The Sabre's Edge

by Allan Mallinson

  Sir David, for all his eccentric attire, had by now acquired a wholly commanding bearing. Hervey saw no point in protesting. It threw onto Perry an undue burden of society with Green, but that was the way of it: he was captain and he had other concerns. 'I am very obliged, Sir David. But I had better send for my small kit. I have nothing but . . .'

  'Oh, we shall not dress,' said Sir David, airily. 'Not in this month. I'll have the khansamah bring you a robe.' He looked at him intently. 'And at dinner I shall tell you of where our troubles may lie in the months ahead.'

  Hervey bathed and then lay down on the narrow divan in his otherwise ample quarters. All about was marble, like the palace at Chintalpore, but whereas at the Rajah of Chintal's seat the air was full of intrigue and menace, here it was peace, although in the resident's words there was a promise of action. He began looking forward to his commission once more. Dereliction there might be - in so many ways Dehli reminded him of Rome - but he sensed it could fascinate. In any case, it was good to be away from the Calcutta garrison, a station full of left-behinds while hounds were hard at work elsewhere.

  Hervey closed his eyes. There was not a sound but for a hoopoe and its mate in the garden beyond his shuttered window. They brought to mind Chintalpore again. How long ago it seemed. Was it seven, eight years? He remembered telling the rajah how he wished one day to entertain him in England. Had he really imagined that he might? Or was it that everything was lived so intensely in India? Could he go back there? It would be easy enough - one of the Calcutta coasters down to the Godavari, thence by budgerow as far as he might up that disobliging river, and on to Chintalpore. Godaji Rao Sundur, Rajah of Chintalpore - Hervey was, after all, one of his jagirdars, and his jagir returned a respectable income each year, not all of which was covenanted to the widows of those desperate days' fighting the nizam's guns and the Pindarees. Would the raj kumari be purged of her crimes? Would her father have recalled her from deep in the forest of the Gonds? Or did she scheme and plot still - so reckless a daughter of so sensible a man? Did he really want to see her again? In one respect at least he had no doubt, for even as he lay, her allure had its effect.

  At seven, the sun on the horizon and the heat of the afternoon given way to a balmy dusk, Hervey put on the green robe that the bearer had brought him and joined Sir David Ochterlony in his Mughal courtyard. With the resident was a tall, well-made native man, clean-shaven, with sleek hair drawn back and held with a clip. He wore a loose-fitting kurta, white trousers and embroidered slippers, and he spoke freely and easily.

  'Hervey, this is Jaswant Sing, my master of horse. And this,' said Sir David, turning to the man, 'is Captain Hervey of His Majesty's Sixth Light Dragoons, who, as of this afternoon, is captain of my escort.'

  They both bowed.

  'What are your horses, Captain Hervey?' asked Jaswant Sing, with a warm aspect.

  'Marwaris, for the most part.'

  Jaswant Sing inclined his head in a way that signified approval. 'And you yourself ride the Marwari?'

  'I have a charger brought with me from England, but my second is a Marwari, though she is not with me for the present, having been sick.'

  'And the Marwari pleases you, Captain Hervey?'

  'Oh yes. Yes indeed. I have never seen a better doer' (Hervey checked himself), 'that is, I have never seen a horse that subsisted on so little, and is yet so handy and obliging.' It was too early to volunteer information about the Marwari's endurance in his jungle raid, however.

  'The Marwari is from Rajpootana, Captain Hervey, which is my home. If your duties are allowing, I should be very pleased to show you the breeding horses there.'

  'If my duties were to allow it, Jaswant Sing-sahib, I should like that very much.' He would leave it at that, for he did not imagine Sir David would be inclined to spare him too soon, if at all.

  Sir David was attentive, however. 'One of Rajpootana's neighbours gives me considerable cause for worry, Hervey. I am frankly fearful of a struggle over the succession in Bhurtpore.'

  Hervey was surprised by such frankness in their present company.

  'You will not know of it, I dare say?'

  'I know but a very little, Sir David.'

  'Nothing much troubles Fort William but the war with Ava, I suppose. Well, the Rajah of Bhurtpore, Baldeo Sing, has long honoured the treaty of friendship with the Company. He is now becoming frail, and his son Balwant is but a boy, and the rajah is fearful that his nephew Durjan Sal has designs on the succession. The old rajah asked that I invest the boy with a khelat - a sort of honorary dress - as a sign of our recognition of his rightful claim, and this I did in the early part of the year.'

  Sir David beckoned his khansamah and told him that he wished to eat at once.

  Hervey decided he would not wait on Sir David's pace. 'And I presume therefore, sir, that you have intelligence that this action has not entirely dissuaded Durjan Sal from his designs?'

  'Just so, Hervey,' replied the resident, in an approving tone. 'And everything that we know of him says he is without scruple.'

  'Jhauts,' said Jaswant Sing, shaking his head. 'They are stubborn beggars.'

  Sir David nodded. 'But when they're not being stubborn, Hervey, they're the most courageous men. In our service they would make fine sipahis. I had a mind to visit the rajah now that the cooler season will soon be upon us, for I was not able to invest the khelat in person. I judged it appropriate to go with an escort of King's cavalry rather than native, for Durjan Sal would no doubt believe it possible to buy off any native troops, and it would be well to remind him that not all of the Company's forces are engaged with the King of Ava.'

  'You mean as a portent, Sir David? I have but fifty dragoons.'

  'Yes, just so. Now, let us eat.'

  Two weeks passed, during which Hervey saw little of Sir David but much of Jaswant Sing. The resident was sick for several days - he ascribed it to the change of season - and then when he was recovered enough to attend to his papers, was much occupied with the estimates which were overdue for submission to Calcutta. So Hervey found time aplenty to learn the Rajpoot way of horsemanship, and his neglect of the troop - or rather his delegation of day-to-day command to his lieutenant - he was able to justify by these equestrian studies.

  'That 'orse got ginger up its backside, sir?' called Private Johnson, standing at the edge of the maidan one morning.

  Hervey sat astride a Marwari stallion which was pirouetting and leaping as if being backed for the first time. He managed to collect it, after a fashion, and walked him over to his groom. 'I'll have you know that this animal is trained for war, Johnson. For combat with war elephants indeed!' 'Oh ay, sir?'

  'Yes. And very handy he is too, for all the fire you saw in him.' Hervey made to stretch his shoulder, to relieve the ache that had been growing since he took the reins, but he stopped short. He would give no sign, even to Johnson, that he could feel the musket ball's force still.

  'And 'ow's 'e fight an elephant then, sir? 'E'd not stand as 'igh as its ear.'

  'He doesn't do the fighting; the rider does. He gets the horse to leap up and takes the mahout in the flank with his lance. Then he can deal with the howdah.'

  Johnson looked sceptical.

  'I'll show you what he can do.' Hervey gathered up the reins again, though nothing like as taut as he would normally for proper collection.

  Indeed, the reins themselves were unusual. They were stitched double towards the end, and Hervey held this doubled length, close to its fork, in his bridle hand and almost to his chest. It showed a long and graceful length such that his childhood riding master would have admired. But that old rittmeister would also have been intrigued, for Hervey was not wearing spurs, nor was he carrying a whip. Johnson could scarcely believe it either.

  'The weight of the reins collects him onto the bit,' explained Hervey. 'I don't know how or why, for I've never heard of an animal trained so. In truth, I'd not have been inclined to believe it.'

  After circling two or three
times at a canter, he put the stallion into a pirouette, then into a reversed pirouette, then into what he knew as 'voltes on a small compass', stopping on the hocks and turning on them, and from that he had the horse jump into the gallop. Finally, and still at the gallop, he made the animal move obliquely, as Peto would have made headway with a weather helm.

  Johnson stood silent but impressed. These were 'tricks' of self-evident utility in the field. It was not difficult to imagine the lance held across the body or out wide, the horse passaging left or right to take the enemy in the flank.

  But Hervey had not finished. There were what his old rittmeister called the airs above ground. Jaswant Sing had shown him how to perform them, though in truth, as well Hervey knew, all he had done was show him how to sit a horse that knew its airs.

  First a levade, the horse rising on its hind legs, hocks almost on the ground. Then forward from the levade a courbette, with three distinct leaps -or was it four? And finally the capriole, the stallion leaping into the air and kicking out long with its hind legs. Jaswant Sing had called it udaang - flying.

  'You see?' called Hervey, panting almost as much as the horse as he walked him over to where Johnson stood - and rubbing his shoulder now, and more confidently, for he knew that to work like that meant he was all but whole again. 'You see how useful that could be!'

  There was no doubting it. 'That were a vicious kick all right,' said his groom, shaking his head. 'I've never seen owt like it.'

  'You see now how useful for elephant-fighting?'

  'Oh ay, sir. Yon 'orse looked as if it would've scrambled up its 'ead.'

  'That was the idea,' said Hervey, slipping from the saddle and loosening the girth. 'But all that's over with - elephants and the like. Just a pretty display now. Think how you might turn heads with it in England though, eh?'

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  TOWERS OF SILENCE

  Bhurtpore, a month later

  H

  ervey sat on the crumbling wall of an old well, in a large straw hat and very unmilitary clothes, sketching. 'Sir David Ochterlony makes but one stipulation,' he had written to Emma's husband, before leaving Dehli:

  He would have me do more than merely gawp at the walls of Bhurtpore; he would have me bring back a thorough knowledge of all its defences. And all this, of course, I am to accomplish without for a moment giving cause for anyone to know what I do in that city. To what end this spying may be directed I can little imagine, except that Sir David speaks darkly of the need, perhaps, of such information in years soon to come. At first I imagined him to mean that he himself, Sir David Ochterlony, might have to do what Lord Lake had been unable to accomplish. But although I believe Sir David to be game for the hardiest adventure still, I am certain he understands the circumstances would be no more favourable now than they were for Lord Lake. I have read much of his lordship's siege, and I cannot imagine that success could be accomplished with fewer men and guns, and Sir David does not have one half of Lord Lake's force at his own disposal. I believe, therefore, that Sir David would put before the Council in Calcutta a proposal for the stronger reinforcement of his command were it ever to come to a fight, and that meanwhile he is taking all prudent steps to acquire intelligence of any nature. He does not confirm me in this opinion when I ask him, but he does not oppose it either . . .

  Hervey was not by any reckoning an artist, but he had been taught to draw, and his practice in field sketching in the Peninsula had made him proficient in the reproduction of landscape with correct proportion and perspective. For several days he had wandered about the city drawing anything he could see which was of no military significance in order to establish his credentials as a travelling antiquarian. No one had shown the slightest interest in him, but he had wanted an alibi - a portfolio of architectural drawings that would serve as evidence of his innocent intent when he began work on the defences.

  One sketch he had been especially minded to hide, however. Its subject appalled him - sickened him indeed. He had scarcely been able to keep down his gorge as he drew. And it took him longer to complete than some of the more elaborate works of decorative detail, for he had wanted as faithful an impression as possible; one that might have the same effect on a viewer that the archetype had on him. It had been a repetitive work, a business of drawing skull after skull. He had tried to estimate how many there were: the column was as tall as Trajan's in Rome, and his guide had said it was neither hollow nor filled with sand. Here was no bas-relief of bones, but a solid pillar of Lord Lake's dead. No Christian burial or cremation according to native rites for these men - King's and sepoys alike. The gamekeepers at Longleat would string up their trophies to discourage predators and to impress by their zeal. The Futtah Bourge, the 'bastion of victory', was but the same. How loathsome it stood by comparison with that eloquent commemoration of Trajan's victory, an affront to every decent instinct of a Christian-raised man, and a gesture of contempt for the customs of war. Peaceful Hindoostan might be, but a sight such as this said that peace was an unnatural thing. Hervey considered it well that he concealed his sketch, and thought it best that he hide it from view of his fellows too.

  This next stage of his work occupied him a full week. 'The fortress of Bhurtpore is without doubt the largest I have ever seen,' he wrote to Eyre Somervile towards the end of October:

  It stands on a plain broken and rugged towards the west but otherwise bare, affording little cover, and I calculate the perimeter to be not very much short of five miles. Any siege force would have to be great indeed to invest the entire fortress. I have now been able to make a very faithful comparison of Lord Lake's dispositions, and it is at once apparent that his insufficiency in men was greater than I had supposed when reading the usual texts, for with the Maratha cavalry harassing him he was obliged to hold ready reserves to deal with them, and he had not thereby the means either to starve out the garrison in the old way or breach the walls in enough places and in sufficient strength to bolt the defenders.

  A broad and deep ditch runs the entire length of the perimeter, from the inner edge of which rises a thick and lofty wall of sun-baked clay and stone, flanked by no fewer than thirty-five turreted bastions. I have been able to draw in plan the location of each, though for reasons of economy in time, and so as not to appear excessively interested should I have been accosted, I was minded to draw elevations of only those I judged would command the likely approaches. The citadel itself occupies a natural height, rising above all else in the city, and is itself enclosed by a ditch 1’0 feet wide and fifty feet deep. And, as if Vauban himself had directed the fortification, there are ravelins and lunettes, fleches and demi-lunes the entire length of the walls.

  And how blessed are the people of Bhurtpore, too, since the moats and ditches are dry, so they are not plagued by the mosquitoes that thrive on still water, and they may drive their animals wherever they wish. I have learned that water when it is needed to fill the moats comes from a jheel to the north-west of the fortress, a very practical and happy arrangement. This water and these walls would pose the best engineer a test of his science. And when the water and the walls are covered by the guns of thirty-five bastions and countless other outworks, the infantry might very well become so many companies of forlorn hopes unless directed by a general of exceptional address. In the skill of the siege artillery and the field gunners reposes their fate. No fortress is impregnable, we must understand, but it is my decided opinion that if ever a fortress came close to such a condition it is Bhurtpore . . .

  And then he had confided in his friend the unhappier detail of his detached duty - unusually, for it touched only on the business of the Sixth:

  I am resolved to have Green out. He daily becomes more awkward in his dealings with everyone. In truth I can scarcely bear to speak to him. Every blemish in both his character and appearance seemed magnified in Dehli, there being no multitude of other officers to draw away attention. I have therefore written to Joynson and advised him that he speak severely with him about t
he advisability of his remaining in the regiment, for I have concluded that he could never make an officer, and if ever it comes to a fight the outcome would be very ill indeed - for himself, principally, for there could be little enough damage he might do to any of the dragoons, such is his subsidiary role. Yet were he ever to encounter a half decent swordsman the result must be disaster.

  But, on the other hand, I am pleased to say that Perry is a fine lieutenant, on whose account I need have had no fears, and I shall take leave hence, before returning to Dehli, to see the great white mausoleum at Agra, about which you always spoke so much . . .

  These letters he then took with him to Agra, where there were trusted hircarrahs to carry despatches down the Jumna and thence to Calcutta, and from where he himself could take a boat back to Dehli with greater ease. He had indeed grown fond of his licence. The days were still warm, and at night it was good to sit before a fire reading or in contemplation. He lacked the company of English-speakers, Jaswant Sing having now returned to Dehli, but this gave him opportunity to practise his Urdu with a certain confidence, and in any case he had never been fretful in his own company - except at the very end of his stay in Bhurtpore, but the fever had not developed its full power, and he was abed for no longer than a day.