Bugles at Dawn

by Charles Whiting

  ‘If I had my way,’ Jenkins said, ‘I’d strap the whole damned lot of them, including the Rajah, to the end of that cannon and blow them apart. Then I pledge you, sir, we’d have no more trouble with the damned niggahs. It’s an unfailing remedy.’ He sniffed and turned to John. ‘Well, sir, make your dispositions and then sleep. You have a lot of work before you.’ He waved a hand in dismissal.

  ‘Sir.’ John clicked to attention, saluted and turned, glad to be dismissed from the Resident’s presence. To senior Company officials there were only two kinds of people — masters and servants. The Jenkins of this world were meant to command and prosper; the others would live their short span and then disappear into the wretched obscurity from whence they had come. He strode over to Jones, waiting with their horses, and told him their orders.

  Jones accepted the news calmly and said, ‘The rissaldar has got the men quarters for the night, food for them and fodder for the horses.’

  ‘Good,’ John said, mind buzzing with his new task. Then he saw the look on Jones’ wizened face and stopped short. ‘Well, Sergeant Jones, what is it now?’

  Jones grunted. ‘You know that mare One-Eyed Reilly of the Remount Depot palmed off on us?’

  Puzzled, John nodded, recalling the cheerful Irish rogue with his mare that was as ‘pure and wholesome as the driven snow’.

  ‘Well, sir,’ Jones said bitterly, ‘yon virgin of his is with foal, damnit! ... God forgive me.’

  The look of self-disgust on Jones’ face did it. John broke out into a great laugh, the tears beginning to trickle down his face.

  ‘The virgin’s to be a mother! ... ha ... ha,’ he chortled uproariously, the tears streaming down his face now. Thus the young man laughed and laughed. It would be the last time he ever did so.

  FIVE

  Georgina lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling. It was still stifling hot and beneath the lace peignoir she was naked, her white body slightly damp.

  The house was settling down for the night. The Collector had returned from an ‘assembly’ still drunk on iced claret and gone to his chamber almost immediately. Now the rattle of dishes from below, accompanied by the acrid smell of curry, had vanished, indicating that the servants had returned to their miserable hovels in the grounds. Only the guards would be around and they would probably be dozing. The house was hers.

  She lay perfectly still, her breast moving softly, her hands tucked between her legs, thinking of men. It was something she often did when she was alone in her bedroom.

  She rolled over and stared at herself in the long mirror of the armoire. She felt her lips go dry suddenly as she eyed herself. Her hands smoothed her firm breasts, caressing their nipples for a moment. A delicious shudder ran through her body. Abruptly she felt very hot, as if with fever. Her legs parted slightly. She closed her eyes and let her hands caress her belly slowly, languorously, the fingers already seeking that warm secret part as her heart started to drum more quickly.

  She smiled, her eyes tightly pressed closed, stroking herself at regular intervals, savouring the pleasure, making it last, her middle finger working with a cunning that seemed inborn.

  She thought of naked men. De Courcy, big, hairy, his magnetism so great that even his touch on her hand had sent a burning heat surging through her body. But the fool — hadn’t he drawn back at the very last minute when she had longed for that penetration? What had it mattered that she was only fifteen?

  In the end it had not been the high-principled Captain de Courcy who had taken her virginity, but a lout of a gardener’s boy at her school in England, a boy so chuckle-headed that he had been unable to read.

  But what he lacked in his head, he had made up for in his breeches — amply so! How they had played with him in that smelly little shed at the end of the grounds, sneaking down the ivy when the good misses who ran the school had been fast asleep, tucked in their narrow virginal beds.

  Seth had been his name — a huge rambling fellow of eighteen with sloping shoulders and lazy gait, as if he were carrying a weight. In a way he had. How delightfully shocked they had been — Vicky, Bettina, Dot and all the rest of those gawping teenage girls crowding inside the shed — when they had seen it the first time! Vicky, who came from the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, had gasped, clutching her cheeks in amazement at the sight. ‘I’ve never seen a thing like that, even on a Zulu!’

  What games they had played with it, tickling it with feathers, fondling it longingly, once even taking turns to write their names on it with a pencil, while Seth stared at them — and it — in stupid bumpkin pride ...

  Cunningly her fingers flicked in and out of that delightful warm hole, her mouth gaping, her breath coming in hectic little gasps, as she remembered and enjoyed the heady perverseness of those memories. Once again she remembered that first time for her, after the others had allowed themselves to be taken one by one. He had watched as she had accepted the whole length, wriggling with pain and delight, making little grunts as she took yet more, a strange perverse laxity about his face, his teeth bared like those of an animal, grunting all the time, ‘You like it, don’ e? ... you like it, don’ e, missy?’

  And she had — and all those snakes of flesh which had followed. How she did! The men with their erect, exposed meat, holding it in front of them like a club. Men ... men ... men ... !

  She moaned at the thought, waiting for the rapturous explosion, breath crazy, eyes screwed tightly together, spine arched, her naked body glazed with sweat now, imagining John Bold thrusting it into her, her nostrils full of his scent yet again, the raunchy meaty odour of men in rut. She was convulsed. She had —

  Something struck the window softly. She started and sat up, eyes blinking open, heart thudding. There it was again. Hastily she pulled her wet fingers from that dripping secret place and gathered the gown about her nakedness. What was it?

  ‘Georgina!’ the voice came in a soft whisper from below. ‘Georgina, can you hear me?’ Major Rathbone!

  She bit her bottom lip, her nerves still jangling electrically, and shivered with excitement. Instinctively she knew why he was there. What should she do? If she were discovered there would be a scandal — and even as she posed the question she knew the answer; what she would do.

  ‘Georgina.’ There it came again, the voice a little stronger now and more insistent. ‘May I come up?’

  She lay trembling for a moment, then like a dreamwalker, her legs strangely weak, her surroundings seeming so unreal, she crossed to the window.

  Rathbone stood against a tree, his cheroot a cherry-red glimmer in the purple light. ‘Yes.’ Her voice seemed miles away. ‘What do ... do you want, sir?’

  ‘You!’

  ‘Sir, you can’t — ’

  ‘Your niggahs are all sleeping fast,’ he interrupted calmly, ‘and your father is undoubtedly doing the same. He must have sunk at least two bottles of iced claret tonight.’ He took a last puff at his cheroot and dropped it to the ground carelessly. ‘Well?’

  ‘I cannot,’ she faltered, but then, her mind still hazed by what had been happening only moments before, ‘You may come up, but only for a few minutes, sir.’

  ‘Yes, for a few minutes.’ The irony was only too obvious in Rathbone’s voice. Then he was clambering up the thatch that protected the walls during the monsoon, as easily as any barefoot Jack Tar climbing the rigging of a man o’ war.

  Lightly he sprang through the window as she stepped back, clutching the gown tightly, knowing her exquisite body would be clearly outlined beneath the lace by the light of the candle.

  Gallantly Rathbone bowed and proffered her the flower he had just picked below. ‘A rose for a rose,’ he said, ‘even if it is stolen from your father’s garden.’

  She accepted it and noted his finger was bleeding where he had pricked it on a thorn.

  ‘Why, you’re bleeding, Major Rathbone.’ Without thinking, she took the finger and kissed the blood away, as her mother had done to her when she was a small child.

>   He watched her through half-closed eyes, the gallantry gone now, face set, handsome — and cruel — as she softly licked away his blood. She saw and recognized the look, and hastily dropped his hand — and he sniggered.

  She swallowed hard. ‘Now, sir, what is the reason for your call at this time of night — and in this manner?’ She tried to put conviction and firmness in her voice, but failed lamentably.

  He laughed softly. ‘I would never make love to a woman if she did not want me,’ he said quietly. ‘Georgina, you will have many love affairs. For all I know you might have had some already — that insolent fellow Bold.’ He shrugged and dismissed the matter, while she went red. All the same she could not deny the fatal attraction that the rakish cavalry officer exuded. She could feel her heart beginning to beat faster.

  ‘I am sure that the Collector will want you to protect your — er — assets until you are safely married. There is a school of thought which maintains that a man who takes his wife’s virginity on their wedding night will keep complete control over her ever afterwards.’ He touched the ends of his sweeping moustache, a mocking look on his dark face.

  ‘My experience has taught me otherwise. If a man can arouse a woman, she will be attracted to him and continue to be so, as long as he can arouse her. Virginity, one way or another, is not worth a fig!’ He snapped his fingers contemptuously.

  She knew he had talked in this bold, outrageous way to many a woman, yet it was still effective, better than all the mealy-mouthed simperings of those three-hundred-a-year men who talked about love and honour and kept a string of native whores on the side. ‘What do you want of me?’ she repeated, already weakening rapidly, her legs barely able to support her.

  ‘This!’ Rathbone hesitated no longer. He took her in his arms. Her nostrils were assailed by the odour of man — tobacco, unperfumed soap, sweat — and against her nearly naked loins she felt the brutal hardness that she had been longing for. Next moment his lips descended upon hers, taking a kiss with cruel relentlessness as he swung her effortlessly into his arms and bore her to the bed.

  He flung her upon it, his face suffused and very angry-looking now, and pulled off his shirt, revealing a hard muscular chest matted with black hair, followed by his breeches. His male flesh sprang free and towered over her like a threatening club as she lay mesmerized.

  ‘No,’ she breathed, ‘please no!’

  He laughed softly. Next moment she felt his hard masculinity swamp her, and it was too late ...

  He had gone when she awoke. It was still dark and tranquil outside, but the cavalry were to ride north at dawn, an advance party of Lord Hastings’ campaign to come, and Rathbone would soon be leaving at the head of his squadron.

  ‘A short life, but a gay one,’ he had told her somewhere in the middle of that confused hectic night after he had made love to her for the third time, ‘and make a handsome corpse — that’s the motto of the cavalry, my pretty pigeon.’

  She lay there, head cradled in her hands, feeling sore and bruised but tremendously relaxed, wondering about men like Rathbone, who took what they wanted and didn’t give a damn about anyone, seizing their pleasures swiftly and ruthlessly because they were aware they would not live to grow old. ‘And make a handsome corpse,’ she repeated in a whisper.

  Somewhere a cock crowed. Already the sky was beginning to flush the blood red which heralded yet another burning day. She was reminded that she had to face the world again this new day; she couldn’t live in her fantasies all the time. She had to deal with reality.

  But what was that reality? Her father’s with his concern with position, wealth and stability? Or Rathbone’s, living for the day? Or was it John’s.

  Yet what was John Bold’s world? He was young, determined, brave, but what did he want out of life? Was soldiering, pure and simple, his world? If so, she could be no part of it ... It was all so very perplexing.

  Outside there came the first hawking and spitting which signalled the arrival of the first of the servants.

  She buried her head deeper in the pillow and continued to think, while it was still cool enough. She heard the rattle of a servant preparing her chota hazri, a pot of tea and biscuits. Soon life would seize her up once more and she would be forced to act her part again, say the right things, make decisions, however minor. But what was her part to be?

  The first rays of the new sun dappled her naked body. ‘Who is the real me?’ she whispered to the ceiling. ‘Who?’

  But there was no answer forthcoming. She yawned, stretching out her long limbs like a fat cat satiated on cream. A rich whore? She mused. A dutiful wife, bored to the back teeth by children and a dull husband? ... The mistress of an adventurer perhaps, living in a tent in the middle of nowhere? ... Who?

  In the end it was too hot to think any more and when the ayah knocked timidly and whispered, ‘Chota hazri, memsahib,’ she responded with alacrity, eager for conversation even with a servant, glad not to think any more.

  SIX

  It was glaringly hot. Across the River Nag far below the blue heat haze rippled and the Arabs who would soon lead the assault were standing naked, dousing their bodies and soaking their robes in the cool water. Watching through his glass, John estimated there were at least five thousand of them. Expected or not, the assault would not be that easy for the Resident’s six battalions of sepoys to repel.

  ‘Sir.’ It was Jones accompanied by a captain in the uniform of the native infantry.

  John folded his glass and looked at the captain, his coat torn and stained with gunpowder, his face under grizzled hair white and wan. He might well have been forty or more, old even for the Company’s service at that rank.

  ‘Elders,’ he introduced himself as John saluted, ‘Elders of the Sixth Native Infantry. I hear that you are to rescue those poor unfortunates once this battle begins.’

  ‘Yes, Captain Elders?’ John answered dutifully wondering what the distraught man wanted of him.

  Elders’ voice trembled and there were tears glistening suddenly in his red-rimmed eyes. ‘I beseech you to do your best, Lieutenant Bold, for me and the rest of the menfolk! You see my Alice — ’ His voice broke momentarily.

  ‘Alice, sir?’

  ‘My wife, Lieutenant. They took her. She is a mere eighteen. She came out with the fishing fleet last autumn and married me within a week, one of the most joyous days of my life.’ The words flooded from Captain Elders now, as if he had been bottling all this up too long and wanted to be relieved of it. ‘Alice knows nothing of India — and its cruelties.’ He looked significantly at John, who knew exactly what he meant. There was no telling what her abductors might do to the woman, what they had already done to her. Elders clasped his hands together, eyes wide staring. ‘You must save her for me!’

  John felt his hand go out to grip the poor fellow’s arm and he heard himself say with more confidence than he felt, ‘Don’t fear, Captain. I shall do my damnedest to ensure that not one hair of your Alice’s head is harmed — or that of the others either. You can rest assured of that.’

  Elders’ response was drowned by the blare of trumpets and the sudden rattle of kettle drums.

  ‘The alarm!’ Sergeant Jones cried, as the rissaldar rose in his saddle and yelled at Bold’s Horse, waving his sword.

  ‘Goodbye, Lieutenant Bold, and good luck!’ Elders bellowed above the first roar of the cannon massed near the Resident’s HQ, and doubled back to his lines.

  John mounted and jerked at the bit. His horse, nervous and jumpy, pawed the air as he forced it round. Everywhere soldiers ran to their posts, officers and sergeants shouting orders, and from all sides the cry went up: ‘They’re coming ... they’re coming again!’

  The attackers swarmed on the craggy hill-face ascending from the River Nag, yelling, waving their weapons and green banners, firing their muskets into the air purposelessly, thousands of them, spread along the length of the line but putting in their main attack on the centre.

  With them came a good s
core of elephants, trumpeting wildly, their fronts heavily armoured with chainmail. Swaying alarmingly on their broad backs were square boxes filled with archers and sharpshooters, whose task was to kill the white officers and NCOs among the defenders. Like most soldiers of the native princes, they expected that with the white men killed, the black soldiers would flee. It was a mistake they often made.

  More than once the Company’s sepoys had fought on long after their commanders had been eliminated.

  But John’s concern now was to judge how the main attack would go in and avoid it, finding a way off the ridge and across the River Nag with the fewest possible casual-ties.

  An elephant was hit. He had a momentary vision of the beast’s vast ears and tiny red eyes as its trunk lashed the air furiously; then the picture vanished as a six-pounder cannonball smashed directly into the creature’s face and it disappeared in a welter of gore, through which bone gleamed like polished ivory. It dropped, churning the screaming, panicked men in the howdah into pulp as it tossed and writhed in its death agonies.

  Its death had the effect the British gunners had hoped for. The other elephants panicked. The mahouts ripped at their sensitive ears with their steel hooks to no avail. The beasts turned and lumbered back the way they had come, trampling screaming Arabs under their flying feet.

  But still the attackers came on, thousands of them scrambling from rock to rock, as the cannoneers filled the air with grape and chain-shot, cutting great swathes in their ranks.

  John nudged Sergeant Jones and pointed to a nullah to their immediate right. It was dead ground, but he suspected the Arabs were not using it as cover for their approach; for once out of it they would be faced by a hundred yards of open ground before coming up against Jenkins’ second battery of six-pounder swivel guns. ‘Do you think the men could get down there without breaking their necks — or their mounts’, eh?’