Eventually we emerged in a square near the palace. There were more redcoats already there, sepoys from another regiment. Our men fell out from the column and stood jealously watching the sepoys, who were desperately trying to hide their loot when they saw that Wellesley was with us. An English officer came over and reported to the general that some of the Mahratta had retreated to a nearby building where they were making a last stand and shooting through the doorway.
“I expect they will give up soon,” he added. “We have them surrounded, and as I came over they were starting to sing songs.”
Wellesley looked at the officer. His uniform was torn and bloodstained and he had a bandage around one hand. The general turned to Swinton, whose Highlanders had so far seen no action at all, and said, “Sort out these last Mahratta, will you, Swinton, and if you find their commanders amongst ’em, bring them to me.”
Fergusson shouted the commands and the men were once more into column and marching across the square and into a courtyard that faced the Mahrattas’ final redoubt. It looked like some large hall, and judging by the noise there must have been at least a hundred men in there, all singing and chanting. Swinton brought the men to a halt as he considered the next steps and I went up to join him.
“What do you think, Flashman? It just don’t seem right to charge in there while they are singing.”
I was puzzled as the singing seemed strangely familiar, but I could not place it. Then I heard them sing a particular refrain and the memory came back and I realised the danger we were in. I did not waste time explaining to Swinton; there was not a second to lose.
“Sarn’t Fergusson,” I called. “Make sure all the men are loaded and get them in a line facing that door with bayonets fixed as fast as you can.”
“You heard the captain,” roared Fergusson. “Into line now and check your loads, flints and priming. Move it!”
“What is going on, Flashman?” asked Swinton, puzzled.
I pulled him back behind the fast-forming line of Highlanders as I explained. “The last time I heard that chanting I was with some hopelessly outnumbered Rajput cavalrymen in a hill fort.”
“When you were trapped by the pindaree?” interrupted Swinton.
“Exactly. They sing it when they are preparing to die. There must be Rajput warriors in that building, and they don’t do surrendering. Any minute now they will charge out and kill as many of us as possible before they are killed in turn.”
“Good God,” said Swinton, looking shocked. “Are we ready for them Fergusson?”
“Aye, sir.” He turned to the men. “You will wait for the order to fire when they are all nicely spread out. Aim for the man in front. I don’t want you all shooting the first bugger out of the door.”
The men stood in a double rank of nearly fifty men each with their muskets held across their chests. Those nearest must have heard my explanation to Swinton but they looked resolutely to the front. Standing behind that line of backs covered in red cloth and white leather belts, I felt as safe as ever. These were the men that had marched into the cannon at Assaye. A few men, even Rajputs, charging from a hall would not trouble them. The chanting was getting faster and reaching a crescendo. Something was about to happen; you could sense it even if you did not understand the words they were shouting. I reached down and pulled my sword out of its scabbard.
The doors of the temple were suddenly flung back and the first men emerged, running straight towards us. They were bare-chested and they had removed their turbans so that their long hair trailed over their shoulders. More men spread out, running behind those leading as though they were in a race towards us. They were roaring a chant as they ran and holding weapons high in the air. Even behind that line of Highlanders I felt a chill of fright.
“Present,” barked Fergusson and nearly one hundred steel-tipped muskets were pointed at the running men. “Aim low at the man in front.”
Even more men were streaming out of the doorway; there were at least a hundred and the front runners were now no more than twenty yards away.
“Fire!” shouted Swinton, who seemed unsure if Fergusson would give the order and could not bear to wait any longer.
“Fire!” repeated Fergusson and nearly a hundred muskets spat death at a range that could hardly miss.
At ten to twenty yards a musket ball could pass through several bodies and those on the flanks of our line with no men in front of them had fired at an angle through the thickest mass of men. A wall of musket smoke obscured our view of the enemy and how many had survived. Normally the Highlanders would march forward, but this time the bodies were so close they could have tripped over corpses in the smoke and left themselves exposed.
Without waiting for an order, Fergusson gave the command: “Step six paces back.”
The line moved back and Swinton and I stepped back with it. The distance gave our men a chance to react when the Rajputs burst out of the smoke, and burst out they did. Three came screaming with raised swords, aiming to split in two the head of the soldiers in front. In each case the targeted soldier raised his musket to block the blow while the man to his right jabbed out with his musket to take the attacker in the throat. It was cool, calm and disciplined as though they had done it dozens of times before, and they probably had.
“Second rank, reload,” called Swinton, reasserting his authority over the regiment, while the rest of us watched the thinning skein of smoke in front of us.
There were groans and screams of pain from the hidden men in front of us, but just as we began to make out the shapes of the dead and dying lying on the ground there was a repeat of the chanted shout. Suddenly men were rising from the ground and coming on towards us, some obviously wounded, but others towards the back of the crowd sprang up unharmed and I think even more came out of the door behind. Perhaps the rattle of ramrods convinced them that all the British were reloading or perhaps it took them some seconds to recover from the devastating volley. Whatever the reason, there must have been at least fifty crazed Rajputs running in on us when half our men were partway through reloading and the rest had unloaded weapons.
Instinctively I looked for Big Jock, always a good man to stand behind in a tight spot, or so I thought. He swung his musket by the barrel as though it were a club and sent one of the Rajput flying back through the air. The front rank of the Highlanders seemed to holding their own against the rest too as they ran towards us, while the second rank continued to reload as fast as they could.
It was then that I saw the Mahratta giant running forward. I have seen it in countless battles since, even at Waterloo, but that was the first day that I discovered that a large man in a battle will invariably attract other giants to challenge him. Big Jock saw this one too late. He tried to swing his musket back to block the huge axe that the giant Mahratta was swinging, but the warrior was fast and reversed his swing to slam the end of the axe hilt hard into Big Jock’s face. The Scotsman was off balance and screamed in pain as he fell to the ground. The giant Mahratta looked for a new target and found a British officer frozen in terror and holding a rather ornate golden sword just in front of him.
I had time to notice that the huge man already had two musket ball holes in his massive chest, but while both wounds were bleeding they did not seem to be slowing him down at all as he moved towards me. I tried to raise my sword, but he just swatted it away with his axe so hard that it flew out of my grasp. With his free hand he reached forward and picked me up by the throat and lifted me high into the air with a smile of triumph. He knew he was going to die, but he was going to have the satisfaction of taking the life of an enemy British officer as his final act.
I felt his fingers tighten about my neck as he started to crush it. With one hand I flailed for his face, but it was out of reach; with the other I tried to pull on his fingers, but it was like pulling on iron. I could hear shouts about me but his hand stopped me looking down. I couldn’t breathe and the periphery of my vision started to get blurry. All I could see was his f
ace as it suddenly contorted in pain and a slight squeal escaped his lips. The arm holding me started to lower but the grip on my throat did not diminish. As my feet reached the ground again I could see McFarlane slamming his bayonet through the giant’s ribs on one side and Gilray ramming his bayonet up into the huge man’s throat. But neither of those had created the initial injury that had caused the giant to lower his grip, which only now was slackening about my throat.
The last thing I saw before I passed out was Wee Jock. Amongst all this violence the boy, with his youthful innocence, looked almost angelic... and then I saw what he was doing. For with his crocodile tooth pendent hanging down across his chest he was pulling his bayonet out from the blood-soaked front of the giant’s loincloth. He turned to me and grinned just before the blackness closed in, but clearly I heard him say, “Ah did for the giant fooker, didn’t ah, sir?”
Epilogue
I came to in the shade of a wall, still in the courtyard I had passed out in. Along with several other wounded men of the 74th, I missed out on the grisly discoveries they made when they explored the palace. At the back they found a room full of the bodies of women and girls, most already dead but some still suffering a lingering death from the poison that they had been given. Those still alive revealed that they were the family members of the Rajputs who had died in that awful charge. On discovering that all was lost, these warriors chose to poison their womenfolk to give them what they felt was a more honourable death than being raped and used by the redcoats.
The British officers were sickened by the tragedy, although screams from across Gawilghur confirmed that rape was a likely prospect for any pretty woman found alive in the fortress by the invading army. I remembered James Skinner telling me about how his Rajput mother had killed herself because she thought her daughters had been defiled by being taken to school. There was a huge gulf between the cultures. Wandering later through the streets and seeing redcoats shooting helpless prisoners, fighting over captured women and loot or lying drunk in the streets, I was reminded of stories about the sacking of Rome. Quite which culture was the most civilised it was hard to say.
The most astonishing thing about the capture of Gawilghur was the butcher’s bill. The Mahratta garrison was estimated at around eight thousand when the assault started, but the fortress was captured at the cost of just fourteen killed and one hundred and twelve wounded. All of the outer fort garrison were either lost in the ravine or taken prisoner, but many of those in the inner fort must have slipped away, either through the southern gate while it was unguarded or over the walls and down the steep sides of the ravine. The bodies of Manu Bappoo and the governor of the fortress were found amongst the corpses of those who had charged us out of the palace.
Captain Campbell survived and gave a glowing account of how Carstairs and I had distracted the Persians. He assured Wellesley that without our intervention he and his men would never have made it to the gatehouses. I genuinely tried to give Carstairs the credit, it was the least I could do, but such was my unearned reputation that this was taken as more modesty on my part and my standing rose yet further.
With Wellesley occupied elsewhere in the town, the 74th had scoured the palace enthusiastically for valuables, but there was little to be found. The raja and his brother had spent most of their wealth on recruiting soldiers. If you totalled the value of what they gathered, I probably had more in the form of the gems still sewn into my coat. I slept well that night, fingering the hard lumps in the garment’s lining; I could afford to be well satisfied. The war was finally over, I had emerged with a greatly enhanced reputation, I had a small fortune in gold and gems and most of all I was alive and uninjured.
We stayed for a week around Gawilghur. I tried to find Carstairs’ body to give him a Christian burial, but it must have been wedged somewhere up the cliff and I could not recover it. The ground surrounding the fort was littered with corpses, though. The bodies of the garrison of the outer fort who had been pushed off the ravine path were lying several deep at the bottom, while further round there were the remains of scores of men, women and children who had tried to escape down the cliff after the capture of the inner fort and who had evidently missed their footing. The vultures there were almost as thick as the flies.
I went back to the British camp where Runjeet still waited for me with his opulent tent. We stayed there for the rest of the week until Wellesley gave orders for the 74th to return to Madras. We were still by far the smallest regiment and desperately needed new recruits expected in Madras from Scotland. The journey took over two months and I am bound to say it was a pleasant trip. We marched to Bombay and there hired two large Arab dhows to sail all the way around the bottom of India and then back up the other side to Madras, stopping off at Goa and Cochin on the way.
Once more I found myself staring over the breakers at St George’s Fort and soon those strange canoes were pulling us ashore. I noticed that with hard-faced Highlanders in the boat no oarsmen tried to renegotiate the fee on the way in. Runjeet hurried ahead to warn the household at the bungalow of their long-absent master’s imminent arrival, while I called in at the fort to announce that the mission I had started over a year ago was complete. It took two hours to write a report of my activities for the governor general, who was away from the fort at the time.
When I finally emerged I was pleased to see my trusty syce waiting for me in the shade of the courtyard with a new horse; I had sold my old ones in Bombay.
“Welcome, sahib,” he said, beaming. “The bungalow is all being prepared for your return and now your wife is here it will be a proper home.”
“It is good to see you again and... eh... wife?” I was dumfounded. I thought perhaps he had misunderstood or misinterpreted. “This wife, she is a woman I have married, yes?”
“Yes, sahib,” said the syce, now looking slightly worried that his master had spent too much time in the sun since they had last met. “Very nice lady,” he added reassuringly.
Who the hell could it be? My mind rattled through various options. Had John Freese found out about his Eliza’s infidelities and kicked her out? That was possible, but she would not pose as my wife in Madras where she was well known as the wife of someone else. There was Fatimah, my insatiable housekeeper from Meerut; had she tracked me down here? But surely there would be wealthy and energetic clients still in Meerut. Could it be the begum seeking refuge in disguise if Scindia had turned against her? No, she would fight to the death to retain her Sardhana.
“My wife,” I enquired hesitantly to the syce, “is she an Indian lady or an English one?”
The syce’s eyes boggled in astonishment – how can a man forget his own wife? He concluded that I had definitely lost my wits as he replied, “She is a very fine English lady, sahib.”
“Well, we had better get home and meet her then,” I said, climbing up into the saddle. Another name had sprung to mind now, but I hardly dared hope as it was virtually unheard of for daughters of the aristocracy to visit India.
A less welcome thought occurred: was Berkeley still on the run from the American? I shouted another question over my shoulder to the syce as we galloped out of the courtyard: “My wife has not brought her father with her, has she?”
“No, sahib, just her maid.”
Lady Louisa Berkeley was waiting for me at the end of the bungalow drive where she had gone to get the first glimpse of me coming up the Madras road. We were in each other’s arms in a moment and so began the happiest two months of my life. That pretty bungalow along the Madras road became paradise then. It was an idyllic time. Louisa wanted to hear all about my adventures and greatly admired the tiger-skin rug with the small bayonet cut still visible near one of the edges. In fact, one she evening she insisted that we make love on it, but even with her lying naked on top of it I struggled to dismiss the less erotic memories it brought back. As we writhed about at one point the skin’s head flipped around and stared at me with its now glass eyes over Louisa’s shoulder and with its tee
th still bared in a silent grimace. That quite took my mind off the matter in hand. To make matters worse, as I suddenly moved back I felt a sharp pain in my left buttock and only then discovered that Runjeet had organised the skinning on the cheap with his cousin, who had left the razor-sharp claws in. I’ll swear that wretched stuffed head was grinning as I hopped around looking for a cloth to staunch what was an inch-deep wound. That bloody tiger had got me at last.
Louisa explained that her sister had passed off the ginger sprog she had produced to an estate family and was now looking for a rich husband. Her father still hated me and had banned his daughter from any contact, but Louisa had felt betrayed by her family and had ignored him. After sending me the letter she spoke to Castlereagh, who put her in touch with Wickham, and between them I think that they helped arrange her passage to India. She posed as my wife to avoid her father hearing where she had gone, but when she arrived in India it was to discover that there were various stories about my fate. Some assured her that I had been killed in an ambush with the pindaree while others were sure that I had been seen at Assaye and was now with the British army. Somehow one of Runjeet’s cousins had learnt of her arrival and offered her the use of the bungalow, Runjeet, Jamma and other household members having already set off to find me. ‘Mrs Flashman’ then immersed herself in the Madras social scene, eagerly learning every bit of news about the Mahratta campaign as it came in. She wrote, of course, but her letters only finally caught up with me some weeks after I had been in Madras.
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