Gwilliams made a farting noise with his mouth, his usual rejoinder to someone he regarded as an upstart and not worth his time.
Everyone ignored the youth after that and the conversation continued in a calmer mode between the two senior officers.
‘What, Lieutenant Crossman,’ said the senior cavalry officer, ‘do you think you can do to wrest this prisoner from us? We are about a legitimate business, sir. If he’s innocent, as you say, you can collect him from Ferozepur, after we’ve given him a trial.’
‘A trial similar to the one you gave the hanged men we saw?’
‘The cornet here was a little over-zealous, I admit, while I was out searching with the rest of my troop. One can’t blame him after all that’s being going on, can one? There will be a trial for these others . . .’
‘I can’t wait for any trial,’ interrupted Crossman. ‘I’m on a mission to the hill tribes and this man is one of mine. I’ve told you this, repeatedly, yet still you stand here and argue. What kind of officer are you? All the EIC officers I’ve met so far have been reasonable men, but I seem to have come up against two buggers who don’t know their arse from their elbow. Sergeant, cut our man out, will you? I’ve no more time to waste on these fellows.’
A dreadful tension was strung like invisible wires in the air. The Sikhs felt it. The British knew it was there. Incredibly, it seemed to all for one taut minute that there might be a fight for Raktambar. That British officers – and NCOs – should attack each other was of course unthinkable, yet here it was in their minds. It was indeed only there for one savage minute, when searing emotions almost overrode common sense, that insanity was loose.
The first blow, especially with a weapon, would have been disastrous for all concerned. To explain such circumstances at the inevitable courts martial, would have been impossible. One could never recapture such a sharply-honed mood again in a dusty courtroom. It would have been one of those cases, like the mutiny on the Bounty, from which no one would have emerged with any honour intact. Infamous was the word which sprang to mind, as they sat in their saddles and for a few vicious seconds contemplated their own self-destruction. Then it was past. King rode up and took the reins of Raktambar’s mount from a Sikh’s hand.
‘Thank you, Lieutenant,’ said Crossman. ‘You may wish to report this incident when you get back. I should tell Colonel Hawke, as well as those you wish to inform, if I were you. He is my superior.’
‘Calcutta Hawke?’ muttered the officer. ‘Why didn’t you say so, man?’
‘I wish I had, now that I see it impresses you.’ As Raktambar was led away by King, Crossman turned his horse and faced the still furious cornet. ‘And you, young man, you might want to reflect on something other than your own feeling of importance. I have no idea of your orders, or what you regard as your duty, but you’re going to have to live with your deeds and you’d better have some good answers in that head of yours to the questions you’ll ask yourself in the future – or God help you, boy.’
The four rode away, back towards their camp.
‘What about us, sir?’ came a plaintive cry from the same captive who had spoken before. ‘Take us with you. They are shooting men from guns. They will fire us from their cannon. A man should die honourably, sahib, not be blown to pieces. Sahib, sahib, we will be good servants, to you, we will be faithful . . .’ Further words were lost on the wind.
Jack could do nothing for the other two men, even if he wanted to. It was entirely possible they were guilty of the crime attributed to them, in which case they were doomed. Mutiny had only one punishment, be it in various forms. Death. Death by firing squad, by hanging, by other less honourable means. British officers, men and civilians had been murdered. In such turbulent days it was certain that innocent men would go down with the guilty, for chaos and confusion reigns in such times and some men will regard the flimsiest of evidence as damning. Some, indeed, would not need any evidence at all, preferring indiscriminate revenge over specific justice. British families were being slaughtered. There would be madness in the wind for some time to come, on both sides of this new war.
Raktambar was up behind Gwilliams on the corporal’s horse.
‘Are you all right, Raktambar?’ asked Crossman, going up alongside. ‘Were you beaten?’
‘A little.’
‘I’m sorry for that.’
The bedraggled Rajput shrugged, as if to say, these things happen.
‘Are you badly hurt? Do you need to stop?’
‘No, I am not hurt. I am ashamed. I did not fight hard enough.’
‘You were taken by surprise. They would have killed you.’
Raktambar shrugged again, then his expression hardened. ‘If I see that boy again, I will kill him.’
‘That’s not advisable. He’s a nasty brat, to be sure, but no good will come of retaliation. His father’s probably an important man, back in Britain, and he thinks he’s invincible. He isn’t. He’ll get his come-uppance one day, fairly soon I imagine. These arrogant little pipsqueaks always do. It’ll all be in my report, when we return to Ferozepur.’
‘Until then he will hang many men.’
‘I think his lieutenant will keep him reined in, from now on. I believe the lieutenant was as shocked as we were by those bodies in the tree. Was it he who stopped the executions?’
‘Yes, the boy had ordered his men to hang us all. If the lieutenant hadn’t arrived back, I would be in that tree.’
Once back in the camp they gathered up their equipment and set out once more for Piwar. A dark mood hung over the whole party. It was bad enough that they should be riding out on such a dangerous mission, without interruptions such as this one, from their own people. Sergeant King rode up alongside Crossman and spoke with him.
‘Did that prisoner mean what he said? Will they fire him from a cannon?’
‘We’re new to this country, sergeant. We shouldn’t make any snap judgements.’
‘Nothing to do with being new,’ snorted King. ‘That would sound barbaric to me anywhere.’
Jack sighed. ‘I agree, but my name’s not Lord Canning, I’m not the Governor-General of India. If this mutiny spreads further, which seems likely, I doubt even he can contain things. What we have to concentrate on is our small sphere of duty – do our job as best we can without compromising ourselves. We can’t stop the mayhem. It’ll just roll right over the top of us and crush us. I’m not saying we should join it, I’m saying to a certain extent we have to isolate ourselves from it. There’s a canker here which has been growing, I think, for many decades. We’ve come fresh to the shores of India and find a festering land. You have your opinions, and you’re entitled to hold them. Mine probably accord with yours. But don’t destroy yourself by going against unstoppable forces. It’ll just be more waste.’
The subject was then dropped. It was not something that either man felt able to carry forward with any chance of resolution. Jack certainly felt that he would exhaust himself both mentally and spiritually if he were to delve too far into it all. He had chosen the profession of soldiering, not that of the study of politics or ethics. He knew what was right and wrong for him, even for his men, but when it grew to nations he felt overwhelmed.
‘Who’s for a song?’ cried Gwilliams, later in that gloomy day. ‘How’s about one of them English songs o’ yourn? The White Cockade?’ Without waiting for a yay or nay he burst into it with a rich timbre that went with his magnificent bronze beard and hair. King tried to join in with him, but his voice was drowned by Gwilliams. Ishwar Raktambar looked away, embarrassed by this breakdown in discipline, waiting for Crossman’s expected intervention. Then Jack cried, ‘That’s it lads, roar it out, louder now. Put a bit of backbone into it. ’Twas on a summer’s mornin’ as I crossed o’er the moss, I never thought to tarry till some soldiers I did cross. . .’ The voices roared out. ‘. . . he is a handsome young man whose blade will serve the King . . .’ Then Raktambar realized that the illness was catching and fell back, lest he beca
me a victim too. When it was all over, the soldiers looked much better, more refreshed. Clearly this strange yelling had clarified their minds, their blood, and had given their spirits a lift.
In camp that evening, Jack found himself alone at the fire with Gwilliams, who was darning a sock by the poor light.
‘What are you really doing in our army, Gwilliams?’ asked the lieutenant of his corporal. ‘What’s someone from the other side of the world doing with an officer like me, in India?’
Gwilliams looked up and grinned through that mane of his.
‘Me? I just washed up, like driftwood on the beach. I bin up and down my own damn continent so many times it made me dizzy, so I came lookin’ for some new ones. Don’t you like to travel, sir? Ain’t that one of the things that makes you join the army?’
‘Travel? Not for the sake of it, no.’
‘Well, I do. I just like to walk on different dirt. As a youngster I was stuck in this preacher’s house, night and day, readin’ the ancients. Oh, I told you I ain’t got no languages, but neither did the preacher. He had all these translations in English: Horace, Plato, Juvenal, Homer, Plutarch, Plautus and the rest of the Roman and Greek crew. I got to thinkin’ about how it was in them olden days, when the world was small. I came down gradual to thinkin’ how lucky it was that world got bigger by the time I came to it and that it weren’t there just to sit and do nothin’, but to be walked on. So I started walking. Then ridin’. Then sailing. Till I fetched up in some marvellous places and some terrible ones. This is one of the better ones. Whole different way of livin’. Somethin’ no one in Nebraska even dreams about.’
‘But to join the British army, and to sing about being a soldier of the King, like you did today? Isn’t that against your American philosophy?’
Gwilliams grinned, holding up the bright needle to the firelight in order to push the wool yarn through the eyehole.
‘Just cause I sing it, don’t mean I live it. The reason I’m in this man’s army, is cause o’ you. I knew you’d take me to places I ain’t got the money to go to. Sure, I could’ve joined some navy or other, but they work the bejesus out of a man, kill him with it, then flog his dead body for asking for a bit o’ cheese to eat on his way to hell. The navy’s no life for a man who likes to walk on foreign land, only for someone who likes water – a lot of it – and bein’ alone with a band of stinkin’ sailors. They take you away for two years ’n’ more, out on the wet, then when you get off the damn boat they leave you for a couple of days before knocking you on the head and draggin’ you back to the ship’s hold agin. That ain’t no life. Sure, there’s parts o’ this one I could do without, but nothin’s perfect in this here world.’
‘Well, I admire you men who know what you want from life. King seems to have the same gift. Me, I’m still looking for my slot. I really don’t know where I belong.’
‘Sir, there’s excitement in that too. The eternal quest.’
‘I’m glad you think so.’
The next morning, shortly after they set out, Jack’s horse threw a shoe. Gwilliams had suggested, and Crossman had agreed, that they carry spare shoes for all the horses. The last time they had visited an army farrier, at Ferozepur, the mounts had been re-shod and spare shoes had been provided. Here, in the foothills of an approaching mountain fastness, the ground was becoming rougher the whole while, so it was necessary they replaced the lost shoe fairly swiftly. A charcoal fire was lit to heat the shoe before pressing it on the hoof and nailing it home. Gwilliams did it, but all the while he berated his sergeant, the son of a blacksmith.
‘How in the hell did you escape your pa’s trade, Sergeant? You surely watched him at his work, when you was a sprat?’
They were in a rough circle in a clearing, the fire at their centre. King was sitting on a rock nearby smoking a stubby clay pipe, this object a very poor cousin of his leader’s long-stemmed chibouque, purchased in Constantinople a few years before. Crossman was at that moment smoking his wonderful curved pipe, straight out of the Arabian Nights, blissfully switched off from the conversation between the other two and more interested in what Raktambar was doing to occupy his time during this leisure halt.
The air was thick with smoke, from the charcoal fire and the two pipes. Gwilliams – stripped to the waist and wearing leather chaps on his legs – had his back to the horse with its rear leg between his own. Raktambar, who had no interest in shoeing or smoking, was busy playing some sort of game with his hands. He seemed to shuffle his fingers as if they were a deck of cards, then he shook his hands and stared at the result, as though he expected the fingers to be in different positions after this exercise. Crossman stared through the smoke, obviously puzzled by these machinations.
King said, ‘I sometimes watched my dad at work, but I didn’t take it in. I was more interested in learning my schoolwork. My dad didn’t want me to be a blacksmith. He wanted me to be more interested in my studies. He sacrificed a lot to give me some sort of education. You’ve got to remember my dad didn’t like being what he was. He said the work was gruelling hard. The heat from the forge, day after day, burned him something fierce. All up his arms and on his face he had these little black pits where white-hot sparks of iron had flown up and buried themselves in his skin. And lately he’s been complaining that his strength is giving out. You’ve got to be mighty strong to be a blacksmith of any kind.’
Gwilliams, struggling with the restless horse, looked up from his work. ‘Do tell,’ he retorted, sarcastically.
Suddenly Crossman shot off his seat and whipped his pipe from his mouth.
‘How did you do that?’ he cried at Raktambar.
The Rajput smiled, flicked his right hand, and held it up for Jack to inspect.
‘All back to normal now,’ said Crossman. He repeated, ‘How did you do that?’
King said, ‘What did he do, sir?’
‘His fingers were back to front,’ said Crossman. ‘He somehow twisted them on their joints so they faced the wrong way.’
‘I seen you do that too, Lieutenant,’ said Gwilliams, grinning, ‘with that woody hand o’ yourn. Don’t you kick me, damn you madam,’ this to the mare, ‘or I’ll slap your arse for you.’
King stared at Raktambar’s hand. ‘An illusion,’ he said after a while. ‘He fooled you, sir, by mesmerizing you somehow.’
‘No, no,’ insisted Crossman, ‘I saw him do it.’
‘Whole point of an illusion,’ grunted Gwilliams. ‘Hell lady, if you don’t stop shiftin’ your rear I’ll whop you so hard . . .’
Finally the shoe was on and Gwilliams himself could relax and join in the conversation. Crossman was saying to Raktambar, ‘Did you do it?’
‘You saw me do it.’
‘But was it real?’ asked King, ‘or did you hypnotize him?’
‘Watch!’ replied the Rajput. He began the strange shuffling movements with his fingers, which flashed up and down, crossing each other a dozen or more times, then he flapped his right hand and held out his left. The fingers were all back to front on the left hand, though the eyes of his audience were continually distracted by sudden movements of the right hand. Then just as quickly, after another swift flick, they were back to normal again. The eyes of the audience went back and forth between the two hands, amazed that this man before them was able to do such a trick, whether it be a physical displacement or an illusion of sorts.
‘Double-jointed,’ growled Gwilliams, ‘most definite.’
‘No, no,’ said King, ‘it’s a trick of our eyes, not his hands.’
‘Do it again,’ cried Jack, ‘I almost had it that time.’
Raktambar shook his head. ‘Too many times is not good. This is not the way.’
‘He’s right, sir,’ King said, ‘magic tricks lose something in the repeat.’
‘It’s not a magic trick – he’s got these here funny joints,’ insisted Gwilliams.
They were still arguing when they were out on the trail, later, which helped them disregard the heat w
hich bore down on them.
In the middle of the long days they rested in the shade, riding only in the mornings and the late afternoons. Crossman avoided villages and indeed people where he could. All India was not in turmoil but it was simmering at the edges. This was a land in which news moved swiftly from one region to another, there being many travellers – wandering holy men, pedlars, itinerant men of strange sects who painted their bodies with yellow ochre, dancers, musicians, a whole host of rootless people who needed to keep on the move to survive – and the word was that the British were vulnerable and ripe for being driven from the land. Some Indian recipients of this word were indifferent to the news, others were glad and rejoiced, a few whose businesses would be affected, were concerned.
This mixed reaction was dangerous in itself. Crossman could never be sure of any they met. The best policy was to keep out of the way of any habitations and avoid groups. Of course they met men and women on the trail, out about their daily business of collecting wood and water, or one of those nomadic types who walked barefoot over the world. But often as not they passed by without a word, or offered a simple greeting, nothing more. Crossman had to hope that by the time those individuals could pass on the news of the strangers, he and his men would be out of reach of any vigilante groups or organized bands of brigands.
Ishwar Raktambar had said very little about his ordeal in the hands of the two British officers and the Sikh irregulars, but opened up one time when he and Crossman were changing guard. It was coming on dawn and Crossman had decided not to go back to bed. He sat with the Rajput and watched the stars fade into the light blue early-morning sky.
‘I wish to thank you for saving my life,’ Raktambar said. ‘Someone should kill that boy before he is made into a general and has power to destroy many hundeds of men without being called to answer.’
‘There are others like him, at this time, I’m afraid. This is not a civil war, but it is like one. In such wars emotions have more force than do rational minds. It is a time when the bullies are able to do what they like doing and not be held to account. If the pot boils over, neighbours will attack neighbours, hiding murder under the cloak of patriotism.’
Brothers of the Blade Page 21