Zemindar

by Valerie Fitzgerald

  ‘When I came round the second time, the sun was going down. I was on land; I could feel the harsh grass under my neck and cheek, and I remember wondering how in blazes I had got there. I had a cracking headache, even worse than the arm, and could only think of my thirst. Sunstroke, I suppose. I lay there for a while, trying to make things out, waiting for something to happen, and then I found I was not alone. An incredibly ancient Indian squatted on his haunches a little way from me, pulling on his biri contentedly, watching me. When he saw my eyes move, he beckoned and a woman appeared, and they both stood looking down at me, wondering, I suppose, what the hell was to be done with me.

  ‘I managed to croak, after about the third try, and the woman went away and returned with a brass pot of water.’

  ‘They had found you? And rescued you? Natives?’ I was frankly incredulous.

  ‘They had found me, rescued me and went on rescuing me. Natives!’ His tone was scathing.

  ‘I’m sorry, but surely, in the light of all that has happened to both of us, my surprise is natural?’

  ‘Hmph!’

  ‘What happened then?’ Kate said impatiently.

  ‘Well, they were on the way back to their own village after attending a wedding in some place on the far side of Cawnpore. They had a bullock-cart. They told me later they thought I was a Pathan. I was wearing the same kit I had when I set out from Hassanganj—never even washed. My beard had grown during the siege, since we had no water to shave in, and I had clung on to my turban like grim death, and damned glad I was to have it too. I used to wrap the tail around my face and tuck the end into the folds at the side to keep the smell out; it probably saved me from sunstroke a dozen times. Apparently the turban was still on my head when they found me, ducking or not. They had sat and watched me for a long time, trying to make out whether I was dead or alive. When evening came, the woman’s curiosity had got the better of her and she had waded out and pulled me ashore. And there I was. They had passed too late to hear the shooting on the river that morning; but, seeing a great many sepoys still riding and marching around, and being simple folk, had decided to hide up in a grove until nightfall. Which was why they had been able to keep an eye on me for so long.’

  ‘They never tried to hurt you? To give you up to the pandies?’ I was still incredulous, and basely when I remember Ungud, Ishmial, Moti and so many more.

  ‘They never even questioned whether I wanted to go with them, or considered the risk they were running in taking me. Just loaded me on to the cart and away we went. The village was about twenty miles this side of Cawnpore. They were the poorest of the poor: untouchables—the old man was a shoemaker and leather-worker, or had been in his good days. They had a hut some way out of the village and a scratch of land. They hid me and protected me, fed me and nursed me to the best of their ability until I left—about a week ago. Ten days?’

  ‘Did the other villagers know of you being there?’

  ‘They must have. They kept away so carefully.’

  ‘Glory be! But you’re being kept for hanging, lad. No doubt of that.’

  ‘That’s it, Kate,’ I agreed. ‘When I think of how much blood you must have lost, and the pain you were in … How did you pull through?’

  ‘Fever was a help. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. I don’t know whether it was some disease, sunstroke, or just the wound, but I was delirious a lot of the time to begin with and didn’t feel or remember very much. After the first few weeks, I began to worry about the damned arm, though. Could see it was useless, but it wouldn’t heal up. Kept breaking open and suppurating, and the fever kept returning too. One day I awoke from a doze to find a pariah puppy licking the pus away while I slept.’

  ‘Oliver! No! Ugh!’

  ‘Now there’s a delicately nurtured female for you,’ he commented ironically to Kate. ‘No sense! That little ring-tailed pup, with its yellow eyes and its eternal cringe, put me on my feet again. I remembered that once when I was a boy my grandmother had told me not to interfere when my pointer bitch licked an injured puppy’s bleeding cut. “She’s healing it,” my Grandmama said. “There’s something curative in a dog’s saliva.” So, well, having no other medication, I decided to give it a try. Made a point of inviting little Fido back every time I saw him. He became quite a friend.’

  ‘And it helped?’

  ‘It certainly improved. Healed quite well. Looks a mess as you can see; I suppose it should have been stitched up when it happened. But it closed after a fashion, stopped suppurating, and only opened up again when some cloddish private knocked it with a musket butt on the way here. He seems to have made a thorough job of it. Still, as you say, Kate, I am obviously being saved for hanging! And now … now, if you don’t mind, I think I would like to sleep. I think now I can sleep.’

  CHAPTER 7

  Having told us his story, Oliver seldom again mentioned his experiences in Cawnpore or in the village to which his rescuers had taken him. Sometimes, perhaps, he would recall some incident too absurd or funny to keep to himself and he would recount it, smiling. More often the recollections that swam to the forefront of his mind during the days of his convalescence were unhappy, and I would find him lying back on his pillows, grinding his teeth and knuckling his eyes as though in pain, or to shut out some insistent vision too horrible to remember without a groan. Sometimes, too, he would call me in his peremptory fashion and, when I went to him, would hold my hand to his lips, eyes closed, or put my fingers over his eyes, as though their presence would in some way exorcise the devils in his mind. Then he would release me very tenderly and say gruffly, ‘Be off about your business, woman. Idling while there’s work to be done?’

  For me, the small dark room where he lay was all there was of reality during those days. When I was not with Oliver, I was thinking of him, cooking some mess for him, trying to find him clothes, or talking of him to our visitors. Not unnaturally, however, our friends had other things on their minds than Oliver’s well-being and before long their anxious or despondent talk made me realize that nothing much had altered in our situation, despite the relief, and that in fact in many ways we were worse off.

  For the relief had failed. Instead of being rescued from the Residency by the forces of Generals Havelock and Outram, the relievers themselves were now incarcerated with us and as completely cut off from help from the outside world as the original garrison had been before the 25th of September.

  I can no longer remember what I had myself expected from the term ‘relief’. Probably something impractical, such as marching out of the entrenchment with bands playing and ranks of immaculate soldiery snapping to attention as we women passed down their precise and warlike lines. Among the men, there had always been two distinct schools of thought: there were those who had hoped for a strong force that in a few swift engagements would release us from our imprisonment, retake the city of Lucknow, and from there quell the insurrection in all of Oudh. Others, more realistic, hoped only for aid sufficient to liberate the Residency and get the dependants to safety, while the men of the Old Garrison remained on to battle for the city and await the coming of a superior force from Calcutta. The second alternative was the most popular, and at times it seemed to me that all most men needed to really enjoy a war was the absence of their female responsibilities. But perhaps my judgement, made in pique, was a little cruel. What no one had envisaged was that, having been rescued, our rescuers would then be shut up helplessly with us within the enclosure.

  For General Havelock, having learned what had befallen General Wheeler’s force in Cawnpore, of the massacre at the river and the later butchering of the women, and understandably anxious that the like fate should not befall us in Lucknow, had marched to our rescue with too small an army. Of the three thousand men who had gathered in Cawnpore to come to our aid, four hundred were sick or wounded and were left behind; an additional five hundred men, together with most of the supplies and several thousand camp followers, had been left at the Alum Bagh, a palace in a
large walled park, only four miles distant from us as the crow flies, but from the nature of things now inaccessible. In the close and bloody fighting in the city on the 25th and 26th of September, two hundred men of the relief had been killed and over three hundred wounded. The strength of the relieving column had thus been halved between the time they had mustered in Cawnpore and the day they entered the Baillie Guard.

  ‘For don’t you see, Miss Laura,’ Mr Roberts explained patiently, ‘if over five hundred men were lost coming through the city when unencumbered even by camp-followers, think what the casualties would be if they were to try to fight their way out again, taking with them some six hundred women and children, to say nothing of the sick?’

  ‘But surely, with our own men to help them … ?’

  ‘There are only nine hundred and eighty of us left, Miss Laura,’ Mr Roberts reminded me solemnly, ‘of the 1,720 of the first counting.’

  ‘And so we remain and endure? Just as before?’

  ‘Except that I believe it will be rather worse. I do not envisage starvation. I believe that the opinion that there were a great deal more provisions available to us than Brigadier Inglis was ever aware of, has now been verified. We will certainly eat, even with the added numbers now with us, but less than we have been eating so far. And the cold weather is almost upon us and we have no warm clothing. The unfortunate men of the relief, indeed, arrived with two days’ rations and what they stood up in, their thin summer uniforms.’

  ‘And how long are we to “endure”, Mr Roberts? Has anyone indicated any length of time?’

  ‘No, one cannot be sure, Mr Erskine. But weeks, no more. Merely a few weeks.’

  Mr Roberts was looking better than he had done for weeks; not quite his old self, but the trembling in his hands was less, his colour better and his sniff almost gone. I commented on his improvement after he had left us.

  ‘Perhaps, having had to be without the stuff for so long, he has overcome the craving, Kate.’

  Oliver looked from one face to the other with interest.

  ‘More likely he has found a new source,’ Kate replied.

  ‘But how?’

  ‘Oh, a sepoy, or some canny private soldier, perhaps, guessing he would find privation here, bought up a supply in some Cawnpore bazaar and brought it in with him. Let us hope Mr Roberts does not have to do without again before too long.’

  ‘Opium?’ asked Oliver.

  We nodded.

  ‘Funny how it gets the most unlikely ones,’ he said without surprise.

  ‘I think he is much lonelier than he would like people to know,’ I said. ‘He is a sensitive man, and craves companionship. He must have had a sad life since his wife died and his daughters married. No real roots or home. I suppose books can’t provide everything, even for him.’

  Charles had entered our quarters for his evening visit to Pearl just as Mr Roberts left, and stood now leaning against the doorjamb with his daughter cradled in his arm. She was satisfied after her meal and dozed contentedly, holding Charles’s forefinger in her little hand. She was now so active and so curious about her small world that we all knew relief when she fell asleep.

  ‘The suppliers of the stuff should be shot,’ he muttered angrily. ‘No man should be allowed to become dependent on the fumes of a wretched weed. It’s degrading!’

  ‘So is liquor, if you allow it to be,’ pointed out Oliver.

  ‘True—but this stuff! We’ve had some trouble because of it only today, down at our post. One of the sepoys, a decent fellow who has done his duty well all through, suddenly put down his musket, hopped over Fayrer’s garden wall and walked out into the no-man’s land beyond where the earthworks are going up for the extended position. Shot before he’d gone ten paces. His friends told us he had located a supply among the relief, but having no money, could not get hold of any. Just gave up in despair and decided death was preferable.’

  ‘You were right then, Kate,’ I said.

  ‘Unfortunately.’

  ‘What is this extended position you mention, Charles?’ asked his brother.

  ‘Oh, I keep forgetting what an old hermit you are. A somewhat sybaritic one, mind you, lolling back there on your pillows, being waited upon by this band of devoted women, but, of course, you can know nothing of what is going on outside. I suppose you are familiar with this place, though, as it was before the trouble?’

  ‘Reasonably.’

  ‘Well, the area Lawrence managed to enclose and fortify, the area we have been living and fighting in all this time, is pretty confined, particularly now with so many extra men, to say nothing of the grass-cutters, grooms and servants that came in with them. As soon as Outram got in and weighed up the position, he decided to extend the perimeter. We’ve been busy clearing out the houses beyond the present walls—spiking guns, blowing up batteries, blowing down mosques—the idea being to enlarge the entrenchment to include the Farhat Baksh Palace and the Chathar Manzil to the south as far as Phillips’s house to the east. Give us a lot more room for living and make things a little less convenient for the gentlemen over the wall. There’ve been sorties every day, pitched battles some of ’em, and of course we’ve had our reverses, but the palaces are all but enclosed now and Havelock’s men are living pretty “cushily”, I can tell you, in marble halls tricked out with precious stones. We tried to clear the road to Cawnpore, too, so that Outram could withdraw with some of his men to the Alum Bagh, but now that so much grain and flour has been discovered here, that idea has been given up. Not but what some variety in the meals would have been most acceptable to us all if he had been able to get through to his supplies!’

  ‘What’s he like, Outram? You seem to be so much in the know.’

  ‘A great chap and a good soldier, Outram!’ Charles answered. ‘A thorough-going gentleman to boot. Why, do you know what he did when he arrived at Cawnpore, to take over command from Havelock?’

  ‘Not an idea. Military gossip isn’t much in my line at the best of times.’

  ‘Well, but you must know it was Havelock who took Cawnpore?’

  ‘I had heard.’

  ‘He arrived in Allahabad straight from the campaign in Persia and was ordered to take command of the British infantry, artillery and volunteer cavalry and get to Cawnpore with all possible haste. Well, of course, he was too late to help you people there, but he tried, and by heavens he had a hard time of it too.’

  ‘Poor fellow!’ sympathized Oliver.

  Charles paused and blinked, not quite sure how to take this, then went on: ‘Delays, diversions, muddle, illness, battles and sorties all the way, and then, having taken Cawnpore, he discovers that he is to be superseded, at the behest of Calcutta, by Outram. Enough to embitter any man, don’t you think? And Outram must have realized it, for when he reached Cawnpore, after Havelock, he waived his right of command and asked Havelock to accept his services in the capacity of Civil Chief Commissioner, and a volunteer, until Lucknow was reached. Handsome, I call it. Only a big man could have done that.’

  ‘Very well bred. Most genteel, in fact. But damned confusing to the poor beggars under ’em!’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Nobody knew whom they were to obey,’ Oliver expatiated. ‘Each generous general was giving way to the other with great punctilio, and the result was chaos. Even in the few days I was with them, I saw only too clearly what happens when two tails try to wag one dog. Outram, as you say, Charles, is a gentleman. He confined himself to suggestions. But Havelock also is a gentleman and so treated all Outram’s suggestions as orders. Except, of course, that when Outram advised a respite before pushing on into the Residency, Havelock for once insisted on his own opinion and moved in—with woeful results, as was apparent when I came in with Ungud the following day.’

  ‘Havelock’s only human, after all.’

  ‘A holy human too, so they tell me. A regular praying mantis.’

  ‘And in your opinion that is to his discredit?’

  ‘No �
��’ Oliver considered the question. ‘But it is not automatically to his credit, shall I say?’

  Charles jiggled his daughter in his arms in an access of irritation and burst out, ‘By heavens, Oliver, I don’t know how you do it! After all you have been through, after all that you have been saved from … to have no faith!’

  ‘Now why should you say that, Charles?’ his brother queried mildly. ‘I did not say I had no faith. I merely said that praying does not, in my view, automatically make a good man; still less a good soldier.’

  ‘Now hush, you two!’ I broke in. ‘You squabble like schoolboys the minute you set eyes on each other. Cannot you see, Charles, that he is only baiting you? Don’t play his game.’

  Charles was too stung to be quiet.

  ‘I … I know, Oliver, that what we have suffered here has been nothing in comparison to what you underwent in Cawnpore, but … but nevertheless, we all, and I personally, have known grief and loss and … and great anguish. For me to find a man like General Havelock, a true Christian, a gentleman and a great soldier, living his belief with humility and courage in the face of mockery and criticism and … in spite of everything, is … is a true inspiration.’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear it. Inspire away, Charles, inspire away. But accord me the courtesy of allowing me to hold my own opinions.’

  ‘You don’t … why can you not … Oh, be damned to you, Oliver!’ And Charles thrust the baby into my arms and strode out of the room, followed by Kate.

  ‘Now there’s a right-minded fellow, Laura. Damning his own kin for no good reason, and when he should be giving a good example to the heathen!’

  ‘You shouldn’t tease him so, Oliver. You know, he really is very convinced about his religion.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes. He always was in a way. Don’t you remember the Sunday morning services after breakfast in Hassanganj? The collects, lessons and Lord’s prayer?’