Zemindar (92 page)

At about midnight, unable to sleep, I stole outside over the recumbent bodies of our guests, to see for myself what was happening. As I gained the verandah steps I found Jessie beside me.

The first thing that struck us was the number of lights that shone in the darkness; bivouac fires, torches of rags soaked in oil and a reckless number of lanterns. Everywhere windows showed light and doors stood open, affording us glimpses of our neighbours ministering to their deliverers. There were unaccustomed sounds too, horses neighing and stamping, and the jingle of bridle-irons, a camel’s sneezing snort and men talking in normal voices, even shouting to each other, unmindful of the volley of musket shots or the shell such unwariness might provoke. And then I realized the strangest thing of all. They had no need to fear a sniper’s bullet. For the first time in eighty-eight nights the pandies were not firing into the enclosure.

‘Och, Miss Laura, it can only mean that they’ve gone,’ said Jessie joyfully. ‘All of them, like the ones that went over the Iron Bridge this afternoon. They ken they’re beat!’

She grabbed my hands in her two large ones, and we stood in the noisome light of a torch and laughed, really laughed, loudly and freely, as we had never seen each other laugh before.

‘’Tis true,’ Jessie said at last. ‘Now I believe ’tis true. The good Lord ha’e delivered us a’!’

‘With the help of Messrs Havelock, Outram and a few others,’ I pointed out, but Jessie was too happy to correct my irreverence.

‘But will you look at them,’ she said as we began to pick our way through the crowd. ‘So many of them … so many—and a’ the grand clothin’ on them!’

Men were everywhere. They lay with their heads on their packs, rifles beside them, on verandahs, in ruined buildings, on the bare ground, in and under carts, limbers and gun-carriages. They were begrimed with mud, dust and sometimes blood, the sleeping faces lined with fatigue, but the flickering light of fire and torch showed us also that they were well-clothed, well-shod and, strangest of all, robust despite fatigue. Caps, shakos and helmets lay beside them, and often I caught the remembered whiff of tobacco from a glowing pipe.

‘Will ye take a look at yon boots?’ Jessie breathed in my ear, pointing to a pair of heavy army footwear standing neatly aligned beside their sleeping owner. ‘Not a patch on them; hardly a scratch! Och, to think what ’twill be like to wear good shoon again!’

‘Yes, but if that lad’s not careful, he’ll be barefoot by morning,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s as well Toddy’s not seen them.’

‘Sure they’d be too big for yon wee man,’ said Jessie, judiciously sizing up the boots; the man stirred and mumbled as we looked at him, so we moved away.

Small groups sat around fires, sharing tobacco, scraps of chocolate or rum with the men of our garrison, and often we paused if we saw a face we knew among them. The talk was all of the battle to reach us and of the fighting, fierce and bloody, that we learned was still continuing in the narrow lanes and unlit alleys of Lucknow.

There had been a great number of casualties as the troops forced their way to us that morning, so many that it was said General Outram had advised General Havelock to remain outside the entrenchment through the night in order to allow his scattered force to rally before making the final push. Havelock, however, had decided that even one night’s delay might see our garrison slaughtered and had ordered the advance to continue.

‘I’ve been on orderly duty, see? Runnin’ messages and that for the staff all day,’ said a grizzled man with a bandaged hand. ‘I were standin’ not six feet from the General when we ’alts and ’e takes out his field glasses and runs it over your walls and that there gate. Couldn’t see much myself at that distance, ’cept that your walls looked to me like the things nippers build up with their ’ands with sand at the seaside, and not much ’igher neither! ’E looks for a long time, and then ’e shakes ’is ’ead and says: “ ’Avin’ seen that gate, I will delay no longer!” Like as if them were ’is last words, all solemn. Well, later, when we gets to the Baillie Guard, I see ’is point. ’Ow it ’as stood up so long … well, it’s a bloody miracle. All charred it is, and shot-’oled and damn near down. A bloody miracle!’

‘We should ’ave waited and paid no mind to the looks of it,’ an elderly man said bitterly, spitting a stream of tobacco juice into the dust. ‘’Tis right cruel, miss. We ’ad to leave our wounded, same as always, but they say—I ’eard it from a bloke what’s just got in—the bastards is doin’ in the wounded now, seein’ as ’ow we managed to get through ’em. Gawd—and them ’elpless!’

‘Not for long, matey,’ one of our garrison attempted to console him. ‘Bluff Jack sent out two detachments from here, and there will be more following in the morning. We’re to clear the city of stragglers before midday.’

‘Maybe, but that’ll be too late for some of my mates. For a lot of ’em.’ The old man lay down with his elbow under his head and stared into darkness.

Not long afterwards we came upon Toddy-Bob wandering with careful aimlessness through the huddled forms, and I knew that his errand was, essentially, the same as mine.

‘You didn’t ought to be out alone on such a h’occasion as this,’ he scolded, glaring up into Jessie’s white moon of a face. ‘You ought to know better than to let ’er out, woman! ’Tis all right for you, maybe, but she’s a lady and it ain’t fittin’ to ’ear the talk that’s goin’ round tonight. S’truth! It’s enough to make me blush like a maiden aunt, and they’re gettin’ grogged up proper now, so it will be worse. Now you’ll be favourin’ me if you get back to where you belongs, and I’ll make it my duty to see you safe ’ome.’

I would have laughed had I not been afraid of hurting his feelings. There were many other women wandering through the entrenchment in curiosity or perhaps a desire to help; many too who were still seeking news of those they had lost. And by now my vocabulary, known if not used, was as comprehensive as most troopers’. However, I had been aware of the odd amorous glance and wink cast in my direction and the fumbling of a drunken man’s hand at my skirt, so I allowed Toddy to grab me by the elbow and lead us back to the Gaol. Somewhere bagpipes were skirling and Jessie hummed to herself as we walked and a pure pale moon shed a light so bright it put out the stars.

It seemed I had just put my head on the pillow when I felt Kate’s hand shaking me awake.

We ate our meagre breakfast standing on the verandah so as not to disturb our guests, who were still asleep, and, knowing how urgently we would be needed at the hospital, set off directly we had finished. The clear sky of only a few hours earlier was now heavy with threatened rain, and we made our way to the hospital through a world dark, hot and steamy.

The pandies were quiet in our vicinity but from the city came the sound of heavy firing. The men of our garrison who had been sent out to escort in the wounded and the rearguard of the relief were having a hot time of it. Over the great palace of the Kaiser Bagh and the pretty marble pavilion called the Moti Mahal, the leaden sky was lined with pale smoke from the rebels’ heavy guns. We paused a moment on the slope leading down to the Baillie Guard before turning left to the hospital. Through the gateway the road leading to the city carried a slow-moving stream of men, animals, ambulances and wagons for as far as the eye could see.

‘Where in the world are we going to put them all?’ wondered Kate. We turned towards the hospital and within minutes she had her answer. There was nowhere to put them.

Those of our own wounded who could crawl, shuffle or bear to be dragged from their beds had voluntarily vacated their places to the newcomers. We could now count the number of familiar faces on our fingers, but not all the gratitude and goodwill in the world could extend the capacity of the Banqueting Hall, and within a few hours of the opening of the Baillie Guard every inch of space was crowded—in the main room, in the storerooms at each end, on the verandah. The supply of straw mats and pallets had given out, and men lay in rows on the verandah without even a canvas sheet between their bodies and the stone, while a party of their able-bodied comrades worked hurriedly at hanging tattered awnings from the roof-beams as protection from the impending rain.

Many women of the garrison were already at work helping the doctors, though since they were new to the work, they were sometimes more hindrance than help, and one or two had to be nursed over ladylike attacks of faintness themselves. Not that one could have accused them of over-sensitivity. Accustomed as I was to the smells and sights of that horrible long room, my stomach lurched with nausea as we entered and picked our way over the men to receive instructions from the doctors. On the heavy wooden operating table, impregnated with the blood of all those who had suffered on it over the last three months, an amputation was about to take place. Five men moved forward to hold down the victim, a sixth held aloft a lamp. Dr Darby removed the cigar from his mouth and carefully extinguished it on the ground before putting the butt back into his trouser pocket. He glanced at his assistants, who tightened their grasp on the victim’s limbs, and I caught the dull glint of steel in the lamplight as he suddenly bent his head and made the first swift, decisive incision. The rum bottle from which the patient had been drinking dropped with a crash of splintering glass and a scream of mortal agony forced the blood from my face and stopped me short in my tracks with my hands over my ears. At my feet a man clutched at my skirt and buried his face in it, sobbing. For a moment silence filled the twilight and then, no further sound coming from the table, the mutterings, groans and retchings of the other sick resumed. I took a deep breath, cursed with silent volubility, and set about my work.

There were new faces among the medical men, but not yet enough, and where, I wondered, were the supplies that should have come in with the relief?

‘This is war, missie,’ Dr Partridge grunted when I put the question to him as I bandaged a leg with strips of linen from some woman’s tucked and hem-stitched petticoat. ‘God alone knows where they’ve got to—if there were any in the first place. If I could get my hands on some chloroform! A wagon-load of the stuff, that’s what we need now. Thank you, that will have to do for this poor fellow. Now, there … that sepoy two places up. A leg smashed.’

We moved along the row and looked down at the unconscious man. I knelt and tried to peel away the shreds of trouser leg from the wound. ‘An ugly one, but I think we can save it. You’ll need water there, missie, and here … take my scissors, but mind you give them back. I think you can deal with that yourself. He’s lost a bit of blood, but he’s a sturdy fellow and the bone is only broken, not crushed.’ His fingers, bloody and expert, explored the limb as he spoke, and the man quivered and moaned without regaining consciousness. ‘Now, you clean it up and I’ll send along an apothecary with some splints, if we can find any, to set the bone. And here, there’s still a sup or two of heartener in the bottom of this bottle. See that he gets it, but after the apothecary is gone. The longer he stays under the better for him!’ He wiped his fingers on his leather apron, then produced a flat silver brandy flask from his pocket and handed it to me.

‘His caste …?’ I asked anxiously as he left me.

‘Mohammedan. Use a spoon to put it between his teeth before he comes around and he’ll never know the difference!’

As often before, as I worked on the sepoy’s leg, I noticed that the sight of dark red blood on dark skin is somehow less alarming than the sight of dark red blood on fair skin. Indeed, it was difficult to see the blood in the gloom of the room, caked and congealed as it now was on clothing and flesh, so I had to use the utmost care with the scissors. The apothecary arrived with rough splints cut from a board before I had finished swabbing the wound.

‘Damn shame, miss, if you’ll pardon the expression,’ said the apothecary as I made room for him to kneel beside me. ‘This fellow is one of our own men, shot by mistake by the relief when they were entering last evening!’

‘Oh, no, Mr Saunders!’ The apothecary too was one of our men with whom I was well acquainted.

‘Yes, fired off a volley at a group of our fellows who had climbed over the wall to greet them. Saw them near the wall, thought they were trying to enter … and … bang, bang, bang. None killed, thank the Lord, but a bad business!’

‘And you mean he’s been here, in this condition, since last evening? Without attention?’

‘Miss, we’ve none of us slept this entire night. All we’ve been able to attend to were the amputations—or at least the evident ones. For the rest, we could only give them water and food and hope they’d hang on until the supplies arrived. Now it looks as though there are no supplies to arrive. Gone astray somewhere in the city, or most likely been captured or blown up. Over two hundred men arrived during the night and they’re still coming in. We’ve nothing left to use on them. We strip the bandages from the dead now before we send them to the burial ground. Look at that heap over there in the corner. Not even washed and we’ll have to use them again. No swabs, ointments, salves, tinctures; not even a headache powder. Leeches and rum, that’s all we’ve got, and soon it will be only leeches.’

‘Oh, my God!’

‘You’re welcome to Him, miss. Me, I can’t believe in Him any longer.’

The young man set to work with his splints and cord. Handing over Dr Partridge’s brandy for him to administer, I moved to the next man.

So the morning somehow wore away, all of us working with numb hearts to try to bring some comfort to those for whom we had no healing. The heat increased and with it the stench, as for all our efforts men still lay, sometimes for hours, in their own vomit, excrement and blood. It had begun to rain, the usual torrential midday downpour, which reduced the roads of the entrenchment to rivers of slush and raised the humidity to such an extent that inside the crowded hospital it was almost impossible to see for the sweat dripping off one’s brow into one’s eyes.

I was beginning to feel the strain of the previous day’s excitement, the sleepless night and the hard work I had been engaged in for several hours. Outwardly I must have appeared much as I always had done, much as the other women around me did: solicitous, sympathetic and moderately efficient in the unpleasant tasks I performed. But within I was almost as incapable of emotion as the man who died in my arms, and in mid-sentence, as I raised him to remove his shirt.