Dust and Steel

by Patrick Mercer

  ‘A windpipe, d’you mean, sir?’ asked McGucken calmly. ‘…Aye, that looks about right,’ before he quickly tossed the bit of gristle into the flames.

  ‘That’s right, but whose is it?’ asked Morgan, as his heart fell.

  ‘Oh Jesus, sir, look here.’ Judd had found another gruesome fragment.

  He showed them a complete hand that still had a cuff of a grimy white shirt at its wrist where the explosion had severed it. There was no blood – the heat of the bang had cauterised the neat amputation – but the two lower fingers were curled in a scaly, familiar way.

  ‘May I see?’ asked Morgan, and Judd was only too pleased to rid himself of the horrid thing. ‘Look here…’ Morgan pointed to the scarred palm and fingers, and to the signet ring, surprised that the flesh was still warm to the touch. ‘I fear that this is Captain Bazalgette’s hand; look, these are the wounds he received under the Colours at the Alma.‘

  ‘You’re right, sir, and this is Major Bainbrigge’s wallet, ain’t it?’ McGucken was holding a buckled piece of black leather about ten inches long and eight wide. It was the brigade-major’s sabretache.

  ‘It is, Colour-Sar’nt. We’ve lost two very fine officers, gentlemen –’ Morgan was interrupted by shouts and yells arising from the ground floor of another house close by.

  ‘Sir, that’s the lads from the Tenth. They’ve nabbed some bugger, by the sound of things,’ said McGucken, not even waiting for his officer’s approval as he bounded the short distance to the fire-lit walls of the next house.

  ‘Rook jao; hat jao!’ McGucken roared at the clutch of Bombay men who were pushing and slapping at someone in their midst. The sepoys froze as the colour-sergeant’s bellow echoed off the walls of the squalid little room.

  ‘Theek hai, sahib.’ The naik in charge of the group stiffened to attention at the sight of the British officers, moving the unsheathed bayonet that he held in his right hand to his left before sketching a salute.

  ‘Who have you got here, naik?’ Morgan asked, pushing the bodies away in the darkness to try to get a glimpse of the sepoys’ captive.

  ‘It’s that old woman I was telling you about earlier, Morgan.’ Fawcett recognised her stooped form immediately. ‘You know, the one I said had been pestering Corporal Aldworth, begging some fire.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Corp’l Pegg had seen her as well,’ said Morgan, studying her. She was bent like a sickle, her skin a deep, wrinkled brown and her hair wispy below a tattered shawl. A trace of blood seeped from her hooked nose, but the eyes that stared at Morgan burnt deep and intense.

  ‘Come here.’ He beckoned her towards him but as she took a shuffling step, the sepoys cried out in alarm, thrusting her back.

  That’s damned odd, thought Morgan. The mutineers have done unspeakable things to women, but I’ve never see these Bombay lads treat them with anything but respect, deference almost, yet they’ve obviously roughed her up and want her nowhere near me.

  But whilst Morgan tried to guess what had been happening, McGucken had been in a spirited conversation in his best pidgin Hindi with the sepoys, who were pointing excitedly at a scorched patch on the floor.

  ‘They say she fired a mine, sir…’ McGucken broke away for another explanation from the naik. ‘Look here, there’s a wee bit of bamboo sticking oot the floor, sir, burnt at the top. The jawans say it’s a fuse that was pre-laid under the road, bamboo full o’ powder that must have led to all that bang-stick in the house opposite.’

  ‘Well, no wonder the old bitch was so anxious to get hold of some of our embers.’ Morgan now recognised the hate in the woman’s eyes. ‘How else would she have lit the fuse?’

  ‘How, indeed, sir.’ McGucken shook his head slowly as the woman stared her mute defiance at them all. ‘She must have bided her time here, keeping her sparks goin’ until she saw Cap’n Bazalgette and the brigade-major walk inside and then lit the fuckin’ thing.’

  ‘What have we done, Colour-Sar’nt, to make them hate us so much?’ Morgan was genuinely puzzled. Surely, British rule must have improved life immeasurably for elderly folk like this woman – hadn’t it?

  ‘Aye, sir, as you say, they must just bloody hate us,’ replied McGucken flatly. ‘Best if we deal with this rather than leave her with the Tenth, sir, by your leave?’

  ‘Yes, you’re right, Colour-Sar’nt,’ Morgan answered distractedly, for he was still pondering the depth of loathing that such an old, dessicated creature could harbour. ‘Carry on, please.’

  As Morgan turned to leave the room, he missed the colour-sergeant putting his wishes into practice. All he heard was a gasp from the sepoys, a crack that experience had taught him could only be that of fracturing bone, and the noise of a body collapsing to the floor; then just silence.

  Morgan turned to look: there was McGucken standing over a clump of rags that, only seconds before, had been the old woman. His bayonet was dug hard through her nose and palate, the steel nailing her skull to the floor, whilst her eyes were still open, still hating.

  ‘Fire!’ shouted Morgan for the third time.

  The first volley, fired by twelve picked men of Number Two Company had sent the crows cawing from the trees and the parrots rocketing out of their evening roosts in the date grove. There had just been time for the birds to calm themselves, to stop their panicky flapping, to eye the branches to which they might return, before the next dozen shots banged above the coffin. But the third volley was too much. Every set of wings, be they sable or flashing green, sought a quieter perch for the night.

  ‘Order…arms.’ The Two Company men had done their best to look clean and tidy on their company commander’s last parade. They’d begged trousers that still had unpatched knees, sponged the mud off their scarlet shell jackets and washed the filthy covers of their caps until they looked almost white. Colour-Sergeant Judd had even got them to scrub their leather belts until they were an even, dun colour. Now they all waited for the words of command as they buried their officer, and Morgan buried his friend.

  There’d been a spirited argument after the explosion. Whaley had assembled a working party to scour the ground for further body parts – a search that had gone on into daylight by men anxious not to let Captain Evelyn Bazalgette and Major Charles Bainbrigge provide any nourishment for the pye-dogs or shite-hawks – there were plenty of dead Pandies who could oblige on that account. But when both officers amounted to no more than a mess-tin full of offal it had been decided, after much discussion, that one crude plank coffin, hastily knocked together by a native carpenter, would do.

  ‘Party…ready.’ Colour-Sergeant Judd had now taken over. Six men, three either side of the coffin, took the strain on the ropes with which they would lower the box into the grave.

  ‘Sir, if you please.’ Judd gave Morgan the signal to step forward.

  He returned his sword to its scabbard, marched to the grave-side, halted and briskly removed the faded yellow silk from the top of the coffin. The subalterns had slipped the Regimental Colour from its pike and suggested to the commanding officer that it might be used to cover Bazalgette on his last journey.

  And I remember you beneath this flag four years ago, thought Morgan as he carefully furled the cloth into a neat rectangle…Up there, you were, on the banks of the Alma, bullets and shot all around you, and you cheerin’ like the hero you were, even when you had a couple of canister rounds through the fist…He looked at the brown stain at the corner of the flag, where his friend’s blood had daubed it so long ago. And now look at you, and that grand man Bainbrigge alongside: blown to splinters by a withered old witch – and for what?

  ‘Lower!’ The box disappeared into the ground as the priest took up his prayers where he’d left off and both company buglers sounded the Regiment’s farewell.

  Goodbye, my friend, thought Morgan as his hand quivered to the salute. Miss Gabbett shall have this…he felt the signet ring in his left palm that he’d taken off Bazalgette’s dead hand…and she’ll never know how we mocked your prese
ntiment.

  EIGHT

  Jhansi

  ‘’Scuse me, sir, orderly from the commanding officer for you,’ Private Beeston spoke as softly and respectfully as he could, trying not to stamp on Morgan’s sorrow.

  The drums had rattled and the fifes had squealed as the companies had dispersed back to their duties once Bainbrigge and Bazalgette’s grave had been shovelled full of soil and two wooden crosses knocked into the earth at its head. In the deepest reaches of despondency, Morgan had marched the men back to the pickets around Kinaree, knowing that he’d lost not just a friend, but the only person who knew all the details of his tangled circumstances. Now, whilst both the Grenadiers and Number Two Company continued the tedious business of clearing the village, he slumped onto his bedroll in the improvised mess, took his flask and poured a long measure of brandy into its silver cap. But he wasn’t given the chance to slip too deeply into misery.

  ‘Sir, Colonel’s compliments, sir, and would you be so kind as to attend upon him up at the Rajah’s palace in town at four o’clock, sir, please? Brigadier-General’s got some instructions to give out, sir, but the colonel needs to speak to you first.’

  Morgan had heard the pony that had brought the young private from the orderly room with the message. He recognised him as one of the men who had joined in Dublin last year; in the initial tests for all new draft from the depot, his literacy had stood out and he was immediately whipped away to be one of the adjutant’s clerks.

  ‘Thank you. I’ll be there…remind me of your name.’ Morgan was careful to treat the adjutant’s messengers well. ‘And d’you want a swallow of tea whilst you’re here, son?’

  ‘Groves, sir; I will, thank you.’ As Morgan yelled for tea and for his horse and an escort to be prepared, he looked at Groves. The lad stood only about five-foot six, but he was broad and sun-burnt, with the clearest blue eyes peering through the gloom of the little room, and whilst his first trade was scribbling, a bandage on his left hand showed that he’d taken as fair a share of the fighting for Kotah as any of the men with the companies.

  ‘Any idea what it’s about, Groves?’

  ‘Sir, not really, sir. I know the brigadier-general is giving orders, sir, and I’ve just had the devil’s own job finding Colonel Kemp who’s been blown for as well, but I think it’s just the pair of you and Colonel Hume what’s going to be there.’ Groves reached slightly timidly for one of the two mugs of tea that had appeared in Private Beeston’s beefy hands, for he wasn’t used to being treated with such civility by lofty creatures like Morgan.

  ‘I think you’ve taken leave of your senses,’ Hume told Morgan.

  Kotah was burning and the smoke drifted low over the few buildings that hadn’t been torched. Hume had established his own headquarters besides one of the fort’s bastions in a huddle of low buildings from where he could look out over the countryside beyond and attempt to see the cavalry chasing the remnants of Hira Singh’s men.

  ‘I understand that Kemp has persuaded the brigadier-general that he’s the only man who knows the Rhani well enough to be able to hunt her down, and I quite see that her death will prick the damn Pandies’ confidence…’ Hume looked exhausted, thought Morgan, ‘…but your persuading the gallant commandant that you have to be in at the kill is a bit too much to swallow, ain’t it? Isn’t the command of the Grenadiers enough for you, or have you suddenly tired of the boys that have stood by you and the Regiment that’s acted as your wet nurse?’

  ‘Colonel, I think I’ve got some explaining to do.’ Morgan gritted himself and was about to plunge into a full explanation of his private life when Hume cut across him.

  ‘Oh, no, Morgan, you don’t need to puke up all that stuff about you, the late, brave James Keenan and his wife, nor about the boy you and that girl have sired. No need; I’ve known all about that nonsense since you was tupping her before Sevastopol. I wasn’t going to intervene, it was too distracting watching Richard Carmichael working himself into a horny lather over it all. I’ve also heard the news about your wife – and I’m damn sorry about it – but your tomcatting will threaten a promising career.’

  Morgan stood and gaped at Hume. He had no idea that the commanding officer knew every last detail, including the fact that he was now free to pursue Mary.

  ‘But you’re experienced enough to make those decisions for yourself,’ Hume fixed Morgan with a hard stare, ‘and I quite understand that you would want to try to find Mrs Keenan and your son in the Hades that the bloody Rhani has created. No, that‘s not my concern at all. Kemp’s half mad – driven that way, I dare say, by the grief and misery of what’s happened to his command and to his family – but he’s lost his flint and will probably end up getting himself and you killed…’

  That was exactly what Bazalgette had said, thought Morgan.

  ‘…and on top of that, General Smith eats out of Kemp’s hand; wouldn’t dare tell him to face about. Now, of course, with Rose knocking on Jhansi’s door…’ Morgan had heard great things of Sir Hugh Rose, the newly appointed commander in Central India, who was gearing up to take the Rhani’s fortress by storm, ‘…Kemp has sown the idea in the generalissimos’ minds that he can cut the head off the serpent by stamping on the Rhani. The danger is that the whole thing will just end up in a suicidal blood bath, which would suit Dick Kemp down to the ground.’

  Morgan thought back to the Kemp he’d met all those years ago at home in Glassdrumman. He’d listened to his stories of the Sikh Wars and seen the fierce joy he’d had in reliving dangers and glories past, yet there had always been an brusque kindness there. But the Kemp he’d met again out here in mutinous India was different. There was still the rough-hewn exterior, the ready smile and genius for leadership, but all mercy had gone from him, any compassion had been swept away on a flooding need for revenge. The colonel and Bazalgette were right – Kemp would be a highly dangerous man to be alongside, yet his path led not only to the Rhani but also directly to Mary and to Sam.

  ‘Anyway, Kemp’s sold the idea to Smith, and he’s written to Rose about it so, unless you decide to stay with the lads who’ve served you so loyally,’ Hume paused and looked at Morgan coolly, ‘you’ll be off post-haste to Jhansi once Kemp’s got his troops together. Now, whilst you’re gadding about playing Richard the Lionheart, I shall be a company commander down, and that leaves me with no alternative than to give Captain Carmichael command of a double company – the Grenadiers and his.’

  ‘But, Colonel, you can’t do that to my company,’ Morgan remonstrated.

  ‘Too late. They’re not your company any more. You’ve made your decision and I have no choice, Morgan. With Massey taken to replace Bainbrigge as brigade-major, and now your haring off after love’s sweet dream and away from me, what’s to be done?’ Hume’s frown turned into a smile. ‘But don’t worry too much. Young Fawcett has made a capital start to things and as long as McGucken isn’t struck down your precious Grenadiers should survive.’

  Should survive, thought Morgan. Jesus, I don’t want to be the man that breaks the news to Jock McGucken that he’s to be under Richard bloody Carmichael’s command again. There was drama enough out in Russia.

  ‘Now, gentlemen, I know that most of you are only too painfully aware of how things stand, but there are some newcomers,’ Brigadier-General Smith looked past Hume, Kemp and Morgan, concentrating on his two new staff officers, ‘who might benefit from knowing a bit more of the overall situation. Whilst the main centres of the rebellion, Delhi and the other cities, are now mostly under our control, here in Central India, the six Mahratta-controlled states of the Central India Agency have thrown their lot in with Tantya Tope – that devil who massacred General Wheeler’s people in the Ganges at Cawnpore – and have become a serious thorn in the side. The most influential of these territories is Jhansi and the Rhani who rules it, not so much because of its military prowess, but for other, strategic reasons. This bold young Jezebel has now sunk her differences with Tope and the pair of them will be a blood
y pest unless we snuff them out right sharp.’

  The man may not like the sound of lead, thought Morgan,…but he can hold an audience’s attention right enough.

  ‘Anyway, there are two crucial points about Jhansi,’ Smith went on. ‘First, the commander-in-chief, Sir Colin Campbell, has got quite enough worries about the rest of Bengal without having to keep looking over his shoulder all the time. The fortress dominates Sir Colin’s lines of communications and didn’t need to be concerned about it until Tantya Tope teamed up with the Rhani and a gang of other ruffians. Now that the place has been fortified and garrisoned we’ve got to take it, for if we don’t we can never be confident that our rear areas are secure, nor where the next brush-fire mutiny will break out.’ Smith pointed to the map. ‘You see how Jhansi’s central position must have distracted Sir Colin during that nonsense around Lucknow. Now, Sir Hugh Rose has just started his first moves against the place – parallels began to be cut yesterday – but there’ll be serious fighting to be done once they decide to storm. We’ll be too far distant to get there in time – it’s a least a dozen forced marches away – but a small party on fast horses will be there in five days.’

  Five days’ hard riding, thought Morgan…That’ll leave us with raw arses and the nags with sore backs…

  ‘The second point is the Rhani herself,’ Smith continued. ‘You all know what a Jezebel the papers have made her out to be – and quite rightly so after her perfidy with Skene and the other Europeans – but Kemp knows the woman in the flesh. Tell us about her, if you please.’

  ‘There was a time when I really would have liked to know her in the flesh, General, for she’s a tasty little bint…’ Kemp looked round at the audience, most of whom grinned, but one or two – Smith included – frowned disapprovingly, ‘…but the bitch played us false and murdered – well, you’ve heard enough about the blood-letting that she started. Thing is, she’s damnably persuasive and strong-willed. She’s got all the native princes eating out of her pretty little palm because she’s brighter than the lot of ’em put together, understands us lot – the British – and all our weaknesses, and she don’t lack courage. She was brought up like a boy and taught to fight Mahratta-style; why, I’ve seen her myself on her Arab pony with a sword in either hand controlling the damn thing with the reins looped round her toes. The shave is that she’s now leading her troops herself, dressed like a man in a mail shirt and steel pot; the only way to identify her is that she has her eight-year-old son, young Damodar, on her saddlebow when she goes into action. And there’s something else: she protected Mrs Mary Keenan – wife of one of my subalterns who was murdered – and her son when the rest of the Europeans were put to the sword. Mrs Keenan…’ Kemp paused as he looked at Morgan, ‘…some of you know her, I believe, was already a pal of the Rhani’s before this unpleasantness started. She became a sort of unofficial physician and confidante, I’m told, and now she and her young lad are being held hostage by the Rhani.’