They heard someone running outside in the street. Jack went to the window and squinted through the slats, but he couldn’t see anything clearly. More people ran past. More shouting.
‘I’m going to take a look,’ he said. ‘Stay here.’
The children had come back to the bedroom door and now gazed at the wounded man. Jack pushed past them, unbolted the door and slipped outside. He stood beneath the arch. The street was wet and shiny and dotted with puddles. A group of five soldiers ran past, splashing through the rain. Then came a pair of stretcher-bearers carrying a wounded man. Jack called out to them, but they didn’t stop.
He stepped out of the archway and peered through the shower. He could still see the edge of the hospital tarpaulin and the figures moving about underneath.
Three soldiers turned the corner and clattered towards him, talking loudly to each other as they jogged along.
‘Hey,’ Jack called. ‘Why have the guns stopped?’
The three halted. One of the men stared at Jack through the rain. ‘Haven’t you heard? They’ve smashed through the wall at the Bishops Gate. Some kind of black magic.’
Jack paused. The 9th had been positioned at the gate. ‘Any survivors? I mean, from the regiments posted there.’
‘How should we know?’
The men went to move on.
‘Hold on,’ Jack said. ‘You know the Ghost? Have you heard where he is?’
‘In the Tower. They’re making a stand there.’
‘Is that where you’re going?’
The man paused and glanced at the others.
One of the other men snorted. ‘Are you joking?’
They pushed past, splashed down the street and disappeared into the grey haze.
Rainwater ran into Jack’s eyes. The Rajthanans were already in the city. He was running out of time.
Saleem wrenched the doors open. ‘Quick.’
Jack followed Saleem into the bedroom, where the woman was standing beside the bed. Charles’s eyes were closed and he lay still, a slight frown on his forehead, as if he were troubled by a dream.
Jack stared at the woman, a question on his face, but she looked away. He strode over to the bed. Charles had stopped breathing. There was no pulse.
Jack made the sign of the cross. His throat felt hard. There was a trace of pain across his chest and for the first time that day he realised how tired he was. He sat on the side of the bed and rubbed his face. He looked over at Saleem, who just stood there in the half-light, mouth hanging open.
A musket cracked in the distance, the echo rolling up the street.
‘They’re through the wall,’ Jack said. ‘The Rajthanans are coming.’
The woman sniffled, put her fist to her mouth and glanced out at her children, who sat huddled in a corner of the front room.
‘What should we do?’ Saleem asked.
Jack walked through to the front room. He knew where he was going, but he didn’t want Saleem to follow. There’d been enough death.
His musket, along with Saleem’s, lay on a table. The children crouched in a corner and looked at him as if he were a crazed man.
‘Is there anywhere to hide?’ he asked the woman.
‘The cellar.’ She gestured to a rug in a corner.
Jack kicked aside the rug and found a trapdoor underneath. He pulled the door up and looked down into a gloomy, dusty chamber that smelt of old apples.
‘Here.’ The woman fetched a ladder from an adjoining room.
He lowerd the ladder and leant it against the open trapdoor. ‘When the Rajthanans come – you and the children, in here.’
The woman nodded, bit her lip.
‘They won’t harm you.’ He tried to sound reassuring. ‘They’ll be after the men. But all the same, keep out of the way until it’s over.’
As Jack spoke, things began to seem clearer. He knew now what he had to do.
He strode over to the table and picked up his musket. Outside, the sound of shots grew closer. He looked across at Saleem, who stood in the doorway to the bedroom.
‘Get in the cellar.’ He nodded towards the trapdoor.
Saleem frowned. ‘Hide? But we have to fight.’
‘Get in there. Now.’
‘Jack . . . we can’t.’
‘It’s over.’
‘How can you say that?’
Jack lifted his musket and pointed it straight at Saleem. ‘I’m sorry. Get in the cellar.’
The woman gave a muffled cry and rushed over to shield her children.
Saleem’s features drooped like melting wax. He blinked repeatedly. ‘What?’
‘Move it.’
Saleem walked over to the trapdoor and paused before stepping on to the ladder. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘You will. Take that cross off your chest.’
‘No.’
Jack gritted his teeth and looked coldly at Saleem. ‘Do it.’
Carefully, deliberately, Saleem tugged away the emblem sewn on to his chest. He now looked indistinguishable from an ordinary European Army soldier.
‘Right,’ Jack said. ‘Get in the cellar.’
Saleem climbed slowly down the ladder. When Jack went over, he could see Saleem standing on the floor looking up at him. Jack pulled the ladder up, leant it against the wall and then went back to the trapdoor. ‘I’m leaving you here.’
Saleem shot him an accusatory look.
‘It’s for your own good,’ Jack said. ‘The war’s over. Forget about it. Stay here until the coast’s clear. Get out of that uniform as soon as you can. Then get back to your village.’
‘I trusted you, Jack.’
Jack looked away. ‘You fought well. You should be proud of yourself.’ He found it hard to still the shake in his voice, and he couldn’t bring himself to look back down in the cellar. He wasn’t betraying Saleem, he was saving him. But the lad wouldn’t see it that way.
He slammed the trapdoor shut and the sound rolled through the quiet house. He glanced at the woman, who still crouched with her children. She looked terrified of him. He put the musket on his shoulder, but that didn’t seem to calm her.
He took some cartridges out of his ammunition pouch and rested them beside Saleem’s firearm. ‘I’m going now. Lock the door and don’t open it for anyone. When you hear the Rajthanans coming, you all go down in the cellar as well. Take that musket with you.’ He gestured to Saleem’s firearm. ‘The lad down there can use it . . . if it comes to that. Stay down there for a few days. Don’t come out until it’s quiet.’
The woman nodded, moisture building in her eyes.
‘Don’t let the lad out of there. If he tries to leave, make him see it’s pointless fighting on. You understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m helping him.’ Jack didn’t know why he was explaining himself further.
The woman nodded again.
‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘God keep you.’
He left the house and heard the woman draw the bolt across behind him. It was still raining and the light was dim and grey. The street was empty, but he could hear musket fire in the distance. Columns of black smoke rose above the roofs and he thought he could smell sattva.
He had no idea whether Saleem, the woman and her children would survive. If Saleem obeyed him and stayed put, they would have a chance.
But now he had to go. He had to do what he’d travelled all these miles to do.
He put on his blue cap and secured it under his chin. Then he took a deep breath and stepped out into the road.
19
Was he too late? This thought harried Jack as he ran down the empty streets. Was William already dead, missing, buried under rubble, impossible to find?
His boots splashed and the rain battered his face. From time to time he looked up and saw the white turrets at the top of the Tower in the distance. He wasn’t sure of the route and he kept getting lost in the maze of lanes.
His chest tightened and his breath came in icy spikes. I
f only he could run faster. Damn his injury. Damn his bad heart.
A soldier lay abandoned on a stretcher at the side of the road. His abdomen had been wrenched open and he struggled to hold back the bloody mess of his own innards. He shivered and his teeth chattered as he looked up. ‘Help.’
But that wound looked bad, and Jack knew there was nothing he could do to help. He ran on.
‘Hey.’ The soldier shouted. ‘Hey.’ He continued shouting even as Jack turned the corner at the far end of the alley.
Then Jack skidded to a halt.
Rebel soldiers littered the street ahead. Most lay still, the bloodied cobblestones around them splattered by the rain, but some moved slowly, groaning, trying to crawl, grasping at the cobbles, choking, retching blood. One man jerked and flapped like a shot bird.
Jack swallowed and trod carefully between the figures to avoid the outstretched arms and clutching hands. The walls to either side were pocked with bullet holes and streaked with blood.
Leaving the dying soldiers behind, he turned left again and went down a covered alley. As he neared the end of the walkway, he heard the trumpet of an elephant. He stopped and shrank into the shadows. The beast ambled past, its sagging skin dark from the downpour. Troops followed, marching steadily with boots squelching in the sodden muck of the road. They were regular European Army soldiers in blue tunics and cloth caps.
Damn. He was running out of time. And luck.
He slipped back to the other end of the alley and glanced around the corner. The Tower was near now, looming above the houses, surrounded by drifts of rain.
Up the street, more soldiers marched past.
He looked at the St George’s cross on his chest – he had only to remove it in order to blend in with the other soldiers. He paused for a moment, running his finger over the material. Charles had died for this emblem. Thousands of others had too. More still were prepared to fight for it.
What would Elizabeth want him to do? He guessed that if he could talk to her, she would urge him to keep the cross on his chest and fight for England. But he couldn’t do that. He was still a father running through the forest at night trying to find his daughter.
He tore the patch from his tunic and picked away the white threads that remained. He held the patch in his hand, stared at the cross. He was about to throw it away, but then changed his mind and put it in his pocket.
He looked back down the street – no soldiers. He released the catch on his musket and the knife shot out. Then he went forward cautiously. An artillery boom somewhere up ahead made him jump. Footsteps slapped wet cobblestones nearby. He slunk into an alcove and watched as a platoon of European Army soldiers ran across an intersection, accompanied by a Rajthanan officer in a green turban.
There were further rumbles of artillery. The door behind him rattled and dust dribbled from the thatched roof.
He continued up the street. The sound of the guns grew louder. He took a couple of turns, and then the Tower was right before him, floating in a haze of rain and powder smoke.
Guns flared at each other across the empty square where Sir Gawain had given his speech a few days earlier. The Rajthanans had arrayed their light, wheeled artillery across one side of the square, protected only by a low wall of sandbags. The weapons glinted and roared, their bronze bodies hissing and steaming as the rain oiled them. The gunners danced about, sponging, loading, firing, all to the barked orders of Rajthanan commanders. Balls howled through the air. Spent shot littered the square. The outer wall of the Tower rippled with return gunfire, but the ancient stone was weak – in many places the wall was already half smashed and sections continued to burst into dust.
He was too late. The Rajthanans had already surrounded the Tower. Pain stabbed his chest, sharp at first, then settling into a dull, pulsing ache. Elizabeth was slipping away.
Boots tramped behind him. He spun round in time to see a column of soldiers marching straight towards him. There was nowhere to hide, and in any case he was in plain view of the Rajthanan captain leading the troops.
‘You there, fall into line,’ the captain shouted in Arabic, pointing his scimitar at Jack. He was a thin man with a moustache speckled with silver.
‘Yes, sir,’ Jack shouted back instinctively.
He went to move to the rear of the column, planning to slip away as soon as he could. But the captain pointed his scimitar again and growled, ‘Here at the front, you pink bastard.’
The words stung Jack. Why should he let the captain speak to him like that? But there was nothing he could do about it.
The soldiers came to a halt. They were dark-haired with trim moustaches and goatees, and their captain wore the silver turban of an Andalusian regiment. Jack namasted and tentatively took up a position at the head of the column. One of the soldiers whispered something in Andalusian, which Jack couldn’t understand, and he heard snorts of amusement.
‘At the ready, men.’ The captain strained to be heard over the gunfire. ‘We’ll be storming the Tower any minute now. Remember, the King is to be spared at all costs. All loot goes to the Prize Masters. Anyone caught stealing will get fifty lashes.’
Jack watched the Tower wither beneath the onslaught. The outer wall was crumbling into a mound of debris and one by one the rebel guns were falling silent. Was William in there?
His throat tightened, not just because he was thinking of Elizabeth. The Rajthanans were destroying the Tower, the ancient seat of the kings and queens of England, built long ago by his people.
His people.
Jhala had betrayed him. Why had Jack thought there was a bond between them?
The Rajthanans had betrayed him. They’d killed Charles. They were destroying London. They’d forced him to kill Harold.
For a moment the image of Robert Salter flashed in his head, the young soldier tied to a tree, waiting for the bullet. Jack shouldn’t have stood by and let the lad die like that. He should have confronted Captain Roy, should have stopped it.
Why had he blindly followed army rules?
Why had he blindly followed the Rajthanans?
But there was little point in dwelling on this. He had to put these thoughts aside. Only Elizabeth mattered. And right now he had to somehow get into the Tower and then get William out again.
How could he escape from this Andalusian brigade? He glanced around and saw the captain still standing near to him. It would be impossible to slip away.
An elephant gave a shrill cry as it lumbered into view, partially blocking the end of the street. The creature was draped in a quilted caparison and a siddha in a purple tunic sat atop it, protected from the rain by a batman holding a black parasol.
A team of soldiers wheeled over a spherical wicker cage, inside which squirmed hundreds of avatar snakes, their metal bodies squealing as they scraped against each other. The creatures appeared excited, sticking their heads out of the cage and hissing through steel fangs.
‘Release them,’ the siddha barked down from the elephant.
The soldiers opened a door on the side of the cage and the snakes spilt out like entrails from a freshly slit carcass. The creatures slithered around the legs of the elephant, antennae flicking.
The siddha held up his hand and spoke words in a language Jack didn’t understand. The snakes stopped moving and raised their heads, poised and swaying. Then the siddha spoke a single command and pointed towards the Tower. The creatures hissed and shot off across the square. Jack watched as they reached the far side and slipped into the moat. Soon they were oozing up the remains of the outer wall, pelted by rebel musket fire. Then they disappeared into the chaos of dust and smoke about the Tower.
The Rajthanan artillery stopped completely and the sudden quiet was a shock. Battle smoke clogged the square, but was slowly clearing. The few remaining rebel guns still flashed and sent round shot whistling, but there was no return fire from the Rajthanans.
A horn blared, followed by a second, then a third. The cries were eerie, like wolves baying. Ke
ttledrums pulsed. The sound was familiar to Jack and he felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. He was about to go into battle once again, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it.
The captain drew his scimitar, the metal chiming against the scabbard and the blade shining faintly in the dim light.
The rain streamed down at an angle and hit Jack on the side of the face. He slipped his hand into his pocket, took out the bottle of jatamansi, paused, then swallowed the last few drops.
He said a quick Hail Mary under his breath, then silently prayed to God to let him live, let him survive to save his daughter.
An Andalusian sergeant stepped forward and raised a brass horn moulded into the likeness of a conch shell – the curious design represented the ancient horns carried by the warriors of Rajthana. The horn blower gave a single, clear note to sound the attack.
‘Charge!’ the captain roared and ran out into the square.
The soldiers shouted and followed their commander. Jack was forced forward. He ran with the men, reluctant, but unable to avoid it . . . And now he was out in the square, racing ahead with a wave of bellowing soldiers who coursed out of the neighbouring streets. Horns blasted and drums grumbled. Standards swished.
Musket fire crackled across the remains of the Tower’s walls, where many rebels were still standing. Bullets whined and sizzled through the rain. Bones cracked, skulls popped and men fell, shouting in Arabic, French or Andalusian. Rain and blood splattered Jack in the face. He tried to slow his pace – he had no desire to be near the front of the assault – but the soldiers were a solid wall behind him. He realised that as he couldn’t ease himself back, his only hope, in fact, was to press on as quickly as possible, to get in amongst the walls of the Tower. There at least he would be able to find cover, hide, look for William.
His breathing was shallow and uneven as he gasped down acrid smoke.
A man beside him roared, the cry fading to a gargle. He’d been hit in the mouth and a mess of teeth and blood now rolled down his chin. But he still ran on, a crazed smile on his lips and eyes hungry for the fight. Then he fell, as though sucked up by the ground, and Jack was running on without him.
Land of Hope and Glory Page 32
