A Good Soldier

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  He waited until later in the morning to send a messenger to Ramsey with a note asking him to join him in a pigeon shoot in the palace grounds and a picnic lunch.

  It was an invitation Ramsey could not refuse. He intended to delay his departure until the next day, after he had welcomed Eleanor Verity and Thomas and seen them settled in his bungalow. He had spent the morning with Ruth and she had finally come round to accepting his explanation of Shakuntala’s visit. It was common knowledge now that Shakuntala had decamped.

  The Nawabzada’s messenger found him at the Whittakers’, sent there by Sher Mahommed Khan.

  The Nawabzada had compromised with his conscience. Despite his youth he was endowed with the discretion and obliquity of the oriental in abundance and was by heredity more artful than most.

  He did not directly indict his father. Instead he put what was in his mind as a hypothetical case.

  He and Ramsey were alone together. The servants who would pick up the birds they shot kept their distance.

  Ramsey noticed that the young man showed a confidence he had not displayed before.

  He made the customary polite enquiry about the Nawab. “My father left for Girbad this morning.”

  “I have not yet been to Girbad.”

  “Perhaps it is not a propitious time for you to think about going there. What would you think if...?” The Nawabzada launched himself on his carefully calculated hypothesis of chicanery, massacre, war and disaster.

  Ramsey, alarm growing while he listened, admired the way in which Murtaza skated over the thinnest of ice although leaving him in no doubt of the murkiness of the water beneath; the cunning with which, through innuendo and postulation, a pretence of conjecture and some ambiguity, he hinted at the carnage that impended on the frontier and the extent of its consequences. Most of all Ramsey was impressed by Murtaza’s simulated discouragement of any intention to visit Girbad for the time being.

  As soon as he could without making his going appear urgent, Ramsey took his leave.

  First he told Sher Mahommed Khan and Karim Baksh to make ready to take the road north as soon as darkness fell. He told the sais to drive the trap out next morning to meet the train of carriages, carts and riders comprising the families of the 69th and their armed escort, and bring Mrs. Verity and her son to the bungalow. He went back to the Whittakers and asked them to call on Eleanor in the afternoon.

  Time was against him. The Nawab and Colonel Howell both had a considerable lead over him. So had Major Owthwaite with his advance guard. If any of them arrived at the frontier before him, it could be too late to prevent a war which would be disastrous for Zafarala, for himself and for the 69th.

  There would be little time to rest on the road and the horses would need a respite more than the riders. He told the sais to harness the pony to the trap and drive him to the place near the serai where the horse dealers traded. He returned home with three spare mounts to take north on leading reins.

  When darkness descended, Ramsey, in Pathan clothes, left Nekshahr with his two companions to ride through the night and overtake Owthwaite and the Nawab, and reach Girbad before Colonel Howell, who was approaching from a different direction.

  His own future was at stake and so was the 69th’s. If the regiment precipitated a war, it would not survive a second disgrace.

  *

  They changed horses every two hours, walking, trotting and cantering for a set number of minutes in succession. There was no need to stop for food or drink. They carried water bottles and, in saddlebags, chapati and cold curried mutton.

  The moon rose to light their way, the sky was clear and starry. The night air was dry and chilly, invigorating their mounts. Dust rose in a pale cloud around the horses’ legs. On either hand lay fields of maize and wheat, rice padi and clumps of trees. They rode through sleeping hamlets where dogs barked and came rushing out to keep pace with them, jackals raised curious heads from the garbage heaps where they were scavenging, disturbed chickens squawked and huge rats scuttled across the road.

  They came to a large expanse of bare ground where they could see fires glowing, and knew they had caught up with the main body of Owthwaite’s force bivouacking for a few hours. Later, they saw a tall cloud of dust and heard the clink of accoutrements and the creak of saddlery. They rode off the road to make a detour around Owthwaite and his cavalry. Late in the morning they stopped at a wayside eating-house and learned that the Nawab had preceded them by an hour.

  At that point they left the turnpike again and took a cross-country route which brought them to the outskirts of Girbad at sunset. They stopped at the caravanserai and were told that there was a curfew from the time that full darkness fell until the sun was fully up. They fed, watered and tethered their horses, ate well and left again on foot. The town gate was guarded and nobody was allowed to enter or leave. They made their way towards the fort, which lay to the north of the town on a low hill and directly on the dividing line between Zafarala and Karampur.

  They approached as close to the fort as they could and from the concealment of a copse on the crown of another slight eminence they kept watch and listened.

  Lights glowed in the fort and the sound of voices drifted to them with the smell of the evening fires and food being cooked. For all three of them there was a nostalgia about the bugle calls, the sounds of chaff and laughter of soldiers off duty, the clank and thud of muskets as sentries patrolled the parapets, the stamp of hoofs from the stalls along the near side of the big square building; the odours of stables and watch fires, gun oil and leather, cookhouse, and humanity in cramped quarters.

  Two or three hours after they began their vigil they saw the small glow of carriage lights down the road and presently they could hear the clip-clop of hooves, the rumble of wheels, the metallic sound of cavalry. The Nawab’s cavalcade approached the fort’s main gate, there was a shouting of orders and rattle of arms as the guard turned out. The gate swung open and the Nawab’s coach drove in.

  The hints the Nawabzada had so carefully given him had burned and buzzed in Ramsey’s mind ever since; and now that the critical time was so near he experienced the remembered sensations that preceded battle. The difference was that, this time, the events of the next few hours were conjecture and out of his control.

  The sounds of life from the fort diminished, lights began to go out. Ramsey kept taking out his watch: an hour... two... three... midnight. Tired though he was, he felt no drowsiness. He had the same uneasy, sickening nervous tension that he associated with the day when he had stood on the parade ground at Barrackpore to watch men hanged and blown away by cannon. Sher Mahommed Khan and Karim Baksh, on either side of him, were as alert and tense as he.

  Without warning there was a stir and bustle within the fort. Lights sprang up indoors and around the central courtyard. Raised voices, shouted orders, protests. He had never heard the like: many of the voices were shrill with fear and supplication; not like soldiers’ tones at all.

  More and more lanterns were lit in the courtyard and from where the watchers lay the scene was clearly illuminated. They saw the Nawab come out to take his seat on a dais. Then a long line of shuffling men, nearly all of them in the yellow tunics of Karampur, was brought out roped together, hands tied.

  The men, some in the uniforms of Zafarala, were pushed against the wall, prodded with musket butts and bayonets.

  Volley after volley rang out and the row of helpless convicts dressed as soldiers of Karampur and Zafarala went down. Those who were left standing fell when the bayonets thrust and the swords swung.

  The gate opened and carts rolled out across the hilly ridge, followed by a column of marching troops.

  Soon after, scattered shots and volleys came from the hillsides, cannon boomed from the fort. The sounds of battle filled the air for an hour, until bugle calls fetched the fort’s garrison back. In the midst of the shooting and the battle cries, a fire broke out half a mile on the Zafarala side of the frontier.

  Along the ridg
e, Ramsey and his two companions found the scattered bodies, unbound now, of over a hundred men in Karampur uniforms and some two score dressed as soldiers of Zafarala. They rolled back the sleeves of some and found that each bore a convict’s brand on his arm.

  Going to the place where they had seen huts burning they could smell charred flesh from a furlong away. They found a basti, destroyed by flames, still smouldering and all its inhabitants, their cattle, dogs and poultry, dead.

  At dawn heralds went to the serai and into the streets of Girbad to announce that the Raja of Karampur had sent his mercenaries to burn a village and try to blow up the fort. A battle had been waged and a great victory won. The townsfolk were told to go and see for themselves the evidence of Karampur’s depredations. The Raja’s dead, and the dead of Zafarala who must be avenged, still lay on the battlefield.

  Here was ample justification for the Nawab to order Major Owthwaite to invade Karampur as soon as the main body of his Army arrived. By forced marches, Ramsey calculated, they would be here before the sun went down.

  *

  They returned to the serai for their three best horses, ate a meal and started out immediately to meet the 69th. It was imperative to reach them before they came to the frontier, heard of the alleged attack on the fort and massacre at the basti, and immediately set off in reprisal against the Karampur Army, which was in garrison along a defensive line two miles inside its own frontier, where the terrain was more favourable to it than on the border itself.

  Colonel Howell must have crossed the eastern frontier of Zafarala the previous morning at about the time that the Nawab was leaving Nekshahr. Ramsey wondered at what stage of the journey this information had reached the Nawab. Perhaps it had awaited his arrival at the fort. In any event, it favoured the Nawab’s plan. Whichever force arrived first at the northern frontier would be seemingly justified in launching an immediate punitive column into Karampur.

  With this worry in the forefront of his thoughts, Ramsey rode hard towards the east, the low escarpment which marked the frontier always in sight. At the eastern extremity of the northern borderline, Zafarala, Karampur and a third, much smaller, principality were contiguous. At this point, Ramsey remembered from his military training and a recent study of the map, there was a small kot, a fortress, not much more than a piquet post, on the Karampur side. The topography in that corner favoured Karampur. The kot had been built on a ledge about a hundred feet above the plain, which jutted out from a hillside no more than a hundred and fifty feet high, but protected at its base by a narrow river. A bridge crossed this some half-mile to the west. Zafarala had no strongpoint on this part of the border, because the open plain offered no protection. From the kot, the bridge was hidden from view by the bluff on which the kot stood: but half-way between the two, any approaching force would come into the kot’s field of view and of fire.

  The narrow bridge came in sight. And, to the east of it, advancing at the double, screened from the river by a coppice, a body of troops in scarlet tunics and blue shakos.

  Ramsey eased Sikander back to a walk and shouted to the others to slow down. He took his telescope from its case and put it to his eye. First he searched the distance: and there he saw what he had expected to, a dense dust cloud which he knew could be raised only by a large body of marching men. Then he focused on the platoon of the 69th that was advancing at a steady trot. There could be no mistaking the tall, thin, long-legged officer who led it; an officer who wore a patch over one eye.

  Ramsey recalled the last words Patrick Yeats had spoken to him when they said goodbye in Barrackpore: “I’ll bide my time until I can take my revenge one day.” This was not a mutiny, but to a man with Yeats’ fiery temper, who had seen his wife and children murdered by Indians, any excuse to take even vicarious vengeance would be irresistible.

  Clearly, the Nawab had sent a galloper to report the “invasion” to Colonel Howell, the Colonel had ordered Verity’s company to take the kot, and Verity had detailed Yeats’ platoon to make the first assault.

  Within the next five minutes, the 69th could be in dire disrepute again.

  Sher Mahommed Khan and Karim Baksh were standing in their stirrups to try to improve their view. Both looked delighted with what they saw.

  Ramsey said “We must stop them.”

  “Stop them, Sahib? It is not our platoon, but they will make child’s play of...” Sher Mahommed Khan was always ready to watch a kotful of Sikhs despatched to the hereafter.

  “Fool. If Yeats Sahib attacks the kot it will mean the failure of all our efforts.”

  Ramsey spurred his horse forward. Yeats was too far away to hear a shout, even if all three of them joined their voices. He drew his pistol and fired it into the air. He saw Yeats’ hand go up and the whole platoon come to a sudden halt. Yeats stood looking at the three approaching horsemen for a moment, then the muskets of the leading file of four went to their shoulders and bullets hummed close by the three riders’ heads.

  Ramsey yelled an order, pulled Sikander up on his haunches and slid from the saddle. The other two followed suit. They lay prone, sheltered by a few boulders and sparse bushes.

  Ramsey took a peep. The platoon was trotting forward again. He stood quickly to pull his rifle from the bucket at Sikander’s shoulder. Two more musket balls whipped past.

  Sher Mahommed Khan growled “Yeats Sahib’s platoon never could shoot.”

  Ramsey fired the gun into the air, then ducked as another two balls narrowly missed him. He took off his white pagri and tied it to the muzzle of his rifle, then raised it and waved it. Holding his breath, he slowly began to stand up.

  The platoon had gone to ground and five men were working their way towards him. He put down his rifle, raised his hands and went forward.

  When they were close enough, he called to the corporal in command, “Do you not recognise me, Naik Barkat Ali? It is I, Lieutenant Ramsey.”

  The five men stopped in their tracks.

  “Left’nant Rumgee Sahib! Huzur, we took you for a Pathan...”

  “I have one with me: Sher Mahommed Khan... and another old friend, Karim Baksh.”

  The men were wearing broad grins now. They saluted Ramsey and came on at the double. The other two broke cover and advanced, leading the horses. They all walked back to where Yeats was standing with the rest of his platoon now on their feet.

  Ramsey called “Sorry to spoil your fun, Patrick.”

  “Hugh! What is this masquerade?”

  “I’ve just saved you... and the Colonel... from a court martial, my friend.”

  “I shall be court-martialled if I don’t carry out my orders and assault that kot with no more waste of time.”

  “I think you will be persuaded otherwise when you hear what I have to say.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  By the time that the 69th reached Girbad, all the bodies of the 150 massacred convicts had been cremated. Colonel Howell diplomatically refrained from confronting the Nawab with Ramsey’s verbal evidence. Instead, he purported to accept the accusation against Karampur and suggested that the Nawab should return forthwith to Nekshahr while the regiment took up positions along the frontier. The Nawab, having had word that a docile Shakuntala awaited him, was not loath to comply.

  When Major Owthwaite arrived, Colonel Howell told him the facts of the matter and recommended that he, also, should about turn with his entire force and make tracks for the capital. In the meanwhile, the Colonel had sent a despatch to the Resident by safe hand of Captain Thorn, accompanied — escorted, Howell meant, but did not say — by Ramsey and his two ex- sepoys.

  *

  The Nawab, in the belief that he had discredited his neighbour, the Raja of Karampur, whether or not Colonel Howell or Major Owthwaite followed up the chance he had created, went back in a good humour. The massacre at the fort had been the greatest thrill of his life. He was grateful now to his son Murtaza for having cringed away from carrying it out.

  He was delighted also with Shakuntal
a, who was pliant and complacent and altogether as great a sensual delight to him as the slaughter of those Hindus lined up against a wall in the light of the oil lanterns and screaming for mercy. When, after he had taken possession of her for the first time, she asked him a favour, he could not refuse it; he could not have brought himself to refuse her anything.

  “May I make a humble request, Lord?”

  “What is it, pearl among women?”

  “I have heard much about the great animal fights Your Highness enjoys. I would like to see one. And I would like to sit at your side, unveiled, not on the parda balcony with your other women, so that all men, and especially the Europeans, may see that Shakuntala the dancer is the Nawab’s favourite.”

  What a humiliation for Ramsey. The Nawab chuckled.

  “It shall be as you wish. Tomorrow.”

  *

  “My word, Thomas,” Ramsey said, “you ride like a veteran.”

  “Is that a horse doctor, sir?”

  Ramsey laughed. “It means someone who has been a horseman for a long time.”

  On the grass in front of Ramsey’s bungalow, his sais — under the bossy aegis of Sher Mahommed Khan — had constructed three low hurdles.

  Eleanor Verity, Henry Whittaker, Constance and Ruth sat on the veranda watching while Ramsey taught Thomas to jump his pony. All the servants, even the sweeper standing shyly apart, watched and applauded.

  Sher Mahommed Khan said “When I was Thomas Baba’s age I had a horse that I could make jump the height of a man.”

  “Show us,” said Thomas, who had his measure, in Hindustani

  “Only Pathan horses can jump as high as that,” Sher Mahommed Khan said with dignity. “You do not expect a man to jump over a child’s hurdles, do you?”

  Thomas had a suggestion to make. “Perhaps Ramsey Sahib knows someone who has a Pathan horse he will lend you, so that you can show us all what a fine jumper you are.”

  Sher Mahommed Khan grinned. “Thomas Baba, you have the makings of a little devil in you.”