by V. A. Stuart
So far the terms of the agreement were being meticulously honoured, but Alex was uneasy and, with the coming of darkness, he left Emmy to her preparations for their departure and went, with Francis Whiting, into the compound. Outside the guard had been increased, ostensibly for their protection; the sepoys’ cooking fires flickered, like so many fireflies, a scant sixty yards from the walls of the entrenchment and, from where he stood, the jingle of bits and the creak of leather could plainly be heard, as a cavalry patrol passed along Cantonment Road, heading south towards the road to Allahabad. The unfinished barrack blocks, which the garrison had guarded so tenaciously, were packed with the Nana’s troops, including Four and Six, which Jenkins and Mowbray Thomson had been compelled to vacate during the afternoon.
“Will they keep faith with us, Alex?” Whiting asked, breaking the silence that had fallen between them. “Will they really allow us to go to Allahabad unmolested?”
“I wish to God I knew!” Alex answered morosely. “My wife asked me the same question this morning and I did not know how to reply to her. They say one should trust a snake before a Mahratta, don’t they? So far the Nana seems to be keeping his word … perhaps all he wants is for us to evacuate this place and leave him in undisputed possession of Cawnpore. He’ll claim it as a victory.”
“No doubt. My God, I wish we could have stayed and fought it out with him—made a sortie and taken his guns, as poor old John wanted to!” Whiting’s voice shook in angry frustration. “It’s too late for regrets, of course, but if we’d occupied the Magazine, instead of this place, we shouldn’t be treating with the mutineers now or having to trust the word of a Mahratta. Or if Neill had managed to get to us, even yesterday … what held up those damned reinforcements from Calcutta, I wonder?”
“The state of the country, lack of transport, failure to appreciate the gravity of the situation … unpreparedness. That most of all, Francis. Sir Henry Lawrence was the only one who did prepare.”
“And he refused us help! He’s fifty miles away, with European troops, but he sent us nothing, not a single man. He—”
“How could he?” Alex sighed, recalling the last conversation he had had with his old chief in Lucknow. “He had to put his own people first. Whatever help he had sent us would have weakened his own position—irreparably, perhaps—and it might not have reached us. He only has one European regiment. If he’d sent us half of them, how could he have got them across the river, without guns and with the rebels holding both banks and every boat within miles? Suppose he had sent the two hundred Europeans the general asked for and lost them—before they even got to us—as he very well might have done? He would have risked losing Lucknow, as we have lost Cawnpore, for lack of British soldiers to defend it! Damn it, Francis, with Delhi—as far as we know—still in the mutineers’ hands and Lucknow lost as well, surely you must see what the result would be? The whole country would rise against us, not only the sepoys! Lawrence has got to hold Lucknow, whatever happens to us. The reinforcements from Calcutta and Neill’s column will have to relieve him, now that we’re out of the reckoning. Pray God they do … and soon!”
He had spoken vehemently and Francis Whiting stared at him in some surprise. “I suppose you are right,” he conceded. “All the same… ‘rats in a cage,’ the general called us, did he not? Well, that’s what we are … and we’re committed. There’s no going back now—we’ve no choice but to trust the Nana. I take it the general has resigned himself to surrender? He’s not sending you to look for Neill?”
Alex shook his head. “No, he’s not sending me, but I confess I’m tempted to go. If it weren’t for my wife …” he glanced over the parapet. There were so many sepoys out there in the darkness now that it would have been simple enough to lose himself amongst them, wearing Ram Gupta’s uniform. Only that morning, he had sent out his bearer, Mohammed Bux, in the guise of an escaped prisoner, bidding him hide in the city until he could make his way to his own village near Lucknow. The man had mingled with Azimullah’s escort, apparently without exciting suspicion; it could be done but … there was Emmy.
“Every day I’ve thanked God that I haven’t a wife or children here,” Whiting said, guessing his thoughts. “What you married men have had to endure doesn’t bear thinking about. We could have held this infernal place—or broken out and fought our way to Lucknow—if we hadn’t had those unfortunates to consider. It was having to watch them suffer and die that was our undoing, Alex … and the children were the worst, God rest their innocent souls! Do you know how many of us are left? I had to count heads this morning, when we were estimating the conveyances we should require to evacuate our people to the river and the number of boats.”
“How many?” Alex asked, his throat stiff.
“Four hundred and thirty-seven, my friend, of whom seventy are sick and over a hundred wounded. I fear …” a young officer approached them and he broke off. “Yes, what is it?”
“Captain Moore requests your attendance in the general’s room, sir—yours and Colonel Sheridan’s, if you please.” The boy hesitated and then added diffidently, “It’s to decide the order of march for tomorrow, sir, and the allocation of boats.”
They followed him in silence across the dusty, foul-smelling compound and, from the parapet behind them, came the sentry’s familiar shout of “All’s well!”
To Alex the words sounded cruelly ironic in these circumstances, but he controlled himself and, his face a blank mask, entered the pucca-roofed barrack to hear General Wheeler saying, with grim determination, “All who can march must do so, Captain Moore. We leave with the honours of war and that no one shall deny us!”
* Lord Dalhousie, governor-general from 1848–56. He implemented the policy of “annexation by right of lapse” by means of which the East India Company had acquired vast tracts of land from native princes and landowners who had no direct heirs. The Nana’s claim to Baji Rao’s pension was refused under this policy.
† Mowbray Thomson states that this woman was Mrs Greenway, but most authorities name her as Mrs Jacobi.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BY DAWN on Saturday, 27th June, as a procession of bullock carts and palanquins came towards them across the sandy plain, the survivors of the Cawnpore garrison were ready to evacuate their entrenchment. They had made such preparations as time and their enfeebled state would permit and their hopes were high, as they waited patiently for the conveyances to reach them.
The Nana Sahib had kept his word, they told each other, he had sent eighty palanquins and doolies; the boats were waiting to take them to Allahabad and soon, very soon, their long ordeal would be over. Some of the women wept for joy, clutching their children to them; some knelt to pray and to give thanks for their deliverance. A few, observing that the Nana had sent his own elephant, with a gold-encrusted howdah, for General Wheeler’s conveyance to the river, called down blessings on their enemy’s head. He was honouring the agreement he had signed … surely he could not intend to betray them?
The Nana Sahib had, however, made other preparations for their reception at the riverside. All night, while an army of coolies had toiled to roof the waiting boats with fresh thatch, another and larger army of sepoys and golandazes had been busy at the Suttee Chowra Ghat under the direction of the Nana’s elder brother, Bala Bhat, his two commanders, Teeka Singh and Tantia Topi, and Azimullah Khan, his young Moslem vakeel.
They had worked without fear of discovery, for the ghat—an open, dusty landing place at the river’s edge, a hundred and fifty feet long and about a hundred feet in width—lay nearly two miles east of the entrenchment, well screened by groves of neem and pipal trees. The road, skirting the New Cantonment and the Artillery Bazaar, approached it across a wooden bridge which spanned a wide ravine, with high ground on either side as it descended to the ghat … barren, rocky ground, dotted with prickly pear and offering no cover for fugitives until the tree-line was reached.
A small white, stone-built temple—Hundeen’s—stood on a mound overloo
king the moored boats and here divans and cushions had been arranged, to enable the Nana Sahib and his commanders to watch the embarkation in some degree of comfort. As yet, it was empty but beyond it, in the ruins of a house once occupied by a merchant named Christie, a gun had been placed, so as to command the whole line of boats, which had been hauled into shallow water, their keels almost touching the sandy river bottom.
A second gun—prudently withdrawn during the British officers’ inspection of the landing place the previous evening—was once more in position a quarter of a mile down-river, in a temple known as Bhugwan Dass’s after its builder. A third, a nine-pounder, was hauled on to the Koila Ghat, eight hundred yards below the Temple of Bhugwan Dass and, distributed between them and hiding amongst buildings and trees, Tantia Topi had positioned a strong force of infantry, armed with muskets. Four hundred yards across the river, on the Lucknow shore, a battery of bullock-drawn, six-pounder guns unlimbered and waited, the gunners joined in their vigil by a regiment of irregular cavalry and by the 17th Native Infantry, newly arrived from Azimghur, where they had mutinied early in June.
A letter, dated that evening and signed by the Nana,* accepted the offer of their services and the looted treasure they had brought with them, and informed their commander, Subadar Bhoondho Sing, that: “At this time there are absolutely no English troops remaining here; they sought protection from the Sirkar (ruler) and said, ‘Allow us to get into boats, and go away.’ Therefore the Sirkar has made arrangements for their going and by ten o’clock tomorrow these people will have got into boats, and started on the river.
“The river on this side is shallow, and on the other side deep. The boats will keep to the other side, and go along for three or four koss. Arrangements for the destruction of these English may not be made here; but as they will keep near the bank on the other side of the river, it is necessary that you should be prepared, and make a place to kill and destroy them on that side of the river and, having obtained a victory, come here …”
Azimullah smiled, as he read this letter and then sent it across the river by one of the 17th’s sepoys. Well satisfied with their preparations, he and Bala Bhat went to report to the Nana, leaving Teeka Singh and Tantia Topi to supervise the masking of the guns. The boatmen had their instructions; nothing could go wrong. The sun rose and they waited, with growing impatience, for the appearance of the hated feringhis.
Outside the entrenchment, in addition to the heavy sepoy guard, a mob from the city had gathered, eager for plunder, but it took time to load the wounded and sick into the doolies and palanquins which had been sent for them and the British officers sternly refused to accede to the sepoys’ demands that they make haste. In accordance with the general’s last order, John Moore prepared to lead an advance guard of thirty men under arms to the ghat. They were the fittest he had and he lined them up, to form a barrier between the crowd and the fatigue parties, which —since the doolie-bearers offered them no assistance—were compelled to carry the wounded from the makeshift hospital in the quarter-guard building and then, as gently as they could, lift them into whatever conveyance was available.
Alex, who had overall responsibility for the loading of the wounded and sick, was deeply moved when he recognised the gallant John McKillop—one time “Captain of the Well”—whom he had believed dead, being carried out on a blood-soaked mattress. Brave and uncomplaining as ever, the magistrate managed to summon a smile, but Alex, afraid that the jolting of the uncaring doolie-bearers might prove more than even his stoical spirit could endure, had him placed in one of the bullock carts which had been earmarked for the women and children. Emmy, to his relief, agreed to go with him and he helped her into the cart, shocked by her evident fatigue.
“I’ll wait for you, Alex,” she told him, anxious eyes on his face. “I won’t go on board until you come.”
“No, my love.” He shook his head, his tone one that brooked no argument. “There’ll be no shade on the ghat—at least the boats are roofed. You’re done up, you’ve been on the go all night …rest while you can, in one of the boats. I’ll find you. But I may be delayed, I have to see all the wounded safely on their way. If we should miss each other—”
“We’ll meet again in Allahabad,” Emmy finished for him bravely. But her eyes were brimming with tears when he kissed her and he watched, his own eyes moist, as the bullock cart moved ponderously off down the white, dusty road.
Dear God keep her safe, he prayed silently. Let no harm come to her—she has been so splendid, so courageous and she has worn herself out, caring for others, giving no thought to herself. She …
“Don’t worry, Colonel Sheridan, Lucy and I will go with your wife.” Alex turned, recognising the voice but not the lined white face of Mrs Chalmers. The gaunt young women beside her—her daughter Lucy, he could only suppose—looked at him blankly, her eyes grown imbecile, her slack mouth curving into a strange, secret smile. There was an empty bundle cradled in her arms and, when she spoke, it was in response to a voice or voices only she could hear.
“No,” she said. “No … don’t take him away. I’ll look after him, I’ll keep him safe. Please … let me hold him.”
Alex, shouting to the bullock cart driver to halt, was conscious of a knife twisting in his heart as he assisted Lucy and her mother into it, but Emmy’s face lit up when they joined her and he could not but be glad that he had been able to accept Mrs Chalmers’ offer. He returned to the line of waiting doolies and Mowbray Thomson, sweating under the weight of a tall civilian, with a bandaged head, whom he had carried out single-handed, called to him urgently.
“Yes? Anything I can do, Tommy?”
Thomson deposited his burden. As the doolie moved away, he said, lowering his voice, “The general’s coming out. They’re having to carry him, he can’t walk and he can’t possibly ride two miles on the Nana’s elephant. He’ll have to go in a palanquin. He says his wife and daughters are to use the elephant and … he wants the advance guard to march off now and go to the head of the column.”
Alex bit back an exclamation of dismay. Without Moore’s thirty resolute riflemen, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to hold back the mob of bazaar riff-raff who were clamouring to enter the entrenchment. Heaven knew they would find little of value now among its battered, tottering buildings but their presence would impede the evacuation of the wounded.
“How many more to bring out?” he asked.
Thomson shrugged. “Oh, not that many. We’ll manage … let the poor old man have his guard of honour. He’s earned that, at least, and it may be the last he’ll ever have.”
“Very well, if you say so.” Alex crossed to where Moore was standing and passed on the general’s request.
“Right, Alex, we’re ready. Watch those swine from the city, though, won’t you, when we’ve gone?” Moore looked deathly pale, but he called his men to attention and as General Wheeler emerged, leaning heavily on the shoulders of Dr Harris and the young cavalry surgeon, Boyes, they brought their worn-out rifles to the present and stood there rigidly until their commander had been helped into his palanquin. The Nana’s mahout, who had sat stony-faced and seemingly deaf to all demands that he bring his animal to its knees to enable its passengers to mount, now did so—impressed by the guard of honour—and Lady Wheeler and her two daughters were assisted on to the howdah.
“Advance party!” John Moore’s voice was firm and strong. “Slope … arms! Left … turn. By the right, quick march!”
His small party bore little resemblance to Queen’s soldiers in their torn remnants of uniform and their ragged nankeen; many of them were barefooted, with bandaged limbs, but they marched with their heads held high down the long, dusty road, Colour-Sergeant Johnson of the 32nd, ramrod-stiff, at their head, and the sepoys watched them with grudging respect.
The general had been right, Alex thought; it was a question of honour, although … he frowned angrily as he saw a mob of townspeople surging towards the entrenchment. Glimpsing a native o
fficer, he shouted to him to post a guard to halt the threatened invasion. To his credit, the man did his best but the mob were not to be gainsaid and the sepoy guard, after a few halfhearted attempts to stop them, stood aside and let them in. Other sepoys, with yells of derision, followed them and for several minutes pandemonium reigned, as a crowd of several hundred erupted into the entrenchment, halting the flow of wounded. Finally, with the aid of some men of the 53rd and the native officer, Alex restored order and the flow was resumed.
Mowbray Thomson came out at last, with Edward Vibart, and announced that the hospital had been cleared. The sepoys of the 53rd, recognising him, clustered round him with touching pleasure and, not to be outdone, a dozen of Vibart’s sowars trotted up, saluted and volunteered to escort him and his wife to the boats. Their pleasure and the respect they showed appeared to be genuine and Alex, free now to leave the entrenchment, did so thankfully, his earlier fears and doubts lulled, if not quite dispelled.
Anxious to catch up with Emmy and reassure her of his continued safety, he set off at the best pace he could manage after the slow-moving procession of carts and doolies accompanied by Henry Delafosse and a private of the 84th, a fair-haired young Irishman named Murphy, who had been helping to carry wounded.
“It all seems to be going according to agreement,” Delafosse said, changing his Enfield to his left hand in order to wipe the sweat from his dust-grimed face. “The only trouble we had in the entrenchment—apart, of course, from the arrival of those rapacious swine from the city sewers—was when a sepoy of the 1st tried to relieve George Kempland of his rifle. George told him he could have its contents if he liked but not the rifle and the fellow skulked off.”
