Nightrunners of Bengal

by John Masters

  A veil fell over the Guru’s eyes and he looked past Rodney at the glaring yellow slope of hill. He said, “You hid there, in those korindas? That was a good idea. Leopards use them often--the leopards of England this time, eh? I was looking the other way, north, or I might have seen you.”

  The Guru continued in English, and the soldier standing over Rodney shifted his feet in surprise at hearing the strange language. “You are a remarkable race. You can understand an Englishman being a traitor, if he’s a little mad. But if he thinks England can possibly lose a war, then he’s too mad to be English. Well, you’re right, and I’m not mad. In my country the children will learn my name, and remember me as a man who fought their battle in a far place--for them.”

  “What is your name?” Rodney asked grimly. “I’d like to know--though we can always find out from the old rolls of your regiment.”

  “My name is Donegal Sean Shaughnessy.”

  The grey eyes were on him, and warm now with affection. They were not North Sea eyes but Irish Channel eyes. An evil cloud lifted from Rodney’s mind. Whenever he’d thought of the Guru, the man’s treason had soiled him and every Englishman with its filth. But the Guru had lied in the temple about the smuggling, and lied when he said he was English. Rodney gasped with the relief; in the time of cholera he saw Mrs. Hatch, in the time of defeat he saw the Guru. This was not a traitor, only an enemy--an Irish boy driven by famine to take a shilling and a red coat, to suffer lashes and turn to silver in the embrace of India. On burning roads without end, and for nineteen years under the tree, the rain had ripened his love of liberty and made it a fruit ready to put out seeds.

  The leper of Bhowani looked Mm in the eye. “You were a child, Captain Savage. Now you have become great, and will be greater. I said once to the Rani that this mutiny which we planned would sow only ruin and merciless hatred. It was at our first meeting, after we had heard from the east what was afoot. I said that though we claimed to work for great ideals--patriotism, religion, liberty--yet in fact meaner things drove us. In her, jealousy--that the English ruled and made peace where her kind had made only wars. In the Dewan, revenge and licence to kill, and lust to take women who were bound so that they could not turn away from his face. In me, hatred--hatred of England, which is not the same as love of Ireland. The merchant was the only honest one. He wanted money, and said so--but you don’t know about the merchant?”

  “I didn’t--then.”

  “I see. I felt cold. I said our hands were not clean. We weren’t big enough. No one is.” He sighed. “It was your fault too. You English are proud, distant. You want power for your country in the world. It is only in passing, by mistake, that you work for India--all that good work, turned sour. There was a moment then, in that meeting, when the Rani cried out, ‘India will be free and great and good--and one!’ The others turned away from her. Yet you would have agreed. It was sad. It is sad. Ruin and merciless hatred, I said; for the most part it will be true. But now I know that in some places, in some people, the love has been born which I tried to find in all the gods, and failed. I was cold then; I am warm now. There is love, all kinds of love: you, Miss Langford, the sepoys at the gaol--oh, I’ve heard--the men and women of Chalisgon, the Rani. Poor girl, she’d never thought of that.”

  His silver hands rested at his sides. The branches of a wild fig laced over him and broke up the light on his skin. Behind him the reeds were still.

  “You were right in another matter. We will lose. But I could not follow any other path than this. Do you know what tragedy is? The inevitable--nothing else. I’ve lived trying to love, but for many years I’ve known that I would die trying to hate. Given a certain birth, and descending stars, a man must follow his path though he sees Satan waiting with open arms at the end of it. Examine your own mind when the blood is washed away and the dead are buried. You have reached and passed your pains. For Christ, who loved us, remember and understand, afterward.”

  Rodney felt tears pricking his eyes. He whispered, “I will remember. Forgive me for thinking what I did of you. But I have a path to follow too. Women and children were murdered in Bhowani, through you. You did it, not the sepoys. And you did something far worse. You poisoned a wonderful trust, and it died. I know now that it wasn’t the best, but it was something. It’ll take a long time to grow again. In some ways it will never be the same. What I have to forgive you, I forgive. But I believe in the rule of law and I will do everything I can to bring you to trial.”

  The Silver Guru’s face crinkled in a smile of extraordinary sadness, and he said, “And on the gallows I will say this. Only the hangman will hear, but I’ll be speaking to every Indian and every Englishman, every soldier, priest, merchant, farmer, governor--and especially to you, who have the strength to be greater than rank or race or caste. I’ll say: ‘I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; preserving the unity of the spirit in the bond of...’ “

  The black silk banded his throat, Piroo’s face hovered over his shoulder, and they were both gone. Out of sight the bodies bumped and crashed down the high stone blocks.

  Rodney began to move. Every instinct sent him forward to break the strangler’s lock and save the Guru from those flat eyes. But as his muscles sprang to action he saw a vision of Caroline, starving in the jungles, so that instead he shot over in a backward somersault. His boots hit the soldier behind him in the stomach, and the man fell down, his eyes starting out in superstitious horror. Rodney banged the man’s head hard against the stone and snatched up his rifle. The others had seen and were coming fast. He dropped to one knee and fired. The havildar in the lead coughed and stumbled, the rest dived for cover. Bullets whistled past; Rodney jumped over the edge of the dam and hurled in great bounds down the steps.

  The Guru lay face downward in three inches of stinking water. Blood running from his nose, Piroo crouched over him. When he saw Rodney he loosened the silk and chopped down with the side of his right hand. The short blow struck under the Guru’s ear, and his neck cracked. Piroo tugged at the long hair, jerking the head back at an impossible angle. Then he laughed curtly and ran ahead of Rodney into the reeds.

  In a second they were out of sight. Bullets smacked after them and whined in ricochets off the patches of hard earth. Paddy birds flew up and circled piping overhead. Sedge warblers twittered angrily. The sarus cranes flapped their heavy wings and lumbered into flight. After a minute the shooting stopped, and as Rodney and Piroo pushed aside the tall reed stalks and splashed through the scattered pools they heard the soldiers clattering down the side of the dam, then a groaning wail.

  “He’s dead. He’s dead!”

  24

  He stretched impatiently and for the hundredth time worked out the date. Monday, June the twenty-second, and the monsoon visibly imminent. Today they should reach Gondwara. Today they must reach it, if they were to be in time. One of the bullocks had died the day after they left Naital, and progress along the jungle trails had been slow, painful, and dangerous.

  Each day the enemy cavalry rode out ahead of the main body of the army; twice he’d seen the grey-and-silver horsemen of the 60th trotting down a valley floor parallel to the ridge paths which Piroo always used. Behind the cavalry the army must be moving fast, but they had no news of it. They had not dared to get down on to the Pike yet. It would be safe to do so now, for surely the general would have his vedettes as close as this across the river.

  June the twenty-second, a stifling day, a low lead sky with slow-moving clouds, hot and dark, permeated by the hidden sun. Caroline slept, swaying to the jerk and jolt of the cart; Mrs. Hatch told Robin a fairy story in a low voice; Piroo walked in the dust beside the lone bullock. Rodney called out to him, “Piroo, turn down now. We’ll risk it.”

  Piroo clucked, the bullock swung, and the cart turned right. They dropped off the baking red rock plateau and wound down t
hrough thick woods towards the valley of the Nerbudda River. At the top of the escarpment the trail ran in the lee of a ruined wall, where once a fortress had stood guarding the pass. Lower down they met two bullock carts grinding up the hill, loaded with immense piles of straw. Piroo whined a greeting and a few words in a nasal dialect. Rodney heard one of the strangers answer, “They’re close, friend; that’s why we’re going home. But they haven’t reached the river yet. Be careful; the whites have gone mad too.”

  In the heat haze a white temple towered up against the yellow forest slope to the left of the trail. They were tolling a bell inside, its slow boom of sound shaking the air, and he saw priests scurrying about the platform. The bullock leaned back and stepped delicately, sliding forward so that the red dust, four inches deep, squirted up between its toes. Caroline awoke with a start; Mrs. Hatch left her story unfinished. They sat and wetted their cracked lips with their tongues and looked at each other, while Robin talked to himself and scrambled over their feet. Rodney gripped the rifle, flexing his fingers on the stock and trigger-guard.

  At the foot of the hill the wheels grated and bumped; afterwards the cart rattled steadily on the ragged metalling of the Deccan Pike where it ran straight and level for half a mile by deserted fields. Peering through the crack in the front canvas, he saw another red fort, also in ruins, on the right of the road, and beyond it wide water stretching to a high bank, a mud wall, and a jumble of houses. The squeak of the axle slowed its rhythm; the rattling slowed to a bump and bump; Piroo muttered, “Gora log--lalkurti.”

  A rough English voice cried, “ ‘Alt--roko! Where are you lurching jata, eh? Wo’er you go’ in there, you black barn-shoot? Let’s ‘ave a dekko--jildi now.”

  A hand tore at the back canvas, and two brick-red faces poked through. The fronts of their shakos were spread with the blazon of a flaming grenade, and over it the royal crown of England, flanked by a pair of numerals--men of the Queen’s Fusiliers. The first jerked up his rifle when he saw Rodney’s tattered trousers and dark face. Then they slowly lowered their weapons, for the people in the cart were crying, and Robin’s face was crumpled in abject terror, and- outside Piroo bowed and whined, the black corner of silk inconspicuous in his loincloth. The soldiers called out over their shoulders. Boots slammed against the loose stones of the roadway, and half a dozen heads and shoulders blocked the view. Their voices droned in foul-mouthed tenderness, the sweat dripped from their foreheads and hands, and Rodney could not stop weeping and hugging Robin and clenching and unclenching his hand on Caroline’s.

  Piroo weighted the floor with heavy stones, a fusilier sat on the tailboard, and the cart rumbled down into the river. On the other side they climbed a steep bank and passed into Gondwara.

  The streets were full of soldiers and deserted of townsmen, and stank of death. A furlong in from the river a narrow crooked alley ran off to the left between tall houses. Except for a swinging sign, its paint flaked and dim, there was nothing to show that this was the Street of the Rawans, famous all over India for its wealth and the skill of its craftsmen in precious metals. Below the sign a corpse lay bloated and shiny black, motionless under a curtain of buzzing flies. There were others, on the Pike and in the side alleys; they were Indian men and women, and white maggots clustered round the wounds which had killed them; the women’s sexual parts were torn and bared to the flies. Beside the cart the escorting fusilier said curtly to Piroo, “Take a dekko at them, you. Same ke mwafik for you if you done these poor ladies and gents any ‘arm.” Rodney’s eyes glazed over with the hurt of pity. What had he thought on the hill above Chalisgon? Once in a thousand years, and the chance for the true glory already nine-tenths gone.

  Soldiers of both races were putting the finishing touches to breastworks at the corners of the houses. From their badges he saw that the 82nd Bengal Native Infantry had been allotted the left of the street and the Fusiliers the right. The first line of defence would certainly be on the river, but these preparations showed where the general intended to site his reserves.

  Robin buried his face in Caroline’s lap when he saw the sepoys, and Rodney’s mouth dried up, and sweat made the palms of his hands slippery. Caroline, stroking Robin’s head, tried to smile across at him, but he could not take his eyes off the sepoys and watched them as a rabbit watches a snake. He read every tone in their voices, every fleeting expression on their faces. They were soldiers preparing for battle with the unhurried skill and neutral eyes of the professional. They worked easily, and their officers did not give many orders-- but all was ready and they did not need orders. He had seen it all before; he knew it.

  The night of May the tenth--Shyamsingh’s face! Rodney knew nothing. He could have sworn these men had no thought of treason, but he was certain they had. What could he say to the little general with the stony eyes? How could he make him believe?

  Piroo stumbled from sheer weariness. The fusilier kicked him angrily and shouted, “Git up, you black sod!” Piroo picked himself out of the dust and walked on expressionlessly. Rodney’s head ached. “Ruin and merciless hatred ...” The Indian sepoys worked at their tasks without looking at the Indian bodies in the streets.

  A horseman galloped up from behind and edged past the cart. He wore a dark blue coat, dark blue trousers with broad double stripes of gold, and a black schapska with a gold bag tied to its side; he carried a lance. Rodney recognized it as the uniform of a regiment of Bombay Lancers. A sepoy of the 82nd called from a rooftop, “What’s the news, brother?”

  “Contacted the enemy two miles up the Pike--a patrol of the Sixtieth!”

  The lancer flung the words back over his shoulder as he hurried on, raising dust and swarms of flies. Rodney forgot the corpses and the horror in the streets. The call of bugles, the disciplined tramp of foot soldiers, the rumble of moving guns, all joined together and formed a familiar pattern in his head. His eyes sharpened to full alert awareness, and he began to think. Caroline, watching his face, sighed and relaxed, but he did not see her or hear her.

  If the enemy cavalry were two miles up the Pike, their main body of infantry and guns would reach the river well before nightfall. The Lancer vedettes, the Fusilier outpost, and any more of the general’s forces on the far bank would have orders to fall back slowly. New moon, pitch dark. The enemy might try to cross by night, but they would be wasting their artillery strength if they did; it was unlikely. The battle would be here, and tomorrow--a hundred years and seven hundred miles from the field of Plassey.

  The soldier led into the courtyard of a large building with many ornate porticoes, and the cart stopped. Haggard white women ran out in stained clothes and surrounded it. Rodney climbed down and rested against the wheel, for his knees had turned to water. The fusilier supported him, stroking him as a mother strokes a terrified child, and whispering, “There, sir, there. You rest; don’t you worry. We’ll tear them swine in ‘alf tomorrer; don’t you worry.”

  Rodney shook his head and watched the crowding women help Mrs. Hatch and Caroline and Robin out of the cart. So the general had not been able to get the women and children away from Gondwara; in fact he’d had to abandon cantonments and bring them in here to the city when he moved the troops forward to defend the river fine. He saw that Caroline and Mrs. Hatch walked with flat purpose, while these others trembled and moved jerkily, and spoke with a hidden quiver of panic in their voices. They expected the worst, but could not even yet believe it, and the strains of anxiety made deeper marks on their faces than all the trials of experience had left on Caroline.

  Rodney turned impatiently to the fusilier. “Take me to the general, please, at once.”

  “I’m here, Captain Savage.”

  Sir Hector touched his elbow, and he drew himself upright and saluted. The pasty face crinkled in a smile. “I am glad to see you. Come with me.”

  The little man turned and strode across the courtyard, raising one hand continually to his plumed cocked hat as he went, his huge sword clanking on the stones. Rodney follo
wed into a big room, cool-seeming and dark, and the general pushed up a chair for him--they must have brought this furniture in from cantonments. A hand seized his own and a voice said, “Hullo, Savage--it is Savage, isn’t it? Thank God you’re safe”--and he looked up. He recognized the speaker as George Harris of the 82nd B.N.I., aide-decamp to the general, and a man he knew slightly. He nodded and muttered, “Yes, I got away.” There was another staff officer in the room; Rodney did not know him but saw by his badges that he was of the 26th Foot, Queen’s service. They were all three looking at him strangely, and he realized he had the Kishanpur soldier’s rifle in his hand, the bayonet fixed. He put it between his feet and glanced over his shoulder; an Indian clerk was writing slowly at a desk in the corner; three maps hung on the wall to his left; dusty footmarks covered the marble floor; the afternoon light filtered through tall Moorish grilles on to the general’s impassive face. Rodney opened his mouth to speak.

  Harris was watching him, Harris of the 82nd Bengal Native Infantry. And he, Rodney, was going to say that the 82nd were planning mutiny. Harris would not believe it of his 82nd, any more than he himself had of his 13th. Harris would persuade the general that Rodney was unstrung, mad.

  He cleared his throat. “I’d like to speak to you alone, sir. It’s very important.”

  Sir Hector balanced on his toes, puffed out his chest, and nodded slightly. “Very well. Leave us, if you please, gentlemen. Before you go--Mr. Harris, pray tell me, have the latest orders been acknowledged by all commanding officers? Excellent. And is Captain Cable coming here at four o’clock p.m.? Excellent. I think all else is in train, and you know where to find me. Thank you.”

  He stood beyond the table, his arms clasped behind his back. Rodney gathered his wandering wits and in short sentences told all that he knew and suspected. As the long, muddled, dimly lit story unfolded, the general rocked incessantly on his toes and seemed to grow taller.