Guns to the Far East (18 page)

They hung on his words, repeating them to each other again and again as the long day wore on, their hopes bolstered by the now almost ceaseless thunder of the guns, some of which, by their proximity to the city, they recognised as being the Nana's. Soon, Lavinia thought, soon they would be released from this awful place, they would be safe, guarded by British soldiers, their suffering at an end. Fighting off her weakness, she struggled to her feet to join those who waited by the door of their prison, eager to be among the first to greet their rescuers. They prayed, weeping, and sang hymns, their voices choked with tears, the sick, the wounded, and many of the children joining in.

It fell to Hosainee Khanum to shatter their brittle hopes of rescue. The woman had been absent for several hours; when she returned, one of the Eurasian captives abused her and rounding on her savagely, the ayah said with conscious malice that the Nana had ordered their execution.

“Pray rather that the
feringhi
soldiers never reach here,
mem!
” she added. “For you will die before the first
lal-kote
sets foot in the city!”

There was a stunned, unhappy silence; then, as the woman to whom she had spoken burst into a paroxysm of weeping, others passed on the brief and terrible words she had uttered and pandemonium ensued.

Caroline Moore restored them to calm. “I will ask the Jemadar of our guard,” she volunteered. “If our execution has indeed been ordered, it is he who will have received the order. The Nana would not have given it to a serving woman … Hosainee must surely be lying in order to frighten us.”

A number of them accompanied her to the barred window at the front of the building and Yusef Khan, the Jemadar, came in response to their cries. At first he denied all knowledge of the Nana's order but finally, with evident reluctance, admitted that Hosainee had brought him verbal instructions that the hostages were to be shot if the British column attempted to attack Cawnpore.

“You have nothing to fear at our hands,” he assured his anxious questioners. “Without a written order.”

“But our soldiers
will
attack,” Caroline Moore stated with conviction. “Nothing is more certain. And when they do, then you—”

“If they do, Memsahib, they will be defeated,” the native officer put in. “They are few and we are many and the Nana Sahib has placed great guns to cover the road.” But he was plainly uneasy; head on one side he, too, was listening to the guns, affecting not to see Hosainee's angry attempts to attract his attention.

“If you preserve our lives, General Havelock will reward you,” a Colonel's white-haired widow promised recklessly. Others reiterated this promise and the Jemadar hesitated, torn between fear and duty. Clearly he had heard of the Nana's defeat at the Panda Nudi, Lavinia thought and, in the hope of resolving his uncertainty, she said quietly, “If you take our lives and General Havelock's soldiers learn of it, they will not rest until retribution has been meted out to you. They may be few but they have been victorious whenever they have met the Nana's army in battle—and there will be more, many thousands more, following after them from Calcutta and from England itself.”

Yusef Khan hesitated but, when Hosainee raised her voice in shrill protest, he silenced her with a contemptuous, “Your order will not be obeyed. Who are you to give orders? Bring me it in writing, under the Nana Sahib's signature and seal!” She flung away from him and the Jemadar went on, lowering his voice, “Do not fear, Memsahibs, we will not harm you. But so as not to incur the Nana's wrath, should the serving woman bring us a written order, we will fire through the windows into the walls and ceiling. If you lie down, our musket balls will not touch you.”

The prisoners thanked him tearfully but Hosainee had again vanished and, still apprehensive, at the suggestion of Mrs Tucker, the Colonel's widow, they tore strips from their dresses and petticoats, with which they endeavoured to secure the door. Exhausted by their efforts, they sank down behind it to join once again in prayer, mothers clasping their children to them in nameless fear when, from somewhere close at hand, they heard the crackle of musketry. Fear became panic when Yusef Khan shouted through the window that their kindly little doctor and the sweepers who had served them had been shot, on Hosainee Khanum's instructions.

“The woman comes back, Memsahibs!” he warned. “The time has come … lie down, that we may fire over your heads!”

In the gathering dusk, the terrified prisoners watched Hosainee's approach. With her were five men, one wearing the scarlet uniform of the Nana's bodyguard, the other four peasants of low caste, two, by their stained white robes, butchers from the Moslem bazaar. All were armed with hatchets and knives, the bodyguard with a
tulwar,
and they strode arrogantly past the sepoy guard who—having fired a ragged volley through the barred windows—stood helplessly by, as Hosainee waved a paper at the Jemadar.

“The order!” she sneered. “I bring the Nana Sahib's sealed order, Yusef Khan. March your men from the compound if they fear to carry it out!”

Crouched behind the door, Lavinia heard its timbers crack as the men outside put their shoulders to it. Within the dirty, littered room that had been their prison, the poor hostages waited petrified, the children wailing as, one by one, pathetic wisps of cloth which held the door shut burst from its hinges.

Aware that her last hour had come, Lavinia dragged herself to her feet. The Bible which Tom had given her on their wedding day was in her hands. Trembling uncontrollably, her voice a tiny whisper of sound inaudible above the shrieks and sobs which filled the room, she placed herself in front of two cowering children and began to read from the 23rd Psalm …

It was dark when Hosainee Khanum's butchers emerged from the Bibigarh and the heartrending cries which had issued from its shuttered windows faded at last to a deathly silence. Barely six miles away, the guns of General Havelock's relief force continued to fire, as the streets of Cawnpore started to echo to the running feet of fleeing mutineers and the Nana Sahib—himself a fugitive from the battle—prepared to follow his retreating army.

O
n 6th August
the
Shannon,
in company with the corvette
Pearl,
arrived off the mouth of the Ganges. Soundings were taken, the ship put under easy sail, and a jack hoisted for a pilot. Under his guidance, the frigate steamed through the dull and muddy waters to the mouth of the Hoogly and then up river, with thick, luxuriant jungle on either bank, broken only by mud flats and innumerable small islands which, with their tangled vegetation and basking crocodiles, looked anything but inviting.

On nearing Calcutta, the east bank of the river—called Garden Reach—became more attractive, with its well-kept gardens and pleasure grounds and white painted bungalows and, passing beneath the gun batteries and green slopes of Fort William, the
Shannon
was enthusiastically cheered. At five o'clock on the evening of 8th August, she dropped anchor off the Esplanade, firing a 19-gun salute. Lord Elgin disembarked at once and was driven to Government House to consult with the Governor-General, Lord Canning, and Captain Peel accompanied him.

Phillip also went ashore, anxious to find his brother Graham, only to learn that the
Lady Wellesley
had sailed over a week before for Mauritius to pick up troops. He called at the shipping office, hoping that the letter he had posted to his brother before leaving Hong Kong might have reached him to find, to his chagrin, that the letter was amongst a batch addressed to Graham and Catriona which was being held in the office, pending their return. On his identifying himself, the clerk told him that his brother had taken the lease of a furnished bungalow at Garden Reach and had left instructions that this was to be placed at the disposal of any member of his family who might arrive in Calcutta in his absence.

“He has given me two names, Commander,” the clerk volunteered, leafing swiftly through the little pile of papers on his desk. “Yes, here they are … Mrs James Dorling and Mrs Thomas Hill. His—that is, your sisters, I presume, sir?”

Phillip nodded, tight-lipped. He cut short the clerk's offer to give him the keys of Graham's newly acquired residence and asked if there had been news of either of his sisters. “I was hoping that there might be a letter or letters, perhaps. They would be addressed to my brother, of course.”

The clerk hesitated, eyeing him uncertainly. He was a young man, well mannered and anxious to please but clearly he doubted his authority to hand over mail to anyone to whom it was not addressed. “Where would such a letter or letters be from, sir?” he enquired cautiously.

“From the Upper Provinces—Lucknow probably. Or Cawnpore.”

The clerk paled. “I trust not from Cawnpore, Commander. Have you not heard the news—the terrible news of what occurred there?”

Phillip shook his head. “I heard that it was under siege. There was a rumour in Singapore that terms for surrender had been asked for by General Wheeler and a wild tale of a massacre but neither had been confirmed when we sailed. We …” The expression on the young clerk's face froze the words in his throat. “For God's sake, man, surely it can't be true?”

“Unhappily the tale of the massacre is only too true, sir. Everyone here is still sickened by it, sickened and angry.” In a few brief and bitter sentences, the boy described what had happened following the garrison's surrender and went on, “The survivors of the ghastly slaughter in the boats numbered about a hundred and twenty women and children, and the Nana confined them, with other poor fugitives from Fategarh, in a small house known as the Bibigarh in the centre of the native city. General Havelock was aware of this, sir, when he left Allahabad with his relief force and he made the most strenuous efforts to save them. He had a very small force, fewer than a thousand European troops, and they marched a hundred and twenty-six miles in ten days, fighting four successful actions against the Nana's army. The General re-captured Cawnpore on the sixteenth of July, sir, but that foul fiend, the Nana Sahib, had butchered our poor, defenceless countrywomen the day before, when he knew himself to be defeated. He fled the city, attempting to deceive his own people with a simulated suicide, but he is believed to be in alliance now with the rebels who are besieging Lucknow.”

Phillip expelled his breath in a long-drawn sigh, feeling his stomach churn. It was a ghastly story, worse than anything he had ever imagined and he listened, only half taking in the horror of what was happening in India, as the clerk went on to recount other stories of uprisings in isolated stations, his young voice harsh with disillusionment.

“Is Lucknow still holding out?” Phillip asked, when the boy came to the end of his recital.

“Yes, sir. Despite the tragic loss they suffered when Sir Henry Lawrence was killed.”

“Sir Henry Lawrence is
dead?
”

“Alas, sir, he is … he was killed at the beginning of the siege. News filters through, messages are carried by loyal native runners. We hear few details, just bare facts but it is believed that Sir Henry was killed when his room at the Residency was struck by a shell. General Havelock marched from Cawnpore on the twenty-eighth of last month to the relief of the Lucknow garrison. We heard that he had twice defeated the rebels and reached a town called Busseratgunj, thirty-six miles from Lucknow, but that heavy casualties and losses from cholera among his British troops might compel him to retreat. It is to be hoped that's not true.” The clerk sighed. “Many people here feel that had the command of the relief force been confided to Colonel Neill—the officer who saved Benares and Allahabad, sir—Lucknow would have been relieved by now. But Colonel Neill has been left to command the force holding Cawnpore …” He talked on, extolling the merits of Colonel Neill and Phillip, recovering himself, interrupted him.

“Forgive me but … I have been a long time without news. One of my sisters, Mrs Dorling, was in Sitapur, I believe—that's an out-station, about forty miles north of Lucknow. Did you hear what happened there?”

“The native regiments mutinied in Sitapur, sir, as they did virtually everywhere else in Oudh. But”—the clerk frowned, in effort to remember—“I do recall hearing that a number of ladies from Sitapur managed to reach Lucknow. I very much hope that your sister was amongst them, I …” He hesitated, again leafing through the small pile of Graham's mail. “There's a note here, sir, addressed to Captain Hazard of the
Lady Wellesley.
I believe it came via Allahabad and is from Lucknow, smuggled out before the Residency was invested. In the circumstances, Captain Hazard surely would not object to my permitting you to read it, do you think, sir?”

“No, he would not.” The boy had the note in his hand, still hesitating, and Phillip leaned forward and took it from him. The writing, he saw, was Harriet's and a wave of thankfulness swept over him when he opened it and read the heading and the date. On June 15th Harriet had been in the Residency at Lucknow, Harriet and … oh, heaven be thanked, her three children!

His throat ached as he read the rest of the note.

“We are permitted only a few lines,”
Harriet had written.
“My beloved Jemmy is dead, murdered by his own sepoys, but the children and I have come here safely and are lodged with other fugitives. There is no chance of our leaving until relief is sent. I have just been told that Lavinia and Tom are still in Cawnpore. Pray God they may be saved.
”

“Is it—good news, Commander?” the clerk ventured.

For a moment, his thoughts with Lavinia, Phillip could not answer him. Then, controlling himself, he said flatly, “Yes, I thank you—my sister, Mrs Dorling, is in Lucknow.” He returned the letter and, requesting pen and paper, left a note of his own for Graham. “I can be contacted aboard the
Shannon,
” he told the clerk and was about to take his leave, after thanking the boy for his trouble, when a thought struck him. “Do you know whether any casualty lists have been published here?”