Shadow of the Moon (57 page)

Alex did not answer. He was staring down at the small scrap of greased paper that Niaz had spat out upon the ground, and there was an odd, still look on his face. He drew another cartridge from his pocket and stood looking at it, turning it over in his hand and rubbing the ball of his thumb slowly across the greased paper wrapping, until at last Winter said: ‘What is it?'

‘Hmm?' He turned towards her, but his eyes were blank and unfocused and they looked past her as though she was not there.

Yusaf said: ‘Huzoor, may I too try the gun?'

Alex's eyes narrowed suddenly. The abstraction left them and his hand clenched hard over the cartridge that he held. ‘Assuredly.' He turned slowly and held out the cartridge, and Winter, watching him as she always watched him when he was not looking at her, was all at once aware that behind that casual gesture his nerves were tense and alert as if he were waiting for something to happen; for some expected - or unexpected? - reaction. She was so sure of it that she turned quickly to look at Yusaf, half-expecting to see him recoil from Alex's outstretched hand; but he took the cartridge without hesitation, and biting off the end of it as Alex and Niaz had done, rammed it home.

Yusaf did not lie down to fire in the manner of a sepoy. He handled the musket as a tribesman, and the ball struck the top of the ant-hill and disintegrated it. ‘
Shabash
!' applauded Niaz.

Alex handed him a second cartridge without ever taking that quiet, intent
gaze from him, and a curious spark leapt to life in his eyes as Yusaf, having bitten off the top of the second cartridge, rubbed his mouth swiftly with the back of his hand.

Yusaf fired again, and missed. ‘That is bad shooting,' said Niaz. ‘Thou shouldst come and fire on the range. The second shot should be better than the first.'

‘In my country,' said Yusaf, ‘it is the first shot that counts. If a man fail with his first, he may not live to fire a second. Come over the Border on thy next leave, Niaz Mohammed, and we will show thee!' He handed the rifle to Niaz and once more drew the back of his hand across his mouth.

Alex saw the gesture, and he turned away and stood looking out across the plain with his hands in his pockets, and after a moment or two Winter heard him say something under his breath that sounded like ‘… and furnish the pretence'.

‘What is it?' she asked, as she had asked five minutes earlier, troubled by something in his manner that she could not understand.

Alex looked round at her with a faint frown as though he had forgotten that she was there. ‘What is what?'

‘You said something about furnishing a pretence.'

‘Did I? I must have been thinking aloud.'

‘What about?' inquired Winter, unaccountably disturbed.

Alex gave a short laugh. ‘I was thinking of some lines of Dryden's. “
When churls rebel against their native prince, I arm their hands and furnish the pretence, and housing in the lion's hateful sign, bought senates and deserting troops are mine
.” It seemed remarkably appropriate.'

He turned on his heel, and although it was still early they rode no further that day, but turned back to the cantonments - Alex riding with a speed and recklessness that he had never shown before when he had been out with Winter, and as though he had once again forgotten that she was there.

An hour later he had been ushered into Colonel Gardener-Smith's office where he had been forced to wait for some considerable time.

‘Good morning, Captain Randall,' said the Colonel making a belated appearance and eyeing Alex with some uneasiness. ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting. Awkward time of the day for me—'

He wondered what Randall had come about this time, and hoped that it was no more alarmist nonsense about an armed rising planned for the coming hot weather. Efficient young man, very. Colonel Gardener-Smith had a profound respect for Captain Randall's knowledge and ability. But all these outstanding young men who were pets of the political - ‘Lawrence's Young Men' - had bees in their bonnets. Randall's was the fear of mutiny; not a localized affair, but something on a far larger scale that would involve the whole of the Bengal Army and not merely one, or at the most two, regiments.

Such an idea was of course complete nonsense. Not that Colonel Gardener-Smith imagined that India had seen the last of mutinies and rebellions. That
was perhaps too much to hope for. Now and again one was likely to hear of some dissatisfied and mismanaged regiment causing trouble, but as for the entire Army, nonsense! It would need something more than local grievances to do that - a common denominator that would set off a panic among all sepoys everywhere. But misuses and abuses of authority were always localized affairs, and could not disturb the Army as a whole. His own Regiment, for instance, was loyal to the core, and he had recently written a letter to the
Calcutta Times
expressing his indignation on the subject of those men who had so little respect for the known character and fidelity of the British-led sepoy as to attempt to blacken him in the public prints by suggesting that he was ready to turn against his masters. No such thing! The Colonel was almost tempted to agree with Colonel Moulson (a man whom he could not bring himself to like) that men who expressed such views must be considered to be losing their nerve and should resign from the service of the Company.

Not that Randall appeared to be deficient in either physical or moral courage, but that last interview, at which both Colonel Packer of the 105th N.I. and Colonel Moulson of the 2nd Regiment of Lunjore Irregulars had been present, had been distinctly trying. One could not help thinking that Captain Randall was, at the very least, guilty of exaggeration. And at the worst must be suffering from overstrain or sunstroke. He had put his case with a convincing lack of heat, and had kept his temper remarkably well in the face of what the Colonel could not help thinking was unnecessarily insulting behaviour on the part of Moulson; but all the same …

Colonel Gardener-Smith frowned and said with more hostility than he had intended: ‘Well, what is it now?'

Alex had been standing by the window when he entered, looking out over the sun-baked parade-ground and turning something over and over in his hand. He had replied briefly to the Colonel's greeting and now he walked over to the table and tossed the object down upon it and said without preamble: ‘That is one of the cartridges for the new Enfield, sir. Can you tell me what they are greased with?'

The Colonel stared, considerably taken aback both by the question and the tone in which it was uttered. He picked the thing up, examined it and dropped it, and marked his displeasure by seating himself behind his desk and keeping Alex standing. Randall might occupy a reasonably senior civilian post in Lunjore, but in the presence of a commanding officer he was a mere brevet captain and must remember to conduct himself as such.

He said coldly: ‘I have no idea. And I hardly think that the composition of cartridge-grease lies within your province.'

Alex said: ‘Perhaps not, sir, but it must be within yours. Those cartridge-papers have to be bitten, and if there is any doubt as to the composition of the grease, it is a thing that will affect the caste of every sepoy in the Army. A grievance that will unite men of every regiment - a common denominator.'

The mention of a term that had so recently passed through his own mind checked the Colonel's rising anger, and he cast a startled glance at the innocent-seeming object that Alex had thrown down on his desk. He looked at it for a minute or two in silence and then looked up again at Alex's expressionless face and thought fleetingly that Randall appeared to have aged a lot recently. He said slowly: ‘You mean, if it were animal fat—?'

‘If it should contain any lard or animal fat,' said Alex harshly, ‘no sepoy should be asked to touch it, let alone bite it. The pig is an unclean animal to a Mussulman and the cow a sacred animal to the Hindu, while the fat of any dead creature is an abomination to both. But no one knows that better than you, sir.'

Colonel Gardener-Smith's worried gaze returned to the cartridge and he frowned at it, pulling at his lip. He said uneasily, but without conviction: ‘That is a point that cannot have escaped the attention of the responsible authorities.'

‘Why not? The method and manufacture of these things was worked out in England, not India, and the men responsible for it are not likely to possess any special knowledge of the caste system that prevails here.'

‘I do not believe …' began the Colonel unhappily; and then once more a sense of irritation and frustration came over him. Of
course
there was always the danger of trouble breaking out in a conquered country! And despite the fact that he, like most other regimental soldiers of the old school, took little interest in affairs outside his immediate command, he too had lately been aware of a changing atmosphere and a lack of that sympathy and close co-operation between officers and men that had obtained in earlier and more troublous days. He could feel it in the air and sense it in the very faces and voices of his men, and he did not like it. But it was the New Order, that was all. New methods. New men. A new outlook. The lack of large-scale wars and operations to keep the troops occupied, and an inevitable slackening of discipline. Not what it had been in his young days. But the Bengal Army was still the finest fighting machine in the world. He was sure of that. This new feeling of restlessness in the ranks meant nothing; it would pass, and if only men like Randall would stop croaking of disaster life would be a much pleasanter affair.
His
men were all right. They were his own men and he could handle them; they would follow him anywhere - hadn't he proved that? He wished Randall would leave well alone and stop this continual harrying … Bees in the bonnet.
Buzz-buzz-buzz
…

He banged the table suddenly with his clenched fist and said violently: ‘What do you expect me to do about it, anyway? It's none of my business - or yours! I'm not Master General of the Ordnance! These things will shortly be issued to every regiment in India.'

‘I know,' said Alex tiredly. He reached out a hand and picked up the cartridge, and his face was suddenly blank: ‘But at least it can do no harm to ask for the official analysis of this stuff, and in the meantime it might be
possible to manufacture our own wrapping papers here in Lunjore, so that the men can see for themselves what is used.'

‘That would be impossible,' said Colonel Gardener-Smith shortly.

‘Nothing is impossible now,' said Alex slowly. ‘Not even a mutiny of the Bengal Army.'

Colonel Gardener-Smith stood up abruptly and pushed his chair back with unnecessary violence. ‘That is a point upon which we are unlikely to agree. If that is all you wished to see me about, I must ask you to excuse me, as I have a great many calls upon my time. I will bear in mind what you have said, and write at once to inquire into the composition of the lubrication which is being used. But you may be quite confident - as I am - that your fears will be proved groundless.'

‘Thank you, sir,' said Alex in a colourless voice, and went out into the bright blaze of the mid-morning sunlight.

He rode less with Winter after that and he did not again take out the Enfield rifle.

Winter missed those early morning rides in his company, and did not know that the reason for their curtailment was the fact that it is difficult to arrive home in the early hours of the morning and still wake in time to ride before sunrise.

Alex spent a great many of his nights in unexpected places; listening, watching, and occasionally - very occasionally - asking questions. It was an easier matter by night to pass unnoticed in the crowded bazaars and alleyways of the city, and he had sources of information there whose usefulness would have been severely curtailed had they been observed coming to his house. It was better that he should meet them outside the cantonments and in some other guise, and he had managed in this way to acquire a considerable quantity of curious information.

Niaz too spent much of his time similarly occupied, but he did not frequent the city. Niaz had friends among the sepoys and was often to be found visiting the lines. Much of his information tallied with Alex's, and none of it was in any way reassuring.

‘It is said,' reported Niaz, chewing a grass-stem while Alex, lying full length in a small patch of dusty casuarina scrub, sighted carefully along the barrel of a heavy Westley Richards rifle, ‘that it is the purpose of the Government to convert all men, by force or fraud, to be Christians. This a jemadar of Colonel Gardener-Smith Sahib's
Pulton
himself told me. But they say that as the
feringhis
are few, to force their faith upon all in Hind would be difficult; therefore they will accomplish it by fraud.'

‘With what purpose?' asked Alex, screwing up his eyes against the low sunlight that glowed on the river.

‘So that they may use the sepoys to conquer all the world for them. When the sepoys go on ships, and to far countries, they become sick and do not
fight so well; but it is not so with the sahib-
log
, and this, it is said, is because of the food that the sahibs eat. Therefore, if the Army were all of one caste - Christians - they too would eat the same food and be as strong, and as slaves of the sahib-
log
would fight their battles in a hundred countries. There is even now a tale that to this end the Company have ground up the bones of pigs and cattle and mixed that dust with the flour and with the grain, so that all who eat of it will thereby lose their caste. And being casteless will have to become Christians, and - hast thou heard this then?'

Alex nodded. ‘I have heard. Do they in the lines believe it?'

‘Many believe, for they say that as the
feringhis
won many cities and provinces - and Oudh also - by fraud, why should they not do this? It is also well known that children purchased during years of famine have been placed in Christian schools. What do they say in the city?'