'I know your wife well, Riley and I am sure Logan is correct.' Jack held Riley's worried gaze. 'I don't think there is a pandy born who is a match for Charlotte.' He raised his voice again. 'Now gather round and listen, everybody.'
Jack related all that Fraser had told him. He was surprised at the silence from men who were usually only too ready to give their opinions on everything under the sun.
'Are we marching to Allahabad now, sir?' Prentice asked.
'That's the idea,' Jack said. 'Our single company is not powerful enough to make a dent in the Mutineer positions. We have to join a larger force.' While part of him regretted losing his independent command, he was also glad to be joining an army sufficiently powerful to challenge the Mutineers.
'The whole country is against us,' Kent said. 'Maybe we'd better leave India completely.'
Jack felt a shudder run through him. When he first joined the 113th such defeatist talk would have been commonplace. Now, after five years and hard-fought campaigns against Burmese and Russians, the temper of the regiment had altered, and the officers were more confident than they had been. 'So far as I can judge, Lieutenant Kent, the rebellion has not spread from the Ganges valley. It seems to be confined only to disaffected sepoy regiments and some native states.'
'Other native states could mean half of India,' Kent said. 'We'll be kicked out of the country.'
Jack felt the ripple of unease pass through the men. They had seen their cantonments destroyed, their colonel killed and their families sent into the unknown. Now one of their officers, a man they would rely on to lead them in battle, was telling them they faced defeat.
'Lieutenant Kent,' Jack controlled his voice. 'We are not going to lose India. The Mutineers have taken us by surprise. I know you have recently posted to this regiment from another unit, so you are maybe not fully aware who we are.' He waited for a moment to allow his words to sink in, knowing the men were listening intently.
Jack raised his voice slightly more. 'We are the 113th Foot. Once we were the Baby Butchers; after the Crimea, we became the Defenders of Inkerman. The 113th are at their best when things look bad, as they do now. The rebels appear to be hunting us in a country we think of as our second home.'
Jack realised every man was watching him; every face was concentrating on him. 'Well, Lieutenant Kent, and all the other men of the 113th here, this is our second home. I was born in this country, and I'm damned if I'll let it slide back into the anarchy it was in before we arrived.' Jack wondered why he suddenly felt so passionate about India; he only knew that he did.
'Sir!' Riley sounded sick at heart. 'How about Charlotte and the rest of our families? They're in Cawnpore.'
'I know,' Jack was aware of Jane and Mary watching him. He could not read their faces. 'We'll join the army at Allahabad, lift the siege of Cawnpore, kick the pandies so hard they won't know what hit them and return India to British rule.' The men stared at him, some blank of expression, others concerned. He had hoped for more enthusiasm. Somebody whispered: 'Holy Havelock; bring your Bibles, boys.'
Holy Havelock? What did that mean?
'We're the 113th,' Jack spoke quietly again. 'Not some stuck-up dandified regiment whose officers never venture further from London than Tunbridge Wells.'
He saw the men's expressions alter. Many British regiments had two different sets of officers, the Hyde Park Strollers who squired the ladies while their regiment was in a British barracks, and the practical, less wealthy officers who took over when Horse Guards posted the regiment abroad. The former looked down on the latter as socially inferior. As one of the least desirable units in the Army, the 113th did not possess Hyde Part Strollers; their officers remained with the men wherever they travelled.
'We're the 113th,' Jack spoke slightly louder. 'We do the jobs other regiments don't do.' He saw some of the men nod at that, paused and continued. 'Or rather, we do the jobs other regiments can't do!'
He saw backs straighten, shoulders pulled back, heads coming up; there were even a few smiles.
'Don't forget what we have done; at Inkerman, at the Redan and in the trenches outside Sebastopol. We held the Russians; we met the best they had and,' he paused, then spoke slowly and loudly, 'we smashed them!'
There were a few cheers and men looked at him, nodding.
'So if we defeated the best the Czar produced, what do you think we'll do to a few mutinous back-stabbing pandies?' He waited for a response. The low growl was heartening. He helped them along. 'We'll destroy them!' He shouted the words. 'What will we do?'
'We'll destroy them!' The men responded.
'What will we do?'
This time the reply was a full-blooded roar. 'We'll destroy them!'
'That's right.' Jack held up his hands for silence. 'Until now, we've been creeping around avoiding the pandies. Well, not any longer. It's not the 113th way to avoid trouble. We are marching to Allahabad to join Havelock, and then we are relieving Cawnpore and setting our families free.'
The men were standing up, some stamping their feet. Jack wondered if the Mutineers could hear them, hoped the sentries were alert and continued. 'We're marching tomorrow morning early, so make sure your rifles are clean, bright and slightly oiled, keep them loaded and ensure everybody has sufficient ammunition. Keep your bayonets loose in their scabbards, keep alert…' He waited for a second, 'and if any blasted pandies get in our way, we'll treat them like we treated the Cossacks.'
The men cheered. Jack allowed them to cheer. One part of him hoped the noise alerted the Mutineers, even although he knew the enemy would vastly outnumber them.
'Take command, Prentice,' Jack said. 'I need a few moments to think.' There was no need to explain anything to his junior officers.
'Yes, sir.'
As always, they had camped within a copse of trees to shield them from travellers or hostile rebels. Ensuring his revolver was secure in its holster; Jack stepped to the edge of the trees, produced and lit a cheroot. He looked over the flat plain, with the fading light punctured by the flickering lights of village fires and smoke hazing the sky. There was a peaceful beauty here, as well as a new sense of uneasiness Jack had never experienced before. He tried to recall vague memories from his early childhood, remembering laughter, bright eyes and a feeling of security.
'You did that well,' Mary's voice interrupted his reverie. 'The soldiers were unsure what was happening.'
Jack had heard her coming. 'It's better that they should know.'
'You're deep in thought. What are you thinking?'
'I hate to watch this country tearing itself apart,' Jack inhaled deeply and allowed the smoke to trickle from the corner of his mouth.
'Why do you care?' Mary asked. 'You're a soldier. You're British. You'll go home to your northern island when your time here is finished.'
Jack leant against the tree and allowed his eyes to roam across the vastness of India. 'I was born here,' he said slowly. 'Part of me will always belong here. All of me hates to see these people, the hardworking, innocent, honest people of the land, trapped between these Mutineers and us.'
'Do you hate them?' Mary's voice was low.
'Do I hate who?'
'The Mutineers.' Mary said. 'Do you hate the Mutineers?'
Jack thought for a long moment. 'Yes,' he said softly. 'Yes, I do.'
Mary moved closer to him. 'Don't.' She said. 'Please don't.'
'They murdered scores of my men,' Jack said. 'Burned them in barracks or shot them when they emerged. They butchered the colonel and women and children.'
'I know,' Mary said. 'Your men talk about the murder of the women. They also hate. They are filled with hatred. They frighten me sometimes when they look at me as if I was a murderer too.'
Jack nodded. 'They won't touch you.'
'They won't touch us when you are there,' Mary corrected softly. 'If you were not here, they might. To them, I am another potential rebel, a black.' she looked downward, avoiding his gaze. 'Do I look black to you?'
Ja
ck took the cheroot from his mouth. Although they had been together since Gondabad, he had never properly looked at her before; she had only been a female civilian to be cared for, a shadow of Jane. 'I have never thought about it.'
'Well; do I?' Mary stepped out from the shadow of the trees and into the last slanting light of the sun.
For a moment Jack was back in Burma with Myat sliding past, smiling mysteriously. Except this woman was more vulnerable than Myat had ever been, and her question asked so quietly, hid far deeper concerns. In a way Mary was like India herself, unsure quite what she was; Mary was half British and half Indian, not quite belonging to and never entirely accepted by either people.
'It's like walking a tightrope,' she must have read his thoughts. 'Balancing between one culture and the next, never being sure what people are thinking about you, knowing nobody trusts you.'
Jack thought of his own life as the illegitimate son of a general and some unknown servant girl. Before he learned he was a bastard, Jack had been confident and assured of his place in society. Ever since his stepmother told him he was no longer part of the family, Jack had been a man out of place, neither a proper gentleman nor a man from the ranks. How much worse would it be for this woman?
'Black, white, brown or green.' He shook his head, understanding something, yet only a fraction, he suspected, of the life that fate had given her. 'I don't know, and I don't care. You look beautiful.'
Mary stiffened and looked for him. 'I was not fishing for a compliment.'
'And I was not giving you one,' Jack said. 'I was only speaking the truth.' He watched her slide back into the trees and pulled again at his cheroot. Tomorrow they would begin the march to Allahabad. Tomorrow was the beginning of a new phase. He heard Mary stop and he glanced over his shoulder. She was watching him.
Chapter Six
'Heads up, men,' Jack surveyed them. After months in India, most were sun-browned to the same hue as any Indian, with only the red-heads retaining the pale complexion that peeled and reddened under the heat. Their uniforms were similar to those worn by many of the Mutineers, and their weapons and training were not much different.
'As I said, we are no longer creeping by night and hiding by day,' he said. 'As from now, we are marching like soldiers. From a distance, we are no different to a company of mutinous sepoys. We march in the open.'
'Sir,' Kent said. 'What if we meet any real Mutineers?'
'We are the 113th,' Jack said. He gave no more instructions; his men knew what he meant.
'Keep your rifles loaded and ready,' Jack ordered, 'and your bayonets loose in the scabbards. You griffins: I want you to watch the veterans and learn from them. The old hands, I want you to have patience with the Johnny Raws; you were like them once and probably even greener. We are all the 113th, all part of the regiment.'
Marching under the summer heat with the dust filming them and their boots crunching on the road, the 113th was in no mood to stop for anybody. Twice they saw bodies of red-coated Mutineers marching northward and once a group of irregular horsemen demanded their destination.
'Allahabad,' Jack said and marched on.
'The Gora-log are there,' the horsemen said.
'Achcha' Jack shouted back. 'Good.'
The 113th continued to march. A dozen horsemen pursued them and rode alongside. Savage looking men with an assortment of arms and steel breastplates below spiked helmets, they could almost have come from the pages of the Arabian Nights, save for the muskets some carried. Galloping past the stubbornly marching column, they reined up fifty yards ahead and held up their hands as if demanding the infantry should stop.
Jack felt his anger rise. How dare these insolent rebels attempt to halt my men? He spoke over his shoulder. 'Front rank!'
'Sir!' As O'Neill spoke, Jack thanked God for his Crimea veterans.
'Do you remember when we trained to march and fire in the Crimea?'
'Of course, sir.' There was satisfaction in O'Neill's face.
'Carry on, sergeant.' Jack stepped aside. There was no need to give further orders; his men knew what to do.
The column marched on, boots raising fine dust that rose high to settle on the rear ranks and the road behind them. Jack saw a stick-legged Indian peasant look up briefly and then return to his labour. The warfare of armed men, sahibs or whatever, was no concern of his. He would be happy only to be left alone.
'Right lads,' Jack heard O'Neill's voice, rich with Donegal. 'On my word.'
There was the snick of soldiers fitting caps on their rifles. Two more steps.
'Present.'
Without looking back, Jack knew the front two ranks were aiming their rifles as they marched. The horsemen were only thirty yards in front, unsure what was happening. Some unslung their muskets; others drew tulwars and headed toward the advancing column.
'Aim.' There was no urgency in O'Neill's voice.
'Come on you bastards.' Logan's harsh, unforgiving Glaswegian voice sounded.
Two more steps, the boots crashing down remorselessly.
'Fire.' O'Neill said without emotion.
Eight rifles fired in unison, the noise deafening. The horsemen in front staggered, with three men falling from their saddles.
'Front two ranks; take the flank.' O'Neill said and the front two ranks separated from the main body to march beside the road. 'Present!'
The next two ranks readied their rifles. The horsemen saw death pointing at them, and while some turned to flee, others charged forward, decreasing the space between infantry and cavalry at a frightening rate.
'Fire!'
There was immediate chaos in the advancing horsemen with tumbling riders and horses. The charge ended in kicking carnage.
'Bayonets … fix!' Jack ordered as his column continued its remorseless march. 'Finish them.'
There was no mercy as the 113th plunged forward. Memories of the massacre of Gondabad combined with the frustration of hiding for the last days as the men charged in with bayonets. The British butchered the cavalrymen in an ugly, sordid affair that left no survivors and gasping, sweating infantrymen of the 113th looked in something like satisfaction at the bloodied dead.
'Form up,' Jack ordered. 'March.'
'The pandies will have heard the commotion,' Elliot said.
'Let them,' Jack glanced back over his men. The minor victory had heartened them. They marched slightly straighter, with heads up and their shoulders back despite the crippling heat. India may be in danger of falling, but this company of the 113th were still soldiers, still fighting, still men. There was hope for this unhappy country.
Another day, another night of pickets and slow conversation, of nervous sentries with their fingers on warm triggers, of men twitching in disturbed sleep, of heat and humidity and questing flies, and of Jane's voice singing old lullabies. Jack watched as teenage soldiers crawled closer to listen and some dashed home-sick tears from eyes that had seen far more than boys of their age should. He saw Jane holding a weeping boy's hand as his colleagues watched in nostalgic memory or envious regret for the childhood they never experienced.
'She's a kindly woman,' Jack said.
Mary lay with her back to a tree, watching him as he slumped beside her after completing his rounds of the pickets. She smiled and handed over a mango. 'She's adopted your young soldiers.'
'They're a wild bunch, but some have a good heart.'
Mary lifted her chin slightly. 'Riley and a shy soldier with steady eyes are taking care of us as if we were family.'
'Whitelam.' Jack identified Riley's companion at once.
Whitelam had found a soul-mate in Riley, and next day they discovered an abandoned tonga, a local pony trap, next to a burned-out village. While men with practical skills restored the cart to something like working order, others had found an ancient horse. As they marched on, day after day, Mary and Jane sat in discomfort on the jolting, spring-less cart in the midst of the column, with a tattered hood keeping off the worst of the sun.
'Enj
oying the ride, ladies?' Jack asked.
'Your men are doing their best to help us,' Jane replied.
Jack nodded. The presence of two women helped focus the attention of the men. They had something for which to fight.
The cavalrymen had been watching them for some time, riding on both flanks at a distance of some three hundred yards.
Flapping his hand in a vain attempt to clear away some of the dust, Jack looked left and right. 'If they are Mutineers, then they are having a good look at us. The longer they delay attacking, the closer we are to Allahabad. Let them wait.'
'If they come on both flanks at once,' Prentice said doubtfully, 'we'll be in trouble.'
'Then we form a square and blast them,' Jack told him. 'Keep marching.' He looked down the column. 'How are the women faring?'
'They're bearing up.'
After days of jolting and creaking in the tonga, Jane and Mary were increasingly tired, but both refused to complain. Jack nodded; they were made of the right stuff. He stepped aside to allow the men to march past and slid between the ranks to speak to the women.
'Don't be concerned about the horsemen,' he marched alongside them. 'They can't hurt us from there.'
'I'm not concerned,' Jane lifted a hand. 'We are surrounded by a hundred stalwart British soldiers led by the redoubtable Captain Windrush.'
'Maybe not so redoubtable,' Jack said.
'Your men think otherwise,' Mary called over. 'They have been telling us all sorts of things about you.'
Jack smiled. 'Barrack- room gossip,' he said. 'Half will be lies and the other half simply not true.'
Jane smiled. 'Perhaps,' she said.
'We are nearing Allahabad,' Jack said. 'You should be safe there, and get a rest.'
'Your men will be leg-weary,' Mary said. 'They've marched for days and days, and nobody has fallen out.'
'If they fall out the Mutineers will murder them,' Jack said. 'I have a good sergeant to shout them back into formation and save their lives. Leg-weary or not.'
Windrush: Cry Havelock (Jack Windrush Book 4) Page 10