Free Lance Page 24

  Marriott met wide blue eyes, and tried to make his tone convincing. Through the bedroom’s shutters, closed against the sun, parallel golden bars striped Malabaree rugs. Flies droned endlessly, and crawled on the ceiling. A string-cot bedstead stood against the wall, mosquito curtains draped above the poles; a fly-spotted mirror crowned the chest of drawers. Heavy mahogany furniture taken from the palace elbowed shisham tables made by local carpenters. A curtained archway led to the bathroom, a small cell-like chamber furnished only by a hip bath - cask staves bound with iron - and a tin bucket inside a commode. A stark setting for Amelia, Marriott thought, but the best he could provide - hardly rivalling her suite in Moubray’s Gardens, a slum compared to Beddoes’ palatial rooms. This would be her ambience if she stayed in Marriott’s keeping; he prayed inwardly the contrast was apparent to her eye.

  She looked distraught. ‘Never would I suppose such a thing! You have treated me generously, Charles, and I am eternally grateful. But Mr Beddoes offers...’

  ‘Marriage, security, respectability - dangled like lures to tempt an unwary fish! Have you considered his age - and you no more than a girl? He won’t live for ever. How can you exist as a widow in Moolvaunee?’

  ‘When Gregory - Mr Beddoes - was lately in Madras,’ said Amelia softly, ‘he consulted an attorney, and settled on me a sufficiently liberal fortune. I shall not want for means to buy a passage home, and live comfortably after.’

  ‘Prodigiously bountiful, I vow!’ Marriott sneered. ‘Meanwhile, he lives an isolated life, entrenched in habits repugnant to all notions of propriety. Are you ready to share his favours with native bibees?’

  Amelia said steadily, ‘Gregory has expelled his zenana. Mr Fane, I apprehend, has gathered the choicest jewels into his casket.’ She blushed, and smiled tremulously. ‘What an odiously improper conversation, Charles!’

  Marriott said tautly, ‘Amelia, do you love Beddoes?’

  ‘He offers me his hand and name.’ The azure eyes held Marriott’s. ‘Would you do as much, Charles?’

  Marriott strode to a window, opened a shutter, stared into blinding sunlight. Unseeingly he watched a string of camels, nose-pegs hitched to tails, plodding behind a drover to the grazing grounds. His conscience, he decided, was clean. He had presented fairly to Amelia all the disadvantages that marriage to Beddoes brought, yet she would not be moved. An encumbrance was gone: the road to Caroline rolled straight and clear as a turnpike. None the less frustration, damaged pride and self-respect in tatters soured his deliverance; he wanted revenge on the man who had won his mistress.

  Marriott slammed the shutter.

  ‘You have made up your mind, and I bow to your wishes.’ He held out his hands. ‘Come, my dear - will you give me a farewell kiss?’

  Amelia nestled in his arms, and lifted her face. Lingeringly he kissed the warm soft lips. His fingers fumbled the ribbons of her striped sarsanet gown. She stiffened, and pressed her hands against his chest.

  ‘No, Charles! You must not--’

  He bared her shoulders, lowered his head and kissed the pointed breasts. Amelia struggled, breathing quickly.

  ‘Stop, Charles! It is most shocking indeed! You have not the right... I am promised to ... oh!... for shame, sir... you have torn my shift... your hands... so wickedly wanton... yes, there! . ... ah, my love..

  Marriott poked his head into Beddoes’ room. ‘Mrs Bradly, sir, has decided in your favour. I have bestowed on her my - um- blessing.’ He smiled genially, and closed the door.

  Hurrondah’s European population had been more than doubled, and convivial dinners were the daily rule in Marriott’s house. But Amaury held aloof. He refused to change his quarters from Vedvyas’s palace, where Todd and Welladvice also continued to live. Fane occupied Marriott's old rooms, kept his harem in an adjoining bibee-house, and hospitably offered his companions a share of his dusky brood. Todd, scandalized, stiffly refused. Welladvice wagged a sorrowful head. ‘Thank’ee kindly, sir,’ he said, ‘I dassn’t risk it. Bibees has poxed me twice, an’ there ain’t no sawbones here to set me right.’ Amaury smiled. ‘Uncommonly civil of you, William, but no. I have a young Biharee in keeping, and I fear she might take offence.’

  Welladvice removed Vedvyas’s three-pounders from the gun park to his foundry, replaced their clumsy bracket trails with blocks, fitted new elevating screws, bouched copper linings in fire-worn vents. He attached the guns to six-horse teams and took them for ten-mile marches at an unremitting canter. Smiling broadly, he reported to Amaury. ‘Half a six-pounder’s weight behind the team: twelve hunderweight agin twenty-seven. They’ll stay wi’ yer cavalry, however fast or far yer goes!’ Amaury, taking nothing on trust, led the guns on a jolting cross-country gallop. Well satisfied, he bought bullocks to draw the two teamless six-pounders, because no more horses of a suitable stamp existed in Hurrondah.

  He commanded Welladvice to buy bullock carts for transporting all the case and roundshot in Vedvyas’s magazine, all cartridges and every grain of powder. The sailor, puzzled, scratched his head. ‘We a’ready carries the reg’lation hunder an’ twenty-eight rounds per gun on the wagons, an’ thirty-two reserve fer each division. Why d’yer want more, sir?’

  ‘Just do as I say, Mr Welladvice, and tell me when they are ready.’

  Amaury instantly resumed the squadron’s rigorous drilling. When morning parades were over he spent hours in the lines, gossiping with Rahtors and Rohillas, winning all their friendliness and trust, strengthening a bond already forged in the furious chase to Dharia. He kept open house for the officers; risaldars and jemadars frequently shared his meals. Todd, entering unexpectedly, discovered him in shirt-sleeves and loose trousers, squatting tailor-fashion on the floor and eating curry with his fingers. Reading the ensign’s revulsion as he hastily withdrew, Amaury amusedly appreciated Todd’s conclusion which Fane reported later: ‘Damme, William - Hugo is going native!’

  Amaury fostered with every man, from risaldar to trooper, a friendly camaraderie which proscribed familiarity - the line between leader and led was never crossed - until he became convinced these ruffianly hirelings would follow him to any strait that promised battle and booty. Vedvyas was a different matter. He wanted the mirasdar’s help - a hereditary authority to support and confirm his own - and his accumulated treasure hidden somewhere in the palace. Distrusting native perfidy he refrained from revealing his plans; and Vedvyas turned a stony face to cautious hints and allusions.

  Eventually, on a sun-broiled morning while they watched the squadron’s drilling, Amaury threw prudence to the winds and broached the business plainly. He said negligently, ‘After ruling Bahrampal so long are you now content, sirdar sahib, to accept your place as a mirasdar among many, all equal under the Company? Does not the situation sometimes irk you?’

  The touch of contempt in Amaury’s drawl flickered Vedvyas like a whip. ‘What does a tiger do when snared and trapped in a cage? Roar and lash his tail, and claw uselessly the bars! Should I likewise betray despair, and add relish to my captors’ triumph? Leave me a tatter of dignity, sahib!’

  ‘Escape from the cage, Vedvyasjee! Escape to a dominion fairer than Bahrampal, and beyond the Company’s sway! With a little planning and forethought - and a pinch of resolution - you can break the Company’s fetters and rule your destiny again! Are you brave enough to stake your future on a throw?’

  Vedvyas gave him a smouldering look. ‘Nobody has yet questioned my courage - and lived! You have hinted at this before. Are you, a Company officer, suggesting I should rebel, and fight your dragoons and sepoys? I am not a half-wit, Umree Sahib!’ Amaury watched the squadron canter from column of troops into line, and explosively rebuked an errant serrefile. ‘No need to cross swords with the Company - why should I advocate suicide? The ends I seek on your behalf may easily be won. Before I reveal my plans, have I your oath of silence?’

  ‘You have, upon my gods.’

  Amaury repressed a smile. Though he liked and respected Vedvyas he believed him t
reacherous as a viper, the promise worth a counterfeit pagoda. ‘Very well. This is my proposal. Dharia lies open for the taking. Let us go there secretly with all our men, occupy the fortress, and thence impose supremacy on the jagir it commands.’

  Vedvyas inscrutably inspected a wheel into half-troop echelon. ‘Jemadar Kandiah Ram muddles the commands. A stupid dolt, unworthy of his rank. He must be replaced. No, sahib,’ he said decisively. ‘The idea is quite impracticable. Simple to occupy Dharia - the garrison an aged priest. And then? Will the Bhonsla of Berar permit two hundred men to wrest from him his jagir? How shall we withstand his fifty thousand soldiers? What do we live on, how pay our troops - with promises and Dharia’s broken stones?’

  ‘You possess a vast fortune, sirdarjee,’ Amaury said softly. ‘For twenty years Bahrampal’s revenues have flowed into your coffers.’

  ‘And there they remain. I need a fanam or two to sustain my paltry state. Shall I hazard, all on one wild gamble?’

  ‘I will willingly stake my resources - though a trifle compared to yours. Moreover I shall be outcast from the ranks of all the English; a fate you will not suffer in Hindostanee eyes. Certainly, your stature will increase.’

  Vedvyas stroked his moustache. ‘You are a wily tempter, Umree Sahib. Almost you persuade me - but not quite. I am mirasdar of Hurrondah under Company rule: a lowly position but safe. Shall I exchange it for that of an outlawed dacoit locked in a ruined city? I declare you ask too much!’

  Amaury sighed. His arguments were arrows on an adamantine wall. He gave Vedvyas farewell, dismissed the parade and rode away pondering, reins loose on Hannibal’s neck. The mercenaries, he was convinced, would follow where he led, whether Vedvyas came or not. Money remained the problem. He must have ready cash. After seizing Dharia Amaury foresaw a profitless period while they won the peasants’ trust, restored the villages’ population and prosperity - on which revenues depended - enrolled local labour to repair the fortress walls and make the city habitable. In pay alone his little force would swallow a monthly four hundred pagodas; he must also find money for labour gangs, food and forage; and wages for more mercenary troops he hoped later to enlist. A district of Dharia’s size, given time and management, should in the end produce ninety thousand pagodas a year. Given time. Meanwhile, he had to have cash in his pocket.

  Amaury climbed Hurrondah’s hill, stooping over the saddle’s pommel to ease Hannibal’s ascent, and purposely followed a roundabout route to the squadron’s stables. A tight, house-canyoned alley wound to the sepoys’ barracks: long small-windowed buildings which had once sheltered palace retainers. He reined at a courtyard fronting a squat brown house, where a sentry paced his beat. Amaury answered the soldier’s salute, and pensively rattled his feet in the stirrups. This, the sepoys’ quarter guard, held the bell of arms and treasury - and was protected day and night by a ten-strong havildar’s guard. Amaury broodingly stroked the horse’s mane. Bahrampal’s Company funds: of twenty thousand sterling carried from Madras at least fifteen thousand must be left. Gold mohurs and pagodas clinking in leather yakdans. Saliva moistened Amaury’s tongue: the memory wafted a savour like mellow sun-warmed wine.

  He touched spurs to Hannibal’s flanks, wandered round to an alley which divided the quarter guard’s rear from a high blank wall of the palace wing that housed Vedvyas’s zenana; and contemplated, chin in hand, the width of the narrow cleft.

  ‘Possible,’ he murmured. ‘Perfectly possible - if only I could persuade him.’

  Amaury gathered the rein and trotted briskly to his quarters.

  Hurrondah’s English visitors amused themselves as best they could. Caroline rode before sunrise, escorted by Anstruther and sometimes Todd, who deserted his cherished sepoys, relegated drill parades to the senior subhadar’s charge, and smothered the call of duty. Military scruples never afflicted Anstruther: he attended stables daily, ambled to evening roll call, and once a week paraded his twenty dragoons, trotted round the fields and practised sabre drill. This, the sum of his duties, he considered sufficiently zealous. ‘Dreadfully fatiguing. In Fort St George the adjutant takes parades!’

  Caroline, in excellent spirits, declared herself enthralled by dusty mud-brick villages nestling in the shadows of tamarinds and mango groves, and the rolling tree-freckled plains that lapped the distant hills. Passing a field where dewdrops pearled the grasses she said, ‘Unfortunate Mr Marriott - in Madras he always rode at daybreak! I collect he is overworked, and may not spare the time. Where,’ she added carelessly, ‘does Captain Amaury hide all day? Never, until dinner, does he show himself in society!’

  Todd frowned. ‘Hugo is - h’m - very diligent in his duties.’ Caroline sniffed. ‘Which duties? Is he not on furlough? A most assiduous officer, indeed!’

  Beddoes escorted Amelia whenever she rode abroad or took the air in a palankeen, and hovered jealously at her elbow when Marriott appeared. (‘As dead a case of splice as ever I saw in my life!’ Anstruther commented sagely.) General Wrangham inspected the sepoys’ barracks, dubiously regarded Amaury’s cavalrymen and artillerymen, explored Hurrondah’s teeming streets, found dragoons frequenting arrack shops and castigated Anstruther, who cheerfully accepted the reprimand, put Hurrondah out of bounds, organized foot races, tugs of war and shooting parties to occupy his men’s extensive leisure - and returned happily to his amusements. The chaplain, seldom visible, moved in a spiritual atmosphere - a rich aroma of gin and brandy-pawnee.

  The midday heat drove everyone indoors; in darkened rooms they played backgammon, brag or whist, retired to siesta during the afternoons, gathered in the dining-room when evening shadows lengthened and crows in soaring flocks cawed raucously to roost.

  Marriott rarely shared their relaxations. Petitioners in droves thronged his office veranda; he waded through grants and deeds, settled conflicting claims to a sugar cane field or silted well, checked revenue returns, dictated scorching letters to defaulters. An unenthusiastic Fane was swiftly installed in a room allotted as magistrate’s court, where he flinched like a startled sparrow from mountainous piles of paper: all cases awaiting judgement. A horrified young magistrate realized he would have to hear three or four hundred cases every month, record the proceedings in writing, including the pleadings and evidence, furnish monthly reports of every cause decided, monthly accounts of every fanam passing through the court, correspond with village headmen and mirasdars, and send reports to the Recorder’s Court in Madras.

  Despite the work that absorbed him, Marriott felt fidgety and fretful. He could not screw up his courage to propose to Caroline - the offer made months ago in Madras, he decided, had lapsed. He longed to be out in the districts, disposing farmland settlements - a boundless task the Pindari raid had interrupted - and reviled the polite convention which compelled his presence in Hurrondah while Sir John remained. How long did he intend to stay? After dinner, when ladies and servants had gone, he nudged a madeira decanter to the general’s elbow, and said, ‘You must find our society excessively dull, sir. I am persuaded we ought to contrive for you more enjoyable diversions.’

  ‘Pray do not trouble yourself, Mr Marriott - I am vastly entertained. However, I shall not be here much longer; my leave is nearly done.’ He sent Marriott a frosty look. ‘Have you spoken to that daughter of mine?’

  Marriott said awkwardly, ‘I sincerely lament that circumstances have not yet afforded a proper opportunity. Pray believe the omission does not proceed from want of conduct; and will shortly be repaired. Meanwhile, sir, I must visit an outlying district where, I gravely suspect, the peasants in a remote village practise human sacrifice.’

  ‘The devil they do! Damned barbarous blacks!’

  ‘A fertility rite, I am apprised. They fatten the victim for months; then tie him to a post and hack pieces from the living body. The strips of flesh are buried in fields, or slung on poles above streams that water the crops. Would you consider joining my expedition?’

  ‘Certainly, certainly. Nothing would give me greater pleas
ure. Tis always interesting to observe how you fellows...’

  Laughter drowned his words. At a card table in a corner the three young men and Beddoes played erratic hands of whist, the cornet spicing the play with gossip from Madras. Marriott indicated Anstruther with a wave of his cheroot. ‘How long, Sir John, will the dragoon detachment stay in Bahrampal?’

  The general sipped madeira, regarded disapprovingly the chaplain snoring in his chair. ‘The Council’s intention is that they, and the sepoys, should remain until you consider your District completely settled.’

  ‘I do consider it,’ Marriott answered firmly. ‘The military are superfluous here, and may be removed directly.’

  Amaury, elegant in silver-buttoned primrose coat and cream-coloured sateen breeches, removed a languid gaze from the ceiling. ‘I am compelled to differ, Charles. Bahrampal internally is safe enough, but what if the Pindaris strike again? Are you trusting, after all, to my cavalry’s protection?’

  Marriott said briskly, ‘I am fully determined, Hugo, your rabble shall be disbanded. ‘Tis imprudent to retain them when the Company’s troops are gone; and they lend Vedvyas a consequence he does not merit. Moreover, with that done, I shall recover from Vedvyas all the illegal revenues he has exacted over the years. I have the amounts precisely tallied, the values appraised from old assessments. He holds unlawfully in his treasury some fifty thousand pagodas - near twenty thousand pounds!’

  Ash shuddered from Amaury’s cheroot and scorched the damask cloth. He brushed it away. ‘A surprising sum,’ he said in even tones. ‘Are you sure this is wise, Charles?’

  ‘Disbanding those mercenary villains is certainly wise!’ General Wrangham barked. ‘I have watched their drill and gunnery. They are too damnably efficient!’