‘Search your mind afresh, Taggart Sahib.’ Jarar Mahommed’s eyes gleamed with blood lust. ‘Silence brings more of the lash, a fitting punishment for a deserter, Taggart Sahib!’
‘I tell you, there is no more. No more!’
The lash, at a signal from Jarar, fell again, cruelly wielded by a man naked to the waist whose black skin shone with sweat, a man who looked like a Nubian. Taggart-Blane gave another shrill scream from the bottom of his throat, a cry that was flung back at him from the enclosing stony walls now spattered red with blood. Rigby-Smith’s face was grey and working; he seemed on the verge of collapse himself.
‘There is, I think, at least one thing you have not told me, Taggart Sahib, and this is what caused your act of desertion?’ The lash was lifted again. Taggart-Blane licked his lips. ‘I...had killed a man. Shot him.’
‘A man, of your own men, not an enemy?’
Taggart-Blane nodded, tears running down his cheeks. ‘Why did you kill this man? Tell me, for I am interested! Who was he, Taggart Sahib?’
Taggart-Blane blubbered like a baby. The lash rose and fell. Punctuated by screams, the story emerged. Held under strong guard, Colonel Rigby-Smith listened in tense horror. His face was a study in many emotions. And when the story was ended, when it was obvious to Jarar Mahommed that the man beneath the lash had genuinely no more to tell, the signal was given for the real and final torment to begin.
*
The small British force found the 114th encamped in uncomfortable conditions outside the walls of Kunarja. As the drums and fifes were heard and the weary English soldiers were seen, the Scots came to their feet, waving and cheering. Lord Dornoch and the adjutant, Andrew Black, rode forward with an escort to greet them.
Dornoch was overjoyed. ‘James! An unexpected pleasure, to be sure! Do you come with Calcutta’s answer?’
‘Yes, Colonel — or I believe a term popular at Division would be General Fettleworth’s answer!’
Dornoch smiled, but his face was anxious. ‘And the answer is?’
‘Agreement, Colonel. Agreement in full.’
The Colonel let out a long breath. ‘Thank God — thank God and General Fettleworth! That’s a relief, James. I’ve been allowed communication with Colonel Rigby-Smith inside the palace, up to ten days ago at all events, and I think you’ve reached us just in time. The princely patience, by all accounts, was wearing a little thin! Poor Rigby-Smith feared torture, and he and his officers had been subjected already to a degree of starvation.’ He glanced at the adjutant. ‘Captain Black, if you please — stand the regiment to at once. You and I and Ogilvie shall ride under escort to the gates, and demand an audience. I wish the main body of the regiment to be fallen in by companies and to be ready at a distance, ready for anything that may happen — though now I expect only peace!’
‘Very good, Colonel.’ Black wheeled his horse, and rode down towards the encamped Scots. Courteously, Dornoch greeted Major Arkwright; and then, with a wave of his hand, indicated that he wished for a word in Ogilvie’s ear. The two officers moved a little apart from the escort.
‘Well, James?’ There was sharp anxiety in Dornoch’s voice.
‘Taggart-Blane, Colonel?’
‘Yes, yes—’
‘He was ordered by General Fettleworth, on my own suggestion, to accompany my mission. Colonel, he left the column in the Khyber.’
‘Left?’ There was a sharp intake of breath. ‘D’you mean — deserted?’
‘In effect, Colonel — yes.’
‘You didn’t find him?’
‘No, Colonel. We tried, but it was no use.’
‘So he’s still at large?’
‘If he hasn’t been frozen to death, Colonel.’
There was a silence. ‘By God, James,’ Dornoch said after a moment. ‘You come with both good news and bad, do you not! What’s the end of all this going to be!’
‘Bad, Colonel, for the regiment. And for the havildar, Lal Binodinand, it could be fatal.’ Ogilvie paused. ‘And yet, perhaps not. General Fettleworth believes in his innocence...’ He reported, briefly, his talks with Fettleworth and Wilkinson. ‘And to some extent, I suppose, Taggart-Blane has now incriminated himself by leaving the column...by deserting.’
‘Murder and desertion — and worse! We shall not live this down James — never! This is a sad day for me, and will be so for your father also. The regiment...it’s his life, James, as it is mine.’
‘Mine also, Colonel.’
‘Yes, my dear boy, I know. I know!’ Lord Dornoch looked away, his eyes shadowed — looked towards the regiment now falling in under the orders of Captain Black. He gave a deep sigh; then his back stiffened like a ramrod and he said, ‘Now we must go forward. There is much of importance to do. We shall talk fully about this later.’
‘Yes, Colonel.’
Ogilvie followed on as Lord Dornoch rode towards the Highland line. A few minutes later, with the Queen’s Own Royal Strathspeys in column of route behind him, and the pipes and drums of the battalion in front, Dornoch headed for the gates of Kunarja. The primitive, stirring wail of the pipes, and the beat of the drums, echoed off the age-old walls standing up from the cruel snow out of Himalaya. The Scots went forward with rifles and fixed bayonets and frost-stiffened kilts to the tune of ‘The Campbells Are Coming’, and as the head of the column drew nearer to the gates of savagery, Ogilvie could almost fancy himself to be one of those warring clansmen of old, bearing down with the threat of fire and sword upon Loch Leven, cold and lonely between Glen Nevis and Glen Coe.
*
‘So you’ve returned at last,’ Colonel Rigby-Smith said disagreeably. The audience with Jarar Mahommed concluded to the satisfaction of both sides, Dornoch and Ogilvie had been taken to where the Colonel of the 99th Rawalpindis was being held in solitary confinement. The room stank, and so did Rigby-Smith — it was a smell of a lack of washing and hygiene, a horrible cold fug that sickened Ogilvie. Rigby-Smith himself had aged ten years; his cheeks were sunken and grey and his whole body was shaking. His uniform was awry and dirty and covered with blanket fluff; but he seemed to have lost none of his pernickettiness. ‘I trust you appreciate you’ve now returned to my command, not that of Lord Dornoch?’
Ogilvie caught Dornoch’s eye and saw the fractional lowering of an eyelid. ‘Yes sir,’ he said.
‘Then kindly do me the courtesy of reporting in a proper manner.’
‘Yes, sir. Captain Ogilvie, on secondment from the 114th Highlanders, reporting back from escort duty, sir — with the terms fully agreed and the agreement delivered to His Highness Jarar Mahommed. Sir! ‘
Grunting, Rigby-Smith returned the salute that Ogilvie gave him. Then, turning to Lord Dornoch, he said, ‘I suppose you know why Jarar Mahommed had you brought here, Dornoch?’
‘He said you had something to show me, Rigby-Smith.’
‘Yes, I have!’ Rigby-Smith lifted a hand and rubbed at his eyes. To his astonishment, Ogilvie saw that those eyes now held tears. ‘Do you know, that man’s the most barbaric monster I’ve ever come across in all my years in India? I’ve had the most terrible time — so have we all, all my officers and men. And now this. It took place...oh, two days ago, perhaps three. Damn it, I’ve lost count of time...I’m in no fit state for all this, I tell you! Horror has been piled upon horror, and this is the culmination of that brutal man’s wicked cruelty...that I should be made to show you what he has done!’ He lifted one of his shaking hands and pointed. ‘Do you see that hatch in the floor, there?’
Dornoch nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘It leads to a hole, a mere hole gouged out of the earth and lined with some hard substance, I don’t know what. There’s something in it. If I were you...I’d not look.’
‘I think I must look, Rigby-Smith.’
Rigby-Smith gestured wearily, and brushed a shaking hand across his eyes. ‘If you must, then you must. Possibly...yes, perhaps it would be better to do as Jarar Mahommed wants, since we’re still in his power—’
‘We are not! I have my regiment here, in readiness at the gates — you know this. We’re in nobody’s power, Colonel, I assure you of that!’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Rigby-Smith said perfunctorily. He was shaking more than ever. ‘I shall tell you what’s in...’ All at once, he staggered. Ogilvie caught him before he fell, and held the inert body in his arms.
‘He’s fainted, Colonel.’
‘The devil he has! Lay him on the floor — gently — and we’ll open up that hatch. God, but I can’t get away from this place quickly enough!’
Ogilvie lowered Rigby-Smith to the floor and then, with Dornoch, bent to the hatch and lifted it by means of a small ringbolt set into the wood. At first they saw nothing; then they made out a pile of sacking, as it seemed. Ogilvie dropped through the hatch into the hole, and poked at the sacking. There was a soft feel, almost a squelchiness, and more prodding resulted in some wetness, and a stain — a stain of blood.
Ogilvie flinched away from it, as the truth, the terrible truth, came to him. He looked up at Dornoch. ‘Colonel, it’s a body. A dead body, I think.’
‘We must bring it up — or examine it in situ would be easier. Can you strip away that sacking, James?’
Ogilvie got to work. It was a horrible and gruesome business, but he did it. The opened sacking revealed a body, complete but dismembered, a torso with its limbs severed and laid by its side, a torso wearing the uniform and insignia of a subaltern of the Royal Strathspeys, and the head of Taggart-Blane grinning, the teeth bared in the agony of death, from its position, like the crown and sceptre on the coffin of a dead monarch, in the centre of the gutted stomach.
Retching violently, Ogilvie straightened and lifted his shoulders through the lip of the hole; Dornoch bent to him, and helped him through. All Ogilvie could do was to point down, and utter the dead man’s name. Dornoch’s face was grim and set. He said, ‘There’ll be work for my regiment to do before we leave Kunarja!’
‘No!’ This was a violent interpolation from Rigby-Smith, who had come round from his faint and was staring in fearful agitation towards the open hole, and at Lord Dornoch. ‘No, Dornoch, you must not attack the town!’
‘My dear Rigby-Smith, you forget yourself. I must—’
‘No! I beseech you ‘ Rigby-Smith moved across the floor on hands and knees, like some grotesque and. enlarged beetle, then got to his feet and stood swaying before the Scots Colonel. ‘The moment your regiment approaches the gates, all the hostages will be slaughtered. I ask you to think now, not of one man who is dead, but of several hundreds who need not die!’
‘Including you, Colonel Rigby-Smith.’ Hawk-like, Dornoch stared into his face, and he looked away.
‘Indeed including me. But I am not asking for myself. Think, Dornoch, think!’ Rigby-Smith reached out and clutched at Dornoch’s arm, his fingers shaking as though with a fever. ‘A whole native regiment butchered as that unfortunate young man was butchered — and the agreement abrogated by your own act even before it has begun to take effect! You cannot, you must not, throw all that away! That subaltern of yours was captured by Jarar Mahommed’s men, men from one of his outposts — the subaltern having deserted your regiment, Dornoch, whilst on service in the Khyber Pass! To avenge such a death is not a fit and proper premise upon which to build your own war, Colonel!’
‘This act of desertion...how do you know this?’
Rigby-Smith said hoarsely, ‘Why, because the subaltern was tortured in my presence — was eventually butchered in my presence, God help me! He said all this, do you not see!’
‘Said — precisely what?’
Rigby-Smith lifted his hands to his ravaged face. ‘He revealed that he had killed a man of my regiment, my own regiment. A sepoy named, I think, Mulata Din. Before this...he had committed an act of the grossest indecency, by his own confession. Your subaltern was a murderer, Dornoch — a murderer and a sodomist! You shall not start a war on his behalf, you shall not!’
Dornoch caught Ogilvie’s eye. He asked Rigby-Smith, ‘Who else, beside you and Jarar Mahommed, was a witness to all this?’
No-one else, at least no-one else of my regiment. Only the natives who were carrying out that maniac’s orders on Taggart-Blane.’
‘I see. Give me a moment,’ Dornoch said abruptly. He strode up and down the stinking room, deep in thought, deeply agitated. There was a silence from the other two, as they both watched the Colonel. Then, at last, he stopped. Facing Rigby-Smith he said coldly, ‘There is possibly a way in which this can be resolved. I see no purpose in further killing, and am certainly not anxious to endanger the hostages. Rigby-Smith, I will withdraw my regiment upon certain conditions, the first being this: you will repeat my subaltern’s words to General Fettleworth and to no-one else except upon the General’s own order. This will save the life of one of your own havildars, currently in arrest in Peshawar. You promise this?’
‘Yes, yes—’
‘And secondly: how did this officer die?’
Rigby-Smith covered his eyes. ‘He died screaming — screaming. Oh, it was horrible.’
‘But he died well?’
‘He died screaming, as I have said. No, he did not die well...’ Rigby-Smith’s voice faded as he saw the look in Dornoch’s eye. ‘He...oh, very well, then. Yes he died well. Yes.’
‘And this you will say in Peshawar?’
‘Yes — yes, I’ll say it. It’s a lie, but—’
‘Let the lie be on my own conscience, not yours, Colonel Rigby-Smith. He died well. I have your word?’
‘Oh yes, yes.’
‘Keep your word,’ Dornoch said quietly, ‘or by God above, I’ll see that you are relieved of the command of your regiment, Colonel Rigby-Smith!’ He turned to Ogilvie, and put a heavy hand on his shoulder. ‘I think it’s all right now,’ he said. ‘I have a very deep knowledge of the workings of the Divisional Commander’s mind. And...’ he gestured down into the hole with its horrible content. ‘He died on active service, James. On active service for the Raj. I’ll guarantee no questions’ll be asked about that, though it’s possibly more than he deserved. But he’s paid — he’s paid in full.’
If you enjoyed reading The Lion’s Den, you might be interested in Soldier of the Raj by Philip McCutchan, also published by Endeavour Press.
Extract from Soldier of the Raj by Philip McCutchan
CHAPTER ONE
‘James, love....’ It was no more than a murmur from sleep as the woman stirred a little by his side, but it was enough to bring Ogilvie awake. His head throbbed as though a whole legion of native devils was contained in it, and hammering to get out. Distantly from a cantonment parade-ground, a cruel bugle brought the British soldiers to awareness of yet another day of the ferocious Indian sun. The notes bored stridently through Ogilvie’s sick headache. He opened his eyes to see the early morning sunlight beaming through the slats of the shutters across the window of the bedroom; and shut out the sight again as a wave of hideous pain rose from behind his eyeballs.
He groaned. Thank God, promotion didn’t come every day. If last night was what happened when one’s captaincy came through on the wire from Northern Army Command at Murree, then heaven help the man who attained the rank of major whilst on service in the Raj! Yet India did help to sweat out the drink; the morning’s heat would improve matters but if he had taken so much whisky back at the Royal Strathspeys’ depot at Invermore in Scotland, James Ogilvie decided now, he would be on the flat of his back for the rest of the day, and that would presumably mean a Court Martial.
Besides, last night had not been merely his own private celebration. It had happened to be a guest night in the Mess — and one of the guests had been no less a personage than Lieutenant-General Francis Fettleworth, the Divisional Commander. Ogilvie broke out in a fresh wave of sweat as he wondered how much of his condition Bloody Francis had noticed. But then, from what he had himself seen of Bloody Francis, he had formed the impression that the Divisional Commander had also been l
etting his hair down to a pretty considerable extent. Ogilvie’s memory was of a large, bloated face, very red in the cheeks — a wonderful background for the white moustache whose drooping hairs totally concealed the mouth — and of bleary eyes cheek-red in the whites.
Memory, after such a night, was unreliable; and there were blank spots of complete oblivion, periods during which James Ogilvie knew he could have been guilty of the wildest abandon and impropriety. He had had only one such night previously, and that had been nearly three years ago in London, shortly after leaving the Royal Military College at Sandhurst on being newly gazetted to the 114th Highlanders as a subaltern; and, from that one experience, he knew that last night’s inebriate must always await enlightenment from other lips before he could truly count his sins. One placed oneself wholly in another person’s power; had Ogilvie been unkindly told now that last night he had attacked the guard commander with a claymore, or taken Lady Dornoch, his Colonel’s wife, in his arms, he could not have argued the truth of the assertion.
Disliking such placement of himself in another’s hands, Captain James Ogilvie, who had not yet physically adorned his shoulders with his extra stars, resolved, as many a man had done before, never, never to drink so much again...
As consciousness came back more strongly, memory stirred a little more vigorously. There were two things, two special things, that Ogilvie now recalled from last night. One was of himself, with Mary Archdale, hidden from view behind a potted palm in the darkness of the verandah outside the Mess, when two men had emerged and conversed, one of them leaning fatly against the railing, the other standing straight and gaunt and obsequiously attentive, listening to the pipes of the battalion marking ‘lights out’.
One of those men, the semi-reclining one, had been Bloody Francis. The other, Captain Andrew Black, adjutant of the 114th, also having drink taken. Fettleworth had given a hiccough and had said, ‘A wonderful sound — your pipes. Stirring. Warlike. And nostalgic, Captain Black — immensely nostalgic. Hrrrmph.’ He had then blown his nose, hard. Behind the potted palm, Ogilvie recalled, he had stifled a laugh with some difficulty; for, when last they had been in big-scale action under Fettleworth, a year or so ago on the terrible track to Fort Gazai, the Divisional Commander had, so rumour reported, expressed very different sentiments about the Scots’ beloved pipes, and about the Scots as well come to that.
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