‘No,’ he shook his head, his eyes still closed. ‘Now I’ve started, I can’t stop. I don’t want to upset you, but …’
‘You won’t upset us,’ she replied. ‘We have heard so many terrible things recently, and talking does ease the mind, they say. Tell on, then, boy, tell on.’
‘After a few days of the non-stop battering they were getting, those two buildings were almost as dangerous in themselves as the pandies’ guns, but there was no other shelter—even from the sun. Then, about two weeks after the start, one evening a caracasse of sulphur and tallow struck the thatched barrack, where most of the sick had been gathered together with the soldiers’ families. There was a wind blowing … the hot wind …’
‘I know; we felt it too in the house of Wajid Khan, the loo.’
‘Perhaps on that same day,’ he murmured, ‘that same awful day.’ A long pause ensued as he remembered it. He shuddered.
‘In that heat everything was tinder. In seconds the roof was ablaze, thatch and pulverized brick and beams smashing in on the occupants, most of them too badly wounded to move. Their screams … in that hellish, stinking twilight! It’s those I hear so often, Laura … those terrible shrieks of burning men and the smell of burning human flesh. Their relatives … some of them … watching. Seeing, hearing what was … happening to them.’
The shudder became a nervous shiver, and I thought the fever might have returned. I hushed him like a baby, cradling his hand in both my own, but he went on.
‘The worst … the worst was always watching … others. Suffering, dying … and not being able to do anything—anything—to help!
‘That was the end really. The fire should have been enough. After that the only shelter the women and children had was in some shallow trenches and a few tiny “go-downs” where the heat was so monstrous the children could not breathe. Women were confined in those ditches, bore their children in the full glare of the blazing sun, the guns and every passing eye.’
‘Dr Darby’s wife was one of them,’ Kate said quietly.
‘Yes. He’s here, isn’t he? They got her, though. At the river.’
He paused again, his teeth clenched to try to stop the shivering. Kate and I glanced at each other anxiously.
‘Some days later, when the heat of the burned-out barrack had died down sufficiently for us to approach it, we found forty charred bodies among the ashes. And the fire had taken the few medical supplies that had been laid in. By then, though, as many were dying of the heat and sheer despair as from the effects of the guns.
‘I remember one afternoon, the day after the fire, I think, it was so hot my palms came up in yellow blisters like balloons from handling my rifle; my head was cracking open with pain, the sun had got me, I suppose, and I’d had no water all that day. I dropped down behind the ruined walls—all that remained of No. 2 post by then—to try and recover a little in the shade thrown by the wall. I found another man there before me, and was just about to ask him to move over a bit when he looked up at me, with the sly, determined expression of a child defying its father, put his revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger … And I … I was so tired … so uncaring really, that I sat there … with his blood … and brains bubbling on the hot stone. Steaming. The water from the well, you see, was often pink with blood. Some couldn’t take it, whatever their thirst, or if they did they brought it up at once which made matters worse. Dried them out even more. That chap, I knew, had not had a drink in two days. More perhaps.’
For a further week the purgatory had continued, and then on the 25th of June a lone woman, wearing ragged European clothing and with a child at her breast, was seen approaching the walls bearing a white flag of truce. She brought with her a letter conveying the Nana Sahib’s offer of terms.
‘We had no option of course, though when it was learned that the Nana wanted us out of the entrenchment that same night and would not hear of our evacuating it in the morning, he was sent a message saying we had enough powder to blow ourselves and his entire army to blazes. If that is an option. The next day Azimullah, the Nana’s aide, agreed to treat with Wheeler, though the poor old devil was so far gone by then, everything had to be decided by his officers.’
‘And you, did you trust in the terms, Oliver? Did you expect treachery or not?’
‘No, I did not expect treachery. I could see no point in it. They’d given us the drubbing of a lifetime, after all. Oh, we’d hung on, but they’d got us out of Cawnpore, made the point, to their own satisfaction anyway, of the Rajah of Bithur’s ascendancy in his own territory. There was no point in treachery. What could they gain by slaughtering a few hundred starving whites and Eurasians and a handful of loyal sepoys?
‘What’s more, the terms they agreed to were pretty well generous: carriages and litters for the wounded as far as the river; elephants and whatever else was necessary for the women and the baggage; even sixty rounds of ammunition to be issued to each man before leaving; boats to get us to Allahabad. It was as fair as we had a right to expect from any adversary. No, I did not expect treachery. I was wrong, apparently, though I have still to be persuaded of it. Yes, I have still to be assured that it was on the Nana Sahib’s own orders that we were shot down at the river.’
‘But, Oliver, who else could have given the order?’
‘You know these people, Kate! You know the intrigue and the wrangling and pushing for place that goes on in these petty courts. There’s always someone trying to edge out the present incumbent, or trying to placate him or win his favour. It could have been any of a dozen men, probably—close to the Nana and hoping to gain some private end by taking matters into his, or their, own hands. Or perhaps no one gave the order. Perhaps … perhaps it was all a mistake.’
‘How could it have been? I don’t understand …’ I put in.
‘I know. Seems inconceivable. I’ll try to explain.’
Jessie had left the room to feed Pearl in the kitchen; it was quite dark now, and we called to her to bring in the saucer dip. Oliver was looking drawn and again we suggested he defer telling us the rest of his story to another time; but he shook his head and continued.
‘There was a curious want of consistency in the way the others treated us after the guns were handed over and our surrender became a fact. On the one hand courtesy, even consideration; on the other a … a deliberate flouting of what we had a right to expect from men who had shown such courtesy. The Nana sent his own ceremonial howdah to be used by Wheeler’s elephant, yet the mahouts refused to order the elephants to kneel, so the only way they could be mounted was by hauling oneself up by the tail. I heard that one sepoy spat in an officer’s face, yet I saw others weep when told of a former officer’s death. One party of women had their possessions torn from them by the sepoys; yet other sepoys, many others, went out of their way to help by carrying children and assisting the wounded. I don’t know why I should be surprised by the inconsistency. They were human, and humanity is inconsistent. Why should I be puzzled by the fact that the memories men harbour are as different as their temperaments or their faces? And impel them to different actions?
‘We must have looked a weird, a pathetic sight, setting off for the river and … safety. The elephants with their garishly painted heads, one bearing a silver howdah; the wounded in a long string of carts and litters; the rest of us struggling along on foot, all closely guarded by sepoys and watched by a horde of curious citizenry. It was already hot … and we took our smell of blood, decay and filth with us. Washing, as you can imagine, had not been among our priorities when half a cup of water could cost a man’s life. The men were in tatters, the children nearly naked; some of the younger women wore only the bodices of their dresses over their pantaloons, their skirts having been ripped up for bandages. Poor creatures, their shame and embarrassment as they walked along in their own excrement. Almost everyone wore a bandage somewhere; even the most robust and lucky of us.’
‘You too?’ I asked, though he had not mentioned his arm.
‘Yes, me too. I’d bound my feet in the remains of my red velvet waistcoat. I’d lost my shoes one night, when trying to get some sleep; I’d taken them off and placed them on top of a wall nearby. Thought they’d be safe from my comrades, and so they were, but not from a shell that exploded on the other side of the wall and blew them and the wall to smithereens.’
‘You must have been injured too?’
‘No, only a little dustier and dirtier than usual. The walls retained the heat, so we tried to sleep in the open, away from them. That saved me. I was lucky, but my feet were soon blistered and cut about by walking on the baking rubble, so I tore up the waistcoat. Compared to most of the others, I was in the pink of form. Most of the women and children had been injured too in that damned worthless barrack, though I saw one female trotting along carrying a parasol and a little dog! Most had little left to carry but themselves.’ He laughed slightly at the memory.
‘Well, the ghat—the landing stage, Laura—was about a mile away. When we arrived, we found the boats drawn up as had been negotiated, forty of them, thatched and provisioned for the journey down to Allahabad, each poled by ten boatmen; everything in readiness. Now tell me, why would a man who was preparing to have us all killed go to such lengths to set the scene? He had had to scour the area for the boats and pay the boatmen a fortune for taking us. And the provisions were on board; I saw them. Why should anyone provide food for people whom he knew would never have the chance to eat it? Wouldn’t it have been simpler and cheaper if he wanted to do away with us to arrange for our collective demise back in the entrenchment, when we had surrendered our arms? He could have done it then, you know. No question but he could have done it then. Why the elaborate charade?’
‘It’s what I said to Mr Roberts when I first heard of it,’ put in Kate. ‘Do you remember, Laura? And why should the Nana then rescue the women only to have them butchered later? ’Tis truly incredible. But we’ll never know the truth of it now, I expect. Unless and until they capture him, or one of his lieutenants.’
‘Yes. Why did it happen? That question, Kate, will exercise me for the rest of my days.
‘Anyway, there we were at the ghat, five or six hundred of us all told, I suppose. On the near bank was a wide beach backed by trees where we were all crowded, and on the far side the trees came down to the water, which was very low and full of reeds. The embarkation was a lengthy business, everyone, well or sick, having to wade through the water or be dragged or carried to the boats that stood out in midstream. It all went smoothly; no incidents. Not much help from the boatmen, but perhaps none was to be expected. The sepoys who escorted us dispersed the crowd that had followed the column and stood around watching, chewing pan and talking. It was altogether a very Indian occasion, unhurried, muddled, casual.
‘I remember looking round and feeling a strange sort of peace descending on me. It was all so familiar; to me, so … so pleasant. Even the sight of heavy shade, dark, almost cool, under the trees was a delight. There were crows watching us curiously from their perches, a flock of mynas, parrots … and a woodpecker at work high up in a tree, and a kingfisher skimming over the muddy water downstream. God, I believe I was almost happy for a few minutes, finding all those everyday things which we had forgotten about for so long, still as they had always been despite what we had gone through.
‘I suppose it took us about an hour to get everybody aboard, and a damned tight fit it was too. Boats built for four passengers carrying ten and twelve, so overloaded most of them were aground. I was standing in a boat, looking around me, as I say, with some pleasure at being in the open again, when I heard a bugle, just a couple of notes such as a bandsman produces when the band is warming up before a performance on the maidan. For a second nothing happened. Then … then all of a sudden I saw the native boatmen leap out of the boats and make for the shore … and heard the crack of a rifle.
‘All hell broke loose immediately. And what a hell! There … there were cannon hidden in the reeds of the Lucknow shore and sepoys rushed out from among those shady, bird-filled groves on the Cawnpore side and raked us with musketry. In moments the dry thatch of the boats was aflame; then cavalry charged into the water with drawn tulwars and hacked at the people as they leaped screaming from the burning boats, and I remember thinking, almost immediately it happened, “Hell! Why did we fire first? We fired first!” ’
‘The bugle call, Oliver?’ I protested. ‘Surely it was a signal? If not why were the cannon in readiness, or the sepoys waiting in the trees?’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t know. Perhaps they expected treachery from us; we had arms and ammunition after all?’
‘Treachery! From a couple of hundred debilitated and wounded men such as you describe?’
‘I know; not a sensible deduction. But—what if the Nana were not entirely sure of his own men, the ones who accompanied us, I mean? Their officers were among us. Or what, and this is what truly haunts me, Kate, what if the cannon and the sepoys were there to protect us—not murder us? A … a precaution in case the Cawnpore people took it upon themselves to finish us off? The Nana, from what I heard in the entrenchment, had been most sympathetic to the British, offered much good advice which had been taken. Even that note he sent in on the first day announcing he was about to attack; it was taken as a threat, but it could have been a warning … from a man forced to it against his own will. The terms he’d made with us, too, were magnanimous.’
‘But that bugle call? What was it then?’
‘I don’t believe it was a call, a true call. If it was, then the final notes were lost in the firing. To me, it was like some stupid sepoy, a recently appointed bugler perhaps, playing with his new toy. Experimenting with it.’
We all fell silent. In the kitchen Jessie crooned to Pearl, and smoke from the fire she had lit to heat the soup drifted into the bedroom.
‘God between them and all harm, but Oliver, boy, do you really think all those lives were lost because of … of a mistake? That our shots invited, or provoked, the … rest?’
Oliver said nothing for a moment. The flickering light of the dip accentuated every furrow on his face, and in every line was bitterness.
‘I cannot be certain, Kate. I do not know enough and I suppose I never will now. But I believe it might have been due to a mistake, yes! We were all on edge. Jumpy. Remember what we had gone through in those three weeks, and many of us, most perhaps, were expecting treachery. Perhaps if we had not been allowed our guns …’
‘Oh, Oliver! That’s a terrible, terrible thought …’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know. I have lived with it through these months.’
Again there was silence until I put in hesitantly, for the other two seemed absorbed in their musings, ‘What happened then, Oliver? Was that when you were wounded?’
He nodded.
‘I … I just stood there for a minute or two, aghast, not knowing what to do, not even thinking of what I should do, and something hit me. I don’t know what, perhaps the prow of another boat, or an oar. I lost my feet and fell into the water, but Mowbray Thomson and another man grabbed me and I managed to regain my feet. I hung on to their boat, it was drifting now; somehow it had come off the sandbank that had held it, and all I could do was hang on and hope for the best. I couldn’t see. My eyes were full of muddy water churned and splashed by the horses and people throwing themselves into the river; and explosions. Then I lost my feet again. The river was very shallow there, a couple of feet in depth, no more, but we must have drifted into a deeper channel, for I found I was floating and I let go one hand from the side of the boat to wipe my eyes. That was when … my arm went. I looked up just in time to see a tulwar descending on the arm still hanging on to the boat. It was too late to let go and dive, and the steel caught me. Slashed right down to the bone. The sowar could have ended me then, but somebody on the boat got him with a rifle and we all went down—the horse, the sowar and me, into the filthy water, bobbing with bodies now and seething with fa
llen flaming thatch. The noise! I cannot convey it. The sound of terror, absolute terror: screams, shouts, the human shriek of wounded horses, the sowars yelling “Din! Din! Din!” as they swept down among us, and the shots and explosions ringing out over it all. On and on the shots rang out.
‘It’s difficult to know what happened next. I must have disentangled myself somehow from the horse and the sowar, and surfaced. I remember someone trying to haul me aboard the boat. A boat. I don’t know whether it was the same one, though it seems likely, since apparently it was the only one that moved downstream and got away.
‘I was … in a bad way. The pain was frightful and I was half drowned to boot. No!’ He shook his head at himself. ‘That’s not right. I felt nothing at the time; the pain only started later. But I was half-drowned and choking, and suddenly I felt myself falling again, back into the river. I don’t know why my hand had been released by my would-be rescuer. Probably a bullet got him too.
‘I fainted then, I suppose. Nothing is clear after that. I seem to remember that awful screaming and crying on and off for hours, but it might have been only moments. Then for a long time I heard nothing, knew nothing.
‘It was afternoon when I came to. The sun was blazing down directly into my eyes, as I lay in the water on my back with my head and shoulders caught against some roots and driftwood that had got stuck on a sandbank. If they hadn’t been there, those roots, I’d have drifted on and drowned, I suppose; been killed certainly. As it was, I must have looked pretty dead already, not worth the bother of wading into the river to make sure of anyway. After a while I began to be aware that things had quietened down; the odd shot, some activity on the bank higher upstream, but I had floated or been dragged quite a way, and I could see nothing. I was losing a lot of blood and must have been caught up in the driftwood some time, for the shallow water around me was red. I could not stop the bleeding and, frankly, hadn’t the interest left to try, but I did attempt to ease the pain by lowering the wound into the water. I suppose I drifted off again after a while.
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