Marriott, flushed and bothered, furiously sucked his houcca. Beddoes chuckled, and cuddled his lissome Maratha, naked now as the dancers. ‘Devilish accomplished, hey?’ He flourished a hand to the bare-skinned bodies carpeting the floor. ‘Take y’r pick, sirs, take y’r pick! ’Tis tedious to sleep alone. I bid ye a very good night!’ He tucked the Maratha wench effortlessly beneath his arm like a sportsman porting a fowling piece, and stumped from the room.
His guests blinked at one another.
‘Most discourteous to refuse so amiable an offer,’ Amaury drawled. He sauntered to the dancers, chose a bright-eyed piece of nudity and led her away. Fane said uncertainly, ‘Shall you, Charles-er...’
‘Not for me,’ Marriott said. ‘However, do not let me detain you.’
‘Well, I think . . .’ Fane cautiously approached the pile. Two giggling girls promptly entwined him and dragged him to a doorway where, bleating protestations, he disappeared from view. Marriott drained his glass, blundered along dimly lighted passages, across a courtyard where a fountain played light tinkling tunes on the night, and found the door he sought. Amelia sat up in the bed, hand to her throat in alarm.
‘Charles! Why are you here? We have agreed...’
‘A pox on all agreements!’ Marriott stripped his clothes with shaking hands, and hurtled into bed.
‘For shame, Charles! I believe you a little disguised ... never have you been so hot... pray be gentle... ah...’
Marriott reached a hand and snuffed the candle.
In the days that followed they explored Beddoes’ demesne, the rambling palace in a thirty-acre garden surrounded by servants’ quarters, stables, godowns, bibee-houses, offices and barracks: a complex nearly as large as the village it adjoined. Amaury investigated the stables, which housed over fifty horses from thoroughbred Arabs and English hunters to the undersized rat-tailed countrybreds which, Beddoes explained, were the mounts his hircarrahs used. ‘More enduring quads than they look,’ he grunted. ‘Do fifty miles a day on a handful of grain and grass. Come from Maratha country. All their cavalry ride ’em.’
‘You could mount a troop,’ said Amaury. ‘Do you find much use for these horses?’
‘I take ’em around when touring the jagir. Impresses the natives.’ He looked at Amaury shrewdly. ‘I shall by no means consider, sir, lending ’em to anyone else for any other purpose.’
‘Nothing, I assure you, was farther from my mind,’ Amaury said blandly.
Beddoes prodded a thumb in Amaury’s chest. ‘Ye do not deceive me, sir - we are too much of a sort. Heard about y’r trouble - blister me if I understand why ye didn’t shoot that general! What are ye seeking now? Ye travel in queer company for one of y’r kidney. Look at ’em! Marriott and Fane, upright Company servants - Marriott will be Governor one day, if I don’t mistake his shape. Todd, the zealous ensign - ain’t he bound for a general? But ye - a broken officer, and not a scruple to y’r name! What are ye after in these God-forsaken parts?’
‘Permit me to observe that you have made a remarkably rapid judgement of your guests. Are you sure it is correct?’
‘Hah! After unravelling native intrigues for thirty years - often me life depended on getting the answer right - a European character is clear as a crystal bowl! About these horses. The numb- skulls in Madras send ye to Bahrampal without a single trooper - and that on Maratha borders. Heard of the Pindaris?’
‘No.’
‘Ye will, ye will,’ said Beddoes grimly. ‘If ever they set upon ye ye’ll want every horse ye can find!’
Beddoes constantly attended Amelia, took her riding, proudly displayed his gardens, a private aviary and menagerie, and entertained her in his zenana with tea and sickly sweetmeats. Marriott, when he heard, was profoundly shocked. ‘A most indecorous proceeding,’ he blustered. ‘That extraordinary old quiz has lost all notion of propriety!’
‘The women seem very happy,’ Amelia said simply.
Travelling in regal state, the Collector took his visitors on tour. Going from village to village he interviewed headmen, rode the fields, examined crops, held court at evening on the platform beneath a peepul tree and listened to petitioners. He tried thieves and vagabonds and murderers, disentangling the tortuous evidence, hooded violet eyes sceptically examining the witnesses’ expressions. His punishments were summary and highly individual, and held a logical simplicity the natives understood. They often horrified Fane, who had conscientiously studied the Company’s legal codes.
A Brahman priest accused of compelling a widow’s burning - suttee had been forbidden in the Presidency’s dominions for over a hundred years - pleaded a national custom which embraced the whole of India. Said Beddoes, ‘My nation also has a custom. When men burn women alive, we hang them. Let us all act according to our customs.’ He pointed to a tree near by. ‘That will bear his weight.’ Guards dragged the screaming priest away.
Fane’s eyebrows vanished into his hair; feverishly he thumbed the pages of his law book.
Beddoes looked at him sardonically. ‘Ye can save y’rself the trouble, Mr Fane. I can tell ye the legal sentence: a hundred fanams’ fine. Would it stop that damned fanatic doing the same again?’
He called the next case - a peasant charged with killing his wife - ripped the conflicting evidence and reduced the defence to a plea that a man had a perfect right to kill his wife because she had enraged him. Beddoes said benignly, ‘Well, Hydeeram, you have angered me. Why should I not kill you?’
He did.
Ignorance of the language prevented Marriott understanding these exchanges at courts and durbars. His banian found a tutor, and he began to study Hindi. While they journeyed in leisurely stages through Moolvaunee’s jagir Beddoes explained the complicated revenue system which descended in part from the Moghuls, the field surveys Marriott must undertake to calculate the values of crops - mainly rice - on which taxes were assessed.
‘Mirasdars own the villages in heritable shares; they dispose of their portions by mortgage, sale or gift. For the Company’s share ye’d best contact for a lump sum with the mirasdars - if Vedvyas lets ye!’
Amaury said, ‘Your mentioning that rascal, sir, reminds me we may have to fight directly we reach Bahrampal - a factor we hardly considered in making our preparations. Our retinue, in ' consequence, is devilish unwieldy.’
‘Strip it - strip it to the bone! All ye want is sepoys, armed peons and hircarrahs. Shed the luxuries from y’r baggage. Leave ’em all with me. When ye are properly established I shall send ’em on.’
For a month they roamed the jagir, then returned to Moolvaunee, a sybaritic life in Beddoes’ palace, and the task of pruning the caravan’s cumbersome bulk. Eventually, for three hundred fighting men and as many followers, a month’s supplies were loaded on no more than eighty animals.
Preoccupied with organizing the expedition, Marriott hardly noticed the Collector’s increasing appetite for Amelia’s society. They rode together at daybreak, and after breakfast Beddoes, on some excuse or other, kept her near him all the morning, paid assiduous court at dinner and, to prolong his time in her company, actually relinquished his after-dinner orgies - much to Amaury’s sorrow. Beddoes soon discovered Amelia’s talent for doctoring, and enlisted her help in planning a hospital and clinic - the first, outside Bengal, devoted solely to natives.
Marriott’s eyes were abruptly opened. One evening after dinner Beddoes led him to the courtyard where moonlight spangled diamonds on the fountain’s feathery jets, and said baldly, ‘I understand, sir, Mrs Bradly is in y’r keeping.’
‘The lady accords me that honour.’
‘Ha. Hr’rm. Yes.’ The tip of an ebony cane prodded the creamy lilies which garlanded the pool. ‘Ye are taking her to Bahrampal. A perilous place for females.’
‘I intend by your leave, that she should stay in Moolvaunee until my District is settled.’
‘So I apprehend.’ Beddoes adjusted the ruffles at his throat, touched the curls of his peruke, and said with unwonted
diffidence, ‘I am led to believe that Mrs Bradly is not entirely averse to my - um - person. Moreover I have conceived for her a profound esteem and affection. In short, Mr Marriott, I ask permission to offer for her hand.’
Marriott stuttered. ‘But... on so short an acquaintance? ‘ ‘Tis impossible! Your mode of life... the disparity in age!’
‘Zounds, sir, I am not turned sixty!’ Beddoes’ tone was distinctly peevish. ‘My establishment is surely a worthier setting for Amelia - hr’m, Mrs Bradly - than the rigorous life in tents and huts she will live in Bahrampal. Will ye inflict on her a camp-follower’s existence?’
‘I am compelled to differ, sir. She has made her choice, and I shall by no means consider persuading her to a different course. The convoy departs tomorrow, and I must request that meanwhile you cease your importunities, and treat Mrs Bradly with propriety, recollecting she is - and remains - the lady I am protecting.’
‘Despite a thirty-year absence from polite society,’ Beddoes growled, ‘I am not entirely a savage. Her honour, in my house, is safe.’ He wagged his cane under Marriott’s nose. ‘But I warn ye, young fellow, whether ye will or not, I shall certainly press my suit!’
Muttering beneath his breath, he lurched away in the dark. Marriott went immediately to Fane. ‘William, until the military impose order in Bahrampal a magistrate will be unable to exercise his office. Therefore it were best you stayed in Moolvaunee until I bid you follow. You can supervise the transport we are leaving and - ah - look after Amelia.’
Fane grinned broadly. ‘So you have quizzed our lecherous old satyr? I wondered when you’d rumble his designs! By all means, Charles.’ He cuddled the plump little wench who nestled coyly in bed beside him. ‘I shall leaven my onerous duties with comforts which, I fear, you will sadly lack!’
They crossed the Vamsad valley into Bahrampal and headed for a township known as Gopalpore. Although the landscape stayed unchanged - brawling streams and wooded vales, red-rocked hills, gullies sheltering villages and fields, ruined forts, relics of Moghul conquerors, gripping commanding spurs - their reception was very different. In Moolvaunee the villagers had run to greet them; here, when the column was sighted, peasants abandoned cattle and ploughs and rushed pell-mell for shelter. Gates were slammed, spears glinted on the citadel’s embrasures. Marriott once tried to approach a guarded village, flourishing a handkerchief tied to his whip. A loophole spat white smoke, a ball whirred overhead.
The further they plunged into Bahrampal the more brutal became the scars that pillage, war and famine had seared upon the land. During a dreadful two-day march they crossed a tract where creatures like living skeletons dragged themselves from hiding, clawed the excrement the column’s animals had dropped and feebly fought for scraps of undigested grain. Corpses stippled the wayside, vultures like gorged vampires flapped heavily from their feasts. A putrid carrion stench thickened the air.
At a village where the denizens, beyond fear or hope, left the gates hung wide, the living dragged out bodies by the heels and stacked them naked in a decomposing pile. Soon afterwards the vanguard halted; Todd rode to discover the reason. He found the sepoys leaning on their muskets, regarding with horrified faces a little group which ringed a rotting corpse, and hacked the wasted flesh and stuffed it into their mouths. Todd clenched his teeth on the vomit that rose in his throat, and roughly gestured the soldiers forward.
‘The jagir has been ravaged,’ Amaury said. He scowled at a distant hamlet, the houses burned and blackened, charred rafters like skeletal fingers trellising the sky. ‘With all their granaries looted the people have nothing to live on till next harvest. I doubt many will survive to sow and reap the crop?’
‘Vedvyas’s work?’ Todd hazarded.
‘He, or a rival mirasdar, or Maratha raiders. Time will tell. The sooner we reach Gopalpore the better.’
They left the wasted land behind and entered more prosperous country. Travellers were infrequent: spearmen escorting camel trains; a nautch troupe riding donkeys, the women shrouded to the eyes; a caravan of traders, strongly guarded - men in quilted tunics carrying scimitars and matchlocks. None was inclined to linger or answer questions; they passed the time of day and hurried on.
A ruinous leaf-thatched hut crowned a hillock formed from remains of broken houses which stood beside the track. Marriott and Amaury climbed the slope, their horses scattering earthenware shards and bits of fragmented brick. An elderly bearded Hindoo crawled from the hut. His clothing was torn and threadbare, he leaned one-handed on a staff and tranquilly salaamed.
‘Who are you, sirdarjee?’ Amaury asked.
The old man drew himself up. ‘My name is Gopal Rao. Who am I, do you ask? I am the owner of this wretched hut. I was the mirasdar of all your eye can see.’ He gestured grandly to the countryside around.
‘So? Why do you now exist in such a miserable plight?’
Gopal Rao explained, leaning again on his staff and scrutinizing the Europeans under jutting hairy eyebrows. He had been hereditary chieftain of the district round Gopalpore, a territory granted his ancestors by Aurangzeb himself. Vedvyas, years before, had started plundering his possessions, taking village after village and appropriating revenues. Gopal, captured at last in a skirmish, had been allowed to live on conditions which his conqueror imposed.
‘This was one.’ He drew an arm from under his robe and showed a cauterized stump.
‘And the others?’
‘Vedvyas made me swear to renounce my claim to Gopalpore so long as he lived. Hence,’ he said thinly, ‘my outcast life in a beggar’s hut.’
‘So Vedvyas now holds Gopalpore?’
The old man proudly lifted his head. ‘No. My eldest son defied his demands. Gopalpore is the only important place in all of Bahrampal that still resists him.’ He gazed incuriously at the convoy trailing past, drovers prodding baggage bullocks, scarlet- coated sepoys rating laggards. ‘You bring an army, sahib. Whither are you bound?’
‘To occupy your town,’ Amaury said curtly, ‘and afterwards kill Vedvyas.’ He translated for Marriott the conversation’s gist, and added, ‘Let us persuade the old boy to come with us. We shall win his people’s respect by restoring him to his place. Then his gratitude - and soldiers - will help us against Vedvyas.’
‘Would not his son support us anyway?’
‘To him we are but another marauding gang, to be repelled as stubbornly as the rest. Gopal Rao’s authority will greatly ease our reception.’
‘God damn my blood!’ said Marriott irritably. ‘Does nobody in Bahrampal recognize the Company? I had not contemplated fighting battles for my District! Very well. See if you can convince him.’
Marriott tried unsuccessfully to understand the torrent of Hindi that followed. He studied the native’s face, and saw astonishment succeeded by calm reflection, and finally acquiescence. Gopal Rao re-entered his hut, gathered a meagre bundle and three brass pots, bowed to the hovel which had sheltered him so long and strode beside the horses to overtake the column. Amaury gave him a pony, consigned him to a subhadar’s care, and left him lecturing his guardian on the merits of matchlock muskets.
The last day’s march crossed a plain where copses and tall coarse grass limited the view. Marriott sent hircarrahs reconnoitring far in front, and heard a distant gunfire before they galloped back - the sound alone had turned them on their tracks. The roofs of Gopalpore, they said, could be seen three miles ahead, and soldiers were encamped before the walls.
‘Excessively vague information,’ Amaury sighed. ‘I had better go forward and review the situation myself.’
‘Don’t be a dunderhead!’ Marriott snapped ‘You will have no more chance than a cat in hell!’
‘Not so. Why should the besiegers - whoever they are - take amiss a single European, and a civilian at that?’ He indicated, smiling, his powder-blue coat, travel stained buckskin breeches and mahogany-topped boots. ‘I suggest, Charles, you halt the column here until I return.’
He cantered off, th
reading between the trees, and presently met armed natives among bullocks and carts and baggage dumps. The few who saw him stared, somebody shouted, no one tried to stop him. Amaury waved his whip, and rode unhurriedly past. Guided by the sporadic rattle of musketry and a cannon’s occasional boom, skirting other warriors sitting or aimlessly wandering, he arrived in sight of high stone walls engirdling a town.
A crash from a grove near by sent his horse curvetting.
‘Steady, Hannibal,’ Amaury murmured, smoothing the glossy neck. ‘You have often heard that noise before.’
He approached the grove. Stationed on the fringe was a twelve-pounder iron cannon with a long, cranked, double bracket trail and solid wooden wheels. A ragamuffin native lazily sponged the bore; another, cradling a powder bag, leaned against a wheel. A soldier somewhat better dressed - a sash around his waist and grubby leather crossbelts - bawled commands which nobody obeyed. Amaury’s appearance stopped him in mid-bellow; he strode to Hannibal’s head and said belligerently, ‘Who are you? Whence do you come? What are you doing here?’ He had the aboriginal’s flat features - dark-skinned almost black - betel-stained teeth and yellow bloodstreaked eyeballs.
‘Admiring your excellent gun drill,’ Amaury said suavely. ‘I swear no Fringee artillery can equal your efficiency. Pray continue, risaldar sahib - such marvels strike me dumb!’
The man - probably a kind of havildar in charge of the gun - bridled and said complacently, ‘We know our drill.’ He patted the clumsy piece. ‘Although a little crooked it carries very straight.’
The spongeman reversed his rammer and drove the cartridge home. A gunner brought an iron ball, approximately round, and lodged it in the bore. The spongeman thrust it down. Amaury expected to see the firing drill completed - the gun layed, a portfire touched to powder in the vent. Instead the gunners abandoned the weapon, squatted in a circle and kindled houccas.
‘Are you not going to fire?’
Free Lance Page 14