Free Lance Read online

  ‘Draw sabres!’

  The squadron sprouted blades. Pindaris capered in wavering patterns, jostled into a shapeless group, yelled and brandished lances ten feet long. Beyond them mounted herdsmen whipped cattle to a run; riders hauled the leading reins of packhorses tugging alongside.

  ‘Form line to the front!’

  Column to line, thought Amaury - would they remember the drill? Rathors, swearing loudly, checked the pace, wrenched bits, wheeled jaggedly to line. ‘Dressing - keep your dressing!’ the risaldars roared.

  Confronted by a steel-tipped spate the Pindaris wheeled and fled, fragmented like a bursting shell in separate galloping meteors, riding down the livestock and the sluggish pack-train.

  ‘They run!’ brayed Welladvice. ‘Hoist General Chase!’

  Amaury pointed his sabre.

  ‘Charge!’

  ‘They are prisoners of war, sirdarjee, and must be treated accordingly.’

  ‘Do you nourish a rabid jackal when you catch him?’ Vedvyas inquired sourly. ‘No, sahib. Let the soldiers have their way. There is plenty to avenge - too easily you forget the slaughter we have seen.’

  Reins looped over arms, they picked a way through refuse the rout had squandered. Bodies sprinkled the ground, turbaned corpses clad in motley knee-length coats: a score or so dispersed on a milelong stretch. The squadron’s horses, almost spent, had foundered to a stand, incapable of pressing a pursuit. More than half the raiders got away, leaving the dead and wounded - summarily despatched - and a dozen cringing prisoners.

  ‘You have caught Pindari raiders, a most unusual feat,’ Vedvyas continued. ‘My men will brand the lesson deep in Pindari memory!’

  Amaury surveyed the spoils corralled under a guard: cattle and goats, riderless horses, pack animals, abandoned weapons - scimitars, spears and matchlocks - and weeping women ravished from the villages. Troopers surrounded the prisoners, stripped of their garish coats, naked to the loincloths. A sabre flickered, and neatly severed an ear. The man shrieked and fell on his knees, gibbering for mercy.

  Amaury cursed, stepped forward. Vedvyas gripped his arm. ‘Dangerous to interfere, sahib. These are not your docile Madrassee sepoys, bound by regulations and the Articles of War. Let be, Umree Sahib.’

  Rathors cut dry bushes, heaped them in a bank like a giant mattress, struck tinder and fired the edges. The dry wood caught and crackled, flames shimmered in evening sunlight. Amaury muttered uneasily, ‘What are they doing?’

  Vedvyas folded his arms and said woodenly, ‘They will cast them living into the fire. Such is the fate of pillagers taken in arms. Come away, sahib - the sight is not a balm for Fringee eyes.’ He gestured to the mount that reared from the plain a mile away. ‘If our horses can still walk, let us find the reason why the fortress has sent nobody to ask our business.’

  The hill sailed on the plain like a monstrous ship alone on a tranquil sea - a geological freak that some volcanic convulsion had spouted to the surface aeons before. Rocky slopes, in places sheer, climbed five hundred feet to a tableland two miles round. A ditch engirdled the crest and rimmed a stone-faced curtain wall, bastion-studded, pierced by loopholes, the parapets embrasured. Houses clustered the base of a formidable four-square citadel which towered on the summit.

  Nowhere was there any sign of life.

  They rode the hill’s circumference, gazing up, puzzled by the emptiness and silence. The signs of neglect were plain: crumbling rifts in the curtain, rain-eroded ramparts, saplings leaning from cracks in walls, creepers draping bastions. Roofless houses climbed to the citadel, thatch long rotted, timbers sagging.

  Amaury reined. ‘I believe the place deserted. Here is the way to the gate.’

  They walked the tired horses up a steep circuitous track. Hannibal snorted and skittered sideways. ‘Hold up, lad! What startled you?’ A fat brown snake slid over the pebbles. Amaury drew his sabre, leaned from the saddle and sliced the brute in half, watched loathingly the squirming coils. Vedvyas said, ‘There are plenty more to exercise your swordplay. Look around!’

  Snakes infested the hillside, slithering over rocks, coiled basking in the sun, lurking like scaly ropes in crevices and crannies. Amaury shuddered; he had a horror of these reptiles - a weakness he could never overcome. ‘All deadly,’ Vedvyas murmured. ‘Cobras, kraits and vipers. They must have bred here undisturbed for many years. Choose your way carefully, sahib.’

  Eyes on the ground they climbed to the outer gate, crossed a causeway bridging the ditch and entered a barbican. Ponderous iron-strapped doors barred the inner gate; a postern sagged ajar on broken hinges. Amaury dismounted, took pistol from belt, opened the pan and renewed the priming. Vedvyas nervously gripped a pistol in either hind.

  ‘Tether the horses, Vedvyasjee, and then we shall explore.’

  They mounted to the barbican’s ramparts, followed a parapet surmounting the curtain wall - a wall twenty feet high and half as thick. Amaury shaded his eyes. From the bivouac far below a smoke pillar smudged the sunset. He looked through his spyglass, grimaced and returned it to his pocket. Descending from a bastion halfway round the circuit they threaded a warren of alleys sheathed by ruinous houses - and checked at the first bleached skeleton, a fragile bundle of yellowing bones which vultures and jackals had sundered. There were more as they went on; at a corner bones and skulls and rib-cages choked the street from wall to wall, a grisly barrier which crunched and crackled as the couple clambered over. Amaury peered through a doorway, heard the sinister rustle of gliding coils and rapidly retreated. They craned into wells, saw green-scummed water in the depths glinting like mildewed coins. Amaury dropped a stone and heard it plop.

  ‘A perennial water supply within the walls.’

  They reached the citadel, a huge square keep three storeys high. Stout iron-bound doors closed the single entrance. Grunting with effort they forced one open. Vedvyas stepped inside, yelped and flailed his arms. Small furry bodies brushed their faces. ‘Bats,’ said Amaury. ‘Better than snakes!’ He scrutinized the interior. The citadel was fort and palace in one. Above arcaded cloisters running round all four sides the massive walls enclosed tiers of rooms whose windows opened on a spacious inner courtyard.

  ‘We will leave it. Too dark to explore in safety.’

  Behind the citadel, in a plot enclosed by a low mud wall, they found a temple. Vedvyas’s breathing hissed in his teeth; sharply he cocked his pistols.

  Crouching beside an ochre-spattered lingam garlanded by withered marigolds an old man watched them unblinkingly. His skull was shaven, caste marks daubed his forehead, from the skirts of a threadbare robe protruded dirt-scaled skinny legs. Cindery bristles stubbled the wrinkled cheeks, cunning eyes like ebony buttons flanked a gristly nose.

  ‘Who are you?’ demanded Amaury.

  Betel reddened lips emitted a rusty croak. Amaury shook his head. ‘Hindi - but strange to me. Can you understand him?’

  Vedvyas, pistols levelled distrustfully, addressed the ancient, who answered in creaking sentences as though his powers of speech were long disused. Amaury climbed the temple steps, peered through a pillared archway which led to a night-dark chamber hollowed from a shelf of solid rock. An evil fetor soured his nostrils - rancid fat and incense and corruption old as time. He hastily withdrew, sat on the steps and longed for a cheroot.

  The mirasdar said, ‘He is a priest, the city’s sole inhabitant. The place is called Dharia, and was held by Raghujee Bhonsla. I have heard a little more, but the man is old, and rambles. Let us return now, sahib, or we shall ride in darkness.’

  They picked a cautious passage down the hill, and heard the slithering menaces on either side. While they jogged across the plain to camp fires starring the dusk Vedvyas related the old priest’s tale. From these disjointed facts and accounts he gathered later Amaury, weeks afterwards, pieced together Dharia’s history: a fortress commanding a once prosperous jagir under Moghul rule, then stormed and ravaged by a Maratha army under Raghujee Bhonsla, Rajah of Berar. Save
for a solitary priest the city was abandoned; and peasants scratched a living in the jagir’s shrunken villages. Robbers spilled into the vacuum; the territory became a hiding place and highway for Pindaris.

  Amaury lifted his helmet; a night wind dried his clammy scalp. Troopers sat round camp fires talking quietly, cooking rice and goat flesh taken from Pindari plunder. They looked peaceful and relaxed, Amaury thought - like wild animals after a heavy meal, sated by their victims’ blood. The pyre glowed dull red, mottled on the surface by blackened, cindered lumps. An acrid stench of roasted flesh lingered in the air.

  He saw Hannibal unsaddled, watered and fed, collapsed exhaustedly on the ground beside Welladvice and chewed voraciously a half-cooked gobbet of mutton the sailor offered. He was tired beyond feeling, yet a sense of exultation thrilled like a vibrant nerve. Amaury recognized a goal, a dawn-glow flooding a dark horizon, a beacon that beckoned from the sombre tunnel of a purposeless, flat existence.

  ‘Yer bin to that fort, sir? Powerful-lookin’ place. Empty, ain’t it?’

  ‘Quite empty - and holds a diamond beyond price, a kingdom for the taking. We will rest here for two or three days, and afterwards return by easy marches to Bahrampal. Then,’ said Amaury dreamily, ‘I shall devise a scheme to pluck this jewel from its setting.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  While Marriott was exploring Bahrampal’s southern districts a runner brought him word of the Pindari raid in the north. He returned hastily to Hurrondah. The Collector’s house was all but built: a rambling single storeyed residence, a valance of deep verandas skirting vast high-ceilinged rooms. Bricklayers added the final courses, carpenters carved window frames, coolies spattered whitewash on the walls inside and out. Marriott decided that the building was fit for habitation, deposited his baggage and sent for Todd. Relaxing in wicker chairs they lounged comfortably on a veranda, claret glasses in hand, houccas burbling gently, while the ensign tried to answer Marriott’s anxious questions.

  ‘Upon my soul, I know very little. A peasant, badly hurt, told us where the marauders struck. Hugo took his cavalry and a gun, went galloping into the blue.’ Todd sucked the houcca, made a face, extracted a cheroot from a leather case. ‘The cannon has since returned. There has been no word from Hugo, which is deucedly odd - the village is but thirty miles away.’

  ‘A cursed nuisance! Why can’t the fellow keep us posted? I believe he might have got into a scrape. He has not much above eighty men, and the Pindaris, I am apprised, ride in considerable strength. It may be best to march your sepoys there at once.’

  Todd lighted his cheroot. ‘Difficult to imagine Hugo riding blindly into trouble. Had he met disaster his survivors would have returned. He may presently be restoring peace and order to the area - the pattern of work which has lately engaged your attention. How did your tour go?’

  Marriott settled deeper in the chair, held his glass to the sunset’s rays, admired the ruby glow. ‘ ‘Twas uncommonly fatiguing. I rode ten miles a day, going from village to village with my tent - once a dust storm tore the canvas from the pegs - settling peasant’s rents: a long and tedious process leaving room for little else. From cockcrow until noon I had twenty people round me, coming and going in parties and airing their complaints. One tells me an uncle stole his property while he was grievously sick of a fever, and so he cannot pay his Company dues. I delve the truth, and find the uncle died years since. Another declares he cannot afford his usual rent because his wife is dead, who used to do more work than his strongest bullock. All afternoon till dusk I ride the fields, estimating crop yields, judging boundary disputes, inspecting irrigation. So it went - and much else besides.’

  ‘Infernally difficult for you to conduct these affairs in Hindi, interpreter or no.’

  Marriott laughed. ‘I have acquired perforce a sufficient understanding, and jabber away like a Moorman. Even Urdu comes trippingly on my tongue. Seldom now do I need the banian’s help.’

  ‘I imagine the settlement is not half done.’

  ‘Not a tenth! I intend to speed the system. Individual assessments are excessively time-consuming, so I shall in future rate each village as a whole, giving the headmen powers to decide what every man should pay.’ Marriott frowned into his glass. ‘The Company’s share is fixed too high; mistakenly we take the Nizam’s old taxation rates as showing a tangible revenue. For centuries there has been no assessment of what the land can fairly pay. ‘ ‘Tis a point I must impress when next I write to the Council.’

  ‘Which reminds me.’ Todd groped in a pocket. ‘A letter to your address came yesterday from Moolvaunee - from Beddoes, I collect.’

  ‘Moolvaunee, eh? Why has not Fane arrived with the baggage we left? Is he sunk in sloth among his dusky doxies?’

  Marriott split the seal. Bullock carts squealed past the house; peasants, chattering loudly, returned from work in the fields. Shadows shrouded the veranda, mosquitoes whined in the dusk. Marriott called for lamps, adjusted a wick, spread the letter, beneath the light. He read i n silence and exclaimed loudly.

  ‘Damn my blood, Henry! Listen to this!

  “My dear Mr Marriott,

  Not without much persuasion I have prevailed on Mr Fane to disengage his attentions from the diversions of Moolvaunee, which I had hitherto deemed a damnably humdrum place. Your friend is a strange oddity, but his merits infinitely outweigh his peculiarities - I must not presume to use a stronger word.

  “I trust, before this letter arrives, he will be on his way to Hurrondah, bringing with him the baggage consigned to my protection. I take on myself to say you will find it intact down to the last milch goat and bag of rice.

  “You may be surprised to hear that I myself shall either accompany Mr Fane or follow at a few days’ interval, and that I shall be escorting Mrs Bradly. As you know very perfectly my way of thinking in this matter, I must assure you my relations towards her have been conducted with the utmost propriety. Her behaviour at Moolvaunee has been prudent, her mien obliging, her conversation polite; yet her demeanour has convinced me she is not insensible to my suit. In consequence of hopes she raised, however innocently, that one day she might accept my hand I have lately visited Madras, and obtained from the Recorder’s Court a licence for marriage. At the same time I induced an indigent chaplain, whom I tempted with plentiful pagodas, to brave the dangerous journey to Moolvaunee, where he now resides, his trepidation fortified by Bible and brandy.

  “The happiness of a most deserving female leads me, sir, to entreat your benevolence on her behalf. Pray release her from your keeping and condemn her no longer to a wretched existence beyond the bounds of polite society. I am satisfied your humanity will allow you to consign her to my care; and I feel a particular gratification in the hope that she may take my name, and conduct her life thereafter with respectable decorum. But I readily apprehend you may justly demand satisfaction, and it is to this purpose that I have cleaned my pistols, and journey to Hurrondah, rather than celebrate my nuptials in a surreptitious manner mortifying to myself, to you, and above all to my esteemed friend Mrs Bradly.

  “During my short sojourn in Madras I passed an agreeable evening in Mr Harley’s company. He has lately had your advices regarding affairs in Bahrampal, and is quite alarmed by the hostility you encountered and the battles which engaged your scanty forces. He talked of sending reinforcements. I endeavoured to reassure him with, I fear, indifferent success. I believe he entertains for you a fatherly affection; and seems unduly concerned on your behalf.

  “I heard little talked of in Madras but the fashions! It is reckoned the height of indelicacy to powder the hair, or wear clocked stockings. For my own part I am very well satisfied with the old customs, and too sedate to adopt every absurd and preposterous innovation.

  “I remain, sir,

  Your obedt. servant,

  Gregory Beddoes

  Moolvaunee,

  September 10th, 1801.

  “P.S. Urgency compels me to unseal this letter. Advices have been received h
ere that General Wrangham himself, taking leave of absence, conducts a troop of dragoons to Bahrampal. He is presently a march distant from Moolvaunee. I conceive he may attach himself to my party, and that you will shortly see us all in Hurrondah. There’s society for you!” ’

  Marriott drained his claret, slammed the goblet on the table, cracked the stem. ‘Devil take it! I assured the Council all was well in Bahrampal! Why the deuce does Harley send me soldiers?’

  ‘ ‘Tis cavalry,’ said Todd. ‘I dare say Beddoes told him we could not contrive without. Don't you recall, when we broke our march in Moolvaunee, he asserted we needed horsemen to intercept mounted looties?’

  Marriott refilled his glass. ‘It is all hellish inconvenient! My work in the jagir not half done, Pindaris raiding the north, Hugo gallivanting I know not where - and a general visits Bahrampal with a band of unwanted troops!’

  ‘Very ill-timed,’ Todd agreed. ‘What answer,’ he added cautiously, ‘will you give Beddoes in the matter of Mrs Bradly?’

  ‘God knows! Hurrondah, I allow, is horridly unsuited to accommodate a female - but how can I entrust her to that old profligate’s clutches?’

  Marriott sent hircarrahs to the stricken village, and learned perplexedly that Amaury had vanished, leaving no directions as to his destination. The scouts searched further afield, reported he was nowhere in Bahrampal, nor anywhere in the Circars. He must, the Collector concluded, have entered territory forbidden by Company edict, gone far beyond reach of rescue by Todd’s slow-moving sepoys. Marriott debated what to do, and judged it useless to follow a phantom. Those who broke the rules must endure the repercussions. Amaury, an officer on furlough, soon to be cashiered, had no official standing in the Company’s expedition - and his rapscallion cavalry’s going was a most convenient riddance. He determined to abandon both to whatever doom engulfed them - and rigidly repelled a pricking conscience.