Johnson, in the way that only he seemed able, had anticipated him, and Jessye and one of the rajah’s country-breds stood saddled in their stalls. In five more minutes they were leaving the palace by a side gate, and heading for the low-lying hills which overlooked the river and the road to the oxbow, so that they might observe discreetly, respectfully.
The great basin of the upper Godavari was nothing like as green as at other times, except the forested slopes of the northern side, an abutment of the Eastern Ghats, whose dark canopy extended as far as the eye could see. On the flood plain itself there were comparatively few trees, and at this time of year the black cotton soil and rocky outcrops were bare of signs of cultivation. During the rains the tableland would become grass country once more, a vast grazing ground and fodder store for the thousands of placid beasts which served the people of Chintalpore. Between the city and the oxbow the river was a wide, sedate stream – as it was, indeed, for much of its length. The only obstruction between here and the sea 150 miles to the east was caused by shallowing across two or three sections of rocky bed where the river traversed the strike of the adjoining hills, barring the way to navigation when the water was low. On the eastern borders of Chintal, where the domains of the nizam, the Company and the Rajah of Nagpore successively adjoined those of Chintal, there were points of great beauty. Here the Godavari became enclosed between the Bison range (so called because of occasional visits by that stocky game) and the hills of Rumpa. The steeply shelving cliffs and crowded forests of bamboo, teak, tamarind and fig might have been those that overlooked the Lorelei, except that no castle or other work of human hand was to be seen.
In an hour or so they were nearing the oxbow, almost a full mile behind the cavalcade, on the higher ground to the south. But such was the brightness of the sun, and the clearness of the air, that the procession could easily be observed in all its detail without even a telescope. The saffron lance pennants first drew the eye to the escort, whose sowars still sat tall in the saddle. Then to the bullock carts and the camels which carried the means for the rajah’s feast, and then to the gaggle of ryots who followed, as always, hopeful of some benediction of the rajah, or better still some material benevolence – and some blessing by Shiva or Kali or the spirits of the Godavari. In truth, they came because they had always come, for if they did not, then perhaps there might be no monsoon, no harvest. Such was the way with Hindoo gods.
But it was the state elephants that truly commanded Hervey’s attention. At this distance their massiveness, their substance, their belittling of every living thing, was at its plainest. The howdahs added half their height again, and their golds, silvers, crimsons and vermilions stood in sharpest contrast with the baked colours of the land. No greater distinction between the highest prince and the meanest hind could there be than before him now, the rajah elevated beyond all reach in his jewelled and canopied throne, and the ryot behind, covered in the dust of his lord’s retinue, legs bowed, back bent – closer to the earth than to the belly of the noble creature which carried his rajah and gave a face to God. At that moment Hervey knew in his vitals the eternal draw of this land.
Carefully he worked himself nearer to the oxbow, not wanting to be seen, for it seemed (for all its panoply) so private an occasion. He might have got closer still, but at a furlong from the rear of the great press of ryots, behind the ranks of sepoys, he halted shouldersdown in a nullah and took out his telescope.
‘What d’ye see, Captain ’Ervey sir?’
He swept left to right along the whole line of the durbar – perhaps a quarter of a mile of tight-pressed souls, all silent. ‘There’s a sadhu haranguing them. I can’t hear what he says but I think they’re swearing the oath.’ He allowed himself a faint smile of satisfaction: Locke’s way had so nearly prevailed. He had come close to accepting Locke’s counsel indeed, for the instant that muskets, powder and ball were placed in the hands of the sepoys they would be given the means of insurrection they had formerly lacked. But Chintal, of all places, could not be held subservient by mere force of arms. There must be a voluntary compliance in its subjects, both civil and military. The rajah knew it too. And that was why the rajah now had to meet the test four-square, knowing that if Hervey and he had judged things wrong his sowars might save his person, and that of the raj kumari, but his dominion would be lost.
Rousing cheers broke from the ranks of the resworn sepoys. The rajah descended from his state elephant, mounted the white Turkoman and rode along their front rank acknowledging the loyal greetings – testing their fidelity, even – by his very closeness. He rode back to the centre of the line, stood high in the stirrups and made his little speech of obligation and satisfaction. When he absolved them of the year’s service without pay there was another full-throated roar of devotion, and he walked his charger directly towards them, the ranks opening to let him pass, the sepoys making low namaste. And as the great tamasha began – with its spit-roasts and rice, its breads and its spices – the rajah rode from the parade with a stature that even Hervey, through his telescope, could see was enhanced. An escort of but a half-dozen lancers rode with him, south and east towards the low-lying hills where earlier Hervey and Johnson had taken their ease as the durbar assembled.
He lowered the telescope . . . and then raised it quickly again. It was the sudden surge near the state elephants. Like the wind across a field of corn. Shisha Nag was it not? Throwing up his head, lashing with his trunk, raising a great dust. Hervey could not make out what disturbed him. All he could see was Seejavi standing close by, swaying gently, this way and then that. He rubbed his eye clear of moisture and put the telescope to it again. And he saw the body of a man being carried, as if it were a half-filled palliasse, from where Shisha Nag had raised such a dust. He wondered which unfortunate mahout or sepoy had fallen victim to the young male’s bile – or even to old Seejavi’s wiles.
* * *
A little trail of dust marked the rajah’s progress. Hervey did not even have to broach the crest of the obliging nullah to keep station with him. Where the ground first began to rise, a mile or so from the oxbow, the dust settled and he edged a little up the nullah’s banks to see where the rajah and his escort were halted. He could see them quite clearly, almost two full furlongs away, by an ancient pagoda in a secluded mango grove. The rajah waited as the lancers beat about the ground (for leopard were not unknown in these parts) and then, as his escort retired to the other side of the little hill which hid the pagoda from sight of the river, he dismounted and entered the sacred building. Hervey could see it all quite clearly from his hollow in the ground. He was about to lower his telescope, for he had no wish to spy on the rajah during his devotions, when he noticed, a hundred yards beyond the grove, under a banyan tree, a bullock cart. And then, after a short while, the rajah emerging from the pagoda and walking towards it. A figure emerged from the shade of the tree and made namaste – a shrivelled little man in a sunhat. Hervey turned his telescope back to the cart: two of the thinnest-looking oxen, cream-coloured, yoked side by side, stood patiently. How many oxen, carts and shrivelled little men there were in all of India he could not begin to imagine, but he knew he had seen these ones before.
That afternoon
Three pariah kites glided high above the palace with not a beat of any wing in the five minutes Hervey observed their ascent. They described a lazy but precise circle over the royal gardens, as if disdaining the city beyond, and without any apparent interest in prey on the ground. Perhaps the birds knew that now, in the heat of the day, though still no greater in this month than that of an English summer, few warm-blooded creatures left the shade. At length he walked to the stables, hoping to find Selden there.
‘Hervey, come and take a look at this mare. Have you seen a foaling before?’
‘Not since Jessye herself,’ he replied.
‘Well, you might this evening. She’s waxed up, but she’s not sweating yet, so she’ll drop it after dark is my bet, as most do.’
T
he mare, a light-chestnut Arab, was standing calmly on a deep bed of straw, her syce keeping watch anxiously inside the foaling box. ‘Very well then, Bittu,’ said Selden to him in his native Telugu as he left. ‘Send for me at once when her breathing becomes laboured.’ And then, turning to Hervey: ‘Come – tea and words, I think.’
Hervey agreed.
In the cool seclusion of Selden’s apartments Hervey spoke his thoughts freely. He must leave Chintal as soon as possible – within the week, he hoped. The Jhansikote business was something he ought not by rights to have intervened in. ‘Have you yet located the papers for the jagirs?’
Selden frowned. ‘Hervey, it is a trickier business than you suppose. I don’t have right of access to such documents. I must choose my time.’
Every day he remained here, Hervey protested, he prejudiced his chances of being received by the nizam – which was the duke’s foremost commission.
‘Yes, I understand full well,’ sighed Selden; ‘and I am conscious – acutely conscious – of your having gone to Jhansikote on my promise.’
Hervey would have said some words of mitigation (for he suspected he could never have stood aside, having accepted the rajah’s hospitality), except that to do so might have lessened Selden’s resolve to find the documents. ‘Then you will try to bring matters to a conclusion before the end of the week?’
Selden nodded.
Hervey poured himself some tea and sat by the window.
‘By the by,’ said Selden, sitting in a chair draped with a tigerskin, ‘you have heard of the elephant going must at the durbar this morning.’
Hervey, gazing out intently at the pariah kites still circling, could truthfully say he had not, for he had seen it at a distance, and no-one had spoken of it since his return.
‘Extraordinary business: it tore a man from its howdah. The fellow’s back would have broken as it hit the ground, but the great beast trampled him for good measure. He was brought here post-haste in a doolie – dead as mutton.’
‘Was it anyone of note?’ asked Hervey, though not, in truth, greatly exercised, for he was becoming accustomed to death in India.
Selden raised an eyebrow and lowered his voice. ‘Captain Steuben.’
‘Good heavens!’ gasped Hervey, turning back towards the salutri. ‘Good heavens! The poor fellow. How perfectly dreadful . . . what ill fortune—’
‘But not, I’m sure, accidental ill fortune.’ It was now Selden’s turn to look away, leaving Hervey to ponder the suggestion.
‘Why do you say . . . on what evidence do you believe . . .’
Selden turned back to him, but he merely raised both eyebrows.
‘Come, man: you must have some evidence!’
‘I cannot suppose anyone to be innocent of the affair of the batta who had the opportunity to be otherwise.’
Hervey poured himself more of the cinnamon tea. He could not, he said, gainsay Selden’s logic. ‘And yet I cannot somehow believe—’
A sudden commotion below the window halted his speculation. They leaned out, to see several dozen of the palace staff babbling excitedly and calling on the salutri. ‘Come,’ said Selden, making for the door. ‘Something’s amiss.’
They followed the little crowd to the other side of the gardens, to one of the summer wells. Another babble; this time of outdoor servants as they pulled out the body of a man, gagged, and bound with ropes. They parted to let the salutri through. He needed only a glimpse of the smooth cheeks, the long straight hair and the doll-like upturned nose to recognize him.
‘Kunal Verma,’ he sighed, shaking his head.
‘Who?’ said Hervey.
‘Kunal Verma – the rajah’s dewan, keeper of his treasury. And of land deeds.’
XIV
THE SUBSIDIARY ALLIANCE
A week later
Chintalpore was becoming hot and the air heavy. The south-west monsoon, the yearly salvation of the tens of thousands of ryots who dwelled so close to the soil as to be almost indistinguishable from it, was a full three months away. Throughout the winter months, the sun being low, the surface of the earth in Hindoostan had been steadily cooling until now its temperature was lower than the seas adjoining it. By some as yet unfathomed effect no moisture-bearing clouds could be induced to leave the ocean and water the land. But from March onwards, with the sun higher, and its strength bearing directly on the land for longer, the surface of the earth would speedily become hotter than the ocean. And when this inversion came about, by some equally unfathomed effect, moisture-laden clouds from the south-west would march steadily landwards until, by about the end of May, they would be watering the Malabar littoral prodigiously, and as far north even as Bombay. By the middle of June, if the gods had granted a favourable monsoon, Chintal’s fearsome heat and enervating humidity would be relieved by the daily downpours. Thereafter, there would be a bountiful harvest and plenty in the land. But if the gods were not propitiated and did not grant a good monsoon, then there would be misery, starvation, death. Which of these there was to be would increasingly occupy the prayers of the Rajah of Chintal’s subjects in this onset of the hot season. But as for the rajah himself, what most occupied his mind, and filled his prayers, was the nizam.
Hervey had sent letters to Guntoor for Madras and Paris, together with a note for the collector advising him of his intention to leave for Haidarabad at the end of the (yet another) week. Having become more circumspect since Jhansikote, and now with the complications in respect of the jagirs since the death of Kunal Verma, he intended to proceed with more formality. However, Selden had been unable to transact the business with the land registry. It was not a propitious time, the salutri explained, for the rajah’s ministries were in confusion. Another ten days or so, he believed, would see things better placed.
The letter to Colonel Grant had exercised Hervey a great deal. His immediate disposition had been to write a complete account of all that had passed, yet in successive drafts he had been unable to render any account that did not convey an inauspicious picture of his mission. This he partially ascribed to the difficulty of portraying the peculiar circumstances of Chintal, but mostly he knew it to be the result of his own misjudgements to date. And so he had in the end written a somewhat bland narrative, referring to one or two setbacks, but confident of ultimate success on all counts.
This and the letter to Madras urging the Company to come to the rajah’s aid with an offer of subsidiary alliance had occupied the whole of one evening and most of its night, and so when the hircarrah left for Guntoor next morning it was without any letter to Horningsham. This had not done much for Hervey’s spirits, and he had therefore thrown himself into lance drill with the rissalahs. It perfectly occupied his mind – though the price was heavy, with more than one crashing fall from misjudging the angle of strike on a tent peg. But neither did he think it time wasted in the wider scheme of things, for although the lance was merely his ostensible reason for being in India, the Chintal rissalahs were proficient with the weapon – skilled, even – and his findings would surely find a place at the Horse Guards as they considered at this very moment what should be the future of the lance in the British cavalry.
The Chintal sowars carried lances made of bamboo, ten and a half feet long, with a bayonet-shaped steel head. ‘I dare not recall how close I came to feeling the lance’s point at Waterloo,’ said Hervey to Captain Bauer one morning as they watched another round of tent-pegging, shaking his head at the thought.
‘I am surprised you do not have lancers, after so many years’ seeing their effect,’ replied Bauer, his German heavy.
‘Oh, do not mistake me, sir, for I myself am as yet unconvinced. The lance, for all its fearsomeness, has limited utility compared with the sabre.’
‘Ach, Hervey – but its moral effect!’
True, he conceded, its moral effect alone could be overwhelming, even before the weapon was brought to bear. ‘But in a mêlée, if only one can get in close, the lance is useless against the sabre. The
lancer can scarcely parry, or wheel and thrust half so well as a sabreur – or even a resolute infantryman with his bayonet.’
‘Ja, perhaps so – then he throws his lance down and draws his sword. But first, Hervey, how do you get to close quarters with a squadron of lancers?!’
‘That, indeed, is the material point,’ replied Hervey smiling.
Bauer joined in his enjoyment of the pun.
Hervey was still intent on serious study, however. ‘What has determined its length? In England there is a regiment of light dragoons presently engaged with a lance some sixteen feet – longer even than a medieval knight’s.’
‘Ten feet, or thereabouts, is a good compromise,’ said Bauer, nodding. ‘It allows the sowar to pick off a crouching man and follow through cleanly, without surrendering any great advantage of reach. If he wants more reach then he must lean from the saddle!’
Hervey saw as much, as lancers galloped this way and that in front of him, effortlessly taking tent pegs further from their line each time.
‘Of one thing I am sure, Captain Bauer: carrying a lance is a most effective aid. At the trot and canter it makes the man greatly more active, obliging him to ride his horse forward into the rein, and promoting a more independent seat. When it is in my power to do so I shall have my own troopers carry a lance at riding school.’
Bauer was delighted: exactly his sentiments when riding master many years before. ‘Hervey, you would make a good German!’ he beamed.
They did not speak for several more minutes, except to remark on one sowar’s skill or another, but then Hervey’s thoughts returned to the question of moral effect. The rajah’s sowars could wield the lance with impressive skill; he fancied there was no sight more able to strike fear into an adversary than a line of their steel points lowered and approaching at a gallop – perhaps the only chance cavalry had of breaking an infantry square without support of artillery. And it was artillery the rajah was in want of. Yet even now as he watched the drill he could not but imagine that, if the infantry maintained their close order in the face of the moral effect, lancers would make no more material impression than would dragoons. The matter turned – as did every battle in the last instance – on how welldrilled was the infantry. ‘Captain Bauer,’ he said in a measuring way, ‘do you not think a front rank of lances, backed by a second of sabres, and perhaps even the third, might have the same moral effect and yet have greater handiness?’
The Nizam's Daughters Page 28
