Nightrunners of Bengal

by John Masters

  Before coming to the conference, Rodney had tried Sepoys Ramdass and Harisingh, charged with returning five days late from leave. They were types, wildly different but inseparable--Ramdass a sly, talkative little townsman from Bareilly; Harisingh a bovine peasant from a foothill village in the Kotdwara district--the one always leading the other into trouble. Harisingh pleaded guilty and offered no excuses; Ramdass spun a rigmarole which Rodney would not normally have believed--but he did this time. Ramdass said that the two of them had been returning from a visit with Harisingh’s father’s cousin in Cawnpore, and reached the Jumna ferry at Kalpi in good time. The boat wasn’t there, so they and a crowd of other travellers waited on the bank for three days.

  At last the ferrymen poled the boat back and said they’d been hiding. Why? Well, a village watchman wanted to take some chupattis across and demanded a free ride on the ground that he was for the moment a messenger of the god Shiva. The ferrymen refused; the watchman argued, so they threw him in the river and he drowned. Then they hid, because Shiva would be extremely angry. Waking up still alive three days later, they thought Shiva might have forgotten about them and rather nervously returned to their work.

  The sepoys finally crossed the river, and spent two more days praying at a roadside shrine in case Shiva thought they might have had something to do with the death of his messenger.

  Rodney had ordered that each forfeit five days’ pay, and when they were gone sat back in his chair, wondering. So the chupattis were travelling across the Ganges-Jumna plains too. They might be all over India.

  He snapped to attention. The colonel was saying, “. . . outbreak of arson in Barrackpore, particularly in the lines of the Thirty-fourth B.N.I. It seems extraordinary, but General Hearsey there believes that the incidents spring from an altercation which took place in January between a sepoy of the Thirty-fourth and a low-caste coolie employed in the Dum-Dum ammunition factory. Apparently the coolie taunted the sepoy by saying that the cartridges for the new rifle are greased with a mixture of pigs’ fat and cows’ fat. As it is customary, of course, for the sepoys to bite off the end of the cartridge and pour the powder into the barrel, the story has spread with great rapidity. The grease would defile Hindus and Mohammedans alike--in other words the whole Native Army--if the story were true.”

  “Is it?” Rodney exclaimed. That might explain the sweeper’s jeer at the sepoy the morning they got back from Kishanpur. A few of his men had been given the new Enfield rifle and cartridges at the end of December, and by now they all had them. Barrackpore and Dum-Dum were just outside Calcutta, but news of that sort travelled fast and might have been whispered among the men here within a few days. What an unbelievable folly to commit! It could easily be true. He could just see some goddamned accountant --probably sent from England with orders to do something about the well-known inefficiency of Anglo-India--adding up his sums and reckoning he could save the thousandth part of a pice on each cartridge.

  The colonel rebuked him. “Kindly do not interrupt me, Captain Savage. Thank you. As I was about to say, commanding officers have been instructed to assure the men that the grease is not defiling and that the rumour is untrue. It is suggested that sepoys be permitted to break these cartridges open by hand, instead of biting them, or even grease them with their own materials, until the matter has been thoroughly thrashed out.”

  “I hope they are thrashing it out, sir,” Rodney said. “It’s the sort of thing that could be very serious. And the suggestion about letting the men grease the cartridges themselves won’t be of much use to us. The ones we have are greased already; they’d just be spreading their ghi, or whatever they’d use, over the top of the other stuff.”

  “Damned tommyrot!” Major Anderson cried. “Johnny Sepoy will do what we tell him--always has, always will. If anyone’s raising trouble, they’re agitators, probably in the pay of the Russkis or the Frogs. Make ‘em all use the cartridges, and like ‘em, according to regulations. Shoot anyone for mutiny who refuses. That’ll bring out the agitators.”

  Caversham mopped his face. “Mr. Sanders, there are plenty of the old-pattern cartridges left, I expect?”

  “No, sir, there is none, and they are no use, besides, with the new rifles--and the annual musketry practice is due to start at the end of the month.”

  “Dear, dear, that’s a pity. Are you sure we have none of the old?”

  “Certainly I am sure, sir.” Munro Sanders, though as Scots as McCardle, spoke the pure, accurate English of a man who has learned it in school. He was a big Highlander, the son of a Caithness farmer, and his voice had the Gaelic lilt.

  Caversham crumpled his handkerchief into a ball and raised doubtful eyes. “What do you suggest, Major?”

  “Get on with the musketry, Colonel. Swear that the cartridges are not greased with this fat, if we must--but after that, by God, insist on discipline. It doesn’t matter what happened in the Thirty-fourth; this regiment’s sound.”

  Rodney could no longer contain himself; he leaned forward to attract the colonel’s attention. “May I speak, sir? I think this is important. In the last few years the sepoys’ world has been shaken up a lot. Oh, for instance, when they took away the field allowances the garrisons of newly conquered territories used to get--that is still being talked about. Right or wrong, it was a custom to give them, and you can’t play with custom here. Every year the Company creeps forward somewhere. The regiments are stationed farther and farther away from the men’s homes.”

  He took a deep breath and to his surprise found that he was on his feet and almost shouting. The hot weather had got him already. The others were looking down at the table, ashamed for him. He raised his voice. “And apart from these Army things, they’re affected by the same things which worry other Indians of their class and caste: suttee forbidden, female infanticide forbidden, Brahmins made subject to the criminal laws. We think those are good and just ideas, but the sepoys don’t. They used to talk and try to understand our point of view; now they don’t. In my company the men are jumpy and have been for several weeks. I know other company commanders have noticed the same thing, where companies have British Officers. Of course our regiment won’t do anything rash, but I don’t think any more strain should be thrown on them. Can’t the musketry wait till after the rains, when this cartridge muddle will be cleared up? It’s only ten rounds a man, anyway.”

  “If your men are jumpy,” Anderson said venomously, “it means you’re not looking after ‘em properly.”

  “I am!” Rodney snapped. “And I do not command them from my bed, either--sir!”

  His temper rose; he’d make them understand. He’d spoken to Narain and Godse several times, and he was determined to transmit to Caversham the unease he’d felt. Narain had stroked his drooping grey moustaches and looked at his captain with old, careful eyes. Once or twice something close to his heart had almost found release in speech--but never quite. He’d said it must be the heat; the sepoys were content; he couldn’t think of any cause for discontent; he’d ask again if the sahib wished. Rodney had tried speaking to individual sepoys, but they retired politely into a separate room and shut the door--Caroline Langford’s phrase.

  “They’ve got other worries too, sir. You remember the chupattis? That’s unsettling them. I had another instance only this morning.”

  “What have chupattis got to do with cartridges? Nothing at all!” Anderson snarled. “Captain Savage is making a mountain out of a molehill, as he’s done before, sir. You’ve given your orders. Let’s get on to more important things.” Caversham had not yet given any orders, but Anderson knew well enough how to force him into a decision.

  Rodney made a last effort. “And then, you know, Major Myers takes a Bible down to his lines when he’s--well--not sober? And tries to convert the men to Christianity and rants at them about the wrath of God? Just by chance I happened to overhear one of my sepoys ask Narain the other day if it were true that we were going to force them all to become Christians. That could be re
ally serious, if they believed it.”

  “For God Almighty’s sake. Savage! Major Myers is a fool, but he’s in the Eighty-eighth.” Anderson was beside himself. “What he does is Colonel Bulstrode’s look-out, not ours.”

  “Kindly do not blaspheme so frequently, Major Anderson.”

  “I apologize, sir--but really! Is it true, sir, that the pay of field officers is going to be raised forty rupees a month? It ought to be--“

  “And what about captins? I ‘eard----“

  They were off. Rodney sat back, hard mouthed, and looked down at the table. The waves of petty controversy surged round him while he jabbed angrily at the paper and at last broke the point of his pencil, Sculley, Geoffrey, Sanders, Atkinson, Torrance--one after the other, round and round. They were all good fellows; why couldn’t they see? Don’t they believe him? Did they really think he was too excitable, an alarmist? Tripe, twaddle, inconsequential piddle. He listened furiously.

  “As your adjutant, sir, it is my duty to report that some officahs are allowin’ their men to use bazaar polish on theah leathah, instead of . . .” “My store will soon become too small for the quantity of equipment I am asked to keep in it, sir. I must have another building. The end hut of Number Two Company now, that will . . .” “I need all the hutting space I have. The quartermaster doesn’t appear to understand that . . .” “Mr. Atkinson does not understand . . .” “How many days’ leave may I grant men during the Holi, sir?”

  And on and on and on--till his tunic clung to him, his head drummed and quaked, and the punkah’s steady squeak hurt like a rusty screw turning in his skull. Everyone was pale with nervous anger but far from speechless. They were worse than the women at the Club, and with less reason.

  The conference at last ended, nothing settled. Rodney flung out of the room, mounted, and spurred Boomerang into a split gallop up the Pike. The road glared back into his eyes, and the dust grated between his teeth. Nothing settled--except that the sepoys would have to use the new cartridges. Most surely there were too many separate rooms and too few windows.

  There was the affair of the little carpenter to prove his point--no, damn it, Caroline Langford’s point. This morning, after he’d given judgment on the two sepoys late back from leave, Piroo the lascar had been brought up with a request. The man was a fixture in the company, and a good enough carpenter; Rodney did not trust him because he never held his head up, never looked anyone straight in the eye, but whined and grovelled and crept round the sides of rooms and huts, hugging the walls. He was always bare above the waist; under a thin mat of grey hairs scars latticed the shiny dark skin of his chest. His ears were large and stuck out from his head, seeming by themselves to support his untidy turban; his eyes were dark, ruminant, rheumy, sunk deep under a bony and receding forehead; his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his sinewy throat. He sometimes wore a loincloth, and sometimes rolled-up green trousers cast off by a sepoy and two sizes too large for him. The corner of a clean black silk handkerchief always peeped out at his waist, and seemed a useless and incongruous ornament, for he never used it, but blew his nose with his fingers like any other Indian. He was a follower--carpenter, odd-job man, noncombatant--and of low caste.

  Today, after minutes of crawling abasement, Piroo had asked for leave to go home and rebuild his house, which had fallen down. That was interesting on two counts. Count one: the man must have rare cheek. Every sepoy’s and every follower’s house “fell down” once a year, in the big rains of the monsoon; accordingly every sepoy and every follower asked for leave at that time to go home and rebuild it; so much was rigid tradition. But to announce that your house had fallen down, and ask for leave on that account, when there had been only a few mango showers--that was cheek! Count two: Piroo said his house was in Devra, eight miles away, and he owned land with it. Rodney had seen in Narain’s expression that the subadar was as astonished as he to hear this. The little man was a whining low-caste lascar in the regiment, but outside the regiment’s back door he might be lord of a hundred acres, and no one know it.

  Everyone had a room of his own; and each liked his room and kept it locked and thought secret thoughts in it.

  Faster! To hell with the heat and the dust. Drunk on Saturday with McCardle, he’d be drunk again tomorrow at the 60th’s guest night--dead the day after, like Julio. Or Robin might be dead, everyone dead in a welter of petty spite. Faster! Faster!

  Boomerang reached out with frantic strides; Rodney spurred him on and swore continuously. The passers-by dived for the shelter of the trees when they saw them storming up the Pike, and put the ends of saris or turbans over their mouths until the dust settled.

  11

  As soon as he walked into the 60th’s mess, he sensed that the night would be long and hectic, but not genuinely cheerful. Julio had belonged to this regiment; as clearly as if it had been an order shouted in his ear, he understood that this night they were all to join in determined, furious gaiety to dull the edge of memory, to disperse the cloud of bad temper hanging over Bhowani, to exorcize the smallpox at the Bells’ and the cholera up the Pike.

  White covers assuaged the burn in the anteroom’s leather sofas, and the 60th’s grey and silver shell jackets helped to temper the impression of heat. But the look of coolness was an illusion; what air moved through the opened double doors and windows was hot, and the men were flushed, sweaty, and already partly drunk. It was six o’clock and dinner would not be served till eight, an hour ahead of the usual hot weather routine. Rodney liked this room--high and white, Georgian, carelessly elegant with the dash that cantered in the very syllables “Bengal Light Cavalry.” Foxhunting prints hung, widely spaced, on the walls, and between them standards and guidons captured in Lake’s campaigns in Central India. Standing in the doorway, he eased his shoulders and, while looking for his host, automatically checked to see who was here.

  Everyone knew everyone in Bhowani. All but one of the 60th’s officers were present: Gosse, Russell, Hedges, Willie van Steengaard, his host, Long, Bates, Smith, Waugh, Geoghegan, the veterinarian, Herrold the surgeon--the man who was going to become a father in about nine months’ time. Only the regiment’s present commanding officer, Major Swithin de Forrest, was not here. In the same sweeping glance Rodney noted the other guests: Sanders of his own; Bell of the 88th, drinking warily (wife Louisa and mother-in-law Harriet Caversham would give him hell whatever he did, so why didn’t the fool drink up?); and a tall fresh-looking boy of about seventeen with excellent teeth and curly auburn hair. The boy was wearing the 88th’s scarlet with white facings, and Rodney did not recognize him, so he must be young Myers, Rachel’s hero brother, arrived yesterday from Addiscombe.

  Anyway, as the 60th had no colonel or lieutenant colonel --and de Forrest must be dining at home--Gosse was senior dining member. He searched again for the bald head, walked over, bowed, and said formally, “Good evening, sir.”

  “Evening, Savage, Hey, Willie! Here’s your guest. Let’s all have a drink.”

  Rodney relaxed. They were off.

  Outside on the lawn the band, dismounted, played English and Irish airs. Liveried mess servants scurried about with silver buckets and silver trays. At first it was an effort to talk, a strain to laugh; but the champagne fizzed cold on his palate, and soon he found he could talk about anything. He argued and swore vehemently and waved his glass, and the champagne kept coming--jeroboams of champagne, nothing but champagne--the golden bubbles--Bengal Light Cavalry!

  Dinner at last, and the grey and silver were swimming together in his brain. Life was a sheen, shimmering with music. The regiment had a long table, made of ebony and well polished. A row of Doric candlesticks, severe as the columns of the Parthenon, marched down the centre of it; silver and crystal and white damask floated on it, and their reflections wavered under its surface. The candlelight, rather than the dim walls and distant ceiling, curtained off this place where he was. The score of servants in the room stood outside that magic of golden light; they broke in, like ge
nies, with a plate or cradled bottle, and stepped back and did not exist. Out there it must be dark and silent, and perhaps cold; the clattering and the uncontrolled laughter in the candle circle must die there where the light died. Outside, they looked in and watched the mystical communion. Here the officers partook of the continuing body of the regiment and of the blood spilled in its battles. The parade ground and the offices were for work, mere mechanical efficiency; but here union with a common past linked the officers, so that together they faced the cholera, and Julio’s ghost, and would face together the future’s unrevealed enemies.

  A silver trumpeter, the table’s centrepiece, galloped over the ebony’s fathomless black, his head turned round and back, his silent trumpet shrieking to the rafters. His stallion’s long tail streamed in the wind of his imagined passage; his dolman flew out behind him. He was jumping a broken, upturned gun; two gunners sprawled dead across barrel and trunnions. Behind him, Bengal Light Cavalry had charged in the glory of battle--they were the glory of battle; but they were not here, even in silver--only the inspiration of them, and its reflection in the faces of the officers round the table. The boy trumpeter galloped alone, as he had at Laswari.

  Rodney leaned forward to peer at the inscription on the low plinth: In memory of Trumpeter Shahbaz Khan, 60th Bengal Light Cavalry, killed in action on November 1st, 1803, on the field of Laswari. The words blurred--he had read them many times--and he concentrated on a scarlet blob opposite. Scarlet--not Bell--must be young Myers; face scarlet too; boy’d be under the table soon, sunk in a grey and silver sea.