‘Mary…Mary Keenan!’ Morgan yelled and, for an instant, the girl slowed her mount and stared, wide-eyed and beautiful through the dark, looking straight into his face. She pulled her horse to a standstill, her mouth open, trying to form words, but then she turned to look as her son was led away, and in an instant she was kicking hard at the flanks of her horse and following the rest of the galloping party straight towards the battlements.
‘God, they’re not going to jump that, are they?’ Kemp gasped as the dozen riders put their beasts up the wide flight of steps that led to the walls and then, one by one, bounded through the gun embrasures, and disappeared from sight. ‘They’ll bloody kill themselves!’
As they ran towards the stone breastwork, Morgan remembered the horseman who had leapt to his death at Kotah. Lungs heaving, he reached the parapet and looked over, expecting to see a tangle of smashed bodies far below. But even in the dark he could see that the jump, though severe, was possible, as a grassy bank reached up to a point no more than twelve feet below the wall. It had claimed one victim: a horse whinnied pitifully with a broken leg, a sowar lying motionless on the ground alongside, but in the light of the half-moon, Morgan could just see the rest of the group riding off towards a point of the siege lines that he knew to be thinly manned.
‘Damn her to hell,’ growled Kemp. ‘The bloody woman must have had that planned to perfection. Right, men, the only one of us who can shoot is the rissaldar. So, back to the horses and let’s get after her.’
NINE
Pursuit
‘’Oo exactly was that native, anyway, sir?’ Pegg’s face was creased with incomprehension, his voice lurching each time he thumped uncomfortably on his horse’s saddle. ‘An’ why did the commandant knife ’im like that?’
As soon as Kemp, Morgan, Pegg and the rissaldar had joined up with the rest of the party, they had galloped off as hard as they could in the wan light of dawn, keen to find their enemy’s trail. But Lance-Corporal Pegg was perturbed. Eight months into this, his second campaign, he was hardened to most things, but after the Rhani’s escape over the fortress walls he had witnessed an act of cold brutality that he simply did not understand.
‘As far as I can gather, he was a spy – someone close to Lakshmi Bai – who’d been bribed by the commandant to tell us where she was.’ Morgan hadn’t been made privy to the details of the betrayal.
‘Well, sir, if ’e were on our side, why did the commandant destroy ’im?’ Pegg wasn’t going to let the issue go. ‘Wouldn’t it ’ave been useful to keep ’im with us whilst we was giving chase?’
‘I suppose, Corp’l Pegg, the commandant felt he couldn’t trust him; if he was willing to sell out his own queen, he could just as easily turn on us.’ Despite this emollience, Morgan had been horrified to see Kemp grab the native – who was still crouching at the throat of the alley when they had left him in the skirmish with the Rhani’s troop – drag him bodily to his feet and then push a long sliver of steel under the man’s sternum, stabbing up into his aorta. The native died silently, just a look of surprise on his face as Kemp let him drop. Then he’d reached into the man’s belt and retrieved the purse of money with just a mumbled, ‘Ah, the wages of sin…’
‘Bloody ’ell, sir, remind me not to get on the wrong side o’ Clemency bleedin’ Kemp, won’t you?’
And that sentiment came from Lance-Corporal Charlie Pegg, thought Morgan, the man who would ransack his dead mates’ kit before they were even cold; the man who’d shot a priest out East without blinking. As everyone had warned him, Kemp was turning into a very tricky confederate indeed. Morgan was trying to think of something loyal but sympathetic to Pegg’s view when the NCO spoke again.
‘Ay-up, sir, it looks as though you’re wanted.’ Down the files of trotting hussars and irregulars, came Kemp, holding his big grey in check whilst the rest of the cavalrymen passed by. In the early light, Pegg and Morgan’s red coats stood out especially starkly in the files of blue and khaki; now their leader reined in alongside.
‘Rissaldar Batuk’s found their hoofprints; he reckons they’re about an hour and a half in front of us, but the Rhani will insist on stopping to pray and eat at about midday.’ The bulky officer sat comfortably in the saddle, almost an extension of his horse, in contrast to Pegg’s ungainly posture. ‘Reckon you can keep this pace up, young Pegg?’
‘It’s Corporal Pegg, sir. Course I can. This is nowt to what we did in Russia, sir,’ Pegg puffed in reply.
‘Hmm…I’m sure. Be a good fellow and make yourself scarce for a while, would you, son?’ Kemp jerked his head for Pegg to leave him alone with Morgan.
‘Yer what, sir?’ Pegg was confused by the commandant’s subtlety.
‘Just fuck off for a minute, will you? I need to speak to Captain Morgan privately,’ Kemp replied.
When Pegg had at last grasped what the officers wanted and kicked ahead to join the hussars in their cloud of dust, Kemp slowed his horse, pulling it a little way away from the jangling column, Morgan alongside him.
‘I’m glad we’ve got a chance to speak alone, sir.’ Ever since Kemp’s lynching of dozens of prisoners outside Awah three months ago, Morgan had been trying to screw up his courage to speak to the man about his excesses. Perhaps he might have found the careless murders more acceptable if they had been committed by someone he didn’t know, but Kemp was his father’s best friend – the only link out here with Glassdrumman and rainy civilisation. The shocked face of that man in the alley, though, had been too much for him; Morgan couldn’t connive any more. ‘That native you killed back in the town—’
But Morgan wasn’t allowed to continue.
‘Aye, I saw the look on your face – and on his. He was a traitor, Morgan, just like all these damn Pandies, and this one had outlived his usefulness.’
‘But he was—’ Morgan tried to interrupt.
‘No, hold your tongue, boy.’ Any geniality had gone from Kemp’s voice. ‘He was just another piece of scum who’s better off cold. And you can’t know this, but that lad in the red coat was – I’m pretty sure – Sepoy Lolemum Dunniah, formerly of the Company’s Twelfth Regiment of Native Infantry, the very man who ate my own salt and then butchered my wife.’ Morgan had seen Kemp’s bitter, un reasoned hatred before. ‘And now that we’re talking about betrayal, what do you make of the lovely Mrs Keenan’s conduct, for that’s who it was in the Rhani’s party, was it not?’
‘It was, Commandant.’ Morgan’s belly tightened at the memory of the fleeting glimpse he’d had of the girl. ‘Why, she’s a hostage, is she not? She’s being held against her will by Lakshmi Bai, ain’t she?’
Morgan had scarcely admitted to himself that Mary had fled just a little too readily, her horse spurred on just a little too keenly. Why, he wondered to himself, would she want to see him? There was the child, for sure, but a child he’d never seen and a child that James Keenan had treated as his own. He’d hardly tried to pursue her, had he? And he knew how strong-willed – cussed, some would say – Mary could be. Others had thrown in their lot with the natives, after all.
‘Is she, though?’ queried Kemp. ‘She could have made a break for it back in that square, I fancy. And it’s mighty queer company she’s keeping: murderin’ Pandies and renegade rhanis. Not without risk, I grant you, but then that leap over the battlements was bloody dangerous too. Dressed as a native, she was; wouldn’t any loyal woman have made a run for it there and then, particularly once she’d grabbed an eyeful of you? I suspect that your comely friend might have “gone bush”, been spending too much time with the bloody natives and caught a nasty dose of treachery. There’s plenty of examples, you know. Look at that white sergeant-major who was fighting with the enemy in Lucknow.’
‘Aye, sir, I’ve heard those stories as well, but it’s much simpler than that. You saw those two boys on the pony, didn’t you? I can’t swear to it because I don’t know either by sight, but I’ll wager that they were Damodar – the young pretender – and Mrs Keenan’s son. Rop
ed to the saddle, as far as I could see, and being towed around by that pug-ugly that you now tell me is Dunniah. What mother’s going to abandon her child in such circumstances?’ But Morgan had wondered when Mary galloped off with scarcely a backward glance and then dared that appalling leap over the castle’s walls.
‘You think? You really believe that a woman of spirit like Mary wouldn’t take every opportunity she could to get away from these savages?’ Clearly, Kemp’s mind was made up. Morgan suspected that the commandant saw treachery round every corner – yet he harboured many of the same doubts.
‘Of course she wouldn’t, sir, not if her child was being held,’ Morgan replied, trying not to let his own worries show.
‘Hmm…I wonder. Well, we shall see, won’t we, for I’m expecting the next round of this contest very shortly.’ The harshness had gone from Kemp’s voice. ‘Then, perhaps, we shall have a chance to judge where Mrs Keenan’s loyalty really lies.’
The sun was hot in the sky now, the dust as dense and choking as ever. Where Jhansi had been mostly green and fertile, the further they got away from the fortress town on the road to Gwalior, the flatter, browner and increasingly parched the landscape became. The few villages that they passed through, though, were remarkably untouched, for this part of Mahratta country had yet to see any real campaigning. Other than a little marching and countermarching by the local princelings’ troops as they jockeyed for position whilst the British were distracted, the country had been left alone. As a result, the natives were still naïvely friendly, turning out to line the road and gawp as the column of grey-powdered horsemen clattered by. Roly-poly children with great, curious eyes came to watch the cavalcade, whilst cadaverous chickens ran squawking from the horses’ hoofs as they pounded on without check. In normal circumstances – if these times could even begin to be described as normal – thought Morgan, such places would be ripe for the torches and blades of Kemp’s men, but the urgency of the pursuit spared them.
Half blind and choked by the swirling grit, sore from the saddle and dazed from a night without sleep, Morgan failed to spot the pair of horsemen who came tearing back to report to Kemp at the front of the column.
‘Bit of a ramasammy goin’ on up front, sir.’ Pegg pulled the handkerchief that he’d knotted about his mouth to one side. ‘Commandant’s all a-fluster, look.’
Kemp was like a hunting dog, thought Morgan, as two of his scouts – both loyal Indians from one of the disaffected cavalry regiments – pointed excitedly towards a stand of trees that were just visible above a low bank. The commandant stood in the saddle, every sinew taut, quivering as he first raised his arm for the column to stop, then flapped his hand in the field signal for ‘Dismount and await orders’.
‘’E wants you sir.’ Pegg had seen Kemp tap his shoulder and then place his hand on his helmet – another set of silent hand signals meaning ‘Officers to me’. ‘I bet ’e’s got the scent of that Rhani lass.’
‘I trust you’re right, Corp’l Pegg and it’s not another bloody porker,’ said Morgan as he pulled Emerald from the line of march and gently nudged her into a trot with his spurs.
‘Right, you lot.’ Kemp’s irregular gentlemen crowded around their commander just as Morgan arrived. They were all filthy, their faces and beards masked with grime, the miscellany of swords and pistols that stuck from sashes or hung from cross-belts all covered with a thin layer of powdered dirt. ‘Our boys reckon they’ve found her. Stay in the saddle, let’s just walk forward a few paces and have a look. Slowly, no dust cloud, now, and shield your field glasses. Her sentries will be as shagged out as we are, but I don’t want any flashing lenses to alert them.’
The clutch of riders moved cautiously forward until they were just peeping above the scrub-covered bank. Along with the other half-dozen, Morgan pulled his binoculars from their leather case that hung around his shoulder and raised then gently, his hands cupped over the ends. About a mile away, he could see a clump of date palms that were dense in the middle, sparser at the edges, concealing, he thought, some sort of walls or buildings. Down the wind came the faint cawing of rooks and crows, which had been disturbed by something below them; now they circled on black, tattered wings high above.
‘Wind’s pretty well in our faces, boys. She’ll have dogs out with her sentinels so any move from behind – upwind – will have to be quick and hard. If we give her any warning at all, she’ll be away as fast as light. Right, here’s the plan. Cornet Breen, I want you to keep our boys,’ Kemp pointed to the thirty dishevelled irregulars, who were now squatting in the cover behind them, most watering their horses, ‘and half the hussars to form a firing line on that bund yonder.’ Kemp pointed out a thorn-topped bank, which wobbled in the sun about eight hundred paces to their front. ‘You’ll need to move now, slowly, and some of the way on foot if you’re to get there unseen. Soon as you’re there, Morgan and I will assault from the left, from that bit of village.’ Again, Kemp raised his arm slowly in order not to attract attention, and pointed way off into the distance. ‘We’ll go in with the sabre and pistols. I want you, Breen, to drop any of the bastards that run with carbine fire. I expect there’ll be a bit of a set-about with her bodyguards to let her and her followers get away, and that’s when you’ve got to make every round count: fire at the nags and we’ll deal with the survivors.’ Kemp looked deliberately at Morgan. ‘Shoot everyone, Breen; control your fire. I don’t want any gaps whilst you reload. Any questions?’
There were no questions – everyone understood their lethal tasks. Morgan just sat and stared numbly; in the chaos that was about to be unleashed, there would be no quarter for Mary or for Sam.
‘Fuckin’ mongrel’s giving it some, sir.’ Pegg, along with the dozen 8th Hussars, Kemp and Morgan, was picking his way through the deserted village that lay about one hundred paces west of the clump of date palms. In the twenty minutes that it had taken them to skirt round to this flank, all had been quiet. Breen’s troops seemed to have moved undetected and this barking was the first sign that the rebels might have had that something was in the wind. ‘There’s some movement in the brush, sir.’
Pegg pointed to a flash of light-coloured robes in the tree line. As the assault party had first ridden, then walked carefully round in a broad hook, Morgan had seen how the covert had changed shape. Dense at the southern side, from where he had first scanned it with his glasses, the trees thinned out to the north, broadening into a tear-drop of cover some two hundred and fifty paces long and seventy wide. Thorns and low brush gave way to an open area in the middle where a tiny dilapidated Muslim temple stood, its white walls and wood-shingled roof now crumbling. There were at least two thin columns of hazy smoke rising from behind the walls.
‘Yes, I can see it, and those bloody birds are off again.’ Morgan caught Kemp’s elbow and pointed as they peered round a low mud wall.
‘Well spotted, Corp’l Pegg,’ Kemp muttered as he studied the target. ‘Bloody lookouts know something’s up now. Is Breen in place yet, Morgan?’
How in God’s name am I supposed to know? thought Morgan. ‘He should be, sir. He’s had plenty of time and there’s been no disturbances.’
‘Well, it’s too late now.’ The dog had worked itself into a frenzy of barks. ‘Use these walls for cover, mount, form line and move on my signal, if you please, Cap’n Morgan.’
Farrier-Corporal Martin was leading the dozen hussars; now he looked up keenly from under the peak of his covered cap, grasping Morgan’s hand signals perfectly and shaking out his file of men behind the screen of the tattered buildings. As the last man mounted, Kemp – crouching low in the saddle – trotted down the file and broke cover as he put his horse up a ditch and onto the dirt road.
With a rasp he pulled his sword from its scabbard, pointed it at the enemy and, abandoning all caution, yelled, ‘Come on, the Balaklava Boys. Give these Pandies what you gave the fucking Tsar!’ touching just the right nerve with the 8th Hussars, jealous as they were of their record.
The men responded, horses skittering right and left of the commandant, blades singing from their sheaths as they prepared for battle, hoofs scrabbling at the dirt, leaping from a standstill into a fast canter. From the tree line two balls of smoke blossomed as the sentries fired at their attackers, both rounds humming high over the line of horsemen as sabre blades fell and a long, low snarl came from the lips of the Irish 8th.
‘What d’you want me to do, sir?’ panted Pegg as he dug his heels into his horse’s ribs; he was unarmed except for the Enfield rifle slung across his back. ‘I’ll go back an’ wait for you, shall I?’
Morgan hadn’t given a thought to Pegg, still less supplied him with a suitable weapon. His eye was sighting down his blade at one of the Rhani’s men, who was sprinting as if his life depended upon it – which it did.
‘No, damn you, just keep up with…’ But he was too distracted by the tricky business of running a moving man through from the saddle to give Pegg any more attention. Nothing he had ever done had prepared him for this. Fencing lessons as a boy were one thing, and high fences with the West Meath were another, but he’d never combined the two. Point or edge – what had Finn the ex-lancer always said to him? But there was no time to try to remember as the Indian ducked under his horse’s nose, and the powerful slash that had been designed to cleave his collarbone met nothing more solid than fresh air. The effort nearly unseated Morgan as he struggled to keep his feet in his stirrups.
Then came a cry from behind: ‘There, yer bastard!’
As Morgan wheeled his horse for another go at his foe, he found that Lance-Corporal Pegg had dealt with him without the benefit of expensive fencing lessons; indeed, without even the benefit of a weapon. He’d kicked the man firmly in the mouth with a steel-shod toe. Then a hussar reached low and finished the job with a neat thrust from his sabre. But even as they wheeled and turned around the corpse, a spatter of bullets flew around them as Kemp and the rest of the troops fell on the Rhani’s people.
Dust and Steel Page 27