Free Lance

by George Shipway

  ‘Captain Amaury?’ Caroline inquired sharply. ‘Why is he leaving Madras?’

  ‘Have you not heard? He has been granted a year’s furlough, and goes with me to the Circars.’

  Caroline put down the vase with a crash that cracked the china. The ladies at the card table turned inquisitive heads. She stared blindly from the window at the Fort’s flat rooftops climbing in tiers like crenellated cliffs. ‘Ah, God help me!’ she whispered. ‘I had not known.’

  Marriott, completely at a loss, looked at her stricken features. Caroline wrestled a tiny lace-edged handkerchief between her fingers, and said feverishly, ‘Charles, I have altered my mind. We shall be secretly betrothed - I will inform my parents after you have gone, so that papa may not pester you and demand you withdraw your offer. You must on no account approach him before you leave!’

  ‘I protest,’ said Marriott, flabbergasted, ‘such conduct is most indecorous! After obtaining your permission, propriety requires I lay my suit before your--’

  ‘No, no, no! We are vowed for marriage, Charles - is not that your desire? You must leave to me the ticklish task of extracting papa’s agreement. Meanwhile, you must not betray our secret to your closest friend, not even Captain Amaury! Do you promise?’ Confounded by the sudden reversal, Marriott scrutinized her face. He saw unhappiness verging on despair, mingled strangely with a fierce determination. Perplexed and vaguely conscious he swam in waters beyond his depth, he said slowly, ‘I promise. This is not how I envisaged our engagement, a clandestine affair and odiously indefinite. I cannot, in truth, understand your motive. Surely it were better--’

  ‘Leave to me the judgement, Charles. Sir John, as I have told you, can refuse me nothing.’ A smile trembled for an instant on Her lips. ‘Now you must go - those whispering hussies are sure we hatch some scandalous assignation!’

  When Marriott had gone Caroline lifted the priceless vase and smashed it into fragments on the floor.

  The ghauts beyond the Godaveri was a country of close horizons: tangled hills and forests, red rocks and dark green foliage, old crumbling forts on jutting crags, temples spiring from eroded crests. Rivers tumbled in gorges which yielded to broad lush valleys where little lakes were sprinkled like shards of shattered glass. Spurs thrusting from the hillsides embowered mud-brick villages and croplands hacked from jungle. Rock walls engirdled every village; a citadel, square and loopholed, towered inside the ramparts.

  Peace, in the Northern Circars, was a very recent blessing.

  The part of the valley the convoy covered seemed to be in motion. Cattle and sheep concealed the ground, camels plodded in long brown ropes, elephants in procession were huge grey moving boulders. Sepoys marched in the middle, a compact scarlet column gemmed by sungleams on their muskets; on flanks and rear a scattering of low-caste irregular soldiers, known as peons, herded the stragglers. A half mile in front rode a fan of hircarrahs - mounted irregulars used as, scouts, messengers and spies - followed by the five Europeans for whom this travelling concourse, a thousand men and a thousand beasts, provided security and shelter.

  Marriott folded a paper and stuffed it in a saddlebag. ‘A horridly inaccurate map, the Godaveri marked fifty miles astray. No matter. The hircarrahs say we approach Moolvaunee’s jagir: the farthest part of the Circars where a European lives.’

  ‘Who, I surmise,’ Amaury said, ‘is Gregory Beddoes?’

  ‘Yes. A legendary name in Madras. The Council appointed him Collector after the treaty of ’66, and rumour says he has never left the District since. We will stay a week or more at his residence in Moolvaunee, four stages on.’

  ‘For which I shall not be sorry,’ Todd remarked. ‘My sepoys, after a month-long march, badly need a rest to clean their kit.’ He wheeled his horse. ‘I must see how they progress - Naigue Goculchand was seriously lame this morning.’

  Amaury, smiling, watched him go. ‘Our young ensign attends keenly to his duties. A most worthy officer - he actually insists on trudging afoot with his men. Confoundedly fatiguing - thank God I joined the cavalry!’

  They halted after midday, the multitude coming to rest like a broad slow-moving river widening to a lake. Sepoys pitched tents in a four-square corral fencing the baggage mound: an orderly enclosure amid a raucous throng of followers who built for themselves crude shelters hacked from trees, cut firewood and forage, drove their beasts to water, found them grazing. Todd posted guards and pickets, checked arms and ammunition; Amaury watched horses groomed and fed; Fane and Marriott, ranging further, inspected camels and bullocks, counted casualties and re-allotted loads.

  Amelia supervised the communal mess tent and ordered meals. The cossetted lady of Moubray’s Gardens gathered the gentlemen’s domestics collectively under her banner and taught them a routine for making and breaking camp faster than the sepoys’ drilled proficiency - greatly to Todd’s annoyance. She discovered a talent for doctoring, and took over the medicine chest. At evening, Portuguese handmaid in tow, she tended the hurt and sick of every caste from sepoy subhadar to basket-coolie. Fluxes, putrid fever, ague and mortified wounds afflicted the march; at every stage a corpse or two was buried or burnt.

  Amelia always rode the early morning stages - a trimly habited figure riding sidesaddle - and retired to her palankeen when the sun climbed high in the sky. She slept alone, having intimated primly she would not share Marriott’s tent till they reached their destination: a regard for the proprieties which infuriated Marriott, made Amaury smile, and earned Todd’s grave approval.

  At General Beat - a military tattoo which no amount of banter could induce the ensign to forgo - the whole camp stirred to life. While a honey-pale dawn light faded the stars dubashes shook their masters awake, peons knocked down tent pins, cooks kindled fires, boiled water for tea and shaving; and a discordant braying and bellowing burst from the horde of animals. The gentlemen sat in dew-wet chairs while barbers scraped their chins; the tents came down and coolies packed up baggage. In the mess tent - always the last to go - the Europeans breakfasted on mutton pelaws and curry. Marriott invariably inspected the elephants, escorted by a sepoy detachment, which carried in leather yakdans the Company’s twenty thousand pounds.

  The drums beat ‘Forward March’, and the whole ungainly multitude rolled slowly into motion.

  When they reached Moolvaunee Marriott and Fane changed riding clothes for formal dress and went in official guise to call on Collector Beddoes. Guided by a hircarrah they skirted the village and saw houses sited in shady groves, dominated by a magnificent mansion which, except for the whitewashed walls, would not have disgraced a nobleman’s seat in England.

  ‘Beddoes Sahib’s palace,’ the hircarrah said.

  A doorkeeper conducted them to a fan-vaulted hall furnished in Arabic style with gilt-and ebony-inlaid chairs, intricately carved, and vivid Belochee carpets; delicate Chinese paintings decorated pink-washed walls. From a filigreed brass thurible incense smoke in slow blue whorls tanged with a bitter fragrance the scent of roses heaped in bowls. A yellow-liveried waiter presented a silver tray of hock in crystal goblets. Fane took a hearty swig.

  ‘Iced, by God! Our friend lives like a veritable nabob!’

  They talked in undertones, sipping the wine - ‘uncommonly good, smooth as silk’ - until the waiter returned and ushered them into a chamber even larger than the hall. Water-soaked grass matting screened narrow lancet windows, the air was cool and fresh. The only piece of furniture was a vast four-poster bed, ornately carved and gilded, mosquito curtains drawn. Embowered in striped silk cushions, garbed in cotton shirt and trousers, reposed Mr Gregory Beddoes.

  A knobbled sunburnt face like old mahogany, the leathery skin a map of crisscrossed lines, beaked bony nose and jutting chin, heavy eyelids hooding violet eyes, and a rounded dome of a head which sprouted sparse grey bristles. Powerful shoulders, a barrel-like chest and a corpulent paunch. He extended a hairy hand, the fingers plentifully ringed and henna-stained at the tips.

  ‘Y’r servant, s
irs. Was expecting ye two days since.’ His voice was deep and hoarse, the words puffed between yellowing teeth in short sharp gusts as though pumped out by a bellows. ‘Ye find me deucedly disadvantaged. Having me afternoon rest. Must dress suitably to receive ye.’ He opened his mouth and roared like a mating bull. ‘Holloa, boy, boy!’

  Servants scurried in and stripped his body bare, revealing long purplish grooves on thighs and arms, a puckered scar on the chest. Beddoes caught their inquisitive looks, and said, ‘Old battle wounds. Had to fight like a tiger to quell this District. Years ago. All peaceful now.’

  The servants dressed him in an open-necked cotton shirt, sleeves rolled above the elbows, and blue cloth breeches unbuttoned at the knees. Rolling like a mariner in his gait he led his visitors to another huge room, floor carpeted from wall to wall, elegant chairs and tables in European style, a spinet in a comer, paintings by Zoffany and Hickey on the walls - it might have been the drawing-room of a house in Berkeley Square. Waiters brought tea in eggshell porcelain bowls; Beddoes, propped on cushions, reclined enormously on a couch.

  Marriott said, ‘You were apprised of our coming, sir?’

  ‘Indeed. Nothing happens in my Province - stap me, they call ’em Districts now! - that I don’t know about. Watched ye since ye passed Godaveri. Bound for Bahrampal?’

  ‘I am authorized to collect the revenues the jagir owes the Company.’

  A chuckle quivered Beddoes’ paunch. ‘Egad, I don’t envy y’r task. Vedvyas’s country. Ye’ll be fighting for every fanam.’

  Marriott said stiffly, ‘I cannot conceive, sir, why we should be compelled to battle for rights conceded under treaty.’

  Beddoes noisily sipped tea, and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘Those fellows in Madras believe ink splashed upon a treaty weaves a magic spell. A witch’s wand that wafts the land from the Nizam’s hands to theirs. Blasted stuff and nonsense! Ye’d better listen, for this is how it goes.’

  Succinctly, in short jerky phrases, Beddoes outlined the situation in the Circars.

  They had once belonged to Hyderabad, itself originally a province of the Moghul Empire ruled by a Viceroy. With the Emperor Aurangzeb’s death in 1707 the empire began to disintegrate, and the Viceroy of the Deccan, one Nizam-ul-Mulk, established a rule that soon became hereditary. In the decades following, his successors further loosened the tenuous Moghul link; and at the same time faced increasing threats from a growing Maratha power in the north and Mysore to the south. In return for promise of military help, successive Nizams ceded the Circars first to the French and then to the English. Neither had settled the country. Meanwhile, the mirasdars, who were either descendants of Moghul officials given the right to collect and keep the taxes in lieu of salary, or heirs of independent chieftains ruling before the Moghuls, acquired hereditary rights over groups of villages which they treated as private fiefs. The problem facing Collectors was to induce the mirasdars to relinquish that share of the revenues which by ancient rights belonged to the Moghul emperors and later to the Nizams.

  ‘They have not been properly controlled for years,’ Beddoes concluded. ‘Not by the Nizam, not by the French, not by us. Had trouble in this District in my early days. Used force, persuasion, bribes. Got the village headmen on my side. Then the peasants. Ye must do likewise.’

  ‘I have only three sepoy companies to impose my will,’ Marriott said.

  ‘Enough. I had no more than half-armed peons and hircarrahs to impose mine. The mirasdars on the whole are indifferent fighters. But ye will have first to deal with that rascal Vedvyas.’

  ‘A Maratha chief?’

  ‘No - though ye will meet them soon enough, since Bahrampal’s northern borders march with Maratha territory. Horsemen all, infernal bandits, raid and devastate and run. Need cavalry to catch ’em. About Vedvyas. He is a mirasdar descending from rajahs who ruled in Bahrampal before Akbar’s time. Trying to bring the whole jagir under his control, recreate his ancient kingdom. Keeps fighting the other mirasdars. Ye’ll have to stop him?

  Beddoes heaved his bulk from the couch. ‘Tell ye more later - ye’ll be staying awhile. Make y’r quarters in me house; me banian will show ye rooms. Dine at four o’clock sharp.’

  ‘An English lady,’ said Marriott, ‘travels in our company.’ Laughter rumbled in Beddoes’ throat. ‘Zounds, so I was told, and not anyone’s wife! Bring her, sir, bring her - she will not be alone. I have thirty in my harem!’

  They dined splendidly in a handsome room ornamented with two rows of Scalioglia pillars and astonishingly panelled in mahogany and walnut - how the devil, Marriott wondered, did Beddoes repel white ants? - at a polished rosewood table lighted by chandeliers. Behind each chair a servant waved a fan; waiters-in yellow livery served courses in succession: turtle soup and river fish, poultry, game and meat. The wines evoked from Amaury. an appreciative whistle. The greatest surprise was their host’s appearance: an evocation of the modes that Robert Clive had known. He wore a powdered and pomatumed wig, four curls a side, a full-skirted purple coat lined with crimson satin, black silk breeches and stockings. Butterflies and flowers were lavishly embroidered on a thigh-length white silk waistcoat. All his clothes were a trifle tight, button-holes and shoulders strained by Beddoes’ tremendous frame.

  The Collector of Moolvaunee, Marriott mused, belonged in character and outlook to the days when Covenanted Servants, carrying trading goods in one hand and a sword in the other, carved unauthorized domains from an India sunk in anarchy, and stayed deaf to frightened chirpings from Directors in Leadenhall Street. Even his oaths betrayed a different age: ‘zounds’ and ‘egad’ were archaic as the high red heels on his shoes.

  Beddoes accorded Amelia an old-fashioned courtesy, flourished lace-ruffled wrists in a sweepingly graceful salute, seated her on his right and discoursed entertainingly throughout the meal on politics in Hindostan from Comorin to Oudh. He shrewdly appraised the Governor-General: ‘A clever little man is Richard Wellesley. Very ambitious, and enraged beyond measure by the pinchbeck Irish title they gave him for beating Tippoo.’

  ‘I declare he has gained little from his victory,’ Amaury observed, ‘for he refused a hundred thousand pounds from the Prize Fund.’

  ‘Gad so! The egregious blockhead! Why else do fellows come to the East Indies, that common receptacle of abandoned and undone men, but to turn a dishonest penny? Has he not learnt from Clive and Warren Hastings?’

  Amelia, pleading a megrim, departed early to bed. Waiters plied decanters: port followed claret, brandy after port. Beddoes drank hugely, gulping the potent liquors as though he swallowed water, and with just as little effect. From stories he related the visitors learned his history, the chronicle of a man who had settled in the Circars determined to feather his nest and retire as soon as might be. He had collected a quick, unscrupulous fortune; and in the process became absorbed by the problems of the peoples he administered, until his greed dissolved in an ambition to better their lot. Plainly, from his remarks, he held the natives in great affection.

  ‘The most mischievous, deceitful race of people I have ever seen or read of. I have not yet met a Hindoo who had one good quality, and the Musulmans are worse than they. And yet--’ Beddoes shrugged massive shoulders. ‘They are children, easily persuaded by sweets or a drubbing, whichever may be needful.’ Twice he had refused the Council’s offer to replace him - ‘told ’em they would have to send a regiment to get me out’t- and remained the benevolent ruler of a District as large as Wales, scrupulously remitting the Company’s dues, taking a percentage for himself - ‘got all I want now; almost a millionaire’ - and bringing law and order, peace and justice to half a million inhabitants who had known none of these amenities for centuries.

  ‘A year ago they tried sending me one of these new-fangled magistrates. Like ye, young fellow!’ He sent Fane a vulpine grin. ‘Told ’em I’d shoot him if I saw his face. Company law don’t answer here. Got to build y’r own on foundations the people know, on codes the Moghu
ls decreed.’

  Soon after midnight Todd rocked to his feet and declared thickly that he had to inspect the guards. Beddoes watched him weave to the door. ‘A new breed the Directors send out nowadays. Confoundedly dull and earnest, no belly for wine. Milksop poor devils, wishy washy soft young fellows. Zounds, when I was young--’

  ‘Mr Todd is a very good sort of young man,’ Marriott interpolated mildly.

  ‘Maybe, maybe. I only say he is not my sort. However, you, sir’ - he cocked an eye at Amaury - ‘strike me as a famous hard liver, not averse to any roguery to gain your ends.’

  ‘Am I to regard that as an insult, sir?’ said Amaury, smiling.

  ‘A compliment, egad - for it exactly describes meself! Now that moll-coddling boy has gone let me show you me latest find.’ He bellowed an order; a banian led to the table a slim sloe-eyed girl. She stood shyly beside Beddoes, who tucked an arm around her waist. ‘A little beauty, is she not? A Maratha from Indore, fifteen years old - and proficient in vice as the devil himself! Come, gentlemen, the night is young. I shall afford you a small entertainment!’

  He led along lofty corridors to a room about forty feet square. Paintings of astonishing obscenity, copied from Hindoo temples, ornamented the walls; low cushioned couches ringed a frescoed marble floor. An alabaster statue in the centre depicted a god and goddess coupling in fantastical contortions. Houcca-bearers deposited pipes, servants set decanters at their elbows. Beddoes clapped his hands.

  Musicians wearing the household’s yellow livery struck up wailing discords on zithers, pipes and drums. A score of voluptuous girls, eyes kohl-ringed and cheeks rouged, flitted through an archway, bare bodies weaving sinuously beneath transparent gauze which floated from their shoulders. The dancers circled the room in a rippling, writhing rhythm, the veils revealing and then concealing tantalizing thighs. Drums beat a resounding flourish, the veils were ripped away. The music quickened, pipes squealed to a crescendo. Like a tempest cut by a thunderclap the music stopped. The girls collapsed on the floor in a heaving heap.