Zemindar

by Valerie Fitzgerald

  I would have laughed had I not been afraid of hurting his feelings. There were many other women wandering through the entrenchment in curiosity or perhaps a desire to help; many too who were still seeking news of those they had lost. And by now my vocabulary, known if not used, was as comprehensive as most troopers’. However, I had been aware of the odd amorous glance and wink cast in my direction and the fumbling of a drunken man’s hand at my skirt, so I allowed Toddy to grab me by the elbow and lead us back to the Gaol. Somewhere bagpipes were skirling and Jessie hummed to herself as we walked and a pure pale moon shed a light so bright it put out the stars.

  It seemed I had just put my head on the pillow when I felt Kate’s hand shaking me awake.

  We ate our meagre breakfast standing on the verandah so as not to disturb our guests, who were still asleep, and, knowing how urgently we would be needed at the hospital, set off directly we had finished. The clear sky of only a few hours earlier was now heavy with threatened rain, and we made our way to the hospital through a world dark, hot and steamy.

  The pandies were quiet in our vicinity but from the city came the sound of heavy firing. The men of our garrison who had been sent out to escort in the wounded and the rearguard of the relief were having a hot time of it. Over the great palace of the Kaiser Bagh and the pretty marble pavilion called the Moti Mahal, the leaden sky was lined with pale smoke from the rebels’ heavy guns. We paused a moment on the slope leading down to the Baillie Guard before turning left to the hospital. Through the gateway the road leading to the city carried a slow-moving stream of men, animals, ambulances and wagons for as far as the eye could see.

  ‘Where in the world are we going to put them all?’ wondered Kate. We turned towards the hospital and within minutes she had her answer. There was nowhere to put them.

  Those of our own wounded who could crawl, shuffle or bear to be dragged from their beds had voluntarily vacated their places to the newcomers. We could now count the number of familiar faces on our fingers, but not all the gratitude and goodwill in the world could extend the capacity of the Banqueting Hall, and within a few hours of the opening of the Baillie Guard every inch of space was crowded—in the main room, in the storerooms at each end, on the verandah. The supply of straw mats and pallets had given out, and men lay in rows on the verandah without even a canvas sheet between their bodies and the stone, while a party of their able-bodied comrades worked hurriedly at hanging tattered awnings from the roof-beams as protection from the impending rain.

  Many women of the garrison were already at work helping the doctors, though since they were new to the work, they were sometimes more hindrance than help, and one or two had to be nursed over ladylike attacks of faintness themselves. Not that one could have accused them of over-sensitivity. Accustomed as I was to the smells and sights of that horrible long room, my stomach lurched with nausea as we entered and picked our way over the men to receive instructions from the doctors. On the heavy wooden operating table, impregnated with the blood of all those who had suffered on it over the last three months, an amputation was about to take place. Five men moved forward to hold down the victim, a sixth held aloft a lamp. Dr Darby removed the cigar from his mouth and carefully extinguished it on the ground before putting the butt back into his trouser pocket. He glanced at his assistants, who tightened their grasp on the victim’s limbs, and I caught the dull glint of steel in the lamplight as he suddenly bent his head and made the first swift, decisive incision. The rum bottle from which the patient had been drinking dropped with a crash of splintering glass and a scream of mortal agony forced the blood from my face and stopped me short in my tracks with my hands over my ears. At my feet a man clutched at my skirt and buried his face in it, sobbing. For a moment silence filled the twilight and then, no further sound coming from the table, the mutterings, groans and retchings of the other sick resumed. I took a deep breath, cursed with silent volubility, and set about my work.

  There were new faces among the medical men, but not yet enough, and where, I wondered, were the supplies that should have come in with the relief?

  ‘This is war, missie,’ Dr Partridge grunted when I put the question to him as I bandaged a leg with strips of linen from some woman’s tucked and hem-stitched petticoat. ‘God alone knows where they’ve got to—if there were any in the first place. If I could get my hands on some chloroform! A wagon-load of the stuff, that’s what we need now. Thank you, that will have to do for this poor fellow. Now, there … that sepoy two places up. A leg smashed.’

  We moved along the row and looked down at the unconscious man. I knelt and tried to peel away the shreds of trouser leg from the wound. ‘An ugly one, but I think we can save it. You’ll need water there, missie, and here … take my scissors, but mind you give them back. I think you can deal with that yourself. He’s lost a bit of blood, but he’s a sturdy fellow and the bone is only broken, not crushed.’ His fingers, bloody and expert, explored the limb as he spoke, and the man quivered and moaned without regaining consciousness. ‘Now, you clean it up and I’ll send along an apothecary with some splints, if we can find any, to set the bone. And here, there’s still a sup or two of heartener in the bottom of this bottle. See that he gets it, but after the apothecary is gone. The longer he stays under the better for him!’ He wiped his fingers on his leather apron, then produced a flat silver brandy flask from his pocket and handed it to me.

  ‘His caste …?’ I asked anxiously as he left me.

  ‘Mohammedan. Use a spoon to put it between his teeth before he comes around and he’ll never know the difference!’

  As often before, as I worked on the sepoy’s leg, I noticed that the sight of dark red blood on dark skin is somehow less alarming than the sight of dark red blood on fair skin. Indeed, it was difficult to see the blood in the gloom of the room, caked and congealed as it now was on clothing and flesh, so I had to use the utmost care with the scissors. The apothecary arrived with rough splints cut from a board before I had finished swabbing the wound.

  ‘Damn shame, miss, if you’ll pardon the expression,’ said the apothecary as I made room for him to kneel beside me. ‘This fellow is one of our own men, shot by mistake by the relief when they were entering last evening!’

  ‘Oh, no, Mr Saunders!’ The apothecary too was one of our men with whom I was well acquainted.

  ‘Yes, fired off a volley at a group of our fellows who had climbed over the wall to greet them. Saw them near the wall, thought they were trying to enter … and … bang, bang, bang. None killed, thank the Lord, but a bad business!’

  ‘And you mean he’s been here, in this condition, since last evening? Without attention?’

  ‘Miss, we’ve none of us slept this entire night. All we’ve been able to attend to were the amputations—or at least the evident ones. For the rest, we could only give them water and food and hope they’d hang on until the supplies arrived. Now it looks as though there are no supplies to arrive. Gone astray somewhere in the city, or most likely been captured or blown up. Over two hundred men arrived during the night and they’re still coming in. We’ve nothing left to use on them. We strip the bandages from the dead now before we send them to the burial ground. Look at that heap over there in the corner. Not even washed and we’ll have to use them again. No swabs, ointments, salves, tinctures; not even a headache powder. Leeches and rum, that’s all we’ve got, and soon it will be only leeches.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’

  ‘You’re welcome to Him, miss. Me, I can’t believe in Him any longer.’

  The young man set to work with his splints and cord. Handing over Dr Partridge’s brandy for him to administer, I moved to the next man.

  So the morning somehow wore away, all of us working with numb hearts to try to bring some comfort to those for whom we had no healing. The heat increased and with it the stench, as for all our efforts men still lay, sometimes for hours, in their own vomit, excrement and blood. It had begun to rain, the usual torrential midday downpour, which reduced
the roads of the entrenchment to rivers of slush and raised the humidity to such an extent that inside the crowded hospital it was almost impossible to see for the sweat dripping off one’s brow into one’s eyes.

  I was beginning to feel the strain of the previous day’s excitement, the sleepless night and the hard work I had been engaged in for several hours. Outwardly I must have appeared much as I always had done, much as the other women around me did: solicitous, sympathetic and moderately efficient in the unpleasant tasks I performed. But within I was almost as incapable of emotion as the man who died in my arms, and in mid-sentence, as I raised him to remove his shirt.

  ‘He’s gone,’ I said to Saunders, the apothecary, who was tending the man on the next pallet. ‘He’s gone—and he was talking!’

  Saunders turned on his haunches and finished the work of pulling off the shirt. ‘Back wound, miss. Ball or shell fragment too near the heart, I expect. Moving him was enough to kill him. Now don’t fret, miss, you couldn’t have known and when your number’s up, it’s up!’ He turned away.

  There was no sheet or blanket with which to cover the dead face. I crossed the still-warm hands over the bare breast, pulled down the eyelids, and rose to my feet, feeling nothing, not even the rough kindness in Saunders’s brusque words. Mindful of our necessities, however, I tossed the dead man’s shirt on to a nearby heap of dirty bandages.

  It was nearly noon. Above the vehement rain the guns of the Kaiser Bagh could be heard. I wondered whether I was hungry, decided I was not, but that I must have some fresher air very soon or earn Dr Darby’s contumely by fainting or vomiting over my next patient. Slowly I worked my way on to the verandah, shaking my head dumbly at beckoning hands of doctors and patients alike.

  Outside and away from the open door into the hospital, the air was better. I picked a path to the edge of the verandah, and was grateful for the feel of warm rain on my hot, wet face. The world had disappeared behind sheets of solid grey water, the buildings nearest the hospital, the Resident’s House, the Treasury, Dr Fayrer’s house, only visible when the downpour veered for a second and afforded a momentary glimpse of their ruined wraith-like forms.

  A little revived in body if not spirit, I leaned my cheek against the damp pillar to which I clung in order to feel the rain on my face, and surveyed the scene around me.

  The generous architecture of an earlier day had endowed the Banqueting Hall with a wide, arcaded verandah. Once the pillars that supported its considerable length had supported also the flowery masses of jade-leaved quisqualis and the brazen trumpets of bignonias. The red tiles had been polished to a brightness that reflected Chinese lanterns and fairy lights.

  I wiped the rain and sweat from my face with my sleeve and looked around me.

  The climbing plants were long gone, and with them some of the pillars. The shot-holed roof sagged threateningly and the worn canvas and old awnings with which it was now repaired did little to keep out the rain. The bright tiles were smashed and men lay, sat and sprawled on the soaked stone, propped against the wall, the pillars or the backs of their companions. Some shivered with ague, teeth chattering; some moaned; one or two muttered in delirium; most endured in a silence that was itself agonizing. Doctors, apothecaries and the few women moved among them, and those of our own wounded who were capable helped their new comrades with a few poor means at their disposal: a mug of water, a hand with the unlacing of a boot on a swollen foot, or a shoulder to lean a bandaged head upon. They were still arriving, the wounded from the city. If a man could walk, he was sent on up the slope into the entrenchment to find what accommodation and assistance he could. If not, his comrades on the verandah drew in their legs, hunched closer and made room for him on the sodden floor.

  A cauldron of gun-bullock soup was lugged out and the women on the verandah prepared to serve it. I should be doing the same inside, I knew, so I filled my lungs with a few deep breaths of air, pushed my damp hair back from my forehead and was about to return to the ward, when through the rain I glimpsed what I thought was a familiar figure helping yet another wounded man toward us. Curiosity made me pause for a moment as they approached.

  It was Ungud, but with a cotton sheet wound around his skinny form to protect him from the elements. That, then, was why I had not seen him, I thought. He had been sent out again to act as a guide to the relief. When they were near enough, I called to him, indicating a vacant spot on the very edge of the verandah where he could deposit the man he was helping. He nodded and made towards me, without surprise. The verandah rail had been taken for fuel, so all he had to do was disengage the man’s arm from around his shoulders and allow him to slide down to a sitting position on the plinth. The man remained upright but slumped against a pillar and, as he did so, I saw blood dripping down his arm and over the slack fingers resting on his knee.

  ‘Thank you, Ungud,’ I said wearily, wondering whether the wound was something I could take care of myself or whether I would have to go in search of a doctor. He would have a long wait if the latter.

  ‘Give him water!’ ordered Ungud peremptorily, instead of shuffling off after salaaming, as I had expected him to do. ‘The blood is nothing, but he is tired, too tired. Feed him quickly and let him sleep!’

  Something in the small brown man’s tone of voice, in the proprietorial manner in which he stood looking down anxiously at his erstwhile burden, made me take a closer look at the man.

  He was dressed in a ragamuffin accumulation of clothing: cord breeches and native string-soled sandals, a soldier’s grey-back flannel shirt, and a white helmet with a brass spike at the top. His head was bowed on his chest and the peak of the helmet came low over his forehead so that all I could see was an unkempt brown beard covering the lower part of his face.

  ‘Miss-sahib! Food and rest. Juldi!’ Ungud said again.

  I took a grip on myself. This was no time to give way to fancifulness. I had waited and I had hoped; I had longed for the improbable always, and believed in the impossible sometimes. I must not now allow my heart to beat with such ridiculous haste because of the tone of voice of a damp and dirty native pensioner.

  Merely to still the clamorous thudding of my heart, I knelt beside the man and gently lifted the helmet from his head. The lock of sun-bleached hair that fell forward over his forehead had choked me with tears even before the stubbly black lashes parted over the hazel eyes.

  ‘Do as he says, Laura,’ said Oliver, trying to smile, ‘I’m … thirsty.’

  He fell against me, fainting.

  CHAPTER 5

  No qualms of guilt assailed me as I deserted my duties, and I gave no single thought to the other men in the hospital who needed my help.

  We laid him on my string cot. Jessie boiled water and tore her last remaining petticoat into bandages, while Ungud and I pulled off the string-soled sandals and cut away the sleeve of the grey shirt to attend to Oliver’s wound, a jagged slash on the inner side of his right arm just above the elbow. I had by now garnered enough experience of such matters to realize that the wound was an old one, partially healed, that had broken open anew under some undue exertion. It bled freely, but I knew I could stop the flow.

  ‘Aye, and many’s the one I’ve seen like this one after a hand-to-hand,’ commented Jessie, as she brought in water and bandages. ‘He had his arm upraised to strike, d’ye ken, but the other man sidestepped smartly to the left and brought his weapon down just that mite the sooner, making for his enemy’s arm. “Butcher Cumberland’s cut” the lads ca’ it, and ’tis many weeks old, too.’

  We worked together to staunch the blood and then bound up the wound and laid the arm across Oliver’s chest. He never stirred. He bore no signs of other injury severe enough to account for his unconsciousness, so I had to suppose the wound had broken open more than once and that loss of blood, lack of food and exhaustion accounted for his weakness. On the soles of his feet were scars and scabs of severe lacerations, some of which now oozed blood. These too we cleaned and bound.

&nbs
p; Having satisfied himself that his Lat-Sahib was in competent hands, Ungud went away, returning presently with Toddy-Bob, who burst into the room without preliminaries and then, on seeing his master’s apparently lifeless body stretched on the bed, promptly burst into tears. While Jessie hushed him, attempting to explain that all was well with Oliver, I fetched the remainder of the birthday brandy and slipped a spoonful of the neat spirit between Oliver’s teeth. He shuddered a little but his eyes remained closed, so I repeated the dose two or three times, my anxiety mounting as each time he failed to respond. Then at last he heaved a long sigh and his eyes fluttered open. For a second or two he gazed around the room, taking in nothing; then his eyes focused on the white frightened blur of Toddy’s face and his lips twitched in a smile.

  ‘Tod.’ The whisper was so faint it would have gone unheard but for the light of recognition in his eyes. ‘You here?’

  ‘That’s right, Guv’nor,’ answered Toddy, edging nearer. ‘We’re fine, me and Ishmial too. I’ll fetch him in a moment.’

  Oliver then looked enquiringly at Jessie’s vast bulk as she peered down at him with worried interest.

  ‘This is our dear friend, Jessie,’ I explained, speaking for the first time. ‘She lives with us—here in these two room—and looks after us all.’

  ‘Laura!’ he exclaimed on hearing me, in a stronger voice. ‘Laura!’ He paid no attention to my explanation of Jessie’s presence. ‘Where are you?’ I was kneeling by the bed and a little behind his head, so he had to turn to see me.