The Lion's Den

by Philip McCutchan

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. What about Gundar Singh? Is he to know?’

  ‘Yes, I think he’ll have to — I’ll talk to him myself, soon. All you have to do is to keep your mouth shut.’

  ‘That’s all you trust me to do, isn’t it! ‘

  ‘No, it’s not, and you know it. For God’s sake, man, stop this brooding! You’ve got the makings of a good officer — you’ve stood the march splendidly—’

  ‘I feel bloody awful, as though I can’t march another step, the cold’s right in my guts, and if you call that splendid—’

  ‘We all feel the same, and the fact that you’re keeping going is what’s splendid. Don’t denigrate your own capabilities, Alan. The world doesn’t like a boaster, true, but it never rewards self-abnegation!’ He paused, and laid a hand on Taggart-Blane’s shoulder. ‘You know very well what the trouble is, and so do I, of course. I told you once before, you have to put that behind you for now, you simply have to, for all our sakes.’

  ‘Do you expect me,’ Taggart-Blane asked bitterly, ‘to forget the whole thing as easily as all that?’

  ‘No. But I do expect you to make an effort. When the thought comes into your mind, push it out again before it gets a grip! It can be done, you know—’

  ‘Really? Do you really think so? When you’re faced with utter ruin, the complete collapse of a career, the disgrace of your family, being bloody well drummed out of your regiment, all because somebody’s made a bloody great mistake — like you have?’

  ‘If it’s a mistake, nothing will be—’

  ‘If it’s a mistake! You see, James, you don’t believe me, you simply don’t trust me anymore. Do you imagine the knowledge of that gives me any confidence—or any incentive to forget and look bloody happy? Do you? Or are you a complete bloody idiot?’

  Ogilvie hesitated; he knew he had in a sense been preconditioned towards a disbelief in Taggart-Blane’s protestations of innocence, preconditioned by those remarks from his uncle, from Lord Dornoch, from the officers of the sepoy battalion and from the sepoys’ havildar-major. With these remarks going through his mind again, he said, ‘Of course I realise how rotten it is for you, but never make the mistake of thinking yourself already judged. That’s not the case at all, and of course I trust you. Now, what about that talk you wanted with me?’

  ‘I don’t want it now.’

  ‘Don’t be such an obstinate ass. I’m perfectly willing to talk—’

  ‘No, thanks. I can cope with my own problems, James, without help from you or anyone else. It might have helped to talk earlier, but not now. The time for that is past — it’s too late.’

  Ogilvie looked at him sharply. ‘How d’you mean, too late?’

  ‘I don’t need it any more. Now, for God’s sake, leave me alone, can’t you?’

  ‘If that’s really what you want—’

  ‘It is! Just tell me the night’s orders, that’s all. Are the watches to be the same as usual?’

  Ogilvie shook his head. ‘I’m leaving Gilmour out tonight. The man’s swaying on his feet, and though he may feel he’d rather do a duty turn to keep his mind occupied, I want him to sleep — or if he doesn’t sleep, at least to be handy by his daughter. But as the only other British officer, I’ll want you to be in charge of a watch, so you won’t be standing it with me.’

  ‘Is this a sop?’

  ‘No, it isn’t, but it’s proof that I trust you. I’ll take my watch with Gundar Singh, and you’ll take yours with your havildar, whatsisname—’

  ‘Bandra Negi.’

  ‘Right. Now, if you’d like that talk after all—’

  ‘No, thanks. I appreciate what you’re doing, all the same. God, I’m bloody well frozen.’ Taggart-Blane turned away, then halted and looked back. ‘Who’ll take the first guard duty, James?’

  ‘I will. I’ll have you and Bandra Negi roused out at midnight.’

  Taggart-Blane nodded and went off along the trodden snow and was soon lost to sight. Ogilvie stood throwing his arms about his body and thinking, wondering whether he had in fact made a foolish decision after all. On the whole, he fancied not. Taggart-Blane would surely not repeat his indiscretion! He was a desperately worried young man already; the last thing he would do would be to make matters so much worse that he would stand condemned for certain.

  *

  Before settling down into their sorry bivouacs, Gilmour and his daughter spoke to Ogilvie. Katharine Gilmour was stiff-faced, keeping what seemed to be an iron grip on her emotions, but her eyes, haunted and shadowed eyes, were a more faithful indication of her feelings. Ogilvie felt desperately sorry for her and her father; this dreadful winter march through the Khyber snows was bad enough without a very personal loss to turn it into more of a nightmare; and the very taking of the body, in its undignified bier, through difficult and probably hostile territory must be a heart-wrenching business for them both.

  Inadequately, he felt, he expressed his sympathy to Katharine Gilmour, and she nodded without replying. Gilmour said, ‘With regard to the secrecy, Ogilvie...we’ll keep it up as long as we can, which in fact is not likely to be very long. I’ve spoken already to the mule-driver — we must trust in him.’

  ‘I’d forgotten about him,’ Ogilvie said. ‘Do you think we can trust him?’

  Gilmour shrugged. ‘If we can’t, it’s too bad. There’s no more we can do.’ He glanced at his daughter’s face, then gestured meaningly at Ogilvie: he seemed only now to realise that this was a painful matter to discuss in her presence.

  ‘Is there anything I can do, Miss Gilmour?’ Ogilvie asked. ‘If there are any extra comforts you need, I’ll see what can be provided, though—’

  ‘You’ve been very kind all along, Captain Ogilvie,’ she said, her voice flat, quite toneless. ‘I’m sure there’s nothing else you can do now, and I shall not ask for anything that’s not available to anyone else in any case. My mother would have said the same thing. She had a very strong sense of duty. If she had not had that, she would not be dead.’ There was a lash in her voice now, and Ogilvie saw her father flinch from it. ‘She would not have been in Afghanistan at all. But now that she has died... even if the Khyber is territory largely run by Afghans, I think she would rather have been buried here, than be a cumbrance to a military campaign!’

  ‘My dear, such a word—’

  ‘But I say it again, Father, a cumbrance. She would have hated that! You are wrong, wrong to do this—’

  ‘But her one wish always, Katharine—’

  ‘Was to do her duty! And how, Father, do you know what her wishes ever were? How often did you pay the smallest attention to them, if they conflicted with what you had made up your mind to do?’

  ‘I, too, had my duty, Katharine. Now it is my duty to carry out what I know to have been her very dearest wish.’

  ‘I think—’

  ‘There is no more to be said. No more, I tell you, Katharine.’ Gilmour turned from his daughter’s passionate face, his own stony and closed. ‘Ogilvie, there is no change, no change at all. If you will excuse us now—’

  ‘Of course, sir. Good night, Miss Gilmour.’ Ogilvie turned away, feeling distressed. The girl had spoken cruelly enough, which he would have guessed was totally out of character and the result of immense pressures of grief and physical hardship, but there could have been truth behind her words. The British Raj did not always exact its sacrifice in terms of death in battle, nor did it confine its demands to the menfolk alone. For a fleeting moment Ogilvie reflected, as he moved with difficulty along the track, where the snow was being blown into flurries by a rising, dismal-sounding wind, that the Queen-Empress, sitting alone but powerfully, so well cushioned inside the thick, battlemented walls of Windsor Castle, must surely have ice in her veins and gunpowder in her head if she could remain so aloof and confident when her position and her regality were maintained on a scaffold of so much suffering.

  *

  Ogilvie awoke abruptly, very suddenly, fancying he had heard rifle-shots
coming through the now snow-filled wind. He scrambled to his feet, shaking off a blanket covered with snowflakes, and came out from behind his large boulder to meet the wind full force as it funnelled along the pass. It was totally dark still, a curtain of black with no glimmer anywhere. Faintly, he heard shouts, then more rifle — or revolver-shots, again distantly.

  He could see no-one.

  Feeling ahead of himself, moving by touch and memory, he found the Gilmours’ bivouac and found both of them wide awake, with Gilmour coming out with his revolver in his hand. ‘What’s the trouble?’ Gilmour shouted in his ear. ‘Bandits?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I wanted to make sure Miss Gilmour was all right first. I’m going to find out now.’

  ‘I’ll come with you—’

  ‘No, Major. I’d much rather you stayed with your daughter. It’ll relieve me of one anxiety. Please.’

  ‘Very well, but let me know...’

  Ogilvie didn’t hear the rest; he was already moving towards the sound of the last rifle-fire, though this had stopped now. All along the line, the sepoys were struggling to their feet, shouted awake by the havildars and naiks. Towards the rear, where the camp followers were milling around in the beginnings of panic, he found Havildar Bandra Negi.

  ‘What is it?’ he shouted above the wind, almost falling over the man.

  ‘Sahib, it is bandits on the hillside, but nothing of importance, and we have driven them off already—’

  ‘They’ll be back! Have we any casualties?’

  ‘I cannot say yet, Sahib—’

  ‘Where is Taggart Sahib?’

  ‘Here, James.’ Ogilvie swung round; Taggart-Blane had come up behind him. ‘It’s all right, we’ve coped. I’d have called you, of course, if it had gone on any longer —but it didn’t!’ He sounded highly excited, almost feverishly so.

  Ogilvie said, ‘Well done, Alan. We’ll stay on the alert now, till we move out. They could try again, you know. In the meantime, we’ll see to any wounded. Bandra Negi?’

  ‘Sahib!’

  ‘Check if we have any casualties, and report to me. Also, send along the personal representative of Jarar Mahommed.’

  The havildar went off. To Taggart-Blane Ogilvie said, ‘From now on, we’re going to be in the thick of it. We’ve probably reached the end of Jarar Mahommed’s area of jurisdiction now. It’s been bad already. Now it’s going to be worse.’ He looked all around, trying to pierce the thick darkness of the night, but he could make out nothing, though he fancied there was just a touch of lightening in the heavy sky. With Taggart-Blane he moved down the line of bivouacs as the men were dispersed by the N.C.O.s along the track, ready now and waiting for anything that might happen. It would, in Ogilvie’s experience, be rare if the attack was not resumed before the approaching dawn.

  Nothing happened, however; there was silence from the hillside, silence from the sepoy line too, apart from the occasional snick of rifle-bolts, and metallic sounds as equipment shifted on the watchful bodies.

  Bandra Negi was taking his time; there was a definite lightening by the time he came stumbling up, and Ogilvie, with some surprise, noted a staring anxiety and fear in the havildar’s eyes as the man approached and saluted. ‘Well, Bandra Negi?’ he asked.

  ‘Sahib, there is one casualty. A man dead. There are no wounded.’

  ‘Then we’ve been lucky, Bandra Negi! Who is the dead man?’

  ‘Sahib, it is Mulata Din.’

  ‘Mulata Din!’ Involuntarily, Ogilvie glanced at Taggart-Blane, standing by his side. He saw fear reflected in the subaltern’s face: a terrible fear, an almost crazed fear that, however, quickly vanished as Taggart-Blane got control of himself. But it was a naked, self-revelatory exposure of inner feelings that increased Ogilvie’s own concern. He turned to the havildar, keeping his voice as level, as dispassionate, as he could. He said, ‘I’m sorry, Bandra Negi. He must be buried, and quickly—’ He broke off, having noted something odd in the man’s bearing. ‘Yes, Bandra Negi, what else have you to say?’

  ‘Mulata Din was shot in the head, Sahib.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sahib, the bullet passed through, to embed in the ground beneath him.’ Bandra Negi extended an open palm. ‘This is the bullet, Sahib.’

  Touched now by a hideous fear of his own, Ogilvie took the bullet and examined it. The light was poor still, but he needed no light. The feel, the outline, was enough: Ogilvie had handled too many such bullets not to know it immediately and for certain. The bullet had been fired from a British Army revolver. A moment’s thought told Ogilvie that the attacking bandits, though they might well be in possession of stolen or captured British arms, would be highly unlikely to use a close-range weapon such as a revolver in anything other than hand-to-hand fighting. Unless there had been any incursions into the sepoys’ bivouacs by the attackers, the only revolvers that could have fired that bullet were few enough: Major Gilmour, himself, Taggart-Blane, Gundar Singh and the four havildars were armed with revolvers. No-one else.

  Ogilvie asked, ‘Did the tribesmen enter our lines, Bandra Negi?’

  ‘No, Sahib.’

  ‘Not to your knowledge?’

  ‘Sahib, I am certain no bandits came near the bivouacs. Not one was seen by me or by any man I have spoken to.’

  ‘Then how do you account for this killing, Bandra Negi?’

  The havildar hesitated, then said, ‘Sahib, it is ill to make accusations, but...’

  ‘Yes, Bandra Negi?’

  ‘I have no more than my thoughts, Sahib.’

  ‘Then you will tell me your thoughts, Bandra Negi. That is my order.’

  ‘But Sahib, I cannot—’

  ‘You will find me a hard man to deal with, if you do not obey at once, Bandra Negi.’

  ‘Yes, Sahib.’ The havildar’s voice was low and full of distress, and he seemed shrivelled by more than the biting cold. He glanced briefly towards Taggart-Blane, and Ogilvie, following that sudden shift of the eyes, saw the horror written deep into the subaltern’s working face. Then Bandra Negi went on, his very breath crackling and freezing as he spoke, ‘Sahib...there is a havildar — Lal Binodinand — I saw him coming from the direction of the bivouac of Mulata Din, just before I joined Taggart Sahib, when the attack had started. Taggart Sahib will support this. He also was there and must have seen Lal Binodinand.’

  Ogilvie looked at the subaltern, saw the chattering teeth. ‘Is this right, Mr. Taggart-Blane?’

  White-faced, Taggart-Blane nodded. ‘Quite right.’

  Withholding comment on Taggart-Blane’s own proximity to the dead man at the relevant time, Ogilvie turned again to the havildar. ‘What are you suggesting, Bandra Negi?’ he asked.

  ‘Sahib...that Mulata Din was murdered, deliberately shot through the head. It could have happened no other way than at close quarters. The bullet must have come from immediately above the head, it was not fired at an angle from the hillsides.’

  ‘And you suggest further, that it was Havildar Lal Binodinand who fired this bullet? Is this what you are saying?’

  Bandra Negi hung his head. ‘Yes, Sahib. You asked, and so I answered, and I did my duty.’

  ‘Yes, it was your duty.’ Ogilvie took a deep breath, and asked the next question, one he was bound to ask: ‘Bandra Negi, on what do you base your accusation, other than the apparent proximity of Lal Binodinand to Mulata Din? Where lies the motive? Was there, perhaps, bad blood...a quarrel?’

  ‘Yes, Sahib. There was much bad blood.’

  ‘On what count, Bandra Negi? What was the reason for this bad blood?’

  After just one more fleeting glance at Taggart-Blane, the havildar’s face closed up tight. ‘Sahib, I cannot say — I do not know.’

  ‘Think, Bandra Negi. Think well!’

  The havildar shook his head. ‘I do not know, Sahib.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Ogilvie studied the man’s face closely. ‘This is the truth?’

  ‘It is the truth, Sahib. I can say only this �
�� that it may have been the terrible cold of this march, and the snow that affects men’s minds.’

  Bandra Negi was shaking a little, but the face was set obstinately. Further probing at this stage would obviously be a waste of time. ‘Very well, Bandra Negi,’ Ogilvie said. ‘Now go, and bring Lal Binodinand to me here. Say nothing to him of why I want him. While I am talking to him, go again, and bring the other two havildars to me, to wait at a distance until I make a sign for them. Bring also the sepoys who were bivouacked next to Mulata Din.’

  ‘Sahib! ‘ Bandra Negi saluted and turned about. When he had gone Ogilvie said, ‘Well, Alan?’

  ‘Well, what, James?’ Taggart-Blane’s eyes flickered from left to right; the subaltern was extremely ill-at-ease.

  ‘So Mulata Din’s frost-bite has been laid to rest.’

  ‘It would seem so.’

  ‘I was wondering . .

  ‘What were you wondering?’

  Ogilvie shrugged. ‘If you had any comment to make, that’s all.’

  ‘I? No — I have no comment. I’m sorry — as I would be at the death of any man, especially by murder. It’s pretty horrible, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  There was a silence between them, as they stood there in that grey, cold dawn. Taggart-Blane’s cheeks were as grey as the dawn itself, as haggard now as the bare Afghan hills. After a moment he said roughly, ‘Now, look here, James, what are you suggesting?’

  ‘At this stage, nothing. Nevertheless, there is one thing I must ask of you.’

  ‘Well, ask, then! Hurry, before I bloody well freeze!’ Stiffly, reluctantly, Ogilvie said, ‘Hand me your revolver, if you please.’

  ‘If I please? And if I don’t please?’

  ‘Then I shall take it from you.’

  Taggart-Blane gave a high-sounding laugh. ‘By God, you’ll need assistance to do that, I can tell you ‘

  ‘Don’t let us make a scene of this, Alan.’ Ogilvie was sweating in spite of the intense cold. ‘Give me your revolver — don’t be more of a bloody fool just now than you can help — for God’s sake, man, don’t you see I have to do this, and don’t you see it’s better if it’s done privately, between the two of us?’