Zemindar

by Valerie Fitzgerald

  It was an eerie sensation that beset us as we padded through those dusty streets deserted by all save ourselves and the soldiery. No sacred bulls nuzzled the choked gutters; no beggars cried for baksheesh at the corners; no poverty-marked crowds of tattered men and veiled women thronged and jostled; no naked children played among the heaps of refuse; only here and there a ring-tailed, yellow-eyed pi-dog sniffed suspiciously as we passed, then returned to the undisputed largesse of the garbage.

  It was not hot, but in these enclosed lanes stinking of urine and excrement, the base of whose buildings were stained waist high with the vermilion saliva of betel-chewers, we were soon perspiring. The noise unnerved us. Musket and rifle fired so close that we could smell the cordite above the filth; shells burst noisily just out of sight and sometimes, more alarmingly, in the air above us, and heavy shot and ball cannonaded into buildings, filling the air with lime dust and particles of shattered masonry. Beyond the buildings that hedged our passage from the pandies’ sight, we could hear the enemy shouting directions and calling to each other, and once I clapped my hands over my ears to shut out the terrified shrieks of a wounded man.

  Delays were constant and hazardous, each narrow section of street causing a bottleneck that rapidly backed up vehicles, animals and humans, all fretting with impatience and fear, but none daring to utter a word of protest. Baggage tumbled off carts and out of panniers and had to be replaced under the frenzied eyes of the owners, giving vent to their wrath in dumb-show. Once, a half-starved horse, pulling a landaulet just ahead of us, lay down with a grunt and died; coolies had to be found to take over the poor beast’s task. On three occasions, everyone was held up when Mrs Polehampton’s harmonium tumbled off the back of the camel that carried it. The harmonium had belonged to the Reverend Mr Polehampton, and his widow would not move a step until it was safely resecured atop the beast.

  The tension of the humans communicated itself to the animals, who became difficult to control. Horses reared suddenly, pawing the air, always with some syce or soldier clinging to their muzzles to prevent them neighing. Bullocks grunted and stopped stock-still, heads low between their knobbled knees, red eyes rolling with terror; no amount of belabouring could move them. Only our Rosinante, imperturbable if lethargic, and the blinkered mules tightly muzzled with rope, seemed too foolish to catch the infection of fear and plodded quietly on through the noise.

  Time and again a man of the picket line would leap from his place to fire at a head or an arm visible on a rooftop, and time and again I closed my eyes and held my breath, waiting for the shout that would reveal our escaping presence and draw the enemy fire. But our luck held. We continued on our way, slowly, with many stumblings, delays and grumblings, but steadily.

  The troops lining our way had yet to set foot in the Residency they had fought to free, having been moved up that day from the Martinière or Dilkusha where Sir Colin had left them on his final surge towards us. I noticed that they eyed us with frank curiosity, not untinged, I also noticed, with distaste, and smiled to myself when I realized what disappointment they must feel on finally coming face to face with the ‘Dear Creatures’ (as Sir Colin insisted on calling us) whom they had delivered. I could only guess the visions they had concocted of the frail and delicate females it had been their privilege to liberate. Frail most of us certainly were from lack of food, but those of us who had survived those 142 days and nights in Lucknow would never again be considered delicate.

  What the wondering eyes of those stolid stalwarts beheld was a straggle of scrawny women and pale, big-eyed children, doggedly putting one foot before the other with total concentration on proceeding as fast as broken shoes and blisters would allow. Dressed in a wonderful assortment of shabby garments, usually bonnetless, generally cloakless, wrapped in finest Kashmir shawls from the palaces or in quilted cotton from the servants of the palaces, not a face was entirely clean, nor was there one that did not bear the marks of more years than its owner counted. There were, of course, a lucky few, like the Gubbinses and the Bonners, still adequately dressed and accoutred with the symbols of their state in life. But I speak of the majority of us: the wives of the soldiers of the 32nd, of the officers of mutinous native regiments, or widows and ‘unprotected females’ like Kate and myself. It was we whom the soldiers had the opportunity to examine, and tired, frightened and bedraggled as we were, we must have looked a graceless lot.

  Once, having halted for some delay ahead, I heard a blue-uniformed ‘Shannon’ mutter to his mate, ‘Not what you’d call a likely bunch o’ lookers!’

  His mate shrugged and replied, ‘Can’t even thank a fellow for ’elpin’ ’em over a wall, let alone out o’ Lucknow!’ Thereafter Kate and I were voluble in our whispered thanks for any proffered arm, and we were often in need of assistance.

  Several times we were ordered to run, when the firing was particularly heavy; several times, too, Jessie was made to dismount and keep under cover of Rosinante when the bullets flew too close. We stooped as we walked; we ran; we crawled through muddy ditches and clambered over broken walls. We sheltered in a ruined house, holding our breath, while a party of pandies hauled a gun over the cobbles just on the other side of the flimsy wall, and halted again, and as nervously, while a battle on the roofs above us moved to a safer distance. We hauled Rosinante over yards of hoof-cutting debris; and pushed her through feet of evil-smelling water; we pulled her through humble courtyards still littered with the domestic remains of small lives; and puffed after her, waving the umbrella, when once a shell burst too close for the comfort of even her stolid mind.

  So long unused to lengthy walking, our feet were soon sore, and I was nearly through the thin soles of my old shoes when, at about five in the evening, we at last reached the Sikander Bagh.

  The buildings had been thinning out, giving way to orchards, groves and high-walled gardens, when, of a sudden, we found ourselves in the country. Rosinante came to a stop, and I looked up to see fields of sugar cane where partridge called, a jarmin avenue loud with monkeys quarrelling, and mango topes glistening in the late and slanting sun. I smelled the fresh and forgotten scent of green things growing in damp soil.

  Jessie handed the baby down to Kate and slid wearily from the saddle, rubbing her rear. Kate held Pearl up to see the monkeys, and I bent down and pulled a handful of young grey-green gram leaves from the roadside and sniffed the tangy fragrance with closed eyes.

  This was freedom. This was what life had been—before.

  Quiet, gentle things; trees and birds, crops springing in the tended earth, and a wide horizon.

  Unmindful of our wondering eyes, as we stood silently and watched them, a young boy in a loincloth and dirty muslin shirt, accompanied by a skinny yellow pi-dog, drove his family’s milch cow home through the sugar cane, playing a bamboo flute as he went. Further off, a couple of women walked towards the setting sun, tall earthen pots on their padded heads, full cotton skirts swinging rhythmically to their straight-backed graceful stride. An old man with another ring-tailed dog precisely like the first, paused and watched us, chewing betel-nut with toothless jaws. Beyond the cane fields, a smudge of grey smoke against the flushing sunset sky indicated some small hamlet pursuing its ancient humble ways within sound of the guns that had battered us for five gruesome months.

  But behind us the cannonade continued, and around us, everywhere, armed men were watchful. We were still within range of the enemy.

  In a meadow studded with huge mango trees, within sight of the shattered walls of the Sikander Bagh, families were taking their ease. It was the battle for these very walls that I had glimpsed from the roof of the hospital three days before, when a neighbour had loaned me his fieldglass and I had caught the glint of morning sunshine on massed bayonets. I had turned away, escaping the sight. But here the rebels had been cut to pieces by the Highlanders in a final frenzied blood-letting before they stormed on to the Residency, and here 1,857 bodies had been counted after the carnage. Some of those bodies, we were to
ld, still lay unburied in the fly-infested, stinking space that had once been the flowery, fountain-flowing Garden of Alexander.

  Sir Colin’s staff had prepared well for us. Under the trees, food was set out: bread, butter and jam, biscuits and platters of fresh fruit. Huge ‘dixies’ of tea steamed on the usual cook-stoves of three bricks and a few smouldering dungpats. Kate, Jess and I loaded ourselves shamelessly with all that was offered, then retired to a eucalyptus grove where we had tethered Rosinante and partook of our feast with concentration, never uttering a word until the last crumb was picked from our skirts and consumed, and the last drop of tea drained from the mugs. Then Jessie looked at Kate and myself, rose, collected the mugs and set off to have them refilled with wine, while Kate and I lay back and laughed at the picture of our stern Covenanter departing in search of strong liquor.

  We drank the wine with even more appreciation than the tea, but not as silently; then watched the alarms and excitements around us with admirable detachment.

  Children lost their parents, women mislaid their possessions, servants got separated from their mistresses, and distraught officers scampered through the crowd, trying to find the woman who had requested the cheese or the parent of a loudly objecting child summarily rescued from a tree. Tired infants bellowed for their beds; exhausted mothers smacked and scolded, and the grass was thick with discarded boots and shoes, their owners trying tenderly to restore their feet in the cool evening air. A subdued hubbub filled the area, growing at times to an appreciable roar, as new parties arrived and were screamed at in welcome by their friends.

  A strange large soldier, bearded and grim, stood for five solid minutes looking down at Pearl, innocently and sweetly asleep in Jessie’s ample lap. Now and then he shook his head. At last he said, ‘That babe was born there?’

  ‘Not quite,’ I answered. ‘She was about two months old when we entered the entrenchment.’

  ‘And she lived!’

  He bent down and laid one large finger along the baby’s thin cheek. ‘She lived!’ He shook his head, saluted and went away.

  Closing my eyes, my back against a tree, I surrendered myself to this strange experience of liberty. The evening was closing in; to the west, behind the angry city we had left, the sky was rose and red, but to the east it was washed in that pellucid duck-egg green, lined with light, seen nowhere but in India. The copse of long-leaved eucalyptus trees stirred in the evening breeze with the sound of crumpling paper, showering us with lemony fragrance. Flights of emerald, ring-necked parrots shot screaming through the trees, and the mynas, unmindful of war, flight or fear, squabbled for their night-time perches in disregard of the human horde invading their dormitory.

  Oliver! Oliver … I thought, and fell asleep with his name in my mind.

  When I woke, darkness was upon us and I was cold on the cold dewy ground. Kate, who had drawn the second longest straw, was already mounted on Rosinante with Pearl in her arms. Cursing my sore feet and broken shoes, I joined Jessie behind her. No lights were allowed us and the night was like pitch.

  Soon after we had taken our place in the column and left the hospitable meadow behind us, the disorganized cavalcade degenerated into chaos. The rough road, swept over during these past days by thousands of feet, hooves and wheels, was now a morass of sticky sand, scarred with shellholes and shallow trenches.

  Carriages stuck axle-deep in the mire. Horses stumbled, spilling their loads into the confusion and unseating their riders. Bullock-carts sank to their flooring and were abandoned. Doolie bearers lost their way and carried frightened women far out into strange fields. The extended picket of the earlier hours of our journey had been replaced by an escort of troops, who, with great goodwill, slung their weapons on their shoulders to heave at carriages full of grumbling, tearful women, whip bullocks into motion, round up riderless horses, carry sleeping children, or thrash coolies attempting to desert with their loads.

  Our party kept together by the simple expedient of my holding the reins and Jessie clutching the tail of Rosinante. I lost a shoe in sand, fell more than once, and had my bare foot trodden on by a passing infantryman, but I hung on to those reins as though they grew from my fingers.

  For two and a half dreadful hours, confusion reigned in the unrelieved darkness, a heaving turmoil of seemingly directionless movement, during which we somehow covered the miles to the Dilkusha. At last, after a halt due to some mishap further up the column, we learned that we had arrived. At once there was pandemonium, everyone abandoning their places in the line to search for friends, quarters and food. The earliest arrivals had been lucky and were already settled for the night, but the arrangements made for our reception proved entirely inadequate for the numbers. What few tents had been erected were already occupied, we were told by a harassed officer, as also was that part of the Dilkusha Palace not already occupied by Sir Colin’s staff.

  The night resounded with complaints, grumbles and querulous pleas for help, while embarrassed officers and bewildered men tried to cope with a couple of hundred exhausted, ill-tempered women, children and their cohort of attendants.

  ‘Oh for Toddy-Bob!’ I sighed, as we looked around wondering which direction might lead us to shelter and a bed. ‘He’d have us housed and fed in a trice whatever the circumstances.’

  ‘We must look for an officer’s mess,’ Kate rallied herself to decide. ‘There’s bound to be someone I know. This is the sort of occasion when a man is indispensable.’

  So Jessie took the sleeping Pearl, Kate dismounted, and still all holding firmly to some part of Rosinante or her saddlery, we set off.

  The darkness of the vast park was almost impenetrable as we threaded our way through tents and carriages, doolies and limbers, mounds of baggage and supplies, bells of arms and stacked cases of ammunition, and over lines of weary soldiers sleeping imperturbably on the ground. Here was a corral of horses, fine well-fed ones of the relief, there bullocks dozed heavily, recumbent in a cloud of gnats; camels belched in rude surprise as we disturbed them, and elephants flapped huge ears in curiosity. Small cow-dung fires glimmered under the trees as servants smacked out chapattis between their palms, swinging easily on their haunches in the firelight. Above them, hanging upside down among the mango leaves, fruit bats squeaked like mice, red eyes reflecting the flame.

  The palace itself was lighted and alive with officers, but so many families had gathered on the wide verandah waiting for help that we decided we would be quicker served elsewhere, even if by chance. But we wandered to the very outskirts of the park and found nothing in the way of a mess tent. At the end of our endurance, beginning to feel that we could sleep standing up if necessary, we were hailed by a mounted officer.

  ‘Ladies … please! Would any of you know a Mrs Barry? Mrs George Barry?’ he called out of the gloom.

  ‘Glory be to God! We’re saved and just in time!’ groaned Kate, then called out that she was Mrs Barry.

  The officer cantered up to us and dismounted.

  ‘Mrs Barry?’ He held out a neatly gloved hand, peering towards Kate.

  ‘It is, and you, if I’m not very much mistaken, are Johnny James!’

  ‘Mrs Barry! I …’

  ‘Yes, I know! You never would have recognized me. But it’s me all the same. Laura, Jessie—this young man used to be one of my boys, and not so long ago either. Lieutenant James.’

  ‘Why, Mrs B, when I heard that you had been in Lucknow all through, I swore I’d find you out and see you comfortable. I’d heard … about your husband!’

  ‘There you are, you see,’ Kate said triumphantly. ‘My boys never forget me.’

  ‘But this is wonderful, Mrs B. I was beginning to think …’

  ‘Ah, well, no, I’ve not succumbed yet! But if I don’t soon find some place to lie down and sleep, I probably will, and so will my friends.’

  ‘Come along with me. I’ve cleared my tent for you and we can squeeze the other ladies in somehow. Oh, and I see you have a dear little baby with you!’ />
  This is no time for sentimentality, I thought to myself ungratefully, and why will a man gush over a baby who can get along quite well without a bed, when he has three exhausted females on his hands?

  Lieutenant James was not the Army’s most intelligent officer, but he was kind. Soon we were seated on groundsheets before a fine fire, drinking more wine while a meal was prepared for us. The tent would just take the three of us packed like sardines, with Pearl squeezed somewhere between us. None of us, I am afraid, gave a thought to where Lieutenant James himself would sleep that night.

  The meal appeared. Ham, bread and butter, cheese and a pitcher of milk. But the day had been too much for me. I ate two mouthfuls of ham, excused myself, crawled into the tent and was asleep before I had closed my eyes.

  They tell me that dire confusion continued all that night. Soon after the last of the families were in, the sick began to arrive, and the great treed park resounded with noise and bustle until morning. I heard none of it, and it was nearly noon the next day before I awoke.

  Lieutenant James’s servant brought me hot water to wash in, and later a meal to which, this time, I did full justice. There were eggs, I remember. Two boiled eggs and toasted bread.

  Rested and refreshed, I only then realized how painful my right foot was from having been walked on for some considerable distance without a shoe. The sole showed several cuts and gashes, the toes were bruised and swollen, and blisters, formed during the first part of the journey, had burst and were suppurating. I cleaned it as best I could, and later in the day, on a visit to the quarters of the sick, Kate managed to procure some salve, lint and a bandage for me.

  The fearful suffering of the wounded as they were borne away from the Residency had caused many deaths, including that of dear, dour Dr Darby. Those who had survived described to Kate something of the horrors of the journey they had made. Packed one on top of the other into ambulances and litters, jogged, pushed, pulled and dropped along the length of the hazardous and obstructed route we too had followed, wounds burst open afresh, fevers soared, splints on fractured limbs worked loose, dressings were torn off by the struggling limbs of companions, and they were the luckiest who had lapsed into unconsciousness. Now every doctor was hard at work trying to undo the damage of the march, but within a few days the sick would have to endure yet further torment as they were moved on to Cawnpore.