Free Lance

by George Shipway

  ‘Why not? A man has more hope of recovery in any place but this.’ Blore looked distastefully around the strident room. ‘You think this din intolerable - you should hear the clamour at night! Every soldier who can walk quits hospital at sundown and returns rip-roaring drunk when the taverns close at midnight. The fights and hullabaloo -!’ He spat on the grimy floor. ‘Take your friend away, Mr Marriott. I shall visit him at evening.’

  They carried Todd in a palankeen to Moubray’s Gardens. Marriott summoned servants, stripped the stinking shirt, washed him from head to foot and put him to bed. The cadet moaned, and babbled nonsense, and rolled his head on the pillow. His skin was burning hot, spasms racked his frame and left him limp and breathless. ‘Surely he cannot be cold? Marriott wondered, himself sweating in the humid heat. Amelia came to the bedside, touched the sick man’s brow. ‘Blankets, Charles,’ she ordered, ‘every blanket in the house. Will he drink? - give him all the water he can swallow.’ Her tone was brisk and competent; the fluttering femininity was shed like an outworn cloak. Marriott hunted blankets - an article uncommon in Coromandel’s climate - while Amelia forced a glass between Todd’s chattering teeth.

  ‘Go attend to your duties, Charles. Leave him in my care.’

  ‘Females have no place in sickrooms.’ Marriott regarded her doubtfully. ‘You have experience of this malady?’

  ‘I have indeed,’ she answered sombrely. ‘My infant daughter died from it.’ She looked pityingly at the shaking figure on the bed. ‘As, I fear, will this young man; the fever is far advanced.’ Marriott swallowed his breakfast, and departed to a palankeen to Fort St George. There, comparing bills of lading, copying letters, totting accounts, checking tariffs for indigo, opium, rice and salt, he strove to forget the boy who fought the ague for his life. Marriott was hardened to losing his friends: seven out of the score of cadets and Writers who had sailed with him to Madras two years before were already dead. You acquired a flinty callousness to conceal your sorrow and fear, a vitrified indifference which kept you dry-eyed at the graveside and quickly stifled memories. Memory and mourning were mischievous indulgences for men in Hindostan. Marriott jabbed pen on paper, split the quill, sprayed ink across a ledger and cursed.

  ‘Charles, you are not yourself this morning,’ Fane remarked. ‘What troubles you?’

  Marriott told him. Fane said seriously, ‘Aye - the sick season, and a particularly bad one. New headstones in the cemetery every day. I am not sure,’ he continued anxiously, ‘I feel so well myself.’

  Marriott left him examining his tongue in a fly-blown mirror, returned to Moubray’s Gardens and found Blore at the bedside bathing the cadet’s face in vinegar and water. The surgeon threw the blankets aside, and trickled liquids into a beaker. ‘Laudanum, tincture of valerian, mercury, cream of tartar. There - ’tis the best I can do.’ He stirred the mixture and dribbled it down the invalid’s throat. Todd lay inert, eyes closed in shadowed pits. Blore looked at him and clicked his tongue.

  ‘Medicines will not save him now - they seldom answer when this fever takes a hold.’ He clinked bottles and phials in a bag, and snapped the catch. ‘The best receipt for health on Coromandel, Mr Marriott, is a good house in an airy part of the town, a saddle horse for exercise, and above all never drink bad wine. As for your friend, I conceive him at his last gasp. He still exists, though his pulse is scarcely perceptible and as bad as can be. It is impossible he can survive two hours more.’

  Blore stumped to the door, turned with his hand on the latch and added, ‘I shall acquaint the Fort Major, so that he may hold a Lieutenant’s party in readiness for the funeral this evening.’

  He went out, colliding in the doorway with Amaury, who walked rapidly to the bedside. ‘What is this? Todd - why is he here?’

  Marriott explained. Amelia covered her face in her hands, and cried bitterly. Amaury lifted the dying man’s eyelid, felt his pulse, prised open his teeth and peered into his mouth. ‘He is in desperate case,’ he muttered. ‘What fool removed the blankets?’ He covered the motionless form, and stood for a moment in thought. ‘Only one thing for it. A last throw - but there is nothing to lose.’ Amaury strode from the room, returned cradling bottles in his arms, and extracted a cork. ‘Claret,’ he said curtly. ‘Lift his head.’ Gently he spooned wine into the cracked, dry mouth. At last he set the empty bottle down, stood and looked compassionately at a face the colour of clay. ‘It may answer - it may not. Another bottle in an hour’s time, if he still lives.’

  Brusquely he dismissed Amelia. She gave him a mutinous look, pulled a chair to the bed, sat down and folded her hands in her lap. Amaury sent her a fleeting smile.

  While afternoon waned to evening, while the sun went down and stars like diamond slivers flecked the sky they watched the patient together, fanning the tiny spark of life that flickered and waned and glowed; and steadily poured claret down his throat.

  After midnight Todd stirred and moaned, and the sweat broke upon his skin.

  Colonel Todd came hurrying from Arcot, and stared aghast at the skull-like, waxen face. Although too weak to lift a finger the boy was conscious, and recognized his father with the shadow of a smile. ‘How long has he lain like this?’ the colonel demanded.

  ‘Five days,’ said Amaury. ‘I think he will now recover - the fever has diminished.’

  ‘What does the physician say?’

  ‘The quack,’ replied Amaury dryly, ‘abandoned hope. When he returned, on hearing Mr Todd yet lived, I forbade him the house.’ The colonel scrubbed his chin perplexedly. He was a short, spare, testy man with a furrowed walnut face; grey-peppered hair retreated from his forehead, leaving a shining dome; the rest he wore luxuriantly, like a full-bottomed peruke that brushed his epaulettes. ‘Then how have you treated him? What potions has he had?’

  ‘Claret,’ said Amaury blandly. ‘Three bottles a day. Sometimes four.’

  ‘Claret?'

  ‘Indeed. Food and drink and medicine in one, and a soothing anaesthetic. Your son, being always a thought disguised, is reasonably impervious to his sufferings. That, sir, and unremitting care.’ He indicated the others by the bedside. ‘To Mrs Bradly and Mr Marriott he will owe his life. One or the other has stayed with him night and day.’

  The colonel looked stunned, ‘Claret! Upon my conscience, I have never heard . . .’ He recovered himself, and shrewdly appraised Amelia. Colonel Todd was not a fool; after thirty years in India he could soon evaluate his fellow Europeans; and a woman’s standing in a bachelor household was easily assessed. He crossed to her and lifted her hands to his lips. ‘You keep my eternal gratitude, Mrs Bradly; I owe you more than I can ever repay.’ Tears started in Amelia’s eyes; the colonel gently patted her cheek, and extended his hand to Marriott. ‘You also, sir - may call on me for any service whatsoever. As for you, Captain Amaury--’

  Amaury lifted a hand. ‘Pray spare me your thanks,’ he said boredly. ‘The remedy I invented might well have been a deathblow - ’twas a hazard like the casting of a dice. I recommend, sir, that when Henry is recovered you remove him from the Fort - an airless, pestilential pit which breeds disease.’

  The colonel nodded. ‘I shall use my interest to have him commissioned at once, and posted to my regiment. General Harris, fortunately, is a relative by marriage.’

  Within a fortnight Henry Todd, leaning on two sticks, was hobbling about the compound of Moubray’s Gardens.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When Todd was nearly recovered Amaury insisted on taking him at mid-morning to stable parades in the cavalry lines. ‘For,’ he remarked, ‘convalescence from quaking fever is a lengthy business; and if you dawdle all day in Moubray’s Gardens you will sink in a decline.’ After breakfast and a cheroot - Todd, despite his dislike of houccas, learned to smoke pipes and cheroots - the pair departed for Fort St George in palankeens. Todd rested on a manger and watched Amaury make his rounds.

  The stables were thatch-roofed, airy sheds, unwalled, the horses picketed head inwards over clay-buil
t mangers; a barracks closed the flank of every standing. Troopers stripped to their drawers plied body-brush and wisp; native officers - jemadars and risaldars - supervised their work. Todd envied Amaury’s fluent Hindi; and remembered disconsolately his own struggles with the language. Mastery of the native tongue was by regulation mandatory; yet Todd had met long-service sepoy officers who spoke as little Hindi as a Bibee Sahib in ordering her domestics.

  Amaury inspected the horses one by one, examined barley feeds distributed in mangers, dismissed the parade and conducted Todd to the smithy. He watched farriers at work, scrutinized saddle rooms and bells of arms, checked magazines and granaries. His vigilant eyes missed nothing; his reprimands were stinging but delivered in a way that made the victims grin. It was obvious to Todd that though officers and men went in awe of their formidable captain they none the less adored him. Amaury passed the barracks by - ‘I never go in there; best leave native officers to regulate the privacies’ - and led the cadet to a small low-ceilinged room, the only furniture an inkstained table, two cane chairs and a teakwood chest.

  Amaury waved Todd to a chair, and seated himself at the table. ‘Squadron office,’ he exclaimed, ‘a tedious part of military life, but foolish to neglect it.’ Troopers, changed from stable garb to undress regimentals, wandered into the room, leaned against the walls and talked in undertones. The proceedings were quite informal; a risaldar presented an urgent request for furlough - ‘my house fell down in the rains’; complaints about ration rice - ‘scrapings from last year’s harvest, suitable as grapeshot, not for food’; a bicker over a troop-horse - ‘I trained him from a remount, sahib; why should he be ridden by a mutton-fisted trumpeter?’ Amaury’s summary edicts were received like divine decrees.

  A soldier wearing a havildar’s stripes stamped to attention and saluted smartly.

  ‘Well, Tillukdaree?’ said Amaury.

  ‘I am the senior havildar in my troop, sahib, with fourteen years’ service. The troop jemadar has died and, by your honour’s favour, I crave promotion in his place.’

  ‘I had considered,’ Amaury murmured, ‘transferring Jaswant Rao from the second troop. His service is longer than yours.’ Todd laboriously followed the quick exchanges, piecing the sense together from words he understood. The havildar spread his hands. ‘You say truth, sahib - but Jaswant Rao became havildar a year later than I, so in rank I am senior.’

  ‘Indeed a consideration - which does not invalidate the total length of service.’ Amaury thoughtfully tapped his fingertips together. ‘If I am ready to make an exception and grant this favour, what do you consider it worth?’

  Tillukdaree hesitated. ‘Last month, sahib, you promoted Jemadar Deonarain to risaldar: it cost him thirty pagodas. For jemadar I should not pay more than twenty.’

  Amaury grinned. ‘Come, Tillukdaree, you well know Deonarain paid forty. I shall let you off with thirty.’

  Todd could hardly believe his ears. The havildar rubbed his neck, considering.

  ‘Twenty-five, sahib.’

  ‘Twenty-seven, and the place is yours.’

  A relieved smile split Tillukdaree’s bearded face. ‘As your honour decrees.’ He groped in an ammunition pouch, clinked coins on the table. Amaury counted, scooped them up and put them in his pocket. ‘Register Jemadar Tillukdaree’s promotion forthwith,’ he told a risaldar. ‘Who is next?’

  ‘Naigue Ramdhone, seeking promotion to havildar.’

  It cost Ramdhone fifteen pagodas...

  During the return journey to Moubray’s Gardens Todd’s manner was oddly constrained. On remarking that he had seen no other European officers in the cavalry lines during stable parade or afterwards, Amaury replied, ‘We have twenty officers on the rolls, but only five or six on duty with the regiment. The rest are away on detachment, furlough or staff appointments. Those that are left attend parades whenever they find convenient; seldom, I confess, do they trouble themselves in the lines, leaving stables and inspections to native officers.’ Amaury drew deeply on his cheroot. ‘I have a partiality for military detail: it relieves the stale monotony of garrison existence.’

  The monsoon’s ultimate squalls had blown the clouds away; the sun beat down from a sky like hammered brass, distilling steamy vapour from rain-soaked earth. The palankeen’s swaying and jolting irked Todd’s wasted frame. He said, ‘I find myself surprised at the system for gaining promotion. Do the regulations provide a price for every rank?’

  Amaury stared at him in wonder. ‘Regulations? Price? You must be humming, Henry! What you have seen was plain straightforward bribery, sanctified by custom since Stringer Lawrence’s day. Everybody does it!’

  ‘Officers accepting bribes!’ Todd exclaimed in horror. ‘How odiously disgraceful! I cannot conceive--‘

  ‘In India,’ Amaury explained patiently, ‘no favours are granted without inducement, and every prerogative has a price. Lord Cornwallis, years ago, said he verily believed every native of the country was corrupt. A nice point, perhaps - but I’m cursedly afraid he’s right. Sepoys expect to pay for promotion; if I did not take the money the risaldar would, so the bribers concerned would be no better off. Where, then, is the wrong?’

  Wearing a stunned expression, Todd subsided on the cushions. Amaury examined him curiously, concluded the lad too vulnerable for further revelations and decided not to take him on a visit to his godown. The fellow might have a relapse, he thought, if he saw how wicked I am! He sent Todd safely indoors and, accompanied by his banian, went to the ground floor store rooms, unlocked an iron-hasped door and surveyed with satisfaction a brick-floored vault where bales and jars and sacks climbed ceiling high: arrack, flour, rice and salt, candles, gingham, longcloth.

  This was Amaury’s trading store, a source of income based on a time-hallowed swindle: the non-existent sepoys whom regiments kept on their rolls. The colonel drew these phantom soldiers’ pay, and usually shared the loot with his senior officers. To allay suspicion, rations on payment were drawn for the missing men; squadron commanders paid cash at Company prices for flour and rice, and sold them at a profit to local merchants. From this nucleus sprang a comprehensive traffic in various commodities, the scope varying with the energies of the officers concerned. Some were so successful that they branched to the usurer’s business, and loaned their surplus cash at thirty-six per cent to impoverished native princelings. The Newab of Arcot, it was said, owed pagodas by the thousand to gentlemen of the Company.

  Amaury would have recoiled in horror from cheating at whist or hazard, from bunking a debt of honour or swindling his tradesmen. There his probity ended. He had studied the peculations that corrupted the Company’s India, and seen the fortunes made from dubious transactions. Having no intention of ending his days a retired army colonel living in the Black Town and dying of booze and bibees, Amaury had set himself a target: capital sufficient for acquiring a plantation and a fleet of trading brigs. He could then resign his commission and become a wealthy nabob. Already he considered he was halfway there: his balance at the Carnatic Bank was comfortably heavy; and he had laid out sound investments in Bombay and Bengal.

  The aristocratic officer turned money-grubbing merchant, Amaury reflected sardonically. Why not? He was the Honourable Company’s servant, and was not their ancient title ‘The United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies’?

  He audited the stores with a tally his banian kept - like a housewife conning her pantry, he mused with an inward smile - directed perishable foodstuffs to a trader in Poonamallee, asked the banian’s advice (readily and accurately given, for the servant drew a commission on every article sold) about disposal of chintz and candles in the Cuddalore market; and went upstairs to his rooms. Passing an open doorway he glimpsed Marriott sitting beside a grey-bearded Musulman, poring over a book and mumbling to himself.

  ‘Still devilling your Persian, Charles? How does it go?’

  ‘Extremely badly. The tutor here declares my progress swift - I don’t believe a word the rasc
al says. I can neither read nor write a dozen words together, and that after two years’ study!’

  ‘Why not abandon the effort? ’Tis a futile language for common use, spoken by none save lawyers. Hindi or Urdu is far more valuable.’

  Marriott wiped a sweating face. ‘Have pity, Hugo! The regulations insist all Writers master Persian - and one dialect is sufficient at a time! Moreover Harley’s interest has secured me appointment as interpreter in Persian on General Wrangham’s staff.’

  ‘Interpreter?’ Amaury’s laughter exploded. ‘Yet you cannot string a sentence! What remuneration is offered for this onerous occupation?’

  ‘A hundred pagodas a month.’

  Amaury whistled. ‘Nigh on five hundred pounds a year. Damn it, Charles, you civilians nobble all the plums! I have to work like a slave for the half of that!’

  When Amaury returned from furlough in the hills, invigorated by a spell in cooler air, he said, ‘This tiger-sticking is rare fun, Charles. We killed eight within the fortnight!’

  ‘I shall by no means consider joining you, being perfectly satisfied it is an excessively dangerous sport. Were any of your party hurt?’

  ‘Two horses mauled, and young Cornforth of the Artillery badly mangled. The stupid fellow insisted on following a wounded tiger into cover, and dismounted the better to approach him. His wounds mortified past recovery, and we buried him in the jungle.’ Amaury crumpled a letter in his hand. The colonel desires to see me the instant I return. I wonder what frets the old boy?’

  Colonel Loxford informed him. Once a thrusting subaltern in Haider Ali’s wars, the 7th Cavalry’s commander was now raw-boned, tall, stoop-shouldered, his cadaverous features cobwebbed by threadlike purple veins. Recurrent fevers racked him, an old sabre cut had lamed him; he kindled his waning fires with liberal draughts of arrack. He lived in Fort St George, went little in society and seldom attended parades.