Dust and Steel

by Patrick Mercer

  ‘Well, take the rise out of me all you like, you Irish lout,’ Bazalgette grinned back at him, ‘but it was the strongest of feelings, you know. And, I tell you what, when that goddamn thing went off right next to me, I thought that I really had breathed my last. Did you see it?’

  ‘Not directly, but I saw the smoke and flash; it must have given you a wee bit of a tremble.’ After the fighting had died down, Morgan had made a special point of examining the great bundle of musket barrels that the mutineers had strapped together and placed in such a way that they would catch any advance on their flank.

  ‘Aye, it did. Riddled poor Green; dead before he hit the ground, and it wasn’t the best of things that all the other boys had to pass him as we went into the attack. Right bloody next to me, he was.’ Bazalgette shuddered at the memory.

  ‘P’raps, but it didn’t stop you, did it?’

  ‘Well, no, but the lads paused a bit…’ Bazalgette wrinkled his brow. ‘You know how it is: they’ll be heroes one minute, full of deeds and glory, but if the least thing goes wrong they’re just as likely to run like rabbits. You must have seen that?’

  Seen it? thought Morgan. I’ve come close to running more times than I can count. The boys saw me hesitate today, and if McGucken hadn’t kicked me on we’d have left you so deeply in the mire, my friend, that your goddamn presentiment would probably have come true.

  ‘Aye, I’ve seen it – and felt it.’ Morgan looked directly into his friend’s face before continuing, ‘But did your men detect anything wrong with you this morning, Bazalgette?’

  ‘What are you suggesting, Morgan?’ Bazalgette replied slowly, a little stiffly.

  ‘Well, I know how much you’ve been through out in Russia and now here, and I’m suggesting that you need a rest.’ Morgan could see his friend bridling. ‘Take a job on the staff or at a depot until your “presentiments” go to blazes.’

  Bazalgette started to rise up to be at Morgan’s level, his face angry, but just as suddenly he sat back down with a thump. ‘Aye, you’re right…’ It was as if all the fight had gone out of Bazalgette. ‘But don’t you ever wonder if the next bullet, the next shell, the next fucking spear or whatever it is, will get you and you’ll end up like Green today, wrapped in a blanket in a filthy bloody alley in God-knows-where?’

  ‘Of course I do, but I try not to let the men see,’ said Morgan. ‘Once they’ve tumbled to the fact that I’m scared, they will be as well.’

  That’s a bloody great bit of hypocrisy, Tony Morgan, he thought. You know how difficult you find it even to stop your hands trembling sometimes.

  ‘Yes…yes, you’re right, of course; and it must be even more difficult for you with Maude and…and, well, the other situation,’ said Bazalgette, looking at the ground in embarrassment.

  Maude – God, I’ve hardly given the girl a thought now for weeks…The mail, usually so efficient in India in peacetime, was now dreadfully delayed. Just as it reached one of their stopping points, the column would have moved on again, leaving the men frustrated and feeling even more isolated than they needed to. The baby will have been born weeks ago; boy or girl? And what of Mary and Samuel – are they even alive?

  ‘I try not to think about it,’ Morgan lied; he’d gone far enough with this discussion. ‘At least we’re both better off than Burton and his sons.’

  They were talking on the steps of the bungalow that had been the home of the British Resident, Major Burton, until he and his two toddler sons had been butchered there. It had been burnt out, but deep, red-black splashes still covered the veranda and the lower part of the walls.

  ‘There’ll be no Christian burial for those poor souls, any more than there will be for that lot, there.’ Bazalgette looked at the Chumbal, on whose banks the bungalow lay. In midstream the first crop of rebel bodies had begun to drift by. All young men, many still in the red and white of the John Company regiments that they’d betrayed, they eddied and whirled down the river, limbs outstretched, reaching for each other in the comradeship of death.

  ‘Yes, they’ll stink by morning and then won’t the shite-hawks have a spree?’ Morgan looked at the bodies; most, he guessed, had died after being thrown seventy feet over the battlements of Kotah. Even if they’d survived the fall they would have drowned. But there was time for no more reflection as the brigade-major, Bainbrigge, came jingling up the path between files of Morgan’s Grenadiers.

  ‘Ah, gentlemen, idling the day away after hanging back this morning?’ Bainbrigge asked with a broad grin.

  ‘Steady, Bainbrigge,’ replied Morgan, ‘or I’ll get one of my men to hold your horse for you.’ Both laughed whilst Bazalgette looked on bemusedly.

  ‘And before you ask so kindly,’ the brigade-major continued, ‘General Smith is well – if a little bruised – and in fine ranting form. More to the point, he has a job for you that I’ve cleared with Colonel Hume, who’s happy for me to seek your services.’ Bainbrigge was careful to make the officers understand that he wasn’t operating outside the formal chain of command.

  ‘Just over that hillock is the hamlet of Kinaree.’ He pointed to a smudge of smoke that rose about a quarter of a mile away. ‘Half a company of the Tenth are in there and they report that it’s stuffed full of powder, shot and fuses. The rebels seem to have been using it as a magazine and they’re worried that they haven’t got the manpower to stop a Pandy or two creeping up after dark and sparking the place. Just as importantly, we need the ordnance for our own guns.’ The brigade-major paused to open a map.

  ‘Morgan, I’d be obliged to you if you’d set off first and put a cordon around the place, tight as a duck’s arse. Then, once that’s done, would you, Bazalgette, get your lot into the place, smoke out any badmashes lurking there, and then secure any stores, and, if possible, list what you’ve got – you know how the general likes his lists. I’ll be down as soon as I can – probably won’t be until after dark, now – to get your report. Can we move off sharpish with the Grenadiers ready to secure Number Two Company in, say, sixty minutes, gentlemen?’

  Both officers had now been joined by their colour-sergeants, who listened intently to the major. There was much checking of maps and pocket-watches before the pair of captains agreed to Bainbrigge’s orders.

  ‘Right, gentlemen, I’m very grateful to you.’ Bainbrigge settled himself in the saddle. ‘By the way, Morgan, the brigade commander told me to say how very trim that gun of yours looks outside his tent!’ Everyone laughed, Morgan a little ruefully.

  ‘You’re sure the boys have got their slippers on when they’re in the buildings, Colour-Sar’nt?’

  Morgan and McGucken had removed their boots before making their way into a little thatched building that lay next to the main road from Kotah into the village of Kinaree.

  ‘Aye, sir. Those that ain’t got ’em or have lost ’em will just have to pad around wi’ bare tootsies, won’t they?’ McGucken replied with characteristic sympathy.

  Even from the outskirts, the Grenadier Company could see that most buildings were full of powder in open chatties, fuses, copper initiator tubes and all manner of other, dangerous ‘bang-stick’, as the men liked to call such things. There was a real fear that a nailed boot might strike a spark on a stone floor, so slippers had been ordered.

  ‘And please make sure, Colour-Sar’nt that there is no cooking inside buildings and no open candles. If you’re content, we’ll use this building as our joint mess tonight; I hope we can get back into Kotah in the morning.’ Morgan had lit a storm lantern now that darkness had fallen; it shed a cosy glow over the scruffy interior, which was dominated by a hearth, some rags and cooking pots but, apparently, no munitions.

  ‘Fine, sir. I’ll get your, my and Mr Fawcett’s servants up here wi’ some cold food; let’s hope the place ain’t crawlin’ with lice.’ The last temporary mess that the sergeants and officers had shared before the assault on Kotah had left them all itching and scratching for days.

  Morgan took a chance and stretch
ed out on the stone floor, asleep almost before his head touched his haversack, which he was using as a pillow. Neither the shouted commands of Number Two Company as they sorted out the munitions deep in the village, nor the crashing of the servants as they arrived and unpacked the officers and senior NCOs’ food and personal items disturbed him, but Private Beeston did.

  ‘Now then, sir, stir yersen.’ Beeston shook his company commander awake whilst the servants looked on, thoroughly amused by what was likely to happen next. ‘Coom on, you’ll like this, yer will.’

  ‘Beeston, just bugger off, will you…’ there was a ripple of mirth from the men at Morgan’s understandable anger. ‘Can’t a man have a damn bit of sleep without being—’

  ‘Hush, sir. There’s some mail for yer.’

  Mail, thought Morgan…We don’t get that any more. I was only thinking about that just a few hours ago.

  ‘Some bogger loves you, sir,’ and with a casual salute, the big, awkward Nottingham man withdrew, leaving a thick wedge of envelopes for the officer.

  There was the normal clutter of bills from tailors, saddlers and veterinaries; his solictor had written about something complicated at Glassdrumman, and a farrier had asked him for a reference. There was a clutch of delicate envelopes in his wife‘s rounded hand but one letter in particular seized his attention and made his stomach shrink. He recognised his father’s spindly hand; he recognised the Cork postmark; he recognised the seal in the wax but he knew what the thick black line that ran right around the envelope suggested. His hands trembled, one filthy fingernail being pushed under the paper flap, ripping it open.

  ‘My Dearest Son, it’s with the heaviest of hearts…’ Morgan could hardly bear to read any more of his father’s letter, ‘…that I tell you that your beloved wife is now safe with her maker.’ Maude had died in childbirth on New Year’s Day 1858 after, ‘a difficult labour bravely borne.’

  I can just imagine what that labour must have been like, thought Morgan. It may have been bravely borne, but it killed the poor girl – the poor girl whom I’ve barely thought about for the last few weeks. And now I’m a widower and a father again – and free to pursue Mary…But the unworthy thought shrivelled in his mind even as he had it.

  ‘William Anthony is a fine, stout lad and we’ll be baptising him at Saint Thomas’s the week after next, as I know you and Maude would have wanted…’

  As you, Billy Morgan, want, he thought. Heir to a Protestant dynasty and now utterly under his grandfather’s influence whilst his papa is away at war. But I’m a father again and this time the lad can bear my name. But what sort of a husband was I that I can feel no more than a pang of remorse for the poor girl? Despite all this, though, Morgan felt a surge of pleasure penetrate his guilt and shame.

  ‘There y’are, sir.’ The door of the hovel was thrown open with a crash, disturbing Morgan’s misery. ‘Sorry to upend you, sir, but I’ve got Major Bainbrigge waiting outside for you.’ Lance-Corporal Pegg was in charge of the picket on the main road, just next to Morgan’s headquarters.

  ‘Thank you, Corp’l Pegg.’ Morgan scrambled to his feet, scattering papers and envelopes over the floor. ‘I’ll be with him directly. All quiet?’ he asked as he buckled on his sword and reached for his cap.

  ‘Aye, sir, I think so. Cap’n B’s lot are doing a lot o’ shouting and bellowing in the town, but nowt else,’ Pegg replied, wiping a dirty hand over his red-rimmed eyes.

  ‘Any sign of Pandy?’

  ‘Not a thing, sir. There’s this old hag who keeps mitherin’ the lads for some embers, sir, but she’s ’armless enough.’ Pegg pointed in the dark. ‘There she is now.’

  Just across the road from them was an ancient woman who seemed, in the starlight, to be bent almost double with age. She was shuffling about, mumbling.

  ‘She looks as though she’s lost her wits, Corp’l Pegg; don’t allow her near the men if you can avoid it – and don’t let them mistreat her. She’s old enough to be their great-granny.’ Morgan was under no illusion about the potential for nastiness that the man had.

  ‘Ah, Morgan, there you are…’ Major Bainbrigge was accompanied by an orderly; neither had dismounted and it was clear that he was in a hurry. ‘All quiet? Where’s Bazalgette, d’you know?’

  ‘All’s as quiet as can be, thank you, sir,’ Morgan replied, saluting and using the formal term in front of the men. ‘Bazalgette was last seen in the two-storey building yonder.’ Morgan pointed down the road a hundred paces, where a tiled roof could be seen outlined against the night sky. ‘If he ain’t there now his colour-sar’nt – Judd – will know where he’s got to. Come in for a stiffener once you’ve seen him, if you like sir?’ Morgan tried to push the bad news he’d received to the back of his mind.

  ‘What, and return to the general stinking of grog? I’ll tell him I got it from the Grenadier Company, Ninety-fifth, shall I?’

  Morgan did his best to laugh at the quip as Bainbrigge walked his horse off in the direction that he’d been shown.

  ‘Right, Corp’l Pegg, make sure the men are fed and rested as best you can and keep an eye on that old bint.’ Morgan spoke automatically, his mind now returning to Maude’s death once the welcome distraction of Bainbrigge had passed.

  ‘Will do, sir. That bloody ram eats more of us rations than the rest o’ the mess put together. What you goin’ to do with it? Patsy Coughlin said it could be trained to fight proper; I saw him take ’is horns to a pye-dog today, sir, an’ there was no contest there, I can tell you. Might make a bit o’ money out of ’im, sir.’

  But even Morgan’s interest in ‘the fancy’ couldn’t be stimulated tonight. ‘I haven’t decided yet, Corp’l Pegg; just don’t roast the poor lamb, is all I ask.’

  ‘Won’t do that, sir, we ain’t got no mint sauce.’ Pegg, delighted with his own wit, saluted as Morgan withdrew morosely into the privacy of his mess.

  A plate of rice and cold chicken was pushed into his hand as soon as he returned, but the letter from his father, which still lay on the floor, guaranteed that he could not eat it.

  ‘Now, sir…’ the door opened again, bringing the welcome sight of McGucken and another, ‘…all’s well, an’ I found Mr Fawcett blundering about jumping at shadows.’

  The young ensign grinned at the colour-sergeant’s good-natured joke. ‘That was no shadow, Colour-Sar’nt, but a bloody odd old crone that was buzzing around near Corporal Aldworth’s position, annoying the men.’

  ‘Yes, she was around here as well. I told Corp’l Pegg to keep her at arm’s length,’ said Morgan.

  ‘I think she’ll be safe enough, even from Corp’l Pegg’s depravities.’ Fawcett was pleased with the word. ‘Why, I’ve never seen anyone quite so ugly, not even—’

  But he got no chance to finish. Through the narrow windows a flash lit the room like dawn, followed straight afterwards by a rolling boom that blew a clump of thatch out of the roof.

  ‘God, that’s a magazine going up – and bloody close.’ Morgan scrambled to his feet. ‘If you see a native, just shoot. Bloody Pandies must have got back into the town somehow.’

  The three of them picked up their weapons and tumbled out of the room, to be greeted by a pool of flames and a pyre of smoke belching up into the sky at the end of the street. Where a substantial, two-floor mud-and-brick building had stood, there were now just shattered walls no higher than a man’s waist.

  They ran as hard as they could, seeing no one except two sepoys of the 10th, who had been carrying a big basket of what, in the dark, looked like fuses until they had been blown clear off their feet by a great wall of flame and heat. Both were moaning on the ground, badly scorched, and Fawcett paused to help them.

  ‘No, sir, leave them,’ yelled McGucken, ‘there’s nothing to be done for that pair; just keep your eyes peeled for rebels.’

  In no time they were at the seat of the explosion where bricks, earth, tiles, roof timbers and burning straw lay in a terrible muddle, flames licking up almost prettily, smoke dri
fting across the stars.

  Then, round the far side of the shattered walls, came Colour-Sergeant Judd, unarmed, in his shirtsleeves, with his hair and face dripping wet.

  ‘Y’ all right?’ McGucken grasped his friend’s arm as they all looked at the myriad fires.

  ‘Aye, Jock; think so…’ Judd was obviously shocked. ‘I’m a bit deaf from the bang, like…’ Judd shook his head as if to clear it, ‘…I’d just got me kit off an’ was having a wash in that shack next to the magazine, when there was this fuck-off bang an’ all the thatch an’ tiles got pulled off of the roof. Thank God it was only a bit of all this stuff and the rest of it in the other buildings didn’t go off. Where’s the officers?’

  ‘We were just going to ask you that, Colour-Sar’nt,’ said Morgan, wrinkling his nose against the smell.

  They’d all noticed it; but each of them had enough experience not to comment. In the same way that India’s normal scent was a combination of rotting vegetation and dung, her battles smelt of wood smoke and roasting flesh. At first, the men had greeted the aroma with comments like, ‘Ay-up, that smells grand,’ and, ‘Frying tonight,’ until they realised what it meant.

  ‘Cap’n B and Major Bainbrigge was in the building there, where we’ve got us mess.’ Judd pointed to the now roofless shanty from which he had just emerged. ‘Told me to get me ’ead down whilst they looked around for some report that the general wanted. They went out an’ I was just getting a swill when it happened.’

  Whilst Judd had been speaking, McGucken had been poking at something on the ground with the toe of his boot. The shadows hid its exact nature until he lifted it into the light.

  ‘What’s that you’ve got there, Colour-Sar’nt?’ Morgan asked as McGucken held the thing up and stared at it against the fire.

  ‘Not sure, sir. Ain’t seen anything quite like it before.’ The Scot turned an inch or two of narrow piping over in his fingers. It was strangely ribbed and the flames made the matter that held it together pinkly luminous.

  ‘Looks like a bit of an oesophagus, Colour-Sar’nt.’ Morgan remembered the lessons at school about the body’s organs and his delight in their complex names; whilst he’d never seen such a thing in the flesh, instinctively, he knew exactly what it was.