Zemindar

by Valerie Fitzgerald

  Anyone but Toddy-Bob would have needed to be told more of the facts, but I relied on him to act without question, and I smiled to myself as I imagined how he would expatiate to Ajeeba on our influential and wealthy friends, and also the horrors that would overtake her if she betrayed us. No doubt but that ‘Sir ’Enry ’imself’ would play some part in his fantasy.

  When Ajeeba had gone, I felt safe in confiding my hopes to Charles and Emily. The day, hot and wearisome as any other we had passed in that house, was borne more easily as we thought of the night, and we spent much time deciding which of our possessions we could best do without; for, though we had brought little with us, our bundles were still too heavy to be carried with comfort, and we would have to make our way to the Residency on foot. In the end all we left behind were our night-caps, some lawn petticoats and two heavy cloaks. I discarded also my little trinket box, but took the trinkets tied up in a handkerchief, and at the last moment, very unwisely, discarded Marcus Aurelius. I could not know then how often I would stand in need of his philosophy.

  We were ready with our bundles and our burqhas at ten that night. Ajeeba had told us when she brought the evening meal that she would come for us at ‘about midnight’, so we had a long wait, made no more comfortable by the knowledge that it was still not too late for her to change her mind. She arrived, at last, at about half an hour after midnight. The last thing I had done was extract three pearls from the garter, wrap them in a page of Marcus Aurelius and put the little packet in my pocket where it would be easily accessible. Then I refastened the garter round my leg, where I had worn it since the day when Oliver had persuaded me that I had committed no great crime in taking it.

  The pearls, lying in my hand for a moment, brought back that dry and windless morning, and I heard again Oliver’s voice, ‘Think of this then; I love you.’ Tears, which I chose to consider nostalgic, stung the back of my eyes, and hastily I wrapped up the pearls and put them out of sight.

  Our escape from the house of Wajid Khan, when it came, was simplicity itself, despite the perfervid imaginings with which we had filled the hours of waiting. There was no hurried, dangerous flitting through the corridors of the great house; no guards to be bribed; no sudden alarms to bring our hearts into our mouths. It was almost an anticlimax to the days of anxiety, the planning and the tension.

  Ajeeba simply led us to the small door in the courtyard wall, used by the sweeper woman, and opened it. Beyond lay a dark and smelly passageway under the bulk of the house, and beyond that again a narrow lane skirting the house and opening into a bazaar. Our only anxious moment came through Pearl, who whimpered as we crossed the courtyard, but the folds of her mother’s burqha, beneath which she was hidden, served to muffle the sound effectively.

  Ajeeba, never looking behind her, led us swiftly through a tangled maze of stalls and shops and little alleys, and so quick was our passage that I retain only a blurred impression of shrill voices chattering at the lamp-lit stalls, hurrying feet, pressing bodies and light and darkness succeeding each other through the eye-slits of my burqha with great rapidity.

  ‘Psst.’

  In the angle of a wall behind a large mosque, Toddy-Bob and Ishmial lurked in waiting. They pressed our shoulders joyfully, thanked God in divers tongues, and laughed, but softly, while Ajeeba watched the pantomime with a suspicious expression on her yellow face. When our mutual satisfaction had been expressed, Toddy-Bob drew me apart.

  ‘We ’as our doubts of that wench, miss, Ishmial and me. She done like she said she would, but who knows if that’s the end of it? We ’as a plan of sorts. Ishmial will take you to a friend of ’is in the bazaar; it’s no good trying to get into the Residency at night, see, with everything locked up and sentries all around. Proper suicide it would be. They’re gettin’ that nervous, they’d blast off at their own daughters if they appeared done up in them burqhas. So you lay low where Ishmial takes you, and I’ll join you in the morning.’

  ‘Oh, Tod, you’re wonderful! I don’t know what we’d have done without you,’ I exclaimed, for what could be simpler than for Ajeeba to accept her reward and then put the populace on our trail. It was a contingency I had not thought of myself, but Toddy had been ready for it.

  ‘Yes, well!’ He cleared his throat in modest agreement.

  ‘But you must pay her, Toddy. She has risked her position, if not her life, for us, after all.’

  ‘Certainly, miss,’ And then as an afterthought: ‘What with?’

  ‘Oh, yes! I have it here; she needs a dowry, you see, and I think she can sell these for a handsome sum. Mr Erskine told me they were very fine.’ I passed over the packet surreptitiously, for I had not wanted Ajeeba to see the transfer. ‘Three pearls. I … I happened to have them by me.’

  ‘Yes’m.’ Toddy’s face was a mask, but I could guess what was going through his mind.

  We parted: Toddy-Bob and Ajeeba going one way—her farewell, once the packet was in her hand, was quite cordial—while Ishmial led us through further small bazaars and along more smelly alleys till we came to the shop of a halwai or sweetmeat vendor, and through it to a room behind. The room was small and amazingly dirty for a storeroom of edibles. A lantern was brought us and we tried to make ourselves comfortable, but there was nothing to sit on but the floor, and I reconciled myself to another sleepless night. It was a small price to pay for safety.

  When the sun rose, light filtered in through a slatted window set high in the wall. The room was crowded with sacks of flour and sugar, earthern jars of clarified butter smelling rancid in the heat, baskets of parched gram and lentils, great brown wheels of solid molasses, bottles and tins of spices, sesame seed, poppy seed and dill seed, all the ingredients needed in the manufacture of the rich sweets and spiced pastries that were our host’s stock in trade.

  There was little air in the storeroom and, as the heat rose, so the smell of the rancid butter increased. When the halwai began his cooking soon after dawn, the smell of hot oil from his cauldrons added to our discomforts. We had to perch Emily on a sack of flour, for she had seen cockroaches moving on the floor; but she was scarcely comforted by her position, as a rat gnawed at the sack she sat on.

  We turned our backs while she fed Pearl, but when the halwai came in with a bowl of fish cooked in sour curds to form our breakfast, though we thanked him politely, we let it lie on the floor. The stench in the room had taken away appetite.

  The sun was well up when Toddy joined us with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. He vouchsafed no explanation of how he had ‘dealt with’ Ajeeba, and a sixth sense warned me that it would be impolitic to enquire. He ate some of the fish with enjoyment, then sat back and told us of all that had taken place while we were separated.

  ‘Didn’t they suspect that you were not one of them, Tod?’ Emily asked.

  ‘No’m. Not at first anyway. We kept to ourselves; you can do it in them big houses with so many comin’ and goin’ all the time, and there was more people comin’ in every day, so the crowds ’elped us. Ishmial did the talkin’ mostly, and I made an effort to look stupid so they wouldn’t want to draw me out. The men who came in were soldiers, you see, miss, at least what they fancies is soldiers—must ’ave been a ’undred of ’em more or less—so when things become really crowded, and some of ’em wants to know too perticular where we come from and that, well, we thought it best to move on. We didn’t go far, miss, and every day Ishmial would go in and ’ave a ba-t with some lads as ’e took up with in the stables. We kep’ in touch with what was going on, you can be sure, and when Ishmial ’ears that the Burra-begum ’as gone aloft, well, you can imagine ’ow we feels!’

  ‘It didn’t occur to you to go to the Residency, and report our position?’ Charles spoke with some irritation.

  ‘No, sir.’ Toddy surveyed Charles with an unrepentant eye. ‘We was told to stay by you, and we stayed. Anyway, what would have been the use of goin’ to the Residency? Wajid Khan would ’ave said ’e knew nothing of you, and things is that delicate
at present, none could ’ave forced their way into his ’ouse. Not even Sir ’Enry. Least of all Sir ’Enry. ’E still thinks ’e can calm things down if ’e only acts like a gentleman and keeps his powder dry, like!’

  ‘But the Residency is still open? It’s three weeks since we’ve had any word from outside, Toddy, and we know nothing of what has been going on.’

  ‘To be sure, sir, it’s still open. And they’re still trying to get a wall around it, so they say. Still! S’truth, what the Guv’nor will say when ’e ’ears that! Not that we seen many Englishmen. Not seen none, come to think of it. But then, you never did see ’em in these parts. Always kep’ to their own cantonments and the big streets.’

  ‘What else, Tod?’ I prompted, as he fell quiet. ‘What else has happened?’

  ‘Nothing much, not ’ere, that is. Course there’s talk, lots of it. The talukhdars and zemindars are fetchin’ in their soldiers, just like Wajid Khan is, and they sit around sharpenin’ their tulwars or causin’ trouble with the women. Proper ’orrid it is, the goings-on we come to ’ear about. They say as ’ow Delhi is all cleaned up, no whites left alive there, and now there’s a batterin’ goin’ on in Cawnpore. Well, that’s not far off and, as I sees it, if they’ve started on the shootin’ there, they’ll start ’ere pretty soon too. Stands to reason, like.’

  The mention of Cawnpore reminded me of Oliver Erskine, but I could not ask Toddy whether he thought his master was safely away from the place before the ‘battering’ started, since I could not tell Charles and Emily what errand had taken him there. They thought he was still in Hassanganj.

  So we talked away the uncomfortable hours. At midday, we were brought more food, and since by this time we had accustomed ourselves to the stench and were extremely hungry, we ate what we were given. Then we dozed for a while, but at two o’clock sharp were wakened by Ishmial, who had decided the safest time for us to make our way across the city was when most of the people were stretched on their string cots or the filthy roadways, sleeping away the greatest heat of the day.

  We were now at a greater distance from our objective than we had been in Wajid Khan’s house, for Ajeeba had led us back through the city and away from the river on which the Residency stands.

  Perhaps because of fatigue, the fear of discovery hardly troubled my mind, but as we walked endlessly under the deadening heat through the somnolent streets of the city, I began to fall into a sort of lethargic hopelessness. My bundle, small as it was, was heavy; my burqha impeded every step as my feet dragged through thick dust and noisome mounds of garbage left to putrefy where they were thrown. Few people were abroad; even the bullock-cart drivers slept on the shafts of their vehicles as their beasts plodded unerringly to familiar destinations.

  Charles carried Pearl under his burqha, and Toddy had taken Emily’s bundle, but it would not have been right for Ishmial to be seen carrying anything while he had womenfolk to do it for him. True to his role, he strode ahead of us, his musket on his shoulder, with Toddy close behind him, while we three supposed females kept at a decorous distance to the rear. The very monotony of our progress through unfamiliar but strangely similar streets added to our fatigue. I began to feel that everything had been going on too long. I was sick of fear, of suspicion, of hostility, and was tired to death of the whole unbelievable situation in which we found ourselves. My resources had petered out, and I felt that I had never had the sort of character to deal with the crises through which we had passed. Too much had been expected of me, of us all. Now our luck was running out; we would never reach the Residency. At this last moment, something must happen to kill our final hope. The gates would be locked, or we would be discovered. Too much had happened over which we had no control, and which we had never provoked. So many were dead: Moti, the Wilkinses, the sowar, the Begum, whose delicate hand, henna-tipped, I had glimpsed fingering a jeweller’s little boxes. For all I knew, even Oliver Erskine was dead. Almost I longed for discovery and a sudden end to tension.

  A roar broke out behind us, and I knew my longing was to be fulfilled. Men shouting, hooves clipping rapidly on stone, many hooves, and a rumble of carts and a jingle of harnesses.

  ‘Why do they need so many to take us?’ my numbed mind asked. ‘We have no strength left. We’re too tired to run away.’

  I would not look behind, but clutched my bundle and doggedly put one blistered foot before the other. Let them cut me down from behind, I thought; I have faced enough.

  ‘Sir! Sir! Please, sir, wait. The Residency, we are near it, aren’t we?’ I heard Toddy cry anxiously.

  ‘Good God! You an Englishman?’

  ‘Yes, sir! As English as the Queen—Gawd bless ’er Majesty—and so are my friends here, savin’ the black one and ’e’s as good as one.’

  ‘You had trouble?’ The young officer’s bright blue eyes swept over us enquiringly, as we halted and turned to face him.

  ‘You might call it that,’ agreed Toddy with dignity. The officer reined in his horse and stared down at us with amusement and interest, which grew into a great guffaw of laughter as Charles, his patience tried beyond bearing, threw off his burqha and stood revealed in his breeches, shirt and sweeping golden moustaches.

  ‘Sir, we would be grateful if you could direct us to the Residency by the shortest route,’ he said curtly, cutting short the newcomer’s mirth. ‘We have come a long way and the ladies you see have endured a great deal, to say nothing of my infant daughter!’ He held the child up for the officer to see.

  ‘Sorry, I’m sure, sir. Had no idea,’ the young man said, taken aback. ‘Straight on and then to the right. Make towards the river, and you can’t miss it. You’ll be all right now, sir, half a platoon of Britishers are coming up behind you. It’s the detail sent out to fetch in the crown jewels of Oudh. You’re just in time, sir. We’re to be invested tomorrow, they say.’

  It was Sunday, the 28th of June 1857.

  BOOK IV

  BAILLIE GUARD

  ‘Nothing happens to any man

  which he is not formed by

  nature to bear.’

  Marcus Aurelius

  CHAPTER 1

  We followed the road that leads from the city through parks and gardened palaces, past the soaring minarets of the Imambaras, bending then towards the river and the Residency. At the top of an incline, we found the brass-studded gates of the Baillie Guard wide open to receive us.

  Wide open and welcoming, though for three long weeks we had imagined them barred. For a moment I paused to take in that open gate. I knew I would never see a finer sight than the unpretentious arch of snuff-coloured stucco, flanked by two smaller arches neatly pillared in the classical style, through which now the remnant of the State of Oudh was conveyed as I watched, on bullock-carts, in carriages, on ammunition floats and gun limbers, on the backs of elephants and in the swaying panniers of camels, while armed men, on horseback and on foot, lined the roadway, and wheels, hooves and feet churned up a choking cloud of thick white dust.

  The hot, lowering morning had developed into an afternoon dark as night and ominous with the far-off rumble of thunder. The whole world, arid and exhausted, waited in sullen longing for rain—the first downpour of the monsoons. As I dragged my blistered feet up the slope and through the gate, I noticed a familiar group of the birds called Seven Sisters at the gatehouse door, ragged grey feathers fluffed out, eyes cocked apprehensively skyward, waiting only for the first big drops to dart shrieking for shelter.

  Emily, with Pearl in her arms, had been lifted up by a kind soldier to sit on the tailboard of a cart on which, among boxes, crates and bundles, was a throne or state chair of some sort wrapped in a piece of dirty sacking. Free of his burqha, Charles strode beside her, and I followed, with Toddy-Bob and Ishmial bringing up the rear of our little procession. Apathy fell away as we neared our journey’s end, and I knew the others shared my excitement at the sight of that open gate; yet as we passed through, all we could do was smile our relief to each other with tear-fil
led eyes. Only Ishmial remembered his God. As we found ourselves at last truly within the Residency walls he dropped to his knees and pressed his forehead to the dust.

  During the long starlit nights in the bullock-cart, and sometimes even during the first days in the house of Wajid Khan, I had allowed my thoughts to linger on this moment, imagining the greeting of old acquaintances, the surprise, the delight, the unbelief with which we would be received, savouring prematurely those sensations of ecstatic relief and triumphant accomplishment which I felt we must all know at such a time. In my fancy the Residency had looked as it had done when I first saw it on a mild November afternoon of late sun and pale sky: elegant buildings gay with striped awnings and painted shutters, lawns neatly mown, hedges clipped and gardeners moving about the flowerbeds spraying the blooms with water from their goatskin mushaks—an enclave of order and tranquillity. It had been pleasant to anticipate moving among those lime-washed houses, walking along precise gravel paths under the shade of mighty gold mohurs laden with flaring orange sprays, or tall flame-of-the-forest trees, offering their scarlet cups to the pure sky, for in dreams all flowers bloom together—and pleasanter still to know that once there, we would find friends, support and commiseration, as well as clean beds and familiar food.

  But now, had I not recognized the Resident’s house itself, or rather its short hexagonal tower on the summit of which the flag hung motionless under the livid sky, I believe I should have thought myself in Bedlam.

  Gone were the trees that I remembered so fondly; gone the neat hedges, the shrubs and flowerbeds; gone the white palings and tile-capped walls that divided one house from the other; gone even the lawns and the gravel walks. In their place stood great piles of ammunition, pyramids of ball and shot, mounds of stores and equipment, tents and huts, shelters of thatch, sacking and bells of arms, carts and carriages, limbers and doolies, wheelbarrows—and guns. The grass had been trampled into the hard earth by soldiers and coolies, by horses, mules, bullocks, camels and elephants. Everywhere there was movement, everywhere noise and dust.