Читать книгу Dust and Steel - Patrick Mercer - Страница 8

‘Stop yer fuckin’ swayin’ about, can’t you, Beeston?’ barked Colour-Sergeant McGucken, cheeks glowing with the salt air, his dun sea-smock such as all the troops wore to protect their scarlet shell jackets from the tar and omnipresent stains on board ship, as smart and soldierly as if it had been fitted in Savile Row. ‘Ye get more like a lassie with every tape ye get, ye bloody puddin”!’

The whole of the Grenadier Company had been paraded on the starboard deck of the Honourable East India Company’s steamer, Berenice, as much out of the sun as possible to be addressed by their company commander, Captain Anthony Morgan. As they’d left Bombay the swell had increased a little, reducing a good third of the company to mewling, puking hollows of themselves, fit only for sympathy – and that was in short supply. Now, four days into their six-day voyage north to the Gulf of Cutch and Mandavie, where the whole of the three hundred men of the left wing of the 95th were to disembark, most of the troops had recovered as the seas became more moderate.

Most of them, but not all. To his intense embarrassment, Private Beeston, veteran of more scrapes and skirmishes than he cared to remember, and the wearer of two good-conduct stripes, was amongst the worst affected, and only now was he beginning to stagger about, so pale that he made the ship’s canvas look positively ruddy.

‘Keep still, can’t you, Jono?’ Lance-Corporal Pegg muttered to his wobbly pal as the company, now drawn up in four ranks, obediently standing at ease on the rolling decks, waited for their officer. ‘Else Jock McGucken’ll bloody ’ave you.’

‘Aye, Corp’l,’ Beeston whispered back through the side of his mouth. ‘I’ll be fine.’ Drops of sweat were forming at the edges of his nostrils. ‘Where are they tekin’ us now, Corp’l?’

After four months’ enforced idleness in Bombay, alleviated only by swirling rumours and counterrumours that they were off to deal with first one hot spot and then another, which resulted in nothing more than early rises, kit inspections and then numbing waits in the heat, they had all been glad to embark on the Berenice – glad, that was, until the seasickness struck. Then the electric excitement of the news that they were going to crush the mutineers, of new adventures and, above all else, the prospect of loot, had been dampened under a blanket of vomit.

‘Dunno. That shave about Delhi was all bollocks,’ Corporal Pegg opined. ‘That’s safe back in our hands now, an’ you heard that Sir Colin took Looknow, couple o’ weeks back?’

‘Oh, aye.’ Beeston brightened a little. ‘That’s that Scottish bogger, Sir Colin Campbell, in’t it? Last saw ’im at Ballyklava, din’t we, with them Jocks ’oo couldn’t shoot.’

They both sniggered at the memory of the 93rd Highlanders’ appalling musketry all that time ago.

‘Aye, that’s the bloke,’ smiled Pegg. ‘Stuck it to the bleedin’ Pandies this time, though; killed thousands. No, I reckon it’s Cawnpore for us. Needs to be. I’m bored to the fuckin’ death of ’anging about whilst all the others get the loot an’ quim, not to mention—’

‘Listen in, yous.’ McGucken’s bass Scots halted Pegg’s philosophising. ‘Grenadier Company…Company, ’shun.’ At the word of command every man stiffened, pushing his clasped hands straight down in front of his bellybutton, hollowing the back and bracing his thighs before snapping the left heel back against the right, thumping his boot hard on the teak decks of the ship.

‘Sir, one officer and seventy-eight men on parade…’ McGucken made the little ritual a spectacle, ‘two detached on duty, one sick.’ His hand quivered at the salute as the company commander came on deck, the colour-sergeant’s great legs like some satyr, straining at the cloth of his blue-black trousers. ‘May I have your leave to stand the men at ease, sir, please?’ The crescendo of his words made two muscular lascars in the waist of the ship look up in startled admiration.

‘Please do, Colour-Sar’nt.’ Morgan returned the salute with a relaxed grace, standing out clear and sharp in his scarlet coat, for Colonel Hume had forbidden the officers to wear smocks. ‘An’ gather the lads in around me, please; I can’t be doing with any shouting.’

A few, good-humoured insults about the men’s parentage from McGucken soon had the Grenadiers shuffling into a crescent around Morgan, straining to hear what news he had to tell them.

‘You’ve put up with a great deal of boredom, lads, over the past few months, and behaved pretty well,’ Morgan started. ‘Fairly well, anyway.’

There was a great storm of laughter as Morgan looked pointedly at eighteen-year-old Private Pierce from Crewe, one of the new draft, who had been found wandering drunk and stark naked on the fort’s yard two weeks before, making the natives, according to Private O’Keefe, ‘…t ’ank God that it wasn’t a proper man from Lifford there in the nip – that would o’ caused another mutiny – but amidst the wimmin this time!’

‘But now we know where we’re bound.’ Morgan paused for effect. ‘It’s Cawnpore, lads, to right the wrongs that were done to General Wheeler and his people back in June.’

‘See, I told you so,’ crowed Pegg as a general mutter of satisfaction swept around the company.

‘Now, you’ll all have heard what happened there, how the general was gammoned by Tantya Tope into putting his people into boats on the Ganges, then torn to ribbons by the Pandies as they floated in the shallows.’ Morgan paused again, looking at the serious faces of his men. ‘And how the white women and children, not to mention the native Christians, were hacked into pieces with axes and thrown down the wells…and worse.’

None of the troops could have failed to know what had happened in Cawnpore. The newspapers that reached them from England had been outraged by the rapes and massacres, but long before they arrived rumour had swept from the bazaar to the barrack block, from the stables to the officers’ mess: tales of treachery and black betrayal, blood and mindless cruelty. Morgan remembered it as a particularly difficult time. The news of the massacres had come hard on the heels of the murder of the Forgetts, and it had been all that the officers and NCOs could do to stop the men from visiting a little rough justice on their new ‘comrades’ in the 10th BNI.

‘Well, it’s our chance now, lads, to take Cawnpore back and to even the score a bit.’ Morgan watched the men. About half of them had yet to see either their twentieth birthdays or any fighting, but the others knew what such glib phrases meant. They knew that ‘evening the score’ meant blood and wounds, danger and death for them as well as their enemies, but wherever Morgan looked he could see nothing but plain determination, men whose simple values had been rocked by the death of innocents.

‘We’re to disembark at Mandavie.’ The troops looked at Morgan, utterly blank. ‘Only another day on board and then we’ve a long march up-country to Deesa that’ll take us the best part of four weeks. We’ll rest there – it’s the depot of our Eighty-Sixth, and we should be there for Christmas Day – before another flog of about five hundred miles to Cawnpore.’ This was greeted by a little cheer. ‘But it’s the march that I need to tell you about. For the first time we’ll be in hostile country, but not so hostile that we can afford to treat every native the same. It’s hard to understand, lads, and it’s going to take every bit of wit and patience you’ve got to deal with the mutineers that we meet as the murdering, godless thugs that they are, yet handle the civilian population with respect – unless they betray us.’ Morgan looked at seventy-odd wrinkled brows, not at all convinced that one word that he said was being understood, but he pressed on. ‘Now you’ll have all heard of Lord Canning’s declaration back in June…’

‘Oo’s ’e, then?’ Beeston asked quietly.

‘You know, Jono, that cunt from London ’oo wants us to pray for the Pandies’ salvation.’ The Governor-General of India would probably not have been flattered by Pegg’s description of him.

‘He’s made it quite clear that British rule is under no serious threat and that once this little pother in Bengal’s been put down,’ Morgan let none of his reservations about the depth and severity of the uprising show, ‘Her Majesty’s power will be wider and stronger than ever before. And that means that we’ve got to leave the country in the best shape we can. It’s no good putting every man, woman and child to the sword one minute and then having to rebuild the place an’ pretend that it never happened. Now, you’ll come across all sorts of horrors an’ meet folk who’ve been outraged and seen things that they should never have had to see; there’s all sorts of irregulars roamin’ about the country – English an’ native, soldiers and civilians – who’ve taken the law into their own hands an’ are stringing people up from every tree.’ Morgan paused again to look at the men, every one of whom was listening intently to him. ‘And that’s fine for mutineers, but not every native is disloyal. Just look at the Tenth…’

‘You look at the murderin’ bastards if you want,’ whispered Beeston to whoever cared to listen.

‘…and we need the help of the civilian population, especially for the intelligence that they will give us about who is and who isn’t a mutineer, where the enemy is located, what his plans are, and a host of other details. Now, most of you have seen harder knocks than anything that this bunch of ragamuffins will be able to throw at us, and you always behaved yourselves.’ There was just a slight question mark in Morgan’s voice. ‘I expect the highest of standards from you: an’ Christ help anyone who steps out of line. Any questions?’ Morgan scanned the crowd of sun-burned faces. ‘No, right, Colour-Sar’nt.’

But before Morgan could hand over to McGucken, a boot stamped on the deck and a hand shot out, seeking permission to speak. ‘Sir,’ Pegg’s Wirksworth accent cut the sea air, ‘’ow d’we know ’oo is and isn’t a bleedin’ Pandy? The papers say they tek their uniforms off if it suits ’em an’ just bugger off into the villages and pretend to be ordinary folk.’

There was a hint of nodding heads from the other men at their self-appointed spokesman’s words.

‘That’s exactly what I’m saying, Corporal Pegg. These ain’t Muscovites fighting fair and even, but we can’t assume that everyone’s an enemy – it’s going to be difficult,’ Morgan answered firmly.

‘Aye, sir, but these bastards ’ave murdered women an’ nippers, an’ stabbed us in the back.’ Pegg wouldn’t be silenced. ‘It’s all right for some windbag politician to tell us to be Christian kind to the Pandies, sir, but they won’t ’ave to do the fighting, sir, will they?’

McGucken stepped forward to shut Pegg up, but Morgan stopped him as he saw a ripple of support and concern spread throughout the troops.

‘You’re right, Corporal Pegg.’ Pegg’s face relaxed at his officer’s tolerant reply. ‘But that’s our job; we’ve got to do the dirty work whilst shiny-arsed politicos blow words into the wind. So, we’ll just have to get on with it, won’t we; an’ if you find a bit of grog an’ gold in the process, the colour-sar’nt and me won’t be asking too many questions.’

It wasn’t much of a quip, but it worked well enough for Morgan as the men greeted it with a laugh until McGucken brought them to attention as he strode off.

As he groped for the rail that led him below decks, Morgan paused for a moment and stared at the shore, which was now quite distinct. White surf marked a strip of sand topped with dusty-green jungle, and he wondered just what danger and peril lay in front of them all.

‘No ’eathen mut’neers ’ere then, Corp’l?’ Beeston, footsore and bored after three hot, uneventful nights on the march said what everyone had been thinking.

‘No, not so far, Jono. Just these buggers an’ a stink o’ shit,’ Pegg replied disappointedly.

They had all got used to a cloud of Indian servants and bearers who had done the men’s every bidding for a daily pittance back in Bombay, but only a handful had greeted them at the desolate quayside at Mandavie, due, they all assumed, to the imminence of battle. But there had been no sign of the mutineers; indeed, there was little to be seen of anything as they marched in the cool of the night on the muddy tracks beside ditches and drains bordered by scrubby jungle.

‘We’ll be in Bhuj in a couple o’ hours, won’t we, Corp’l?’ Beeston asked, his voice flat with the tedium of marching and the lack of sleep snatched in the midday heat between double sentry duties as they waited for the attack that hadn’t materialised.

‘An’ d’you think they’ll let us put us smocks back on – this jacket’s so bloody ’ot,’ Beeston continued. The men had not been allowed to shed their red coats in favour of the much lighter canvas smocks for no good reason that the troops could see.

‘Naw, they’ll keep us dressed up like they did out East till someone saw some sense…Aye, we should be there soon,’ Pegg replied dully. ‘Hark at that lot. You’d think they were on bleedin’ furlough, you would.’

It was true: the four companies of the 10th Bengal Native Infantry, who had disembarked alongside the left wing of the 95th, had sung and chanted rhythmically from the first pace they’d taken. Whilst the 95th had started in fine form bellowing ‘Cheer, Boys, Cheer’, their own especially ribald versions of ‘The Derby Ram’ and countless, sentimental Irish ballads, they had soon lapsed into moody silence as the miles dragged slowly by in the dark nights. The sepoys, meanwhile, had maintained a simple enthusiasm, great gusts of laughter occasionally reaching the ears of the tramping British as some witticism was passed up and down their scarlet columns.

‘In fact, I reckon those are probably the lights of the town yonder.’ But no sooner had Pegg spotted a line of guttering lanterns in the distance than the cry went up from behind them that was repeated by McGucken and the other non-commissioned officers.

‘Get off the road, Grenadiers. Horse coming through!’

And as the foot soldiers took to the thorny banks of the road and leant on their rifles, easing the weight of their knapsacks, columns of bearded men in dark, loose-fitting kurtahs, brown leather belts and bandoliers, curved tulwars at their sides, carbines bouncing behind their saddles and deep red turbans on their heads, came trotting past.

‘’Oo’s that lot, Colour-Sar’nt?’ Pegg asked McGucken as they both stood and watched the horsemen jingling past.

‘Scinde ’Orse, Corp’l Pegg.’ McGucken pulled the short clay pipe from his mouth and rootled in the bowl with the tip of his little finger.

‘Right little tatts they’re on, ain’t they?’ Pegg ventured, stuffing a fresh quid of tobacco into his cheek.

‘Well, they’re not like our ’Eavies; more like scouts and reconnaissance troops on sort o’ polo ponies,’ McGucken answered, ‘but there’s two squadrons of ’em an’ they’ll be right ’andy against any rebel cavalry that we meet.’

As the last of the Indians clattered by, the NCOs had the men on the road again, plodding forward towards the lights of Bhuj, the vinegary smell of fresh horse dung now sharp in their nostrils.

‘I didn’t get a wink of sleep, did you, Morgan?’

When fatigue took some of the edge off him, Carmichael could be almost pleasant, thought Morgan.

‘A wee bit, but those Sappers made a God-awful din when they arrived, didn’t they?’ Morgan replied.

As the wing of the 95th had arrived at the little town of Bhuj some three hours before dawn and been shown to a mixture of reed-shelters and dak bungalows by staff officers, where they had sunk gratefully onto mats and charpoys, other troops had streamed in. The wing of the 10th BNI had been hard behind them, more than two hundred sabres of the Scinde Horse were already milling around in the dark, and then, just before dawn, Captain Cumberland’s Royal Engineers had come rumbling into camp on the squealing, solid wooden wheels of innumerable bullock carts.

‘They did,’ Bazalgette wiped at his plate of curried goat with a piece of rubbery chapatti, ‘but this has the makings of quite a formidable little column, don’t you think?’

‘No, gentlemen, don’t stand up, please.’ Colonel Hume was just too late to stop the group of captains and subalterns, all working hungrily at a tiffin of rice and meat, from dragging themselves to their feet. ‘Good to see a bit of civilisation again, ain’t it?’

Morgan marvelled at the man. It was all he himself could do to cast a rudimentary eye over the crude shelters allotted to his company when they’d arrived a few hours ago before a quick, ‘…Carry on, Colour-Sar’nt,’ as he scuttled off to the officers’ bungalow and stretched himself out to sleep. Not Hume, though. His red-rimmed eyes showed that he’d been far too conscientious for slumber whilst all the other units in the column had been arriving, and now he even had time to play down the wretchedness of the camp and its amenities.

‘You’ll all be pleased to hear – ah, thank you, shukria,’ Hume passed his sword belt, pistol and cap to a native servant – ‘that the artillery is on its way. Once the Second Field Battery of our friends the Bombay Artillery is with us, then we’ll be complete and Johnny bloody Sepoy will have to look to his laurels.’

There was a general mutter of agreement from the officers, although the younger subalterns, Morgan noticed, were much too engrossed in their food to give the Colonel the attention that the older officers thought he merited.

‘And on that subject…’ Hume gratefully accepted the quart pot of ale that a servant pressed into his hand as he settled into one of the cane chairs, ‘…how have the men accepted your pep talks on “Clemency Canning’s” dictat?’

‘Fine, sir,’ said Bazalgette, as the colonel’s gaze fell upon him, though he was far more interested in the contents of a tureen of fish soup.

‘And your lot, Massey?’

‘It took a bit of getting through to them at first that we can’t go around behaving like the mutineers themselves, but I think they took the point,’ Massey answered thoughtfully.

‘And Number One Company?’ Hume turned to Carmichael, who having been first to get at the food, was replete; now he was rubbing an oily cloth over his revolver, having first made a great show of drawing the six charges from the chambers.

‘They’re all right with things, Colonel, but I explained how we’d got to be careful not to cause more trouble than we solve, and how we mustn’t go around assuming everyone’s a bloody Pandy.’ Carmichael held the big pistol up to the light and nonchalantly squinted down the barrel.

‘And they understood that?’

Hume was checking more that his officers knew what was expected rather than just the soldiers, thought Morgan, listening intently.

‘Oh, yes, they seemed to,’ Carmichael answered rather too easily. ‘Anyway, sir, I told them that if all else failed, Mr Enfield and Mr Adams here would be able to provide the answers.’

‘Oh, so that’s one of the Adams revolvers, is it?’ Hume asked innocently, to Morgan’s delight.

Carmichael never ceased to brag about his expensive pistol and how it had saved his life in the Crimea more times than he could recall, but his casual answer had needled Hume, though Carmichael didn’t seem to have noticed.

‘I’ve noticed it before; may I have a look?’ the colonel continued.

Carmichael passed the big blued-steel weapon across to the commanding officer, presenting the handsome ivory grips first. He never lost an opportunity to show the weapon off; its smooth double action and the precision of its rifling served as an excuse for everyone to admire the inscriptions in the ivory – the monogrammed ‘R. L. M. C.’, as well as the battles at which its owner had been present.

‘Hmm…that balances well.’ Hume handled the weapon appreciatively. ‘And a craftsman’s been at work here.’ He studied the butt. ‘Alma, Balakava, Inkermann, Sevastopol. My word, you must have cared for this, Carmichael – it looks as if it’s never been out of its holster.’

Hume’s barb was lost on Carmichael, but not on Bazalgette and Morgan, who looked at each other and smiled.

‘I feel like bloody Noah, sir. Look at these rascals, will you?’ McGucken was rarely so voluble, but Morgan had to admit there was something biblical about the bullocks, camels, donkeys and even six vast grey elephants that swayed about the gun lines of Number Two Field Battery.

‘They give us some queer jobs, they do, but the commanding officer was most particular about the safety of the guns and the gunners, and I suppose it’s a compliment of sorts…oh, goddamit,’ Morgan cursed as he stepped in a giant dollop of what looked like horse manure.

‘Dunno whether standing in pachyderm shite’s lucky or not, sir, but I guess you’ll find out now,’ McGucken grinned as Morgan scraped the welt of his boot with a handful of coarse grass, ‘though I’d prefer to be with the rest of the column rather than hanging around wiping gunners’ arses. The fightin’ll probably be done by the time this menagerie catches up with ’em.’

‘I hear what you say, Colour-Sar’nt, but there’ll be no attempt at towns or cities without the guns, and if there are rebels about on the route to Deesa, they’ll want to knock out the artillery first,’ answered Morgan, almost convinced by his own line of reasoning.

‘An’ look at this lot, sir – what’ll we do wi’ them in the middle of a fight?’ asked McGucken as he stared at the crowd of civilan bearers, grass cutters, grooms, cooks, washerwomen and general servants whom the battery had brought with them.

‘D’you know, Colour-Sar’nt, I haven’t the least idea.’ The same thought had occurred to Morgan as swarms of civilians had appeared from nowhere once the troops had reached the relative civilisation of Bhuj and attached themselves to the company before they started the long march up-country. ‘I suppose they’ll make themselves scarce if the lead begins to fly. Anyway, are we ready to march once the sun’s down?’

‘Aye, sir, as ready as we’ll ever be, but I have me doots about yon cows.’ McGucken looked at the great, lazy-eyed oxen. One scratched its chin with a rear hoof, narrowly missing Private Swann as its horns flailed about, whilst its partner, shackled to it by a clumsy wooden yoke, flapped its ears incessantly at a cloud of flies.

‘Yes, not to mention the rest of God’s creatures that we seem to have inherited.’ Morgan looked with dismay as two camels wandered past, swamped by bundles of fodder almost as large as themselves. ‘Still, with such a lack of draught horses, I’d prefer to have this lot than try to pull the hardware ourselves.’

As the march started after sundown that night, Morgan regretted his words. The guns and their limbers behaved well enough – the Indian drivers keeping the horses well in hand – and the camels were aloof but quiescent, whilst their vast loads meant that no traffic could pass in the other direction. Then, after a great deal of trumpeting and general skittishness, the elephants that were pulling the extra ammunition caissons settled to their duty, plodding stolidly in the dark under the direction of their mahouts. But the bullocks: how right McGucken had been not to trust ‘yon cows’.

‘Get up, won’t you, you lazy son of a drab,’ one of the Bombay gunners, a grizzled Englishman wearing the Sutlej medal, kicked and slapped one such creature that had lain down directly in the centre of the narrow, muddy track, anchoring its yoked partner securely and blocking all the traffic that came behind it. ‘Get your fuckin’ arse movin’ before I take the steel to ye.’

To the 95th’s Grenadiers, who marched beside the column of nine-pounders, howitzers and their attendant traffic, ready to protect them from any interference by the enemy, such sights were a wonder.

‘Come on, you useless sod,’ the gunner continued, pulling his hanger from its scabbard and giving the animal such a poke that it leapt to its feet, bellowing forlornly and pulling its partner violently forward.

‘You’ll need to tend the wound you’ve given that beast,’ Morgan said, concerned not with any pain that the gunner had inflicted, but merely the continued efficiency of the ox, ‘or it’ll mortify in this climate, won’t it?’

‘Mortify, sir – I hope it bloody dies.’ The gunner had, quite clearly, reached the end of his patience with this particular animal. ‘But I doubt it; they’ve got hides thicker than a docker’s dick-skin, these bastards ’ave, sir.’

And after a brace of night marches and sleep-short days, Morgan came to agree with the gunner, for the tiresome cattle seemed to ignore hunger, thirst, threats or reason, suiting themselves entirely whether they wished to obey orders or not, and apparently impervious to all stimuli other than those that they imposed upon themselves.

The hours of darkness were hells of delay and infuriating petty problems – slipped saddles, shed shoes, broken spokes and binding axles – whilst the days provided little sleep at all as the sun beat down.

After almost two weeks of stuttering progress, McGucken was tramping alongside Morgan one night, reliving some story of his time with the 36th in Gibraltar when vivid flashes lit up the road at the front of the column.

‘What in God’s name’s that?’ asked Morgan, though he knew well enough as the flat bangs of musket-fire and the sweeping whistle of lead shook him from his reverie.

‘Bloody ambush, sir,’ yelled McGucken, already sprinting hard towards the trouble. ‘Come on, Captain Morgan, sir, you don’t want to miss the fun.’

Morgan’s belly was tight with fear, but he scrabbled after McGucken when more flashes reflected off the bushes and trees as a couple of British rifles returned fire.

The track was narrow and greasy, blocked by animals and drivers, shrieking women and cowering grooms. Worse still, as the pair ran forward, grabbing their own men as they went, so a stream of panic-filled bearers came bowling down the verges towards them, shouting, eyes wide with fright, barging and pushing their way to the rear. As the mob skittered past Morgan in the dark, one man fell under the feet of the others, pulling at something in his shoulder whilst a nearby camel suddenly sank to its knees, its breath soughing coarsely from its lips. As he jostled his way forward, Morgan was aware of something fast and menacing whispering through the night: flights of arrows were thumping into flesh and saddles and tack, or quivering in the mud around his ankles.

‘Jaysus, this is like the bloody crusades, sir,’ McGucken puffed as they ran up to the head of the column. ‘What else will the fuckers use, boiling oil?’

But before Morgan could reply, McGucken spotted two figures stumbling hard down the track on the other side of the camels and the frightened oxen, away from the noise of battle in front.

‘Corporal Pegg…’ even though the arrows continued to fly, McGucken’s barrack-yard yell brought the fugitive and his companion to a sudden halt, ‘…where d’ye think yer going?’

Despite the darkness, Morgan could see the guilt on Pegg’s face.

‘Er…nowhere, Colour Sar’nt,’ Pegg stammered. ‘I were just mekin’ sure that—’

‘Put that bint down, Corporal, and get back to your men.’

Even in this chaos, McGucken’s strength of character could galvanise others. It was what made him so indispensable, thought Morgan.

Pegg objected no further: the native girl whom he had been sheltering shrieked off into the night, clutching her sari about her, whilst he skulked his way back to the front of the column, trying to look as though he’d never been away.

‘What’s going on, Sarn’t Ormond?’ Morgan found the non-commissioned officer kneeling in the grass surrounded by a handful of his men. They stared hard at the fringe of jungly forest that loomed darkly fifty yards away from them, weapons ready, peering down the barrels, looking for a target.

‘Got shot at from over yonder, sir.’ Ormond pointed at the trees with a nod of his forehead, never taking his eyes off the source of danger nor his finger off his rifle’s trigger. ‘Couple of the lads fired back.’

But before Ormond could finish, another volley boomed out from the trees, the rounds whipping high overhead in the darkness. Though they were wide of their mark, Morgan found himself flat on his belly, pressing his body into the grit and mud of the track whilst a camel danced about him, the creature’s decorative bells jingling madly, more frightened of the human’s strange behaviour round his feet than the noise and uproar.

Christ, that was a mile off, thought Morgan. What am I doing down here on my belt buckle? What’ll the boys make of me? They’re not scrubbing around in the dirt, are they?

The crackle of shots from his own men helped to restore Morgan’s senses as Ormond turned to him, his face damp with sweat in the moonlight, and yelled, ‘What d’you want us to do, sir?’

‘He’ll be leading us out to clear them.’ Happily, McGucken was there at Morgan’s elbow, as calm as if it were all a blankfiring exercise. ‘Won’t you, sir? Get yer spikes on, lads.’

And whilst the clutch of men around them pulled the slender, eighteen-inch-long bayonets from their scabbards and slipped the sockets firmly over the end of their barrels, Morgan collected himself, dragging his blade from his belt and pushing his hand through the sword knot whilst his arse shrivelled tight in an all-too-familiar way. He licked his lips, held the gently curved steel out in front of him and stumbled forward over the greasy verge at the edge of the road and into the long grass beyond.

‘Come on, Grenadiers, follow me!’ Morgan’s words seemed to come from a stranger as the little crowd of men surged after him, weapons levelled, half cheering as they crashed over the broken ground.

His mind raced back to the last time he’d been ambushed at night outside Sevastopol. Then it had been screaming Russians, banging rifles and popping flares. But the enemy was nowhere to be seen now, just the ominous, black tree line that got closer with each clumsy stride.

‘There’s the bastards…there. Fire, lads.’ Ormond’s breathless voice came from somewhere behind Morgan, as drab spectral figures paused, snatched at bowstrings and scrambled away into the depths of the forest before the troops could close with them.

A covey of arrows flickered harmlessly around as a handful of rifles crashed, the yellow flashes instantly lighting up the night, giving just a glimpse of lithe, running shadows, one of which was flung onto its face as if by the swipe of a giant’s hand.

‘Got ’im,’ McGucken growled with satisfaction, the cloud of powder smoke hanging heavily amongst the leaves and branches. ‘Stop here, lads. Don’t chase ’em, they’re not for catching, now.’

Morgan reached for a tree trunk for support as he sucked for breath, his sword suddenly leaden. ‘Get the men reloaded, please, Colour-Sar’nt.’ Experience had taught him that, at least.

‘Aye, sir,’ McGucken replied. ‘You heard the officer,’ even as he pushed around looking for his quarry in the undergrowth as a sportsman might search for a downed woodcock.

‘’Ere ’e is, Jock…bus.’ Sergeant Ormond had been in more bloody scrimmages with the colour-sergeant than either could count and was allowed such familiarity. Now he kneeled, parting the grass so that the moonlight might let him see just what the enemy looked like.

‘Skinny little runt,’ said Ormond as Morgan and McGucken clustered round. ‘Nice shot, though, right through the neck.’

It was difficult for Morgan to see much in the dark; all he could make out was a man not much bigger than a child wearing a dirty grey dhoti from which stuck stick-thin legs and bare muddy feet. Stained teeth were visible under a wispy moustache, lank hair covered much of his face, whilst blood, black by the light of the moon, still pumped from a long gash that ran from under his left ear across to his windpipe.

‘Yon’s no sepoy, is ’e, sir?’ McGucken held up a slender curved bow that he’d pulled from the dead man’s hand.

‘Certainly doesn’t look like it, Colour-Sar’nt. He’s no uniform or belts on him. More like a common badmash, I’d say,’ replied Morgan.

But before the professional debate began over exactly what sort of man it was that McGucken had reduced to cold meat, a gale of shouting and frightened trumpeting from the elephants that towed the heavy ammunition carts broke out from the column waiting on the road behind them.

Morgan began to run through the brush, back towards the road, the noise of the elephants being joined by a strange, feral squealing.

‘Come on, then, get after the company commander.’ McGucken chivvied the troops into a stumbling run, away from the dead man at whom they had all been gawping. ‘Watch out for any of these rogues hidin’ in the grass.’

But the danger came from quite a different source. When the column stopped, the elephants had jammed themselves tightly together at the rear of the line behind the guns and just in front of the spare oxen and some dhoolies carrying the sick. Here the track was deeply sunken, its banks reaching up five feet or more, effectively penning in the animals and their burdens.

‘Get out of the way!’ Morgan, at the head of his panting men, had been able to make out the forms of the six elephants wildly swaying about, trunks outstretched, trumpeting deafeningly in the night, stamping and stomping at something that shrieked beneath their feet. Now, one of the huge beasts came lumbering over the bank straight towards the group of soldiers, mighty ears flapping wildly, tusks thrashing left and right, its mahout clutching helplessly to its neck as its ammunition cart floundered after it. As the monstrous thing cut a swathe through the running troops so a wheel came off the caisson, which slewed round, spilling great, black, 24-pound howitzer rounds, which bounced through the grass.

‘Oh, ow…’ yelled Private James. ‘It’s broke me leg!’ as he was bowled over like a skittle by one of the iron shot, which knocked his feet from under him.

‘They’re pigs, sir.’ McGucken had dodged the blundering grey form and now stood on the edge of the bank just feet from the other plunging elephants, looking down at a dozen shrieking, darting forms, ghostly pale in the night. ‘The elephants are terrified of ’em – so’s the natives. Where the fuck have they come from?’

He was right. Morgan saw how the squeals of the pigs were tormenting the elephants, who were trying to rid themselves of their attackers with tusks and vast stamping feet, which, in turn were making the pigs even more petrified and noisy. Meanwhile, the Hindu civilians and military drivers had gathered in an appalled huddle on the opposite side of the road, aghast and helpless as the unclean creatures ran amok.

‘God knows. Kill the bloody things, lads.’ Morgan leaped down amongst the huge, stamping, grey, leathery feet, immediately regretting his decision. ‘But don’t shoot, stab the sods.’

This is no way to die, he thought as an enormous pad with nails the size of trowels thumped into the earth just inches from him, and just look at those nuts – as a scrotum the size of a bag of flour swung past his face. It’ll look just grand on the Court and Social page:…‘gallant fate at the head of his men; bashed to death by an elephant’s bollocks whilst trying to sabre a swine.’

Eventually they finished the job. Private Saint had his foot run over by the wheel of the battery’s forge wagon, Sergeant Ormond was brushed sideways by an elephantine knee, but the pigs were finally subdued by the blades of the men and order restored to the terrified leviathans.

‘What d’you suppose that was about, Colour-Sar’nt?’ Morgan sat on the bank by the track, as the first light of dawn turned the black sky to turtle-dove grey.

‘Oldest trick in the book, apparently, sir. One of the gunner naiks was tellin’ me that everyone knows that elephants and pigs are shit-scared of each other an’ if yous want to stampede the big buggers you just release a few wee porkers around their feet,’ answered McGucken.

‘Well, there we are; they didn’t teach us that back at the depot, did they, Colour-Sar’nt? Still, it shows the Pandies have got a deal of sense. If they could have knocked the guns out, or just destroyed the ammunition, we’d be in queer street,’ Morgan reasoned. ‘What damage is done?’

‘Not much, sir. A fodder camel’s down, some oxen have bolted an’ can’t be found yet, one bearer’s been wounded, Sar’nt Ormond an’ Saint are a bit knocked about, an’ the artillery lads are just getting a spare wheel back on that limber.’ McGucken checked a pencilled list on a scrap of paper. ‘Oh, aye, one of the Bombay gunners is unaccounted for; they think he might have gone off wi’ the Pandies. An’ the natives reckon that judging by the archer we got, the whole thing was probably the work o’ rebels from one of the maharajah’s armies up north, not reg’lar sepoys.’

‘So, irregular rebels, not regular rebels…Hmm, this is going to be even more confusing than I thought. Anyway, let’s get moving once that wheel’s fixed. We’ll find some water up ahead, get everything square and bed down for the day.’ Morgan tapped his pipe out on the heel of his muddy boot. ‘But we’ll have to be more alert in close country if we don’t want to get caught like that again.’

‘You all right, Pete, Jono?’ Lance-Corporal Pegg pushed through the brush into the small clearing where Privates Sharrock and Beeston were sitting behind a modest ant hill as sentries for the column that rested in the midday heat behind them.

‘Aye, we’re sound as a bell, Corp’l. Too much bloody staggin’, though,’ Beeston replied dolefully.

Since the ambush the day before, Morgan had ordered that the sentries should be doubled, so cutting by half the small amount of sleep that the men were getting during the day.

‘Well, I’ve got Jimmy here to replace you, Jono, so you’ll soon be rolled up snug; mek the most on it.’ The men were posted for two-hour shifts, a fresh sentry being brought forward by a junior NCO every hour to replace one of them, so minimising the likelihood, at least in theory, that a pair of sentries would fall asleep at the same time. The burden, though, fell heavily upon the lance-corporals and corporals, who got little rest.

‘If I’m on me chin-strap, I bet you’re half dead, ain’t you, Corp’l?’ The new sentry posted, Beeston and Pegg were walking back to the column down a narrow track.

‘Well, I’ve ’ad more restful times, but double sentries is always a pain in the ring, ain’t it?’ Pegg replied.

‘Wasn’t the sentries I were thinking about, Corp’l.’ Beeston’s darkly tanned face lit into a smile. ‘It was that dhobi bint that you’re a-poking.’

‘Less o’ that, you cheeky sod.’ Though only twenty, Pegg was more than capable of pulling rank with older, more experienced men when it suited him. ‘Anyway, she’s not just a bint, she’s—’

‘Hush, Corp’l, what’s that noise?’ Beeston cut across Pegg’s retort, freezing in his steps and pulling the hammer back on his rifle, raising the butt to the shoulder.

Pegg must have missed the low gurgling snuffle amongst the hum and click of insects as he’d walked up the track with the new sentry a few minutes before. But now, as both men listened intently, the noise came again.

‘What d’you reckon it is, Jono?’ asked Pegg, as he too brought his weapon up to the shoulder.

‘Dunno. Sounds like a man, though, Corp’l,’ answered Beeston. ‘There, it’s coming from over there.’

Slowly, hesitantly, the two soldiers crept forward off the track and into the thicket as the rasping moan came again.

‘Bloody hell, they’ve made a job on him, ain’t they?’ Jono Beeston murmured as they both looked at the torn form of a man who was tied to a tree trunk. His naked feet stuck out below his crumpled knees; the only clothes he now wore were the blood-stained overalls of the Bombay Horse Artillery, whilst from his shoulders great strips of flesh had been flayed away from the purply muscle and fatty tissue that lie below the skin. His head lolled on his slashed chest, his topknot was now undone and the hair hung down in a curtain around his face.

‘’E’s not long for this world, poor owd lad.’ Pegg gently lifted the Indian gunner’s chin and pulled one eyelid open. ‘Let’s get ’im cut down an’ carried back.’

The pair of them slung their rifles and lifted the man by armpits and knees, the way they’d carried a hundred casualties in the past, trudging back down the uneven path.

‘Bring him here, lads.’ McGucken had been about to visit the sentries himself when he saw Pegg and Beeston with their load. ‘Who is he?’

‘One of the artillery drivers, Colour-Sar’nt,’ Pegg puffed as they lay him on the ground as gently as possible. ‘Found ’im tied to a tree over yonder.’

‘Aye, he must be the boy who disappeared yesterday.’ McGucken bent down, pulled a tiny round shaving mirror from his haversack and held it against the man’s lips. ‘No, he’s bus. Well done for bringing him in though, lads. Nip over an’ tell the gunners, will you, Beeston.’ McGucken was matter-of-fact; he’d seen too many dead men to be affected by another. ‘They’ll want to get ’im burnt before we move on; poor sod.’

‘Mek’s you wonder though, Colour-Sar’nt, what this is all about, don’t it?’ Pegg and McGucken stared down at the grisly sight; the blood on the man’s shoulders where the flesh had been stripped away had started to congeal as death arrived, whilst flies crawled thickly over his eyes, lips and nostrils.

‘All that stuff about God’s mercy from Mr Canning that the officers lectured us about on the ship – ’as anyone told the fuckin’ Pandies to behave like Christians?’ Pegg asked.

‘Doesn’t seem like Christmas, does it, Colour-Sar’nt?’ Morgan tramped alongside McGucken, the whining of the bullock-cart wheels deadened only by the incessant buzz of flies.

‘No, sir, it doesna,’ replied McGucken, routinely swiping at the insects. ‘They’ll be punishin’ the grog back home, just gettin’ the measure o’ things for Hogmanay. What’ll be happenin’ back in Cork?’

What indeed? wondered Morgan. He remembered his mother’s excitement when he was a boy whilst they covered Glassdrumman – the ‘big house’, as the servants would have it – in holly and pine cones; how she’d insisted on following the latest fashion from London by bringing an eight-foot fir tree into the hall and covering it with glass balls (to be greeted by, ‘Balls, indeed’, from his scowling father) bought at vast expense from Dublin. What would Maude (how pregnant would she be now?) be doing tonight, and how would Mary be spending the season of goodwill up in Jhansi – assuming she and Sam (what did the lad look like, was he sturdy, like him, or willowy like his mother?) were as safe as Keenan had assured him they would be?

‘Will you listen to that, sir!’ McGucken interrupted his thoughts with a delighted laugh.

Just in sight, a mile away, rose the mud and brick fort of Deesa, the only European station for miles around, which it had taken them over four weeks of blistering, tedious marching to reach. Their only excitement had been the botched ambush two weeks before; now, as the heat started to make the dawn light wobble and the horizon to dip and rise, as the kites wheeled above them and the camels hawked and farted, the sound of a brass band came wafting down the breeze.

‘Ha…damn me, it’s “Good King Wenceslas”, ain’t it?’ Morgan smiled.

‘Aye, sir, “…where the snow lay round about, Deep an’ crisp an’ even,” – some bugger’s got a sense o’ humour.’

And so they had. The artillery and its escort of the 95th was the last part of the column to reach Deesa, and as they approached they could see the white-jacketed musicians of the 86th under their German bandmaster, and a neat quarter guard in scarlet presenting arms whilst the guns, carts and limbers rumbled and groaned through the gates.

‘Makes you realise just how bloody scruffy we’ve become, Colour-Sar’nt, don’t it?’ Morgan returned the guard’s salute as they passed. The young subaltern in command, just shaved and freshly pressed, stood with his sword held gracefully akimbo.

‘Aye, sir, an’ here’s the commanding officer.’ McGucken had spotted some horsemen trotting slowly towards them. ‘March to attention, Grenadiers.’

The troops brought their rifles smartly to the shoulder, trying to make up for their dust-ingrained, sun-bleached appearance.