Should he tell her? Jack shrugged; if he did not, she might think he was a man of mystery, a dark stranger with a brooding secret like the hero of a Gothic romance. He gave a sudden bitter smile; nothing could be further from the truth. 'I am not entirely from the officer and gentleman mould.' He had drawn on his cheroot before he continued, so short spurts of tobacco smoke accompanied each word. 'My father was an officer of the Royal Malverns, scion of many generations of a military family, but my mother was not his wife. She was a kitchen maid or some such; a brief, meaningless affair to ease my father's concupiscence.'
'You make it sound very sordid,' Mary had been listening. 'I wonder if she felt like that, or indeed if he felt like that. Perhaps their relationship was significant to both their lives, something unique and precious despite the differences in their social position.'
Jack frowned and said nothing. He felt uncomfortable at the turn the conversation had taken.
'After all,' Mary continued. 'Your father did not abandon you. He sent you to England to be educated and had you brought up as his son. It was your step-mother who disowned you, not your father.'
Jack examined the glowing end of his cheroot, stepped forward and tossed it into the void. Far below, the river ran brown, glittering under the sun. 'You are a persuasive woman.'
'And you are a man who worries about things you cannot alter.' Mary met him statement for statement. 'Do you think you are less of an officer or less of a man because of an accident of birth? Your soldiers certainly do not.' A gentle smile lifted the corners of her mouth. 'Do you think less of me because my mother was a Rajput and my father a British officer? Do you think less of me because I am the product of a brief, meaningless affair to ease my father's concupiscence?'
Jack turned to face her, again consciously comparing her to Helen. 'No.' He spoke more shortly than he intended.
'Nor do I about you; and nor should anybody else with even a modicum of sense,' Mary said. 'You are no fraud, Captain Jack; you are a soldier of the Queen and a respected – a highly respected - officer of the 113th Foot.'
Jack took out another cheroot, contemplated it for a moment and put it back in his pocket. He studied Mary. 'You are very serene sitting there,' he said. 'You look as if you are waiting for an artist to paint your portrait.'
'Only if you are the artist,' Mary was smiling. 'There is nobody else here. Only us.' Standing up, she extended her hand to him.
'What?' Taken by surprise, Jack stared at her.
'What do you think? I want to hold your hand. Or am I not sufficiently respectable for you?'
Unused to such forward behaviour from a woman, Jack hesitated. 'Tomorrow we march for Cawnpore,' he said. 'Tomorrow we return to the war.'
'I know,' Mary said softly. Her hand was warm and dry in his. 'Come home safely, Jack Windrush.' She lowered her voice so even he could not hear. 'Come safely to me, Captain Jack.'
Chapter Eight
'It is one hundred and twenty miles from Allahabad to Cawnpore.' Elliot gave the statistic with some satisfaction. 'And there could be pandies every yard of the way.'
Jack inspected his men. Havelock had split the 113th, leaving half in the fort with Lieutenant Fairbairn and Ensign Shearer in charge. Now Jack's sixty men of the 113th helped make up the 979 British infantry, with contingents from the 64th and 84th Foot as well as the kilted 78th Highlanders and the Company's Madras Fusiliers. Eighteen Volunteer British cavalry accompanied them, as well as thirty irregular native horsemen and a hundred and thirty proud Sikhs.
'I don't fully trust those Sikh fellows,' Kent said. 'We were fighting them only a few years ago, and now they pretend to be on our side. Like as not they'll turn traitor the minute the Mutineers appear.'
'If you don't trust them,' Jack said, 'I recommend you keep a strict watch on them, Lieutenant Kent.' He had hoped to leave Kent in Allahabad, but Havelock had insisted he accompany the relief column. Jack shrugged; obeying disliked orders was all part of the soldier's bargain.
General Havelock's small army included his son, Lieutenant Havelock as Aide-de-Camp and the experienced Stuart Beatson and Fraser Tytler as Assistant Adjutant-General and Quartermaster-General respectively. Captain Maude, an energetic man of great experience, was in charge of the artillery.
'So Cawnpore has fallen,' Elliot said. 'Wheeler surrendered to Nana Sahib. I never thought I'd see the day a British general surrendered to a native.'
'That's the shave,' Jack spoke quietly. 'If it's true we don't hold much in the north of India now. Please God Sir Henry Lawrence keeps the flag flying in Lucknow.'
'I heard the sepoys who wanted to remain loyal are turning,' Elliot said. 'They are scared of the Mutineers. The Rani of Jhansi is said to have murdered all the British in her country too, after promising safe conduct.'
Jack thought again of Boadicea and wondered if the Romans experienced the same feelings of hurt and betrayal he was experiencing, or if they had only known hatred and a desire for revenge, as seemed to fill Colonel Neill.
'There were uprisings in Gwalior as well,' Elliot said.
'The unrest is spreading.' Jack felt for a cheroot; he only had a few remaining and no way of renewing his stock. This war was showing him many types of hardship.
'Here's the general.' Prentice said.
At five foot five, Havelock should not have been an imposing figure, but there was something about his white-haired, neat figure in his blue frock coat that inspired confidence.
'Men,' Havelock did not need to shout for his voice to carry to every man in the relief column. 'You will by now have heard the news from Cawnpore.'
There was a deep growl from the soldiers. Jack focussed on his reduced company; Riley was white-faced under his tan, with O'Neill grim at one side and Logan's mouth moving in silent obscenity at the other.
While the 64th and 84th were mainly composed of young Johnny Raws with sun-reddened faces and peeling noses, the 78th Highlanders were veterans of the recent Persian War and looked ready to recapture all of India on their own. They spoke in whispering Gaelic and thrust stubby pipes into whiskered mouths as they waited for Havelock to continue.
'We are going to avenge the fate of British men and women.' Havelock said. 'I know you will all do your duty. Trust in the Lord and all will be well.'
'Not what I would call a rousing speech,' Elliot murmured as they marched out of the great fort and toward Cawnpore. It was four in the afternoon with the air heavy with the oncoming monsoon.
O'Neill eased a hand around the inside of his collar and looked upward. 'I wish the rain would come and end this humidity.' he said. 'At least we won't die of thirst.'
'No,' Parker was smiling. 'We'll drown instead.'
With five Highland pipers wailing in the van, Havelock's small column crunched grimly on. Brayser, the ex-gardener turned officer, led his Sikhs while Captain Maude fussed over the artillery. In their wake, the supply waggons creaked onto the hard road, lagging further behind by the minute.
'No straggling,' Havelock ordered his infantry. 'Stay in the column.'
They marched along the Grand Trunk Road with the men toiling in the dull heat until the heavens opened and the first deluge of the rainy season descended upon them.
Thorpe looked upward. 'Maybe once we can have a war in good weather,' he said. 'Burma was just humid heat, Crimea was mud and cold and snow, and now we have some beggar emptying the sea on us.'
'We're not allowed to fight on pleasant days,' Coleman told him easily. 'The generals on both sides get together, you see, and decide they'll only fight in foul weather so they can go hunting and horse-riding when it's fine.'
Thorpe grunted. 'I thought so,' he said. 'I bloody thought so.'
The land on either side, once fertile and well populated, had been devastated by war. Frogs and crickets greeted them with a monotonous grating; villages lay in ruins with vultures and insects competing for obscenely dead bodies while wild pigs ran from the outraged boots of soldiers who interrupted them from feasting on human corpses. Wo
rst of all were the bodies that hung from roadside trees; native men of all ages swung slowly with their accusing eyes following the progress of the marching column.
The opening volley of the monsoon hammered them. For a few moments, men faced upward, trying to catch the falling rain in their mouths as they marched, and then they bowed their heads under the relentless downpour. The dust on the road settled and turned to mud as the column marched on beside the weeping trees that lined the Great Trunk Road.
'The land looked better from the fort,' Elliot said.
Kent glanced fearfully at the hanging men with their twisted necks and limp bodies and water dripping from their pointed toes. 'Bloody pandies! They've hanged everybody!'
'No they haven't,' Jack said. 'We have. Renaud has been executing rebels, and anybody he thinks might be a rebel.' He shook his head. 'Poor India.'
'Murdering pandy bastards.' The voice came from the ranks of the 113th.
The column swung on, regular as on parade, with officers ignoring the deluge, scant cavalry on the flanks and the level, dreary plains sliding past. Marching behind the 113th, the men of the 64th and 84th staggered on the road and wilted in the humid heat.
'They lads won't last,' Logan jerked a thumb behind him.
He was right. After only three hours, Havelock stopped the column for the night. The men tried to camp on the sodden ground.
'Where are the tents?' Kent asked. 'Where are the commissariat waggons?'
'Still back there,' Prentice nodded toward Allahabad and the unseen supply train. 'You'll have to rough it.'
'This is nothing.' Elliot said. 'You should have been with us on the first night in the Crimea.'
Jack eyed his sodden, grim-faced men. 'That's hardly a comfort, Elliot. Now, who the devil is this?'
The Volunteer cavalryman trotted along the 113th, shouting. 'Where is Captain Windrush? I need Captain Windrush.'
'Here!' Jack stepped out.
'General Havelock would like to see you.' The rider was about forty, with a shiny red face beneath a broad-brimmed hat, and with a makeshift lance in his right hand. Three long-barrelled revolvers were shoved ostentatiously through his scarlet cummerbund.
'And you are?' After five years as a commissioned officer, Jack was not inclined to jump to the orders of a sweating civilian.
'Oh; Tom Plankett; I'm an indigo planter…'
'Very good, Mr Plankett. In future, you will carry your message correctly and address me as sir.'
'I manage an estate of…'
'I don't care a twopenny damn what you do. Pray inform General Havelock that Captain Windrush sends his compliments and he will be with him directly. Go.'
Havelock rode at the head of the column, unsmiling and with a Volunteer cavalryman at his side. Fastened to the pommel of his saddle by a long cord, a native walked awkwardly at the side of the Volunteer.
'The cavalry caught this man skulking by the road,' Havelock said. 'He claims to know you.'
Jack looked closer at the prisoner. 'Yes, sir. He is Private Fraser; he warned me about trouble many weeks ago.'
'Oh? Did you take heed of his warning?'
'I passed it on to Colonel Jeffreys, sir. Fraser is no Mutineer.'
Havelock nodded. 'Release him,' he ordered casually. 'Now, Fraser, what do you have to say for yourself?'
'The Mutineers have captured Fatehpur, sir,' Fraser ran a hand around his neck where the cord had left a red mark. 'They are waiting for Major Renaud there.'
Havelock snorted. 'Why did you not inform him, Fraser?'
'Major Renaud would have hanged me on sight, sir,' Fraser said casually.
Havelock did not comment as he gestured to the closest Volunteer. 'You fellow; Plankett isn't it? Gallop ahead, find Renaud and tell him, with my compliments, not to progress any further. Inform him the rebels are at Fatehpur. Go, man!'
Nodding, Plankett kicked in his heels and pushed ahead.
'Fraser; you seem to be a useful man. Do you wish to re-enlist?' Havelock asked. 'You are over age, but you'll be doing the Lord's work.'
'Yes, sir,' Fraser's Scottish accent was distinct under the sing-song cadences characteristic to Indian veterans.
'As you already know Captain Windrush, you may join the ranks of the 113th,' Havelock said. 'On a temporary basis.'
'Yes, sir.' Fraser accepted his re-enlistment without visible emotion.
They marched on with the Volunteers guarding the flanks until they met and merged with Renaud's force by the side of a copse of trees. Rain hammered down, bouncing off the hard surface of the road, dripping from shakos and forage caps and the manes of bedraggled horses. The men stood in ranks, silent, keeping the muzzles of their rifles pointed downward, inwardly cursing India, the army and life in general.
'Report, Renaud,' Havelock ordered. 'What intelligence have you gathered?'
'Sir,' Renaud said, 'the Mutineers at Cawnpore are commanded by Nana Sahib, with a bodyguard under a fellow called Tantia Topi.'
'Very good.'
'Topi is advancing toward us with some 1400 sepoys, about the same number of local rebels and ex-Oudh soldiers, a few hundred cavalry including some ex-Company sowars and a dozen guns.'
'Very good; thank you, Renaud.' A sharp order from Havelock sent Fraser Tytler and a handful of horsemen forward to reconnoitre. 'The rest of us can have breakfast,' Havelock said calmly.
'That's very civil of the general,' Elliot said.
'It may not be a good idea,' Kent looked around warily. 'If the Mutineers come across us here, they could slaughter us.'
'They might try,' Jack said. 'Have you seen any action, Kent?'
'I have not had the opportunity, sir' Kent said.
'You are about to, I think,' Jack nodded forward. 'Just keep calm, let the men know you are there and trust them.'
Elliot sighed. 'Here we go, then,' he looked up. 'Listen! Was that artillery? It's hard to tell in this damned rain!'
'It was thunder!' Kent said, just as a cannonball crashed into the camp, throwing up a column of mud and earth and rolling to a halt a few yards from the position occupied by the 113th.
'Solid looking thunder, don't you know?' Elliot said as Kent backed away.
Jack said nothing as Tytler rode hard toward them with his horse throwing up a fine spray from the road. He reined up in front of Havelock, flecks of froth covering his horse and his forage cap awry.
'The Mutineers are coming, sir!'
'So I gathered, Tytler.' Havelock said. 'How many?'
'There is a whole army, sir; a column of infantry on the road, with two cannons in front and cavalry on both flanks. As soon as they saw me, the cavalry advanced at speed, and I had to ride hard to escape.' Tytler fought to control his horse.
'The pandies are attacking us.' O'Neill's voice was distinct above the diminishing hammer of rain. 'They must think we're unarmed women.'
Logan laughed. 'Come on; you pandy bastards!'
'You know what to do, men,' Jack called. 'Obey orders and trust in your comrades.'
'Aye,' Logan replied. 'We'll lace these buggers.'
There was a growl in reply, with a few muttered prayers and many more curses. Riley was quiet, looking to his front as he slid the bayonet from its scabbard and tested the edge. The rain eased to a halt, leaving only a fine mist drifting upward from the warm ground. The smell of wet earth was pleasant, as was the call of birds.
'That will be the famous Tantia Topi, coming to pay us a morning call.' Havelock gathered the officers. 'He's Nana Sahib's adviser. Captain Maude: take a hundred men and eight of your guns there,' he pointed to a coppice a few hundred yards away, vague under the mist. 'The Irregulars will take the left flank; the Volunteer Cavalry the right and the remainder of us will form a line of column. I presume the enemy think they are only opposing Renaud's force.' He looked at lugubrious as ever. 'We will surprise him.' He raised his voice. 'Officers, prepare to deploy on my word.'
'What's that village ahead called?' Kent sounded anxious.
<
br /> 'Fatehpur,' Elliot replied shortly.
From their position to the south, Fatehpur looked a difficult proposition if Tantia Topi chose to defend it. The Grand Trunk Road ran straight through the middle, past solid stone houses surrounded by enclosed gardens, while the plains on either side were deep in monsoon floods.
'Tantia could hold this place for hours; we'd have to take it building by building,' Elliot ran his experienced eye over it.
Jack nodded. 'This could be bloody.' He looked around; an array of small hillocks lay between the flooded fields and the British, with a scattering of tiny hamlets and mango groves.
'Look,' Prentice pointed forward. 'There's movement in that mango grove. No civilian in his right mind would stand between two rival armies. Ten guineas to a brass farthing that Tantia's men are there.'
Jack nodded. 'We'll just have to turf them out, then.' He took a deep breath, touched the letter in his breast pocket and for some reason thought of Mary. He would never see her again, but at least she would be safe in Allahabad.
The British waited, rifles loaded, faces grim until Havelock ordered a general advance toward Fatehpur.
'Stand to your arms, men,' Jack said. 'O'Neill, take ten men as skirmishers: Coleman, Thorpe… The usual suspects.' He glanced at his men. They were silent, determined, shifting slightly to relax muscles. Coleman muttered something to Thorpe, who gave a small, quick smile. Unusually there was none of the black humour with which British soldiers habitually eased the tension before battle. This coming battle was different; they were fighting men they had thought of as friends.
The British advanced slowly, each step accompanied by a splash as their feet sunk into the muddy ground.
'Come on, you murdering black bastards,' Logan glanced at Riley, who stared ahead, his eyes focussed on the copse where Maude's men and the artillery waited.
The Mutineers opened rapid fire with their cannon, the sound surprisingly loud as always. Kent started and grabbed at his shako.
'Don't mind the shine, Kent,' Jack said. 'Stand tall; the men are watching.'
The Mutineers appeared on the road ahead, infantry marching steadily and cavalry on the flanks. Their artillery fired again, aiming at the main British force advancing in three columns toward them. Smoke coiled along the ground, hazing the ranks of the Mutineers as they marched, red coats like flowing blood and white trousers twinkling through the heat haze. Overhead, pregnant clouds threatened a renewal of the deluge.
Windrush: Cry Havelock (Jack Windrush Book 4) Page 12