The Nizam's Daughters

by Mallinson, Allan

  ‘Yes, Captain sahib?’ he said, blinking.

  Hervey did not even have to think of the Urdu. It came at once. ‘Rani, did you visit each of the guns last night?’

  ‘Yes, sahib, all of them.’

  ‘How strongly built were the redoubts – the little forts that the guns were in?’

  ‘Very strong, sahib.’

  ‘Not easily knocked away?’

  ‘No, sahib.’

  To the hijda’s puzzlement, Hervey looked pleased. ‘And how narrow were the embrasures – the spaces through which the guns fired?’

  ‘Not more than a woman with voluptuous hips could pass, sahib,’ replied Rani, pouting and describing the shape with his hands.

  The Urdu escaped him, but the hijda’s hands said enough. He smiled to himself. Could it be that the nizam’s men had made the mistake of doing what many an embattled gunner had done before, and sacrificed traversing for protection? Yes: this was their Achilles’ heel! This was where he would direct his lance!

  He was already back in the saddle when he heard it. First a murmuring, then a buzzing, and then – if not cheering – sounds of distinct approbation. He turned to seek its cause, and there was a sight as glittering as that before Waterloo, when the Duke of Wellington and his staff had made their progress through the ranks. But, he smiled, what a contrast with the duke’s sombre, civilian attire that day was the court dress of the Rajah of Chintalpore!

  ‘Good morning, Your Highness,’ said Hervey, saluting. He could scarce believe the felicity of the timing. Five minutes before and the rajah would have found him with no plan, and each would have fuelled the other’s despair. Now, though, the rajah was inspired by Hervey’s sanguine air, and he likewise by the rajah’s substance and dignity.

  ‘Captain Hervey,’ he replied with a smile, ‘you see before you a very indifferent soldier but, I hope, one that may have some utility.’

  ‘Sir, your coming here now is most welcome to me, and I have no doubt it is everything to your sepoys,’ he replied, bowing.

  ‘Is there time for you to explain to me what is your design for battle?’

  Hervey returned his smile willingly. ‘Indeed there is, sir. It is, in any case, a simple plan. First let me point out to you the ground – the sun is not too bright for you to make out the Pindaree lines in the distance?’

  The rajah shaded his eyes and peered across the kadir. ‘Oh yes, Captain Hervey, I see them very well. And the guns like the walls of Jericho. How shall you tumble them?’

  Hervey smiled again. ‘If I may first explain the ground, sir. See how on our right the Godavari constrains our manoeuvre – and that of the Pindarees too. It is too deep to cross in force: it cannot therefore be the means of outflanking the line of the guns.’

  The rajah nodded in agreement.

  ‘On the left is the jungle. It constrains our manoeuvre as surely as the river, except that, for a short distance at least, it might afford cover. But progress on foot would be too slow, and with horses impossible.’

  The rajah nodded again.

  ‘The distance to the guns is about one half-league, and the distance from the forest to the river, at its widest part, the same, though it narrows to no more than a mile where the guns are – as you may see.’

  The rajah saw it all with perfect clarity.

  ‘There are eight guns, sir, and they command the approaches across both the kadir and the river—’

  ‘But how can we possibly advance in the face of such a cannonade?’ said the rajah, unable to contain himself.

  Hervey nodded respectfully. ‘Ordinarily, Your Highness, we could not. But the embrasures in each redoubt are extremely narrow, which means that the guns are not able to traverse to their extreme left or right. Neither will they be able to depress far enough to sweep the final approaches. They are also strongly built—’

  ‘Then that is more ill news, is it not, Captain Hervey?’ the rajah protested.

  ‘Not really, sir. If they are strongly built then the gunners will not be able to break them down quickly when they discover their mistake. If we could capture just one of the redoubts and use powder to blow up a wall, we could enfilade each of the others, reducing them one by one.’

  The rajah looked at him in dismay. ‘That is not possible, surely?’

  ‘It is an option of difficulties, certainly, sir – but what other do we have? Awaiting the collector’s reinforcements risks being overwhelmed in an attack once the Pindarees discover our strength – or rather the want of it.’

  ‘I see your reasoning well enough, Captain Hervey, but how do you intend capturing a redoubt?’

  ‘Quite simply, sir, I intend getting sepoys along the cover of the forest edge to a point where they may enfilade the Pindarees – and perhaps even the redoubt nearest the forest, for the flanks are not wholly walled.’

  The rajah pondered the notion before nodding his head slowly. ‘But one more question, Captain Hervey: how have you discovered this critical information about the guns? Your telescope alone would not reveal it.’

  ‘No, indeed, sir. I sent spies into the Pindaree lines last night.’

  The rajah eyed him sternly before nodding again, but this time with a smile. ‘As did Joshua?’

  ‘As did Joshua, Your Highness,’ said Hervey, smiling.

  ‘And is there a Rahab in the Pindaree lines?’

  ‘No, sir; merely some brave hijdas, now returned.’

  ‘Hijdas. Always hijdas,’ he tutted. ‘But now you have to be about your business?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I have my orders to give.’

  His officers assembled in the lone shade of a flame tree in full bloom. Locke’s absence he now felt all the more as he looked into the faces of those on whom his plan depended. Templer, for all his youthful enthusiasm, was no substitute, and Alter Fritz was . . . old. The faces of the native officers revealed a mixture of eagerness and apprehension. Hervey explained his design to tolerable effect in a mixture of Urdu and German (which Alter Fritz then rendered in Telugu – and not once was the rajah’s facility called on). The sepoy officers, hearing the plan, now looked keen. The rissalah officers looked disappointed, however.

  ‘You want us only to make a demonstration, sahib?’ they said disconsolately.

  ‘Yes, to begin with. We must tempt their attention away from the companies as they advance along the forest edge on our left flank. We must therefore convince them that we intend moving along the river’s edge in strength. We might tempt their cavalry to a charge and lead them onto the fougasses.’

  The cavalrymen looked a little happier.

  Hervey turned back to the infantry. ‘When you sepoys reach your enfilade position I shall gallop our guns to join you, and bring them to bear at close range on the embrasures, or even on the flanks of the redoubts if we have got far enough round.’ He now turned to Alter Fritz: ‘Have you the taste for the sabre still, Captain Bauer? Shall you take command of the cavalry?’

  Alter Fritz’s face lit up. ‘Hervey, with sword in hand I die here!’

  Hervey smiled and clapped the old Württemberger on the shoulder. ‘Then let us begin, before the sun makes our work even hotter than will the nizam’s daughters! But first,’ he said, turning to the rajah, ‘Your Highness, do you wish to say anything?’

  The rajah looked around benignly at the dozen or so officers crouching in the flame tree’s welcome shade. ‘Only this,’ he began in Telegu: ‘today I believe is a day when honour shall return to us all in full measure. May your god be with you.’

  All stood. Alter Fritz saluted, his face still aglow, and the rajah walked with his officers towards where their bearers waited.

  Turning to Templer, Hervey said simply, ‘Now you know what is my design. If I should fall then it is you who shall have to see it through. I want you to leave your horse and go with the sepoy companies.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘There can be no “but”. Alter Fritz is well able to see to the demonstration. The point of decision w
ill be with the sepoys on the left. That is where I shall be as soon as the Pindaree cavalry is drawn across to the right and you have reached a position of enfilade on the left.’

  And then they shook hands.

  The sepoys’ blue coats stood a better chance of going unnoticed than the scarlet of the British infantry would have, but a diversion nevertheless seemed prudent. Hervey therefore ordered one rissalah to advance along the river bank with the galloper guns to draw fire – which he was confident would be opened prematurely by the nizam’s gunners in their eagerness to begin work. ‘Double your charges,’ he told the gunner jemadar. ‘Do not concern yourself with any effect but that on the enemy’s attention.’

  Though he knew where he wanted to be, Hervey knew where necessity demanded he should be, and he now took post in the centre of his depleted brigade, drawn up with four companies in line and a halfrissalah on either flank. From here he would watch his design for battle unfold, and judge the moment when and how to make the dash to join the sepoys’ enfilade. And as he sat, keenly observing the flattest, emptiest arena on which he had ever faced battle, his thoughts turned not to home, as they had done before Waterloo, but to that very battle, with its many, many times greater numbers – horses, guns and men. Yet though the numbers were vastly greater at Waterloo, he fancied his situation now not entirely unlike the duke’s that day: at least, in the closing stages of the battle. He sat astride a horse not much bigger than a pony, in front of a body of men who, though stout-hearted enough, faced what must be overwhelming odds.

  And yet there was one test they would not face – the test that had been Major Edmonds’s and then Captain Lankester’s as they had had to judge the effect of the enemy’s cannonading on their line. For this morning Hervey’s brigade was outside the guns’ range, and he intended that it remain so. Nevertheless, he knew that the smallest misjudgement would see them all perish.

  Alter Fritz and his rissalah advanced in two ranks at the trot. The lance pennants, though there was no breeze, fluttered with the forward movement – a pretty sight, thought Hervey, and unusual for its not facing him. He watched through his telescope as they proceeded with admirable steadiness towards the Pindaree lines, Alter Fritz sitting erect in the saddle, as proud, no doubt, as when he had first been a trooper on parade for Duke Charles Eugene. When the rissalah was half-way to the lines, there was a long, rolling eruption of flame, smoke and then noise from the nizam’s guns. The range was extreme, yet Hervey held his breath as the rounds arched lazily towards the lancers in a graceful parabola: he could see each one of them quite clearly. All fell short of the rissalah by a furlong at least, one ball bouncing into the river, sending up a fountain of water and steam, followed by another and then another. Two balls bounced straight at the lancers, but with each bounce their velocity was diminished, and the ranks opened to allow them to pass through harmlessly. The three remaining shot were what interested Hervey most, for they were so wide of their mark (fired, he supposed, by the guns on the Pindarees’ left) that he knew their traverse must indeed be severely limited, with only the narrowest of arcs. Though the battery was able to sweep the whole of the kadir, and very effectively out to a quarter of a league, they were not able, it seemed, to concentrate on one target. It was exactly as he hoped. And then, a minute later, Alter Fritz having most daringly advanced a further hundred yards, the second salvo was fired (equally without damage) and Hervey realized the full import of the limited traverses: at half the distance between the cannons’ first graze and the muzzles themselves there would be a significant extent of frontage which the guns could not cover at all. He had never been especially good at geometry – and he would have wished now for paper and protractor – but, by his rapid calculation, at that distance half, indeed, of the front would be uncovered.

  Now here was an opening. Between salvoes he could take the whole of the cavalry in a gallop from as close as where Alter Fritz and his rissalah stood presently in safety, and in the time before the gunners could fire another round they could be through the belt entirely swept by fire (he supposed the enemy must have explosive shells as well as roundshot) and into that where the arcs could not interlock. From then on the odds would change in their favour until, in the final furlong or so, the guns would scarcely be able to bear on more than a fraction of his front.

  A frontal assault on any guns was, however, a calculated gamble, for there were bound to be casualties, especially close in when they began firing canister. It was, therefore, merely attrition – and a cynical attrition at that. Any cavalryman felt a deep repugnance towards confronting guns with nothing but the breasts of horses and brave men. And Hervey not least: he could not throw away the lives of any of his command in so premeditated a fashion. But the effort in this appreciation might not be wasted yet, for he saw clearly now that to disrupt the fire of the two guns on the Pindarees’ right was to open up an approach by which he could, perhaps, turn their flank.

  Alter Fritz and his rissalah were doing sterling work drawing the guns’ fire – and, thereby, the Pindarees’ attention – to the right flank. The old quartermaster judged it prudent to advance no further except to send forward an open line of mounted skirmishers to try to draw the fire of the Pindaree cavalry mustered in a dense mass before the guns – by Hervey’s estimation, perhaps a thousand or more. And his stratagem was working, for all attention seemed fixed on the river flank. A calm settled once more on the kadir, as the gunners perceived their powder to be wasted at that extreme range, and all of Hervey’s force stood motionless in place. All, that is, but the two companies making their way on the left – still undetected – along the forest’s edge, and the mounted skirmishers advancing with deliberate slowness on the right.

  It was now becoming uncomfortably hot: not yet the heat that seized the whole of the body in a vice, but fierce nevertheless, and salty beads of sweat were making their way down the back of Hervey’s neck. He took off his shako and wiped his forehead with his sleeve, and rubbed dry the leather cap-band. He envied the sepoys at the forest edge who, though their brisk step would not have been without effort, at least had some shade. He replaced his shako, adjusted the neckflap, though the sun would not bear directly on it for several hours yet, and took a long drink from his water bottle. He had been worried about water. He had been worried that the Pindarees might have poisoned the wells near where they supposed he would make camp. He had been relieved, therefore, to see villagers using them as they approached, and Alter Fritz, whose proud boast was never to have had a moment’s gripe since coming to Chintalpore, had pronounced the water sweet. But how he wished for Private Johnson’s chirrupy humour at this moment – that and the brew of tea he would have had at daybreak, and no doubt another canteen for him now. In Johnson’s mind a brew of tea was a kind of military elixir during whose making and drinking all priorities were resolved and all possibilities became apparent.

  But with thoughts of Johnson came thoughts of Jessye, and a moisture about the eyes that was not the fault of the heat. He had always known that Jessye must one day succumb to . . . any number of things. Such was their precarious profession. But he had always promised her that the final blow would, if need be, come from him, and that she should pass peacefully with him by her side. And this promise he had not kept. Had he truly believed him when the subedar said she felt no pain lying there full of the snake’s poison? That letting her slip away with the sun on her back, rather than with the crack of a pistol in her ear, was a truer kindness? Or had he simply not the courage to see the oldest friend he had in the service lifeless at his feet? It was a cruel and ignoble end for her, and he had not been there at the final moment. Yes, Johnson had been with her, the man who loved her almost as much as he did. But Johnson had not seen her slip wondrously in that soapy membrane from between the haunches of her dam ten years or so before, nor watched her instinctive struggling for her mother’s milk only minutes later, nor her clambering to her feet and her first, tentative steps not long afterwards. These were w
hat bound a man more closely to his horse than anything might – even if the man might find admitting it beyond him.

  For the first time since coming to India he felt alone, though the rajah was close beside him. Every time he had awaited battle he had been surrounded by faces he knew and voices he recognized, and they had talked incessantly. There was always something to talk about: if it was not the battle to come it was the battle that had been. And then there was the encouragement of juniors by seniors, and the reassurance by return. But he did not know these native officers, and the impassivity of the sepoys and sowars unnerved him somewhat. He thought of riding up and down the ranks to hail them with an appropriate word, but his grasp of Urdu was still precarious, and he had none of Telugu, so the enterprise might be worse than unproductive.

  Suddenly they were all attention to the right flank, where Alter Fritz’s skirmishers had opened a brisk, if scarcely effective, fire on the Pindaree cavalry.

  ‘What do they do there?’ asked the rajah, a little shakily.

  Hervey reassured him. But contrary to everything he had expected – or, indeed, could have hoped – half the Pindaree host now surged forward in a trot towards the skirmishers.