Guntoor, 23 February — two weeks later
No pleasanter beginning to the month of purification could Hervey remember. Candlemas, which had come as Nisus had only lately recrossed the Equator, had been so warm that he could scarcely comprehend that this same day in Horningsham might be chill enough to freeze his father’s breath as he said the offices in church, and numb his fingers so much that turning each page of the prayer book became a labour. The nights were a little cold in Guntoor, perhaps, but each morning came as the one before, and the days followed the same course — a warming which progressed precisely by the clock, and with it the lives of the people who depended so much on its regularity. ‘Brighton’, the collector had called Madras, and Hervey might have believed it when he attended morning prayer in St Mary’s church the following day. But now he was seeing India beyond the Company pale. The strangeness of its gods, its beliefs and superstitions, the dangers which attended routine things, the revolting deformities, the sensual possibilities in the dirtiest of corners — it was a heady, elemental place as alien and fearful as the pagan lands of the Old Testament. But it was beginning its work with him as surely as it had with the collector and thousands before him, for none but the most desiccated could be untouched by the promise of so much. Not that Guntoor was Babylon, or even Gaza.
Hervey, Emma Lucie and Henry Locke (to whom Peto had seemed relieved to grant arrears of furlough) had spent a week in the collector’s company, a week equally pleasing to each, for Mr Eyre Somervile was generous, cultivated and sporting to an uncommon degree. Dinner had just finished, Emma Lucie had retired to her quarters, and Locke had repaired once again to the bazaar, whose unselfconscious delights had instantly captivated him. Hervey had accepted the collector’s invitation to a final brandy and seltzer, and they were sitting in the comfortable leather armchairs of his drawing room, wondering which of two brightly spotted geckoes would reach the ceiling first. ‘They are singularly lazy beggars,’ opined Somervile after a while. ‘The house snake will have them by morning if they don’t look sharp.’
‘House snake?’ said Hervey, suddenly alarmed.
‘House snakes, I should say, for there are two,’ replied the collector casually.
‘Oh! I am very unpartial to snakes,’ confessed Hervey, lifting his feet and looking all about him. ‘What kind are they?’
‘One is a wolf snake, the other a cat — both female, I reckon. And there is a big male rat snake which comes in from the garden from time to time.’
Hervey was now certain he had been living within an ace of death these past seven days. ‘Are they very venomous?’ he asked, shuddering.
‘Venomous?’ said the collector, incredulously — but thoroughly warmed to his teasing. ‘Not in the least, though a rat snake killed one of the writers at Fort George last year!’
‘How so then?’ asked Hervey, quite horrified.
‘It looks somewhat like the cobra, but it has a more pointed head — and bigger eyes. And it doesn’t spread a hood, of course. But to a writer not long from England it can look like a cobra — or several if you’ve taken too much whiskey. As it seems had Mr Fotheringham when he fell headlong down the residency steps in his fright.’
Hervey frowned at Somervile’s wry smile, recovering his composure somewhat.
The smaller of the geckoes had finally reached the top of the wall when one of the collector’s babus entered with a despatch. ‘Read it for me, if you will, Mohan: I have left my eyeglass in my dressing room.’
The babu put on his own spectacles, and lifted the paper to the light of a wall sconce. ‘Sahib, it is from the deputy collector in Tiruvoor subdistrict. He writes: “A body of Pindarees, by estimates one thousand strong, entered the Circars three days ago from Nagpore and have laid waste villages along the Tiruvoor. There is much destruction of property and life, and the horde proceeds unchecked.” ’
The collector’s donnish affability vanished in an instant. He sprang up, seized the despatch from the babu, held it up close to the oil lamp on his desk and scanned its details with increasing dismay. ‘I knew it! I knew it! I’ve been warning for months but Fort George didn’t wish to hear!’
Hervey, on his feet now too, pressed him for details.
‘There are twenty villages along the Tiruvoor, probably ten thousand souls at the mercy of these devils. And there’s not a standing patrol in miles!’ He was railing so loud his bearer and khansamah came running.
‘What’s to be done?’ asked Hervey, having no notion of the proximity of the villages, and therefore of the predators.
‘What men are there in the garrison at present?’ said Somervile to the babu.
‘At present, sahib, there are being only one troop of cavalry. Infantry will not be returning inside of one week.’ His head rocked from side to side in the manner of babus offering news that might be disagreeable.
‘Very well then, be so good as to have it parade here at five tomorrow morning ready to take to the field. I shall ride with them myself: I wish to see at first hand the scale of these depredations.’
The babu took off his spectacles, made namaste and scurried from the room. Later he would tell his wife he had seen the collector in a rage, and she would not believe him, for the Collector of Guntoor had never been known to raise his voice. The meanest bondsman who had ever heard of his magistracy, or of his administration of land revenues, knew him to be of the purest fire and the most gentle, generous heart, and the most fastidious Brahman knew him to be of an intellect and sensibility no less remarkable.
And yet the collector’s gorge was now so risen that he could barely contain himself. He sank into his chair and struck the table with his fist, sending coffee cups spilling from their tray. ‘I dearly wish I could believe in your god, Captain Hervey, so that I might be assured that the fiends who inflicted such evils on their fellow humans would savour the same!’
Hervey poured a large glass of brandy and seltzer for him. ‘Do you have any objections to my accompanying you? And Mr Locke would, I know, wish to come too. As long as we may return within the week, for Nisus will be off Guntoor then.’
‘No objection at all. I should be glad of it,’ said the collector, springing up again and searching the maps on his desk.
‘Locke will be the best of men in a fight,’ continued Hervey. ‘I’m glad his captain felt obliged to be so generous with leave.’
‘Yes,’ replied Somervile, having found the map he wanted. ‘Your Mr Locke is a good sort, though I regret there’ll be no need of his sword arm, for there won’t be a single Pindaree east of the Ghats by now.’ He sank down in his chair again and wiped a hand across his face. ‘I’ve been warning of it, I know; and yet I can hardly bring myself to believe it can have happened — that a native body has deliberately violated the territory of the Honourable East India Company, ravaged that which is under the Company’s protection’ (he took another large gulp of brandy), ‘plundered its villages, tortured and murdered native people under the dominion of the Company and, therefore, of His Majesty!’ He took out a large silk square and dabbed at his eyes.
Hervey tried to think of something that might help him regain his composure, but could not. ‘Somervile, I have not enquired before, since I formed the impression that it was Company business of a confidential nature,’ he tried, refilling both glasses and fixing him with a look that demanded serious attention, ‘but I should be very much obliged if you would tell me all that there is of the Pindarees.’
The collector paused a moment before laying aside the map. ‘Very well, I shall tell you all. And, I might add, if your Duke of Wellington were here I have not the slightest doubt that this would never have happened, for the policies which the previous governor-general pursued were too yielding, and the present one, though more vigorous, has yet to make his mark.’
‘Though he has subdued the Ghoorka tribes, I understand?’
‘I fear he was driven to it. I doubt he had any real appetite.’
Hervey was reassured that his principal was held in high regard by one official of the Company at least. ‘The Pindarees, then: what is their peculiar menace?’
The collector sat in his armchair again. ‘From the beginning? The Pindarees are a body — several bodies — of irregular horse who serve without pay and who have licence to plunder wheresoever they can: chiefly south of the Nerbudda river, in the territories of the nizam and the Rajah of Berar and the peshwa.’ He dabbed at his brow again and loosened his collar. ‘They originated — as far as we may know — a century and a half ago in the Dekhin, in the service of the Mughal rulers, but as Mughal power declined they transferred their services to the Marathas — against whom your duke fought with signal success a dozen years ago. As Maratha power declined in turn, the Pindarees have become even less disciplined and predictable.’ He emptied his brandy and seltzer, peered at the motionless geckoes for what seemed an age, and then resumed as they began their descent of the wall. ‘They’ve separated into three clans, each led by the most odious of men. These chiefs rarely themselves lead a plundering foray; rather they appoint sirdars. That band which has penetrated hereabouts is led, it seems, by one Bikhu Sayed, who is known for his especial insolence and depravity. I fear we shall see and hear things that will make the strongest stomachs turn.’
Hervey was confident of his stomach, but the notion of lawlessness on a regimented scale was wholly alien to him. ‘How many are they?’
‘The estimates are varied, but the best formulations are probably those of the Bengal office, which put the number of horse at twenty-five thousand. That is the figure which their spies estimated to have assembled at the Dasahara festival five years ago — the most reliable intelligence in our possession, if a little dated.’
‘And all these may operate as one body, with effect?’ asked Hervey, incredulous, for he knew that no such body of European cavalry had manoeuvred to advantage during his service.
‘Again, so little is known,’ said the collector, frowning. ‘Captain Sydenham, from the Bengal office, has estimated that only some six or seven thousand may be counted truly effective cavalry.’ He shrugged. ‘But there is a saying here: “What cares the ass or the bullock whether his load be made of flowers?” It matters little to a ryot whether the cavalry that has ravaged him is counted effective or ineffective.’
‘No, of course,’ Hervey agreed, ‘but it matters more if some operation to extirpate the menace is being contemplated.’
The collector sighed and nodded. ‘Forgive me. Indeed it does. I am too distressed at the knowledge of what these demons have done. That and the certain knowledge that there will be no concerted campaign of extirpation.’
Hervey wished profoundly that he might reassure him on that point: the duke, for sure, would not sit idly by once he was appointed to Fort William. ‘What does this incursion portend in the wider sense?’
‘Hah!’ said the collector, getting up and pouring yet another glass. ‘That is the very question which should most be exercising the minds of those at Fort St George and Fort William — ay, and in Bombay Castle too. There must be some great concerted action on the part of the three presidencies, else we shall never be able to continue our business unmolested. More immediately, I fear for the peace hereabouts since the Rajah of Nagpore has evidently been unable to prevent Bikhu Sayed from traversing his lands, and this will put Chintal in a most perilous position — squeezed by the nizam to their south and west, and by the Pindarees to their north and east. It bodes ill for trade along the Godavari river if Chintal declines into chaos.’
Tempting though it was to question him directly on Chintal, Hervey held himself in check, though they sat talking for an hour before the collector thought fit to retire. Hervey penned a brief note for Henry Locke and hoped he would return before dawn. When he turned in, he lay for a full half-hour trying to think how Somervile’s estimate might affect his mission. But beyond the obvious conclusion that it could not make things easier, he was at a loss. Perhaps Bazzard in Calcutta would have a clearer picture, though he was inclined to think not, for Colonel Grant had seemed to suggest he would be little more than a facilitator, a clearing office. Was that why Selden was so useful as a point of contact in Chintal? Not for the first time he began to feel the want of that fuller exposition which Grant had said was not necessary.
There were just the remains of the night’s chill in the air as dawn came to Guntoor. The first rays of the sun were quick to pick out the whitened, single-storey residences of the civil lines, the verandahs, where sat the chowkidars, becoming for a time darker pools as a consequence. Smoke was already rising from stoves and ovens behind each residence as bearers prepared chota hazree — tea and poori, or chapatti perhaps. The collector’s household had risen earlier this morning, however, and after a fuller breakfast — eggs and cold beef — Somervile, Hervey and Locke were now gathered in the carriage drive at the front. Birds sang in every quarter — not as many as in Horningsham, but shriller, although a bulbul was giving out its melodious, liquid call from deep inside a leafy shrub. A pair of night herons flapped overhead, from the direction of the river, their distinctive ‘kwaark, kwaark’ more than ever importunate in the quiet of the dawn. Hervey breathed deep, in both senses, eager to begin.
A minute or so later and the sound of hooves on hard earth quickened him even more. Wiry little horses, country-breds, not Arabs, led by equally wiry syces, came up the carriage drive in a restive jog-trot. There had been some heat in Jessye’s leg after their ride yesterday and Hervey had told Johnson that she was to have box-rest for a day or so. These country-breds looked handy enough, however, and he had sufficient respect for the collector’s eye for horses to trust that he would have under him an honest gelding. As the three mounted, each with the help of as many syces — one holding the bridle, one on the offside pulling down the stirrup leather, and the third with palm on knee in lieu of a mounting block — there arrived from the cantonment the patrol that was to determine whether the Pindarees’ incursion was the precursor of another fierce predation, or whether it had been a single freebooting action. And as the Godavari river was to be the limit of their reconnaissance, they carried with them — or, rather, bullock carts would follow with — camp stores and provisions for a week’s essay.
Had the officer commanding the cavalry troop been attired according to the regulations, he would have looked more magnificent than Hervey himself on a full-dress parade, for the Madras Light Cavalry’s uniform was a French-blue hussar jacket, with silver lace across the chest, sky-blue overalls and a Greek helmet with a shoulder-length, white horsehair plume. But this morning, as most days, the officer (as his troopers) wore the same shako as Hervey had at Waterloo, but instead of a black oilskin cover it had one of buff cotton with a piece of cloth to shield the neck from the sun. The officer saluted the party from the civil lines eagerly with his sword — the straightpattern sabre, unlike Hervey’s. ‘Cornet Templer, sir,’ he said, smiling.
‘Yes, Mr Templer,’ replied the collector; ‘I am not likely to forget. I shall not wager my mare against yours quite so soon again, unless I find a more talented jockey than that jackanapes who calls himself your lieutenant! You should take her to Madras: she will win you a small fortune.’
Cornet Templer looked not much more than a boy. His tanned face was framed by curls the colour of autumn corn, and it now seemed to be but one large smile. Hervey took to him at once, for his liveliness was infectious, his eagerness admirable. Just the sort of cornet he would have wanted for his own troop — a clean young Englishman. There was a deal of handshaking following the saluting. Lieutenant of Marines Henry Locke took to the cornet too, though, as his seat was less certain than once it might have been, it was not without some difficulty that he managed to press his mount to within handshaking distance. Cornet Templer looked him straight in the eye, seeming not to see any disfigurement. And that to Locke — more than Hervey or even Peto might have supposed — meant a very great deal.
There was one more introduction to effect. Cornet Templer turned his head towards his troop. ‘Subedar, sahib,’ he called, still smiling. A tall Madrasi, dressed almost identically to Templer, jogged up on his big gelding — an animal in better condition than Hervey had yet seen in the country. ‘Gentlemen, this is Subedar Thangraj. He will not permit us to get into too much trouble.’
Subedar Thangraj straightened his back still further, and saluted high, almost touching the crown of his shako. ‘Captain, sahib, it is an honour to meet with one who has fought at the great battle of Waterloo,’ he said in clear, confident English, looking directly, and with much solemnity, at Hervey.
‘Thank you, Subedar sahib,’ he replied formally, though astonished that these details should already be known to this native officer — and that the man should be so wholly confident of recognizing to whom the distinction applied. But he was puzzled by the rank. ‘Templer, you said “Subedar”; I understood that in the cavalry the rank is “Rissaldar”.’
‘In the armies of Bombay and Bengal, yes sir, but not in Madras.’
‘And is this so for the other ranks?’
‘It is. All our private men are sepoys, not sowars.’
‘How so?’ asked Hervey, vexed with himself for being unaware that there should be this difference.
‘I do not know,’ said Templer, with the elements of a frown now added to his wide smile. ‘But since Madras was the original presidency, it is for the others to explain why they changed, sir.’
‘Quite so,’ smiled Hervey, recognizing the propriety. ‘Is there very much difference in other respects between the three armies?’
‘Indeed there is, though I have not been in the country long enough to see at first hand. But when we make camp tonight I shall be glad to tell you what I know.’
There was evidently more to Cornet Templer than his broad, easy smile — and Hervey liked him even better for it.
When all were satisfied that the necessary salutations had been made, Cornet Templer asked the collector for leave to begin the patrol.
Somervile nodded.
‘Walk-march please, Subedar sahib,’ he called. It seemed to Hervey more a friendly invitation than a command.
‘Very good, sahib,’ replied the subedar, who barked the orders in turn to the patrol, but in a tongue Hervey did not recognize. The sepoys straightened their backs once more and the column moved off in a cloud of dust fetlock-high, out of the civil lines and on to the wide palmyra avenue that led directly to the high road north to the Krishna river — and thence, if they were to remain on it rather than branching north-east (the latter being their intention), to the Rajah of Chintal’s capital at Chintalpore.
Dust rose higher as they settled to a brisk working trot, kicked up by the more extravagant action of one or two of the horses, fresh and eager to stretch their legs after a night in standing-stalls. The dust quickly reached his nostrils, yet it was not wholly unwelcome, for it seemed no different from the spices to which he was becoming accustomed. Indeed, he was already of a mind that this taste of baked earth was rather the essence of India, like the light which transformed the way he saw things, or the heat at midday, as if hands were touching him. It was not possible, even momentarily, to be insensate in this land, for the presents to each and every sense were so potent as to be almost compelling. Already he had observed that no bird had anything but the gaudiest plumage. Not even an insect concealed itself by drab colour. No noise was restrained, no taste — in either sense — was mild. No smell was anything but pungent, no belief incredible, no notion too outlandish. And all this within the civil lines of the Company’s very regular station at Guntoor. Now he would see Hindoostan — the country beyond the chunam and the chintz, beyond the exaggerated English manners of the Company’s officials and their liveried servants. He would see it just as he had wanted to see Ireland beyond the Pale, a year and a half ago. The experience of native Ireland had taught him, however, that although he might cross such a divide physically, to do so with his heart spelled ruin. He would be on his guard.
But home thoughts were with him yet as they jogged past pretty bungalows (the word new to him), whose white fences and trim gardens would not have been out of place in Sussex. ‘Which part of England are you come from?’ he asked, Cornet Templer now having drawn alongside him.
‘I don’t call any part home, sir,’ replied Templer, still smiling; ‘I spent three terms at Harrow but went thence to Addiscombe, for I was first meant for the Company’s sappers. My people are from Wicklow.’
So much for his instinct for people, thought Hervey — English indeed! They talked freely, however, especially of Addiscombe (for Hervey had little knowledge of the Company’s military academy), until, leaving the town limits, Templer excused himself to go forward to attend to some detail with the point-men.
Hervey rode thereafter with Locke and the collector, several yards off to the flank in order to avoid the dust. They wore mixed dress, with overalls of light canvas made up for them a day or so before in Guntoor, and their sword belts were simple affairs with snakefastening and no sash. Locke wore a marine man’s hat of black glazed leather, with a neck shield pinned to it, and Hervey wore his own shako with a cream cover and neck flap — like Templer and his men. But neither of them had on a tunic of appreciably martial stamp. Hervey’s was a coat of hunting length, the same colour as his shako, and he wore a yellow silk stock. Locke had on a cutaway of the same weight of cotton, but of a dusty pink colour, together with a white stock and his treasured gorget. Despite this mixture, however, neither man could have appeared to an onlooker as anything other than military, whereas nothing could have been further from the case with the collector, whose black coat made no concession to what Hervey supposed would soon be the excessive heat of the day — though his wide-brimmed straw hat would provide considerably greater protection from the sun than the short peak of Hervey’s shako or the pulled-up brim of Locke’s headdress.
‘It seems a distant cry from trade, this,’ smiled Hervey.
‘Then let me disabuse you, sir, of any notion that trade is what the Company is about nowadays. At first, yes — in Queen Elizabeth’s day. Then it was truly a company of merchants trading spices from the east. It began to change with King Charles’s Braganza dowry — Bombay — and then later when that enfeebled Mughal Shah Alam made the Company his dewan — his administrator — for the Bengal revenues. But this much you surely know?’
Hervey was relieved that the collector had some appetite for conversation, even at this hour, for Locke was bearing the signs of little sleep, promising to be no sort of companion at all. ‘I have not heard it stated so definitively, sir.’ He was not without the art of flattery in a good cause.
The collector was more than happy to continue, definitively. ‘Mr Pitt’s India Act established the Board of Control. Doubtless he would have preferred to appropriate the Company lock, stock and barrel, but that would have put too much patronage in his hands for the Whigs to stomach. It was a half-baked scheme, for it gave no-one the necessary freedom to act. And it made worse the differences between the three presidencies. Madras and Bombay were all but pursuing contrary policies towards Mysore at one juncture.’
Hervey pressed him to more as he leaned forward to remove a monstrous horsefly from his gelding’s ear.
‘The amending act three years ago has done much to tidy things up — the president of the Board now has a seat in the cabinet and such like — but it spells the end for the Company. Of that I’m sure. We are in all effects a department of state even at the present, and it will not be long, in my judgement, before parliament sees fit to wind up all trading interests. What worries me, Captain Hervey, is that our new administrators are becoming too imperious in their dealings with the country powers and with the natives in the presidencies. Warren Hastings knew the continent, you see, from his engagement with trade. The new breed does not.’
Hervey thanked him for his candid opinion.
The collector made light of it. ‘But I heard you asking Templer if there is any difference between the armies of the three presidencies.’
‘Yes; he said he would explain when we made camp tonight.’
‘He will indeed, but I shall first tell you the root of those differences.’ He flicked his whip against his mare’s quarters, she having become disunited. ‘You would say that there is a difference in the fighting qualities of men from the various parts of our own islands, would you not? You would no doubt say that the Scotchman is a fearsome soldier, but without his officers he is at a loss; that the man from East Anglia is steadfast in adversity and so on. But these are but fine shades in men whose red coats make of them all fine soldiers. Here things are a matter of greater extremes — as they are in all things. From a military point of view there is no doubt that the Rajpoots of northern India are the noblest, the finest of the races. The Rajpoot is tall and well-built, clean-limbed. He may not marry a woman who is not of a Rajpoot family. Where you find him — in the Bombay regiments — he is peerless.’
Hervey nodded in appreciation. ‘Then I hope I shall soon meet them.’
‘Not this side of the Nerbudda river, I think,’ replied the collector, shaking his head. ‘You shall have to go to what is Hindoostan proper — to the north of the Nerbudda. But that is as may be. The Bombay presidency’s forces are well-tried: that is the material point. And, incidentally, what a city Bombay is, Captain Hervey! You would consider it alone worth the journey to see what its women will dare in the matter of dress! Nowhere on earth will you see any more colourful sight than a Parsi girl — brilliant beyond measure!’
Hervey and Locke were all attention.
‘A Bombay street is as splendid and lively a sight as a Calcutta one is ugly and dispiriting.’
‘I think you have no very great regard for the Bengali, sir?’
‘Not in the main. He’s feeble and effete beyond measure. He holds personal cowardice to be no disgrace. Do you know of any other race in the world to which that accusation might be directed?’
‘Which leaves the soldiers of the presidency of Madras,’ said Hervey, smiling.
The collector sighed. ‘The glories of the ancient Telinga kingdoms are long past, and — it must be said — their martial spirit. When the French occupied the Karnatic, and when Clive was campaigning in Mysore, the Telinga fought with ferocity and intelligence.’ He touched his mare’s flank again with the whip as she fell back half a length. ‘But the Madrasi now is a man of peace, a better servant than a soldier. The Telinga makes a better-looking sepoy, being of superior physique, but he possesses on the whole less stamina than the Tamil. The Tamil can exhibit fine fighting qualities, mark you: Subedar Thangraj overcame more than a dozen mutineers at Vellore with only a clubbed carbine.’
Hervey glanced across at the subedar. In his native dignity there was the stamp of Serjeant Strange. He looked back further along the column, seeing in a face here and there more than a vestige of that fighting spirit which the collector said was now dimmed. He found it hard to believe that men who wore their uniforms as well as these did, or who sat their horses so, were not as determined when it came to drawing the sword.
The collector strove at once to correct the impression he had given. ‘Captain Hervey, do not suppose for one moment that I am saying these men lack fighting spirit. It is only that by comparison Madras is not thought to have so martial a people. If you were to see the men of the northern parts — Rajpoots, Sikhs, Jats, Punjabis, Pathans — big men, not enervated by climate, you would understand my meaning. Have no fear: Cornet Templer’s men will fight as well as you would wish. And I for one am content to place my security in their hands.’
Next day
The sun had been up for only an hour, but in that cool, fresh, first sixty minutes of another Indian day the patrol had made ten miles. Chota hazree — sweet tea and a plantain — had been brought to the officers in their bivouac tents a half-hour before sunrise, and they had been in the saddle as the first shafts of light searched them out on the plateau from behind the hills to the east. Nothing that Hervey had seen before made him so conscious of his own insignificance.
The collector had intended to ride for another hour, at a reduced pace, before halting for a breakfast of cold chikor, of which they had bagged a dozen brace the afternoon before. But there was to be no burra hazree just yet. ‘Pindarees, sahib,’ exclaimed Subedar Thangraj, his eyes seeing clearly what Templer and Hervey could only confirm with the telescope.
From a mile away the village, which had no name that any in the patrol knew of, and none on any map, bore the signs of having been assailed. More than the usual number of vultures circled above, and there was a continual glide earthwards. And instead of the many wisps of smoke that would ordinarily have marked the cooking fires and ovens of a village of this size, there was a single, large pall of black smoke.
Cornet Templer’s face changed at once from ease to tautness. ‘Subedar sahib: extended line, draw swords!’
Hervey had to check his instincts. Templer intended, it seemed, to gallop straight to the village without any preliminary reconnaissance or indirect approach. This was dangerously more than audacity, surely? This was more than the boldness which Peto’s book advocated and which Hervey approved. It was recklessness, was it not? He looked at Henry Locke, who shrugged. ‘He orders the troop to form line and draw swords,’ he explained; to which Locke simply raised both his eyebrows.
‘Captain Hervey,’ said the collector with perfect calm, seeing his concern, ‘in the Company’s cavalry it is the practice to charge the enemy at once — instantly, without hesitation. He invariably outnumbers you and hesitation is fatal; by the very action of attempting to throw over the greater number there somehow comes the ability to do so. And the enemy, who in his rational appreciation would know that such a thing is impossible, is denied the time to think, and so is afeard that it must in truth be so. Rarely will he stand his ground — unless his escape is closed off.’
By the time the collector had finished his elegant if somewhat elliptical explanation, the troop had extended into line. ‘Draw swords!’ ordered the subedar. Fifty and more sabres came rasping from their scabbards. Hervey winced at the noise, as he always did — the sound of sword edges blunting. But he also suspected that these sepoys had begun the patrol with blades as sharp as razors.
‘Walk march!’ called Cornet Templer, his voice carrying easily to both flanks — in all a frontage of 150 yards.
All Hervey could think of was the duke’s instructions to his cavalry commanders: ‘Cavalry is to attack in three lines, four or five hundred yards apart when facing cavalry; a reserve must be kept of twothirds of the whole, to exploit a success or to cover a withdrawal.’ And here was Cornet Templer and his troop in one extended line, and open order!
He fell in by the collector’s side at the rear and drew his sword. The collector pulled his straw hat down firmly and reached inside his coat for the diminutive pistol he always carried (but had not thought to prime). ‘Keep an eye for any who wish to throw themselves on our mercy, Hervey. I should wish to interrogate them.’
Hervey smiled to himself at the collector’s absolute confidence in the outcome, struggling meanwhile with his gelding, which seemed to have had little by way of formal schooling and was reverting to its instinct for the herd. The line was soon in a brisk canter. Dust billowed, horses were pulling and blowing at the same time. Hooves drummed and bits jingled. He looked left and right at the half-hundred troopers: from behind they could have been from any one of the armies that fought Bonaparte. They could have been from the Grande Armée itself, except that they rode shorter than any regular cavalry he had seen before — and in open order and extended line! Yet it was not difficult to understand how these men felt invincible in that headlong rush at the Pindarees, of whose number they had not the slightest intimation, for there was dust enough to conceal a thousand cavalrymen.
‘Charge!’ roared Templer, with fewer than a hundred yards to run to the village. The line of sabres lowered to the ‘engage’, expecting to catch the enemy on foot.
Hervey could see nothing of what they were charging. He thought he saw horses but he could not be certain, for dust swirled everywhere. He was more anxious still: even if there were no ambuscade, the line, once it had collided with the village, would rapidly lose cohesion — when a half-capable enemy could take them from a flank.
And then they were in the village, and it was all he could do to keep his seat as his little gelding, effortlessly changing leg, swerved this way and that to avoid tumbling at an obstacle, any number of which would have brought down a less balanced horse. They jumped something he didn’t even see, and the gelding landed with its head still up and ready for the next challenge.
Some of the sepoys were far ahead, and he could see that the charge had become a pursuit. Here and there was a fallen horse, but mainly they were human shapes which lay sprawled and bloody — and none was wearing a French-blue tunic. He galloped on, looking about for the collector. The ground was rising slightly but there was no cover. As far as he could see in front of him there were sepoys furiously raising and lowering their sword arms. He began to check, for the gelding was blowing hard — when the best of horses could stumble. A lone Pindaree came towards him and threw down his sword, falling from the saddle to his knees and clasping his hands together, pleading. Hervey was trying to find the words to tell him he was made prisoner when one of the sepoys galloped up with a different intention. He shouted that the man had surrendered, but whether or not he was understood, it made no difference, for the sepoy sliced at the Pindaree’s neck from behind, severing the head as neatly as Hervey had seen Serjeant Strange cut a swede in half in the tilt-yard.
It was not his fight, he told himself, and the sepoy gave him a most respectful salute with his bloody sabre as he circled back to join his comrades. He turned and slowly trotted back to the village, recalling what the collector had said two nights before about the strongest stomachs turning. There were bloody bundles of flesh and homespun about the village, but no other human presence that he could see. He heard the bugle, and looked back to see the line at last rallying. Then the collector appeared, in a lather every bit as prodigious as that of his horse — and blowing almost as much — though he had kept up remarkably well. ‘A sorry business this, Hervey,’ he called, dismounting by one of the bundles and clasping a handkerchief over his nose.
Hervey said he did not expect there would be anyone for him to interrogate, to which the collector seemed not overly surprised, nor even very disappointed.
‘We had better begin searching the huts, however,’ he suggested, still clasping the silk to his nose. ‘There may be something that tells us what these fiends are next about.’
They regretted doing so almost at once. The sight in the first hut made the collector rush out clutching the silk to his mouth, and throw up noisily. Inside, Hervey stared in disbelief. Here was a lesson in anatomy he had not seen even in a textbook — the womb hacked open and its full-grown contents ripped away and sliced like meat on a butcher’s slab. And, as if that could not have been enough to satiate the most depraved, the wretched woman had been impaled hideously and severally. Hervey now wished he had struck off the Pindaree’s head himself, for though he had seen the horrifying work of cannon, never before had he known sheer surgical brutality. He was numb with incomprehension.
‘You had better search the well, Mr Templer,’ said the collector as he recovered himself, seeing the troop coming into the village.
Before it occurred to Hervey why the well should be searched, one of the havildars revealed why. ‘It is full of bodies, sahib,’ he called.
Hervey, Templer and the native officers doubled over to him, covering their noses as they did so. The well was large, twenty feet across, with a three-foot wall, and it was deep. There were many bodies (perhaps fifty — it was difficult to estimate), and as far as Hervey could tell, peering into its darkness, most — perhaps all — were women. Those uppermost in the tangled mound were naked.
‘They were the ones who either had not the time or the courage to jump for themselves,’ said the collector.
‘What do we do now?’ asked Hervey, beginning to sicken at both the sight and the stench.
‘What do you think we should do?’ enquired the collector, with a mild challenge in his voice. ‘We roll up our bloody sleeves and get them out!’
The officers took turns to descend to the bottom of the well, to where the ordure was most nauseous, and tied ropes round each body, the sepoys hauling them to the surface. For over three hours they laboured thus, until the remains of every one of forty-seven women and girls — and eleven infants — were brought into the heat of the mid-morning sun. Meanwhile, the other sepoys had collected the bodies of a dozen men, mostly aged, and had lain them in the shade of the village’s banyan. Now they began building a massive pyre on which they might all be cremated according to the rites of Vishnu.
‘The village men would have been in the fields, by the look of things,’ said the collector, ‘and there they will have hid since. We shall not be able to tempt them in for a day or so.’
Hervey simply nodded.
The collector lowered his voice, until it had almost a note of despair. ‘This is an especially brutal raid. The women are always susceptible, but they are by no means always defiled, nor the men killed if they offer no resistance.’
‘It’s the mutilation and… the brutishness, the method of their violation,’ said Hervey, matching his tone.
The collector nodded grimly. ‘If I were to suppose what happened, I should say that the village was taken wholly by surprise — at about three o’clock yesterday. Some of the women would have screamed, gathered up their last-born and run at once to the well, throwing themselves in within sight of the marauders. This would have excited the worst of them — a freebooting band among freebooters without what passes for the discipline of some of the Pindaree cohorts. Some of the old men would have made a show of protecting the women and been cut down for their trouble. The first blood would have excited the appetite for more, until there was a frenzy of rape and slaughter. You are dealing with a savagery here, Captain Hervey, the like of which you would find hard to imagine even in your battles in Spain. I pray this cohort we surprised is not typical of what we may expect.’
‘And how many rupees might the Pindarees have supposed a village such as this would render up?’ asked Hervey incredulously.
‘Just so, just so,’ the collector replied, shaking his head again. ‘We are, as a rule, spared these sights in the Company’s territories, and half of me wishes to believe that this incursion was but a misjudgement.However, I fear this and the earlier forays have been somehow to test our strength, and that we shall see more unless we do something. Yet I can’t suppose that anything which is done in a small way shall have any effect. No, it must be something undertaken on a bigger scale — encompassing the whole of the country. I hold the extirpation of the Pindaree menace to be the greatest, and most pressing, necessity of the Company. And yet the Court of Directors in London will have no truck with it.’
Cornet Templer told off a jemadar’s patrol to follow the Pindaree spoor, then came up and saluted. ‘Do you have any further orders, sir?’
‘No, Mr Templer, I think not. How many did we account for in all?’
‘Villagers, sir, or Pindarees?’
‘The latter.’
‘Seventy, not fewer.’
The collector nodded approvingly, even though a prisoner or two would have been helpful. ‘You showed great address, Mr Templer. I shall commend your conduct this day to Fort St George.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ replied Templer, flatly, for there was too much otherwise to dull any satisfaction with his exertions.
The jemadar’s patrol left with little expectation of catching any more of the fleeing Pindarees. If they could trace their route of withdrawal from the Circars it would at least indicate something of what freedom of movement they enjoyed in the neighbouring states. Meanwhile, all that the remainder of the troop could do was wait in the hope that some of the ryots would return to the village, and that they would be able to say something which might help in any subsequent encounter. It was a mournful bivouac that night.
The first hour of daylight the following morning was given over to what Hervey’s regiment called ‘interior economy’. Saddles, bridles and other tackling were laid out with great precision for the scrutiny of Cornet Templer and Subedar Thangraj. And after inspecting every piece of leather they went to the horses with the farrier-naik. Hervey walked with the collector through the lines of country-breds, recalling as if yesterday the condition of his own regiment in Spain after a similar march.
‘What do you think of them, Captain Hervey?’ asked Somervile.
Hervey replied that he found them very much better than he had been led to believe, that they compared very favourably indeed with the remounts they were receiving towards the end of the campaign in the Peninsula.
‘The Company of late has been much exercised by the need of good horses. Left to itself, India breeds indifferent mounts, though there are a dozen or so native breeds. Seven or eight years ago — before my time here — the directors engaged a distinguished London veterinarian — a Mr Moorcroft. Do you know the name?’
Hervey said he had some notion of it.
‘It was he who began the reform of the Company’s stud department. And great work he has done, too. But much buying is still, perforce, in the hands of regimental purchasing officers.’
‘Then I perceive that the Madras Cavalry’s purchasing officer has an affinity for Arabs.’
‘You would be right,’ replied the collector, smiling. ‘Mr Blacker has bought many hundreds of pure Kehilans, and is most adept at putting them to native mares.’
‘You are very evidently an apostle of the breed,’ Hervey smiled back, conscious of the energy of the little horse the collector rode, though he had not yet become accustomed to its curious lines.
‘Yes, indeed I am. See how full-chested those troopers are, how broad across the loins, and how round-sided and deep-barrelled they are. You will not see one horse in ten in England as short-limbed yet with such qualities. That chest is what gives the Kehilan his endurance. You would scarcely ever be able to exhaust him, unless unreasonably. And he can live on air if needs be. The only inconvenience I perceive is that the entire needs considerably more bleeding than does an English stallion, and in this country he is more prone to miasmic fevers. You will see the farrier bleed as many this morning as he finds in need of a new shoe.’
Hervey expressed himself surprised at the number of entires generally. ‘I’m afraid we find them altogether too untractable. We cannot pick and choose our remounts whilst on campaign, and they must stand side by side with the mares.’
The collector understood. ‘But there is none so brave as a stallion. I would not wish to surrender such an advantage were I a military man.’
Hervey smiled. He had to acknowledge the point. Though, as he explained, when considering the normal method of operation of European cavalry — in squadrons, knee-to-knee — some concession had to be made to the need for tractability.
‘But if you are pleased by what you see with our native regular cavalry, Captain Hervey,’ the collector added, ‘then you should see our silladar regiments.’
Hervey paused while he searched his mind for the meaning of the Urdu. ‘I do not know this word,’ he concluded.
‘A Maratha corruption of the pure Persian silahadar,’ said the collector quite unaffectedly, for he had studied both languages. ‘It means simply a soldier bearing arms, or wearing armour. In this case it refers most approximately to British yeomanry, except that they are more or less permanently embodied — and, I hazard, a great deal more effective. Each man provides his own horse and all necessities, except firearm and ammunition. And for his services he receives thirty rupees a month. We shall soon have one such regiment on the Madras establishment — one of Colonel Skinner’s Horse. They are at present in the north of the Circars where the first Pindaree band struck earlier this year. You would, I believe, approve of them!’
Hervey was intent on learning more. What, for instance, impelled a sowar to hazard his horse if this were the means of his livelihood? But Cornet Templer reported that the troop was ready to resume, and the collector was keen for the off. The jemadar’s patrol had already sent word that the marauders were a halfday’s forced march ahead of them and had crossed into the Rajah of Chintal’s territory. They would remain on the border to watch for a day and then rejoin. Hervey asked if Chintal was where they would take refuge, but the collector thought not. They would plunder the place and pass through with as much impunity as they had here, for the rajah’s forces were meagre and ineffectual. But Somervile wished nevertheless for a reconnaissance along a fair length of the border to be sure there was no doubling back, and so he asked to be left with an escort to conclude his business with the village — a business which, Hervey soon learned, was impelled by humanity rather than any actuarial concern of the Company’s — and pressed Templer to make a good show along the border en route for home.
Templer was about to leave, and Hervey and Locke with him, when there came another of what Somervile called India’s infinite curiosities. A solitary trail of dust, not very high, first revealed the presence on the road from the east. One by one the soldiers of the patrol turned to watch, until all were fixed on the little bullock cart as it made its slow way towards them. Two of the thinnest-looking oxen Hervey had seen, yoked side by side and standing no higher at the shoulder than Jessye as a yearling, plodded patiently before the hackery, their cream-coloured tails swaying with the movement of their quarters but otherwise still, not yet needed for relief from the plague of flies that would beset them in an hour or so. And in the cart itself sat a shrivelled little figure, sun-hatted, smiling. Without any apparent urging, the oxen made for the shade of a banyan at the edge of the village, and there they stopped. The little man took off his hat and bowed his head.
Hervey looked quizzically at the collector.
‘The priest,’ explained Somervile.
‘Ah,’ said Hervey. ‘I had imagined someone more…’
‘The Catholic priest, I mean.’
‘Catholic priest? I had not imagined—’
‘Well, do not suppose the roots are as deep as St Thomas would have wished. In these villages it is but a superficial creed — to the unread ryots merely an intelligible alternative to unintelligible Hindoo. The Virgin Mary is to them but a beneficent goddess, and the transition from Krishna to Christ is one which offers no material difficulty to their limited faculties.’
It seemed a harsh judgement, but it was said with kindness. ‘Where does he come from?’
‘Who knows?’ shrugged Somervile. ‘The cart is his travelling residence, but beyond that… Rajahmundry perhaps? But priests were ministering here before the French came. And he will go on ministering and hoping for the best until he dies. And then a few sticks with rags tied to them will decorate his grave, and he will rank as a departed fakir or yogi.’
The collector seemed full of admiration. Hervey would never have thought it.
‘Oh, mistake me not, sir. I do not hold with any faith, but I cannot but be moved by the devotion of these bullock-cart priests — and the constancy of their flock by return. There are easier things to be in India than a native Christian.’
The noise was like that which the greenhead recruit makes when, wagered by the sweats that he cannot get a clear note from a bugle, he blows hard with full lungs and open lips in a terrible, straining distress-call. Except that no human lungs could blow so long and so loud.
‘Elephant, sahib,’ said Subedar Thangraj, seeing Hervey’s astonished look. ‘Elephant very angry, very not-content.’
Hervey had somehow supposed elephants to be entirely mute. There had been no reason to suppose otherwise. The stuffed specimen in Mr Bullock’s Museum of Natural and Artificial Curiosities, at No. 22 Piccadilly, had engaged him a full quarter of an hour when he had visited with d’Arcey Jessope two years before, but had, naturally, revealed nothing of its stentorian powers. And those living beasts that tramped, with the greatest docility, along the thoroughfares of Madras and Guntoor had likewise made not a sound. He now supposed they must bellow like cattle, and was suspicious at first of the subedar’s assurance that the noise came, indeed, trumpet-like from the animal’s trunk. Johnson had once assured him that an elephant was able to prospect for precious stones in the ground, and Lieutenant Locke now insisted, even more improbably, that elephants were able to throw stones with great accuracy at a mark.
The Sukri river, explained Templer, was the border between the princely state of Chintal and the Northern Circars, and there was held to be common title to its waters. Thus it was not evident whence the distressed elephant, thrashing knee-deep at the edge of the river with its attendants, had come.
‘Elephant fussunded, sahib,’ concluded Subedar Thangraj.
Hervey looked at Templer, to whom the problem did not seem novel. ‘Mud or quicksand it will be,’ said the cornet. ‘The great beast will have sunk and struggled, and now he will be well and truly stuck.’
‘What shall we do?’ asked Hervey, assuming they must do something.
‘I’ve seen a gaur caught this way. I fear there’s nothing we can do that is not already being done,’ he replied, indicating the ropes on which the attendants were pulling as the elephant continued its trumpeting as loud as before, and its two companions on the far bank added to the uproar.
‘Save me, O God: for the waters are come in, even unto my soul.’
Cornet Templer looked at him strangely.
‘Psalm Sixty-nine,’ explained Hervey, with something between a smile and a grimace. ‘ “I stick fast in the deep mire, where no ground is: I am come into deep waters, so that the floods run over me.” ’
‘And does the psalmist have any notion of how the elephant may be delivered from the mire, sir?’ asked Templer, smiling too.
Hervey racked his brain for the rest of the psalm — one of the longer ones. ‘ “As for me, when I am poor and in heaviness: thy help, O God, shall lift me up.” ’
‘Then we had better go and do God’s work down there, sir,’ laughed Templer. ‘Subedar sahib — shoulders to it!’
The attendants had cut grass and branches from the few trees thereabouts, and had thrown them for the elephant to tread on. But it had been no use. They even tore planks from a ferry moored nearby and put them in reach of his trunk, but he seized each one and angrily threw it aside.
‘Elephant will tear off his mahout to step on, sahib, if he has need,’ said the subedar; ‘it is most strange he will not take planks. Better for stay clear, sahib.’
The attendants — a dozen or more — were now hitching the ropes to the two other elephants in a last bid to haul out the stricken animal.
‘That will cut through to the bone, surely,’ said Hervey, seeing them only manage to secure a line round one leg. He sprang from the saddle, unable to remain a spectator any longer — even if he had no other ideas.
Templer and the subedar dismounted too. ‘I think we could wedge some of those planks under his belly to prevent his sinking any further,’ said the cornet.
Subedar Thangraj barked orders to the attendants and the patrol. He had advised they kept their distance, but now that his cornet had decided on this course of action he would direct the operation with all the vigour the sahibs would expect. Meanwhile, Templer and Hervey removed their boots and jackets to cross the quicksand.
The attendants spoke a dialect unintelligible even to the subedar, but several understood Hervey’s Urdu and in a few minutes, with the help of half a dozen sepoys, they succeeded in getting up a platform around the beast, with wedging planks angled under its great bulk. By now, however, the elephant had sunk so deep that all but a part of his back and head were under the sand. He could no longer struggle, only wave his trunk in the air and trumpet feebly — though the clamour of the attendants and the calls of the other two elephants were as strong as before.
‘Sahib, elephant will soon go under quicksand. Better for we shoot him now and take him from his misery,’ said the subedar.
When Templer put this to the attendants they howled in protest and waved their hands about in horror. It was only then that Hervey, who had been standing on the platform for some minutes, dismayed that he could not think of any solution to the worsening problem, thought that he might have an answer. ‘Great heavens!’ he exclaimed, as it occurred to him. ‘Templer, do you remember your Ovid?’
Cornet Templer was taken aback.
‘Come, man: how did Hercules cleanse the Augean stables?’
Templer thought a moment. ‘He diverted the river through them. But what—’
Hervey did not let him finish. ‘See, there’s a bend in the river yonder,’ he said, pointing upstream; ‘we can cut a channel and let in water. It should loosen the quicksand and we might then be able to get him out — that, or it will be over quickly for the wretched beast.’
Templer gave the orders at once to Subedar Thangraj. He in turn got the sepoys and others who had gathered on the bank to work with their bare hands, and in half an hour they had made the cutting, and water began to flow towards the fussunded elephant. At first it looked as though all that would happen was the merciful drowning of the beast, now utterly exhausted and seemingly resigned to its fate, but after a few more minutes the quicksand started to loosen. The attendants put ropes around the animal’s quarters and the combined strength of fifty men and two elephants now braced for a final effort. The water was fast rising, and the ropes might not bear the strain. But at the signal, all pulled as if their own lives depended on it — and out he came, like a cork from a bottle.
The beast was done for. He had been stuck fast for a full five hours and every rib showed. He stood, swaying, as if he might collapse at any moment. ‘Brandy, Subedar sahib: fetch him some brandy,’ said Hervey.
Subedar Thangraj found a bottle from the bat-horse packs and, mixed with water in a bucket, the brandy was proffered to the exhausted elephant by his mahout. And it seemed not without some effect, for although he continued to sway on his feet, he began to step from side to side, showing no sign of wanting to lie down. The attendants were overjoyed, and began an incoherent babbling which nevertheless conveyed appreciation of the sahibs’ ingenuity. And then suddenly there was excited pointing and more jabbering: ‘Salutri, sahib, salutri!’ shouted the one with some Urdu.
Salutri? Hervey was baffled: where in all of Hindoostan were they to find a veterinarian? He tried to tell them this, but they pointed more insistently: ‘Salutri, salutri!’ Hervey turned to look — astounded.
‘Matthew Hervey, I never supposed for a moment that you would take my advice,’ said Selden as he rode up, followed by a half-dozen lancers, saffron pennants fluttering — the distinguishing colour of the princely state of Chintal.
The last time Hervey had heard that voice was in Dover the best part of two years before. Hatless, he held his arm out to the side and made the smallest bow of his head, smiling with incredulity as he did so: ‘Mr Selden, by what providence is it that we should meet thus?’
The salutri laughed. ‘Doubtless you would say it was the will of God, but I should not wish to debate divinity again with you — at least, not here. It is a great world into which we are born, but a small one in which we choose to live. Who are your friends?’
‘Oh, forgive me,’ said Hervey, conscious now of Templer and Locke standing silent next to him. ‘Let me present Mr Locke, lieutenant of Marines in His Majesty’s Ship Nisus, and Cornet Templer of the Madras Light Cavalry.’ Both made bows. ‘Gentlemen,’ continued Hervey, turning to them, ‘may I present Mr Selden, lately veterinary surgeon to the 6th Light Dragoons.’
Selden, now dismounted, held out his hand to each. ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said, smiling the while, ‘you are standing on the left bank of the Sukri. May I therefore welcome you on behalf of the Rajah of Chintal to his domain.’
They expressed themselves grateful but explained that the crossing was unintentional. One of the mahouts began to talk rapidly in his own tongue, and Selden quizzed him with considerable fluency. He turned to Hervey again. ‘It appears, too, that I must thank you on the rajah’s behalf for rescuing one of his favourite hunting elephants. The rajah is a great shikari: we have been in these parts for a week’s sport and these elephants were bathing before their return to our hunting camp. Come, let me offer you some refreshment. Our camp is but a mile away, and we don’t strike until tomorrow, though the rajah has returned to Chintalpore, unfortunately — the Nizam of Haidarabad visits and there’s much to attend to.’
Here was fortune indeed. He was met with Selden, an object of his mission to India, and a month, surely, before he might be able to do so through the offices of Calcutta. And the nizam himself was about to pay a visit to Chintalpore. Hervey was turning over the possibilities in his mind even as he accepted Selden’s invitation.
Templer, however, was concerned for the propriety — and the legality — of Company troops entering the rajah’s domain, even with an invitation.
‘Very well, then,’ Hervey concluded, with as indifferent an air as he could manage, ‘it seems that Mr Templer shall have to return directly to Guntoor. However, Mr Locke and I accept with the greatest pleasure!’