Guns to the Far East

by V. A. Stuart

  Why, she asked herself dazedly, had she not thought of the river before? If she could procure a boat and a native boatman willing to row herself and the children down river for the promise, on arrival in Lucknow, of a substantial reward, then the forty miles which now separated her from her goal need not be quite so daunting as she had initially supposed. The road was out of the question—it would be teeming with mutinous sepoys, the out-stations it served, Khyrabad and Muhona, probably in the same state of anarchy as Sitapur—and clearly to attempt to make the journey on foot through the jungle, with three helpless children, would be beyond her strength. But the river offered hope and … She caught her breath on a sob. In Lucknow, God willing, Lavinia and Tom would be waiting—anxiously, no doubt—for her arrival. She and the children would have a roof over their heads—the quarters Lavinia had invited her, weeks ago, to share—they would be with their own kith and kin, guarded by British soldiers of Tom’s regiment, who would protect them, if the mutineers should grow bold enough to launch an attack on Lucknow itself. Sir Henry Lawrence, wise and farsighted man, had provisioned his Residency for a siege …

  Almost with impatience, Harriet waited for the dawn. When it came, she roused the two older children and, promising that they should have the water they craved if they helped her to find the river, she set off, careful to keep the newly lighted eastern sky always to her left. At first, refreshed by their sleep, Phillip and Augusta ran ahead of her, the little boy manfully trying to open a path for her through the tangled undergrowth, but after an hour, both became weary and Augusta started to wail that she was thirsty and could go no further. Fearful that the child’s loud sobs might lead to their discovery, Harriet chided her sharply, her own hopes sadly dashed and her energy flagging.

  “Where is the river, Mamma?” Phillip asked. “Do you know where it is?”

  “It’s only a little further,” Harriet told him, without conviction. “Take Augusta’s hand, darling, and help her along. We’ll find it soon … you must be brave, both of you. It’s just that it’s difficult to see exactly where it is, with all these trees getting in the way.”

  It was more than difficult, she thought grimly; not only did the trees obscure their view but there was a sameness about the whole landscape which rendered it well nigh impossible for her to be certain that they were going in the right direction. A huge, gnarled banyan tree, which she had taken as a landmark to gauge their progress, was echoed by one exactly similar in shape and size only twenty yards further on and she had to look back to the first before she could be sure that it was not the same. And the sun was rising higher, brazen and pitiless; soon, she knew, they would have to find shelter from its powerful rays and wait, still tormented by thirst, until it sank and permitted them to continue their search. If they did not find the river by nightfall, their chances of survival would be slight …

  “Oh, God,” she prayed silently. “Help us … do not abandon us here. These are Thy children, Thine own little ones … didst Thou not say that Thou would’st answer prayers offered in their name?”

  “Mamma …” Phillip said, his lower lip trembling, his small face bloated and blistered beneath the useless little sailor cap he wore, “Mamma, I’m so tired—please may I stop? Augusta won’t walk, I have to drag her and one of her shoes has come off.”

  He sounded so lost and defeated that Harriet’s heart went out to him in helpless pity. “All right, darling,” she said, making a great effort to hide her own feelings, as she pointed to the nearer of the giant banyan trees. “Lie down there, under the roots of that tree, both of you. I’ll go and look for Augusta’s shoe.” As an afterthought, she laid the baby under the twisting roots between them, noticing with dismay as she did so that Augusta’s shoeless foot was badly swollen, the child white with pain. “Tie her poor little foot in this,” she instructed, giving Phillip her scarf. “In case I can’t find her shoe. And—look after Baby for me, won’t you?”

  Relieved of the baby’s weight, she retraced her steps at a brisker pace than she had hitherto managed to keep up, and found the shoe beneath a clump of thorny brushwood about two hundred yards from where she had left the exhausted children. It was as she knelt to pick it up that she heard Ayah’s voice, calling her by name, and stumbling to her feet with a strangled cry of thankfulness, saw the woman coming towards her. Ayah was not alone; there were three men with her, rough looking ryots in ragged cotton dhotis, one of whom was armed with a matchlock of ancient pattern, which he held somewhat uncertainly in front of him, its muzzle pointed towards herself. But Harriet had no eyes for his weapon; her gaze went to the earthenware chatti which Ayah bore on her shoulder and she said, making no attempt to disguise her relief and gratitude, “Oh, Ayah—you came! I cannot thank you enough, I …” She had spoken in English and then, seeing the look of suspicion in the face of the villager with the matchlock, repeated her greeting in fluent Hindustani. “Have you brought us water? The little ones are in sore need of it.”

  “I have brought water,” Ayah confirmed. “Also chapattis.” She indicated a bundle, tied up in a dirty white cloth. This was welcome news but Harriet hesitated. There was an odd note in Ayah’s voice, a subtle change in her manner which, if not insolent, was bordering on it … and she had not made the customary salaam.

  “Is there anything wrong, Ayah?” she asked.

  Ayah shook her head. “I came, as the Memsahib asked, bringing food and water. Where are the baba-log?”

  “They are nearby resting.” Knowing with what joy the children would greet their Ayah, Harriet was about to lead her to their hiding place when one of the men said, in a harsh whisper, “Tell the Mem our price.”

  “Your price?” Harriet echoed bitterly, scarcely able to believe the evidence of her own ears. “Is there a price for helping us, then?”

  “We are poor people,” the man said sullenly. “And we take great risks to bring you this food. Our brothers of the Company Army would punish us if they knew. Our price is fifty rupees— give it to us and we will leave the food and water and return to our village.”

  She had little more than the fifty rupees he had demanded on her, Harriet thought, and she had hoped to use most of the money as advance payment to a boatman, when they reached the river. Her heart sinking, she asked quietly, addressing her question to the Ayah, “Does this mean that you will not give us shelter in your village, as I had also asked?”

  Ayah was silent, avoiding her gaze and the man with the matchlock said harshly, “We cannot—the risk is too great. The sepoys are everywhere, hunting for the sahib-log—they come from Khyrabad as well as from Sitapur, and the word is that they have risen also in Shahjehanpur, throwing off the Company’s yoke and killing all, mems and babas, as well as the sahibs who commanded them. Soon they will rise in Cawnpore and even in Lucknow. The Company’s Raj is ended, Memsahib.”

  “No!” Harriet protested. “You are wrong—you listen to lies.”

  The man smiled thinly. “We see what is happening with our own eyes. Today you beg us for help—yesterday you would have driven past us in your carriage without sparing us a glance, without observing that we are in rags and our children’s bellies empty. Now you are in rags and it is your children who cry out for food and drink.” He spat his contempt in the dust at Harriet’s feet. “Pay us and we will go. We will do you no harm … but the price is fifty rupees.”

  “That is all the money I have with me.” Harriet told him. It went against the grain to plead with such a man but, for her children’s sake, she knew that she had to try. “I had hoped to use the money for the hire of a boat to take us to Lucknow. I will give you ten—or fifty if you will shelter us and help us on our way to Lucknow.”

  “You will not find a boatman willing to accept your hire,” the man retorted impatiently. “Nor a village where they will give you shelter … rather will any you approach betray you to the sepoys. But we will not betray you if you pay us what we ask.”

  His words struck a chill to Harriet’s heart. W
ere they, she wondered aghast, could they possibly be true? Her hands trembling, she felt for the small bag of money, which she had placed in the bosom of her tattered dress for safety on leaving the carriage. “I will pay you twenty-five. That is all I—”

  “Fifty,” the ryot countered, his expression suddenly ugly. He motioned Ayah to set down her water chatti and, raising his matchlock to his shoulder, took aim at the chatti. “I will shoot if you do not pay, Memsahib, and then you will have no water for your little ones.”

  Ayah muttered a protest, tears starting to her eyes but the man ignored her and Harriet reluctantly counted out fifty rupees into the outheld hands of one of the other men. The owner of the matchlock lowered his weapon and gave her a mock salaam. “Eat well, Memsahib,” he bade her cynically. “And drink your fill.” He signed to his companions to follow him but Ayah, moved to pity, lingered for a moment at Harriet’s side.

  “Take this, Memsahib,” she whispered. “For the boat.” The little pearl ring was restored to Harriet’s finger. “The river is not in the direction you were going, it is behind you. Walk back—there is a cart-track not very far away, which will lead you to the river. Do not delay—go there as soon as you and the little ones have eaten. Seek an old man named Mahee Singe; he will help you. He—” One of the men called out to her to hurry and Ayah laid the cloth-covered bundle of chapattis at Harriet’s feet and, without a backward glance, ran off to catch up with her companions.

  Her fifty rupees seemed to Harriet well spent when she rejoined the children with the provisions they had bought. The water, stale and luke warm though it was, tasted like nectar to her parched lips; Phillip and Augusta took on a fresh lease of life when, at last, their thirst abated. They fell upon the chapattis with exclamations of delight and the baby lay gurgling on her lap after she had fed him and sponged his tortured little body with a handkerchief, wrung out in a little of the precious liquid. They set off for the river, finding the cart-track Ayah had indicated with little difficulty but the sun was now almost at its zenith and, remembering the toll it had taken of them the previous day, Harriet stifled her impatience and deliberately set a slow pace, pausing every fifteen or twenty minutes to rest. It was afternoon when suddenly, to her heartfelt joy, she glimpsed the sun-bright water of her goal a hundred yards or so ahead of them, at a bend in the track. There was a village, many of the houses built on stilts over the water, about the same distance to her right, she saw, and she halted, bidding the two older children keep out of sight until she could reconnoitre it.

  Leaving them to crouch obediently in the shade of a clump of trees, she moved forward with the caution which bitter experience had taught her, and subjected the village to a careful scrutiny, shading her eyes with her free hand. There were boats drawn up on the muddy bank, some fashioned from hollowed-out tree trunks, the rest of more conventional construction and one—a squat, high-prowed sailing vessel, ideal for the purpose she had in mind—lay anchored in shallow water on the far side of a line of rush-thatched houses. Apart from half a dozen women, spreading their washing on the ground for the sun to bleach, she could detect no signs of undue activity and, after a while, she saw the women, their task completed, make a leisurely return to the village, whose other occupants were seemingly following the usual village practice and sleeping through the heat of the day.

  It looked safe enough, Harriett thought, yet still she hesitated, remembering what the ryot with the matchlock rifle had said earlier that day. “You will not find a boatman willing to accept your hire nor a village where they will give you shelter. Rather will any you approach betray you to the sepoys …” Dear heaven, was he right, she wondered, could people like these change overnight from docile peasants to enemies, ready to betray and steal, perhaps even to kill those who had previously been their rulers? Or were the people of Ayah’s village the exception, motivated more by fear than by hatred?

  Ayah had returned her ring, it was true, but in pity, not in gratitude or love and she had gone without even a farewell to the white children to whom, it had always seemed, she was devoted … Harriet bit back a sigh. There was no understanding what had happened, no reason within her comprehension which could explain why Jemmy’s sepoys had murdered him in front of his wife and children.

  She moved forward slowly, tears blinding her. She would go to this village, would ask for Mahee Singe; even if they refused to allow her to stay, at least they would direct her to the man she sought—the old man whom Ayah said she could depend on for help. He might be in the village, a fisherman, perhaps, or—since Ayah had seemed confident of his loyalty— a Government pensioner. Regretting now that she had not asked Ayah for more precise details concerning Mahee Singe, she stumbled on, her baby on her hip, the tears flowing unchecked down her flushed and dusty cheeks.

  She was almost within hailing distance of the village when she saw the bodies and halted, numb with shock. There were four of them—three men and a woman, all of whom were known to her—and there was a dead horse lying nearby. All had been shot and … She turned her head away, fighting down nausea. All had been hideously mutilated, the woman with such bestial savagery that Harriet could not bring herself to look a second time. Less than a week ago, she thought, her mind rebelling against the memory, Mrs Gowan and her husband—the Commanding Officer of the 9th Oudh Irregulars— had dined with Jemmy and herself. So, too, had the young Assistant-Surgeon, John Hill, and Lieutenant Greene and his wife. Now four of their five guests lay … there, unburied, exposed for any passing ryot to gloat over, until the jungle scavangers should complete the work they had already begun. And she, fool that she was, she had been about to enter the village to plead for help … Choking uncontrollably, Harriet began to run, the baby almost falling from her arms and setting up a thin, protesting wail which she was forced to stifle, a hand over his mouth.

  “Dear God,” she prayed. “Oh merciful Father in Heaven … don’t let them find us! Don’t let them hear!”

  She regained the track, her heart pounding, and paused there for a moment to get her breath, listening fearfully, every sense alert, for sounds of pursuit. None came and she staggered on towards the clump of trees where she had left Phillip and Augusta, the baby’s weight almost more than she could sustain. And then she saw them coming to meet her, two small, wobegone figures in their filthy, tattered clothes, each holding the hand of a white-bearded old native. They were chattering to him trustingly in their fluent, chirping Hindustani, and he was answering them, laughing with them, encouraging them to go with him to … what? To the death meted out to the Gowans and poor young Greene and the doctor? Oh, God in Heaven, not to that, not to … The river was preferable. It was near enough. If she called to them and they ran, all three of them together … God would give her strength to carry her baby those last few desperate yards and …

  Harriet’s lips moved but no sound came from them. The children saw her and called out to her joyfully. She took two swaying paces towards them and then the bright sunlight faded and she was in darkness, falling into a deep abyss to which, it seemed, there was no bottom and no end …

  When she recovered consciousness, the white-bearded old man was kneeling beside her, holding a cup of water to her lips and little Phillip clumsily dabbed at her face with a cloth wrung out in water, calling to her anxiously, begging her to wake up.

  “Do not be afraid, Memsahib,” the old native bade her gently in English. “We will not harm you or your little ones. We are friends here.”

  “Friends?” Harriet echoed bitterly. “Are those—are the bodies of my people evidence of your friendship?” She sat up, horrifled to see that a crowd of villagers had gathered about herself and her children, hemming them in, cutting off their escape to the river.

  “You saw them?” the old man said. “I am sorry that you did. But we did not kill them, I swear to you, Memsahib. That was the work of the sepoys who betrayed their allegiance— we were powerless to prevent it. The sepoys commanded us to leave the bodies exposed but when the
sun goes down, we will bury them—as Christians are buried, with a cross above each one.”

  His tone, as much as his words, carried conviction and Harriet’s fears began at last to fade. One of the women, she saw, was nursing the baby, cradling him in her arms and crooning to him softly; another had little Augusta on her knee—they would not do that, she thought thankfully, if there were murder in their hearts. Feeling tears of relief in her eyes, she looked up into the old man’s dark lined face and asked hesitantly, “Are you … are you Mahee Singe?”

  He smiled. “Ji-han, Memsahib, that is my name. Your Ayah, Sunda Dass, sent word to me that you were in need of help and I went in search of you, finding the two little ones before I saw you.”

  “Why should you help us?” Harriet questioned. “When others refuse?”

  “For seventeen years I served as chuprassi to the British Resident at the Court of the King of Oudh,” Mahee Singe told her proudly. “When Outram Sahib left, he rewarded me with the tessaildarship of two villages—this and another—and I live here in retirement. I will not betray my salt, Memsahib, nor will my people. Trust us—we will protect you and, if need be, hide you from the treacherous dogs of sepoys, who rebel against the Company’s Raj.” He sighed. “When the other sahiblog came, with the sepoy curs howling at their heels, we were unprepared, taken by surprise, and we could not save them. But now we are armed and ready. We will give you food and shelter and, when it is safe to do so, we will take you to Lucknow.”

  Harriet wept as she thanked him. For the next ten days, she and the children stayed in the village, treated with respect and touching kindness by Mahee Singe and his people. On several occasions, marauding sepoys entered the area but no word of the presence of the fugitives was allowed to reach their ears and, true to his promise, the old tessaildar had the bodies of their murdered victims buried a little distance away, with a roughly fashioned wooden cross to mark each grave. On the evening of the ninth day, to Harriet’s joy, some fishermen brought Sita Ram to the village. The orderly was in peasant dress, his uniform discarded; he had managed to desert from his regiment, he said, on the eve of its departure with several others for Delhi and, on his advice, it was decided to make an attempt to reach Lucknow under his escort the following day.