Such a proper word sounded so odd from Kemp’s lips, thought Morgan.
‘Well, the wretched fellow was blind already from having his eye-glasses broken in his face, but they kept thrusting the steel harder and harder up him. Each time he screamed worse and – to my eternal shame – I used the noise the poor devil was making to get clear. And you know, Morgan, what the whoresons were chanting – in English, mark you – every time they jabbed at him?’
Morgan shook his head, horrified.
‘That line from the Bible, “Physician heal thyself”. I know none of this will surprise you; you’ll have seen much the same in Russia.’
But Morgan had seen nothing remotely like the things that Kemp described. Certainly there had been brutality, and sometimes cruelty, but nothing, thank God, to compare with this.
‘That’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard, Commandant.’ Morgan hesitated before asking the next question in case it brought further hideous revelations. ‘And what of the girls?’
‘What indeed? That day they’d been out with a party of other children and their ayahs; none of them has been seen again.’ Kemp whispered the last words. ‘But I tell you this, Morgan, since that night my party of irregulars and I have given more of these Pandies the opportunity to meet their heathen gods than I care to think – all the way from Jhansi right back down here to Deesa – and there’s a lot more work to be done yet. But I won’t rest until I find that black-hearted git Lolemun Dunniah and roast the flesh off his back.’
‘Welcome, sirs…welcome to us mess.’ Lance-Corporal Pegg stood in the corner of one of the long, low bungalows that the 86th had made available to the 95th, ushering in his guests.
‘Thank you, Corporal Pegg. I’ve a wee present for you, just to remind you that it’s Christmas Day after all.’ Morgan passed one of his precious bottles of carefully hoarded Irish whiskey to Pegg; selfishly, he regretted having to part with it, but the hospitality was a generous gesture from the men and he had nothing else suitable with which to reciprocate. ‘May I introduce Mr Fawcett, lads? He and another young gentleman have been waiting for us here for days, fresh out from England.’
Morgan had no subaltern in his company since young Budgen had remained in Gibraltar, sick with fever. Now Ensign Alexander Fawcett had arrived, broad and fully grown at eighteen, with surprisingly lush whiskers and a deep tan already. He’d obviously been working on his cap to make it look more used than it was, but the newness of his scarlet jacket and his virgin half-boots betrayed him. Still, thought Morgan, he was a friendly boy, son of a vicar in Oxfordshire, and he’d handled himself steadily enough at the disaster of a parade that afternoon.
‘This, Fawcett, as you’ve gathered, is Corporal Pegg from Wirksworth. The other cutthroats are Beeston, Cooper, Sharrock, James and Coughlin, all good hands…when they’re sober.’ The men had all jumped to their feet, taken the pipes from their mouths and now they were laughing at Morgan’s quip, appreciating it all the more after his earlier embarrassment.
‘Anyway, sirs, sit yersen down. Got some traditional Christmas fare for you, curried green parrot – just like me mam used to mek.’ Another ripple of laughter greeted Pegg’s riposte. ‘Actually, we’re lucky it’s not me mam’s cooking; it’s our little jewel, Cissy, ’oo looks after us, ain’t it, boys?’
Each corner of the bungalow was filled by similar groups of men from the Grenadiers – Morgan would take Fawcett to meet them later – sitting around storm lanterns that shed pools of gentle light in which they sat, smoked and yarned. Then, gliding from the shadows came their cook, Cissy, a great iron pot of curry in both hands, a flatter dish of rice balanced effortlessly on her head. This mess had chosen well, for the girl’s sari hugged her curves most becomingly, whilst her wide sloe eyes sat above a perfectly tilted nose, which was pierced by a delicate gold band. She smiled openly, warmly at the men, the candlelight catching an unusually flawless skin as she took the rice from her head with practised grace.
‘Aye, yer a good lass, Cissy, bono, shukria.’
Morgan couldn’t help but notice how Pegg’s hand strayed down the girl’s buttocks and thighs as she slid away into the dark – and that, of course, was where Morgan had seen her before: she’d been shrieking and running away from the ambush a couple of weeks ago with Lance-Corporal Pegg in close attendance – also making his way to the rear. He’d have to speak to the colour-sergeant about this.
‘Enjoy the parade, sir?’ Beeston, cross-legged on the floor in his shirtsleeves and ridiculous bright puce native slippers, a fashion all the rage amongst the men, took his pipe from his lips and grinned at Ensign Fawcett whilst the others sniggered expectantly.
‘Well, it was quite an introduction to the company and to the general.’ Fawcett was being as diplomatic as he could. ‘He’s a bit of a tartar, ain’t he?’
‘Tartar, sir – ’e’s a right cunt, ’e is,’ Beeston replied flatly, removing, with consummate distaste, a piece of tobacco from his lip.
‘No, cunts is useful,’ muttered someone else.
‘What ’ad poor old Jimmy Pierce done anyway?’ Beeston asked in mock outrage.
Pierce was making something of a name for himself. After his naked antics in Bombay, he’d been first at the native arrack whilst all the other men were eating their dinners, exhausted from the march and pestered by the NCOs’ checks on weapons, ammunition and all sorts of other ‘arsewipe’ – as the troops styled such irritants. Then, when the whole column had been paraded to be told that they were now part of the grandly titled ‘Central India Field Force’ by their new commander, Brigadier-General Smith, Pierce had disgraced them all again by falling flat on his face in a drunken swoon. Morgan had never heard a rifle make such a clatter. The general had just finished speaking and, naturally, Pierce had been in the front rank of the company, the whole incident being impossible to disguise.
‘Well, he was howling drunk on parade,’ Fawcett answered.
‘Naw, sir, touch o’ the sun is all. ’E’s just a kid – bit of a thirsty one, but just a kid.’
The others laughed out loud at Beeston’s reply, Morgan noticing how he’d hung his jacket with his two good-conduct stripes prominently on display.
‘You goin’ to flog Jimmy, sir?’ asked Coughlin in his deep Dublin brogue.
‘Well, that’s what The Man ordered; you heard him as well as I did,’ Morgan equivocated.
Pierce had collapsed just paces from General Smith, and Morgan had never seen such immediate, apoplectic anger. Sitting high on his horse, Smith’s face had mottled scarlet in an instant, his mouth – to which they had all had to listen for too long already – turned to a snarl.
‘Hoo is thet man? Has he drink tay-ken, Colour-Saar-gent?’ Private James imitated the general’s plummy syllables.
McGucken had raced over to Pierce. His collapse might, indeed, have been sun or illness-induced but, unfortunately, as his head was raised he let out a curse that could only have come from the bottle.
‘He’s beastly drunk, he’s to be flogged; I won’t hev it, do…you…hear?’ James continued the theatre, to be rewarded by the chuckles of the others.
‘Well, if Pierce was indeed drunk…’ Fawcett ventured.
Morgan was pleased to see the young man being accepted by the troops like this. It was the only high point in the otherwise dismal start to the company’s service under General Smith.
‘Aye, sir, but that’s up to our officers to decide, not some red-arse cavalryman with bugger all on his chest ’cept Turkish tinsel.’ Beeston wasn’t letting up. ‘An’ as for talking to Captain Morgan like that, ’oo does ’e think ’e is? An’ on Christmas Day, would ’ave bin Christian to overlook it, wun’t it?’
‘All right, lads, the commanding officer and I will decide what happens to young Pierce.’ Morgan had taken his first mouthful of parrot curry – a dish to which they were all now very used – his words serving to soothe the men’s anger. ‘What do you think of the news?’
‘We
ll, sir, we was lookin’ forward to gettin’ at the bastards in Cawnpore, but it seems as though we’re too late for that, don’t it?’ Pegg replied.
Whilst on the march up to Deesa, the officers had been told that Cawnpore had finally been taken on 6 December, but, in the absence of other objectives, it had been decided not to tell the men in case it dispirited them.
‘So now we’re bound for Jhansi and ’Rutter country – that’s another four hundred miles from Cawnpore, ain’t it, sir? What will that be like?’ Pegg asked the question all the men wanted answered.
‘Mahratta country,’ Morgan corrected, his stomach leaping at the very mention of Jhansi. ‘Well, it ain’t going to be like the stuff we’ve heard about in Delhi and Lucknow, where the mutineers have come out to fight pretty regular. The major part of John Company’s Bengal troops have been beaten now or dispersed. Where we’re going, though, is vitally important, for unless this bit of country is tamed, rebellions and uprisings might continue indefinitely. There’ll be turned sepoys aplenty, you can be sure of that, but we’ll also be facing local troops from the maharajas’ armies, as well as all manner of irregulars.’
‘What, sir, like that bunch o’ savages that Colonel Kemp has got with him?’ asked Private Sharrock.
Kemp had banded together a couple of dozen horsemen – some civilians, some British and Indian officers whose troops had mutinied – and a hundred or so native irregulars clad in loincloths, greasy turbans and little else. They carried a collection of bows, axes and matchlocks that, according to McGucken, ‘would’a done credit to the fuckin’ Saracens’, and this exotic troupe had mesmerised the men, making Kemp an instant celebrity, everyone wanting an attachment to his posse.
‘Yes, a bit like them or that set of clowns that ambushed us on the way here,’ Morgan replied, ‘but there’s one thing I’m sure of: Corp’l Pegg’s right, it’s bloody miles to Jhansi and there’ll be many a Pandy in between, so look to your boot leather and your weapons, lads, an’ be ready for a long slog.’
‘Aye, sir, an’ a merry fuckin’ Christmas to you too!’ was Pegg’s reply as he took a deep pull at the bottle of whiskey.
FOUR
The Battle of Rowa
‘Sahibs, very quiet, please,’ Rissaldar Batuk pushed his finger to his lips and signalled gently with his palm that the reconnaissance party should lie down on their bellies. ‘Be snake now,’ and with no further instructions the grizzled Indian NCO wormed forward through the grass in the gloom of dawn.
‘He doesn’t need to worry about the noise; the bloody insects would wake the dead, so they would.’ But even so, Morgan whispered this to McGowan, now promoted from adjutant and commanding a double company of the 10th BNI, as they crept on their elbows and knees through the cacophony of the cicadas’ dawn chorus.
‘Probably,’ McGowan murmured back, ‘but we’re very close now.’
Indeed they were. After five more yards or so of too close acquaintance with damp grass, ants and scuttling centipedes, the trio came to a lip of land that gave way to a short, steep slope where the trees and scrub refused to grow. There, no more than a hundred and fifty paces away, lay the cramped, fortified village of Rowa, now quite clearly stretched out below them as the sun rose and beamed on the pall of cooking smoke that hung above it.
‘See, sahibs.’ The rissaldar pointed carefully, slowly, not wanting to draw attention to them by any sudden movement. ‘Sentries, there, there and there. Smoking, see.’
This man knows his business. I’d give good money to have my Grenadiers scout the ground like this; I hope not too many of the rebels are as skilful as this fellow, thought Morgan.
The night before, Hume had called Morgan to see him, along with McGowan, whose two Bombay companies had been placed under Hume’s command for the forthcoming attack. The general had ordered Hume to lead two of his own companies and the pair of the 10th BNI, along with a troop of guns, against the village that lay about twelve miles from their camp at Muddar, where the troops had paused on their march towards Jhansi. Rowa was said to be full of mutineers who would certainly challenge and harass the column on the route of march unless they were defeated. He told the two captains to take an escort and carry out as thorough a reconnaissance as possible the following morning, then come back to him by midday with a plan of battle.
Rissaldar Batuk, one of Kemp’s loyal and experienced NCOs, who had had a brush with the garrison of the village some weeks before and who knew the ground, had told them where to dismount and Lance-Corporal Pegg, Morgan’s escort, had been delighted to remain with the horses. Morgan guessed that Batuk was about forty, for his beard and hair were tinged with grey, but he was as slender and muscled as a whip and moved with a practised, silent grace.
The two officers slowly brought up their binoculars, cupped their hands over the top of the front lenses to prevent any reflection, and studied the ground.
‘That wall extends right the way in front of the village and up the slope the other side, don’t it, Morgan?’ They were looking at Rowa from the edge of the jungle scrub on the right flank of the village. McGowan’s eye had followed a mud wall that was almost the height of a man for about seventy paces before it jinked away out of sight, re-emerging beyond the reed and grass roofs of the crowd of low buildings behind it.
‘Aye, that’s right enough, but is there some sort of trench cut behind it?’ Morgan answered quietly as he squinted through his glasses.
As both men concentrated, the noise of the cockerels in the village was suddenly joined by the barking of myriad dogs.
‘Yes, look there, that carrying party seems to be climbing down into it.’ McGowan, though he didn’t know it, had seen the sentries’ cooked breakfasts being taken out to them by half a dozen cooks. ‘I’ve lost them now. It must be deep.’
‘Hmm…how many guns can you see?’ Morgan tried not to let the white ants that crawled over his wrists distract him.
‘Three…yes, only three, but there could be one that’s masked by the turn of the wall,’ McGowan answered. ‘Look like light brass horse guns, what d’you think?’
‘Yes, sahib,’ the rissaldar cut in in a whisper, holding up three fingers. ‘Tatt gun – old.’
‘Old they may be, but murder at close range.’ Morgan adjusted the focus on his glasses minutely. ‘Let’s hope the rogues are as dozy tomorrow morning as they are now.’
In the British Army, dawn would have seen all sentries alert – certainly not eating their breakfasts – and gun crews standing to their pieces, portfires lit and barrels trained on the enemy’s most likely direction of attack.
‘Aye, they’re still a-slumber under their carriages.’ McGowan could see figures lying under the guns wrapped in some sort of blanket. ‘In fact, most of number three gun’s crew seem to be absent from their posts.’
‘Good, let’s hope they’re smoking a pipe of bhang somewhere and that they’ve enough to last ’em another day,’ Morgan said lightly, though privately he dreaded the horrid black muzzles.
‘Now, me owd mate,’ Corporal Pegg, comfortably seated on a folded blanket to keep the insects away from his ample bottom, leered at Sepoy Suddo Surpuray, ‘tell me ’ow yer plan to murder that master of yours, Captain bleedin’ McGowan?’
Both of them had been left with the reconnaissance party’s horses in a small clearing in the forest, concealed from the main track that led to Rowa. Surpuray, McGowan’s orderly, had proved to be a much better horseman than Pegg, both of them doing their best on the baggage ponies they’d been given to keep up with the rest of the group. Now Pegg was taking advantage of the sepoy’s almost complete absence of English to unleash all of his prejudices.
‘Goin’ to creep up on ’im an’ knife ’im like you did that peeler back in Bombay?’ Surpuray nodded and smiled as Pegg mocked him. ‘Mind you, the ignorant twat prob’ly deserved it, didn’t ’e, bab?’
The sepoy continued to nod and grin, making a dumb show of firing a rifle, thrusting a mock bayonet and pointing towar
ds Rowa before drawing a finger across his throat.
‘That’s right, youth,’ Surpuray was, unconsciously, providing great sport for the veteran Pegg, who’d loathed McGowan ever since their encounter in Bombay so many weeks ago. ‘Shoot the stuck-up sod. It’s the only danger he’s ever likely to see.’ Pegg drew a lucifer across a striker several times before he got the damp chemicals to burn, then sucked hard on his blackened clay pipe. But just as he began to puff clouds of blue-grey smoke from the side of his mouth, one of the horses whinnied quietly and the others pricked up their ears.
Surpuray tensed with the horses and then, with one smooth movement, grabbed Pegg’s pipe from his mouth and smothered the bowl with his hand.
‘Why, you ignorant…’ Pegg drew his hand back to slap the sepoy, as he’d slapped many a native servant. ‘Tum lakhri, lakhri tum?’
But just before he launched the back of his hand, Pegg saw that Surpuray had his fingers pressed to his lips, beckoning wildly towards the track. Reluctantly lowering his fist, Pegg listened intently, trying to hear above the whine of the insects all around him, knowing that the native’s hearing in such circumstances was vastly more practised than his. Surpuray must also have feared that the fragrance of the pipe, carried on the slight breeze, would have told a sensitive Pandy nose that humans were close by.
The horses continued to fidget but he could just make out the click of hoofs and the jingling of tack. Pegg sensed that it was only one animal approaching; he lifted his rifle whilst Surpuray drew his bayonet from its scabbard and crouched in the bushes, peering through them onto the track like some great scarlet cat.
Then, the sepoy struck. Before Pegg had even realised that the quarry was so close, Surpuray leapt from his lair straight into the path of whatever it was that was coming, grabbing the leather bridle of a mule with one hand and pulled his long spike of a bayonet blade back to strike.
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