Bugles at Dawn

by Charles Whiting

  John didn’t answer directly. ‘Grab my cloak and cover the body. Those two outside must think it’s me.’

  Jem Jones’ dark eyes gleamed with admiration. He did as ordered whilst John stowed his few valuables about his person — telling himself he could make up for what he was being forced to leave behind with the money taken from Jem Jones. Lord Hartmann would unwittingly provide for his needs in Frankfurt. Finished, he pulled off the little silver ring from his right hand.

  ‘This is the coat of arms of the de la Mazieres — my mother’s family,’ he explained hastily. ‘Don’t steal it. It is going to be your proof that you have dealt with me. Remember Hartmann’s second payment?’

  Jem Jones looked up at him approvingly. ‘You’re a schemer after me own bleeding heart, Capt’n,’ he said warmly, and then as the tall young man crossed to the window, ready to drop out into the wet darkness, ‘Well, sir, shall I let them in? With this busted conk of mine, I’ll need someone to give me a hand with the shovels.’

  John, with his right leg already cocked over the sill, turned and queried, ‘With the shovels?’

  ‘Why bless yer, Capt’n, yes. Can’t expect me to bury a big, heavy feller like the late John Bold by mesen, can yer now?’ He gave an enormous wink and for a fleeting moment John almost liked him.

  Next instant he was dropping into the darkness ... and the unknown ...

  PART TWO: AMBUSH

  ONE

  India!

  The glare from the red ball of the sun cut his eye like a knife as he peered through the telescope at the land beyond the white race of the surf just off Madras. No breeze blew. The air from the land was furnace hot so that his shirt stuck to his lean back in black sweaty patches. But despite the heat John Bold felt a mounting, wild excitement he’d never experienced before. This was where his fate would be decided. India would become his destiny!

  As the East Indiaman reefed its sails and they glided deeper into the bay he could see through the bright circle of glass that the shore was crowded with half-naked brown men. They squatted on their haunches, wilting in the afternoon heat, spitting regular streams of red saliva to the baked earth. Naked children splashed listlessly in the muddy green water without the energetic screams of European children; while their mothers and sisters glided back and forth, wrapped in bright gowns, bearing pots upon their heads, moving with a barefoot sensuous grace that was totally foreign to him.

  The bosun bellowed his orders and the fiddler, squatting barefoot on the top capstan, started to scrape his old fiddle for the benefit of the sweating sailors. On the shore, a totally naked old man with a fringe of white beard, squatted motionlessly on a kind of raised platform, legs crossed, hands limp at his sides, staring into nothingness, while a young attendant painted strange white marks on his emaciated black body. John guessed he would be a holy man, and refocused the instrument on a line of carriages and horsemen waiting in the shade for the passengers to be borne ashore. From the old India hands on board during his month-long voyage he knew who they were. They would be the friends and relatives of passengers, of course, but most of them would be lonely men — merchants, officials of the East India Company and officers — waiting for the ‘fishing fleet’ to arrive: women from England sent out to India to ‘catch’ some rich nabob. For women — white women, at least — were a scarce commodity in British India, and nabobs, tired of their dusky mistresses, were prepared to pay a good price for a white woman, however ugly. John lowered the telescope, his nostrils already assailed by the smell of this strange new country: a heady mix of garlic, coriander, dung and sweat. Now he was finally here after the terrible voyage from the Persian Gulf, sharing one latrine with a hundred men and women, with nets rigged above the upper deck to prevent heat-crazed passengers throwing themselves into the Red Sea, and all the time struggling to keep fit and passably clean, proof against typhoid, scurvy and scabies which were rampant on the vessels on the India route.

  When he had joined the ship he had considered himself as sailing into exile, banned to a strange and utterly foreign land due to no fault of his own. Now at his first glimpse he already felt India’s magic and his heart raced at the thought of what lay before him.

  The sub-continent, he knew already, was King George’s territory in name only. In reality the country belonged to the East India Company, known as the John Company, divided into the three presidencies of Madras, Bengal and Bombay. Here a governor could tell a new arrival, ‘I expect my will to be your rule, not the laws of London which are simply a heap of nonsense. My orders must be obeyed as if they were English statute law!’

  The John Company traded as it wished — minting money, making laws, executing criminal and civil justice. It kept the peace or made war, as it desired. Its head, the Governor General, lorded over the fates of nearly a hundred million people, ten times the population of the old country, with almost unlimited power.

  For here everything depended upon trade and profit. Men came to India to make money, fast, before the myriad tropical diseases or the riotous life in the white cantonments caught up with them. By forty, the average nabob, as they were called contemptuously back home, wanted to be on his way back to England, taking with him a vast fortune with which to buy a landed estate, a seat in Parliament, and in due course a title. India for the white man simply meant profit.

  With corn on the Indian market at five-pence a bushel to be sold at Liverpool’s docks for three shillings and tenpence, it was not surprising that everyone was motivated solely by money. Junior officers of the John Company, even ministers of the church, took part in commerce and made a fortune — if they survived.

  The thought made John pensive as the other passengers now began to come on deck. The land intrigued him, but also inspired a certain dread. He knew already that the heat was almost intolerable for a white man. The sun’s glare, reflected off the white-painted shanties lining the shore, stabbed to the very eyeball. The palms, motionless, were stirred not by the faintest breeze. The shadows offered no coolness and flies hummed everywhere.

  White people did not go out in the midday heat. Their womenfolk lay naked on rumpled beds in shuttered rooms, while from another, native servants worked the overhead punkah with their toes; while the men slumped sullenly and half drunk in rattan chairs, drinking one whisky-soda after another. All waited for the evening when the million invisible cicadas filled the cooler air with their monotonous chirping and at last the European quarters would begin to stir, the promenades and assemblies commence and life seem a little more bearable.

  He tugged his nose and his fingers were wet with sweat. His lean face hardened. The idle chatter of the nabobs, breaking reputations with their backbiting, always concerned with the overwhelming need to make money, would not be his life. He needed adventure. He would join one of the Company’s three armies, and do what he had always wanted — to thrill to the sweet sound of those bugles in the morning.

  At the bow the East Indiaman’s swivel cannon thundered, as if to emphasize his sudden warlike mood, saluting St George’s Fort opposite. The passengers clapped and John turned to take a last look at them.

  There was the fishing fleet, all giggles and hands clasped to their gaping mouths, a plain bunch for the most part, some of them women who would never see thirty again. Then there were returning nabobs, fat and puce-faced; officers from the Company coming back from leave, splendid in their exotic regimentals, their faces either bright red or a deep yellow, the result of persistent fevers; and a handful of awed, scared sixteen-year-olds, Company clerks trained at Haileybury, all hoping that one day they might be a second Clive of India. Finally there were the Frenchmen.

  They were in civilian clothes now since Napoleon had been finally defeated and exiled, but there was no mistaking that air of authority about them or the sabre scars which marked their faces, especially that of Nom de Dieu, as the English on board had called him — behind his back!

  Nom de Dieu, who uttered the curse at least once a minute, might well,
with his flowing dyed moustache and carefully curled hair, have been one of those beau sabreurs who had ridden with Murat. He did everything with Gallic élan and dash; and he walked with a bow-legged swagger which marked him indelibly as an ex-cavalryman.

  John wondered why so many Frenchmen were coming to India. The Company wouldn’t employ their recent enemies and all the French colonies in India had been captured from Napoleon three or four years ago.

  The anchor rattled down in a rusty clatter and his attention was caught by the shouts of the naked brown boatmen in the horde of ramshackle masula boats expertly braving the heavy-running surf, and now offering their services to the passengers. For at Madras there was no way of unloading a large vessel save by transferring to these rough boats, powered by skinny yet muscular natives.

  Lugging his total possessions, limited to one shabby carpet bag, he found himself in the middle of a gaggle of women from the fishing fleet wanting to get ashore. The waiting men were eager to eye the new arrivals, and it would not be the first time that marriage proposals had been made there and then.

  One woman stood out from the rest, and John eyed Georgina Lanham with respectful admiration. He had seen her the day he had joined the ship. Thereafter she had been struck down by the ague and he had not seen her until now.

  He had been immediately stirred by the beauty of her oval face, surrounded by a mass of golden ringlets dangling in carefully contrived disorder. She stood out like a beacon among the other women. Her figure, too, was superior. They were either too thin or too fat, all angles or flat curves in their cheap cotton gowns. She was dressed in a sheer green silk robe which revealed slender legs, and the burgeoning breasts forced upwards from the tight waist seemed to be about to spring from the deep décolletage of her Empire-line at any moment. As she bent low to reveal a generous cleavage he felt a dry longing in his throat and his heart hammered. It was like being on the battlefield once more.

  But the beautiful Miss Lanham was too concerned with lifting the hem of her gown and getting safely down to the bobbing boat to notice him, crying to the nearest boatman when he was too slow to help her, ‘Mail, mail somalo ... ek dum!’ in a sharp voice which was obviously used to giving orders — and having them obeyed!

  John took pleasure in her use of the native language. She had obviously been here before, and so was not one of the fishing fleet. Perhaps he might cultivate Miss Lanham, however haughty and distant she might seem at this moment.

  Their boat pushed off, the skinny natives standing upright, faces glazed with sweat as they battled the current. The roar of the surf grew ever louder, the men rowed harder, then they were in that fierce maelstrom, their long narrow craft shooting up and down the white fury of the waves. Women screamed and men clung on grim-faced. Frantically the natives controlled the craft as the water attempted to seize and sink them. John was deafened by the roar, the spume stinging his face and making him blink. But Miss Lanham seemed totally unaffected. She made a pretty picture, defiance written all over her, golden curls streaming and the spray-dampened silk clinging, revealing every lush curve. He fell in love with her at that instant!

  John felt carried away by the heady sexual excitement of riding through the surf and the sight of that beautiful nubile body. In this hot climate it would be easy to be rash, carried away by the warm sensuality of it all. Again she bent and he almost caught sight of her nipples. He was overcome by longing.

  They were almost through, gliding in on the crest of a wave as high as a house, heading for the still water beyond, where a crowd of young men on horseback and in elegant carriages were laughing and clapping their hands at the spectacle.

  Now the craft drifted in calm water while the crew leaned gasping on their paddles. Young men were already beginning to wade waist-deep into the water to offer their services. ‘Can I help you, ma’am? ... Over here, miss, if you wish aid ... I say, you with the black ringlets, can I be of assistance?’ they cried, while the ugly ducklings of the fishing fleet simpered and cooed, like great heiresses with beauty and private fortune instead of poor country parsons’ daughters sent to India as a last desperate resort.

  Miss Lanham looked at them in disdain, then turned her gaze on John, seeing him for the first time. What she saw pleased her: a tall young man with jet-black side-whiskers curling up against high un-English cheekbones. But if the face was hard, the mouth was sensitive, almost sensual. The curved lips sent a delicious but improper shudder down the length of her body and between her legs. This was no company clerk, she saw approvingly, no powdered foppinjay of the kind she had met in the two years she had spent in Miss Marbles’ Academy for Young Ladies in the village of Croydon ‘finishing’ her education. This was a man.

  ‘And you, sir,’ she asked boldly, challengingly, ‘what are you about?’

  ‘About?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Am I to be forced to tolerate the attentions of those half-witted Mary Anns in the water yonder?’

  His blush deepened. It was the first time he had heard a woman use the term for men who were not really men.

  ‘Or should I use the services of these niggahs?’ Contemptuously she indicated the boatmen, holding out their hands for further tips. ‘Would you trust a white woman to those blackamoors, sir?’

  ‘Why no, Miss Lanham.’ He dropped his bag and held out his hands.

  ‘Fie, sir, not that way,’ she chided. ‘You cannot carry me in your arms. It will only wet my skirt.’

  ‘How then, Miss Lanham?’

  ‘Piggyback, sir, just as in the nursery.’ She smiled, showing pearl-like teeth. When he bent awkwardly in the small craft, she didn’t hesitate to draw up her skirt — giving him a glimpse of plump white thighs above her stockings. Then he felt the firm flesh of her legs encircle his neck tightly, sending currents of excitement tingling down his spine. His heart throbbing crazily, he slid into the muddy water up to his waist.

  She chuckled, urging him on with a ‘Giddiup, old Dobbin ... come on now, show your paces!’

  She pressed her legs close to him and he felt himself become hard, thanking God that the muddy water hid the tumescence which bulged the tight buckskin of his breeches. God, her nearness, the smell of her body — a mixture of cologne and animal sensuality — was almost intolerable.

  ‘Allo, mon brave, you make the little gallop, hein?’ It was the big French cavalryman, Nom de Dieu. He was blundering through the water with one of the fishing fleet on his broad shoulders. His hands, however, were not secured around her ankles, but hidden well beneath her skirt and by the radiance on the woman’s face, John could well imagine what they were doing. The Frenchman winked knowingly at John and chortled, ‘Quelle vie, heth!’

  A minute later John reached the burning white sand and hastily bent to let her dismount. She did so carelessly and again he caught a flash of the flesh above her stockings.

  ‘Thank you, kind sir,’ she said, looking down at his soaked trousers boldly and seeing what she shouldn’t have. ‘I hope you did not get too wet on my behalf?’ Now her green eyes were wide and excited.

  ‘No, not at all,’ he stammered, embarrassed and excited. ‘In this heat they will soon dry.’

  ‘Yes, I am sure of that. Perhaps you would tell me your name now?’

  He told her.

  As a native servant hurried towards them across the sand, she stretched out her hand for him to take. ‘With such a name, perhaps you will be bold enough to call on me when you have the time?’

  ‘Why ... yes,’ he stuttered, taking the hand for an instant. Then the servant was escorting her to the waiting coach, leaving him feeling drained and very alone in this alien world ...

  TWO

  ‘Impossible!’ Colonel Monroe, the Military Secretary snapped testily, ‘Quite impossible for me to do a thing for you at this moment, my dear Bold.’ With a hand that shook he took another sip of whisky-soda, his face a choleric red, as if he were in a rage. He wasn’t. His colour was due to twenty years of the tropics and the heavy drinking th
at went with it.

  In the two days that he had spent in Madras, trying to see the Governor General’s Military Secretary, John had encountered quite a few employees of the John Company with the same choleric red faces. ‘Touch of the liver, my boy,’ one of them had assured him yesterday. ‘Nothing to be frightened of.’

  ‘You see, Bold,’ Colonel Monroe continued, as above them the punkah fan stirred the stifling air of the office, ‘it is entirely up to My Lord Hastings who he commissions as an officer in the Company’s armies in India. It is his desire and command to see each one personally before he does so. As you perhaps know, he leads his own campaigns in the field and he prefers to know personally the kind of officer who serves under him. It is very important when they are in the command of native troops.’

  ‘I see, sir,’ John began, ‘but I am in a diff — ’

  ‘Punkah wallah!’ the Colonel, whose belly bulged beneath his light blue uniform, cut in with raised voice, ‘What are you about, you lazy dog? Jildy!’

  The cry had the desired effect and the half-naked old man, hidden in a side cupboard, the rope that agitated the overhead fan attached to his right foot, started to move the fetid air a little more speedily.

  Monroe mopped his balding head with a large silk handkerchief and breathed, ‘I do declare, I shall never get used to this demned heat!’

  John nodded — his own clothes were sticking unpleasantly. But it didn’t seem to affect the natives too much, though their pace had slackened. Through the open window he could see them thronging the street. It was vibrant with their noise: the tinkling bells, the wails of the gurus, as he had already learned to call the near-naked holy men, the cries of the shopkeepers, the screeching wooden wheels of the ox-drawn tongas.

  What a mass they were, as they plodded or pushed their way through the stinking filth of the cobbles which were dyed red with betel juice spit and prowled by skeletal dogs. And the stench was indescribable: a pungent mixture of curry, drying hides, boiling ghee, urine and cowdung.