You might think it impossible for a white man to pass himself off as a native soldier in John Company’s army, and indeed I doubt if anyone else has ever done it. But when you’ve been called on to play as many parts as I have, it’s a bagatelle. Why, I’ve been a Danish prince, a Texas slave-dealer, an Arab sheik, a Cheyenne Dog Soldier, and a Yankee navy lieutenant in my time, among other things, and none of ’em was as hard to sustain as my lifetime’s impersonation of a British officer and gentleman. The truth is we all live under false pretences much of the time; you just have to put on a bold front and brazen it through.
I’ll admit my gift of languages has been my greatest asset, and I suppose I’m a pretty fair actor; anyway, I’d carried off the role of an Asian-Afghan nigger often enough, and before I was more than a day’s ride on the way to Meerut I was thoroughly back in the part, singing Kabuli bazaar songs through my nose, sneering sideways at anyone I passed, and answering greetings with a grunt or a snarl. I had to keep my chin and mouth covered for the first three days, until my beard had sprouted to a disreputable stubble; apart from that, I needed no disguise, for I was dark and dirty-looking enough to start with. By the time I struck the Grand Trunk my own mother wouldn’t have recognised the big, hairy Border ruffian jogging along so raffishly with his boots out of his stirrups, and his love-lock curling out under his puggaree; on the seventh day, when I cursed and shoved my pony through the crowded streets of Meerut City, spurning the rabble aside as a good Hasanzai should, I was even thinking in Pushtu, and if you’d offered me a seven-course dinner at the Café Royal I’d have turned it down for mutton-and-rice stew with boiled dates to follow.
My only anxiety was Ilderim’s cousin, Gulam Beg, whom I had to seek out in the native cavalry lines beyond the city; he would be sure to run a sharp eye over a new recruit, and if he spotted anything queer about me I’d have a hard job keeping up the imposture. Indeed, at the last minute my nerve slackened a little, and I rode about for a couple of hours before I plucked up the courage to go and see him – I rode on past the native infantry lines, and over the Nullah Bridge up to the Mall in the British town; it was while I was sitting my pony, brooding under the trees, that a dog-cart with two English children and their mother went by, and one of the brats squealed with excitement and said I looked just like Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. That cheered me up, for some reason – anyway, I had to have a place to eat and sleep while I shirked my duty, so I finally presented myself at the headquarters of the 3rd Native Light Cavalry, and demanded to see the woordy-major.
I needn’t have worried. Gulam Beg was a stout, white-whiskered old cove with silver-rimmed spectacles on the end of his nose, and when I announced that Ilderim Khan of Mogala was my sponsor he was all over me. Hasanzai, was I, and late of the polis? That was good – I had the look of an able man, yes – doubtless the Colonel Sahib would look favourably on such a fine upstanding recruit. I had seen no military service, though? – hm … he looked at me quizzically, and I tried to slouch a bit more.
“Not in the Guides, perhaps?” says he, with his head on one side. “Or the cutch-cavalry? No? Then doubtless it is by chance that you stand the regulation three paces from my table, and clench your hand with the thumb forward – and that the pony I see out yonder is girthed and bridled like one of ours.” He chuckled playfully. “A man’s past in his own affair, Makarram Khan – what should it profit us to pry and discover that a new ‘recruit’ had once quit the Sirkar’s service over some small matter of feud or blood-letting, eh? You come from Ilderim – it is enough. Be ready to see the Colonel Sahib at noon.”
He’d spotted me for an old soldier, you see, which was all to the good; having detected me in a small deception, it never occurred to him to look for a large one. And he must have passed on his conclusion to the Colonel, for when I made my salaam to that worthy officer on the orderly-room verandah, he looked me up and down and says to the woordy-major in English:
“Shouldn’t wonder if you weren’t right, Gulam Beg – he’s heard Boots and Saddles before, that’s plain. Probably got bored with garrison work and slipped off one night with half-a-dozen rifles on his back. And now, having cut the wrong throat or lifted the wrong herd, he’s come well south to avoid retribution.” He sat back, fingering the big white moustache which covered most of his crimson face. “Ugly-looking devil, ain’t he though? Hasanzai of the Black Mountain, eh? – yes, that’s what I’d have thought. Very good …” He frowned at me and then said, very carefully:
“Company cavalry apka mangta?”
which abomination of bad Urdu I took to mean: did I want to join the Company cavalry? So I showed my teeth and says: “Han, sahib,” and thought I might as well act out my part by betraying some more military knowledge – I ducked my head and leaned over and offered him the hilt of my sheathed Khyber knife, at which he burst out laughing and touched it,14 saying that Gulam Beg was undoubtedly right, and I wasn’t half knowledgeable for a chap who pretended never to have been in the Army before. He gave instructions for me to be sworn in, and I took the oath on the sabre-blade, ate a pinch of salt, and was informed that I was now a skirmisher of the 3rd Native Light Cavalry, that my daffadar was Kudrat Ali, that I would be paid one rupee per day, with a quarter-anna dyeing allowance, and that since I had brought my own horse I would be excused the customary recruit deposit. Also that if I was half as much a soldier as the Colonel suspected, and kept my hands off other people’s throats and property, I might expect promotion in due course.
Thereafter I was issued with a new puggaree, half-boots and pyjamy breeches, a new and very smart silver-grey uniform coat, a regulation sabre, a belt and bandolier, and a tangle of saddlery which was old and stiff enough to have been used at Waterloo (and probably had), and informed by a betel-chewing havildar that if I didn’t have it reduced to gleaming suppleness by next morning, I had best look out. Finally, he took me to the armoury, and I was shown (mark this well) a new rifled Enfield musket, serial number 4413 – some things a soldier never forgets – which I was informed was mine henceforth, and more precious than my own mangy carcase.
Without thinking, I picked it up and tested the action, as I’d done a score of times at Woolwich – and the Goanese store-wallah gaped.
“Who taught you that?” says he. “And who bade you handle it, jangli pig? It is for you to see – you touch it only when it is issued on parade.” And he snatched it back from me. I thought another touch of character would do no harm, so I waited till he had waddled away to replace it in the rack, and then whipped out my Khyber knife and let it fly, intending to plant it in the wall a foot or so away from him. My aim was off though – the knife imbedded itself in the wall all right, but it nicked his arm in passing, and he squealed and rolled on the floor, clutching at his blood-smeared sleeve.
“Bring the knife back,” I snarled, baring my fangs at him, and when he had scrambled up, grey-faced and terrified, and returned it, I touched the point on his chest and says: “Call Makarram Khan a pig just once more, ulla kabaja,a and I will carry thine eyes and genitals on this point as kebabs.” Then I made him lick the blood off the blade, spat in his face, and respectfully asked the havildar what I should do next. He, being a Mussulman, was all for me, and said, grinning, that I should make a fair recruit; he told my daffadar, Kudrat Ali, about the incident, and presently the word went round the big, airy barrack-room that Makarram Khan was a genuine saddle-and-lance man, from up yonder, who would strike first and inquire after – doubtless a Border lifter, and a feud-carrier, but a man who knew how to treat Hindoo insolence, and therefore to be properly respected.
So there I was – Colonel Harry Paget Flashman, late of the 11th Hussars, 17th Lancers and the Staff, former aide to the Commander-in-Chief, and now acting-sowar and rear file in the skirmishing squadron, 3rd Cavalry, Bengal Army, and if you think it was a mad-brained train of circumstance that had taken me there – well, so did I. But once I had got over the unreality of it all, and stopped imagining that everyone was going to see through my disguise, I settled in comfortably enough.
It was an eery feeling, though, at first, to squat on my charpaib against the wall, with my puggaree off, combing my hair or oiling my light harness, and look round that room at the brown, half-naked figures, laughing and chattering – of all the things that soldiers talk about, women, and officers, and barrack gossip, and women, and rations, and women – but in a foreign tongue which, although I spoke it perfectly and even with a genuine frontier accent, was still not my own. While I’d been by myself, as I say, I’d even been thinking in Pushtu, but here I had to hold on tight and remember what I was meant to be – for one thing, I wasn’t used to being addressed in familiar terms by native soldiers, much less ordered about by an officious naikc who’d normally have leaped to attention if I’d so much as looked in his direction. When the man who bunked next to me, Pir Ali, a jolly rascal of a Baluch, tapped my shoulder in suggesting that we might visit the bazaar that first evening, I absolutely stared at him and just managed to bite back that “Damn your impudence” that sprang to my tongue.
It wasn’t easy, for a while; quite apart from remembering obeisances at the prescribed times, and making a show at cooking my own dinner at the choola,d there were a thousand tiny details to beware of – I must remember not to cross my legs when sitting, or blow my nose like a European, or say “Mmh?” if someone said something I couldn’t catch, or use the wrong hand, or clear my throat in the discreet British fashion, or do any of the things that would have looked damned odd in an Afghan frontiersman.15
Of course I made mistakes – once or twice I was just plain ignorant of things that I ought to have known, like how to chew a majoone when Pir Ali offered me one (you have to spit into your hand from time to time, or you’ll end up poisoned), or how to cut a sheep-tail for curry, or even how to sharpen my knife in the approved fashion. When I blundered, and anyone noticed, I found the best way was to stare them down and growl sullenly.
But more often than not my danger lay in betraying knowledge which Makarram Khan simply wouldn’t have had. For example, when Kudrat Ali was giving us sword exercise I found myself once falling into the “rest” position of a German schlager-fencer (not that anyone in India was likely to recognise that), and again, day-dreaming about fagging days at Rugby while cleaning my boots one evening, I found myself humming “Widdicombe Fair” – fortunately under my breath. My worst blunder, though, was when I was walking near a spot where the British officers were playing cricket, and the ball came skipping towards me – without so much as thinking I snapped it up, and was looking to throw down the wicket when I remembered, and threw it back as clumsily as I could. Once or two of them stared, though, and I heard someone say that big nigger was a deuced smart field. That rattled me, and I trod even more carefully than before.
My best plan, I soon discovered, was to do and say as little as possible, and act the surly, reserved hillman who walked by himself, and whom it was safest not to disturb. The fact that I was by way of being a protégé of the woordy-major’s, and a Hasanzai (and therefore supposedly eccentric), led to my being treated with a certain deference; my imposing size and formidable looks did the rest, and I was left pretty much alone. Once or twice I walked out with Pir Ali, to lounge in the Old Market and ogle the bints, or dally with them in the boutique doorways, but he found my grunts a poor return for his own cheery prattle, and abandoned me to my own devices.
It wasn’t, as you can guess, the liveliest life for me at first – but I only had to think of the alternative to resign myself to it for the present. It was easy enough soldiering, and I quickly won golden opinions from my naik and jemadarf for the speed and intelligence with which I appeared to learn my duties. At first it was a novelty, drilling, working, eating, and sleeping with thirty Indian troopers – rather like being on the other side of the bars of a monkey zoo – but when you’re closed into a world whose four corners are the barrack-room, the choola, the stables, and the maidan, it can become maddening to have to endure the society of an inferior and foreign race with whom you’ve no more in common than if they were Russian moujiks or Irish bog-trotters. What makes it ten times worse is the outcast feeling that comes of knowing that within a mile or two your own kind are enjoying all the home comforts, damn ’em – drinking barra pegs, smoking decent cigars, flirting and ramming with white women, and eating ices for dessert. (I was no longer so enamoured of mutton pilau in ghee,g you gather.) Within a fortnight I’d have given anything to join an English conversation again, instead of listening to Pir Ali giggling about how he’d bullocked the headman’s wife on his last leave, or the endless details of Sita Gopal’s uncle’s law-suit, or Ram Mangal’s reviling of the havildar, or Gobinda Dal’s whining about how he and his brothers, being soldiers, had lost much of the petty local influence they’d formerly enjoyed in their Oudh village, now that the Sirkar had taken over.
When it got too bad I would loaf up to the Mall, and gape at the mem-sahibs with their big hats and parasols, driving by, and watch the officers cantering past, flicking their crops as I clumped my big boots and saluted, or squat near the church to listen to them singing “Greenland’s Icy Mountains” of a Sunday evening. Dammit, I missed my own folk then – far worse than if they’d been a hundred miles away. I missed Lakshmibai, too – odd, ain’t it, but I think what riled me most was the knowledge that if she’d seen me as I now was – well, she wouldn’t even have noticed me. However, it had to be stuck out – I just had to think of Ignatieff – so I would trudge back to barracks and lie glowering while the sowars chattered. It had this value – I learned more about Indian soldiers in three weeks than I’d have done in a lifetime’s ordinary service.
You’ll think I’m being clever afterwards, but I soon realised that all wasn’t as well with them as I’d have thought at first sight. They were Northern Muslims, mostly, with a sprinkling of high-caste Oudh Hindoos – the practice of separating the races in different companies or troops hadn’t come in then. Good soldiers, too; the 3rd had distinguished itself in the last Sikh War, and a few had frontier service. But they weren’t happy – smart as you’d wish on parade, but in the evening they would sit about and croak like hell – as first I thought it was just the usual military sore-headedness, but it wasn’t.
At first all I heard was vague allusions, which I didn’t inquire about for fear of betraying a suspicious ignorance – they talked a deal about one of the padres in the garrison, Reynolds sahib, and how Colonel Carmik-al-Ismeet (that was the 3rd’s commander, Carmichael-Smith) ought to keep him off the post, and there was a fairly general repeated croak about polluted flour, and the Enlistment Act, but I didn’t pay much heed until one night, I remember, an Oudh sowar came back from the bazaar in a tremendous taking. I don’t even remember his name, but what had happened was that he’d been taking part in a wrestling match with some local worthy, and before he’d got his shirt back on afterwards, some British troopers from the Dragoon Guards who were there at the time had playfully snapped the sacred cord which he wore over his shoulder next the skin – as his kind of Hindoos did.
“Banchuts!h Scum!” He was actually weeping with rage. “It is defiled – I am unclean!” And for all that his mates tried to cheer him up, saying he could get a new one, blessed by a holy man, he went on raving – they take these things very seriously, you know, like Jews and Muslims with pork. If it seems foolish to you, you may compare it with how you’d feel if a nigger pissed in the font at your own church.
“I shall go to the Colonel sahib!” says he finally, and one of the Hindoos, Gobinda Dal, sneered:
“Why should he care – the man who will defile our attai will not rebuke an English soldier for this!”
“What’s all this about the atta?” says I to Pir Ali, and he shrugged.
“The Hindoos say that the sahibs are grinding cow bones into the sepoys’ flour to break their caste. For me, they can break any Hindoo’s stupid caste and welcome.”
“Why should they do that?” says I, and Sita Gopal, who overheard, spat and says:
“Where have you lived, Hasanzai? The Sirkar will break every man’s caste – aye, and what passes for caste even among you Muslims: there are pig bones in the atta, too, in case you didn’t know it. Naik Shere Afzul in the second troop told me; did he not see them ground at the sahibs’ factory at Cawnpore?”
“Wind from a monkey’s backside,” says I. “What would it profit the sahibs to pollute your food – since when do they hate their soldiers?”
To my astonishment about half a dozen of them scoffed aloud at this – “Listen to the Black Mountain munshi!”j “The sahibs love their soldiers – and so the gora-cavalry broke Lal’s string for him tonight!” “Have you never heard of the Dum-Dum sweeper, Makarram Khan?” and so on. Ram Mangal, who was the noisiest croaker of them all, spat out:
“It is of a piece with the padre sahib’s talk, and the new regulation that will send men across the kala pani – they will break our caste to make us Christians! Do they not know this even where you come from, hillman? Why, it is the talk of the army!”
I growled that I didn’t put any faith in latrine-gossip – especially if the latrine was a Hindoo one, and at this one of the older men, Sardul something-or-other, shook his head and says gravely:
“It was no latrine-rumour, Makarram Khan, that came out of Dum-Dum arsenal.” And for the first time I heard the astonishing tale that was, I discovered, accepted as gospel by every sepoy in the Bengal army – of the sweeper at Dum-Dum who’d asked a caste sepoy for a drink from his dish, and on being refused, had told the sepoy that he needn’t be so dam’ particular because the sahibs were going to do away with caste by defiling every soldier in the army by greasing their cartridges with cow and pig fat.
“This thing is known,” says old Sardul, positively, and he was the kind of old soldier that men listen to, thirty years’ service, Aliwal medal, and clean conduct sheet, damn your eyes. “Is not the new Enfield musket in the armoury? Are not the new greased cartridges being prepared? How can any man keep his religion?”
“They say that at Benares the jawans have been permitted to grease their own loads,” says Pir Ali,16 but they hooted him down.
“They say!” cries Ram Mangal. “It is like the tale they put about that all the grease was mutton-fat – if that were so, where is the need for anyone to make his own grease? It is a lie – just as the Enlistment Act is a lie, when they said it was a provision only, and no one would be asked to do foreign service. Ask the 19th at Behrampore – where their officers told them they must serve in Burma if they refused the cartridge when it was issued! Aye, but they will refuse – then we’ll see!” He waved his hands in passion. “The polluted atta is another link in the chain – like the preaching of that owl Reynolds sahib with his Jesus-talk, which Carmik-al-Ismeet permits to our offence. He wants to put us to shame!”
“It is true enough,” says old Sardul, sadly. “Yet I would not believe it if such a sahib as my old Colonel MacGregor – did he not take a bullet meant for me at Kandahar? – were to look in my eye and say it was false. The pity is that Carmik-al-Ismeet is not such a sahib – there are none such nowadays,” says he with morbid satisfaction, “and the Army is but a poor ruin of what it was. You do not know today what officers were – if you had seen Sale sahib or Larrinshk sahib or Cotton sahib, you would have seen men!” (Since he’d served in Afghanistan I’d hoped he would mention Iflass-man sahib, but he didn’t, the croaking old bastard.) “They would have died before they would have put dishonour on their sepoys; their children, they used to call us, and we would have followed them to hell! But now,” he wagged his head again, “these are cutch-sahibs, not pakka-sahibs – and the English common soldiers are no better. Why, in my young day, an English trooper would call me brother, give me his hand, offer me his water-bottle (not realising that I could not take it, you understand). And now – these common men spit on us, call us monkeys and hubshis – and break Lal’s string!”
Most of their talk was just patent rubbish, of course, and I’d no doubt it was the work of agitators, spreading disaffection with their nonsense about greased cartridges and polluted food. I almost said so, but decided it would be unwise to draw attention to myself – and anyway it wasn’t such a burning topic of conversation most of the time that one could take it seriously. I knew they put tremendous store by their religion – the Hindoos especially – and I supposed that whenever an incident like Lal’s string stirred them up, all the old grievances came out, and were soon forgotten. But I’ll confess that what Sardul had said about the British officers and troops reminded me of John Nicholson’s misgivings. I had hardly seen a British officer on parade since my enlistment; they seemed content to leave their troops to the jemadars and n.c.o.s – Addiscombe17 tripe, of course – and there was no question the British rankers in the Meerut garrison were a poorer type than, say, the 44th whom I’d known in the old Afghan days, or Campbell’s Highlanders.
I got first-hand evidence of this a day or two later, when I accidentally jostled a Dragoon in the bazaar, and the brute turned straight round and lashed out with his boot.
“Aht the way, yer black bastard!” says he. “Think yer can shove a sahib arahnd – banchut!” And he would have taken a swipe at me with his fist, too, but I just put my hand on my knife-hilt and glared at him – it wouldn’t have been prudent to do more. “Christ!” says he, and took to his heels until he got to the end of the street, where he snatched up a stone and flung it at me – it smashed a plate on a booth nearby – and then made off. I’ll remember you, my lad, thinks I, and the day’ll come when I’ll have you triced up and flogged to ribbons. (And I did, as good luck had it.) I’ve never been so wild – that the scum of a Whitechapel gutter should take his boot to me! I’ll be honest and say that if I’d seen him do it to a native two months earlier I wouldn’t have minded a bit – and still wouldn’t, much: it’s a nigger’s lot to be kicked. But it ain’t mine, and I can’t tell you how I felt afterwards – filthy, in a way, because I hadn’t been able to pay the swine back. That’s by the way; the point is that old Sardul was right. There wasn’t the respect for jawans among the British that there had been in my young day; we probably lashed and kicked niggers just as much (I know I did), but there was a higher regard for the sepoys at least, on the whole.
I doubt if any commander in the old days would have done what Carmichael – Smith did in the way of preaching-parades, either. I hadn’t believed it in the barrack gossip, but sure enough, the next Sunday this coffin-faced Anglican fakir, the Rev. Reynolds, had a muster on the maidan, and we had to listen to him expounding the Parable of the Prodigal Son, if you please. He did it through a brazen-lunged rissaldar who interpreted for him, and you never heard the like. Reynolds lined it out in English, from the Bible, and the rissaldar stood there with his staff under his arm, at attention, with his whiskers bristling, bawling his own translation:
“There was a zamindar,l with two sons. He was a mad zamindar, for while he yet lived he gave to the younger his portion of the inheritance. Doubtless he raised it from a moneylender. And the younger spent it all whoring in the bazaar, and drinking sherab.m And when his money was gone he returned home, and his father ran to meet him, for he was pleased – God alone knows why. And in his foolishness, the father slew his only cow – he was evidently not a Hindoo – and they feasted on it. And the older son, who had been dutiful and stayed at home, was jealous, I cannot tell for what reason, unless the cow was to have been part of his inheritance. But his father, who did not like him, rebuked the older son. This story was told by Jesus the Jew, and if you believe it you will not go to Paradise, but instead will sit on the right-hand side of the English Lord God Sahib who lives in Calcutta. And there you will play musical instruments, by order of the Sirkar. Parade – dismiss!”
I don’t know when I’ve been more embarrassed on behalf of my church and country. I’m as religious as the next man – which is to say I’ll keep in with the local parson for form’s sake and read the lessons on feast-days because my tenants expect it, but I’ve never been fool enough to confuse religion with belief in God. That’s where so many clergymen, like the unspeakable Reynolds, go wrong – and it makes ’em arrogant, and totally blind to the harm they may be doing. This idiot was so drunk with testaments that he couldn’t conceive how ill-mannered and offensive he was making himself look; I suppose he thought of high-caste Hindoos as being like wilful children or drunken costermongers – perverse and misguided, but ripe for salvation if he just pointed ’em the way. He stood there, with his unctuous fat face and piggy eyes, blessing us soapily, while the Muslims, being worldly in their worship, tried not to laugh, and the Hindoos fairly seethed. I’d have found it amusing enough, I dare say, if I hadn’t been irritated by the thought that these irresponsible Christian zealots were only making things harder for the Army and Company, who had important work to do. It was all so foolish and unnecessary – the heathen creeds, for all their nonsensical mumbo-jumbo, were as good as any for keeping the rabble in order, and what else is religion for?
In any event, this misguided attempt to cure Hindoo souls took place, not just at Meerut but elsewhere, according to the religious intoxication of the local commanders, and in my opinion was the most important cause of the mischief that followed.18 I didn’t appreciate this at the time – and couldn’t have done anything if I had. Besides, I had more important matters to engage my attention.
A few days after that parade, there was a gymkhana on the maidan, and I rode for the skirmishers in the nezabazi.n Apart from languages and fornication, horsemanship is my only accomplishment, and I’d been well-grounded in tent-pegging by the late Muhammed Iqbal, so it was no surprise that I took the greatest number of pegs, and would have got even more if I’d had a pony that I knew, and my lance hadn’t snapped in a touch peg on the last round. It was enough to take the cup, though, and old Bloody Bill Hewitt, the garrison commander, slipped the handle over my broken lance-point in front of the marquee where all the top numbers of Meerut society were sitting applauding politely, the ladies in their crinolines and the men behind their chairs.
“Shabash, sowar,” says Bloody Bill. “Where did you learn to manage a lance?”
“Peshawar Valley, hussor,” says I.
“Company cavalry?” says he, and I said no, Peshawar police.
“Didn’t know they was lancers,” says he, and Carmichael-Smith, who was on hand, laughed and said to Hewitt in English:
“No more they are, sir. It’s a rather delicate matter, I suspect – this bird here pretends he’s never served the Sirkar before, but he’s got Guide written all over him. Shouldn’t wonder if he wasn’t rissaldar – havildar at least. But we don’t ask embarrassing questions, what? He’s a dam’ good recruit, anyway.”
“Ah,” says Hewitt, grinning; he was a fat, kindly old buffer.”’Nough said, then.” And I was in the act of saluting when a little puff of wind sprang up, scattering the papers which were on the table behind him, and blowing them under the pony’s hooves. Like a good little toady, I slipped out of the saddle and gathered them up, and without thinking set them on the table and put the ink-pot on top of them, to hold them steady – a simple, ordinary thing, but I heard an exclamation, and looked up to see Duff Mason, one of the infantry colonels, staring at me in surprise. I just salaamed and saluted and was back in my saddle in a second, while they called up the next man for his prize, but as I wheeled my pony away I saw that Mason was looking after me with a puzzled smile on his face, and saying something to the officer next to him.
Hollo, thinks I, has he spotted something? But I couldn’t think I’d done anything to give myself away – until next morning, when the rissaldar called me out of the ranks, and told me to report to Mason’s office in the British lines forthwith. I went with my heart in my mouth, wondering what the hell I was going to do if he had seen through my disguise, only to find it was the last thing my guilty conscience might have suspected.
“Makarram Khan, isn’t it?” says Mason, when I stood to attention on his verandah and went through the ritual of hilt-touching. He was a tall, brisk, wiry fellow with a sharp eye which he cast over me. “Hasanzai, Peshawar policeman – but only a few weeks’ Army service?” He spoke good Urdu, which suggested he was smarter than most, and my innards quaked.
“Well, now, Makarram,” says he, pleasantly. “I don’t believe you. Nor does your own Colonel. You’re an old soldier – you ride like one, you stand like one, and what’s more you’ve held command. Don’t interrupt – no one’s trying to trap you, or find out how many throats you’ve cut in the Khyber country in your time: that’s nothing to me. You’re here now, as an ordinary sowar – but a sowar who gathers up papers as though he’s as used to handling ’em as I am. Unusual, in a Pathan – even one who’s seen service, don’t you agree?”
“In the police, husoor,” says I woodenly, “are many kitabso and papers.”
“To be sure there are,” says he, and then added, ever so easily, in English, “What’s that on your right hand?”
I didn’t look, but I couldn’t help my hand jerking, and he chuckled and leaned back in his chair, pleased with himself.
“I guessed you understood English when the commander and your Colonel were talking in front of you yesterday,” says he. “You couldn’t keep it out of your eyes. Well, never mind; it’s all to the good. But see here, Makarram Khan – whatever you’ve done, whatever you’ve been, where’s the sense in burying yourself in the ranks of a native cavalry pultan?p You’ve got education and experience; why not use ’em? How long will it take you to make subedar,q or havildar even, in your present situation? Twenty years, thirty – with down-country cavalry? I’ll tell you what – you can do better than that.”
Well, it was a relief to know my disguise was safe enough, but the last thing I wanted was to be singled out in any way. However, I listened respectfully, and he went on:
“I had a Pathan orderly, Ayub Jan; first-class man, with me ten years, and now he’s gone back home, to inherit. I need someone else – well, you’re younger than he was, and a sight smarter, or I’m no judge. And he wasn’t a common orderly – never did a menial task, or anything of that order; wouldn’t have asked him to, for he was Yusufzai – and a gentleman, as I believe you are, d’you see?” He looked at me very steady, smiling. “So what I want is a man of affairs who is also a man of his hands – someone I can trust as a soldier, messenger, steward, aide, guide, shield-on-shoulder –” He shrugged. “When I saw you yesterday, I thought ‘That’s the kind of man.’ Well – what d’ye say?”
I had to think quickly about this. If I could have looked at myself in the mirror, I suppose I was just the sort of ruffian I’d have picked myself, in Duff Mason’s shoes. Pathans make the best orderly-bodyguards-comrades there are, as I’d discovered with Muhammad Iqbal and Ilderim. And it would be a pleasant change from barracks – but it was risky. It would draw attention to me; on the other hand my character was established by now, and any lapses into Englishness might be explained from the past which Mason and Carmichael-Smith had wished upon me. I hesitated, and he said quietly:
“If you’re thinking that coming out of the ranks may expose you to greater danger of – being recognised by the police, say, or some inconvenient acquaintance from the past … have no fear of that. At need, there’ll always be a fast horse and a dustuckr to see you back to the Black Mountain again.”
It was ironic – he thought I went in fear of discovery as a deserter or Border raider, when my only anxiety was that I’d be unmasked as a British officer. Bit of a lark, really – and on that thought I said very good, I’d accept his offer.
“Thank you, Makarram Khan,” says he, and nodded to a table that was set behind his chair, against the chick: there was a drawn sabre lying on it, and I knew what was expected of me. I went past him, and put my hand on the blade – it had been so arranged that with my body in between, he couldn’t see from where he sat whether I was touching the steel or not. The old dodge, thinks I, but I said aloud:
“On the haft and hilt, I am thy man and soldier.”
“Good,” says he, and as I turned he held out his hand. I took it, and just for devilment I said:
“Have no fear, husoor – you will smell the onion on your fingers.” I knew, you see, that in anticipation of the oath, he would have rubbed onion on the blade, so that he could tell afterwards if I’d truly touched it while I swore. A Pathan who intended to break his oath wouldn’t have put his hand on the steel, and consequently wouldn’t have got the onion-smell on his fingers.
“By Jove!” says he, and quickly sniffed his hand. Then he laughed, and said I was a Pathan for wiliness, all right, and we would get along famously.
Which I’m bound to say we did – mind you, our association wasn’t a long one, but while it lasted I thoroughly enjoyed myself, playing major-domo in his household, for that’s what it amounted to, as I soon discovered. His bungalow was a pretty big establishment, you see, just off the east end of the Mall, near the British infantry lines, with about thirty servants, and since there was no proper mem-sahib, and his khansamahs was almost senile, there was no order about the place at all. Rather than have me spend my time dogging him about his office, where there wasn’t much for me to do except stand looking grim and impressive, Duff Mason decided I should make a beginning by putting his house and its staff into pukka order (as I gathered Ayub Jan had done in his time) and I set about it. Flashy, Jack-of-all-trades, you see: in the space of a few months I’d already been a gentleman of leisure, staff officer, secret political agent, ambassador, and sepoy, so why not a nigger butler for a change?
You may think it odd – and looking back it seems damned queer to me, too – but the job was just nuts to me. I was leading such an unreal existence, anyway, and had become so devilish bored in the sepoy barracks, that I suppose I was ready enough for anything that occupied my time without too much effort. Duff Mason’s employ was just the ticket: it gave me the run of a splendid establishment, the best of meat and drink, a snug little bunk of my own, and nothing to do but bully menials, which I did with a hearty relish that terrified the brutes and made the place run like clockwork. All round, I couldn’t have picked a softer billet for my enforced sojourn in Meerut if I’d tried. (Between ourselves, I’ve a notion that had I been born in a lower station in life I’d have made a damned fine butler for some club or Town house, yes-me-lording the Quality, ordering flunkeys about, putting upstarts in their place, and pinching the port and cigars with the best of them.)
I’ve said there were no proper mem-sahibs in the house, by which I mean that there was no colonel’s lady to supervise it – hence the need for me. But in fact there were two white women there, both useless in management – Miss Blanche, a thin, twitchy little spinster who was Duff Mason’s sister, and Mrs Leslie, a vague relative who was either a grass widow or a real one, and reminded me rather of a sailor’s whore – she was a plumpish, pale-skinned woman with red frizzy hair and a roving eye for the garrison officers, with whom she went riding and flirting when she wasn’t lolling on the verandah eating sweets. (I didn’t do more than run a brisk eye over either of ’em when Duff Mason brought me to the house, by the way – we nigger underlings know our place, and I’d already spotted a nice fat black little kitchen-maid with a saucy lip and a rolling stern.)
However, if neither of the resident ladies was any help in setting me about my duties, there was another who was – Mrs Captain MacDowall, who lived farther down the Mall, and who bustled in on my first afternoon on the pretext of taking tea with Miss Blanche, but in fact to see that Duff Mason’s new orderly started off on the right foot. She was a raw-boned old Scotch trot, not unlike my mother-in-law; the kind who loves nothing better than to interfere in other folk’s affairs, and put their lives in order for them. She ran me to earth just as I was stowing my kit; I salaamed respectfully, and she fixed me with a glittering eye and demanded if I spoke English.
“Now then, Makarram Khan, this is what you’ll do,” says she. “This house is a positive disgrace; you’ll make it what it should be – the best in the garrison after General Hewitt’s, mind that. Ye can begin by thrashing every servant in the place – and if you’re wise you’ll do it regularly. My father,” says she, “believed in flogging servants every second day, after breakfast. So now. Have you the slightest – the slightest notion – of how such an establishment as this should be run? I don’t suppose ye have.”
I said, submissively, that I had been in a sahib’s house before.
“Aye, well,” says she, “attend to me. Your first charge is the kitchen – without a well-ordered kitchen, there’s no living in a place. Now – I dined here two nights since, and I was disgusted. So I have lists here prepared –” she whipped some papers from her bag. “Ye can’t read, I suppose? No, well, I’ll tell you what’s here, and you’ll see to it that the cook – who is none too bad, considering – prepares her menus accordingly. I shouldn’t need to be doing this –” she went on, with a withering glance towards the verandah, where Miss Blanche and Mrs Leslie were sitting (reading “The Corsair” aloud, I recall) “– but if I don’t, who will, I’d like to know? Hmf! Poor Colonel Mason!” She glared at me. “That’s none of your concern – you understand?” She adjusted her spectacles. “Breakfast … aye. Chops-steaks-quail-fried-fish-baked-minced-chicken-provided-the-bird’s-no-more-than-a-day-old. No servants in the breakfast room – it can all be placed on the buffet. Can ye make tea – I mean tea that’s fit to drink?”
Bemused by these assaults, I said I could.
“Aye,” says she, doubtfully. “A mistress should always make the tea herself, but here …” She sniffed. “Well then, always two teapots, with no more than three spoonfuls to each, and a pinch of carbonate of soda in the milk. See that the cook makes coffee, very strong, first thing in the morning, and adds boiling water during the course of the day. Boiling, I said – and fresh hot milk, or cold whipped cream. Now, then –” and she consulted another list.
“Luncheon – also on the buffet. Mutton-broth-almond-soup-mulligatawny-white-soup-cold-clear-soup-milk-pudding-stewed-fruit. No heavy cooked dishes –” this with a glare over her spectacles. “They’re unhealthy. Afternoon tea – brown bread and butter, scones, Devonshire cream, and cakes. Have ye any apostle spoons?”
“Mem-sahib,” says I, putting my hands together and ducking my head. “I am only a poor soldier, I do not know what –”
“I’ll have two dozen sent round. Dinner – saddle-of-mutton-boiled-fowls-roast-beef … ach!” says she, “I’ll tell the cook myself. But you –” she wagged a finger like a marlin-spike “– will mind what I’ve said, and see that my instructions are followed and that the food is cleanly and promptly served. And see that the salt is changed every day, and that no one in the kitchen wears woollen clothes. And if one of them cuts a finger – straight round with them to my bungalow. Every inch of this house will be dusted twice a day, before callers come between noon and two, and before dinner. Is that clear?”
“Han mem-sahib, han mem-sahib,” says I, nodding vigorously, heaven help me. She regarded me grimly, and said she would be in from time to time to see that all was going as it should, because Colonel Mason must be properly served, and if she didn’t attend to it, and see that I kept the staff hard at their duties, well … This with further sniffy looks towards the verandah, after which she went to bully the cook, leaving me to reflect that there was more in an orderly’s duties than met the eye.19
I tell you this, because although it may seem not to have much to do with my story, it strikes me it has a place; if you’re to understand India, and the Mutiny, and the people who were caught up in it, and how they fared, then women like Mrs Captain MacDowall matter as much as Outram or Lakshmibai or old Wheeler or Tantia Tope. Terrible women, in their way – the memsahibs. But it would have been a different country without ’em – and I’m not sure the Raj would have survived the year ’57, if they hadn’t been there, interfering.
At all events, under her occasional guidance and blistering rebukes, I drove Mason’s menials until the place was running like a home-bound tea clipper. You’ll think it trivial, perhaps, but I got no end of satisfaction in this supervising – there was nothing else to occupy me, you see, and as Arnold used to say, what thy hand findeth to do … I welted the backsides off the sweepers, terrorised the mateys,t had the bearers parading twice a day with their dusters, feather brooms, and polish bottles, and stalked grimly about the place pleased as punch to see the table-tops and silver polished till they gleamed, the floors bone-clean, and the chota hazriu and darwazabandv trays carried in on the dot. Strange, looking back, to remember the pride I felt when Duff Mason gave a dinner for the garrison’s best, and I stood by the buffet in my best grey coat and new red sash and puggaree, with my beard oiled, looking dignified and watching like a hawk as the khansamah and his crew scuttled round the candle-lit table with the courses. As the ladies withdrew Mrs Captain for calling-cards. MacDowall caught my eye, and gave just a little nod – probably as big a compliment, in its way, as I ever received.
So a few more weeks went by, and I was slipping into this nice easy life, as is my habit whenever things are quiet. I reckoned I’d give it another month or so, and then slide out one fine night for Jhansi, where I’d surprise Skene by turning up à la Pathan and pitch him the tale about how I’d been pursuing Ignatieff in secret and getting nowhere. I’d see Ilderim, too, and find if the Thugs were still out for me; if it seemed safe I’d shave, become Flashy again, and make tracks for Calcutta, protesting that I’d done all that could be done. Might even pay my respects to Lakshmibai on the way … however, in the meantime I’d carry on as I was, eating Duff Mason’s rations, seeing that his bearer laid out his kit, harrying his servants, and tupping his kitchen-maid – she was a poor substitute for my Rani, and once or twice, when it seemed to me that Mrs Leslie’s eye lingered warmly on my upstanding Pathan figure or my swarthy bearded countenance, I toyed with the idea of having a clutch at her. Better not, though – too many prying eyes in a bungalow household, which is what made life hard for grass widows and unattached white females in Indian garrisons – they couldn’t do more than flirt in safety.
Every now and then I had to go back to barracks. Carmichael-Smith had been willing enough to detach me to Duff Mason, but I still had to muster on important parades, when all sepoys on the regimental strength were called in. It was on one of these that I heard the rumour flying that the 19th N.I. had rioted at Behrampore over the greased cartridge, as sepoy Ram Mangal had predicted.
“They have been disbanded by special court,” says he to me out of the corner of his mouth as we clattered back to the armoury to hand in our rifles; he was full of excitement. “The sahibs have sent the jawans home, because the Sirkar fears to keep such spirited fellows under arms! So much for the courage of your British colonels – they begin to fear. Aye, presently they will have real cause to be fearful!”
“It will need to be better cause than a pack of whining monkeys like the 19th,” says Pir Ali. “Who minds if a few Hindoos get cow-grease on their fingers?”
“Have you seen this, then?” Mangal whipped a paper from under his jacket and thrust it at him. “Here are your own people – you Mussulmen who so faithfully lick the sahibs’ backsides – even they are beginning to find their manhood! Read here of the great jihadw that your mullahsx are preaching against the infidels – not just in India, either, but Arabia and Turkestan. Read it – and learn that an Afghan army is preparing to seize India, with Ruski guns and artillerymen – what does it say? ‘Thousands of Ghazis, strong as elephants’.” He laughed jeeringly. “They may come to help – but who knows, perhaps they will be behind the fair? The goddess Kali may have destroyed the British already – as the wise men foretold.”
It was just another scurrilous pamphlet, no doubt, but the sight of that grinning black ape gloating over his sedition riled me; I snatched the paper and rubbed it deliberately on the seat of my trousers. Pir Ali and some of the sepoys grinned, but the rest looked pretty glum, and old Sardul shook his head.
“If the 19th have been false to their salt, it is an ill thing,” says he, and Mangal broke in excitedly to say hadn’t the sahibs broken faith first, by trying to defile the sepoys’ caste?
“First Behrampore – then where?” cries he. “Which pultan will be next? It is coming, brothers – it is coming!” And he nodded smugly, and went off chattering with his cronies.20
I didn’t value this, at the time, but it crossed my mind again a couple of nights later, when Duff Mason had Archdale Wilson, the binky-nabob,y and Hewitt and Carmichael-Smith and a few others on his verandah, and I heard Jack Waterfield, a senior man in the 3rd Native Cavalry, talking about Behrampore, and wondering if it was wise to press ahead with the issue of the new cartridge.
“Of course it is,” snaps Carmichael-Smith. “Especially now, when it’s been refused at Behrampore. Give way on this – and where will it end? It’s a piece of damned nonsense – some crawling little agitator fills the sepoys’ heads with rubbish about beef-grease and pig-fat, when it’s been made perfectly plain by the authorities that the new cartridge contains nothing that could possibly offend Muslim or Hindoo. But it serves as an excuse for the troublemakers – and there are always some.”
“Fortunately not in our regiment,” says another – Plowden, who commanded my own company. By God, thinks I, that’s all you know, and then Carmichael-Smith was growling on that he’d like to see one of his sepoys refuse the issue, by God he would.
“No chance of that, sir,” says another major of the 3rd, Richardson. “Our fellows are too good soldiers, and no fools. Can’t think what happened with the 19th – too many senior officers left regimental service for the staff, I shouldn’t wonder. New men haven’t got the proper grip”
“But suppose our chaps did refuse?” says one young fellow in the circle. “Mightn’t it –”
“That is damned croaking!” says Carmichael-Smith angrily. “You don’t know sepoys, Gough, and that’s plain. I do, and I won’t countenance the suggestion that my soldiers would have their heads turned by this … this seditious bosh. What the devil – they know their duty! But if they get the notion that any of us have doubts, or might show weakness – well, that’s the worst thing imaginable. I’ll be obliged if you’ll keep your half-baked observations to yourself!”
That shut up Gough, sharp enough, and Duff Mason tried to get the pepper out of the air by saying he was sure Carmichael-Smith was right, and if Gough had misgivings, why not settle them then and there.
“Your colonel won’t mind, I’m sure, if I put it to one of his own sowars – don’t fret, Smith, he’s a safe man.” And he beckoned me from where I stood in the shadows by the serving-table from which the bearers kept the glasses topped up.
“Now, Makarram Khan,” says he. “You know about this cartridge nonsense. Well – you’re a Muslim … will you take it?”
I stood respectfully by his chair, glancing round the circle of faces – Carmichael-Smith red and glistening, Waterfield thin and shrewd, young Gough flustered, old Hewitt grinning and belching quietly.
“If it will drive a ball three hundred yards, and straight, husoor,” says I, “I shall take it.”
They roared, of course, and Hewitt said there was a real Pathan answer, what?
“And your comrades?” asks Archdale Wilson.
“If they are told, truly, by the colonel sahib, that the cartridge is clean, why should they refuse?” says I, and they murmured agreement. Well, thinks I, that’s a plain enough hint, and Carmichael-Smith can put Master Mangal’s croaking into the shade.
He might have done, too, but the very next day the barracks was agog with a new rumour – and we heard for the first time a name that was to sweep across India and the world.
“Pandy?” says I to Pir Ali. “Who may he be?”
“A sepoy of the 34th, at Barrackpore,” says he. “He shot at his captain sahib on the parade-ground – they say he was drunk with sharab or bhang, and called on the sepoys to rise against their officers.21 What do I know? Perhaps it is true, perhaps it is rumour – Ram Mangal is busy enough convincing those silly Hindoo sheep that it really happened.”
So he was, with an admiring crowd round him in the middle of the barrack-room, applauding as he harangued them.
“It is a lie that the sepoy Pandy was drunk!” cries he. “A lie put about by the sahibs to dishonour a hero who will defend his caste to the death! He would not take the cartridge – and when they would have arrested him, he called to his brothers to beware, because the British are bringing fresh battalions of English soldiers to steal away our religion and make slaves of us. And the captain sahib at Barrackpore shot Pandy with his own hands, wounding him, and they keep him alive for torture, even now!”
He was working himself into a terrible froth over this – what surprised me was that no one – not even the Muslims – contradicted him, and Naik Kudrat Ali, who was a good soldier, was standing by chewing his lip, but doing nothing. Eventually, when Mangal had raved himself hoarse, I thought I’d take a hand, so I asked him why he didn’t go to the Colonel himself, and find out the truth, whatever it was, and ask for reassurance about the cartridge.
“Hear him!” cries he scornfully. “Ask a sahib for the truth? Hah! Only the gora-colonel’s lapdog would suggest it! Maybe I will speak to Carmik-al-Ismeet, though – in my own time!” He looked round at his cronies with a significant, ugly grin. “Yes, maybe I will … we shall see!”
Well, one swallow don’t make a summer, or one ill-natured agitator a revolt – no doubt what I’m telling you now about barrack-room discontent among the sepoys looks strong evidence of trouble brewing, but it didn’t seem so bad then. Of course there was discontent, and Ram Mangal played on it, and every rumour, for all he was worth – but you could go into any barracks in the world, you know, at any time, and find almost the same thing happening. No one did anything, just sullen talk; the parades went on, and the sepoys did their duty, and the British officers seemed content enough – anyway, I was only occasionally in the barracks myself, so I didn’t hear much of the grumbling. When the word came through that Sepoy Pandy had been hanged at Barrackpore for mutiny, I thought there might be some kind of stir among our men, but they never let cheep.
In the meantime, I had other things to claim my attention: Mrs Leslie of the red hair and lazy disposition had begun to take a closer interest in me. It started with little errands and tasks that put me in her company, then came her request to Duff Mason that I should ride escort on her and Miss Blanche when they drove out visiting (“it looks so much better to have Makarram Khan attending us than an ordinary syce”), and finally I found myself accompanying her when she went riding alone – the excuse was that it was convenient to her to have an attendant who spoke English, and could answer her questions about India, in which she professed a great interest.
I know what interests you, my girl, thinks I, but you’ll have to make the first move. I didn’t mind; she was a well-fleshed piece in her way. It was amusing, too, to see her plucking up her courage; I was a black servant to her, you see, and she was torn between a natural revulsion and a desire to have the big hairy Pathan set about her. On our rides, she would flirt a very little, in a hoity-toity way, and then think better of it; I maintained my correct and dignified noble animal pose, with just an occasional ardent smile, and a slight squeeze when I helped her dismount. I knew she was getting ready for the plunge when she said one day:
“You Pathans are not truly … Indian, are you? I mean … in some ways you look … well, almost … white.”
“We are not Indian at all, mem-sahib,” says I. “We are descended from the people of Ibrahim, Ishak and Yakub, who were led from the Khedive’s country by one Moses.”
“You mean – you’re Jewish?” says she. “Oh.” She rode in silence for a while. “I see. How strange.” She thought some more. “I … I have Jewish acquaintances … in England. Most respectable people. And quite white, of course.”
Well, the Pathans believe it, and it made her happy, so I hurried the matter along by suggesting next day that I show her the ruins at Aligaut, about six miles from the city; it’s a deserted temple, very overgrown, but what I hadn’t told her was that the inside walls were covered with most artistically-carved friezes depicting all the Hindoo methods of fornicating – you know the kind of thing: effeminate-looking lads performing incredible couplings with fat-titted females. She took one look and gasped; I stood behind with the horses and waited. I saw her eyes travel round from one impossible carving to the next, while she gulped and went crimson and pale by turns, not knowing whether to scream or giggle, so I stepped up behind her and said quietly that the forty-fifth position was much admired by the discriminating. She was shivering, with her back to me, and then she turned, and I saw that her eyes were wild and her lips trembling, so I gave my swarthy ravisher’s growl, swept her up in my arms, and then down on to the mossy floor. She gave a little frightened moan, opened her eyes wide, and whispered:
“You’re sure you’re Jewish … not … not Indian?”
“Han, mem-sahib,” says I, thrusting away respectfully, and she gave a contented little squeal and grappled me like a wrestler.
We rode to Aligaut quite frequently after that, studying Indian social customs, and if the forty-fifth position eluded us, it wasn’t for want of trying. She had a passion for knowledge, did Mrs Leslie, and I can think back affectionately to that cool, dim, musty interior, the plump white body among the ferns, and the thoughtful way she would gnaw her lower lip while she surveyed the friezes before pointing to the lesson for today. Pity for some chap she never re-married. Aye, and more of a pity for her she never got the chance.
For by now April had turned into May, the temperature was sweltering, and there was a hot wind blowing across the Meerut parade-ground and barracks that had nothing to do with the weather. You could feel the tension in the air like an electric cloud; the sepoys of the 3rd N.C. went about their drill like sullen automatons, the native officers stopped looking their men in the eye, the British officers were quiet and wary or explosively short-tempered, and there were more men on report than anyone could remember. There were ugly rumours and portents: the 34th N.I. – the executed Sepoy Pandy’s regiment – had been disbanded at Barrackpore, a mysterious fakir on an elephant had appeared in Meerut bazaar predicting that the wrath of Kali was about to fall on the British, chapattis were said to be passing in some barrack-rooms, the Plassey legend was circulated again. Out of all the grievances and mistrust that folk like Ram Mangal had been voicing, a great, discontented unease grew in those few weeks – and one thing suddenly became known throughout the Meerut garrison: without a word said, the certainty was there. When the new greased cartridge was issued, the 3rd Native Cavalry would refuse it.
Now, you may say, knowing what followed, something should have been done. I, with respect, will ask: what? The thing was, while everyone knew that feeling was rising by the hour, no one could foresee for a moment what was about to happen. It was unimaginable. The British officers couldn’t conceive that their beloved sepoys would be false to their salt – dammit, neither could the sepoys. If there’s one thing I will maintain, it is that not a soul – not even creatures like Ram Mangal – thought that the bitterness could explode in violence. Even if the cartridge was refused – well, the worst that could follow was disbandment, and even that was hard to contemplate. I didn’t dream of what lay ahead – not even with all my forewarning over months. And I was there – and no one can take fright faster than I. So when I heard that Carmichael-Smith had ordered a firing-parade, at which the skirmishers (of whom I was one) would demonstrate the new cartridge, I simply thought: well, this will settle it – either they’ll accept the new loads, and it’ll all blow over, or they won’t and Calcutta will have to think again.
Waterfield tried to smooth things beforehand, singling out the older skirmishers and reassuring them that the loads were not offensively greased, but they wouldn’t have it – they even pleaded with him not to ask them to take the cartridge. I think he tried to reason with Carmichael-Smith – but the word came out that the firing-parade would take place as ordered.
After Waterfield’s failure, this was really throwing down the gauntlet, if you like – I’d not have done it, if I’d been Carmichael-Smith, for one thing I’ve learned as an officer is never to give an order unless there’s a good chance of its being obeyed. And if you’d fallen in with the skirmishers that fine morning, having seen the sullen faces as they put on their belts and bandoliers and drew their Enfields from the armoury, you’d not have wagered a quid to a hundred on their taking the cartridge. But Carmichael-Smith, the ass, was determined, so there we stood, in extended line between the other squadrons of the regiment facing inwards, the native officers at ease before their respective troops, and the rissaldar calling us to attention as Carmichael-Smith, looking thunderous, rode up and saluted.
We waited, with our Enfields at our sides, while he rode along the extended rank, looking at us. There wasn’t a sound; we stood with the baking sun at our backs; every now and then a little puff of warm wind would drive a tiny dust-devil across the ground; Plowden’s horse kept shying as he cursed and tried to steady it. I watched the shadows of the rank swaying with the effort of standing rigid, and the sweat rivers were tickling my chest. Naik Kudrat Ali on my right was straight as a lance; on my other side old Sardul’s breathing was hoarse enough to be audible. Carmichael-Smith completed his slow inspection, and reined up almost in front of me; his red face under the service cap was as heavy as a statue’s. Then he snapped an order, and the havildar-major stepped forward, saluted, and marched to Carmichael-Smith’s side, where he turned to face us. Jack Waterfield, sitting a little in rear of the colonel, called out the orders from the platoon exercise manual.
“Prepare to load!” says he, adding quietly: “Rifle-at-full-extent-of-left-arm.” The havildar-major shoved out his rifle.
“Load!” cries Jack, adding again: “Cartridge-is-brought-to-the-left-hand-right-elbow-raised-tear-off-top-of-cartridge-with-fingers-by-dropping-elbow.”
This was the moment; you could feel the rank sway forward ever so little as the havildar-major, his bearded face intent, held up the little shiny brown cylinder, tore it across, and poured the powder into his barrel. A hundred and eighty eyes watched him do it; there was just a suspicion of a sigh from the rank as his ram-rod drove the charge home; then he came to attention again. Waterfield gave him the “present” and “fire”, and the single demonstration shot cracked across the great parade-ground. On either side, the rest of the regiment waited, watching us.
“Now,” says Carmichael-Smith, and although he didn’t raise his voice, it carried easily across the parade. “Now, you have seen the loading drill. You have seen the havildar-major, a soldier of high caste, take the cartridge. He knows the grease with which it is waxed is pure. I assure you again – nothing that could offend Hindoo or Muslim is being offered to you – I would not permit it. Carry on, havildar-major.”
What happened was that the havildar-major came along the rank, with two naiks carrying big bags of cartridges, of which he offered three to each skirmisher. I was looking straight to my front, sweating and wishing the back of my leg would stop itching; I couldn’t see what was happening along the rank, but I heard a repeated murmur as the havildar-major progressed – “Nahin, havildar-major sahib; nahin, havildar-major sahib.” Carmichael-Smith’s head was turned to watch; I could see his hand clenched white on his rein.
The havildar-major stopped opposite Kudrat Ali, and held out three cartridges. I could feel Kudrat stiffen – he was a big, rangy Punjabi Mussulman, a veteran of Aliwal and the frontier, proud as Lucifer of his stripes and himself, the kind of devoted ass who thinks his colonel is his father and even breaks wind by numbers. I stole a glance at him; his mouth was trembling under his heavy moustache as he muttered:
“Nahin, havildar-major sahib.”
Suddenly, Carmichael-Smith broke silence; his temper must have boiled higher with each refusal.
“What the devil do you mean?” His voice cracked hoarsely. “Don’t you recognise an order? D’you know what insubordination means?”
Kudrat started violently, but recovered. He swallowed with a gulp you could have heard in Poona, and then says:
“Colonel sahib – I cannot have a bad name!”
“Bad name, by God!” roars Smith. “D’you know a worse name than mutineer?” He sat there glowering and Kudrat trembled; then the havildar-major’s hand was thrust out to me, his blood-shot brown eyes glaring into mine; I looked at the three little brown cylinders, aware that Waterfield was watching me intently, and old Sardul was breathing like a walrus on my other side.
I took the cartridges – there was a sudden exclamation farther along the rank, but I stuffed two of them into my belt, and held up the third. As I glanced at it, I realised with a start that it wasn’t greased – it was waxed. I tore it across with a shaky hand, poured the powder into the barrel, stuffed the cartridge after it, and rammed it down.22 Then I returned to attention, waiting.
Old Sardul was crying. As the cartridges were held out to him he put up a shaking hand, but not to take them. He made a little, feeble gesture, and then sings out:
“Colonel sahib – it is not just! Never – never have I disobeyed – never have I been false to my salt! Sahib – do not ask this of me – ask anything – my life, even! But not my honour!” He dropped his Enfield, wringing his hands. “Sahib, I –”
“Fool!” shouts Carmichael-Smith. “D’you suppose I would ask you to hurt your honour? When did any man know me do such a thing? The cartridges are clean, I tell you! Look at the havildar-major – look at Makarram Khan! Are they men of no honour? No – and they’re not mutinous dogs, either!”
It wasn’t the most tactful thing to say, to that particular sepoy; I thought Sardul would go into a frenzy, the way he wept – but he wouldn’t touch the cartridges. So it went, along the line; when the end had been reached only four other men out of ninety had accepted the loads – four and that stalwart pillar of loyalty, Flashy Makarram Khan (he knew his duty, and which side his bread was buttered).
So there it was. Carmichael-Smith could hardly talk for sheer fury, but he cussed us something primitive, promising dire retribution, and then dismissed the parade. They went in silence – some stony-faced, others troubled, a number (like old Sardul) weeping openly, but mostly just sullen. For those of us who had taken the cartridges, by the way, there were no reproaches from the others – proper lot of long-suffering holy little Tom Browns they were.
That, of course, was something that Carmichael-Smith didn’t understand. He thought the refusal of the cartridges was pure pig-headedness by the sepoys, egged on by a few malcontents. So it was, but there was a genuine religious feeling behind it, and a distrust of the Sirkar. If he’d had his wits about him, he’d have seen that the thing to do now was to drop the cartridge for the moment, and badger Calcutta to issue a new one that the sepoys could grease themselves (as was done, I believe, in some garrisons). He might even have made an example of one or two of the older disobedients, but no, that wasn’t enough for him. He’d been defied by his own men, and by God, he wasn’t having that. So the whole eighty-five were court-martialled, and the court, composed entirely of native officers, gave them all ten years’ hard labour.
I can’t say I had much sympathy with ’em – anyone who’s fool enough to invite ten years on the rock-pile for his superstitions deserves all he gets, in my view. But I’m bound to say that once the sentence had been passed, it couldn’t have been worse carried out – instead of shipping the eighty-five quietly off to jail the buffoon Hewitt decided to let the world – and other sepoys especially – see what happened to mutineers, and so a great punishment parade was ordered for the following Saturday.
As it happened, I quite welcomed this myself, because I had to attend, and so was spared an excursion to Aligaut with Mrs Leslie – that woman’s appetite for experiment was increasing, and I’d had a wearing if pleasurable week of it. But from the official point of view, that parade was a stupid, dangerous farce, and came near to costing us all India.
It was a red morning, oppressive and grim, with a heavy, overcast sky, and a hot wind driving the dust in stinging volleys across the maidan. The air was suffocatingly close, like the moment before thunder. The whole Meerut garrison was there – the Dragoon Guards with their sabres out; the Bengal Artillery, with their British gunners and native assistants in leather breeches standing by their guns; line on line of red-coated native infantry completing the hollow square, and in the middle Hewitt and his staff with Carmichael-Smith and the regimental officers, all mounted. And then the eighty-five were led out in double file, all in full uniform, but for one thing – they were in their bare feet.
I don’t know when I’ve seen a bleaker sight than those two grey ranks standing there hangdog, while someone bawled out the court’s findings and sentence, and then a drum began to roll, very slow, and the ceremony began.
Now I’ve been on more punishment parades than I care to remember, and quite enjoyed ’em, by and large. There’s a fascination about a hanging, or a good flogging, and the first time I saw a man shot from a gun – at Kabul, that was – I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I’ve noticed, too, that the most pious and humanitarian folk always make sure they get a good view, and while they look grim or pitying or shocked they take care to miss none of the best bits. Really, what happened at Meerut was tame enough – and yet it was different from any other drumming-out or execution I remember; usually there’s excitement, or fear, or even exultation, but here there was just a doomed depression that you could feel, hanging over the whole vast parade.
While the drum beat slowly, a havildar and two naiks went along the ranks of the prisoners, tearing the buttons off the uniform coats; they had been half cut off beforehand, to make the tearing easy, and soon in front of the long grey line there were little scattered piles of buttons, gleaming dully in the sultry light; the grey coats hung loose, like sacks, each with a dull black face above it.
Then the fettering began. Groups of armourers, each under a British sergeant, went from man to man, fastening the heavy lengths of irons between their ankles; the fast clanging of the hammers and the drum-beat made the most uncanny noise, clink-clank-boom! clink-clank-clink-boom! and a thin wailing sounded from beyond the ranks of the native infantry.
“Keep those damned people quiet!” shouts someone, and there was barking of orders and the wailing died away into a few thin cries. But then it was taken up by the prisoners themselves; some of them stood, others squatted in their chains, crying; I saw old Sardul, kneeling, smearing dust on his head and hitting his fist on the ground; Kudrat Ali stood stiff at attention, looking straight ahead; my half-section, Pir Ali – who to my astonishment had refused the cartridge in the end – was jabbering angrily to the man next to him; Ram Mangal was actually shaking his fist and yelling something. A great babble of noise swelled up from the line, with the havildar-major scampering along the front, yelling “Chubbarao! Silence!” while the hammers clanged and the drum rolled – you never heard such an infernal din. Old Sardul seemed to be appealing to Carmichael-Smith, stretching out his hands; Ram Mangal was bawling the odds louder than ever; close beside where I was an English sergeant of the Bombay Artillery knocked out his pipe on the gun-wheel, spat, and says:
“There’s one black bastard I’d have spread over the muzzle o’ this gun, by Jesus! Scatter his guts far enough, eh, Paddy?”
“Aye,” says his mate, and paced about, scratching his head. “’Tis a bad business, though, Mike, right enough. Dam’ niggers! Bad business!”
“Oughter be a bleedin’ sight worse,” says Mike. “Pampered sods – lissen ’em squeal! If they ’ad floggin’ in the nigger army, they’d ’ave summat to whine about – touch o’ the cat’d ’ave them bitin’ each other’s arses, never mind cartridges. But all they get’s the chokey, an’ put in irons. That’s what riles me – Englishmen get flogged fast enough, an’ these black pigs can stand by grinnin’ at it, but somebody pulls their buttons off an’ they yelp like bleedin’ kids!”23
“Ah-h,” says the other. “Disgustin’. An’ pitiful, pitiful.”
I suppose it was, if you’re the pitying kind – those pathetic-looking creatures in their shapeless coats, with the irons on their feet, some yelling, some pleading, some indifferent, some silently weeping, but mostly just sunk in shame – and out in front Hewitt and Carmichael-Smith and the rest sat their horses and watched, unblinking. I’m not soft, but I had an uneasy feeling just then – you’re making a mistake, Hewitt, thinks I, you’re doing more harm than good. He didn’t seem to know it, but he was trampling on their pride (I may not have much myself, but I recognise it in others, and it’s a chancy thing to tamper with). And yet he could have seen the danger, in the sullen stare of the watching native infantry; they were feeling the shame, too, as those fetters went on, and the prisoners wept and clamoured, and old Sardul grovelled in the dust for one of his fallen buttons, and clenched it against his chest, with the tears streaming down his face.
He was one, I confess, that I felt a mite sorry for, when the fettering was done, and the band had struck up “The Rogues March”, and they shuffled off, dragging their irons as they were herded away to the New Jail beyond the Grand Trunk Road. He kept turning and crying out to Carmichael-Smith – it reminded me somehow of how my old guv’nor had wept and pleaded when I saw him off for the last time to the blue-devil factory in the country where he died bawling with delirium tremens. Damned depressing – and as I walked my pony off with the four other loyal skirmishers, and glanced at their smug black faces, I thought, well, you bloody toadies – after all, they were Hindoos; I wasn’t.
However, I soon worked off my glums back at Duff Mason’s bungalow, by lashing the backside off one of the bearers who’d lost his oil-funnel. And then I had to be on hand for the dinner that was being given for Carmichael-Smith that night (doubtless to celebrate the decimation of his regiment), and Mrs Leslie, dressed up to the nines for the occasion, was murmuring with a meaning look that she intended to have a long ride in the country next day, so I must see picnic prepared, and there were the mateys to chase, and the kitchen-staff to swear at, and little Miss Langley, the riding-master’s daughter, to chivvy respectfully away – she was a pretty wee thing, seven years old, and a favourite of Miss Blanche’s, but she was the damnedest nuisance when she came round the back verandah in the evenings to play, keeping the servants from their work and being given sugar cakes.
With all this, I’d soon forgotten about the punishment parade, until after dinner, when Duff Mason and Carmichael-Smith and Archdale Wilson had taken their pegs and cheroots on to the verandah, and I heard Smith’s voice suddenly raised unusually loud. I stopped a matey who was taking out a tray to them, and took it myself, so I was just in time to hear Smith saying:
“… of all the damned rubbish I ever heard! Who is this havildar, then?”
“Imtiaz Ahmed – and he’s a good man, sir.” It was young Gough, mighty red in the face, and carrying his crop, for all he was in dinner kit.
“Damned good croaker, you mean!” snaps Smith, angrily. “And you stand there and tell me that he has given you this cock-and-bull about the cavalry plotting to march on the jail and set the prisoners free? Utter stuff – and you’re a fool for listening to –”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” says Gough, “but I’ve been to the jail – and it looks ugly. And I’ve been to barracks; the men are in a bad way, and –”
“Now, now, now,” says Wilson, “easy there, young fellow. You don’t know ’em, perhaps, as well as we do. Of course they’re in a bad way – what, they’ve seen their comrades marched off in irons, and they’re upset. They’re like that – they’ll cry their eyes out, half of ’em … All right, Makarram Khan,” says he, spotting me at the buffet, “you can go.” So that was all I heard, for what it was worth, and since nothing happened that night, it didn’t seem to be worth too much.24
Next morning Mrs Leslie wanted to make an early start, so I fortified myself against what was sure to be a taxing day with half a dozen raw eggs beaten up in a pint of stout, and we rode out again to Aligaut. She was in the cheeriest spirits, curse her, climbing all over me as soon as we reached the temple, and by the end of the afternoon I was beginning to wonder how much more Hindoo culture I could endure, delightful though it was. I was a sore and weary native orderly by the time we set off back, and dozing pleasantly in my saddle as we passed through the little village which lies about a mile east of the British town – indeed, I could just hear the distant chiming of the church bell for evening service – when Mrs Leslie gave an exclamation and reined in her pony.
“What’s that?” says she, and as I came up beside her, she hushed me and sat listening. Sure enough, there was another sound – a distant, indistinct murmur, like the sea on a far shore. I couldn’t place it, so we rode quickly forward to where the trees ended, and looked across the plain. Straight ahead in the distance were the bungalows at the end of the Mall, all serene; far to the left, there was the outline of the Jail, and beyond it the huge mass of Meerut city – nothing out of the way there. And then beyond the Jail, I saw it as I peered at the red horizon – where the native cavalry and infantry lines lay, dark clouds of smoke were rising against the orange of the sky, and flickers of flame showed in the dusk. Buildings were burning, and the distant murmur was resolving itself into a thousand voices shouting, louder and ever louder. I sat staring, with a horrid suspicion growing in my mind, half-aware that Mrs Leslie was tugging at my sleeve, demanding to know what was happening. I couldn’t tell her, because I didn’t know; nobody knew, in that first moment, on a peaceful, warm May evening when the great Indian Mutiny began.
a Son of a owl.
b Cot.
c Corporal.
d Cooking-place, camp oven of clay.
e Green sweetmeat containing bhang.
f Under-officer.
g Native butter, cooking-fat.
h A highly offensive term.
i Flour.
j Teacher.
k “Lawrence” – any one of the famous Lawrence brothers who served on the frontier, and later in the Mutiny.
l Farmer.
m Strong drink.
n Tent-pegging with a lance.
o Books.
p Regiment.
q Native officer.
r Permit.
s Butler.
t Waiters.
u Lit. “little breakfast” – early morning tea.
v “Darwazaband”, not at home. Presumably the salver used for calling-cards.
w Holy war.
x Preachers.
y Artillery commander.