Flashman and the Cobra

by Robert Brightwell

  “Thank you, sergeant,” I said, but he just nodded and walked off without saluting. I noticed that he was heading to the general’s quarters and wondered if he was going to confirm Swinton’s story with the sergeants in the general’s guard.

  I may have been new to this army but Malcolm was right, I had spent most of my time in India in three different armies. There was one universal truth in all of them: the sergeants really ran things. Whether they are called havildars, daffadars or sergeants, you can be sure that their mess will be the best equipped and served as between them they know every trick in the book. The officers’ mess may run out of wine but the sergeants’ mess never runs out of grog. I remembered my time with the Company cavalry and Lal and the others talking about their officer whom I never saw. Poorum had been a havildar-major or sergeant major and had been left to command the patrol on his own. Officers may think that they command the army but they do it on the information given to them by the sergeants and lots of what happens never reaches an officer’s ears.

  Now that I was left on my own I had nothing to do. I wandered around for a bit and found myself walking the few hundred yards to the village of Assaye. Once there I climbed up to the rooftop from which I had watched the battle. Most of the wagons had now crossed the ford and were spread out amongst their regiments, being unloaded. The big telescope was still on the roof and I was watching through it the last few wagons cross the ford when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. I turned and saw Fergusson with a grim expression on his face.

  “Ah thought ah might find ye here,” he said. He had dropped the anglicised respectful tone of a sergeant and spoke in his broad Scots accent with more than a hint of menace.

  “Why is that, Sergeant?” I replied, trying to sound unconcerned.

  “Ah saw ye on this roof during the battle, didn’t ah. You in your Mahratta uniform, and then with their general and some wee fella.”

  “Yes, I was here,” I confirmed. “I saw you too, killing two horsemen with your spontoon.”

  Another awkward silence followed. I was uncomfortably aware that I was still unarmed and we were alone on this rooftop. The sergeant did not have his spontoon but I did not doubt that there was a blade on him somewhere and that he knew how to use it.

  “Ah saw ye watching as we wus killed. Did ye get a good view through yon glass?” He took a couple of steps closer and hissed angrily, “Spy or no, ye did not seem to be doin’ much to stop it.”

  There was no mistaking the menace now as he looked me in the eye. He was directly between me and the stairs, deliberately I was sure.

  “The wee fella,” I said, trying to sound unconcerned at the threatening tone, “was the begum of Samru, a lady and a very capable commander.” I decided that attack was the best form of defence. “What did you think was going to happen when Colonel Orrock marched his men on their own directly towards her lines, which were the strongest the Mahratta had? Of course she was going to attack.” I decided to embellish my role slightly and added, “I only just stopped her from a second attack which would have wiped you out entirely.”

  He thought about that for a moment, looking across to where the 74th had made their stand. He must have been recalling the slaughter and the people watching him from that distant building.

  “Aye,” he murmured after a moment. “The colonel had nae idea what he was doin’.” Then, looking at me again, he added, “But ah’ll be watching ye.” With that he turned and headed off down the stairs.

  I breathed a big sigh of relief. I felt I had passed some sort of test but I was still clearly on probation. I had seen what he could do to the enemy but he was almost as frightening to his own side. There was no point complaining to Swinton about his attitude as I sensed that Swinton found him as intimidating as I did. But Fergusson was protective of his 74th Highlanders, there was no doubt of that. Woe betides anyone whom he thought had betrayed them.

  I loafed around the camp for the rest of the morning and then headed over to the auction of officers’ effects. It would be fair to say that it was a buyer’s market, particularly for kit owned by the 74th. There were the effects of eleven officers to sell and only one potential bidder, yours truly. Looking through the lots in advance, I had discovered that the late Captain Blakeney had been my size and a very wealthy young man with an opulent mahogany campaign chest full of everything a young officer might need in the field including dress uniforms, silk shirts, linen shirts, silver-mounted razors and bowls, cutlery and crockery. It must have cost a fortune, I bought it for five guineas and could probably have got away with one if I had not minded appearing like a thief to those watching the bidding. I also bought a spare uniform coat for everyday use (the one Blakeney had been wearing had a large hole in it), some spare boots my size, a good sword, some pistols and a handsome horse, again all at bargain prices. As I had no cash this was deducted from my pay and delivered to my new quarters, a tent to myself in the 74th company lines.

  A short while later I was alone in my tent pulling on my army officer redcoat for the first time. Sadly none of my late comrades had thought a full-length mirror necessary for a military campaign and so I could not view the effect myself. But when I stepped outside the tent it had the desired effect on the men nearby, who stopped and saluted at the new officer with a silver ‘74’ badge in the tall black leather hat that I now wore.

  “Do ye want the men fallen in for inspection, sir, to announce yerself?” Fergusson growled from behind me. He had evidently been waiting for me to emerge from the tent.

  I looked across the field. The soldiers were busy digging a mass grave for their comrades and there were similar excavations by other regiments around the field. Some of the sepoy battalions were breaking down wood from the village that was now largely abandoned and others were chopping down trees to cremate their dead according to their Hindu customs.

  “No, leave them be, Sergeant. I will introduce myself later.”

  Walking across the field, I saw that the 74th had so few fit men and so many dead to bury that a company from the 78th were helping dig the long pit and other men with handkerchiefs over their noses were collecting the dead, who had already started to swell and smell in the heat. The handkerchiefs were not necessary just for the stench but to avoid breathing in the flies which swarmed over the bodies. It was a hellish scene, but the sooner it was done, the better. I wandered away from the trench, retracing the march the 74th had taken towards the begum’s lines, and saw the surviving drummer boy coming towards me with a human leg in his arms. He saw me and put it down to salute.

  “John McTavish, sir. They call me Wee Jock. I am a drummer boy,” he added unnecessarily; he was only twelve or thirteen and so he could hardly be anything else. He wore a red uniform coat cut to his size and on his belt he had a long case for his drum sticks on one side and a viciously sharpened bayonet on the other. As he was too small to carry a musket I was not sure he was supposed to have a bayonet which hung down his leg like a sword, but I was not going to take it off him. I heard later that drummer boys would sometimes be interfered with by the men, particularly if there were no women about, but I doubt that happened in the 74th. For a start Fergusson would probably find out and punish the offender, and Wee Jock had a belligerent look in his eye that indicated that he knew how to use the blade at his hip.

  I glanced down at the leg; it was a boy’s with a boot and part of a trouser leg still wrapped around it. I had a sudden memory of a leg spinning away during the battle when a cannon ball killed one of the drummer boys.

  “Is this from the other drummer?” I asked.

  The boy wiped his nose on his sleeve before replying, “Aye, it is Jimmy, sir. Ah have found most of ’im but ah cannae find one o’ his arms. Ah reckon that the fookin’ dogs got it.”

  With that he saluted, picked up the leg and marched off towards the pit to put Jimmy’s leg with what other bits of his body he had found and then bury them with his comrades. Children can be quite callous of death; many do not fu
lly understand it. But Wee Jock understood all right. He must have seen enough of it in his short life. He was mourning in his own way, and among the rest of the men there were few tears, just a quite stoicism as they collected and buried their friends. The only person I had seen weeping uncontrollably was Orrock over his damned horse. He had suffered some kind of breakdown and since disappeared.

  With little else to do, I tooled over in the direction the march had come. I searched for a while for the missing arm, roughly where I remembered that the cannon ball had eviscerated the drummer boy. The grass was long but trampled flat. All I found were a few gobbets of flesh and entrails in blood-smeared patches that no one, including me, thought worth picking up.

  Having walked all the way to the ford the British had used to cross the river just the previous day, I walked back to where the men were piling a layer of earth back over their mass grave to trap the flies and the stench.

  “Did you find it, sir?” called out a high-pitched voice.

  “What? Oh, Jimmy’s arm. No, sorry, I didn’t.”

  “That is what ah thought, sir. Fookin’ dogs eh?”

  Now I might have been new in the army but I was pretty sure that was not how a drummer boy should address an officer. On the other hand he seemed to be the only friend I had at the moment, and so as Fergusson watched with a curious look on his face I decided to let that pass.

  “Sarn’t,” I called, copying the pronunciation I had heard Swinton using, “will there be a burial service for the men?”

  “Yes, sir. Major Swinton is just trying to find a padre to do it now.”

  I looked at the men. Apart from Fergusson, who always looked smartly dressed, the rest were covered in mud and worse and had dust-covered faces broken with streaks of sweat.

  “Perhaps you could get the men smartened up first, Sarn’t.”

  “Yes sir. You heard the officer, prepare for inspection in ten minutes.”

  There is something satisfying in seeing ninety men leap into action at your order. Not that I discovered it then, for the soldiers just stared in astonishment at this new officer. Then, after a moment, they reluctantly started to shamble off to where their kit was stored, muttering mutinously as they went. Some were speaking Gaelic so that I could not understand but the words ‘bastard English’ I did pick out, as I was supposed to, from one crowd of men.

  “You move yourselves and smarten up to show proper respect to the dead,” barked Fergusson. “And show respect to the officer,” he added as a surprising afterthought.

  I retired to my tent but Fergusson called me out a short while later to inspect the men.

  “This is Captain Flashman,” he shouted out to them. “He is your new company captain.”

  They were drawn up in three ranks of around thirty. Their jackets, which had faded to orange in the harsh Indian sun, were all straight and belts were on, although hardly any were properly white. Most had given their faces a wipe rather than a wash, which had just re-arranged the dirt. Above all I noticed, as they stood in a compact group in front of me, they stank. Compared to the Indian Company sowars I had ridden with for two months who washed most days and kept themselves and their kit spotlessly clean for a daily inspection, this lot were filthy. They could fight, though, and their weapons were at least in working order.

  I walked along the front rank, glancing over their shoulders at the rows behind as I went. For an inspection I did not know where to start. They looked a shambles compared to the smart guardsmen I had seen marching in London. But then those guardsmen had not marched twenty miles the previous day, fought and won a battle against massive odds, seen most of their comrades slaughtered and then spent the day burying them. On the whole I felt some leeway was justified.

  Most were tall, broad-shouldered men with hard faces but there were some wiry types too. In the middle of the back rank was a giant of a man, a full head and shoulders above the rest, who stared back at me with a look of benign amusement.

  “Private Campbell, sir,” said Fergusson, who had walked beside me and saw where I was looking. “He is known as Big Jock compared to Wee Jock, who is...”

  “... the drummer boy,” I finished for him. “And who is that?” I asked, pointing to a figure that could only be described as skulking in the middle rank. Since I had been in India I had heard tales of half-human half-ape figures that lived in the northern mountains; yetis they were called. We seemed to have recruited one, as this character hunched even further under my scrutiny to hide behind the men in front. He was without doubt the scruffiest and dirtiest. His buttons were done up but misaligned, his belt twisted and his bayonet covered with a combination of rust and dried blood.

  “Private McFarlane, sir,” Fergusson muttered, sounding embarrassed that I had noticed this pariah of the regiment whom he had evidently been trying to hide behind two tall men in the front rank. “He fights better than he looks,” he added.

  I could see Swinton coming towards us with a harassed padre and a piper he had borrowed from the 78th. I turned to Fergusson and told him to march the men to the graveside. Some of the walking or hobbling wounded were also coming across from where the surgeons still had their camp.

  “Ah, Captain Flashman, I see you are settling in,” called Swinton as he approached, sounding slightly relieved, as he glanced at Fergusson. He turned to his companion, dressed in church robes. “This is Mr Dacre, a regimental padre attached to the army.”

  Dacre nodded in greeting. He was bald, sweating and seemed slightly intoxicated as he took a pull on a huge silver hipflask.

  It was not an impressive service. The padre evidently knew the words of the burial ceremony by heart and seemed determined to get through them as quickly as possible. At the end Swinton turned and asked me to fire the salute. Not having been to a military funeral before, I was completely unprepared. But before I could even look round I heard Fergusson giving the order and in a moment a volley of musket fire rang out. I was about to dismiss the men when the piper started up with something I later discovered was called a lament. Well, I certainly lamented being there to listen to it. It went on for ages, droning and wailing. While I fidgeted impatiently I saw several of the men with tears now going down their cheeks.

  Eventually the awful din stopped and the men fell out and I walked back to our tents with Swinton alongside me.

  “I have what is left of our regimental bagpipes in my quarters. Can I give them to you to see what can be done about repairing them? We also need to appoint a new pipe sergeant to play them. Perhaps once the pipes are repaired we can hold some trials, eh?”

  “Certainly,” I agreed, shuddering inwardly in dismay at the thought. “Any news about enemy movements from the general?” I added.

  “Oh, your friend the begum is marching steadily north back to her own lands. The rest of Scindia’s men have dispersed and are no threat either, although our cavalry patrols make sure that they keep marching away from us. Stevenson’s column should be here in the morning. Apparently he worked out himself that his guide was working for the Mahratta and hanged the chap. One of our cavalry patrols found him and his men in the hills and is guiding them towards us.”

  That evening I joined Swinton for dinner, which was a surprisingly formal affair in his tent, with table and chairs and a soldier he seemed to use as his personal orderly serving the food. We ate part of a vulture that had been shot earlier in the day, not a meat I could recommend. He had even found a decent wine and cigars from somewhere, possibly the unsold personal effects of the officers.

  As I left he handed me the tattered remains of the regimental bagpipes. The bag bit was torn to shreds and covered in bloodstains from its last player and three of the pipes had also been broken. Highlanders may love their pipes but I did not. Having to listen to their awful din on a regular basis would be intolerable, and so as I walked back to the small campfire outside my own tent I came to the conclusion that they were beyond repair and dropped them into the flames.

  The next morning I wa
s awoken by a corporal with a bowl of what he called porridge for breakfast. I upturned the bowl onto a plate and the contents remained in a perfect greyish-white dome. It reminded me that I needed to write a letter to Runjeet to reassure him that I was still alive and to organise one of his more capable cousins to come and serve as my orderly. The letter could go with the despatches being sent to Madras, followed by wagons of wounded that were preparing to leave that day. Stevenson’s column was already in sight coming from the south.

  Later, Fergusson came to my tent to tell me that the general was planning a parade of the whole army that afternoon.

  “Ah will get the men smartened up, sir,” he promised with what seemed rash optimism. “Do ye have the bagpipes?” he added. “One of the bhinjarries reckons he can repair them.”

  “Oh,” I said, beginning to regret the wine-fuelled impulsiveness that had prompted me to cremate them the night before. “Well, Sergeant, they seemed far beyond repair and so I got rid of them.”

  “Got rid of them?” he repeated, sounding aghast. Then, as if reading my mind, he looked down at the ashes of the fire and with the stave of his spontoon he stirred them around and there among the burned embers he uncovered four white rings. They must have been made of bone or horn that withstood the flames better than the rest. They seemed to stare up at me like four accusing eyes.

  “Aye,” he growled at me as he bent to pick them up. “They certainly are beyond repair now.” Giving me a look that would chill an Eskimo, he turned on his heel and stalked off.

  I was about to learn the first rule of being a junior officer: never infuriate the sergeants, for they have myriad ways to get their own back.

  Fergusson’s revenge appeared in the form of the yeti-like Private McFarlane later that morning. “Sarn’t Fergusson says ah’m to be your orderly,” he announced firmly while wiping his nose on his sleeve. He stood there at the feral stoop that he called attention with a small swarm of flies buzzing like a cloud around him and genuinely thought I was going to let him play a part in smartening me up. Well, it was as plain as a pike staff what Fergusson was up to and it was not going to work.