‘One company’s fighting up that bloody trench – it’s more than six-foot deep in places and full of hidey-holes, you know,’ McGowan answered – ‘and I took the other lot off to try to get into the middle of town and find their headquarters. But, like you, we got split up in the alleys and all the smoke, and then this lot bounced us…’ McGowan pointed to the mutineers whose wounded had been quietly dispatched by his own sepoys, ‘and now we’re just pausing to sort our casualties out.’
Morgan looked at the three wounded men of the 10th who were being dressed by their comrades. None looked particularly badly hurt, yet Morgan could more than sympathise with McGowan, who was clearly nonplussed by the speed and violence of the fighting that had engulfed his command. But, Morgan thought, if this was McGowan’s first time in action, he wasn’t doing too badly, especially when he compared the beginner’s conduct to his own veteran performance. Not only had he buggered up the assault, he’d now lost his company within minutes of getting into the streets and alleys.
‘Right, well, let’s you and me go and find out where our boys are. Leave your lads in a defensive position here whilst they sort out the casualties, and we’ll have a look-see.’ Morgan felt better for taking charge of the situation, whilst McGowan was obviously relieved to have someone to tell him what to do.
‘James, you stay here with the Tenth.’ Morgan’s unspoken message to the private was, and don’t let them run. ‘Corporal Pegg, come with me.’
James nodded, obviously pleased to be in the middle of a well-armed group, but Pegg had other views.
‘But, sir, don’t you think I should stay ’ere to look after ’em?’
‘I’ll thank you to remember that we don’t need to be looked after by the likes of you, Corporal Pegg.’ It was now McGowan’s turn to be prickly.
‘Aye, Corporal Pegg, just get up here, if you please.’ Morgan was suddenly impatient with the lad’s backsliding. ‘Follow me.’
And with that, the patrol of two officers with sweaty Pegg and Sepoy Surpuray as escorts set off up a smoky, sun-baked alley in the general direction of where, Morgan hoped, Sergeant Ormond and his errant mob should have been.
‘Listen…listen…’ As they crept up the dirty lane, keeping their backs close to the broken walls that lined it, Morgan brought the group to a halt. ‘There, can you hear someone calling?’ There was a lull in the gunfire and as the patrol edged forward they approached a junction where, Morgan swore, he could hear English voices. ‘Sar’nt Ormond, we’re here,’ Morgan bellowed, then again: ‘Sar’nt Ormond!’
All four of them crouched down by the wall, the two soldiers covering the rear with their rifles and bayonets, just as they had been taught.
‘You an’ me together again, Surpuray, old lad,’ Pegg muttered confidentially to the sepoy, who grinned back delightedly. ‘Keepin’ an eye on that bloody officer of your’n.’
‘Will you button your lip, Corporal Pegg, can’t you see I’m trying to listen?’ Morgan’s anxiety spilt over into another bollocking for Pegg. ‘Go forward, if you please, and have a look down the street and see if you can’t find our lads, but keep low.’
Pegg licked his lips, considered asking Morgan to send Surpuray instead, realised it was a lost cause and crept off slowly towards the end of the alley where a mean, dusty, sunbleached street crossed it. As he approached the end of the wall, he sank to his knees, just as he’d been taught, and at the very moment that he bobbed his head round the corner, a mutineer did the same, looking in the opposite direction, straight into the alley.
The two men gawped at each other, one from below a smoke-stained forage cap, the other from under a greasy turban, but Pegg was first off the mark.
‘Them’s fuckin’ Pandies, sir!’ burst from his lips as he pelted back ten paces down the alley where the rest of the group had paused.
Morgan was just aware of Pegg’s panic-filled arrival, of grit being kicked up from his scrabbling boots and an expression that suggested that the devil and all his evil followers were hard on his tail – before the suggestion became fact. A crowd of a dozen grimly silent mutineers spilt round the corner, bayonets and swords levelled, sandals thumping on the earth.
‘Run, sirs…just fuckin’ run,’ shouted Pegg as he tore past the other three.
‘No, stand firm,’ Morgan commanded. ‘It’s our only chance.’
McGowan shouted something in Hindi that caused Surpuray to catch Pegg by the belts and bring him to an undignified halt, before both officers’ pistols banged and banged again, then the three of them were on their feet, sprinting as hard into the charging mutineers as they could go.
As the two groups met, Surpuray fired his rifle from the waist and both Morgan and McGowan snapped off another pistol round apiece, causing a pair of Pandies to clutch at their wounds and fall, others tripping over them in their haste to be at the hated Feringhees. The odds were evened a little, but still not enough. But as the trio charged, Pegg hung back and watched as a wave of war-stained mutineers swept over the others, engulfing their scarlet coats in flashing sword and bayonet blades, bangs and white powder smoke.
Pegg hesitated as he saw both officers knocked to the ground and Surpuray flailing with his butt left and right, trying to stay upright amongst his assailants. He knew that he should stay and help, but just as he was stealing away, he heard a single voice above the tumult.
‘Corporal Pegg, help us for pity’s…’
Pegg stopped, turned reluctantly back and saw there, at the edge of the scrimmage, Captain McGowan, bleeding heavily from a cut on his neck, rolling over and over in the dust with a Pandy locked about him whilst another stood by, spear raised like a man out eel fishing, trying to get a clear jab at the officer.
Morgan felt the whole press of bodies suddenly give – just as a rugby scrum does when the ball is kicked clear. His sword had been knocked out of his hand by the stock of an enemy musket when the two sides met and he had been forced down onto one knee by several men who were vying with each other to punch or stab him. He was holding them off with his left forearm whilst poking hard at stomachs and ribs with his now empty revolver, when Pegg threw himself bodily into the fray.
Barging with his shoulder, the tubby corporal tumbled Captain McGowan’s standing attacker to the floor who, in turn, cannoned into Morgan’s foes. Then, with one of the neatest strokes – almost as if it were a demonstration, thought Morgan – Pegg spiked the Pandy who was above McGowan with just enough steel to disable, but not so much as to cause the blade to get stuck. The man fell off McGowan shrieking in pain, allowing Pegg to turn on the next mutineer.
That was some feint, thought Morgan as Pegg, now standing astride McGowan, allowed an Indian swordsman to overreach himself before neatly stabbing the man in the kidneys, but that next bastard’ll have him.
Morgan threw the mutineer who was trying to wrench the pistol away from him to the ground, stamping on his hand so hard that he heard the bones snap whilst yelling through fist-bruised lips, ‘Look out, Pegg!’ as another Indian with a short spear came at the NCO’s back.
But Morgan needn’t have worried. He’d never seen Pegg in such a fluid frenzy. Ducking under the shaft, the lad brought his bayonet squarely up underneath his attacker’s chin, the blade entering the skin under the jaw and thrusting up into the roof of the Indian’s mouth and then straight into the brain; his assailant was dead before Pegg had even managed to get back on his feet and shake him off his blade.
But still the fight raged. Morgan could see Surpuray hard at work with the butt of his rifle amongst a clamour of enemies, whilst he tripped over a body in his haste to help Pegg protect McGowan. Sweat and curried breath surrounded Morgan as he thrashed and punched at the struggling, shouting sepoys, but the next move by Pegg was his best yet.
Morgan had no breath left to warn Pegg of another attacker as the lad stood like a rock over McGowan. But some sound, some sense must have warned him as a Pandy with a curved knife stole up on him from behind. Just as the blade
was pulled back to strike, Pegg turned, dropped his rifle to waist height and shot the sepoy in the middle of the chest. Morgan marvelled as the round ripped through the back of the man’s shirt and threw him to the ground – not at the marksmanship but at Pegg’s self-discipline in a ruck like this. Morgan knew that he would have fired his rifle – his only round – in the first tight corner, yet Pegg had saved it for a real emergency.
‘Sir, get the officer, shall yer?’ shouted Pegg as Morgan stumbled through the wreckage of bodies that now surrounded him. ‘Surpuray, get here: we’ll hold ’em.’ And as Morgan grabbed McGowan’s unconscious body by the armpits, Englishman and Indian stood shoulder to shoulder, jabbing, stabbing and kicking, falling slowly back down the alley. Finally, what remained of the mutineers broke and ran away, disappearing around the corner from where they’d first emerged.
With the immediate danger gone, Morgan let McGowan down under the cover of a mud wall and reached for his water bottle. As he sucked at the contents, Pegg and Surpuray staggered towards him, falling into an exhausted heap besides the groaning McGowan.
‘Fuckin’ ’ell, sir, that was a bit sharp, wan’t it?’
Pegg seemed uncharacteristically calm, thought Morgan. The young NCO had lost his cap and at least two gashes were matting his hair, whilst the grey cloth of his shirt stuck out from a long tear in his jacket just above his waist belt.
‘Young Surpuray here did a grand job, din’t you, bab?’
The Indian soldier smiled and winced as Morgan poured a little brandy from his flask onto a long sword cut on the back of Surpuray’s hand, before binding it with a clean bandage that he’d taken from the sepoy’s own haversack.
‘You weren’t bad yourself, Corporal Pegg,’ said Morgan. ‘How many did you see off?’
‘Dunno, sir, but you mustn’t go back to loot ’em.’ Pegg smiled weakly at Morgan. ‘They’ll be wanting to finish the job once they’ve rounded up a few o’ their pals. Cum on, sir, we’d best move; an’ you, Surpuray, get yersen reloaded.’
Pegg was suddenly in charge, pulling Morgan to his feet, lifting the semiconscious McGowan up and draping his arms over both their shoulders, and telling Surpuray to guard their backs. But no sooner had the tattered little gang started to move than a storm of shots and shouts broke out fifty paces away at the alley junction behind them.
‘Christ, they’re back. Put him down, sir,’ Pegg told Morgan as Captain McGowan was allowed to slump to the floor and they all reached for their weapons again. But instead of charging sandals, boots thumped the dirt, a British cheer met their ears and a storm of red coats swept past the end of the alley. Leaving the sepoy to guard his officer, Morgan and Pegg ran as fast as their leaden legs would carry them back to the junction. There was Sergeant Ormond and half the company with fresh blood on their bayonets and powder about their lips.
‘Well, there you are, sir. We was just starting to get worried about you,’ Ormond grinned widely, delighted to have his officer back and in charge. ‘You haven’t been letting him get into mischief again, have you, young Pegg?’
‘So, just to be clear, the brigadier-general was called a what?’ Hume, tired by the fight and now exasperated, asked.
‘“A battle-shy whoreson”, sir,’ Morgan replied. He’d tasted a bit of this sort of treatment from Hume before, where the application of excoriating reason – not anger, just reason – could reduce him in seconds to a naughty schoolboy.
‘And that he had what?’
‘“More mouth than a cow’s got cunt”, sir,’ Morgan muttered.
It had been a long day. Rowa had finally fallen and, even now, just before sunset, the Sappers were still blowing in the walls and trenches. Hume had called Morgan to him to explain a litany of things: why the assault had started before his signal; why the enemy’s reserve had not been stopped from attacking McGowan’s men; why the 10th had taken so many casualties as a result; why the guns had been masked by the Grenadier Company; why there had been no signal passed by Morgan’s men to tell Carmichael’s company to move; who had ransacked the treasury building and where were the contents.
‘I know how difficult the fighting must have been inside the town, especially when most of the buildings were set a-fire,’ Hume continued as Morgan stood to attention in front of him, covered in mud, black with smoke and with his scabbard still empty. ‘I know how the men got their dander up and became very difficult to control…’
‘Difficult to control’, not ‘you lost control of your troops’, thought Morgan. The man’s even courteous when he’s tearing a strip off me.
‘…and I know that it was the first, serious action for most of the soldiers…’ Hume paused for effect.
‘If only you knew the half of it, Colonel, thought Morgan. If only you’d seen McGucken shoot a Pandy at full stretch more than two hundred paces away; if only you’d seen Fawcett leading the boys over a blazing roof as if he’d done it all his life; if only you’d seen Ormond pull Kemp’s savages off the three girls they’d found hiding in that cellar and if only you’d known the sweet joy of leading those lads then you – Colonel, my jewel – could forgive anything.
‘…but why, when we know how much the general abhors drunkenness; why when he’s just paying a cursory visit to see how the day has gone, why does one of your poets have to abuse the gentleman at the top of his gin-soaked voice and then run off and hide?’
‘Well, sir, the men don’t seem to like the general very much…’
‘I don’t suppose he likes them very much either, after having to listen to all that,’ Hume snorted, ‘and you haven’t been able to find out who it was?’
‘No, sir,’ Morgan lied. The whole company knew that it was Matthew McGarry, who’d found ‘a wee drop o’ juice,’ in a native still, and who had no great respect for authority even when sober, but then, he’d killed three Pandies all by himself that morning and, well…
‘Hmm…’ Hume was too wise a man, too good a leader, not to know when he was wasting his time. ‘Well, you’ll just have to convince the general somehow that you command my Grenadiers, not a parcel of sots. Other than a list of things that you and your men have learnt not to do again and ways not to address the general, is there anything creditable to come out of all this?’
Morgan thought hard and thought quickly. ‘Well, yes, sir, I believe there is. Sepoy Suddo Surpuray fought well and saved several lives, and whilst I know that a native soldier can’t receive the same decorations that our people can, we should do something for the man. And there’s Lance-Corporal Pegg, sir—’
‘I said anything creditable, Morgan.’
‘I know you did, sir,’ Morgan paused, ‘but I believe his actions today deserve the Victoria Cross.’
‘The Victoria Cross…Pegg?’ Hume drew a deep breath. ‘Pegg, the man who shot the priest outside Sevastopol, the man who lies for a pastime, the man who covers every native girl he can and the man whom you yourself said ought to be reduced from lance corporal because he “sets a bad example under fire”. You think that he deserves a decoration from the hand of the Queen herself?’
‘I do, sir.’
‘Very well.’ Hume sat down on an empty ammunition box and motioned Morgan to do the same. ‘Persuade me.’
FIVE
Clemency
‘So, Colour-Sar’nt, what does the manual tell us about execution by firing squad?’ Morgan tried not to let his revulsion show, for McGucken was being utterly pragmatic about the whole business.
‘Damned if I know, sir. This is one of those jobs that you just make up as you go along,’ McGucken answered dispassionately. ‘You ready yet, Corporal Pegg?’
‘Almost, Colour-Sar’nt.’ Pegg – after his experience gained with the executions in Bombay – had been charged with tying the prisoners to five wooden posts set in front of a sandy bank. ‘’Old still, Mr Bogger.’ The fourth condemned man in the first batch struggled a little as he was triced up by Private Beeston. ‘One more to go.’
After the cap
ture of Rowa almost two weeks ago, General Smith’s column had flogged over one hundred dreary, moonlit, humid and rain-soaked miles to join a much larger force that was destined to push hard into Rajputana to try to deal with brush-fire mutinies and uprisings amongst the maharajahs that threatened to spread right across Mahratta country. Great had been the excitement when the troops were told that the fort of Awah (stuffed full of gold and jewels, it was said) was to be attacked, but not as great as the disappointment in Morgan’s Grenadiers when they were left in ignominious, unprofitable reserve.
In fact, there had been no real fight, for two thousand rebels had decamped during a torrential downpour, leaving much loot for everyone, except the Grenadier Company, and a couple of hundred prisoners. Whilst the fort was reduced to rubble and the spoils divided amongst the lucky ones, Colonel Hume had been told to court-martial the prisoners.
‘So, how many of these lads did the commanding officers have to try, sir?’ McGucken asked conversationally as the last man had his arms lashed to the billet.
‘Nearly two hundred. There were all sorts of folk taken in the town, mainly by the Eighty-Third, but by some of our lot as well,’ Morgan answered. ‘Couldn’t get their belts off fast enough, all claiming, of course, that they was about their own business. Anyway, it was the fastest assize since Pontius Pilate – so Captain Bazalgette said – but the colonel reckoned twenty-five of the rascals had been “taken under arms and in open rebellion against the State”, and now we’ve got to deal with ’em. I blame McGarry and his escapade in Rowa.’
‘Probably right, sir. We made no friend of the general that day,’ McGucken continued calmly, ‘but how d’you want it done?’
Morgan looked at the five men just yards in front of him. They were soldiers, right enough, their bearing and tattoos showed that, and they all seemed to be of high caste. Two were lightly wounded, with filthy dressings covering their hurts – they both seemed to be in pain – but they all faced the waiting ranks of British troops with quiet dignity.
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