by Wilbur Smith
‘I think we may be here some time.’
‘Then we’d best make ready for visitors.’
By the time Tom had heard the story of the boat’s departure, Ana and Alf had come to see what the commotion was about. Ana had been sleeping in the Governor’s house; Alf had lain down for a brief nap, and was furious with the defenders who had abandoned their posts.
‘If we were aboard the old Seraph, I’d have the skin off their backs,’ he growled.
‘Leave them be,’ said Tom. Inside, he shared Alf’s anger, but when he looked at the men in the fort he could see that there was no use undermining them further. Their superiors had abandoned them: no wonder they lacked the discipline to keep watch. If they were to defend the fort against the army that was surely coming, he would need to give them every shred of self-belief they could summon.
He had been awake a day and a night; had fought through the hell of the palace and the jungle, only to find Sarah gone. If there had been a boat, even the ship’s jolly boat, he would have taken it in a trice, he was so worried. His body craved rest, warmth and food, while with all his soul he longed to be with Sarah.
Tom forced himself to ignore it and mustered the men in the fortress yard. He could hardly hide his dismay at the tally. Twenty-one Company men, of whom roughly two thirds were above fifty and the rest under fourteen. Add to them the hubladar and the four sepoys who had escaped the Rani’s palace, Alf Wilson and four more men from the Kestrel, and Francis – that made thirty-two men, including himself.
‘How are we equipped for weapons?’
‘We won’t want for powder and shot, sir,’ said Alf, who had made an inventory as soon as he realized their predicament. ‘The Company gave them plenty, for they knew they might go months without supply.’
‘How about muskets?’
‘Not so many, but more than we need. Also a fair number of pikes and swords – Captain Hicks kept his armoury well stocked, rest his soul. And of course, we’re not short of cannon.’
If only we had the men to serve them, Tom thought. He tried not to let his misgivings show as he surveyed the rag-bag army he had inherited. The irony that he had become the unlikely defender of the East India Company was not lost on him.
They looked back at him, and he realized they were waiting. They expected him to speak; they needed him to speak.
What do you say to men who are almost certainly doomed to die, and want reassurance?
He stepped up on a mounting block.
‘I know you did not come here to fight,’ he told them. ‘But our enemies are coming, and so a fight we will give them. We have stout walls, provisions and no shortage of weapons. Most of all, we have ourselves. Rely on each other, defend each other to the death, and we will make the Rani wish she had never dared defy us. Her attack was cowardly and unprovoked. Now, you have the chance to make her pay for her treachery.’
The men gave a ragged cheer – the best he could have hoped for under the circumstances. At least they did not look defeated yet.
Tom divided the men into teams, mixing the young, the old, the sepoys and the able-bodied men from the Kestrel. Alf Wilson commanded one team, Francis another and the hubladar the third.
His greatest concern was water. ‘Fetch every cask, butt and bucket you can find and fill them from the river,’ he ordered Francis. ‘Hunger and thirst have ended more sieges than gunpowder ever did.’ A second group fetched in sacks of rice and salt fish from the stores.
Tom sent the rest of the men to man the defences. They cut loopholes in the gates low and wide enough to accept the mouths of cannon. One of the men had been a carpenter, and he fitted them with lids like gun ports to disguise them from the outside. They rigged tarpaulin awnings over the guns to keep off the rain.
When that was done, he had them strip the palm thatch from the roofs of the Governor’s house and the other storehouses inside the fort. The moment they dried out, they would be tinder waiting to burn.
He went up on the walls and inspected the fort, studying the angles of fire and lines of attack. With the roofs off, the buildings were nothing more than shells; sand had started to blow into them, as if the beach had already begun to reclaim this spit of land that the East India Company had presumed to call its own.
Not for the last time, he cursed the Company for their carelessness – a symptom of their casual arrogance, the sense of entitlement that allowed them to monopolize the trade of an entire subcontinent. The godowns were too close to the fort: they would make perfect gun emplacements for the enemy besiegers. Worse, there was a cottage standing almost in the shadow of the north wall, from where marksmen could cover an assault. He would have to get the men to demolish it.
Movement at the edge of the forest caught his eye. A dozen of the Rani’s cavalrymen rode out from among the trees. They cantered along the beach, kicking spray from the surf, and reined in a little over two hundred yards away from the front of the fort. One pulled out a brass telescope and studied the fort through the lens.
‘Bring me a musket,’ Tom called, and was pleased to see how quickly the boy brought it to him, already loaded. He sighted it on the nearest rider and fired.
He knew they were out of range. He saw the ball kick up a plume of sand as it struck the beach a few paces in front of the men. The horses skittered back; one reared up, nearly throwing its rider. The others retreated.
Tom lowered the musket. He hadn’t expected to hit them, but at least now they knew they wouldn’t take the fort without a fight. He tossed the musket back to the boy who’d brought it.
‘Get that reloaded. We will need it again before long.’
Two of the horsemen galloped off, no doubt to warn the army that must be following them. The others began riding a lazy circle around the fort towards the settlement, careful to keep safely out of musket range.
‘Are all the men inside?’ Tom called.
‘Water party’s still out.’
‘Francis.’ He ran around to the landward side of the walls. Francis and his men were straggling back from the river, bent double under the weight of the casks they carried. Blocked by the godown, they had not seen the Rani’s riders approaching.
Down by the river, Francis tried to maintain a bold face. In the last twenty-four hours he had witnessed more brutality than he could possibly have imagined; he had gone without food or water. But he could feel the men’s eyes on him, craving his leadership. He knew he had done little to deserve it, yet he was determined to prove worthy of their trust. He waded knee deep into the stream with them, fending off the floating logs and branches that the storm had washed down, helping steady the casks against the current, encouraging and cajoling the men. He had made a point of learning all their names, and he noticed how their faces glowed with pride when he used them.
They had taken one load of water back to the fort and were filling a new set of casks when one of the men pointed upstream. A log was floating towards them.
‘What is that?’
Francis stared in horror. It was not a log but a raft, three long planks fixed together in parallel. But they were not bound with ropes. They were joined by a naked human body, nailed across them in a crude representation of a crucifix.
‘It’s Mr Foy,’ cried one of the men, a book-keeper named Ilkley.
Or it had been, before the Rani’s people captured him, thought Francis. Foy’s body bore the marks of the horrific tortures they had inflicted upon him. His mouth gaped open: an empty hole in his face. His executioners had cut out his tongue and nailed it to his chest.
‘I reckon they didn’t like how he talked to them,’ said Ilkley.
The crude raft floated by, almost within arm’s reach. No one tried to take hold of it. The current carried the body on. It rounded a bend, and washed up on a small sandbar near the mouth of the river.
‘We should bury him,’ one of the sepoys said.
Francis forced the horror from his mind. He had to take control of himself. ‘Leave him,’ he
said brusquely. ‘If we have time, we may bury him later. For now, we must secure the living.’
No one challenged his decision. They knew Foy had authored this disaster, and that their hopes for salvation hung by a thread.
‘Are all our casks filled?’ Francis asked, and when his men confirmed this he called them back to the fort.
The men carried the casks slung between poles. Even with two men apiece, the weight was immense. Legs buckled; shoulders ached. They paused often. The two boys followed with smaller casks, rolling them across the sand. They reminded Francis of children he had seen in the village playing hoop and stick.
A musket shot broke the sultry silence that hung over the settlement. One of the men dropped his pole, spilling water from the open bung. Francis looked at the fort, then back at the treeline, but saw nothing.
‘Hurry,’ he told the men. He tried to force the pace, but the weight of the casks made it impossible. The sand dragged on their footsteps, while the poles were slippery with their sweat in the humid air.
He felt a tremor in the ground beneath his feet. He looked up, and saw the gates of the fort opening. Someone was standing atop the gatehouse, waving and shouting. Was it Tom?
Just then six riders swept around the corner of the godown. When they saw Francis and his men they wheeled about, drew their sabres and charged.
The men threw down their barrels, careless of the way the precious cargo spilled across the sand. They turned to flee.
‘Stand fast,’ Francis shouted. He knew that if the men scattered, they would be ridden down like animals. ‘On me.’
Two of the biggest casks had fallen side by side. Francis gathered the men behind them. They had five muskets, but only two were loaded.
‘Give those to me.’ He almost snatched the muskets out of their hands, took one himself and passed the other to the sepoy. There was no time to load the others. ‘Fix bayonets,’ he ordered.
The cavalry bore down on them at terrifying speed. Francis levelled the musket, aimed into the chest of the leading horse and fired. The beast was so close he could see its nostrils flaring; he felt a twinge of sympathy for the dumb animal, but it did not spoil his aim. The ball struck the point of the animal’s shoulder, dead in line with the heart. Its forelegs buckled and it went down, throwing up a cloud of sand. The rider screamed as one of his legs was trapped beneath his mount, and his fibula and tibia bones shattered at the impact. The other riders swerved to avoid him. But one of them was too close behind the leader, could not change course in time. He went down as well.
The remaining four riders reined in their mounts and sawed their heads around until they were facing Francis and his sepoys. At that moment the sepoy standing beside Francis threw up the second loaded musket and fired without dwelling on his aim. His ball struck the Rani’s cavalry subaltern squarely on the bridge of his nose. He threw his arms wide, and slid backwards over his horse’s rump. One foot caught in his stirrup when his horse bolted and dragged him down the beach with his head bumping over the stones that littered his path.
Francis slotted the bayonet over the musket muzzle and twisted it into position. Three of the riders were down, but the remaining three still presented formidable odds. One of them was loading a pistol.
And then, without firing, he tucked it back in his waistband. He said something to his companions and twitched the reins. Then all three of them wheeled their horses away, forded the river and galloped into the jungle.
Only when they had vanished did Francis think to turn around. The fort gates stood open, and a dozen men with muskets were running towards him. Tom was at their head. When he saw Francis and the others safe, he gave a great whoop of joy. He had not dared order his troops to fire, for fear they would hit Francis and his men. He did not trust their aim.
He ran to Francis and hugged him as he would his own son. ‘Thank God you are alive.’
Francis’ face had gone white, as the surge of battle fever left him. Tom felt him shaking in his arms. He held him a moment longer to steady him.
‘You did well,’ he murmured, so the other men wouldn’t hear. ‘Many men with more experience would have broken, fled and died.’
Francis pointed to the casks strewn about them. ‘We lost more than half the water.’
‘It matters little. We can refill them. It is you who are irreplaceable.’
‘Lets hear three cheers for England,’ he called. ‘Three cheers for the red, white and blue. Hip hip—’
The huzzahs died on their lips. Across the river, the cavalry had reappeared – except where there had been three riders before, now there were a hundred, spread out in a long screen trotting out of the forest.
‘Back to the fort,’ Tom cried. ‘Not point in lingering here.’
Abandoning the casks, they ran for the gates. The Rani’s cavalry rode back across the river. However, they pulled up their horses long before coming in range of the fort’s guns. Perhaps if they had known how few men remained, they would have risked it: but for now, they were ignorant.
Tom reached the gate and waited there until the last of the stragglers was inside. Francis stayed with him, urging the men to hurry. When all were in, the Courtneys slipped through. Alf Wilson slammed the gate and barred it.
The enemy’s army spread itself in a loose cordon, sealing off the sandy spit upon which the fortress stood. Some of the soldiers went into the settlement, and emerged with furniture and valuables. The defenders in the fort had to watch, impotently, while their homes were ransacked and looted.
Later in the day, the artillery trains arrived: teams of a dozen bullocks, each hauling one of the guns salvaged from the Kestrel. There were other guns, too, but they were feeble weapons: merely bamboo tubes bound with iron hoops.
‘Those will be more danger to their own gunners than to us,’ Tom said, watching the Rani’s men manoeuvre them into position. He cursed the fate that had allowed his cannon to fall into the enemy’s hands, along with the Neptune sword. ‘If they did not have our guns, we could withstand a siege until the next monsoon.’
‘But they do not have your powder,’ said Ana, standing beside him.
‘They have their own.’
‘Indian gunpowder is not nearly as potent as English. Your guns will have a greater range.’
‘Good heavens, madam, you are a useful woman to have in a tight spot.’ He called for the hubladar.
‘Miss Duarte believes that our guns enjoy a greater range than those of the enemy. Perhaps you could have your crews demonstrate that fact.’
The hubladar saluted and called his men. Tom looked approvingly at the way they sprang to their task, though with more enthusiasm than skill. It took them a full ten minutes to load and train the gun; while his gun crews on the Centaurus or the Kestrel, would have done it in two.
The men stood back, the hubladar put his taper to the touch-hole, and the gun roared and the carriage sprang back against its restraining tackle. Through the smoke, Tom saw the ball fly well past the enemy guns, then skipping over the sand dunes and into a platoon of infantry who were coming up to support the guns, throwing them about like rag dolls and tearing at least one man’s leg from his body. It finally came to rest half-buried in the side of one of the dunes, where it lay steaming and crackling in the heat generated by its own trajectory.
Soon afterwards, Tom was gratified to see the Rani’s troops returning with their bullock teams to haul their ordnance away to a safer distance.
Tom had never endured a siege before – not from the inside. In the cut and thrust of a sea battle, or an ambush, he could act; here, the hours and days of waiting sapped his strength. He became irritable. If Sarah had been there, she would have known how to soothe him. But she was far away, and that only added to his cares.
What sort of man am I? he mused to himself. An army a thousand strong surrounded him, and he lived every minute of every day knowing they intended to murder him. Yet the primary emotion he felt was not fear or anger: it was boredom. Af
ter that first skirmish on the beach, the besiegers did not mount an assault. Each day, they would fire a few desultory shots with their cannon, and the defenders would answer with their own, but none did much damage. The Rani’s men were content to delay their assault. Soon, Tom positively yearned for it. Anything to break the stalemate.
But he did not sit idle. He could see the same lassitude he felt creeping in among his men, and he knew he had to fight it. He put them to work digging cistern pits to catch rainwater, which he lined with timbers from Foy’s dismantled house, and oakum from the stores. With no prospect of an assault by sea, he brought down one of the seaward-facing guns into the courtyard, and drilled the men in servicing it until they could clean, load, bring it to bear and fire in two minutes. He was pleased to see how the teams he had established in those desperate first few hours had taken root. The men ate together, stood watch together, gossiped and laughed together. He raced them against each other on the guns, and delighted in the pride they took in each other’s achievements.
If I had a hundred more like them, I could overrun the Rani’s camp and chase them all the way back to the palace, he thought.
In the first weeks, their greatest trouble was the weather. Storms rolled in from the ocean, day after day, and the open fort offered no protection. The men huddled in the lee of the walls, shivering and soaking; if the Rani’s army had attacked then, they would have carried the fort without a shot being fired. Later, the storms gave way to a gentler, more constant rain that lasted longer than Tom thought possible. When the clouds finally parted, and the sun emerged, he stared at the blue sky like a prisoner getting his first glimpse of freedom.
But it was scant respite. No sooner had they dried their clothes and their powder than they found that the sun was a worse enemy than the rain. Through long hours in the middle of the day, the fort became an oven. Men pressed themselves against the searing stones to find the merest fragment of shade. The cisterns, which previously had overflowed, now dried up.
