The troopers reloaded, working their ramrods frantically, while John, Sergeant Jones and the rissaldar, who were prepared for this momentary break in the firing, kept up the killing with their pistols, standing upright and exposed now, as if firing on some barrackground range.
Again a volley of musketballs slammed into the survivors. A dozen men went down thrashing, raising clouds of dust in their death agonies. A man tottered towards the attackers, blinded, his face a ghoulish red mess, feeling his way with his hand like a blind man. John took careful aim and felled him unfeelingly.
Now there were perhaps some dozen left alive on the killing ground, grovelling for the most part, their weapons abandoned, one with his hands clasped about his ears like a frightened child trying to blot out the dead sounds of a nightmare, another clasping the dead body of one of his comrades to him as a kind of primitive shield. It was the black-bearded rogue John had selected for questioning. He lowered his pistol and cried, ‘Save the one with the black beard! Kill the rest. Fire!’
The troopers’ blood was up. That old primeval blood-instinct for slaughter had taken possession of them. Kneeling or standing bolt upright now, they selected their targets, huge grins on their sweating black faces, as if it gave them the greatest of pleasure to kill, and poured a hail of fire into the survivors. Thus it was that they didn’t hear the muffled trot of many horses’ hooves — until it was too late.
Breast to breast, packed tightly in the road, the cavalry swung round the bend, sabres flashing, silver equipment jingling, horses nervous and frisky, already scenting the danger of the skirmish to come.
The rissaldar overcame his surprise first. He dropped his pistol, sprang on to his mount and unsheathed his sword. Digging in his spurs cruelly, he surged forward. Veteran that he was, he didn’t have a chance. At twenty yards’ range the leader of cavalry, who had sprung this deadly trap on those who had felt masters of their own trap, fired. The old rissaldar flew over the neck of his horse, head blown away, dead before he hit the ground.
‘Treachery!’ John cried, raising his own pistol to take aim at that well-remembered face with its great sweeping moustache. There was no mistaking it. It was that of the French beau Sabreur — Nom de Dieu!
The blow on the back of his head caught him by complete surprise. A shock wave surged through his body. He felt sick. For a moment he fought to resist the red fog that threatened to overcome him. To no avail. An instant later he pitched face-forward into the white dust, unconscious.
EIGHT
In the big echoing room, heavy with the odour of perfume and bhang, the women began to dance as John, weighed with chains and flanked by two huge guards, waited in numb bewilderment. There were scores of women, some dancing, some lounging in diaphanous gauze pants — through which could be seen their naked shaven lower bodies — and little brightly coloured waistcoats from which their breasts bulged like melons.
Some were dark — they could have been Nubians — others were almost white, their faces heavily powdered. One with rosy cheeks, who wore only a veil, bracelets and gold sandals and was pouring water into a large brass basin for a Nubian lounging on silken pillows on the floor, was definitely white. Even in his numbed state John could see that. Dully, his head still aching from that fearful blow of two days before, he wondered how she had come to this remote fortress in the mountains.
He swallowed with difficulty; he was parched. Since Nom de Dieu had delivered him and the survivors of Bold’s Horse to this place, he had neither drunk nor eaten.
He licked his cracked lips as the opulent Nubian, all breasts and black belly, began to prepare coffee on the little table which stood next to her pile of cushions. His guards were totally uninterested, however. Neither the opulent charms of the Nubian nor the nearly naked whirling dancers seemed to attract their attention. They stared rigidly to their front, swords balanced over their right shoulders at either side of their prisoner, as if these women flaunting their charms so openly were an everyday occurrence, totally commonplace ...
For Frenchmen, Nom de Dieu and the rest of his hard-riders, now dressed in a strange powder-blue uniform and turbans like those of Bold’s Horse, were strangely uncommunicative. All that the fifty-odd survivors of that surprise charge could learn was that the white captives were safe. They had been removed from their captors when the cholera broke out, apparently too precious to Nom de Dieu’s boss to continued exposure to the dread disease. But their captors had been left behind to bait the trap into which John had fallen.
He sucked his teeth bitterly at the memory. What an overconfident fool he had been! On account of his youthful pride and impetuosity, thirty good men had died.
Though his head had ached miserably once he had recovered consciousness, John had kept his ears pricked for information but had heard only veiled references to the ‘chateau’ ... ‘otages’ ... and ‘la princesse’, the title uttered with a degree of reverence that seemed foreign to these hard-bitten mercenaries ...
Opposite him, one of the near-naked women arched herself on her bed of silken pillows, her thighs slack and inviting. John, feeling a faint stirring of lust, caught a mocking look in the dark eyes contemplating him over the veil. If this were some sultan’s or rajah’s seraglio, why were the three men allowed to see the charms of his women displayed so openly? Surely the harem was always kept hidden from prying male eyes, save those of the master himself?
A bell tinkling gently attracted John’s attention. The girls hastily returned to their cushions, some of them holding hands, or with arms around others’ waists like lovers.
A small dark woman was standing in the shadows to the left of the great room, clad in a flimsy bodice which the big heavy-nippled breasts nudged through, a bell in her heavily bangled hand. She rang it once more and nodded to John’s guards.
He stumbled awkwardly, his gait restricted by the leg irons, pushed along by the guards. The girls on their cushions giggled at his plight, though some were looking at him in pity.
He sensed, too, that the dark woman leading the way felt some pity for him. Once he tripped and one of the guards snapped a curse at him. She retorted in the same language and now the guards supported him down the dark, roughly flagged corridor.
They entered a large chamber, dimly lit by flickering tapers. The woman gave a command and John was dragged to a halt, in the centre.
A soft stifled moan, like someone waking up to discover himself in pain, attracted his attention. He searched the shadows noting that his guide was frowning in disapproval.
Then he saw a woman — a white woman — lying trussed on a low charpoy, hands outstretched behind, legs spread wide apart, revealing her plump naked body in all its totality.
John realized who the woman was, as her tormentor bent over the bed like a spider gloating over the fly it had just trapped in its web — Alice Elders, the captain’s wife. Bending over her, the little man clad in European clothes, complete with beaver hat, cut an oddly feminine figure, his full soft buttocks enclosed in tight buckskins. But there was nothing feminine in what he was doing.
With a riding crop he lifted first the one and then the other of poor Alice’s large breasts, chuckling softly, like some cattle-dealer examining stock. As she strained at her bonds, he touched each nipple lightly with his crop, seemingly pleased when they both grew erect. Alice clenched her teeth and shuddered, closing her eyes as if she wished to blot out the scene.
Suddenly the tormentor ran the crop down the length of her full figure, whispering, ‘A body made for love.’ A whimper escaped Alice’s clenched teeth as the crop lingered over her pelvis and began probing deeper.
‘Goddammit, you filthy black swine!’ John exploded in revulsion, ‘have you no shame!’
He aimed to throw himself forward, but the bigger guard jerked at the chain on his wrists and he came to a sudden stop as the steel cut cruelly into his skin. The guide flashed a look of warning.
But the man had heard. Slowly he turned and doffed the beaver, and lon
g tresses of dark hair tumbled over his shoulders, glistening with palm oil. ‘Ah, Mr Jean-Paul O’Hara,’ the creature said in perfect English, ‘or now I hear you prefer John Bold. Welcome to Burrapore!’
John reeled back a pace, gasping with shock, confronted with the dark smiling face of the woman he had seen through a gap in the Gasthaus curtain in Aachen, totally naked while a girl stroked her body. He knew now who she was — that princess whom Hastings had likened to a ‘blend of whore, tigress and Machiavellian prince’ —the Ranee of Burrapore!
PART FOUR: DEATH AT BURRAPORE
ONE
By the spring of 1816 the situation in Nagpore had reached a crisis. In February Apa Sahib launched an all-out attack on Jenkins’ position on the ridge.
At one point a British battery ceased firing. No one ever found out why, for none of its gunners survived. The Arab attackers stormed the position in their hundreds, yelling in triumph, swinging their scimitars, and put everyone to sword.
They then turned the battery round and began bombarding the British positions, slaying several high-ranking officials and officers, including Sotheby, the Assistant Resident. In a nearby building the white women and children set up a piteous wailing, for undoubtedly they would be slaughtered by the Arabs advancing, confidently under cover of their own cannonade.
At that moment reinforcements, the first to be sent north by Lord Hastings, arrived in the shape of a Captain Fitzgerald with three troops of the Sixth Bengal Cavalry. His troopers numbered less than a hundred, but the gallant Irishman did not hesitate. Leading the charge, Fitzgerald breasted a nullah at the gallop and raced for the guns. The Arabs panicked and threw down their arms in surrender. But Fitzgerald and his sowars showed no mercy. They slaughtered the Arabs to the man, turned the cannon on other Arabs further away and drove them off before retiring to the Residency with the recaptured cannon, to the ecstatic cheering of Jenkins’ infantry.
Emboldened by this surprising success, Jenkins ordered his infantry to charge and as the London Times reported some months later:
*
The sepoys on the Ridge set up a joyous cheer and a party at once attacked the Arabs whom the fugitives should have supported. Totally unable to withstand a bayonet charge made in the European Fashion, they gave way and were driven from their ground. In leading this charge Captain Lloyd and Lieutenant Grant distinguished themselves greatly. Grant was thrice wounded, the last time mortally.
The troops of Apa Sahib now gave way on every side and by noon they had abandoned the Field, and fled in panic, leaving all the remainder of their Artillery with the Conquerors; and so ended a conflict more desperate than any that had taken place in India since the days of Clive.
While Apa Sahib now temporarily withdrew from the fight, sending vakeels to Jenkins to express his regret at what had happened and, as The Times phrased it, ‘with true Indian cunning disavowed that he had authorized the attack’, Lord Hastings poured troops into Berar. The Governor General had decided to deal with the treacherous Rajah of Berar once and for all before he commenced his great war against the Mahrattas. There was still the problem of the Pindarees, but for the time being the clever, calculating Governor General decided to ignore that nagging old sore.
That April General Doveton, commanding the British force which consisted mainly of native troops but did include one of Scotland’s most famous regiments — the Royal Scots, a formation of so ancient a lineage that it was nicknamed throughout the British Army as Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard — launched his attack on Nagpore.
The British force was massively outnumbered, with the Rajah having twenty-one thousand men and seventy guns. Still, Apa Sahib surrendered himself at the sight of the British advancing bravely towards his walled capital, flags unfurled, drums beating the pace. Taking a horse he fled to the British Residency. Still General Doveton suspected treachery, with so many armed Arab mercenaries to his front, and he decided to act against them. As The Times would record:
On the morning of 24th April, while darkness enveloped the city, the marshy plain, the river and its wooded banks, the Signal was given. With loud cheers, the stormers rushed from their trenches towards the breach, into which they made passage. But were immediately assailed by a heavy fire of matchlocks from the strong and lofty adjacent buildings — afire which they were totally unable to return with effect, or to evade by coming to close quarters. Sheltered thus behind walls, windows and terraces, the Arabs, in the grey dawn, marked with fatal aim and entire immunity their destined victims and their fire proved most destructive.
But the Arabs had not reckoned with the gallantry of the Royal Scots, mostly veterans of Wellington’s campaigns in the Peninsula. Time and again they attempted to storm the Arab positions, losing nearly a third of that gallant battalion. In the end the Scots failed, but the Arabs had had enough. They offered to surrender. They were allowed to do so, and, after giving up their arms, left the country. With that all resistance collapsed in Nagpore, and Berar was British.
The news was received with great rejoicing throughout British India in the presidencies of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. Victory bonfires were lit. There were public celebrations and great balls. Everywhere the victorious Battle of Nagpore was heralded as the prelude to Lord Hastings’ defeat of the Mahratta princes.
Collector Lanham in his remote upcountry outpost was not to be outdone by Madras. He ordered a full-scale assembly, inviting not only the Company’s men and their ladies but also those officers of the Regular Army now passing through on their way to join Hastings’ army massing on the frontier with the Mahratta states.
As he told Georgina, clad only in her sheer silk shift (for it was damnably hot again), while he dressed for the victory assembly, ‘Money is pouring into India. Supplies, victuals, gunpowder, cannon, it’s all coming in, bringing with it — money!’ He beamed at her as he fiddled with his cravat. ‘In London the shares of the Company are rising tremendously. Shipbuilding is running mad as well. My dear Georgina, we senior officials stand to make a fortune out of this war.’
Georgina was not impressed. Her face bore the sulky look he knew of old. Her mother’s face had had a similar look often enough when she had the monthly vapours, or her weekly sulk when she had exceeded her allowance and he had refused to give her any more cash.
‘What is it, my dear?’ he asked, gazing at her pouting lips and feeling an unpaternal stirring of his blood. Why did she reveal so much of her body now that she was a full-grown woman? ‘You look sad.’
‘And why not, Papa? This war is a bore, you know. All the young men are going to the battle and the ones who remain behind are so ungallant. Counter-jumpers the lot of them!’
He patted her knee with a ‘now, now, Georgina’, staring at her full breasts nudging through the thin material and removing his gaze only with difficulty. God, it was only the other day that she had pleaded to come and snuggle up in bed with him after poor Mama had died! He swallowed with difficulty and said, ‘tonight I shall introduce you to a really delightful young man — no less than a colonel of British cavalry, my dear.’
‘Some frightful bore,’ she said in a melancholic tone, ‘with a wig and dyed moustache and nothing to talk about except his damned horses!’
‘On the contrary, Georgina. He is no more than six or seven years older than you. He has bought his own regiment to come out here. Why, his papa is a crony of no less than the Prince of Wales himself — and the Duke of York!’
Georgina Lanham yawned, completely unimpressed...
But while the cities of British India rejoiced, Lord Hastings’ forces did not meet up to his initial expectations. Under his command were some 130,000 men, of whom less than a tenth were white. The Mahratta Confederacy could field 130,000 horse and 8,000 foot, plus some 15,000 Pindarees.
Of course his army was a great force, but he had always estimated that the attacker should outnumber the defender by three to one. Besides, he was almost destitute of sappers and miners, battering trains, scaling lad
ders and entrenching tools — things he would need to attack entrenched positions. And even now after some four months of skirmishing in Berar and other places with his erstwhile enemies, he did not really know who might prove friend and who enemy, once he marched.
In particular he was virtually in the dark about the Ranee of Burrapore and her Pindaree allies. ‘If the Pindarees attack my flank once I have crossed the River Jumna and move north up country, gentlemen,’ he announced gravely to his staff, ‘we are in serious difficulties. Let us say, for instance, that our forces are held at the powerful fortress at Gwalior, and we are compelled to carry out a protracted siege, they can easily cut us off from our main bases of supply in the Presidency of Madras. If only that young Lieutenant Bold could have supported me with intelligence about that she-devil up there at Burrapore, I would be a much happier man this day.’
But on that stifling April day Lieutenant John Bold was in no position to supply intelligence to anyone. For he himself was completely in the dark, desperately trying to find out what his own fate would be — and that of his men.
‘And now this,’ Hastings continued, looking grim. He nodded to Major Tomkins, who produced an object and laid it on the table — a gold-embossed leather sabre sheath.
Hastings let them stare at it for a moment before explaining, face grim, ‘A sabretache of the Seventh Chasseurs d’Alsace, a French cavalry regiment which fought with Napoleon.’ He paused significantly. ‘And it was found last week by General Doveton’s men at Nagpore!’
There was a sharp intake of breath from some of his listeners, though Major Rathbone, standing to the rear, continued to puff at his cheroot in bored cynicism.
Bugles at Dawn Page 17
