Zemindar

by Valerie Fitzgerald

  ‘It … when it came to them at last, it must have been quick!’ Young Miles swallowed and stared down at his plate.

  ‘At last?’

  ‘Well, ma’am, there were over two hundred women and children in the Bibighar, and they say there were only five of the devils sent in to … to … kill them.’

  ‘Swords?’ went on Kate inexorably.

  ‘Yes, ma’am, tulwars. Very sharp. But … but we found the hafts of some that had been broken in the work—there in the bloody rooms.’

  ‘Oh, God! May they rest in peace!’ Kate sighed, and her hand went into her pocket for her rosary.

  The corporal raised his head and rubbed his nose on the back of a calloused hand; then, getting to his feet, he poured more whisky for each of us. Jess, our stern Covenanter, did not demur but was the first to take a sip from her replenished mug.

  ‘The bairns,’ she whispered almost to herself. ‘Och! The bairns and the sights they must have seen!’

  Corporal Dines sat down again and swallowed his whisky at a gulp. He looked round at the table, into questioning eyes. His face was working and there were tears in his eyes.

  ‘Yes’m,’ he nodded to Jessie. ‘Yes’m—and we … we seen them sights too! Afterwards and all, but we seen ’em and may Christ Himself curse me if I ever sleeps a night through and not dream of what I seen!’

  We were silent. Lieutenant Miles covered his eyes with his hands as though to protect them from the lantern’s glare.

  ‘Bert … don’t! There’s no use …’ he muttered to his friend, but Dines straightened himself on his stool and continued.

  ‘First thing I seen, ma’am,’ he said hoarsely. ‘First thing I seen were a nipper—no more’n a year old, maybe—hangin’ on a meat hook between two women lashed to pillars on either side of a h’archway. Throats cut … and … and blood everywhere. All over there was blood, inches of it on the floor and the walls, and spatterin’ right up to the ceilin’. Oh, God!’

  ‘Hey, Bert, steady old fellow! That’s enough now. Don’t speak of it any more!’ Billy tried to pat his companion on the shoulder, but the other shrugged away, shaking his head, while tears cascaded down his grimy cheeks into his bedraggled boy’s moustache.

  ‘No, sir! Now I ’as to tell it. Now I’ve started, and I ’asn’t spoke of it to no one in all this time, and they want to know. I … I got to tell it. Like it was when I first seen it, sir. Since then there ’as been others as ’as seen it and spoke of it—and to me— but I got to tell ’ow I first seen it myself. Like it is in my ’ead now, sir. Just like it is in my ’ead and afore my wakin’ eyes—all the time!’

  ‘Let him talk, Billy,’ Kate said gently. ‘It will do him good perhaps, and as we have said already, it is better for us to know than to conjecture. Go on, Corporal, tell us what you see in your head, in your own way and in your own time.’

  ‘Well …’ Dines sighed and sniffed and rubbed his nose again. ‘Well, we was told off to Mr MacCrae’s detachment that mornin’ and we marches up to this ’ouse, my mate and me that is, and we stands waitin’ in the garden, wonderin’ what was up and why we was there. And first—well first, I didn’t see anything, see? There was this smell. This stink—all over the ’ouse it ’ung and we wonders what it is. Then Mr MacCrae goes in and after a couple of minutes ’e comes out and … well, ’e starts to throw up all over the verandah. Couldn’t stop. One of the men ’elps ’im and ’olds ’is rifle, and the rest of us that was there just waits and … wonders, like. You know? We was all quiet, no mutterin’ or grumblin’ like there always is. Very quiet, and seems like the ’ole bleedin’ awful town went quiet waitin’ for us to go in and …

  ‘Never ’eard nothin’ like that ’ush, ma’am. No birds. No crows nor mynas nor sparrows. Didn’t even ’ear a cart go by on the road, or a dog yelp. Then … well then, an old sergeant, a real tough old bird if ever there was one, ’e pushes in to see … curious like; but anyway it were ’is job, and when ’e comes out, ’e’s whiter’n snow and can’t speak. Just stares at us all … all of us waitin’ there in the quiet … and after a while signals with ’is ’and to us to go in … but stays outside ’iself. And there’s Mr MacCrae still pukin’ into a rosebush and groanin’ like. God! ’Ow I wish as ’ow I’d never set foot into that bleedin’ door. I ’ung back till almost the last, but then … then … I goes in, and I see that there babe … with the ’ook through its little throat, and I seen my mates standin’ around them rooms in the stink, all quiet … still quiet … like they’d never find words to tell it. Like I couldn’t neither—until now.’

  He reached for the whisky bottle and all our eyes watched his shaking hand spill what remained of the liquor into his mug.

  ‘There was two rooms, see? Biggish, but not too big, and whitewashed and a courtyard beyond in a ’igh wall—just like lots of ’ouses you see around. It were early—no more’n eight o’clock, I reckon, but … they’d been there all night in the ’eat and so … the smell … the smell was there. And the flies; they was there too, and the only noise we ’eard was them and their blasted buzzin’. Well, at first, I just stands there with my mate, lookin’ in like, and not seein’ anythin’ clearly. Not wantin’ too neither after that nipper on the ’ook. But then I starts lookin’ around and noticin’ things. There wasn’t that many bodies in the rooms … leastways, not enough to leave all the blood, and I wonders what ’appened to the others. Then we walks in and the floor is as … slippery and sticky, like … like mud, but it were blood, and after a minute or two my mate says to me “Oh, God! Will you look at them!” And I looks where he points and I sees a row of little shoes, babies’ shoes and nippers’, all with the feet still in ’em.’

  ‘Lord ha’ mercy!’ sighed Jess with closed eyes.

  ‘Cut off at the ankles, all them tiny feet. And some of the shoes … well you could see as ’ow they’d been pretty colours—blood and all you could still see that. Some’ow … some’ow that was the worst thing I seen, them little coloured shoes with the feet in ’em. But … but then there was other things too. Legs and hands lyin’ around, see, and we begun to see other things that was left—clothin’ and ribbony bonnets lying in the blood on the floor, and books and Bibles and parasols with frills—all them things that females likes to ’ave with them wherever they be … and milk jugs and a scent bottle with a silver top and … all them sort of things. Toys too. For the nippers. But everything broken and slashed and blood on it. There was ’andmarks on the walls, ’andmarks in blood, and the walls and pillars and doors was all chipped and scarred with the sword slashes. All scarred with bloody lines. Some of ’em … some of ’em was right low down too, like as if the women ’ad been crouched down, tryin’ to escape, or maybe the children …

  ‘Well, we just stands there lookin’ for a while, everyone quiet, like I says, and cryin’ too … then … then someone shouts from outside—not sayin’ nothin’ mind, just a yell … like … like ’e’s been shot or somethin’. So we goes out, very careful. We don’t want to slip in that … you see, and fall into … and we comes to this well in the garden with a tree near it, and they tells us that … that it’s full of bodies, full of ’acked-up bodies. All them bodies we didn’t know what ’ad become of ’em, and they was packed there in that well—just thrown in any’ow with arms and legs and ’eads cut off … all together. I didn’t see that. I couldn’t. My mate, ’e takes a look and comes back vomitin’ just like Mr MacCrae, and I wants none of it. I wants none of it. I seen enough. And then, as I stands there under the tree, not lookin’ at that there well, I sees some funny grey stuff hangin’ from the bark of the tree, and … and it smells right bad too, and one of the others sees me lookin’ and he sez, “Brains. Children’s brains.” They must ’ave swung ’em up by their ’eels and bashed their ’eads against that tree to kill ’em.’

  Corporal Dines stopped and covered his eyes with his hands.

  ‘Jesus!’ swore Toddy softly.

  ‘That’s all I seen, ma’am. I co
uldn’t tell of what I’d seen … couldn’t speak of it, and my mate, ’im as was there that mornin’, well ’e was wounded on the way ’ere and I ’aven’t seen ’im ’ardly since, or I could ’ave maybe spoken to ’im. But it’s a terrible sight I do carry in me ’ead now, ladies. Terrible!’

  He put his head down on his arms folded on the table and the rest of us sat for a moment silently watching him.

  ‘Aye,’ Jessie said at last, ‘there’s nair a word a body can say. Nair a word. But, I knew them, laddie. Friends of mine were there, and their bairns. Och! May the Lord hae them in his hands the night.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Toddy breathed a second time.

  ‘Watch your tongue, wee man!’ admonished Jessie through her grief.

  ‘Many of their husbands, fathers, brothers, are here—with the 32nd,’ I said. ‘They … we have all been hoping against hope that what we heard was not true, that there must have been some survivors. But now I think, perhaps, it is better that there were none. To live with the memory of that …’

  ‘No. No survivors,’ Billy Miles said in a tired tone of voice. ‘Nothing.’

  Corporal Dines got unsteadily to his feet. ‘Ma’am, beggin’ your pardon, but could I lay down and sleep somewhere? I’m … I’m that spent, I can’t ’ardly see.’

  We pushed the table and stools on the verandah, dragged the thin straw-filled mattresses from our beds, and made the two men as comfortable as goodwill alone could make them on the kitchen floor. In seconds, it seemed, young Dines was asleep.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Barry, Miss Hewitt.’ Billy Miles, unlike his friend, hesitated to remove his boots in the presence of ladies, and waited for us to leave the room.

  ‘Sure, and what can you possibly be thanking us for, Billy Miles? God knows it is little enough we have to give, in view of what you have done for us.’

  ‘Thank you for letting him talk. He … he’s a good man and a good friend. His home is in the village a stone’s throw from my grandparents’ house, where I was brought up when Mother and Father were out here. We used to lark around together when we were boys and I was home from Haileybury. When I got my commission, he joined the same regiment, and we’ve been together more or less ever since. Three days ago he saved my life in a skirmish on the way here. I think he’ll be all right now he’s talked, but at one time, after Cawnpore, I thought … I thought he might kill himself. You see … his sister … was one of the women in the house. She was married to a private in the 32nd, and … and there was a child too. That’s why I brought him here with me. I would not want anything to happen to him.’

  ‘Divil take my prattling old tongue!’ said Kate. ‘And me telling him I had friends among those women. As though that gave me some sort of special reason to grieve!’

  ‘Poor boy. Oh, poor boy!’ was all I could say.

  ‘He’ll be all right now, I’m sure of it. He needs a rest, a long rest.’

  ‘And so do you, Billy Miles. Bed down now, and may the two of you sleep in peace. Come, Laura—Jessie—let us go and leave these boys to sleep.’

  CHAPTER 4

  It was over.

  That was what our minds were full of as we prepared for bed. The siege was ended. In a few days we would be free, and even Corporal Dines’s account of the dreadful Bibighar was soon overlaid by the realization that at last our ordeal was concluded.

  Kate, Jess and I sat long on the two string beds talking softly of the events of the day and of what must soon follow. No more waiting in unbearable anxiety that we somehow had managed to bear. No more hunger. No more constant tiredness. No more dirt, decay and smells. No more sudden horrible death. Only our griefs would go with us when we left and would grow, as time passed and memory dimmed, half-pleasuable and then be wholly forgotten as griefs are meant to be forgotten. In the next room the snores of our guests echoed thunderously as the poor fellows slept for the first time in days, and through the small square window of the bedroom came the stir and bustle of the entrenchment which, all through that long night, knew neither rest nor quiet.

  The Baillie Guard stood open and through it struggled an intermittent stream of exhausted men, some singly, some in bands, and the wounded in litters and horse-drawn ambulances, the rearguard of the relief. Brigadier Inglis had sent detachments out from the Residency to reinforce the relief and guide in the stragglers, and there was so much activity that little sleep was had by any but the newcomers. Thank God it was not raining, for there was scant cover for the poor souls.

  At about midnight, unable to sleep, I stole outside over the recumbent bodies of our guests, to see for myself what was happening. As I gained the verandah steps I found Jessie beside me.

  The first thing that struck us was the number of lights that shone in the darkness; bivouac fires, torches of rags soaked in oil and a reckless number of lanterns. Everywhere windows showed light and doors stood open, affording us glimpses of our neighbours ministering to their deliverers. There were unaccustomed sounds too, horses neighing and stamping, and the jingle of bridle-irons, a camel’s sneezing snort and men talking in normal voices, even shouting to each other, unmindful of the volley of musket shots or the shell such unwariness might provoke. And then I realized the strangest thing of all. They had no need to fear a sniper’s bullet. For the first time in eighty-eight nights the pandies were not firing into the enclosure.

  ‘Och, Miss Laura, it can only mean that they’ve gone,’ said Jessie joyfully. ‘All of them, like the ones that went over the Iron Bridge this afternoon. They ken they’re beat!’

  She grabbed my hands in her two large ones, and we stood in the noisome light of a torch and laughed, really laughed, loudly and freely, as we had never seen each other laugh before.

  ‘’Tis true,’ Jessie said at last. ‘Now I believe ’tis true. The good Lord ha’e delivered us a’!’

  ‘With the help of Messrs Havelock, Outram and a few others,’ I pointed out, but Jessie was too happy to correct my irreverence.

  ‘But will you look at them,’ she said as we began to pick our way through the crowd. ‘So many of them … so many—and a’ the grand clothin’ on them!’

  Men were everywhere. They lay with their heads on their packs, rifles beside them, on verandahs, in ruined buildings, on the bare ground, in and under carts, limbers and gun-carriages. They were begrimed with mud, dust and sometimes blood, the sleeping faces lined with fatigue, but the flickering light of fire and torch showed us also that they were well-clothed, well-shod and, strangest of all, robust despite fatigue. Caps, shakos and helmets lay beside them, and often I caught the remembered whiff of tobacco from a glowing pipe.

  ‘Will ye take a look at yon boots?’ Jessie breathed in my ear, pointing to a pair of heavy army footwear standing neatly aligned beside their sleeping owner. ‘Not a patch on them; hardly a scratch! Och, to think what ’twill be like to wear good shoon again!’

  ‘Yes, but if that lad’s not careful, he’ll be barefoot by morning,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s as well Toddy’s not seen them.’

  ‘Sure they’d be too big for yon wee man,’ said Jessie, judiciously sizing up the boots; the man stirred and mumbled as we looked at him, so we moved away.

  Small groups sat around fires, sharing tobacco, scraps of chocolate or rum with the men of our garrison, and often we paused if we saw a face we knew among them. The talk was all of the battle to reach us and of the fighting, fierce and bloody, that we learned was still continuing in the narrow lanes and unlit alleys of Lucknow.

  There had been a great number of casualties as the troops forced their way to us that morning, so many that it was said General Outram had advised General Havelock to remain outside the entrenchment through the night in order to allow his scattered force to rally before making the final push. Havelock, however, had decided that even one night’s delay might see our garrison slaughtered and had ordered the advance to continue.

  ‘I’ve been on orderly duty, see? Runnin’ messages and that for the staff all day,’ said a grizzle
d man with a bandaged hand. ‘I were standin’ not six feet from the General when we ’alts and ’e takes out his field glasses and runs it over your walls and that there gate. Couldn’t see much myself at that distance, ’cept that your walls looked to me like the things nippers build up with their ’ands with sand at the seaside, and not much ’igher neither! ’E looks for a long time, and then ’e shakes ’is ’ead and says: “ ’Avin’ seen that gate, I will delay no longer!” Like as if them were ’is last words, all solemn. Well, later, when we gets to the Baillie Guard, I see ’is point. ’Ow it ’as stood up so long … well, it’s a bloody miracle. All charred it is, and shot-’oled and damn near down. A bloody miracle!’

  ‘We should ’ave waited and paid no mind to the looks of it,’ an elderly man said bitterly, spitting a stream of tobacco juice into the dust. ‘’Tis right cruel, miss. We ’ad to leave our wounded, same as always, but they say—I ’eard it from a bloke what’s just got in—the bastards is doin’ in the wounded now, seein’ as ’ow we managed to get through ’em. Gawd—and them ’elpless!’

  ‘Not for long, matey,’ one of our garrison attempted to console him. ‘Bluff Jack sent out two detachments from here, and there will be more following in the morning. We’re to clear the city of stragglers before midday.’

  ‘Maybe, but that’ll be too late for some of my mates. For a lot of ’em.’ The old man lay down with his elbow under his head and stared into darkness.

  Not long afterwards we came upon Toddy-Bob wandering with careful aimlessness through the huddled forms, and I knew that his errand was, essentially, the same as mine.

  ‘You didn’t ought to be out alone on such a h’occasion as this,’ he scolded, glaring up into Jessie’s white moon of a face. ‘You ought to know better than to let ’er out, woman! ’Tis all right for you, maybe, but she’s a lady and it ain’t fittin’ to ’ear the talk that’s goin’ round tonight. S’truth! It’s enough to make me blush like a maiden aunt, and they’re gettin’ grogged up proper now, so it will be worse. Now you’ll be favourin’ me if you get back to where you belongs, and I’ll make it my duty to see you safe ’ome.’