The Cannons of Lucknow (31 page)

Alex took leave of his two companions and was about to go in search of Lousada Barrow and the Volunteers when James Neill called out to him to wait.

“You are familiar with this part of Lucknow, are you not, Sheridan?” he asked.

“Yes, sir, reasonably so,” Alex replied readily. “Is there any way that I can serve you?”

“You can ride with me,” Neill said. “And assist me to find a way in for the guns when they rejoin the column. Two companies of my Blue Caps have been relegated to the rear to cover them. Tell me … what lies at the end of this passage we're in?”

“A courtyard, sir, surrounded by houses, with an archway that leads out into the Khas Bazaar. I imagine that Moorsom will direct the guns right-handed through the Paen Bagh and bring them up by the road from the Furhut Baksh and the Terhee Kothee Palace …” Alex described the terrain and Neill nodded.

“Then Olpherts had better post one of his guns in front of the archway.” He snapped an order to one of his staff and went on thoughtfully, “Young Havelock's badly wounded, I'm afraid. This morning at the Char Bagh bridge, when he took it upon himself to lead my Blue Caps against the battery on the other side of the canal, I told him—none too kindly—that the Blue Caps had their own officers, who were more than capable of leading them. And I meant it, damn the boy! 1 wasn't going to have a repetition of that business with the Sixty-Fourth outside Cawnpore. But the young devil chose to ignore my order and he went with them in spite of it. He and Tytler, who's old enough to know better, devil take him! “

“Harry did pretty well, by all accounts, sir,” Alex said.

James Neill smiled, with unexpected warmth. “Yes, damn his eyes, he did! I hope he survives to get the Cross which the Old Gentleman wants for him so much. He earned it on the Char Bagh bridge, Sheridan, I'm bound to admit. He and Fraser Tytler too … though I still don't hold with staff officers superseding regimental officers in the heat of battle.” His smile widened and he laid a hand on Alex's knee. “You don't press your claims, do you? A brevet-lieutenant-colonel and you've served under Barrow all this time, without a word of complaint.”

“I've had no reason to complain, sir,” Alex returned, a trifle stiffly. “As you reminded me—my command is there.” He gestured ahead of them, in the direction of the Residency. “I shall be satisfied if I live to resume it.”

“I respect you for that,” Neill told him, still smiling. “So ride to the Residency with me, at the head of my Blue Caps, will you? I shall be honoured by your company, Colonel Sheridan.”

Alex's throat was suddenly tight. “And I by yours, General Neill,” he responded huskily. “And I very greatly by yours.”

The long day was nearing its close and the light beginning to fade when the order came to advance. The reformed column was led by Generals Outram and Havelock and, with the 78th Highlanders and the Sikhs of the Ferozepore Regiment at its head, started to move towards the shadowed courtyard of the Chutter Munzil Palace, sheltered briefly by the surrounding walls.

Emerging from the courtyard into the glow of the setting sun, the Highlanders entered an inferno of cannon and musketry fire. The narrow street was studded with all manner of obstacles —deep trenches, intended to impede the passage of the guns, palisades lined with musketeers, wooden barricades—and every house was a fortress. From rooftops, doors and loopholed walls poured a tempest of shot and from each trench and cross-street well-sited guns unleashed a deadly rain of grape and canister and round-shot, scything down the ranks of the advancing Highlanders.

But they came on, a single piper playing them home, the Sikhs and the Blue Caps—their comrades throughout the long campaign—close on their heels, the 64th and the 84th preparing to follow them, the 5th Fusiliers acting as rearguard. The leading regiments could not reply to the fire of their enemies, could not wait even to succour or pick up their wounded—their orders were to advance to the Residency and not to halt until the gate was reached and they obeyed these orders to the letter. At times, so narrow was the street and so close the barricaded houses that the rebels' muskets were being discharged at pointblank range, and stones and roof tiles were hurled viciously down on them, as sepoy mutineers spat into their faces, shrieking abuse at them above the tumult of battle

Havelock and Outram, exposed at the column's head, sat their horses with inspiring calm. Colonel Tytler was the first of the mounted staff officers to go down but young Charles Havelock, riding behind him, with Napier and Hargood, was off his horse in an instant. With Hargood's help the bleeding, barely conscious Tytler was lifted back into his saddle and the three continued on their way, the A.D.C.s on foot, with their arms round him, holding him upright.

Alex, at Neill's side, with Major Stephenson and Lieutenant Grant, rode through the worst of the fire unscathed, though men were falling all around them. The Bailey Guard gate was in sight now. Dimly, through the pall of smoke which filled the Khas Bazaar, they glimpsed the dull red stone bastion, its heavy, ironbound door riddled with round shot. Above it, on the ramparts, figures were dancing and leaping in an excess of joy and voices hoarsely cheered them on. The door, barricaded since the start of the siege, could not at first be opened. Outram—who had dashed heroically after the leading company of the 78th, which had overshot their objective—joined Havelock, moments later, his mission successfully accomplished, and the two generals were assisted into the Residency, having to scramble over a low mud wall and the embrasure of a 9-pounder gun guarding the entrance. Then the earthen barricade was cleared, the great door creaked open and they were at the centre of a milling throng of cheering, exultant defenders who sallied forth, rifles at the ready, to bid them welcome. In the momentary confusion, three loyal sepoys of the 13th Native Infantry were mistaken for mutineers and bayoneted but the rest, under the Bailey Guard commander, Lieutenant Aitken, made a gallant rush into the street to aid some wounded, whom they brought in on their backs.

The Highlanders, led still by their single piper and with a young assistant-surgeon carrying their Colour, marched up to the gate and, as they reached it, man after man turned to yell defiance at the rebels with the words they had used all day as their battle cry, “Cawnpore! Remember Cawnpore!”

Beneath a tall archway, a hundred yards or so from the Bailey Guard, James Neill halted. The guns had gone, under Moorsom's guidance, along the route Alex had predicted so as to avoid the yawning trenches dug across the road taken by the main column, but Olpherts' single gun—which Neill himself had posted in front of the Chutter Munzil courtyard—had somehow been delayed. Cursing, Neill sent an aide to ascertain its whereabouts and waited, waving his Blue Caps on.

“For the Residency, my boys!” he shouted, as the Fusiliers surged past him under Stephenson's lead.” On you go, Blue Caps—follow your officers!”

The men, bayonets gleaming in the rays of the dying sun, gave him a ragged, breathless cheer as they passed. Neill drew in his breath sharply as he saw their depleted ranks.

“To think,” he said, a note of sadness in his voice. “To think that less than three months ago they were untried recruits—boys, who had never been under fire! Look how they bear themselves now like heroes, every last one of them. By God, I'm proud of my regiment, Sheridan!” Then, with an abrupt change of tone, “Where the devil's that gun? The infernal thing ought to be here by this time!”

He sat his horse, head turned to watch for the appearance of the missing gun and, through a loophole in the archway above him, a sepoy took aim and fired. The ball struck the left side of his head and, to Alex's shocked dismay, he slumped forward as if poleaxed and fell heavily to the ground, as his horse took fright and galloped off. The gun appeared, as Alex was kneeling beside James Neill's lifeless body and Captain Spurgin, his brigade major, who was commanding the gun escort, flung himself from his horse and ran to where he lay. Between them, he and Alex lifted the body on to the gun limber and thus it was borne into the Residency.

Alex entered in the wake of the Blue Cap escort, dazed but elated, the cheers of Lucknow's defenders ringing in his ears. There had been no second Cawnpore, he thought. The brave garrison, which had held out for three long and weary months was saved from the hideous fate his own garrison had suffered and he thanked God, breathing his prayer silently as he slid from his horse and a pale young woman came to take him by the hand and lead him to shelter. She was a stranger but her gaunt pallor made her seem curiously familiar, her ragged dress and close-shorn hair reminding him suddenly, heartbreakingly of Emmy.

She held a cup of water to his lips and said, with gentle solicitude, “Drink this—you must be very thirsty. I will clean your wound for you and then you can rest.” Unaware that he had suffered any hurt, Alex thanked her and, as he drank the water in great, eager gulps, she added softly, “We are so glad to see you, sir. You are the answer to all our prayers, you and the rest of your valiant company.”

Alex let her tend him, still dazed and only dimly aware that there were other wounded men on either side of him. Then, worn out but conscious of no pain, he slept and only roused himself when—hours later, it seemed—he heard Lousada Barrow's voice, thankfully calling his name.

O
N THE MORNING
of 26th September, the leaders of the rebel host were summoned to a council of war by the Begum-Regent of Oudh, Hazrat Mahal, and a room was prepared for the meeting in the Padshah Bagh, the elegant small palace built in 1830 by King Nasir-ud-Din, on the opposite side of the river to the British Residency.

First to arrive was the Moulvi of Fyzabad, Ahmad Ullah, newly appointed by the Begum as her chief military adviser. He had paused on his way at the camp of Man Singh, in the hope of persuading the powerful Hindu chief to attend the council, and his failure to do so had left him in no pleasant humour. As he listened to the thunder of the guns across the river, he imagined that he heard the cheers of the besieged British, still ringing out in welcome to Havelock's relief force. He turned on the two grey-bearded old
subedar
s who came to join him in the council chamber a few minutes later, cursing them for cowardly bunglers and sparing them nothing in his bitter contempt.

“The accursed
feringhis
should never have been permitted to reach the Residency!” the Moulvi raged, eyes blazing beneath their beetling brows. “They were but a handful, ill-equipped, exhausted by their long march in the heat—outnumbered by more than ten to one. Yet they are there, they are inside the Residency walls and you, who call yourselves generals, failed to stop them!”

“They left over five hundred dead behind them,” Mirza Guffur Bey, the general of artillery, pointed out sullenly. “And whilst they may have entered the Residency, Moulvi Sahib, they will not leave it alive—have no fear on that score.”

His fellow general, a Hindu of Brahmin caste, whose bemedalled scarlet tunic testified to his years of fighting service in the company's army, came swiftly to his support. Normally, they were rivals, warily mistrustful of one another, but the Moulvi's reproaches had been levelled at them both with equal vehemence and had angered him by their injustice.

“Not all the British have reached the Residency,” he stated coldly. “Their wounded, their heavy guns and all their baggage remain as yet in the Moti Munzil, guarded by fewer than a hundred
lal-kote
soldiers. They are surrounded, and we shall not let them escape us. I promise you that, Ahmad Ullah.”

“Then see to it!” the Moulvi bade him harshly. “Both of you … go, as soon as this council is over, and prove your brave words. Show me by your deeds that you are worthy to hold the commands to which the sepoys elected you. If you do not, then as Allah is my witness, I shall have you blown from cannon for the incompetent fools you are … and, though I am no professional soldier, I shall myself assume command of the army in the name of the brave Begum, to whom I have sworn allegiance.”

“The Begum comes now,” Mirza Guffur informed him. Resenting the Moulvi's arrogance, but not daring to show his resentment, he crossed to the window overlooking the street and peered downward with narrowed, short-sighted eyes. Even in the old days, when King Wajid Ali had ruled in Oudh, this upstart rabble-rouser from Arcot had wielded great influence, he reflected. Now, fresh from the victory at Cawnpore, the Begum had been deceived into appointing him to the highest rank in her army and the Moulvi had made it clear that he intended to use the power she had given him … and woe betide anyone who dared to stand in his way.

Times had changed, the old general of artillery reminded himself regretfully. Instead of a king, he must serve a woman who had gained her present rank and title by way of the king's bed. A dancing girl, a courtesan, Hazrat Mahal had not even been acknowledged as a wife whilst the old Padshah Begum lived, but now her son, the ten-year-old Birjis Quadr, had been crowned king of Oudh, and she was regent, the only member of the royal household left to do battle against the hated British. He sighed, looking down as the palanquin approached the palace in regal style, its escort of cavalry clearing the way through a mob of cheering people. Certainly the citizens of Lucknow had taken her to their hearts, forgetful of the loyalty they owed to Wajid Ali, unjustly deposed by the British and, since the annexation of Oudh, their exiled prisoner in Calcutta.