The Tigress of Mysore

by Allan Mallinson

  ‘No sign of artillery?’

  ‘None, General.’

  ‘Nor scouting patrols?’

  ‘None.’

  He turned to Worsley. ‘Very well; you’ll wish to return to your troop. A close eye, if you please, on the Pindaree camp, and action if they stir.’ He’d no need to be any more explicit. Worsley would do what he had to.

  ‘General.’

  ‘Carry on … And, Mr Kynaston: good work.’

  ‘General.’

  They took their leave and kicked into a gallop for the forest edge, Worsley thinking only on how quickly he could gather up his scattered command. As for interference by the enemy, it was good to be mounted on corn-fed horses (even on short rations of late), for if there were need, they’d be able to out-gallop a grass-fed Pindaree’s.

  ‘Major Garratt, if you please,’ said Hervey briskly.

  A galloper sped off to fetch him.

  Major Parry closed to his side again.

  ‘Three thousand, General?’

  ‘No matter. It’s as we thought,’ adding that with the Nizams, they’d not be so very greatly outnumbered – and they’d certainly have the advantage in discipline. ‘But only a thousand on the move: d’ye suppose they reckon us an easy prize?’

  ‘Or might the rest be, as you say, waiting to see the way of the wind?’

  ‘Quite. But we’ll see what we’ll see.’

  Parry could only admire his composure, and hope indeed that the wind was favourable.

  Garratt galloped up. ‘General?’

  ‘We may soon see cavalry a mile or so distant. I can only surmise their purpose is to prevent our reaching the palace. We shall deal with them in customary fashion. I shall bring up one of the Nizam’s – Gordon’s – on your left, and the other as support, and the brigade will advance in two lines. You will command the first line and I the support. In the charge, your right troop will direct. Guns will remain with the Somersets until the rally. Judge your moment to charge, but give the enemy no time. They perhaps intend a good display for the palace, and if we catch them right it will go doubly to our advantage.’

  ‘Very good, General.’

  Parry looked troubled. ‘General, with respect, leading the second line; you are commander of the field force. Oughtn’t the brigade to be—’

  ‘I’m obliged to you, Major Parry. There are two brigadiers in the event of mishap, and Lindesay the senior.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Serjeant Acton smiled. He could have told him that himself.

  ‘Gallopers!’

  Orders flew to the Nizams and the Somersets, and the guns, who cursed loudly at being made to unhook instead of going on with the Sixth.

  Dennie’s men began forming square, the first time Hervey had seen a battalion do so since Waterloo. Once dressed, the order came to load with ball, and then ‘Fix bayonets!’

  He touched his peak to them as he trotted by. ‘Stand-fast, Light Infantry; your time will come!’

  Colonel Dennie raised his sword to the salute, then turned and ordered ‘Skirmishers out!’

  In the far distance the host of ‘Pindaree’ horsemen at last made their appearance.

  The Sixth were already forming two lines, with Gordon’s coming up on their left. Hervey placed himself centre and fifty yards to the rear, the second regiment of the Nizam’s trotting up in two ranks and halting a dozen lengths behind him. Armstrong saluted as he trotted past to take post at the rear of the Sixth’s second rank. Hervey touched the peak of his cap by return – no point now wondering if he’d heed his words (‘let others have their share of the shot’) – then drew his sword. He’d have drawn it at the head of the first line if he’d not had regard for what Parry had been at pains to remind him. Garratt was anyway capable of leading a charge, and the captains knew their business. The real decision lay in when and where to commit the supports. If all they faced were a thousand, he was sure the first line would break them, even just a few hundred sabres – if, that is, they drove in pell-mell and the Pindarees didn’t get their lance points down at too fast a pace. He’d just have to look out for trickery – a masked battery or some such (another thousand waiting in the wings, say). Then the supports would be decisive. It wasn’t likely, but he couldn’t entirely rule it out, no matter how sharp-eyed Worsley’s troop had been.

  ‘Draw swords!’

  Garratt’s words of command brought three hundred sabres from their scabbards, blades flashing in the sunlight.

  The Nizams, flank and rear, drew theirs, making eight hundred in all.

  Hervey could see now that the Pindarees were halted, with a frontage of several hundred yards. If they chose now to advance they’d almost certainly overlap his line on the right, and possibly the left if the Nizams didn’t open out a little.

  ‘Walk-march!’

  Garratt’s trumpeter sounded the order.

  The line billowed forward.

  Hervey’s followed.

  Fifty yards on, and no move from the Pindarees.

  ‘Trot!’

  The horses knew the trumpet call. Hooves began pounding the hard earth two-time.

  With a nod to the commandant of the Nizams behind him, a brawny Deccani Mussulman, Hervey bid the supports follow.

  Still the Pindarees remained motionless.

  Hervey smiled grimly. It was a fault he’d observed before in India – waiting, in order to be sure. Fatal.

  With a furlong to go Garratt put them into a gallop.

  Down at last came the Pindaree lances – but only those on the flanks came forward to meet them.

  Hervey quickened the pace but held short of a gallop. Both the right of the Sixth’s line and left of the Nizams began extending so as not to be taken in flank.

  ‘Good work!’ (though no one heard).

  Then the bugle sounding the charge, and the sabres pointing …

  He quickened the pace again, but still a canter, a hundred yards behind the first line – perfect.

  Now just twenty yards for Garratt to the Pindarees …

  Then the crash of men and horses, blades and points.

  And then the check; always the check – an age sometimes, in truth just seconds – before the effect revealed. Men – Pindarees – gave way, rallied, gave way again, turned once more to fight; or yielded, fled or fell bloodily from the saddle. The lance was supreme in the charge, useless in the melee. Those who threw them away and drew swords bore it longer. But the crush foiled many a one.

  Garratt’s line made progress, but it was time for more steel.

  ‘Now, Commandant! Both flanks,’ shouted Hervey, gesturing left and right with his sabre.

  In joining the melee, the support line must not disorder the first line by too great a momentum.

  Regulations. All well on paper but …

  They drove in at a gallop.

  In an instant the Pindaree flanks, inclined at too great an angle to see them bearing down, ceased to exist. Hervey made for the centre surrounded by his gallopers, Acton as ever a length and a half behind.

  Regulations.

  He drove with the point for a Pindaree battling with a stricken dragoon, pitching him from the saddle like a sack in a tiltyard, then cutting at a second trying to turn about, who took Acton’s point a second later.

  A pistol exploded so close as to deafen. Minnie stumbled over a falling horse but recovered – heaven knew how. Hervey grasped back the reins and dug in his spurs, lying along her neck and cutting left and right. She leapt at a gap, just missing a spear – which Acton dealt with, giving point as he followed through – and Hervey drove his own at another spearman who’d left it too late to draw sword instead.

  Then he was clear; nothing before him but the backs of fleeing men.

  But he was bloodied and breathless, the ringing in his ears as loud as the battle behind. He was exhilarated by the charge, as always – as every man – but this time strangely spent, though an affair of just minutes. Indeed, one of the quickest he’d known.r />
  But now he turned to weigh the butcher’s bill.

  It was savage.

  XXV

  The Race to the Quick

  That evening

  ‘There’s nothing more I can do for him, I fear, Colonel. His lungs are quite certainly full of blood. He can’t last the night.’

  Milne spoke softly. He was as fond of Garratt as he supposed Hervey was.

  The major lay unconscious. The hospital was a fine haveli, which on Milne’s orders the dragoons had cleared downstairs of all but a few chairs and instead brought in straw – better, he said, to ‘muck out’, like a stable, and as comfortable as a bed to men still in the remains of uniform. They’d stripped and washed those in the beds upstairs, the lesser wounded. Clean sheets for them were practicable as well as decent.

  Milne had not been short of assistance. ‘Annie and Miss Hervey haven’t slept, I’d say. Nor the wives. I tell you, they’ve not spared themselves the filthiest chore.’

  Hervey nodded. Whores and harridans the dragoons had called the camp-followers in Portugal and Spain – even some of the wives – but regular ‘Magdalens’ when it came to this.

  ‘And the Indian women too,’ Milne added. ‘They’ve done fine service.’

  ‘Capital,’ said Hervey, trying hard to maintain the mask of the soldier steeled to the price of his profession. ‘And Armstrong?’

  Milne raised an eyebrow. ‘I fancy a surgeon faced with a bigger bill would have amputated – so much blood – but the wound’s clean enough. Not all agree, but I swear by permanganate. I’ve closed it with a great many stitches, I might add. But he kept insisting he’d return to duty, so I’ve trussed him like a lunatic to restrain the limb – and himself. A fortnight’s light duties. I can’t be held responsible if it’s any less.’

  ‘I shall see to it. And St Alban?’

  ‘He too insisted on returning to duty, but I’ve strictly forbidden it. The wound’s deeper than Armstrong’s and he has crushed ribs. I believe he’ll be well, but there’s a risk of oedema of the lungs, which can be fatal. Indeed, it more usually is. I’ve dosed him with laudanum to reduce the respiratory distress. Miss Hervey’s been tending him with especial care.’

  Hervey nodded again. ‘Twelve dead, and some I can scarcely afford.’

  ‘I’m sorry. They were dead, or as good as, by the time I reached them.’

  ‘The Nizams fared better, and they have a good surgeon.’

  ‘Yes, a fine fellow. And what of your infantry, Colonel? I’ve not heard.’

  ‘The Dorsets and the Westmorelands barely a dozen dead between them. They really were most skilfully handled. The Somersets none at all, except to the hornets. Extraordinary that a thing so small should be so deadly.’

  ‘Omnes feriunt, ultima necat …’

  Hervey sighed. ‘Indeed. And one of the Thirteenth’s succumbed to a krait, and another may do so yet.’

  ‘Indeed? Were I not occupied here I’d see him for myself – to observe the symptoms; their surgeon’s admirable.’

  ‘Doubtless there’ll be others when the grass-cutters begin work.’

  Milne stooped to check Garratt’s breathing, then rose again, satisfied there was no change. ‘How, may I ask, do your operations proceed?’

  Hervey took him aside. ‘I’m excessively content. The only hostile troops are now within the palace – the fortress. Those in the forest threw down their arms soon enough, and the rest of the Pindarees yielded to Worsley without setting foot out of camp. Swore they’d been loyal throughout – doubtless a retrospective decision. The fugitives from the charge must’ve made a profound impression. That and the promissory notes of gold – not in my experience unusual in these lands.’

  ‘Condottieri – was ever thus?’

  ‘And we must be glad of it. Better to buy with gold than pay in lead.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Oh, and I have a battery of howitzers. Colonel Bell managed to buy one after all. And we have the guns from the forest.’

  ‘You’ll forgive me, Colonel: howitzers?’

  ‘They shoot at a high angle – over the walls rather than battering at them. Explosive shell. They’re in action as we speak.’

  ‘“Now Jericho was straitly shut up because of the children of Israel: none went out, and none came in.”’

  Hervey nodded. Joshua had been his first hero. He’d had spies in Jericho, one of them a harlot. Then having gained his intelligence, he’d had the trumpets blow.

  ‘I have my Rahab, too, doctor. Or rather, Fairbrother has – several of them.’

  Milne allowed himself a smile. ‘I had heard that. You count, then, on their asking for terms?’

  ‘That would be a fine thing, except that the Ranee’s life is all that Ashok Acharya has to bargain with, and that, by all accounts, is still not in his gift, and he daren’t risk storming the citadel for fear of killing her. We could starve him out, but we might starve the Ranee too. There’s a tunnel to the citadel, but he’s stove it in, and flooded it under the moat. I fear it’ll only be to powder and the bayonet that he yields. But I’m damned if we’ll do it like Badajoz.’

  Milne had no idea what were the imperfections at Badajoz. He wondered instead, as he had since leaving Sthambadree, if it were the moment to speak of Kezia …

  But Hervey had business to be about. ‘Very well, doctor. You’ll send me word if … when there’s any change?’

  ‘I will. But, with your leave, not before dawn, for I would that you had some sleep, and I wouldn’t wish to disturb it. Be assured there’ll be someone with him throughout. The chaplain at least.’

  Hervey nodded again, looked once more at the unconscious Garratt and said a silent prayer.

  ‘By the bye, he said more than once that he wished to speak with you. Something seemed to trouble him.’

  Hervey fancied he knew. So did Milne.

  ‘If he comes to, then I would that you send for me at once. The least I owe him is a peaceful end, his mind at ease.’

  Milne nodded. In truth, though, he wasn’t sure if he would send for him. It was the very devil of a thing to judge.

  ‘No, Captain Hart, I must do it myself. I do appreciate that it is a sapper’s business, but in the pitch dark without having seen it, you’ll have the devil of a job.’

  The captain of Madras Pioneers had done all that honour demanded. Even when he’d conceded that a boat of any sort was bound to be seen in the moonlight, Fairbrother was adamant that neither he nor any of his sappers enter the water with him. He would swim with just Abhina, the hijda with whom he’d ‘fished’ in the moat the day before (and who’d promised the sentries many good things to let them), and with Askew, whom he’d come to trust. Even if there’d been no moon, he’d have insisted on it. In truth, closing the sluice would be the easiest of things, especially for a sapper. It hardly needed exploration. But if the tunnel was to be the means by which the evil of Ashok Acharya – and all his fugitive thugs – was brought to an end, then he wanted it to be by his hand. For Abhina had told him of Mira Bai.

  Nor indeed would the tunnel be retribution enough. He would seek out the strangler and do to him what he’d done to that brave, dutiful and noble-born woman, wife of that fine old gentleman-soldier and mother of his children – the man without whom they’d be hard-pressed now to know what was right to do, let alone how to do it.

  ‘And I cannot persuade you to have a boat ready to assist in case of mishap?’

  Fairbrother shook his head. ‘The risk’s too great. There are no muggurs, I assure you.’

  Captain Hart was a man of scientific training. He accepted that Fairbrother had seen none, and that at night the muggur’s habit was to come on land, but neither of these ‘facts’ was a basis for certainty. That the three were taking with them knives the size of hatchets seemed to argue his case for him. All he could do, however, was give him his hand and let them go into the night.

  And then wait and trust he was right to do so.

  A little
while later at the champak bush, the marker for the crossing, the three of them stripped to just a loincloth, slid into the water and began silently to swim, Askew with a capped pistol wrapped in oilskin between his teeth.

  The moat wasn’t wide by the standards of the great fortresses of Hindoostan, or even deep, its purpose more to prevent the walls being taken by surprise than to withstand prolonged siege. Even swimming cautiously, reaching the sluice didn’t take long, the moon giving them just enough light to see their line. Nor did closing it require any great effort, for gravity was on their side. There was just the faintest groan of the pulley as it lowered, nothing that the most bat-eared of sentries in the tower above could have heard. Yet Fairbrother wasn’t content until he’d made sure the sluice gate was firmly seated. Three times he dived, coming up between for air with as little sound as a fish might make rising to the fly. Throughout they spoke not a word – as if anything much had been possible with Abhina – managing with hand signals alone.

  In all, perhaps twenty minutes, twenty-five at most. And then the return, as carefully as they’d swum across, with Askew leading to make sure the bank was clear; and crawling out just as silently; and then, crouching, to the champak bush where they’d hid their clothes. And still not a word.

  Only when they were back at the place where the tunnel emerged, a simple bustee fifty yards on and just below the moat, did Fairbrother break silence.

  ‘Shabash, Abhina! Shabash!’ he beamed, shaking hands heartily. ‘Aap ka shukria.’

  And likewise with Askew.

  ‘I conclude the tunnel’s sealed,’ said Hervey stepping from the shadows.

  ‘Caca faat!’ (Only rarely did Fairbrother allow himself his island patois.) ‘General: I’d not thought you’d be here. It is sealed, well and truly!’

  ‘And your hijda was with you.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. And Askew.’