He rose and began to pull on his boots, forgetting for once to check for scorpions. Luckily the boots had not been occupied during the night.
‘We’ll have to track him down then. Chronometers are quite valuable and I’ll be held accountable.’
‘Not forgetting the fact that I can’t make maps without them,’ said King, in rather resentful tone.
‘Sergeant, I’m afraid I’ve no time to fight with you this morning over your hurt feelings. You see, we have had a thief in our midst.’
King stuck out his jaw but wisely kept silent after this, realizing that the important thing was to retrieve the instruments.
Gwilliams said, ‘I’ll get the rifles.’
‘Sergeant King, you will remain in the camp,’ ordered Crossman, splashing water on his face from a copper bowl. ‘We don’t want to get back and find the place ransacked.’ He allowed Sajan to wind his turban for him, still not adept at doing it himself.
‘They’re not all thieves, sir. Ibhanan . . .’
‘Is an honest man, I’m sure. But he’s also an elderly man and can easily be overpowered. Besides, if the thief has accomplices out there, you will be of no use to us. You can’t shoot for toffee. Gwilliams, Raktambar and I will set out after the burglar and hopefully bring back the goods.’
Raktambar was already waiting with the horses. Without being asked he had supplied each man with a waterbag and some bread. He had his own weapon with him, a long-barrelled flintlock musket, along with tulwar, two single-shot pistols and a curved dagger stuck in his belt. Unlike the two white men, his appearance was immaculate. He was clean-shaven except for a large black moustache, the ends of which were waxed to a needle sharpness. His clothes had no creases, his boots were gleaming, and moreover he was bright-eyed and ready for the ride.
‘Ah, well done, Raktambar,’ murmured Crossman, taking the reins of one horse from him. ‘You know what we are to do?’
‘Yes, sahib. We have to kill the man who has stolen the sergeant’s treasure.’
‘Well, we may not have to kill him. Gwilliams? Are you mounted?’
‘Just about – yeah. I’m ready,’
Raktambar, being the local man, should by rights have been the tracker, but he was not country bred. The Rajput was town born and had become a palace guard in his youth. He had no useful skills out in the wild in hill, forest or plain. Crossman had learned to track in the Crimea and Gwilliams in the American West, so between them these two men picked out the trail. The thief had taken no horse, presumably because he could not ride, and had set out on foot. From the length of his stride it was clear to Crossman that his man had begun running but after two miles had dropped to a fast walk, then a little later, to a slower walk. He tried to point out these signs to Raktambar, thinking the Rajput would like to learn.
‘What do I care if a man runs or walks?’ said Raktambar, sulkily. ‘It means nothing to me.’
‘The more information you can gather on your quarry, the better,’ explained Crossman. ‘Then when you find him there’ll be less surprises to encounter.’
‘Humph. I see his marks in the dust, I follow them, I kill him. What do I care about surprises?’
‘Could be he might be waitin’ to bushwack you,’ Gwilliams argued. ‘Could be that’s a surprise you ain’t gonna be ready for. Mebbe he’ll shoot you deader’n lump of rock on a mesa. Then you can stick that nose up in the air and tell ole Gwilliams he’s only a barber and don’t know pigeon poop from cobra shit.’
‘How can he shoot me with no firearm?’ asked the Rajput.
Crossman said nothing to this, but Gwilliams fell into the trap with a triumphant, ‘How do you know he ain’t took one from the camp?’
‘I count them, before I leave. There is no weapon missing.’
Crossman stared at the Indian for a minute, as they rode along, his mind half on the tracks in the dirt and half on this argument.
‘You counted all the weapons in the camp?’ he said, incredulously. ‘How did you know how many there were in the first place? What about the Enfields I keep locked in the strongbox?’
‘Since the arms’ box was locked, and the lock not broken, Raktambar believes the Enfields must all be there. As for the others, I know how many there are because I counted them the first night I arrive in your camp and I count them every night since. This is how one stays alive, to know where each weapon is at all times. My master, the Maharajah Ram Singh would be dead a long time ago if I did not keep a tally of where are all the weapons and who is armed with what. You, sahib, and you,’ he flicked his nose at Gwilliams in a gesture of contempt, ‘both follow these footmarks in the dirt, but I know the man has only one weapon. A long knife women use for scaling fish. When I catch him, for he is a stupid fellow to go on foot, he will run at me screaming, knife in hand, and I shall shoot him dead.’
But when they found the man, whom Jack immediately recognized as a quiet, mild fellow called Sitakanta, he was already dead. The body was lying naked in a crop of rocks, this thief having fallen foul of other thieves. There were many footprints in the dust, indicating a group of at least five. King’s instruments were gone, of course, and so were Sitakanta’s clothes. Sitakanta’s throat had been cut and he would have bled to death over a relatively short period of time. His hands and feet were bound with grass rope. There were marks on the binding around his wrists indicating that he had probably tried to gnaw his way through the rope, even as the life drained from him and the world faded away before his eyes. There were also signs that scavengers had been around, probably rats and kites, no doubt scared off when sounds of approaching humans were heard.
‘I wouldn’t have taken this man for a thief,’ said Crossman, as they wrapped the body in a blanket and draped it over the rump of Gwilliam’s mount. ‘He didn’t seem the type. He was always so cheerful and eager to please. When King wanted someone there, Sitakanta would be among the first to volunteer. I’m genuinely surprised.’
‘You never can tell,’ Gwilliams replied. ‘Mebbe his daughter was bein’ held hostage by a bandit chief. Could be his father was in a blood feud with another family an’ needed money to buy ’em off. You can’t tell what’s in a man’s head. He could be smilin’ like a crescent moon, day in, day out, and still be eaten away inside with worrit ’n’ woe. These people ain’t our people, Lieutenant. We ain’t got halfway to knowing their ways in the time we been here. Maybe he hated our guts for some reason? These people are deeper’n any I’ve met on any shore.’
Crossman acknowledged that the corporal, whose insight was sharper and keener than that of most men, was probably on the right track.
‘Then again,’ said Gwilliams, ‘it’s only money. No malice needed, when you think about it. Just a case of you’ve got more’n me, so I’ll have some of yourn, thank you kindly sir.’
They picked up the tracks of the new robbers and followed them for about two miles. Eventually they found themselves approaching a plains village which stood high on a bridge of land with deepening hollows on either side. The rains had not yet come and the lakes had dried up to bowls of dust where white cows and dark buffaloes roamed listlessly in search of scant green leaves on miserable shrubs. There were dark shells of fishing boats lying stranded on the barren earth, lifeless as dead turtles in a desert.
It was obvious that people were desperately poor. Crossman began to wonder what the village near his own home would be like if Loch Eileen dried up every so often and the sheep and cattle were dying of thirst before the inhabitants’ eyes.
‘Now Raktambar, I don’t want you killing everyone in sight,’ said Crossman. ‘Curb your enthusiasm for blood, if you please.’
The Rajput grunted something which might have been assent.
Gwilliams said, ‘I might remind the officer that a murder has bin committed.’
‘We’re not judge and jury, Corporal. We can’t hang half a dozen men for something which might have been done by one or two. The man who has the instruments now might not be the man
who took them from Sitakanta and ended his life. We also don’t have the time to sift through evidence. We’ll take our goods and go, leaving dire threats in our wake. If we meet resistance, of course, it’ll be a different matter.’
They were now at the entrance to the village, which was a sprawl of huts either side of a dusty track, some fifty or sixty habitations. Dirty, naked children were standing, staring at the visitors. Old men and women, many squatting their haunches and stirring tiny fires, looked up with red rheumy eyes probably wondering whether they ought to be as interested as the young. Cattle stood or wandered between the shacks or mud dwellings, harried by the occasional scrawny dog. One younger man stepped out of a hut and then immediately vanished again in the blink of an eye.
Crossman called his party to a halt.
‘Raktambar, your Hindi is obviously a hundred times better than mine – please tell the villagers they must bring our goods out now, or suffer the consequences. Tell them if they don’t do what I say we’ll burn the place to the ground, kill all the cattle, hang the murderers, and sell their female children into slavery before nightfall today.’
Gwilliams whistled under his breath. ‘Jeez.’
‘Corporal, I don’t intend to carry out these threats, they’re merely to save us the time of searching the place.’
‘Never make a threat you do not intend to carry out,’ said Raktambar, wisely. ‘Not in India, sahib.’
‘I’m sure that’s wise advice, but we’ll try it my way this time.’
Raktambar did as he was told, bellowing out the words while waving his tulwar and snarling ferociously.
He added the lies that the goods had been stolen from members of the Maharajah Ram Singh’s column of guards, that the instruments belonged to the court magician and were devices for conjuring demons from beneath the earth and if used by the uninitiated would culminate in the users going to a horrible afterlife where their souls would rot and dribble away into drains that led to the fetid sewers of the underworld.
‘Very imaginative,’ murmured Crossman, sitting aside his restless mount. ‘Very colourful. You have my admiration.’
A short time later, a small trembling boy with round fearful eyes came to them and led the party around a section of the huts to an open space. There on a ragged sack lay the glittering treasure. Both chronometers seemed intact, but the sextant was in pieces. Someone had carefully unscrewed it and taken it apart, bit by bit. There was no telling if all the parts were there or not. Gwilliams gathered up all he could see on the sacking and put them in his saddlebags. The corporal then patted the trembling village boy on the head and gave him a biscuit.
Crossman ordered the party to leave the village.
No one looked back.
As they rode back to camp Raktambar remonstrated with Crossman.
‘You should have burned the village. That place is full of murderers and assassins. Other travellers will not thank you, sahib.’
‘I’m aware that there are bad elements within the place, but I can’t kill women, children and innocent men for the sake of retribution. Had we time enough I would’ve done my utmost to find who was responsible, but we’re short of the stuff, and there it is.’
‘The soldier administrators in the Punjab would have chosen ten men and hanged them without question, to teach the village a lesson.’
‘I am not an East India Company Punjabi irregular, Raktambar. I am a officer in the British army. We do things differently.’
Raktambar shrugged. ‘Some of you do, some of you don’t.’
Which left Crossman thinking. Without a doubt many of those North-West Frontier men were a rougher breed, a more ruthless sort of soldier than he was himself. He had heard stories, of Harry Lumsden, John Nicholson and Herbert Edwardes, warrior-clerks belonging to John Company, who if they had not had their own way of doing things on the frontier, would probably be dead men now. Some of them, Nicholson especially, were revered by the Pathans and the Sikhs almost to the point of deification. Nicholson had made a similar journey to Crossman on landing in India at the tender age of seventeen and had gathered rough glory to himself ever since, defeating all who came up against him. Some of those Punjabi men were already double-stamped, with greatness and with ruthlessness, the one hardly possible without the other.
Those soldier-clerks, these collectors of revenues, had carved an empire out of a divided subcontinent, out of its collection of independent states, pitting one ruler against another, leaving some still nominally in their places but removing others and usurping them. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but in this case the pen and the sword together were invincible. They had taken from the Mughals what the Mughals had taken for themselves several hundred years previously. They had marched in with little more than themselves, formed armies out of Bengalis and others, and had wrested yet further empire from the Sikhs. They were the new Akbars, the new Ranjit Singhs, the latest in a long historical line of conquerors and overseers.
Yet they were not monarchs or even warlords: they were Company men, employees, salaried personnel with managers in distant cities. They were uncompromising men, they had to be to survive the dangerous half of their job, that of being a warrior in a warrior’s world. Pathans, Gurkhas and Sikhs, especially, had an affinity with such men. There was mutual respect between them. They lived a life where honour on the field was everything.
Crossman was not such a man, this much he admitted to himself. He was ready to compromise. He was not as ruthless as he should be for the work he was given. It would probably cause his death one day. But he could no more be one of those warriors, famed among other things for being able to split a man down the middle from crown to crotch with a single sword-stroke, than he could be the priest of a small parish church in Norfolk. He was a hybrid: someone not wholly convinced by the violent lifestyle of the soldier, certainly not inexorable, yet someone who would die of boredom in an ordinary life back home. His main fault – and it was a fault in a man of his stamp – was that he could be moved to unnecessary mercy.
That is also to say he was no great administrator either. Nor decisive judge, nor iron-willed negotiator, as these Company men had to be. Their talents were many and varied and their characters impressive. Jack’s charisma was limited, though his charm was above average. As a pioneer on the frontiers, he would have been sorely tested. But since he was coming up behind those men, now that things were established, his skills might be enough. Nathan Lovelace could have been another John Nicholson, but not Jack. One needed to be steel from the backbone out, even to the farthest reaches of the mind. One had to be a manipulative genius.
He entered the camp to see Sergeant King’s face suffused with relief at being handed his precious instruments. The glow was short-lived, as King looked at the pieces of his sextant in dismay.
‘Who did this?’
Crossman stiffened at the implication. ‘Not I, nor any member of our party, Sergeant.’
King was distressed. ‘Oh, I did not mean . . . how am I to do without my instrument? Look at it! It’s been shattered.’
‘Not shattered, simply taken apart.’
‘As good as shattered,’ wailed the sergeant.
‘Look, Sergeant, I’m sorry for it, but there it is. Perhaps we’ll come across someone who can put it back together again. You’ve not used the thing all that much, anyway . . .’
King walked away clutching the sacking with its precious pieces jingling inside, hardly even bothering to listen to his commanding officer. He became over the next two days even more self-absorbed than he had previously been. He used all the rest stops and even worked by lamplight at night. So engrossed was he that he did not respond to Crossman’s demands to take duty watches. This was a serious omission, but the officer did not chastise his sergeant, recognizing that here was an occasion like no other, which would not be repeated. The death of a family member could not have obtained more grieving-time than was given to that broken sextant. On the third day, after two hours’
rest had been passed at noon, Sergeant King emerged triumphantly. He held the sextant up in two hands, as if it were a crown about to be placed on a monarch’s head.
Crossman was on a canvas chair, sitting in the shade of giant thorn tree. He praised his sergeant grudgingly. ‘Well done, King. Gwilliams and I have had to cover your duties over the last forty-eight hours, but we did it without complaint, and do not require any thanks. No, really,’ he continued, seeing that King was paying absolutely no attention to what he was saying, ‘please don’t swamp us with gratitude. We’re happy that things can now get back to normal.’
‘I did it,’ murmured King, seemingly more amazed with himself than others appeared to be. ‘I reconstructed it perfectly.’
‘It’s hardly a beam engine, Sergeant, and if I may say so, the pieces probably only go back together one way. It was simply a matter of time and perseverance. You managed it because we gave you the time.’
But the sergeant was not going to be done out of his glory. He went about the whole camp, showing the sextant to anyone who would pay him any attention. The chain-men and perambulator-wallahs, of course, praised him to the heavens, as they were wont to do on any occasion whatsoever. If he had showed them a lump of clay with twigs stuck in it they would have exclaimed their delight and amazement at his creativity. Why not? King had employed them to do next to nothing except walk the length of northern India, and to them he was a saviour.
Gwilliams was something different again, pointing out that telescopic sights were back to front. King looked at the corporal in annoyance, as if it were the corporals fault that a mistake had been made. He disappeared again for half-an-hour, then came out with the instrument not only correctly aligned but polished to gleaming. Holding it up to the sky he might have been a chief of some primitive tribe about to perform a sun ceremony.
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