The rajah was not convinced. ‘Captain Hervey, for many years we have lived with the nizam’s fearsome daughters. Like many women, they spit and they make a great deal of noise. But, truly, must they trouble us so?’
Hervey was as close to exasperation as he had been since leaving England. This was not his fight: he had never even formally accepted command of the subsidiary force. Truly the rajah was a gentle man, but . . . ‘Sir,’ he began emphatically, ‘as I am given to understand, the nizam’s daughters are French iron guns of the very largest nature. Their barrels are long – almost ten feet. They may throw a projectile with considerable accuracy, therefore. And they may do so at great range – a mile, easily. You may suppose how they will command the approaches to any fortified position.’ He paused to allow the notion to sink in. ‘The projectile itself weighs thirty-six pounds – three times greater than any which the subsidiary force now being assembled possesses!’
‘War itself is an option of difficulties,’ replied the rajah simply – complacently, even.
Hervey checked himself. ‘You quote General Wolfe, sir, and that is most apt, for he was only able to take the heights at Quebec after stumbling on an unguarded path. It seems to me that we too must find one.’
‘Captain Hervey,’ smiled the rajah, ‘you do not know how pleased I am to hear you say it is we who shall have to find that path. I had begun to suspect you would desert us!’
Hervey counted himself fortunate, always, that the griping in his vitals – the fear of death or dishonour in equal measure – had never rendered him incapable of thinking. Indeed, in some respects it stimulated it. In an instant he had chosen to say ‘we’, for although he knew his mission for the duke was all but rendered impossible now (and by his own making), he could at least redeem some tiny part of his reputation by facing up to things squarely in Chintal. ‘I am at your service, sir,’ he said resolutely.
‘Do I therefore send my sepoys to Nagpore, Captain Hervey?’
‘No sir,’ he replied at once. ‘That would be to leave Chintal a prey to Haidarabad – and there may already be Pindarees down the Godavari on Nagpore’s borders.’
‘But we do not know what the nizam is to do with these guns,’ protested the rajah. ‘If I am able to recall my history, Quebec was a fortress, its defences fixed. Perhaps that is the nizam’s intent only – a fortress on his border?’
‘Sir, why should the nizam build so strong a fortress when there is no threat whatever? No, the only purpose those guns serve is either to be brought to the palace here, probably on boats down the Godavari, to cannonade you into submission – or else they are a lure.’
The rajah had looked anxious at the suggestion that his palace might be thus despoiled, but positively intrigued at the notion of a lure. ‘Please explain yourself more fully, Captain Hervey.’
At the rajah’s bidding, the assembled company sat down, no longer having need of the map spread on the table. Selden, who had arrived after the conference began, but silent throughout (his influence much diminished by the most recent attack of malaria), started coughing violently. The rajah gave him iced water, which revived him as much by its expression of continuing regard as by any medicinal property. Once the coughing had ceased, and the rajah was again seated, Hervey took a deep breath and began his estimate – a calculation which, if wrong, might soon spell the end of the rajah’s sovereignty over Chintal. ‘The nizam will not invest Chintalpore,’ he opened confidently. ‘His treaty of alliance with the Company forbids any such aggression without the Company’s compliance – and that, we know, is unthinkable.’ The raj kumari cleared her throat. Hervey looked at her and saw the suggestion that he could not be so assured on this point. He decided to press on rather than be drawn into deliberation on the perfidy of the Company, however. ‘Your Highness, as I was saying, it is wholly inconceivable that Haidarabad should undertake overtly offensive action against Chintal.’
‘Unless, that is, those brutish sons of the nizam have a hand in matters,’ responded the rajah. ‘I have heard much of the enfeeblement of the nizam these past months. Nor would I place any faith in that badmash Chundoo Lall, his minister. Their long-held designs on Chintal – or, rather, the wealth of Chintal – are about to be thwarted by our alliance with the Company, about which they will have surely heard, since nothing remains secret in Chintalpore. Is this not now the only remaining opportunity they have to wrest that wealth from me?’
‘I cannot gainsay that hypothesis, sir, but I cannot believe the resident in Haidarabad would not have knowledge of such an enterprise. And, that being so, the Company’s agents would have been alerted, and in turn Chintalpore. We must discount it as the least likely eventuality.’
‘And yet we hear,’ said the rajah, with a hint of reproach, ‘that the resident in Haidarabad is not all that he should be.’
A high official of the Honourable East India Company seduced from his duty by pecuniary advantage: it was a grave charge. Hervey scarcely considered an Englishman was free from the mark of original sin, but he was not inclined to see perfidy in that quarter – though Selden would, no doubt, remark that India sweated the false civilization out of the best of men. He knew he could have complete confidence in one official at least. ‘Your Highness,’ he replied, in careful, measured tones, ‘we know, regrettably, that things in Haidarabad may not be as they should. But I have the utmost faith in the Collector of Guntoor. He would not dissemble.’
The rajah conceded. ‘Then what is it that you suppose the nizam is about? What is this ruse you speak of?’
Hervey considered for a moment how best he might explain his thesis – which was, in essence, simple, however ingenious. ‘If Haidarabad may not attack Chintal, then Chintal must be induced to attack Haidarabad. If, as I suspect, the nizam is at this time building redoubts on Chintal soil – not very distantly across his border, so that he might say that its precise line was in some doubt – it is a gauntlet thrown down in challenge. If you do not take it up then there will be some further encroachment, but all the time falling short of anything to which Calcutta could have substantive objection.’
There followed a long silence during which the rajah appeared to be praying, and the raj kumari calculating. At length the rajah pronounced himself in agreement with the appreciation. ‘But, Captain Hervey, we now come to the most painful part: what is to be done? Do I appeal to Calcutta? Do I journey to Haidarabad to ask for terms? I have read that a good tactician is he who knows what to do when something must be done; whereas strategy must from nothing derive what that something is. What should be our strategy?’
There was scarcely an eye but on the rajah as he spoke. Now there was not an eye that was elsewhere but on Hervey. He was all too aware of it, all too conscious of the expectations of him. He had nipped in the bud the mutiny at Jhansikote with little more than a whiff of grapeshot, just as resolutely as Bonaparte had defended the Convention. But did his art lie any more than in the skirmish? He had, in the rajah’s conviction, made a thorough and accurate estimate of the situation that faced them. Yet it had been one thing to make an appreciation – that much could have been done, with varying degrees of percipience, by anyone in the chamber. It was quite another to determine a strategy. And he dared not betray any doubt, for to do so would challenge the resolve that each would need for his strategy to have the remotest chance of success.
He began resolutely. ‘We know that we have not one-hundredth of the power needed to fight the nizam’s army.’ It was not an auspicious beginning. The rajah looked all but dismayed, which hastened Hervey to his purpose. ‘We must therefore take care to fight only those of his forces that it is supremely necessary to fight. By the boldest action we must prevent the enemy from reaching the battlefield in the first instance. These great guns of his – the nizam’s daughters as everyone seems wont to call them – are the cornerstone of his attempt to overawe us. If we are able somehow to neutralize that advantage then the nizam’s own stratagem is thwarted. Then we may turn ou
r backs on him, so to speak, and make ready to deal in turn with the Pindarees on the plain of the Godavari – for that, surely, is where they will erupt from Nagpore.’
The rajah looked disappointed. Was this a strategy of substance or of evasion? he asked himself. How, for instance, were the nizam’s guns to be dealt with by so insufficient a force as Hervey had at his disposal? Had he placed too much faith, after all, in this captain of cavalry – cornet a little but a year ago? ‘Captain Hervey, how, by all that is reasonable, do you suppose we may confront guns as powerful as these? Did not Napoleon himself say that it is with artillery that war is made?’
Hervey blanched at hearing the imperial name, for ‘Bonaparte’ was the best that any Englishman would allow. But it was no time for strict form, and he had to counter the rajah’s proposition – difficult though that task was. He could think of only one response, turning on the rajah’s own exposition of the strategic and the tactical. ‘Your Highness,’ he said, smiling confidently, ‘you have had occasion already to place your faith in my tactics, and not without gratification. Treating with those guns is merely an affair of tactics.’
The rajah, even if he retained doubts, looked intensely relieved. He left for his temple prayers with something of a smile, too.
‘I see you have reconciled where duty lies then, Captain Hervey,’ whispered Emma Lucie with a wry sort of frown.
‘Have I?’ he sighed. ‘I fear I have merely chosen the easier course.’
Later, in the seclusion of the palace gardens where they could not be overheard, Hervey spoke with Locke. Henry Locke, stout-hearted, in love with the most beguiling of the Maharashtri nautch girls because she looked him full in the face; though their positions of a decade before, when Hervey had stood in awe of him at Shrewsbury, were reversed, he bore no sign of disaffection. ‘What do you wish me to do?’
‘My dear friend,’ sighed Hervey, ‘this isn’t your fight. It’s not even my fight. I cannot tell you everything, but—’
‘Matthew Hervey, don’t try to send me away!’ Locke protested
He smiled. What simple loyalties fighting men enjoyed! ‘You don’t understand. I’m doing this because I’ve left myself no other course – because I’ve made such a hopeless job of the thing I was sent here to do!’
‘I could not care less. I have my reasons too. Just tell me what it is you would have of me!’
Hervey would lose no time with any expression of gratitude, for he knew he could not express it sufficiently with brevity. ‘First, you could see that no harm comes to Emma Lucie. Get her out of Chintalpore – to Guntoor if you can.’
He nodded.
‘And then I want you to go to Jhansikote and take charge there.’
Locke nodded again, and smiled broadly. ‘I do have one question though. Would it not be better to see off the Pindarees first before turning to the nizam’s redoubts? If, as you say, he will take no offensive action against Chintal, what’s to be feared having him at our rear?’
He had a point, though not one that Hervey had overlooked. ‘Do you recall what the Duke of Marlborough was said to have declared about campaigning – that no war could be fought without good and early intelligence?’
Locke nodded.
‘Well, that’s more the essence of our problem than those guns themselves. We are, so to speak, like a prizefighter who’s blindfold. We surmise the purpose of the nizam’s men on the lower plains is no more than to rattle our nerve, that they have no offensive intent.’
‘Ay,’ said Locke, furrowing his brow more, ‘but you claimed – and convincingly – that the nizam could not risk taking such action. And for him to do so on the plains, which are so much closer to the Company’s territories, makes no sense at all.’
Hervey nodded. ‘Yes, but what if his troops gave battle not as soldiers of Haidarabad but as Pindarees? They would be able to throw the whole of lower Chintal into confusion, cause the rajah to flee and give the nizam pretext for marching in to restore order.’
Locke’s mouth fell open. ‘Hervey, that’s fiendish. Why did you not say all this in the rajah’s chamber?’
‘For two reasons. First, I could not be sure who might hear – nor even could I be sure of the discretion, perhaps even the loyalty, of all that were in the chamber. And second – and I am most loath to say this, for I admire so much in the man – the rajah is not of the most resolute disposition, at least for the present. If he flees Chintalpore it will be the end.’
Locke blew out his breath in a gesture that acknowledged the true extent of the danger. ‘And you still believe that disabling those guns is the key?’
‘Yes,’ said Hervey, and with some assurance. ‘We may take our chances with the Pindarees, but if they were backed by those guns, I think it another matter.’
‘You think the nizam could simply move those great things the other side of Chintal?’
‘Let me put it to you thus, my dear fellow,’ replied Hervey, smiling. ‘From my reading of history, whenever a plan has depended upon the enemy’s not being able to move guns into a certain position, it has been overthrown by the very fact of his doing so!’
‘Yes, but here—’
‘Even here – even with these forests and hills. What about the Godavari? Now that Haidarabad appears, in practice, to have immunity from dastak, who knows what is moved along the river? Don’t lose heart, though. We shall be fighting the Pindarees with relief at hand – for I can’t think it will be long before the Company is able to despatch the subsidiary force. In any case, I’ll send urgent appeal to the collector this very day. What I want you to do, my dear Locke, is to drill the rajah’s infantry as light companies, for we shall have to bustle them about as nobody’s business. And have them ready, if you will, in three days’ time to take to the field. Tonight I shall leave with half a troop and the galloper guns for the west – I would do so earlier if this heat were not so punishing. And first I shall have it spread abroad that all of the rajah’s troops are to march on the nizam’s redoubts – for having us so march is their purpose. There are agents aplenty in Chintalpore: the false news will not take long to reach the guns.’
Locke looked puzzled. ‘Why do you want them to believe that all the rajah’s men are marching west?’
‘So that, my good friend, they are not tempted to move the guns. If they do, I cannot very well destroy them!’
Locke, knowing now the full risk of the enterprise, would hold Hervey in even higher regard than he had after the mutiny. He knew he could never match the acuity with which his erstwhile junior examined a problem. He could count himself just as brave in battle, but he knew that courage was more than that. It required nerve. That, indeed, was how Nelson and Hoste would have had it. And he did not, in his heart, trust he had nerve in the same measure.
All this he admitted freely to his nautch girl, the Maharashtrian beauty whom Hervey had first been suspicious of for her cloying attachment, but whom latterly he had come to believe was, in her affections, wholly genuine. She helped him make ready for his ride to Jhansikote, bringing him ripe figs from the palace gardens for the journey. And as he set out, when the full heat of the day was beginning to abate, there were large tears in her eyes, and entreaties that he would return to her unharmed. Had Locke given it but a second’s thought he would have known it an unlikely possibility – about as great as leading a boarding party against a deck swept by carronades. But his relish for the fight was growing by the hour, and after Jhansikote nothing seemed impossible. He kissed each eye gently – and then her lips with all the passion that was welling for the battle to come. ‘I shall be back,’ he said defiantly; ‘and then you shall come with me to England!’
Half an hour before dawn, Hervey stepped down from the saddle in a nullah close to the nizam’s redoubts. He had ridden hard all night. There had been – just as on the ride to Jhansikote on the night of the mutiny – an obliging moon, and there had been stretches of the road on which he could put Jessye into a hand-gallop. For the rest of t
he time they had trotted hard, except when she was in need of respite or where they came upon a hackery travelling by night to escape, as they, the heat of the day. Those travellers who were on foot – and there were many – simply stood aside as they heard the pounding hooves. Hervey, Johnson and the Maratha subedar had made the forty miles between Chintalpore and here in six hours, and their horses had yet something in reserve.
Behind them, hurrying at best speed, was a halftroop of the rajah’s cavalry (Hervey had specified not fewer than thirty sowars) and two galloper guns. But since these were coming from Jhansikote they would be four hours behind at least. He wanted all the time he could to think of some way to overcome the guns, however, and he knew, from long experience in the Peninsula, that if he could observe the routine of a defended position at first light it would reveal the best means of proceeding against it. He loosened Jessye’s girth and unfastened the noseband on her bridle so that she could pull at the couch grass: he would give her some of the oats he carried later. As he stood rubbing her ears, wondering what he might see when the sun revealed the redoubts to his telescope, Johnson handed him a tin cup. ‘Tea, sir,’ he said simply.
‘Tea?’ said Hervey incredulously. They had only just arrived, yet the cup was hot to the touch. Not even Johnson could have brewed tea in the saddle!
‘Ay, tea.’
‘Well tell me, man: how in heaven’s name have you hot tea so quickly?’
‘I’ll show you,’ and he went to retrieve the tea’s conveyance. ‘Here, can you make it out?’ – it was very dark now that the moon had set – ‘It’s a stone bottle which keeps ’ot with this charcoal ’ere in a cooker underneath. And it all fits together in a tin ’arness. I bought it in t’bazaar.’
The Nizam's Daughters Page 34
