Rogue Officer (9 page)

This is the last thing I need, thought the dispirited and disconsolate lieutenant, to be seen walking from the field by that man.

Jack felt beaten. The day, as it turned out, was a victory for the British. The enemy had fled inside the town, and with them its leader, Khan. The battle for Bareilly had been won by Jack’s side, but the victory was a little hollow in that Khan was still at large. Despite their keenness Jack’s men failed in their observations. No one had seen which way the retreating Khan had gone: he had been hidden amongst the thousands of his army who had broken and scattered, and later reformed.

General Campbell moved his own men into empty houses outside the town, telling his officers to be ready for a morning attack.

Lieutenant Jack Crossman washed himself and groomed his horse. He offered it soothing words. His mount had been through almost as much terror as Jack himself and it needed this attention. Jack was not normally one to mollycoddle his steed. Though he would never mistreat an animal, he was not one of those Britons who worshipped horses. Jack preferred machines to living creatures. Horses, he found, sometimes turned right when you asked them to turn left. Machines, on the other hand, almost always did as they were told.

‘Good boy,’ he said, patting the gelding’s neck. ‘That wasn’t your fault today, it was mine. I should have been more attentive. On the other hand, if you see a lunatic fanatic flying through the air at me again, I would urge you to bolt immediately and take the consequences later. Even should you be severely reprimanded for leaving the field of battle, you’ll be much easier in your mind knowing you’ve done the right thing.’

Raktambar on the other hand treated his horse as if it were a god, and would have laid down his own life to save it from harm. He fussed over it, went out of his way to get the best fodder for it, called it Inesh, which he told Jack meant King of Kings, and generally treated it with huge respect and great reverence. He abhorred Jack’s attitude to his own mount.

‘You treat your beloved horse as if it was a
Sudra
,’ said Raktambar to Jack. The Rajput was speaking of the lowest Indian caste bar the
Mlecca
untouchables. ‘It is a serf to you.’

They were in Jack’s quarters in an old camel stable, talking over the day’s fighting. Raktambar had not liked the way Jack had berated his mount immediately after the battle, for treading all over him and his assailant while they had been wrestling on the ground.

‘I certainly don’t treat it like a lord, which is how you treat yours,’ agreed Jack. ‘Beloved it is not. My horse is merely an animal who carries me because I feed and groom him. A virtually mindless beast. Would you have me endow him with human reasoning? Or emotions? Certainly not. A beast is what he is and I respect that fact. I don’t believe in getting emotional over a creature who only obeys me through instinct. I feel the same about pet dogs, which should earn their living, as do hunting and sheep dogs. Inesh earns his keep by being obedient to you on the battlefield and off it, but don’t mistake his obedience for anything else. He is not grateful, he is not affectionate, he has no feelings for anyone but himself.’

‘Inesh loves me,’ protested Raktambar, ‘and I him.’

‘Then you are both fools to my way of thinking.’

‘The horse is a noble creature. You should be ashamed to talk as you do, sahib. It is a high and splendid beast.’

‘It is a slave, much as the dog is a slave, and there’s an end to it.’

They were becoming heated with one another and beginning to say things neither actually believed, just to score one over on the other. They both realized this so let the subject drop for the time being.

Jack picked up his torn tunic, took a needle and thread, and began sewing up one of the many rips and tears it had sustained that day. He broke the silence.

‘How do you think the Sikhs fared today?’

Normally a Rajput might be chary of giving a Sikh any credit in battle, but to give him his due Raktambar was generous to his rival countrymen when it came to fighting, especially when conversing with British officers. It was, understandably, a case of
I am against my cousin, hut my cousin and I are against the stranger.
Jack was still the stranger in this land, and a Sikh was for present purposes cousin to the Rajput.

‘I believe they did well, sahib.’

‘So do I. So do I,’ said Jack, with a little reflection. ‘I wonder what it is that makes Sikhs so good in battle. I mean, Bengalis are brave – especially the rebel sepoys themselves – but the Sikhs seem to have a passion for battle, much like the Pathans.’

This was a little too much for Raktambar. ‘The Rajputs are better than both,’ he said testily.

‘Oh, that’s taken for granted,’ replied Jack airily, knowing that wounded pride never made his companion a good conversationalist. ‘I take that to be a fundamental truth, but I’m with you all the time so I don’t feel I have to mention it. No, no, what I’m after is what’s behind the Sikh who wields the sword.’

Raktambar allowed himself to be mollified.

‘That, sahib, is not easy to answer. The Sikhs though – as you know – had a big big empire under Maharajah Rangit Singh who led the Khalsa, the army of the faithful, into many winning battles. They are fearsome warriors, when led by good generals. Especially the
Akalis.’

Jack had met Sikh
Akalis
, religious warriors who always carried an excessive number of weapons on their person – knives, two or three swords, pistols, and even some razor-sharp throwing quoits which they wore around their pointed turbans when they were not in use. The latter they would throw at the enemy at close quarters, amputating limbs and heads (so it was said) and generally causing a great panic in the ranks of the foe.

‘Yes, but what’s behind the ordinary Sikh soldier, the man who is simply there because he’s told to be?’

Raktambar shrugged.’ You know there are five things which a Rajput fights for? I have told you these.’

‘Yes, ranging from homeland to cattle. Is it the same with Sikhs?’

‘Not the same, but near. They have five things they must keep close to them. They are the five Ks which all Khalsa wear to remind them that they are Sikhs and bound by their faith to their Guru.’

‘And those are?’

‘
Kesh
– the uncut hair.
Kara
– a steel bracelet on their wrist.
Kanga
– a wooden comb . . .’

‘Necessary, of course, because of the long hair,’ replied Jack, rather too flippantly.

‘Please, sahib,’ Raktambar said with a dark look, ‘you must not make fun while I am trying to teach you things.’

‘Sorry,’ said Jack, trying to be contrite. ‘Continue with the lesson.’

‘Next is
Kaccha
, the cotton undergarments.’

‘Cotton underpants, yes,’ said Jack with a straight face. ‘And the final symbolic item?’

‘Kirpan
, the sword, the most important of all.’

‘All right, I’m sorry I was facetious there, Raktambar. One should never make fun of religious symbols and you were right to upbraid me. We British are an unfortunate group of nations, we make fun of all things beyond our understanding to hide the shame of our ignorance. India is so complex and we have a simple love of humour coupled with a natural cheerful disposition. Forgive me?’

‘I think so,’ said Raktambar suspiciously, still worried that Jack was making fun of him, ‘if you are truly ashamed.’

‘Well, look at it from our point of view. As if it is not enough to know there are many many religions in India, all of which are immensely difficult for the foreigner to grasp, within those religions there are – I am reliably informed – some three thousand castes and twenty-five thousand sub-castes. How can I, a newcomer, hope to understand even a little of what is India?’

Raktambar smiled now. ‘Even I,’ he said, ‘do not know everything.’

‘There you are,’ said Jack. ‘Now if you don’t mind I shall try to sleep; I’m exhausted.’

Jack had wisely used the conversation, artificially inspired by him, in order to try to shed some of the terrors of the day. In fact he had been so close to violent death he could not stop shaking under his blanket and when sleep finally came, it was not blessed rest, but a real torture of the mind. His nightmares were excruciatingly horrible, leaving him in pools of cold sweat and the agony of a brain twisted by horrific events. If ever he and Jane managed an ordinary married life after this, his wife would very lucky, for he carried in his mind visions of hell that would never leave him. When he woke fully in the middle of a terribly hot night he felt as if he had been wrung out by the hands of a giant and left knotted and creased to dry.

It was a little while before he realized it was the lightning and thunder which had woken him. The heat was unbearable. His throat was parched and he felt as if it were crammed with dead, dry insects. His head was hammering and his eyes were being attacked by needles of pain. Groggy, he sat up, hearing chaos around him. Crawling to the stable doorway he looked out at a world that was almost as tortured as his brain.

He had seen this before, but not so bad. An incredible heat storm had broken during the dark hours. There were lightning flashes all around, spooking the horses and other animals, and worrying the men. Clouds of dust whirled within a strong hot choking wind. In the shifting restless moonlight, black clouds raced around the sky, butting each other like rutting beasts. The trees thrashed and lashed the air around them, whipping each other’s trunks if they were close. Objects flew across the ground, vanished into it, and then reappeared from wild flailing shrubs and bushes.

‘The world has gone mad,’ muttered Jack. ‘Nature is revolting along with the locals at our presence here.’

But this was fanciful reasoning from an embattled mind. In the early hours of any morning a man with a conscience is attacked by imaginary forces and believes in their power. Jack was as susceptible as anyone to such an onslaught and after getting a drink of water from a canteen, he lay down in the dreadful heat and waited for hell to open and drag him in. It could not be hotter there, he thought. Nowhere could. This was the hottest place on earth or in heaven and hell. This was an oven like no other. Hell would be a cool and blessed relief from this torment of suffocating swelter.

T
hat long hot night seemed to last forever. Jack rose in the early dawn and in trousers and shirt walked from the camel stable down to the nearest stream to wash. The water was not as cool as he hoped it would be and there was a faint pinkness to it. Still he washed, and also drank, having little choice. There was a whole army to water and the only source these little brooks. He felt a little ill afterwards, but whether it was the effect of the tainted water, or simply the thought of bodies fouling it upstream, he was not sure.

He was halfway back to his quarters when he heard distant artillery opening up. The blasts appeared to be coming from the far side of the town. General Campbell’s own guns then sent out a reply. After a while it became apparent that there were two armies sending shells and shot into the clustered houses of Bareilly, one on either side. General Campbell was not alone in his attempts to subdue and capture Khan Bahadur Khan.

Raktambar met him as he approached the stable.

‘Sahib, a rider has just arrived. There is one General Coke on the far side of Bareilly!’

‘Coke? He’s there?’

‘He has come from the other way, with his own column, sahib.’

Two individual friendly forces attacking the same town almost at the same time! That was extraordinary. But what was more extraordinary, and very aggravating – Jack later learned – was that Khan had abandoned the town in the night, taking his army with him. Here were two large British columns and they still let thousands of rebels slip away during the night. Jack found out that General Coke had sent his cavalry after the fleeing rebels, but it was unable to prevent the evacuation. Khan was gone, and most of his men with him. The British had allowed the enemy to get away yet again.

General Campbell had sent a young officer to bring Jack Crossman to his presence.

‘Lieutenant,’ said the cornet who came to collect Jack and hurry him across the rough ground to the general’s quarters, ‘I’m told that the general admits to making a mistake. He’s very frustrated. He said he knows he should have gone after Khan yesterday. The day was hot and he thought to rest the men before making a concerted attack amongst the houses. Street fighting is a difficult and demoralizing business and one needs every ounce of fortitude for such a task, don’t you agree? I don’t blame the general.’

Nor should you, thought Jack, being only a seventeen-year-old boy whose chin had barely met a razor. But he didn’t say so, for the cornet was clearly almost as frustrated as his general and just giving vent to his feelings. It was a most disappointing business. Coke too had obviously not gone in yesterday, or Khan would now be in chains. Whether this young whipper-snapper scurrying by Jack’s side had seen enough street fighting to give this learned opinion was unknown to Jack, but he himself had seen plenty and knew the ugliness and difficulties.

The recapture of Delhi had been a massive exercise in street fighting. The city’s alleys and narrow passageways had been boiling with ferocious soldiers and rebels: packed to the doors and walls with pistoleers and swordsmen all struggling to kill one another. At times the melee had been so crowded that Jack’s arms had been pinned to his side and all he could do was glare into the face of a foe equally stymied. It had been a terrible and bloody business, ending the lives of many good officers and men, among them the famous warrior-clerk John Nicholson.

General Campbell was indeed frustrated. There was a look of mental agony on his face. He knew he had made a wrong decision and allowed his enemy to live and fight another day.

‘Ah, Lieutenant,’ he said. ‘You survived yesterday?’

‘Just about, General. One of those Ghazis . . .’ He stopped, realizing the general did not want a full description of his efforts on behalf of queen and country. ‘Yes, yes, as you see, I survived.’