At this moment in time, as his horse trod resolutely forward with its load, he was not feeling anything but humiliated.
Before leaving Ferozepur, Jack had visited the quartermaster of Cox’s regiment and given him some money for Cox’s courtesan. It had been humiliating, having to suffer the hooded knowing eyes of a grizzled sixty-year-old quartermaster, when Crossman tried to explain that absolutely nothing untoward had taken place, but since the captain had omitted to leave the woman provided for, he had taken the duty upon himself. Clearly the major had not believed him. Why should he? Oh, yes young man, the elderly quartermaster might as well have said, I understand. Good luck to you, you randy little devil. Get it where you can is my motto. His eyes and demeanour said as much, even if the words had not come out of his mouth.
Jack’s mind was still taken up with the woman. What would have happened if he had woken to find her beside him an hour earlier? The thought was both terrifying and thrilling. He knew that, now, after the event, he would be regretting any indiscretion, yet he also knew that he would have experienced a short time of forbidden ecstasy, when all guilty thoughts would have flown from his mind and he would have been free of himself.
The four men rode until evening when they came across a vast mangrove forest which would need the light of the following day to see their way. They had brought a single tent with them, a small bell, which they put up between them. Then Raktambar went looking for wood to make a fire, while King saw to the horses. Pasture was found for the beasts and they were hobbled and left to roam for the night. Gwilliams scouted the immediate area, looking for any possible hazards, whether in the form of hostile men, savage wild beast, inclement weather or physical geography. Crossman found himself fetching water and laying out the beds. There were no servants to do the chores out here, he reminded himself, and strange as it might have been to other officers he felt churlish simply sitting around waiting for others to finish the work. He preferred to be doing something himself.
Once they were all set up for the night, poor young Sergeant Farrier King wandered around looking lost and naked having no precious instruments to play with. He did walk off to a nearby rise, without his rifle-musket which seemed a little foolish to his lieutenant. Crossman said nothing however. It would not improve their relationship to be always criticizing King for something. Better to let some things float by without bringing them to notice.
When he did return, the others were sitting around a small campfire and he joined them in eating the stew Gwilliams had cooked.
An evening near jungle is never a peaceful affair, what with all the myriad noises the forest creatures make, but a traveller in any new land soon gets used to particular sounds and blots them from his consciousness. Gwilliams was aware that he was scraping his tin plate with his spoon and begged the pardon of the others.
‘Not a concern,’ murmured Crossman, leaning back. ‘Look at those damn stars! Have you ever seen so many? I swear they multiply every night. And that moon. Have you ever seen so fat a moon?’
‘That moon,’ agreed King, ‘is fatter than my last landlord. He drank fifteen jugs of ale every evening, without fail, and it all went to his middle. At about ten in the evening his shirt would part company with his breeches and his belly would appear, white and round, just like that moon.’
‘So, what was she like?’ asked Gwilliams of Crossman, casually. ‘This mornin’ I mean?’
Jack straightened. ‘Who?’ he asked, hoping there was some other explanation for the question.
‘You know,’ replied Gwilliams. ‘The woman.’
‘None of your damn business, Corporal,’ snapped the lieutenant. ‘How the hell did you know, anyway?’
‘Got eyes,’ replied Gwilliams, smugly. ‘I seen her. Fine pair of haunches, from what I seed. Good set of shoulders.’
Fortunately for Lieutenant Crossman, newly married and concerned about fidelity, King was so engrossed in the heavens, in the stars and their courses, he had not followed the conversation. The young sergeant did not look quite real in the fading light. Jack wondered whether the sergeant was real. Any other ranking soldier would have got himself as drunk as a bishop the previous evening, their final night before going off on what might prove to be their last jaunt into the wilderness. But not Farrier King. He had spent the evening carefully wrapping lightly-oiled rags around his instruments and giving Ibhanan last minute instructions about their care and servicing.
Gwilliams, on the other hand, had soaked his brain in the local gin, but fortunately for the corporal he had the ability to surface the following morning as if he had been supping on spring water.
Only Crossman, the officer in charge, had something to hide and, as usual, it concerned women.
King was something of an enigma to Crossman. After all, he was only a blacksmith’s son and should have had no pretensions to anything but an ordinary soldier’s life. Yet the young man had a purposeful air about him, as if he knew exactly what was his role in life and it certainly wasn’t serving army officers or shoeing horses. It was not that he regarded himself as special, but that he considered himself lucky to have found work that he knew to be special. Farrier King was a surveyor and it was the job that should really bear the capital letter, not his name. He was quietly genteel in a less than lofty way. Not the gentility associated with an English aristocrat, but the kind that settled on men of knowledge who have no time for frivolous pastimes such as drinking and whoring. It seemed to Crossman that King would rather go to a lecture on the use of the Dip Circle Device, than swill ale or bed a willing buxom milkmaid. He did not know how to enjoy himself: or perhaps he did, but his joy was of a deviant variety, resting in cold metal instruments and strings of mathematical theories.
‘I shan’t let you down on this mission, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘You can be sure of that.’
‘What?’
‘You were staring at me, as if assessing my worth, sir. I know I’ve been a disappointment to you in the weapons area, but I’m sure I’ll get better with a firearm with practice. Gwilliams here has had a lifetime of shooting squirrels out of trees – he told me he barked them – isn’t that right Gwilliams? You bark squirrels by shooting at the tree limb on which they sit so that the bark flies up and hits them in the head and stuns them. Remarkable.’
Jack said, ‘I wasn’t assessing you, Sergeant. I was dreaming. Staring into cold space. Now, what’s all this about squirrels? Why would you do that, Gwilliams?’
‘So’s not to ruin the meat and pelt. You shoot ’em square on and you make a mess of the cadaver. Damn great hole in it, the ball blastin’ right through on occasions and taking good meat with it. If’n you just bark a squirrel or chipmunk, you don’t wreck its hide, so to speak.’
‘One learns something every day. What about bears and cougars?’
‘Straight a-tween the eyes, sir, every time, or you might as must end up with raked back and ragged pants.’
‘I thought as much. No barking bears, then. Remember that, King.’
Later, when they went to bed, a rota system for guard duty went into operation. Jack had to take his turn: there were only four of them. Two hours each was not a great chore. The officer worried when it was Raktambar or King on duty, feeling the only one he could really trust to be alert or loyal was Gwilliams. But when it came to his turn, in the early dawn with the grey light leaking from the forest around, he realized he had slept some of the night away. Beasts and birds were moving in the sunrise, some out looking for food, the nocturnal ones looking for a bed.
Jack had heard so much about tigers before coming to India he had expected to meet one on every corner. So far the only ones he had seen were on the walls of a rajah’s palace, though there had been spoor and other evidence. Still, he did not feel so threatened by tigers as he did by elephants. They might seem more benign, the bigger beasts, but they were just as unpredictable. He saw a herd of them go past in the dawn now, silent as creeping mice, down towards a river’s edge. As they cross
ed a ridge, some dozen of them, their silhouettes were stark against the sky. One stopped to defecate and Jack could distinctly hear the thud of dung hitting ground on the drum-hollow forest floor. Then the great grey beasts were gone, into the forest, without treading on so much as a twig.
An anteater came next, shuffling down a narrow path in the grass, followed a little later by some sort of largish feline – not a leopard or any that Jack knew – though whether one was hunting the other was a mute point.
Finally, a snake slithered over some warm boulders, into the sunshine, to bask with the lizards and get some heat into its bones.
Jack had heard much about cobras, but apart from one or two encounters, had not been too bothered by them. There were a lot of snakes in India, despite the fact that the natives and foreigners alike killed them willy-nilly, whenever they saw one. But for the most part – perhaps cobras excluded – they were pretty shy creatures. You don’t bother me, I don’t bother you. It was a philosophy he agreed with.
Gwilliams was first up, followed by Raktambar.
The corporal got the fire going again, blowing on last night’s embers, while Raktambar went down to the stream for water.
It was an hour before Jack realized the Rajput had not returned.
‘Has anyone seen Raktambar?’ he asked of king and Gwilliams. ‘Is he back yet?’
Gwilliams looked along the jungle path. ‘Ain’t seen hair nor hide since he went for water.’
‘I haven’t seen him at all this morning,’ answered King, rolling up some bedding. ‘He was gone when I got up.’
Crossman walked down the animal track towards the stream. He found it was further away than he’d first imagined. There was no sign of the Indian on the trail down to the water. When he got there though, Jack found the water skins lying on the bank, draped over a stone. A half-filled one was up to its belly in the shallows. But Raktambar was nowhere to be seen. Jack picked up the skins, dipped his stump into the cold water for a few moments to soothe the constant: irritation, then walked quickly back to camp.
‘He’s missing,’ the lieutenant told the other two men. ‘No sign of him.’
‘Skipped?’ asked Gwilliams.
Jack shrugged, genuinely mystified. ‘But why? He came back of his own accord. Why would he duck away now?’
‘Mebbe he knows where we’re going now? Could be he doesn’t like our chances? Or mebbe he’s gone to get men, now he knows the trail and where he can attack us?’
‘I can’t believe he would betray us so soon after his speech to me at Ferozepur – I just don’t believe it.’
King said, quietly, ‘How well do we know these people?’
‘I take your point, Sergeant,’ replied Crossman, ‘but the sincerity in his tone, in his very demeanour, was not faked, I swear. I’m not sure what we should do now. We could track him down. I’m sure you could follow him, couldn’t you, Gwilliams? Or we could push on without him.’
Gwilliams, bushy beard glinting like copper in the morning sunlight, shrugged off his present task of saddling the mounts.
‘Take me to the spot, sir. Give me a look.’
Jack took the corporal down to the stream. Gwilliams spent a few minutes looking at the ground there, and at the surrounding bushes and trees. He then gave his opinion.
‘There’s bin more’n one man down here. Look at the prints in the mud on the far bank. Two others have come. And you can see where the shrubs is broken, the leaves disturbed, out that way.’ He pointed. ‘I reckon he was met by someone, mebbe even took. You want my opinion, I say we go after him. It may slow us down a piece, so it’s your call, sir.’
Jack did not hesitate. ‘I’m sure this won’t be the last time we’ll have to deviate from our path, Corporal.’
The pair walked back to the camp and assisted King with the final packing. Then the three riders with two extra horses in tow, set out to follow the trail left by the people who had met with Raktambar. It could be he was known to them of course, even that the meeting had been pre-arranged, but Jack wanted to be sure that Raktambar had not been forced. His own thoughts were that the Rajput had gone willingly, for who would bother to abduct an Indian in a country of millions? Had it been Gwilliams or King who’d gone missing, Crossman would be certain of an ambush.
After an hour’s riding through the forest the trio came upon several mango groves, clearly planted by farmers. A little further on still and huts came into sight, surrounded by cultivated fields. There were no workers in the fields, nor any around the village itself, which seemed strange. Something had frightened them away, probably only temporarily. Once again his thoughts naturally went to tigers. A man-eater? Surely not the whole village though? It had to be something other than just a wild beast.
It was not long before they came across the real reason for the temporary evacuation. They came to a place where something ghastly had happened. There was a giant tree with wide-spreading strong-looking limbs. Dangling on ropes attached to the limbs were five hanged men, all Indians wearing only loincloths, some in turbans. They swayed there grotesquely, one or two of them spinning slowly like plumb-bobs. Jack inspected the corpses and was relieved to discover that Raktambar was not among them. This set of executions had obviously frightened the locals out of their wits, and probably in their eyes had defiled their orchards. It was as if an apocalypse had passed through like a foul wind and left these symbols of death behind it to dirty the landscape.
‘Rough justice?’ murmured Gwilliams. ‘Or mebbe a raid from bandits?’
‘I think you were right the first time,’ answered Crossman. ‘Let’s push on. Can you still track them?’
‘Easier, over the fields.’
In another hour the three soldiers had caught up with a troop of Sikh irregular cavalry led by two British officers. The heavily bearded sowars wore long black boots, red kilts and reversed animal-skin coats, with dark-blue turbans. The two officers were dressed much the same, except for decorations on their uniforms and helmets in place of turbans. They were riding in good order, but there was a solemn air about them. The officers had been speaking to one another, but they stopped when Crossman approached.
Jack was aware he was not in uniform, having opted for white cottons for the ride north-west. His eyes swept up and down the line of horsemen and noted that they had three prisoners with them. One of these was Ishwar Raktamber, who looked as if he had been beaten. His head was hanging down and his clothes were torn. Crossman rode up to the two officers, who watched him coming through narrowed eyes.
‘Lieutenant Crossman of the 88th,’ he said, coming abreast. ‘You have my man there. I want him back.’
The two officers were subalterns themselves. One of the pair, the senior by the look of him, for the other was not much more than a boy of seventeen, glared at Crossman. They were clearly taken aback by his abrupt manner and looked affronted.
‘Who the hell are you, sir, to make demands?’ questioned the big cavalry lieutenant in an accent Jack recognized as East Coast Scotland. He appraised Crossman, looking him up and down. ‘You’re not even Indian army. Giving me orders! Whatsay?’
The cornet looked at his senior and grinned.
‘Wipe that smirk off your face, Cornet,’ snapped Crossman to the youth, then keeping his voice to an even tone he said to the older man, ‘I’ve told you who the hell I am, now who the hell are you?’
The retort came back. ‘Mind your own damn business.’
‘I am minding my business. My business is that Rajput you have there. You took him from my camp, sir, and I want him back. I don’t know what your orders are but I’m sure they don’t include abducting one of the Maharajah Ram Singh’s palace guards, a man who has been in my employ for the past several weeks and who has nothing to do with insurrection.’
While they had been talking a Sikh officer – a subedar – had walked his horse up alongside Crossman’s. The Sikh had his hand on his tulwar sabre, as if ready to draw it at a command. Jack turned to stare into
the man’s eyes, finding nothing comforting there.
The cornet piped up, ‘These prisoners are all mutineers – they’re scum. We caught them all together, running south. We’ve already hanged the worst of ’em and this lot will meet the same fate, once we’ve questioned them as to the whereabouts of their fellows . . .’
Gwilliams had now moved up and was nudging the subedar’s horse with his own, forcing it away from Crossman’s. King, who was the only one of the three in uniform, had come up on the other side. His Enfield rested across the saddle of his mount. There was an uneasy shuffling amongst the cavalry horses, as if their riders were wondering what was going on. It must have been unusual to see British officers arguing so hotly amongst themselves, even if one of them was in mufti. The subedar had now moved behind the two British officers. Raktambar had his head up and was looking anxiously at the confrontation.
Gwilliams said to the cornet, ‘You’re a damn liar, sonny. You never caught our man with those others.’
Raktambar shouted, ‘They came to the stream while I was getting the water – these two,’ he nodded at the other captives, ‘and fell on their knees to drink in front of me. Then the troopers came . . .’
‘We are not mutineers, sir,’ cried one of the two prisoners. ‘We are simple travellers, sir. We are holy men, not soldiers.’
‘Shut your rotten mouths,’ shrieked the cornet, clearly embarrassing even his comrade, ‘or I’ll shut them for you.’ He then whirled back and addressed Gwilliams. ‘I’m not a liar and you’ll answer for that remark. If you’re an officer like your friend here, which I doubt, I’ll have satisfaction. If you’re not, I’ll see you flogged.’ He was still a little hysterical. ‘You hear me?’
Brothers of the Blade Page 20
