Free Lance

by George Shipway

  Amaury said decisively, ‘I offer you and your men shelter and hospitality in Dharia. ‘Moreover, if you so agree, I will take your brigade in service, and guarantee terms at least as good as those you had from Berar.’

  Disbelief stamped Royds’ cadaverous features. ‘How can you offer so much? Twelve thousand rupees a month, they cost!’

  ‘That much I can promise.’

  Royds turned away, placed chin in hand, came slowly back, faced Amaury. ‘And the alternative, should I not be disposed to agree?’

  Amaury smiled genially, and waved a negligent hand to the cavalry squadron. ‘Those behind you, sir; guns and infantry in front. You must fight your way out. Undoubtedly you will succeed - but at a cost. Is it worth the losses, when refuge and security lie twenty miles away?’

  ‘Extremely tempting,’ Royds muttered. He stared into the distance, deep in thought. His gaze became intent, focused on the prisoners huddled in front of the cavalry. ‘Damn my soul! You have taken the captain of rocketeers- that tall grey-bearded bastard in the scarlet turban. I have watched him directing their fire - and he alone is responsible for every casualty I’ve had! Give the rascal to me, I pray you - he deserves a lasting lesson!’

  Better not cross this queer-tempered devil, Amaury reflected, who is dithering on the edge of accepting my proposal. He said amiably, ‘By all means, sir! Do with him what you will.’

  Royds beckoned a squad from the rearguard, and gave staccato orders. The men briskly collected discarded rockets dropped in flight. They hustled from his companions the scarlet-turbaned elder, took him far apart, and tied the rockets tightly round his body, trussing him in bamboo sticks like a close-set palisade, cylinders clustered above his head like a spired iron crown.

  Royds peered between the poles. ‘Say your prayers, son of a pig, before you ascend to heaven!’

  The man, completely unafraid, returned his stare. ‘Why should I pray, you Fringee dog? God has forgiven my sins, for I killed a score of your men!’

  Royds spat in his face, stepped back and gestured violently. A sepoy touched a slow-match to the fuses, turned and ran. The hemp strands glowed and sputtered, and spiralled diaphanous threads of pale blue smoke. The rockets fired together in searing sheets of flame, lifted the swaddled figure a dozen feet in the air, curved and hit the ground, bounced and leapt, rolled end over end and burned a cindered swathe through the grass. The bursting charges exploded, and spattered iron fragments and hunks of mangled flesh.

  A smoking pyre shrouded the blackened lump.

  ‘Vastly spectacular,’ Amaury said dryly. ‘Now may I know your decision?’

  ‘By your leave, I go to consult my officers.’ Royds mounted and galloped away. Amaury silently motioned his squadron to mount; the rearguard, thoroughly alert, instantly shouldered firelocks. Vigilant, disciplined troops, Amaury thought - invaluable for his purpose. Only their commander raised a problem - not a fellow to be trusted very far.

  Royds returned and said, ‘It is agreed - and later we shall draw a written contract. Pray remove your guns, so we may proceed at once to Dharia.’

  ‘Presently, Major Royds. Your brigade is now at my disposal. Therefore kindly detail three light companies - the fastest marching-men you have - as part of a punitive force I take to Droog.’ Royds gaped. ‘This moment? But Droog is forty miles away!’ Amaury looked at the gauzy clouds that smeared the sun. ‘Four hours’ daylight left. We shall march all day, and march all night, and assault the town at dawn. The garrison’s had a drubbing; we shall strike before they recover. Give your orders immediately, sir - speed and surprise is all!’

  Thrustful as a rampant boar, God burn me! A glimmer of respect flickered in Royds’ pale eyes.

  Marriott splashed brandy in a glass, drained it at a gulp, and incredulously re-read Harley’s letter.

  .. . notwithstanding the Members of Council are satisfied you did not observe the common Precautions in safeguarding the funds entrusted to your Charge, I have prevailed upon them that this Misfortune does not arise from any deficiency in your Character, having regard to the Extraordinary zeal and ability you have displayed in settling Bahrampal’s affairs. I am sensible that your Situation is truly mortifying and painful, and readily conceive you desirous of taking Vigorous measures to recover the stolen moneys. Yet the courses you advance, involving Armed irruption into Native Domains, are entirely forbid. The fundamental Principle of the Company’s policy is invariably Repugnant to every scheme of Conquest, extension of dominion, aggrandisement or Ambition; and gratuitous military Adventures are viewed with high displeasure. I confide that your Discretion will not permit this Principle’s infringement.

  From your recent Advices I apprehend that Captain Amaury is presumed murdered by those Malefactors who robbed the treasury. A sad circumstance indeed, since Despatches lately to hand inform me the Court of Directors, in view of his Superior services, has not confirmed the sentence of Dismissal, but authorizes instead that the Commander in Chief should publish in the Publick Prints a serious Reprimand, which, I am apprised by military Acquaintances, is no severe infliction. Poor unhappy man, that he should quit this mortal coil believing himself Disgraced! In this regard I cannot take upon myself to determine the Intention of his drafts, but yesterday received, for fifteen thousand Pounds, drawn at thirty days’ sight on the Carnatic Bank and the General Bank in Calcutta, directed to my address as President, Board of Revenue in Madras. May I prohibit your Leisure to conduct a diligent search among his Papers, which could disclose Amaury’s purpose in entrusting to the Board a sum which, I am persuaded, comprises his entire Fortune...

  Marriott reached for the decanter. Fifteen thousand. Almost precisely the amount lifted from the treasury. He turned over the letter, looked at the date - 4th April 1802 - made rapid calculations. The drafts were signed before the money was stolen. Did Amaury have a hand in ... was he repaying ... Inconceivable! If Hugo were still alive he would have told his friends. Perhaps, as Harley suggested, his belongings held a clue. Everything he had owned was still in his palace quarters. Distasteful to rummage a dead man’s property - let Todd perform the task. Marriott despatched a servant, sending salaams to the ensign, and brooded at his desk, folding and refolding the letter in his hands.

  The messenger returned; the sahib could not be found. Marriott consulted his watch. Mid-afternoon - no European should be wandering abroad. Irritably he told the man to search barracks, buzars and stables, find Todd and send him quickly to the house. He put Harley’s letter aside, and wearily examined a villager’s petition alleging thirteen cows and a milch goat wrongfully taken as bond for a debt; and began to write a judgement. General Wrangham’s arrival stilled the scratching of his pen.

  ‘What may this signify, Mr Marriott?’ He threw a paper on the desk. ‘A request from young Todd for indefinite furlough, directed to my hands as commander Fort St George. Is he so heartily averse to resuming his humdrum duties in Arcot?’

  ‘Damn the fellow! I am this moment trying to find him. Does he state his purpose?’

  ‘Yes. Devilish odd. Says he has intelligence that Amaury is alive, and travels to Berar to seek him out. Blasted stuff and nonsense - he can’t be right in the head!’

  Marriott rose slowly to his feet and examined, thunderstruck, the ensign’s round-hand scrawl. ‘ ‘Tis confirmation,’ he mumbled. ‘Todd knows what I presently suspect. Amaury is the culprit - that wretched snivelling thief who tarnished my repute and showed me blockhead to the Council!’ He slammed the table. ‘I’ll get to the bottom of this, by God!’

  Marriott bellowed for his banian, sent servants running, organized a thorough search in?md around the town. Breathing hard, he collapsed in a chair and mopped his face.

  Wrangham looked at him queerly. ‘There is no such confounded hurry. It is quite a matter of indifference if Todd has already gone, for I intend to countersign his application. As for finding Amaury...’ The general shrugged.

  It soon became apparent that Todd had vanished. T
he hunt closed on the Collector’s house; servants, knocking respectfully, went from room to room. Marriott hunched in his chair, and glowered as each failure was reported; Wrangham lay on a sofa and peacefully smoked cheroots. Purple clouds of sunset striped an orange-yellow sky; a breeze whispered through the windows, rustled the indentures Marriott pretended to study. His banian entered and salaamed. ‘Todd sahib is nowhere in Hurrondah. Nor,’ he added hesitantly, ‘can we find the Wrangham Bibee.’

  The general’s gasp sprayed sparks from his cheroot. ‘What! Is she not in her quarters?’

  ‘Not anywhere, sahib. Her woman also is missing.’

  Wrangham brawled from Marriott’s office, ran to his daughter’s room, flung chests and wardrobes wide. ‘Day clothes gone, and riding habits. By God,’ he blared, ‘she’s done a flit!’

  A flabbergasted conference assembled in the dining-room and confusedly discussed the astounding disappearances. All the evidence, they decided, showed the pair had travelled together; Todd’s furlough application indicated their direction and explained his motive. But why had Caroline fled into the wilderness? The general invoked from heaven an answer.

  ‘I believe,’ said Amelia quietly, ‘she entertained a fondness for Captain Amaury.’

  ‘A fondness?’ Wrangham rasped. ‘God damn my soul, she disliked the man! Pray forgive me, Mrs Beddoes - I am distraught. What is to be done? We should follow them instantly!’

  ‘I gather, from all ye say, they went last night,’ Beddoes grunted. ‘They have twenty-four hours’ start, and the border is but thirty miles away.’

  ‘Devil take the border! Mr Anstruther, saddle your horses!’

  Marriott folded his arms, and his mouth went taut. ‘No Company troops may enter Berar, sir. You yourself forbade me follow the robbers - led by Amaury, as we believe.’

  ‘Do you perceive no difference, sir?’ Wrangham shouted. ‘Here is an English maiden adrift among barbarous Moors! Will you sit here like a dumpling and do nothing?’

  ‘Will you flout the India Act of ’84?’

  Wrangham choked. Anstruther solicitously poured him wine. Marriott continued in iron tones, ‘My authority, Sir John, is supreme in Bahrampal. Your daughter was not abducted - of her own free will she has gone beyond the Company’s jurisdiction. Moreover, I am expressly prohibited, in a letter received today, from trespass in native territory. I will not wantonly affront the Council’s will, nor incur again authority’s displeasure - not for Caroline, not for Todd, and least of all for Amaury.’

  Beddoes’ hooded eyes searched Marriott’s face. A contemptuous grimace crinkled the old man’s leathery mask. ‘Gad so! …Ye’ll go far, Marriott, ’pon my soul! Surely ye’ll end as Governor at the least!’

  CHAPTER TEN

  For two weeks Todd and his retinue threaded the hilly wastelands of lower Berar. Caroline rode her Arab mare; while the Portuguese maid, goaded to the journey by devotion to her mistress and a lavish bribe, travelled in a palankeen. Night-halting at well or village they marched ten miles a day across a wilderness which seldom saw a European face; and at every settlement Todd asked for news of Amaury. No sahib, the villagers swore, had previously passed that way: a persistent repetition which began to trouble him, for any European would be noticed in these regions. Either they were following a different route or - a dismal idea - Amaury had turned south into Hyderabad, or north into Orissa, and was not in Berar at all.

  Todd refused to admit the thought that Amaury was dead.

  They left the hills, dropped into the Indravati valley and travelled faster. Overhauling a caravan - horse traders from Hyderabad, money-lenders, merchants and a troupe of dancing bears - Todd inquired their destination. Dharia, they answered, pointing vaguely westwards, a land where justice ruled and men could live in peace. Had they heard of Amaury Sahib? The English pronunciation elicited shaken heads. Despondently he turned away. A squinting hook-nosed Afghan leading a string of stallions clicked his fingers and called, ‘Hah! You mean Umree Sahib Bahadur - the rajah who will buy my magnificent Persian horses!’

  Rajah, indeed - the usual native hyperbole! Directed by the Afghan Todd pressed on at the fastest speed his animals allowed. On the twentieth day since the night-bound flight from Hurrondah they saw Dharia’s grey stone coronet perched on its plummeting crag. A guard at the barbican barred their way - disciplined sepoys, the ensign marvelled, with Short Land muskets and sky-blue uniforms - until the havildar was persuaded Todd had come on lawful business.

  ‘The Lord Sahib is not here. You had best see Major Royds.’

  Todd numbly assented. Amaury’s stronghold left him bewildered: the hill-top ring of towering walls which girdled a teeming town, the crowded streets and thriving buzars, workshops and clanging foundries, the barracks of Company pattern, the armouries and stables. Caroline striding beside him, he was conducted to a house that bordered a Parade, and bowed to a gauntfaced officer who sat at a teakwood table and corrected battalion rolls.

  ‘Pray sit down,’ said Royds, pointing to plain deal chairs. ‘Cursedly indifferent furniture, I fear; I have had no leisure to equip my quarters. Heard you were arriving: if a mongoose moves in Dharia a spy comes running to tell o’t.’ His eyes flitted indifferently over Caroline straddling saddlewise her chair, face tanned chestnut-brown by the sun of three weeks’ travel. ‘And who may you be, sirs?’

  Royds obviously had not divined the sex of Todd’s booted, spurred and buckskin-breeched companion. Wiser, the ensign decided, to preserve the masquerade until Amaury appeared, avoiding complications and embarrassment all round. ‘My name is Todd, ensign in the 23rd Madras Infantry. Pray permit me to present my friend Mr Wrangham.’

  Caroline threw Todd a mischievous glance, and instantly collected herself. ‘I am honoured by your acquaintance, Major Royds.’

  The timbre of her voice caused Royds to look at her sharply. Todd said hastily, ‘We have private business with Captain Amaury.’

  Royds nodded. Todd wondered who he was, what position he held in Dharia’s curious hierarchy. Was Welladvice now a general and the scoundrelly Vedvyas vizier? The contrast between his expectations and the reality left him stupefied. Ruefully he recalled the mental image he had formed: a cut-throat rabble lurking in the hills, living; in caves and raiding defenceless hamlets - a bestial existence that was hardly to Hugo’s taste. Amaury might then have been persuaded to return to civilization and the company of his peers. But this? How could Todd prevail upon a king to leave his kingdom?

  ‘You gentlemen will have to wait,’ said Royds. ‘Amaury went gallivanting into the blue and is presently, I collect, engaged in sacking a town. I can by no means calculate when he will return. Meanwhile, you’ll be wanting quarters - my banian will find a house.’ He clapped his hands. ‘Holloa, boy!’

  They were accommodated near the barbican in a house, recently repaired, which smelt of fresh-cut thatch arid whitewash. Todd engaged servants, sent to the buzars for food and furniture, bought carpets and curtains. He discouraged Caroline from wandering abroad, insisted when she did so she always wore man’s clothes, and lent her coats and breeches from his wardrobe. ‘ ‘Tis a disguise you must maintain until Amaury arrives, lest Royds should think us…’ He broke off, flushing scarlet.

  Caroline said archly, ‘How shall we explain my Portuguese - surely an odd attendant for a gentleman? Will Major Royds assume she is my bibee?’

  The ensign fled.

  After they had been there a week a clamour and commotion in. the streets roused Todd from his afternoon sleep. Bugles blared in barracks, drums rat-tatted alarm, and sepoys marched quickstep to battle stations on the walls. He hurried to a bastion and looked across the landscape. An arras of dust in the distance gradually rolled nearer and unravelled in separate pillars from columns of marching infantry, cavalry and gun teams, pack animals and carts. Then the bugles called Stand Down; and people raced to the barbican. Todd stood in a throng that lined the street, peered over turbaned heads and scanned in disbelief the leading
horseman.

  A loose crocus-yellow coat draped the tall wide-shouldered figure which swayed easily to the movements of his horse. Silver-mounted pistols were thrust in a crimson sash, and jewels crested the lime-green turban. A sun-bleached beard like ripened wheat, sapphire eyes and a lean, bronzed face. Amaury acknowledged with lifted hand his subjects’ shouted acclaim, and passed a laughing remark to Vedvyas riding beside him. The cavalry followed, fierce brown bearded faces in files precisely dressed, a spectacular variety of gaily coloured tunics. Stocky blue-uniformed infantry, and cannon drawn by six-horse teams, a rider in every saddle and Welladvice in the lead. Last of all a motley procession, vehicles and animals, drovers cracking whips and coolies shouldering bales.

  The crowd began dispersing. Todd hooked a finger inside his stock, and eased the folds’ constriction. The muggy warmth which the monsoon clouds imprisoned enclosed him like an oven’s breathless heat - but this was not the reason why he suddenly felt stifled. The premises supporting his mission were scattered like chaff in a gale.

  He had found, not a bandit chieftain, but a rajah riding supreme.

  Todd attempted to picture the friend he once had known: the handsome cavalry captain who fluttered bosoms in Madras, the coveted decoration for swarry and dinner and rout. This was a different being, different as an eagle from a bullfinch in a cage. Useless to confront Amaury without understanding what had brought about this stunning transformation.

  Welladvice was the fellow; he could explain. Todd trailed the cavalcade which climbed the streets to the citadel.

  ‘The fact is, sir, he has a gift - he can make them heathen blacks do anythink he wants.’

  Welladvice tilted an .irrack jar and handed Todd a glass of amber liquid. They sat in cane-backed chairs on a veranda flanging a small stone house whose four rooms, starkly furnished - buzar-made chairs and tables., string cot, cheap cotton druggets on mud-plastered floors - overlooked the artillery park. The sailor, not a luxurious man, insisted on living in sight of his guns.