The Nizam's Daughters

by Mallinson, Allan

  ‘Trial? Impeached before a lunatic House of Lords! Seven whole years they vilified his comprehension of this country!’

  ‘The collector feels a keen affinity for Warren Hastings, Hervey. They were each at Westminster, a very superior school, you understand!’ said Lucie gravely.

  The collector smiled. ‘I admit it.’

  ‘He will admit, too, of equal scholarship at Winchester and Eton,’ added Lucie with a look of mock despair; ‘but the likes of Shrewsbury – where I received my education – he holds in scant regard.’

  Hervey looked back at him. ‘I was at Shrewsbury too, sir.’

  ‘Indeed?’ said Lucie, agreeably surprised.

  ‘I left just as the war was taken to the Peninsula.’

  ‘My time was past somewhat before then. Trafalgar was done in my second year at Cambridge.’

  ‘And did you know a boy called Henry Locke?’ Lucie recalled at once. ‘Adonis?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ sighed Hervey, thinking how he might explain the change in his appearance.

  ‘He was a year or so below me,’ said Lucie, the recollection of him evidently pleasant; ‘but what an athlete! He could throw a ball clear across the river.’

  ‘Well, sir, he is with me aboard the Nisus. He is commanding officer of her marines.’

  Lucie nodded, agreeably again. ‘Then I should very much like to see him.’

  Somervile evidently thought it time to make some amends for the impression given of him. ‘Ultimately, Lucie, the only means of judging a school is by its alumni. Captain Hervey, here, is a distinguished enough soldier to attract the attention of a field marshal, so I should suppose him to be a man of sensibility. I have a high regard for men under discipline. I conclude from this additional evidence, therefore, that Shrewsbury school is a diamond of the first water.’

  ‘Just so,’ agreed Lucie, wishing to move on. ‘You were saying of Warren Hastings?’

  ‘I was saying that his comprehension will be vindicated, if indeed it has not already been so. To succeed in any measure in India you must treat with the native from a position of close association. Have you heard of Sir Charles Wilkins, Captain Hervey?’

  Hervey said he had not.

  But Emma Lucie had: ‘The Sanskrit scholar, do you mean, Mr Somervile?’

  ‘Yes indeed, madam,’ he replied with no especial notice of the singularity of her knowing – nor indeed, of the reason. ‘He was the first Englishman to gain a proper understanding of Sanskrit. He translated the Bhagavhad-gita. Hastings wrote a foreword and in it he said that every instance which brings the real character of the Hindoo home to observation will impress us with a more generous sense of feeling for their natural rights, and teach us to estimate them by the measure of our own. These are wise sentiments: there are too many which contemptuously deny them.’

  ‘One may be counted too many, Somervile,’ said Lucie promptly, ‘but do you really suppose there are enough to imperil the Company’s situation?’

  ‘Let me put the question to you, sir,’ he replied. ‘How many in the service of the Company hereabouts make any concession to native custom – beyond smoking a hookah or taking to bed dusky, lower-caste women?’

  Lucie blanched and protested.

  ‘Do not trouble on my account, gentlemen,’ urged Emma; ‘you forget I have been in these parts quite long enough to know the way of things.’

  Somervile pressed on, not the least abashed. ‘You, Lucie, are an honourable exception here in Madras, but how many of your fellows have troubled to learn any more of the language of the natives with whom they speak, other than to facilitate satisfaction for whatever are their appetites at that moment?’

  Emma Lucie intervened to enquire of Hervey’s culpability in this respect.

  ‘I have been learning Urdu these past six months, but have not yet had any chance to practise with a native speaker,’ he explained.

  ‘I am gratified to hear of it, Captain Hervey,’ said Somervile. ‘Urdu is as serviceable a choice to begin with as any.’

  ‘But you object to the preaching of the gospel, even in that tongue?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘We want no repeat of the Vellore mutiny,’ added Lucie, signalling to his khansamah to have the soup dishes cleared.

  ‘Mutiny?’ Hervey’s voice carried the chill which the word had brought.

  ‘Not ten years ago,’ said Lucie, shaking his head as if the memory were personal and vivid. ‘Vellore is about a hundred miles distant, to the west of here, and less than half that distance from the border with Mysore. You must understand that at that time Madras and Mysore were in the midst of a most hostile dispute. The sepoys at Vellore rose during the night and killed very many of the European garrison. They would have prevailed, and thrown in their lot with those devils in Mysore had it not been for the address shown by Colonel Gillespie.’

  Hervey was at once roused by the image of this gallant officer. Might he know more?

  ‘Indeed you might, Hervey; and right pleased you should be of it, for Gillespie was a cavalryman – though I cannot recall which regiment exactly—’

  ‘You should, Lucie, for it was the first King’s regiment of cavalry in the Company’s service,’ said the collector archly, surprised that a Madras writer should not know his history more perfectly. ‘The Nineteenth, Captain Hervey – light dragoons.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Hervey, mindful of the Nineteenth’s reputation, ‘the victors of Assaye – the battle which the Duke of Wellington counts higher than Waterloo in his estimation.’

  ‘Just so,’ replied the collector approvingly.

  ‘Well,’ coughed Lucie, taking up where he had faltered, ‘Colonel Gillespie’s regiment were about three leagues away at Arcot. Word was got to him and he set off at once with a portion of dragoons and a couple of galloper guns. With a determined assault he was able to overcome in excess of fifteen hundred mutineers. The bravest man in India, he was called.’

  ‘And he died but a year ago,’ said the collector, ‘a major general – sword in hand fighting the Nepalis. A fine soldier and an equally fine gentleman. But this is to stray from the material point, Lucie: we were discussing the cause of the mutiny.’

  ‘Indeed we were. Well, Hervey, the cause, lying in a nutshell, the ostensible cause, was the activities of missionaries.’

  ‘Did you know the Abbé Dubois, sir?’ asked Hervey, the abbé’s book having lain open in his cabin for much of his voyage. ‘He was a missioner was he not? I have been reading his study of the Hindoos and their customs. It seems to me an admirable work.’

  ‘I knew him imperfectly: I met him but a half-dozen times – to converse with him on his perceptions of the country. I do not include him in my general censure. In any case, the French here had a rather different intention.’

  ‘So you will be acquainted with his book?’

  ‘Indeed I am. I first read it at Cambridge. Lucie, you must surely have a copy?’ he said, in a manner implying a request.

  ‘Why, yes – but in translation only, if such you do not disdain!’ he replied, already on his feet at the collector’s challenge, searching the shelves which ran the whole length of one wall. ‘I saw it only a day or so ago . . . Yes, here!’ He pulled out a handsome leather-bound volume and presented it to the collector.

  ‘Then I shall now quote to you from it,’ he said, leafing through as if he knew it well. ‘This is a most telling passage: “I venture to predict that Britain will attempt in vain to effect any very considerable changes in the social condition of the people of India, whose character, principles, customs, and ineradicable conservatism will always present insurmountable obstacles.” How say you to that?’

  ‘Just so,’ agreed Lucie.

  ‘A counsel of some despair, however,’ sighed Emma Lucie, ‘for India had the Word of Our Lord before our own lands. The apostle Thomas brought the gospel to these shores.’

  ‘Madam,’ began the collector, leaning forward with a look of keen anticipation, ‘I should lik
e very much to speak with you at greater length on these matters, but a question of Captain Hervey has just this minute occurred to me, and which I should wish to put instead at this time.’

  She nodded obligingly, while Hervey braced himself for what he sensed was a question that would test his guard.

  ‘Urdu, Captain Hervey, was the language of the Mughal court and is the language of those parts where the heirs of Babur still rule. Yet these parts are largely to the west and north, and you are – you say – making for Calcutta?’

  ‘That is correct,’ replied Hervey without difficulty; ‘propriety demands that I first present myself to the commander-in-chief at Fort William. But I understand that the finest exponents of the lance are to be found, however, in Haidarabad, where I believe my Urdu would be most apt.’

  ‘Haidarabad?’ said Lucie, in a tone implying that this was somehow to be deprecated.

  Hervey was put on alert. ‘It was the duke’s remembrance thus, sir. It is of no necessity that I go to Haidarabad if there be some difficulty, and if there are other apt exponents of the weapon. No doubt the commander-in-chief will direct me appropriately.’

  Lucie clearly wished the condition of Haidarabad had not been broached, and his discomfort was now compounded by Somervile’s blithe indifference to his sensibilities in this respect. ‘There is some uncertainty in our relations with the nizam at present, is there not, Lucie?’ he called from the other end of the table.

  There was nothing for it but to brazen things out, as if it were of no great moment. ‘There is indeed,’ replied the fourth in council, ‘and want of intelligence is our greatest affliction. I fancy that the commander-in-chief would welcome your seconding there, if such could be arranged – which I very much doubt. Haidarabad is a closed book to the Company.’

  ‘Why do you doubt it?’ asked Hervey, with as little air of concern as he could manage.

  ‘Because,’ smiled Lucie, ‘the nizam appears to be in one of his periodic bouts of inscrutability.’

  ‘And not helped by the Company’s resident, and the Pindarees,’ added the collector.

  Lucie shot an urgent look at him. ‘Somervile has also the rather tedious difficulty of having as a neighbour a small state which seems to be permanently at odds with Haidarabad. He is especially sensitive thereby, for when elephants fight – so to speak – they trample on a good deal of their neighbours’ crops. You understand what is the function of a Company resident, I take it?’

  Hervey took the opportunity to learn more. ‘Perhaps if you would remind—’

  ‘By all means, sir. The Company’s policy for some years – initiated, indeed, by the brother of your Duke of Wellington when he was in Calcutta – has been to conclude treaties with the country powers whereby their security is guaranteed by the Company in exchange for their surrendering the right to engage in war on their own account. These subsidiary alliances, as they are known, are bolstered by a force raised and officered by the Company but paid for by the country power itself. And a resident is appointed to the court as an ambassador of the Company.’

  Hervey was intrigued by the earlier intimation of difficulty with the Haidarabad resident – and the Pindarees (whoever they might be). He judged it inexpedient to pursue the question, however, for there was more than a suggestion that the nizam might be not nearly so well disposed towards the Duke of Wellington as imagined. He would try to change rein for the time being at least. ‘And this state which is at odds with its neighbour?’ he asked, again as innocently as he might.

  ‘Chintal,’ replied the collector, helping himself to whiskey and seltzer from the decanter making its slow progress around the table. And the Rajah of Chintal was largely to be pitied, he continued, for he was a Hindoo and wholly in awe of the nizam, in whose territory the princely state of Chintal would have occupied no more than a fraction of a corner. ‘If all the nizam’s subjects spat at once in the same direction,’ he sighed (to Lucie’s evident distaste), ‘Chintal would be drowned out of sight.’ ‘Just so, Somervile. I myself would have described Chintal as a nine-gun state, however. Less colourful than your description, but more telling.’

  Hervey seemed not to understand the claim.

  ‘I mean that the rajah receives a nine-gun salute from the Company – the minimum.’

  ‘The nizam gets twenty-one,’ added the collector; ‘as do only four others.’

  ‘Others?’ enquired Hervey.

  The collector looked at Lucie, who took up the challenge: the country powers were his business, after all. ‘Mysore, Gwalior, Kashmir . . . and Baroda, though heaven knows why, for it is a trifling place.’

  Hervey wondered how he might enquire of Chintal’s condition, but could think of no way that might not arouse suspicion.

  Lucie was growing more agitated by the minute, however. The collector had often enough made known his view that circumspection was no asset in India, so he now sought emphatically to deflect the conversation away from matters that might lead to graver indiscretion. ‘Come,’ he said firmly, ‘it is time for some air. Shall we go and see your horse, Hervey? And perhaps Somervile will show us his too, for they carried off all the trophies at the racecourse last evening!’

  The stables at Fort George were solid, whitewashed affairs which would have been the envy of London. The Governor’s Bodyguard, a hundred native troopers under a British officer, were as pampered as His Majesty’s Life Guards – though hardened by not infrequent forays into the field. The numerous little fires about the yards, lit in the evenings to drive away the flying insects which otherwise plagued the occupants, were dying down, and although it was now much cooler, the punkahs were still swinging. The syces had gone to their own charpoys some hours ago, leaving the lines to the chowkidars, each of whom made low namaste as the visitors passed.

  Jessye was lying at full stretch, perhaps pleased at last there was no motion beneath her bed. She raised her head as the four approached, her ears pricked with her habitual alertness, and she drew up her forelegs in preparation to rise should the disturbance threaten her. But on seeing Hervey in the lantern light she relaxed visibly, her ears flattening to the sides in anticipation of some word from him, and she whickered – scarcely more than a grunt, but enough to alert the other horses in the lines, each of whom echoed the sound of pleasant expectation. Hervey bade her stay down, pulling her ears a little and giving her candied fruit which he had stuffed into his pockets as they left the dining room.

  The collector made approving noises: he could see her obvious handiness, he said.

  Lucie was less restrained: ‘She is not a looker, but I can vouch that she swims well!’

  Her master pulled a face, but the collector beckoned him towards the further stalls, where his own mares stood.

  ‘Arabs!’ exclaimed Hervey. ‘I have never seen them this close before.’ And both mares flattened their ears and flared their nostrils, intending that he should get no closer.

  The collector smiled. ‘I prefer to call them Kehilans – the Arabic for thoroughbred.’

  ‘More literally, “of noble descent”, I think,’ said Emma Lucie.

  ‘Just so, madam,’ replied the collector, surprised. ‘I defer to your uncommon facility with languages!’

  ‘No,’ she laughed, ‘merely a good memory. I was once shown the Kehilan in Newmarket. I wanted to see what was your facility.’

  ‘Oh,’ he replied absently, ‘just the here and now.’

  Lucie would not hear of this modesty. ‘Somervile has studied at the university in Fès, Hervey. The languages of the Orient are his passion.’

  ‘And horses, evidently,’ replied Hervey, who had coaxed one of the mares forward to take candy from his hand.

  ‘Indeed yes,’ replied the collector; ‘a measure of a civilization may be largely had from its horses. You will never comprehend, say, a Bedouin unless you acquaint yourself with that which he holds above even his most favoured wife.’

  ‘And rather more prosaically,’ said Lucie, ‘Somervile
takes from us a prodigious number of rupees each time he brings his horses here to race!’

  The collector smiled, with satisfaction. ‘Tomorrow they return with me to Guntoor. Why don’t you do the same?’ he said to Hervey. ‘You would see more of India than hereabouts. In Madras you may as well be in Brighton. There is a brig leaving tomorrow. And you, too, Miss Lucie. You were saying only yesterday that you had calls in Rajahmundry which were overdue. It is a short distance only, and a good time of the year to be travelling.’

  With the knowledge that Nisus would remain in the roads for at least five more days, it was, said Hervey, a capital invitation. ‘Might you extend it to my friend Mr Locke?’

  Somervile seemed content.

  The invitation held its appeal for Emma Lucie too. ‘There is also a ship leaving for England tomorrow, Captain Hervey. It will take letters of ours; do you wish it to take any of yours?’

  Indeed he did. And he would write an additional one to Henrietta to tell her of this fortuitous meeting. ‘In her letter to you, madam, was there anything that I might know?’ he added cautiously.

  Emma Lucie considered a while. ‘Not really, sir. Henrietta merely says that you are to come to India on affairs of the Duke of Wellington. She asks that we receive you, if it is expedient – for she knows you are bound for Calcutta rather than here. She says that she hopes herself to make the journey here soon.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Hervey, quickened – though he had said in his letter that he thought it better he should first return.

  ‘That is to say, perhaps,’ added Emma promptly, ‘after you are married? For her letter bore the marks of being written in some haste, and her meaning was not altogether clear in that respect. I shall, of course, write to her and say she is welcome here at any time – subject, of course, to your wishes.’

  Hervey seemed confused. ‘I don’t know what is best. I am under orders, and cannot therefore vouch for my movements at this time. She may come here and we never see each other!’

  ‘Then I think it best if that is said. Henrietta will make up her own mind – as she always has.’