The Passage to India

by Allan Mallinson

  The brigade orderly officer came hurrying. ‘General, a message from Colonel Lindesay: there are Coorgs approaching under a flag of truce.’

  Hervey sprang up, letting fall the canteen of tea Johnson had just brought him. They’d off-saddled, but rather than wait, he set off at once on foot, telling Johnson to make ready and follow.

  He moved rapidly through the Dorsets’ battalion companies, Acton and Neale at his side, to where their light company, in the van again, were standing to arms in a small clearing. A subaltern pointed towards a bamboo hut.

  Lindesay, speaking to the Coorg delegation (if delegates they were, or simply saviours of their own skins) – half a dozen, including two men-at-arms – saluted as he came up. Hervey touched his cap peak in return, taking as little notice of the ‘delegation’ as he could, reckoning that a show of indifference would strengthen his hand if they were here to negotiate.

  The Coorgs braced. Their leader, a man of about fifty, in short kupya with a crimson and gold brocaded chale, bowed.

  ‘Says he’s chief minister and commander-in-chief, name of Konandera Apoo,’ said Lindesay, showing no keener expectation.

  Hervey acknowledged the bow, but curtly. He wondered in what capacity he came – as chief minister or commander-in-chief.

  ‘What does he want?’

  ‘To speak to you. He says he can’t make a contract with any but his equal.’

  ‘Contract?’

  ‘If the interpreter has it right. Deuced difficult tongue. Rajender?’

  ‘Sir, it is exactly right.’

  Hervey turned to him. ‘Did he say any more?’

  ‘No, sir, only that he wished to speak to General Hervey.’

  ‘He knew my name?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Hervey tried not to look too surprised.

  ‘Very well. Tell him who I am, and to state his business.’

  Neale listened intently as Lindesay’s dowra translated; and then nodded, content. His command of the language – if there was but a single one – was still elementary, but it served.

  General Apoo stated his business, Neale’s face revealing just a touch of relief as he did so.

  The dowra spelled it out. ‘He has at his command three hundred men, sahib, from the garrison at Madkerry. He wishes to place himself at your disposal in return for … tappu, annassri.’

  ‘Amnesty,’ said Neale.

  ‘Ask him how many men the rajah now disposes at Madkerry.’

  Just the guards at the fort, and his body-men, came the reply.

  Hervey thought a little. Why would a high official about to deliver up three hundred men, and Madkerry and the rajah thereby, not ask for gold? Yet what ruse could it be?

  ‘Where are his troops now?’

  Camped where the road entered the forest, said the dowra.

  ‘Tell him that I shall require that he returns at once to Madkerry accompanied by my troops. Tell him that I require him as soon as we reach Madkerry to send hircarrahs to all his detachments ordering them at once to lay down their arms and answer to the senior officer of the column before them. And to deliver up the rajah into my custody.’

  Between Neale and Rajender the terms were dictated, and with few requests for clarification.

  Then a simple ‘Ate’ – ‘Yes.’

  Hervey studied the chief minister intently. He wanted to say that if he departed in the slightest from the undertaking, he would himself despatch him with his sabre as a common spy. But the eyes told him he didn’t need to.

  ‘Neale, send at once for Worsley’s troop, and also to Colonel Fraser. His time is coming, I do believe.’

  Colonel James Fraser, who would be the resident – in practice the governor – once they’d deposed the rajah, was at Kushalnagar still, at Hervey’s express wish since he’d concerns enough without ‘political’ advice.

  He turned next to Lindesay, at last with a look of triumph, if conditional. ‘We march at once. We’ve an hour of light of sorts. We can make Madkerry before pitch darkness. Two miles only. We must.’ The moon would not be up for a good few hours yet.

  * * *

  AN HOUR BEFORE first light, Hervey lay down at last, pulling his cloak about him. War took a strange course, he mused. Both sides would battle as if to the very last man, and then suddenly, inexplicably – except perhaps in hindsight – one side would yield. Der Kulminationspunkt. That was what the Prussian treatise called it. The greatest general might not see its coming, but must at once recognize when it did, so as to seize the opportunity. ‘Go on, Maitland! Go on! They won’t stand!’ He’d heard the very words himself that day at Waterloo, and seen the duke wave his hat to have the whole line advance – the great turning of the tide of history.

  It was absurd, presumptuous in the extreme, to make comparison with that greatest of battles. But just like the duke before Waterloo (and he himself had ridden with him), he’d miscalculated, misjudged, misapplied; and then last night he’d seized the moment. And yet it was not quite the irreversible moment that had been the duke’s. He had only the word of a traitor to judge that the rajah’s men would not stand.

  After so many days, though, it was good to lie down under the stars rather than the forest’s canopy. They’d not thrown all caution to the wind to get here – Worsley’s men had gone at a brisk trot rather than a canter, for if it were a trick, it was sure to be one that anticipated a gallop – but as they passed one abandoned post after another, he’d begun to believe it true: Madkerry, as Jericho had been to Joshua, was indeed to be given up to him.

  Only the inscrutable fort remained. Would that be given up also? Or would they have to lay tedious siege?

  He’d decided not to conceal their sudden presence. Better to signal they were here, that they held the high ground and the road to Kushalnagar, and that more would therefore surely follow. He told Lindesay to build up the campfires therefore: make a show of force, sound the trumpet and bugle, tell the people of Madkerry that their deliverers were at hand, and the fort that their time was nigh.

  Then St Alban had come. He knew where the rajah was – taken refuge in the fort after fleeing the palace – and Owthwaite’s nautch girl had shown them the house where the secret passage emerged. He now had possession of it indeed, and for a very modest outlay of gold. But more: the fisher folk – whether or not the same they’d seen last year, he was unsure – had been willing accomplices for an even lesser amount. They professed a hatred for the rajah’s men that counted more than any pagodas: licence to sell their fish could be bought only with the favours of their women. They’d told him of the priest at Madkerry, half feringhee, who was now in fear for his life and that of his flock after the murder of the rajah’s family, for the rajah, Herod-like in his suspicion, might put anyone to the sword. St Alban had searched him out in the dead of night. He was of Portuguese descent, and inclined therefore towards them, and asked what he might do to help.

  ‘None of this may be of any consequence,’ St Alban had said, ‘but we have at least men about the place on whom we may count for information.’

  Hervey agreed. The chief minister was a windfall, and only time would tell what it was that had truly shaken the tree, but the rajah was not yet in their hands. Until he could make contact with the other columns he couldn’t know if the minister’s word was law.

  For some time he’d turned over the options in his mind, mercifully few though there were, before deciding. When it was light, St Alban and his detachment would ride to the secret house, and even though it was theirs already, with great show would take possession. Meanwhile Worsley’s troop would encircle the fort, and the weary regiments of foot and the artillery, the larger part of the force being still in the forest, would assemble on the plain. This, at least, should prevent Apoo’s turn-coats from any change of heart, he said. It was, however, though he possessed no secret weapon like Joshua’s trumpets, a challenge to those inside the fort: ‘Here, Chikka Virarajendra, Rajah of Coorg, are the means by which we shall lay
siege.’

  And when he’d arraigned his host before ‘Jericho’, he would send him the ultimatum. It would consist of few words.

  Hervey woke just before dawn with Johnson’s hand to his shoulder.

  ‘Tea, Colonel.’

  He sat up at once, dog-tired but enlivened by the prospect of the day. ‘No brandy? No schnapps?’

  ‘No Germans.’

  Johnson had woken him thus at Waterloo. He’d said he’d tried to get drink from one of the King’s Germans, but that the man had wanted gold for it. They’d joked of it many a time since.

  Were you too at Waterloo? ’Tis no matter what you do, if you were at Waterloo.

  ‘Deucedest luck, Corp’l Johnson, for our war chest’s replete with coin still.’

  The battle-bond never loosened, but it was more than simply the sharing of shot and shell that day. The rain had beaten down all night as the army lay in the flattening corn, yet somehow Johnson had found a flame to boil a pot. And all for a cornet. How many colonels had sipped hot tea that day?

  When the sun was up he saw what a prodigious effort the Dorsets had made. Not only was their light company encamped outside the forest, but the battalion companies too – and all their baggage and sutlers, so that there was soon a great breakfast of coffee and bacon.

  ‘Well, General, my compliments to you,’ said Lindesay, enjoying his first cigar of the day. ‘We have, it appears, the prize.’

  Hervey smiled. ‘Perhaps let us say that we know where is the prize and that it can go to no other but us,’ he said, declining a cigar but accepting the coffee.

  He told him his intention.

  Lindesay nodded. ‘We’ve left a couple of dozen sick behind us. I’d rather get ’em up as send ’em down to Kushalnagar. But all’s well otherwise.’

  Hervey thanked him. They would talk about what to do with the dead later.

  Next he went to see Worsley. The farrier was busy, but otherwise the troop looked ready.

  He told him his design: ‘St Alban first, and once he’s at the house, you may strike off. I’ve told Neale to have the guns drive forward onto that bluff yonder.’ He pointed to a promontory above one of the streams a furlong away, a quarter of a mile from the fort and at about the same elevation. ‘Just in case the rajah thinks we’ve come on light scales.’

  Worsley understood. He’d already told off the three detachments – north, south, west – as Hervey had warned in the note sent with Owthwaite, their job to bring in the other columns. He was all eagerness – a gallop at last, even if not sword in hand.

  ‘But six of your neatest men, if you will, to lend lustre as I take the rajah’s sword.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He beckoned Johnson and the syces. Minnie looked eager too. He’d let her have her head a little as they made for where St Alban had set up camp half a mile along the jungle edge.

  There was no hiding their satisfaction. ‘Coffee, Colonel?’ asked a dragoon well known to the serjeant-major (as the saying went), especially after a pay-night.

  Hervey took it, more out of duty than desire. ‘There’ll be a little prize money, no doubt, Dixon. Best spend it on coffee, though, think you not?’

  Dixon smiled dutifully. ‘Colonel.’

  He walked aside a little with St Alban. ‘Edward, no exploring officer in Spain had more success, I fancy. Smart work. Smart work indeed.’

  ‘Thank you, Colonel. Though it deprived me of a charge, I understand.’

  ‘A trifling affair, not worth your regrets.’

  ‘That’s not what Serjeant Acton said.’

  Hervey shook his head knowingly. ‘What is the essence of éclairage, Edward?’

  St Alban smiled. ‘A clean blade.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Ready in half an hour?’

  They were. And sharply away, and in ten minutes were signalling from the roof of the house that it was theirs.

  Then Worsley’s troop, followed by the artillery at a purposeful trot – less one of the 12-pounders, which Hervey decided he would take with him directly. The Dorsets were already disposing their red coats the length of the ridge – a sight to behold, exactly as he’d intended – and the native infantry stolidly filing onto the plain from their woody bivouacs.

  Hervey had not long taken post on a bluff with a clear sight of the fort – and the fort thereby with a clear sight of him – when Colonel Fraser came.

  ‘’Pon my word, you’ve made admirable haste, Colonel. I’m glad to see you.’

  ‘I set off as soon as word reached me. The moon was up by then.’

  ‘Even so …’

  Fraser was a spare, intense-looking man, resembling more a minister of the Kirk than a soldier. He was a man nevertheless who possessed Somervile’s every confidence. Hervey told him all that had happened, although all that mattered was what they now beheld.

  ‘Do you wish to accompany me to take the rajah’s surrender? That is, if he’s not inclined to play the antique Roman.’

  Fraser said he would indeed wish to accompany him, but that he was certain the last thing this rajah would do was fall on his sword. Nor, by all accounts, was he prepared to wield it against any who carried one.

  With an escort of six dragoons, and the gleaming 12-pounder, the general officer commanding the Coorg Field Force left his vantage point for the fort, to call out the last Rajah of Coorg.

  He was in good spirits. ‘Neale, you might have found yourself a red coat for the occasion. You are quite the odd bird in the flock. They’ll take you for a footman!’

  Neale was in equal spirits. ‘In green, General? Foot’s the very last thing I should be taken for. India’s yet to see a rifleman.’

  They laughed. He liked Neale more by the day. He was determined – by hook or by crook – to have him in the Sixth.

  He glanced over his shoulder again. Fraser and his party looked serviceable, and Worsley’s men had somehow turned themselves into a creditable escort, some feat given that they’d fought and slept in their jackets for days. It was a moment to savour, long in conception, and accomplished, he supposed, at not too great a price.

  Their progress gathered other admirers. Or rather, they were watched in silence by the people of Madkerry, high and low caste alike, for what were they to make of the invader? Except the children, who watched with acclamation, as anywhere when soldiers passed. No doubt, too, but unseen, they were closely observed by what sentinels were left on the parapets of the fort. Acton, certainly, was not inclined to slacken the rein.

  They proceeded not with a flag of truce, however, but as victors, an orderly carrying Hervey’s pennant. Halting three hundred yards from the fort to have the rajah walk, or ride, a suitably humbling distance, he sent the ultimatum forward under escort of two dragoons. It was in both English and Kanarese so that whoever opened it could be in no doubt – written very exactly by his dowra under Neale’s sternest supervision, with a second translating back into English to be sure that there was no possibility of misunderstanding – and borne by the dowra so that there might be no confusion at the gate. He took with him, too, a sealed letter from Somervile, which Hervey had carried throughout in an oilskin. It was, his old friend said, a letter assuring the rajah of safe conduct: the seal of the governor when facing men of war might be a powerful comfort. Hervey had not gainsaid him, but he was inclined to believe that the threat of oblivion was the more powerful persuader.

  The gunners began unlimbering the 12-pounder.

  ‘Have it lay on the gates.’

  Neale nodded to one of the orderlies, who took the order to the bombardier.

  Now it was merely a time of waiting. ‘Very well,’ said Hervey, ‘we shall see what we shall see. But I’ll not wait long for it.’

  He dismounted nevertheless. His mare had borne him well these past days, but he saw no reason to weigh upon her back when there was no need, and besides, the sun was gaining heat, and there was shade nearby. The rest followed suit, save the dragoons, who remained mounted
in line, but at ease.

  He took up his telescope as the dowra delivered the ultimatum to the captain of the guard. It was done quickly, as if the captain understood exactly what was afoot – as indeed was the purpose of the entire spectacle.

  Hervey took out his watch. ‘Fifteen minutes, and then I shall knock loudly on the gates.’

  ‘A whiff of roundshot,’ said Neale.

  Hervey smiled grimly. ‘A lesser charge made Bonaparte’s reputation, did it not?’

  Neale smiled too. ‘Just so, General.’

  And in truth, a bombardment of even a single round would have been pleasing to all who stood with him, save perhaps Colonel Fraser, who if all proceeded rightly would remain here many months – years – after Hervey and his field force had returned to their stations.

  But no powder, it seemed, would be necessary. Not five minutes later the gates were opened wide, and out walked – walked, not rode, exactly as prescribed in the ultimatum – an assemblage of evident importance.

  ‘Is it he, General?’ asked Neale, glass to his eye.

  ‘He or someone vested very much like.’

  Colonel Fraser was surer. ‘It is he, or very remarkably like. He walks in that way the rajah has.’

  Hervey was not inclined to enquire how exactly. He didn’t himself recall any peculiarity – though in truth he’d barely observed him walk ten paces during his audience. ‘Very well; stay here in the shade, if you please. Better that your hands are clean.’

  Fraser might well indeed find things easier later if he were distanced from the actual ‘regicide’. Anyway, this was his, Hervey’s, moment.