The Cannons of Lucknow (2 page)

I should like to thank the city librarian, Mr. O. S. Tomlinson and the staff of York City Library for their help in obtaining reference books for me, including out-of-print works which I could not otherwise have read.

I make no apology for appending a list of “Books Consulted” since I have tried to make this novel as factually accurate as lies within my power, for which reason I consulted them … and readers, whose interest in the Mutiny may have been stimulated, could well find the list of practical use as a guide to their future reading.

W
ITH THE SOUND
of General Havelock's guns still ringing remorselessly in his ears, Dundoo Punth—Nana Sahib and self-styled Peishwa of the Mahrattas—stepped into the broad-beamed country boat which had been tied up at the Bithur landing stage since early morning, awaiting his appearance.

His brother, Bala Bhat, sullenly nursing the wound he had received in the battle for Cawnpore, had preceded him, with the women of his household, and the women now crouched, frightened and shivering, in the forward part of the boat. Their dark faces were raised to his, seeking reassurance, but the Nana ignored them. He seated himself on the cushions placed beneath the oil lantern in the stern and gestured to the chief boatman to cast off.

“Maharajah …” The grizzled old
rissaldar
-major, whom he had promoted to the command of his cavalry, made a last effort to detain him. “How am I to pay my sowars if you leave us,
huzoor?
They grow insolent, they make demands which I cannot meet. They—”

“Their cowardice has cost us Cawnpore!” the Nana Sahib flung back wrathfully. “Let them plunder the British if they desire payment for their services, Teeka Singh—they shall have no reward from me. I go to my death on their account, fool that I was to listen to their false promises and trust in their courage.” He turned away, his round, plump face suffused with resentful colour, and Azimullah Khan, his tall young Moslem
vakeel
, brushed the old cavalryman contemptuously aside as he, too, boarded the crowded boat.

“Cast off, dogs!” he shouted to the boatmen. “Pull into midstream!”

The men obeyed him, straining at their oars, and the mob of Brahmin holy men, beggars, and palace retainers, who had accompanied their Maharajah to the landing
ghat
, set up a chorus of mournful wails.

“Protector of the poor! Mighty Peishwa, do not leave us! How shall we fare without thee, when the British come seeking vengeance? Nana Sahib, take not thine own life, we beseech thee —stay with us!”

The Nana's full lips curved into a cynical smile as he listened, and Azimullah observed, smiling also, “The seed is sown, Highness. They will believe all when they see our lights extinguished.”

“And tell the British that I am dead?”

Azimullah's smile widened. “Of a surety, Highness—and the accursed British will believe what they are told. Narayan Rao will see to it and buy us time. That is all we need—time to rally our forces.”

“The dogs of sepoys are deserting our cause daily,” the Nana objected. “They flee in the hundreds at the mere sight of a British bayonet. From whence can we obtain others?”

“Ahmad Ullah, the Moulvi, goes to Oudh to gather troops, and from Gwalior, Sindhia will send us more—Tantia Topi will see to that.” Azimullah spoke confidently. “We shall retake Cawnpore, have no fear of that, Highness. This General Havelock has but a handful of white soldiers and he loses men daily from sickness. His gunners are old greybeards who must be carried in bullock carts and his much-vaunted steamer is worn out, with scarcely the power to make her way against the river current.” The young Mohammedan snorted his contempt. “Let Havelock cross the river into Oudh—as he must, if he is to reach Lucknow—and we shall annihilate him.”

“As we did at Panda Nadi?” Bala Bhat put in sourly. “And at Aong?” He gestured to his wounded arm, his eyes bright with anger. “The greybeard gunners, whom you affect to despise, shot the sponge-staffs from the hands of our
golandazes
and their aim was so true that Tantia Topi's elephant was killed under him with a single shot! I saw this, with my own eyes … and I saw also our mighty cavalry routed by a charge of less than a score of
feringhi
horse. What say you to that, Azimullah?”

“They were badly led, badly disciplined,” Azimullah defended. “Teeka Singh is a weak commander. His sowars hold him in contempt, knowing that he cares nothing save to enrich himself.”

“Teeka Singh will be given his just deserts now,” the Nana said. His gaze went to the landing stage they had left and his smile returned, coldly malicious. “His own men will deal with him if he is unable to pay them. Perhaps he will buy his life by disgorging the gold and treasure he has robbed me of … although even that may not be enough.”

But Bala Bhat was not to be placated. “Colonel Neill comes, they say, to serve our people in Cawnpore as he served them in Benares and Allahabad. He shows no mercy—he blows men from the cannon's mouth, hangs them with only a mockery of a trial, and has them buried in the foul earth, so that their eternal souls are damned! And those of
your
Faith, Azimullah, have their lips greased with pig fat before they are hanged and then their corpses are burnt!” His last few words were uttered with a satisfaction he made no attempt to conceal, and Azimullah bit back an angry retort.

Addressing the Nana, he said with dignity, “Your brother's information is not up to date, Highness—Neill has been made a general as a reward for his misdeeds. But do not despair, I beg of you—he, too, shall get his just deserts. This is a temporary setback; the
feringhi
have been fortunate, but their luck cannot hold. And if
General
Neill does here as he has done in Allahabad, it will bring men of both your faith and mine flocking to your Highness's banner … even those who now doubt and waver. You will have the greatest army India has ever known, eager to restore you to the throne of your father the Peishwa! Wait but a little, until the Moulvi returns, and Tantia Topi, with the Gwalior legions. Lucknow will fall, now that Lawrence is dead.”

“I am sorry for Lawrence's death,” the Nana confessed, with genuine regret. “He was a good man—one I would have pardoned and enlisted in my service, for he had a true love for India … a love that transcended race and creed.”

“He might have saved Lucknow,” Bala Bhat reminded him. “Thou need'st have no regrets on Lawrence's account, brother.”

The Nana's plump shoulders rose in a shrug. “I
have
regrets,” he insisted obstinately. “On Lawrence's account and on that of the old general, Wheeler. He was my friend and his wife also. I ordered that they be spared, but those insolent dogs of sepoys disregarded my orders—seeking, no doubt, to implicate me so deeply in their murderous treachery that now I am compelled to flee from British vengeance with a price on my head. Even”—he waved a beringed hand distastefully to indicate the muddy waters of the Ganges—“to the extent that I must pretend to take my own life, in fulfillment of a vow I made under their coercion!”

In the flickering light of the lantern above their heads, Bala Bhat and Azimullah exchanged uneasy glances, both aware that they, rather than the sepoys, had disregarded their master's orders concerning General Wheeler, giving ear, instead, to the Moulvi of Fyzabad, Ahmad Ullah, who had warned that none of the garrison must be spared. But the Nana offered no accusation and, emboldened by this, Azimullah said, passing his tongue nervously over his dry lips, “Highness, there are none left alive to tell of what happened at the Suttee Chowra Ghat, after Wheeler's surrender. The four who escaped by swimming and sought the protection of Drigbiji Singh will have had their throats cut by now. The Moulvi sent men to Moorar Mhow to attend to the matter before he left for Lucknow. Drigbiji's refusal to yield them up to your Highness's messengers was but a gesture on his part. He will not risk his neck to save theirs.”

“You believe so? Drigbiji Singh is no coward.”

“Neither is he a fool,
huzoor
. He will fear to incur the Peishwa's wrath.”

“And the women are also dead,” Bala Bhat added quickly.

His brother stared at him. “The women?”

“Those held prisoner in the Bibigarh. I myself made known thy wishes respecting them to Savur Khan, of thy bodyguard, and to the serving woman, Hosainee. As Azimullah says, my brother, there are none living to bear witness to the British against thee.”

The Nana's shaven brows came together in a frown. “And no bodies? What of their bodies, Bala Bhat?”

“All have been disposed of, Nana Sahib,” Bala Bhat assured him. “I entrusted Aitwurya and his
jullads
with the task and paid them well. As for those at the Suttee Chowra Ghat—why, they are long since picked clean by the vultures. Who can tell a man's race from his skeleton? In any case, the rising river has taken most of them away.”

The Nana inclined his head, his anxiety partially allayed. He would be blamed for the massacre of the women, of course, and probably also for the slaughter of Wheeler's garrison. If the British were defeated, this would not matter and, indeed, might redound to his credit, but if they were
not
, if Havelock's contemptible little force of European and Sikh soldiers managed, by some miracle, to hold Cawnpore and relieve Lucknow, then it would be a different story. The British had vast resources in both men and money, but it would take time to transport reinforcements in any number to India and time was what he was about to gain for himself now. He raised his head, glancing astern to where the lights gleamed through the darkness from the palace he had been forced to vacate. The crowd was, he saw, still moving restlessly about the
ghat
and the riverbank—there would be witnesses in plenty to take the tale of his death back to General Havelock, but he ought, perhaps, to have left his womenfolk behind in the palace to give the story credence. Baji Rao's widows might with advantage have been abandoned—they were millstones round his neck, forever complaining and making demands on him, forever reproaching him because he had permitted European women to be put to death. Only this evening he had discovered, when the two were taken from their quarters, that they had hidden the wife of his lodge-keeper there in the hope of saving her life, and his own favourite wife, the lovely Kasi Bai, had been a party to their deception. She, too, had wept and made a scene when he had ordered the woman disposed of, and she was weeping now, her tears reproaching him. She …

“Highness—” Azimullah gestured to the distant
ghat
. “It is time.”

“Very well,” the Nana agreed. He rose, Azimullah's arm supporting him, his stout, richly robed figure visible to the watchers on the bank as the head boatman raised the stern lantern high above his head.

“Now!” Azimullah bade the boatman, and the two lanterns the craft carried were instantly extinguished. A wail went up from the waiting crowd, carrying quite clearly across the intervening water as the rowers, careful to make no noise, skilfully made use of the current to carry the boat to the opposite bank. It grounded, and two of them bore the Nana ashore on their backs to where the horsemen of his own bodyguard were drawn up to receive him, with curtained palanquins in readiness for the
begums
.

His nephew, Pandurang Rao Sadashiv, dismounted and made him a low obeisance; the erstwhile ruler of Cawnpore touched the young man's outstretched hands and, climbing into the nearest palanquin, drew the curtains and was carried swiftly away, his escort trotting after him.

The crowd on the Bithur
ghat
waited, still loud in their grief, but when half an hour had passed and there was no sign of the boat in which they had watched the Nana embark, the doleful wails abruptly ceased. Led by a Brahmin beggar in filthy, tattered robes, they made for the royal palace and proceeded systematically to pillage it, room by room.