Sword of Fortune

by Christopher Nicole

  Richard scratched his chin as he tried to remember. ‘He was a sergeant in the guard.’

  ‘The same, monsieur,’ a prisoner told them.

  ‘And now he is general-in-chief? What has happened to General Peyraud?’

  ‘General Peyraud left the service of the Begum, a year ago.’

  ‘Left?’ Richard shouted. ‘To go where?’

  ‘General Peyraud left for the service of Tippoo Sahib in Mysore.’

  ‘My God!’ Richard said.

  ‘But that should make our task easier,’ Thomas said. ‘Rambeau’s nought but an upstart sergeant ye trained yerself, Dick.’

  ‘Yes,’ Richard said absently.

  Peyraud would surely have taken his wife with him. But would he also have taken his stepson, for whom surely he could bear no love, and whom Aljai, herself in need of protection, had sworn to protect?

  ‘Then what has happened since General Peyraud’s departure?’

  ‘There has been much trouble,’ the prisoner said. ‘There was a mutiny in the army, led by this Rambeau, against the Begum’s husband, who assumed command on General Peyraud’s departure.’

  ‘What did you say?’ Richard snapped. ‘The Begum’s husband?’

  ‘General le Vasseult, monsieur.’

  ‘Ha!’ Thomas gave a shout of laughter. ‘She married that boy of hers, by God!’

  ‘And there was a mutiny. So what happened?’

  ‘The Begum’s supporters were defeated, and she tried to escape. But she and General le Vasseult were taken. The General was executed, and the Begum was returned to Agra. Messieurs, it was a terrible thing to behold. They stripped her naked and made her sit astride a cannon. They tied her there for the whole journey back to Agra, and paraded her through the streets.’

  ‘My God!’ Richard gasped. ‘They did that to the Begum?’

  ‘Since that day she has not been seen, monsieur. Some say she is kept a prisoner in the palace by General Rambeau. Others say that she has been murdered. The general now rules in the name of Bhutta Reynaud, for the sake of Delhi.’

  ‘Who the devil is Bhutta Reynaud?’ Thomas demanded.

  ‘One of Sombre’s daughters by another woman,’ Richard answered. ‘Aljai always treated her as a slave. But she can only be a puppet, to satisfy the Great Mughal. How long ago did this happen?’ he asked the prisoner.

  ‘Four months, monsieur.’

  So she had been alive at least three months before, when she had managed to despatch her messenger. Alive. And dreaming of vengeance?

  ‘Well,’ Thomas remarked. ‘That’s surely no way to treat a lady, even if she is a succubus. Looks as if we’ll have to teach this fellow Rambeau a lesson, Dick me boy.’

  It was the first time he had sounded truly enthusiastic about the campaign. Perhaps, like himself, Richard thought, he found it impossible to imagine Aljai tied to the barrel of a cannon in the mid-day sun, tortured by the burning metal, and at the same time exposed to the jeers of the people she had ruled for so long.

  *

  Hanif put up scouts well ahead of his advance guard of cavalry, but his men reported that they could see the minarets of the Taj Mahal before there was any sign of an enemy. Then a body of horse was observed to be advancing under a flag of truce.

  Both Thomas and Richard rode out to meet it. Richard immediately recognised the burly, red-faced figure of ex-Sergeant Rambeau, riding at its head.

  ‘General Bryant! Ship Sahib!’ Rambeau greeted them courteously. ‘What means this invasion of the Begum’s viceroyalty?’

  ‘We have come on a visit to the Begum,’ Richard told him.

  ‘With an army, messieurs?’

  ‘I always travel with me army,’ Thomas said. ‘Just like I always travel with me bottle. A man can’t be too careful.’

  Rambeau swallowed. ‘Her Highness is not pleased, messieurs. It has been with difficulty that I have persuaded her not to attack your force, which I honestly believe is here in peace. It may be possible for me to persuade Her Highness to accept a visit from you two gentlemen, together with a small escort. But the remainder of your force must camp out here, at a suitable distance from the city.’

  ‘Listen, me boy,’ Thomas said. ‘Ye’re under a flag o’ truce, so I’m bein’ very forebearin’. I’ll give ye one hour to get out o’ my sight. In one hour’s time me army marches into Agra. If yer thinkin’ of stoppin’ me, ye’d best put yer defences in order.’ He pointed. ‘Bear in mind, I’ve come to see the Begum. If one hair of her head has been harmed, I’ll give ye to my women. An’ no more flags o’ truce, unless ye mean to surrender.’

  Rambeau gazed from his face to Richard’s, swallowed again, then without a word turned and led his entire troop of cavalry galloping off towards the city.

  ‘Let’s move,’ Richard said.

  Thomas shook his head. ‘I allowed him an hour, Dick. We’re honourable men.’

  Richard snapped his fingers. ‘An hour in which he can murder the Begum, if he hasn’t already done so.’

  ‘If he’s already done away wi’ her, then we’re wastin’ our time,’ Thomas said. ‘If he hasn’t, he’ll not do it now. She’s all the hope he has of escapin’ wi’ his neck.’

  Richard supposed he was right. But the next hour was one of the longest of his life, as the army rested and prepared food, and Thomas drank a bottle of rum.

  The moment the hour was up, the advance was resumed, but now the army was deployed in battle order, Hanif’s cavalry forming the right wing, Richard’s sepoys in extended order, four battalions under Hearsey in the centre and four under Birch on the left. The artillery, drawn by oxen, brought up the rear of the centre; Thomas was a believer in massing his guns.

  He rode with Richard, immediately in front of his cannon.

  The minarets grew larger, and they could see the domes of the mausoleum and the Pearl Mosque, as well as the red walls of the fortress.

  Then they saw a cloud of dust, heading east.

  ‘Begorrah, the rascal’s runnin’!’ Thomas shouted. ‘After him, Hanif. Bring the scoundrel back.’

  Hanif took a squadron of cavalry in pursuit, while Richard extended his order still further to allow the guns to be brought through the ranks; the four batteries were lined up, facing the city, the walls of which were crowded with people.

  When he was satisfied with the disposition of his forces, Thomas rode forward under a flag of truce, accompanied by Richard. They were met before the gate by a body of French soldiers.

  ‘Who commands here?’ Thomas demanded.

  ‘I have taken command, Ship Sahib. I am Colonel Lebrun.’

  ‘Well, Colonel, it looks to me as if yer general has run off.’

  ‘That he has, sir.

  ‘Then let me tell ye this: ye’ve fifteen minutes to march all yer men out here and pile yer arms, or me guns are goin’ to open fire and lay this city flat. When that is done, I’m goin’ to hang every last one of ye.’

  ‘And if we surrender?’

  ‘Yer lives are safe.’

  ‘Then we surrender, monsieur. Naturally.’

  ‘Bring ’em out,’ Thomas commanded.

  ‘Would that all our victories could be as bloodless as this one,’ Richard remarked, as the Sardhana garrison marched out and piled their arms before the elated Hariana troops.

  ‘Now where would be the fun in that, boy?’ Thomas demanded. ‘Ye’d better go see if yer woman is still alive.’

  Richard called for an escort of cavalry, and entered that so well-remembered town. Now indeed he was returning in triumph, where he had left in disgrace five years before. The people saluted him as he passed, and some cheered as they recognised him.

  He rode into the courtyard and dismounted. His men stood guard as he strode into the palace.

  ‘General Bryant!’ the women called. ‘Bryant Sahib!’

  Hamilton Dyce was there. ‘By God, but you are a sight for sore eyes, Richard Bryant,’ he said.

  Richard clasped his hand. ‘Wher
e is the Begum?’ he demanded.

  ‘You’ll have to ask these girls. I’m not allowed into the inner sanctum. But she should know,’ he indicated the reception chamber.

  A woman knelt there. She wore the orange sari her step-mother had delighted in, and her head was bowed, her hands together in front of her face in supplication.

  Richard strode towards her. ‘On your feet, Bhutta,’ he commanded.

  She shuddered, and rose.

  ‘Take me to the Begum.’

  Bhutta hesitated, then led him the length of the reception hall, and through the throne room.

  Aljai was not in her bedchamber. She was beneath it, in the vault she had had dug for her treasure chest. The chests still stood there, open and empty. Aljai was suspended by her roped wrists from a hook in the ceiling, her toes just able to scrape the floor.

  She was alive, but she had been cruelly beaten.

  ‘Aljai!’ Richard ran forward and cut the rope with a single sweep of his claymore, catching the naked body as it fell into his arms.

  He found himself, even at such a moment, amazed. Aljai was now over forty years of age and had, by all accounts, suffered most dreadfully during the last few months, yet her beauty seemed almost untarnished. Only a close inspection revealed the lines round her eyes, the tiny streaks of grey in her hair.

  Her eyes were as full of fire as ever.

  ‘Richard,’ she whispered as he carried her up the stairs and laid her on her divan. ‘You came back to me. Oh, my Richard!’ Then she sat up. ‘Have you taken Rambeau?’

  ‘Fetch water,’ Richard told the terrified girls. ‘And food. And prepare a bath. No, we have not taken Rambeau. But we will.’

  ‘He has stolen my treasure,’ she said. ‘I want him, Richard. I want him, and my treasure, here before me.’

  ‘You will have him,’ Richard promised.

  ‘Until then, I have her,’ Aljai said, shrugging disdainfully in the direction of the trembling Bhutta. ‘Oh yes, I have her.’

  Bhutta fell to her knees. ‘I but acted as Rambeau made me, Highness.’

  ‘Ha,’ Aljai snorted. ‘Well, you are going to suffer as Rambeau is going to suffer. I am going to cut off your fingers and your toes, your ears and your nose, your breasts and your buttocks. Then I am going to tear out your tongue. Then I am going to feed you to the dogs.’

  The girl gave a shriek and collapsed to the floor.

  ‘Calm down, Aljai,’ Richard said. ‘You can’t do that to your own stepdaughter.’

  ‘Do you think you can come here and immediately start giving me orders?’

  ‘Aljai, if I hadn’t come, you would never have given another order again. Now go with these girls and have yourself washed. You stink.’

  Aljai glared at him for several seconds, then flounced off the divan and into the bathing chamber.

  Richard waited until the door was closed, then raised Bhutta from the floor.

  ‘I’d make yourself scarce,’ he told the shivering girl. ‘Until she cools down.’

  Bhutta ran from the room.

  He sent word to Thomas that he had found the Begum. The Hariana army was already occupying the city, marching into the fortress, putting a guard over the Begum’s artillery park.

  Meanwhile Aljai, having eaten and drunk, had been bathed and perfumed, and dressed in her cloth-of-gold sari. She emerged to look over the prisoners.

  And Thomas.

  ‘The famous Ship Sahib,’ she remarked. ‘You have prospered since last we met.’

  ‘And ye have not. But I’m told I owe ye my life.’

  ‘And now I owe you mine. Well, perhaps not. That wretched coward did not even have the courage to kill me. When will he be returned here?’

  ‘Just as soon as Hanif gets back.’

  The Begum looked at the prisoners. ‘You will hang these men?’

  ‘No, Highness. I have promised them their lives.’

  ‘They are mutineers.’

  ‘Not against me, Highness. And will ye not need them? Ye’ll have to have an army, if ye can find a worthwhile commander. Yon Lebrun looks an honest man.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said thoughtfully. Will you not return to me, Richard?’

  ‘I’ll not have that,’ Thomas declared. ‘Richard rides wi’ me, now an’ always.’

  Aljai looked at the prisoners again. ‘Have them kneel, and beg my forgiveness,’ she said.

  *

  A feast was prepared, and the Begum told them of her experiences.

  ‘It happened when Peyraud announced that he was leaving me to seek service with Tippoo Sahib. He said it was because I would not let him wage war upon you, Ship Sahib. I would not let him wage war upon anyone. I am a woman; should I not wish to live at peace?’

  Richard, who had already conducted an unsuccessful search of the castle, could no longer contain his anxiety, and asked.

  ‘He took his wife with him?’

  ‘Caty? Oh, yes. She did not wish to go, but he was determined.’

  ‘And his children?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Michael as well. I tried to persuade him to leave the boy. It was my intention to return him to you. This I swear.’ Her eyes were like liquid silk as she looked into Richard’s. ‘But again he refused. I believe he regards the boy as his own. Anyway, away he went with an escort of his most trusted men. To tell the truth, I thought I was well rid of him. He had ruled my country like a dictator. He treated my husband and me like dirt.’

  ‘Your husband,’ Richard snorted. ‘Whatever possessed you to marry le Vasseult?’

  ‘Raoul,’ she mused. ‘Poor Raoul. He was handsome, my Richard, and virile and loyal.’

  ‘Ye thought Peyraud was loyal,’ Thomas pointed out.

  ‘So I did. But Raoul…he never had the chance to prove whether he would have stayed loyal to me or not. I made him general of the army. It was a grievous mistake. He was a master in bed, but he could not command men. Soon they openly defied him. And one day Rambeau announced he was taking over. He had such contempt for Raoul that he merely confined us to the palace.’

  ‘So you escaped,’ Richard said.

  ‘Could I remain in humble captivity to a monster like Rambeau? Yes, we escaped. I had to persuade Raoul to do it. He was terrified. With good reason, as it turned out. But if he had not been so afraid we might have made good our escape. As it was…’ the expression on her face was quite frightening. ‘We were recaptured. We had made a pact, that if we were overtaken, we would kill ourselves. When we knew our cause was hopeless, Raoul himself loaded the two pistols, gave one to me, and without hesitation, blew out his own brains. He had courage, at the end.’ She sighed. ‘I did not. I fired my pistol, but only singed my hair. Then Rambeau and his people were upon us. My God! They stripped poor Raoul, and cut him to pieces, piece by piece, before my eyes. They castrated him, then they cut off all his fingers and toes. They made me watch while they did these things, and they told me they would have done them to him, living, had they been able.

  ‘Then they left him for the vultures to pick. I thought my hour was come, but they wished to keep me alive. They stripped me, and tied me to the barrel of a gun.’

  ‘We heard about that,’ Thomas said, surprisingly gently.

  ‘Can you feel surprise that I hate them? They made me sit astride. Can you imagine? For three days I rode that cannon while they marched back here. And I was subjected to every conceivable insult and humiliation save rape itself, since to do that they would have had to take me off the cannon. Oh, the wretches. I was blistered for two months. I could not sit for over a month.

  ‘And when I was returned here it was as a prisoner of that scoundrel Rambeau. How he humiliated me! I shall never forget a moment of it.’

  ‘Still, all’s well that ends well,’ Thomas pointed out. ‘Ye got your message to us, and here we are, and here ye are, once again ruler of Sardhana.’

  ‘Nothing has ended.’ Aljai all but spat the words. ‘Nothing will be ended, until Rambeau is brought to me, bound and na
ked.’

  *

  Hanif returned two days later with prisoners.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Richard asked.

  ‘They’re her prisoners,’ Thomas pointed out.

  ‘But we are civilised men. We promised Rambeau his life if Aljai wasn’t killed.’

  Thomas grinned. ‘If she wasn’t harmed,’ he corrected. ‘I’d say a blistered bum followed by a flogging counts as harm. I reckon he has what’s comin’ to him.’

  Richard did what he could, in appealing to the Begum’s better instincts, something he had long doubted she had.

  ‘You have no right to pretend to be my conscience, Richard,’ she told him. ‘You have refused to stay and fight for me. So go. Leave me with my prisoners.’

  ‘I will leave when they have been executed,’ he said. Not before.’

  Aljai made a face. ‘Well then, let us execute them now. Together.’

  ‘In a civilised manner.’

  ‘Shall I tell you what they did to Raoul?’

  ‘You have already told me. Certainly they deserve death. So hang them.’

  ‘Not Rambeau,’ she said. ‘He will suffer.’

  ‘Then blow him from the mouth of a cannon.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘After he has suffered.’

  He could do no more, and Thomas would not support him. Rambeau’s companions were hanged the next day. Rambeau himself was tied to the muzzle of the gun, and while standing there was castrated by the Begum’s ladies; it took some time, and Aljai smiled at his screams. Only then was he blown apart.

  *

  Also dragged back with Rambeau was Biriappa, who had elected to flee when she had learned the Hariana army was approaching.

  Hanif was in quite as uncompromising a mood as the Begum, and strangled her with a knotted rope, on Aljai’s insistence.

  ‘Now the account is wiped clean, Richard sahib,’ he said, surveying the lifeless body at his feet.

  ‘My own account will never be wiped clean,’ Richard told him.

  ‘Do you still wish to be avenged on Peyraud?’ the Begum inquired, and clapped her hands for her ladies to drag the corpse away. ‘Are you not a fool, then, for refusing the opportunity to destroy him five years ago? All of these troubles would have been avoided, and your own happiness assured, had you done so. It is your own fault.’