But when he had finished his probing he said gruffly, ‘I remember the raid you spoke of, Makepeace. A bad business—a bad business indeed. I also remember that a sergeant of the gunners was missing afterwards, with his family, and was deemed to have been captured. I am most sorry—most sorry—for your really dreadful misfortunes, Sergeant.’
‘Thank you, Sir, thank you indeed.’ Tears came to the old man’s eyes, poured down his weathered cheeks. When he was able to speak again he asked, ‘may I take it, Sir, that you believe what I have told you?’
‘I have no reason to disbelieve it,’ Fettleworth said.
‘Thank you, Sir, thank you from the bottom of my heart, and may God bless you, Sir, for your kindness.’
Fettleworth tweaked at his moustache, seeming embarrassed. ‘Very well, Makepeace. That’s all. You understand there will have to be a full inquiry—of course?’
‘Indeed, Sir, yes.’
‘I shall speak for you, you may be sure. This is a terrible business. You must not worry unduly, Sergeant.’
Again tears sprang to the old fellow’s eyes as the escort led him away. Black’s face, Dornoch noted, was stiff with disapproval, with fury that there should be any suggestion that Makepeace should get away with it. Leaving the General’s presence, Dornoch felt almost humble. He would never have believed Fettleworth could show such humanity and understanding. He thought again of the Divisional Commander’s undoubted heroism during the attack in the Malakand Pass.
Brave, with a demonstrable capacity for compassion...it was a pity his mind was so closed and unadaptable to present-day methods of making war, a great pity, for he was in basis a good and honourable man. Such attributes went a long way; but, in action, not far enough unfortunately.
***
The column remained bivouacked for a good portion of the dark hours, the cold dark hours when the wind increased and whistled about ears muffled into balaclavas. Before first light next day, the Division was on the march again. Here in the Swat valley the going was much easier. The men moved through coarse scrubby grass, past tall and stately deodars, making good speed now. On two occasions they saw the tribes gathering with obviously hostile intent, but each time the natives were dispersed by cavalry charges. There were no losses to the British other than some pack animals that had to be shot after being hit by bullets; the stores were redistributed and the column moved on again.
At the first halt for rest that day, a surprising announcement came down the line from the General: Fettleworth intended holding a religious service, to be conducted there and then by the Divisional Chaplain. There was a good deal of disrespectful comment from the ranks, and ribaldry about church parades in the desert, and Private Burns, self-appointed barrack-room lawyer, was heard to say something to the effect that Bloody Francis would go on parade wearing a crown of thorns, a halo, and crossed shepherd’s crooks on his shoulders instead of his normal insignia of rank.
‘Christ’s Major-General upon Earth,’ Burns scoffed. ‘The fat-arsed wee birkie!’ But most of the men were pleased; their dead had been left without burial and this was a fitting time to pray for their souls, which was no doubt what the General had in mind. Besides, plenty of the 114th had witnessed Fettleworth’s heroic dash into the enemy ranks earlier and they admired him for this, and were less inclined to criticize now. And in the event the service was an impressive occasion. The whole Division, with their officers out in front of the regimental lines, stood with bared heads while the Chaplain read a simple but moving service in a strong, clear voice, praying to God for victory and salvation for their kith and kin in Fort Gazai. It was all over within thirty minutes and it ended with every man singing a resounding hymn:
Forward! be our watchword,
Steps and voices joined;
Seek the things before us,
Not a look behind;
Burns the fiery pillar
Who shall dream of shrinking,
At our army’s head;
By our Captain led?
Forward through the desert,
Through the toil and fight;
Jordan flows before us,
Sion beams with light.
The words, in those strong voices, beat out across the valley, seeming to reach right into the surrounding hills. It was, Ogilvie felt, a moment to treasure, a jewel for a storehouse of memories. The hymn rose and fell over the lines of war-accoutred soldiers, over the horses and the lances and the grim grey guns of the batteries; and when the last echoes had died away into the stillness the sergeants began shouting their orders and, once again, the Division formed column for the march.
Next afternoon the column began to close the Swat River; this they would need to cross before they could proceed through Kohistan, unless they were prepared to make a wide detour to come up south of the Shandur Pass and then drop down to the west upon Fort Gazai. This would mean an unacceptable delay. Word was passed down from the Staff that the Swat River was to be reconnoitred by the Royal Strathspeys ahead of the main force. Dornoch sent for Ogilvie.
‘James, I want you to take a detachment, a covering party only, to have a look at the river.’ He pointed across the Plain, ringed in by the distant ranges brought to pinnacles of gold by the sun. The air was very clear. ‘We need to find a ford, and also we must have an estimate of the strength of the current. Bear in mind that heavy stores and ammunition, to say nothing of the guns, have to go across—so we may need a bridge to assist the pack animals and the batteries. Of course, the Sappers will have to take a look later, but a lot is going to depend on your preliminary report, James, so let’s have a painstaking one. All right?’
‘Yes, Colonel. Do you wish me to leave now?’
Dornoch nodded. ‘Yes, at once, as soon as you’ve detailed your party. I’ll leave its composition entirely to you.’
Ogilvie saluted and turned away. Shortly after this he rode ahead with his detachment of thirty men, plus a sergeant and two corporals. This time Barr was not with him. In the interests of speed all the men were mounted, and a curious sight they made. Ogilvie himself was wearing trews, but the men were still in their kilts, which were rucked up over their thighs and trailing down behind over the horses’ rumps. There was laughter and a good deal of cat-calling and other chaff as they rode out; and Ogilvie knew that by the time they re-joined the column his men would be pretty sore. It took Ogilvie some little time to reach the southern bank of the Swat and on arrival he found a force of around five hundred tribesmen waiting on the other side. Some shots were exchanged but there were no casualties and the native levies retired to a safe distance under the concentrated fire of the Scots and remained there to watch events. Undeterred by their brooding presence, Ogilvie and his sergeant carried out a quick but thorough survey of the river, riding some ten miles in each direction to make their observations. The river, they discovered, was in fact fordable in a number of places but the current could prove too strong for the heavily-laden pack animals and too deep for the guns in most places; a bridge, it seemed, would be necessary as Lord Dornoch had predicted. His survey completed, Ogilvie rode back with his men to the column and made his report, which was duly conveyed to General Fettleworth. The column moved on and that night made camp on the river bank in full view of the tribesmen. There was no attack; at dawn a brigade with two cavalry squadrons in support was ordered to cross by one of the fords noted and mapped by Ogilvie. Under fire now, this brigade forced the crossing and at once engaged the enemy, who beat a rapid retreat in face of a charge from the 11th Bengal Lancers, thundering across the Plain beneath their streaming pennons and backed by the infantry. With the ford safe, the Sappers threw a makeshift pontoon bridge across the river and as soon as this was completed the supply and ammunition train, and the guns, were moved across while at the same time the rest of the infantry and cavalry and support corps crossed by the ford. It was a tricky business; the men had half to wade, half to swim across; but they made it in safety, all of them, and began to form up on the other si
de, still watched from a distance by the warring tribesmen, while their General, almost the last to make the crossing, was tended through the current by the Staff, whose horses acted as makeshift, mobile water breaks for the delicate operation.
As once again column was formed for the march, sporadic attacks came but were beaten off easily enough; such a force as Fettleworth’s was in fact virtually impregnable to all but picking off tactics when in the open ; the tribes preferred on the whole to mount their assaults from cover and to avoid pitched battles, concentrating their strength mainly in the forts. From now until the link was made with the column from Gilghit, when they would be close to journey’s end, the Division anticipated little real trouble, except possibly when they came to the next river crossing, which would be the Panjkora. As the column pressed forward there was singing from the men, not hymns this time but army songs of the barrack-room kind. Ogilvie, who was currently marching with Hector—whose horse had been commandeered to help replace casualties—noticed the pained look on his cousin’s face, as the bawdy words floated about his ears. He laughed and said, ‘You’re certainly having your mind broadened, old man.’
‘I’m trying not to listen!’ Hector snapped, brushing the swarming insect life from his face. He walked on in silence for a while then said, ‘you know, James, I’ve been doing a great deal of thinking the last few days. I admit I had no idea the Frontier was like this. Oh, I knew it all in theory, but—’
‘Seeing it, that’s different?’
‘Yes.’ Hector blew out his cheeks, which were now dark with the sun and the fresh air of the days and nights. ‘Those natives who attacked—they were skin and bone, you know. Undernourished. It’s dreadful to think of. Contrast that with Simla!’ He shook his head. ‘One day, India will have to be democratized if we’re to go on holding it at all.’
‘Sooner you than me,’ Ogilvie said with a laugh. ‘Try democratizing a Maharajah and see what happens to you!’
‘It will have to come,’ Hector persisted. ‘They must succumb to the pressures from below sooner or later. So will your people have to, James—the military.’ He shambled along in silence for another spell, then asked suddenly, ‘what do you think of General Fettleworth, dear boy?’
Ogilvie glanced sideways; his cousin’s owlish face was innocent, the eyes blinking behind the spectacles with a total lack of guile, but you never could tell with Cousin Hector. He answered briefly, ‘I think he’s a General. And that’s all.’
‘Um?’
‘And my Divisional Commander to boot.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t quite—’
‘And I’m a subaltern—’
‘Yes, but I—’
‘—with ambitions.’
‘Come, dear boy—’
‘And I don’t want to end my career as a dead-end Major in charge of command transport or something like that, back at base. Follow, Hector?’
‘Oh...well, yes, I think perhaps I do.’
Ogilvie was suddenly and uncomfortably aware that he might well have put his foot in it. As clearly as if he’d said the words outright, he had given his frank opinion of Bloody Francis. Men like Hector often needed only the sense, the feeling. They could fill in the rest with winks and nods or with delicately worded reports. Ogilvie sighed as he trudged along through the dust; he should cultivate the double tongue, the diplomatic lie, become the fulsome flatterer. That way, an officer could survive for much longer in the twice-dangerous life of the Frontier.
They approached the Panjkora River; this time there was no fording operation. The Panjkora could not be forded at the place where Fettleworth fetched them up, the sides were far too steep and sheer, and it was seen to be necessary to build a full-scale bridge across the gorge. The Sappers informed General Fettleworth that it might well take forty-eight hours to construct and position a suspension bridge, but this delay had to be accepted.
‘We shall make camp,’ Fettleworth briskly informed the Staff. So the Division settled itself down, and because they were in any case well visible from the ridges fires were lit and a decent meal prepared by the field kitchens. Men relaxed, under the watchful sentries of the guard. The perimeter was constantly patrolled. A few isolated shots came across the gorge but served only to keep the sentries even more vigilant. But the general relaxation was in part denied the 114th Highlanders, to whom came a string of unnecessary and irritating orders from their adjutant. Uniforms were to be smartened up, cleaning of boots and equipment was ordered within the capabilities of the reduced kits. Spit and polish became the order of the day once again, just like at the depot at Invermore in Scotland or the Peshawar cantonments; there would be an inspection the next morning and woe betide any man who had the misfortune to incur Captain Black’s displeasure.
Ogilvie heard some of the comments during his spell as one of the officers of the guard.
‘Did you ever hear the like?’ one old soldier said, spitting into the ground as he sucked away at a foul-smelling pipe. ‘Yon bastard’ll get his due one o’ these days, however. I hope it comes before my time expires, that’s all.’ The man added, ‘Black’s twisted...twisted up inside like a rotten snake, and as vicious too. D’ye mind the way he treated poor old Makepeace, eh? Now, if I was Makepeace, d’ye know what I’d do?’
‘Go on, Ben.’
The old private sniffed, then chuckled and spat again. ‘I’d say to meself, I would, that I’m going to be shot or hanged whatever happens, so before they shot me I’d put a bullet where it’d do the most good—right up Captain Black, so help me!’
Ogilvie walked away discreetly, unseen. It would never do to be noticed listening to such a conversation unless he intended putting the man concerned on a charge.
CHAPTER NINE
In Simla the news from the Frontier, such as it was, had been studied avidly; most of the English inhabitants had a relative or friend who was fighting either with Fettleworth’s Division or with the column marching through the country’s hazards from Gilghit under Brigadier-General Preston; and the fate of the garrison in Fort Gazai was everyone’s concern. Fort Gazai must not be allowed to fall; but the whole might of Empire would be on the march to avenge the dead in the name of the Queen Empress if it did.
But despite all this there was little interruption in the social programme, though now there were not so many officers available to take part in it and to lend their colourful uniforms as plumage to grace the parties given by the Simla ladies; and when Sir Iain Ogilvie visited Simla, snatching a few days’ respite from his cares at Murree, he took his wife to an afternoon’s racing at Annandale, riding his horse through the narrow Simla streets while the native population cringed back obsequiously so as not to restrict the passage of the General Sahib and his ladies, riding in the rickshaws behind. The Ogilvies were accompanied that afternoon by their younger daughter, Anne Farquharson, whose husband John had now started on safari in Africa. Anne was very close to her father, though she had more of her mother’s gentle yet sometimes artful ways with her; and Sir Iain idolized her. She was dark like her mother, and pretty, and vivacious. And after the third race, looking around at the elegantly dressed gathering, she caught the eye of a young woman escorted by a good-looking Indian; the woman seemed to be studying the Ogilvies, but looked away when she saw she had been observed.
Anne nudged her father. ‘Somebody,’ she whispered, ‘seems to know us, papa. Who is she?’
Sir Iain lifted an eyebrow at his daughter, then looked around, ‘She? Who? Where?’
‘She’s going away now...with an Indian who looks as though he’s somebody very special, judging from the turban and the jewels.’
‘Oh. Yes. Yes, indeed. That’s young Shandapur. Capital feller, capital. Maharajah. Very friendly.’
‘But who is it with him, papa?’
Sir Iain refocused. ‘It’s a Mrs. Archdale. Damn stupid husband on Fettleworth’s staff. Pretty woman, damned attractive in fact...’ At that moment the Indian, turning, happened to catch Sir Iain�
�s eye. He smiled with genuine pleasure, took his companion’s arm, and moved towards the Ogilvies. He was a tall man, of graceful movements, and very richly dressed, with a light blue turban whose peacock feather was held by a brilliant ruby, the biggest Anne had ever even imagined, let alone seen. Mary Archdale, though nicely and appropriately dressed in white silk with a large and decorative hat, seemed completely overshadowed by her escort’s grandeur.
Sir Iain muttered into his moustache. ‘Damn! This is going to be awkward, Anne. Your mother isn’t anxious to meet the Archdale girl.’ He reached out and put his hand over his wife’s—she had been concentrating on a gush of conversation from a Civilian wife transferred with the Government from Calcutta—and Lady Ogilvie turned, thankful enough for the interruption, not yet knowing the cause of it, as the Maharajah of Shandapur came up. She gave a small start as she recognized Mary Archdale and for an instant her face went stiff; but she recovered her poise well and displayed her innate good manners. Sir Iain said, ‘You remember young Shandapur, of course.’
The young Indian bowed. ‘It is such a pleasure to see you, Lady Ogilvie. May I present Mrs. Archdale?’
Lady Ogilvie inclined her head, kept her hands clasped in front of her. ‘We have met.’
Sensing an atmosphere, the Maharajah glanced quickly at Mary and then turned to the General. ‘I understand the columns have not yet reached Fort Gazai, Sir Iain,’ he said. ‘Is there recent news of their progress?’
Sir Iain shrugged. ‘Little enough, little enough—but I gather there’s been good speed made, considering the immense difficulties of the march. Yours is an inhospitable land, Your Highness, in its remoter parts.’ Shandapur smiled. A stir in the well-dressed crowd indicated that another race had started; as the thunder of hooves reached him, Sir Iain put up his glasses for a moment before continuing, ‘I understand the Peshawar column has reached the Panjkora. The trouble should soon be over, in my opinion.’
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