The Gallant (47 page)

The rest of his words were drowned by the wild cheering of the men. Then, led by the pipers of the 78th Highlanders, they wheeled into line and set off to cover the last sixteen miles that separated them from Cawnpore.

In the malodorous prison of the Bibigarh, in which they had been confined for so long, the distant sound of gunfire rekindled hopes most of the unhappy captives had long since abandoned. Death, in its most hideous and degrading guises, was no stranger to them now. Already it had robbed the married women of their husbands, the children of their parents, and to many of the sickly, broken-hearted women its advent was a welcome end to unendurable torment.

But although some of the bolder spirits, hearing the gunfire, had cried out that a relief column was at last on its way to rescue them, the jemadar,

a lieutenant in command of their sepoy guard, had stoutly denied any such possibility, and the prisoners had sunk again into the state of apathy, induced by near-starvation and the appalling heat that had for so long held them in its thrall.

Jenny had fought against it for as long as she could find strength to do so. She had tried to keep up her spirits, for young Andy Melgund’s sake, rather than her own. She was all he had now. His father had died before they had even reached Cawnpore, and his mother and his frail little sister, Rosie, had fallen victim to the dysentery that had affected many of them during the past days. Andy clung to her, afraid toddleave her side, his courage no longer proof against the endless days and nights of suffering and the humiliation inflicted on them by those in whose charge they had been placed.

The worst of these was, by far, the woman known as Hosainee Khanum, a coarse, loud-voiced harridan who had been servant to one of the Nana’s courtesans and who derived a sadistic pleasure from the threats that, from time to time, she delivered, claiming that they came from the Nana himself. It was ironic, Jenny thought wretchedly, hearing the unpleasant creature’s voice from the courtyard outside, haranguing the guard-indeed, it was more than ironic that Hosainee had been sent to the Bibigarh in response to the prisoners’ plea that something should be done to cleanse the two cramped rooms they were compelled to occupy.

Sweepers had been given the task, and Hosainee had been entrusted with their supervision…

. Jenny breathed an unhappy sigh. Their conditions had, it was true, been improved, in that the floors had been scoured and the bodies of the poor souls who had perished from disease or the wounds they had suffered were removed each day, while previously they had been left where they lay. But in return for this favor, the prisoners were compelled to endure Hosainee’s presence, her insolent taunts and the mental torture she devised in order to provoke them.

On

her first appearance among them, she had informed the Ranpur fugitives, with conscious cruelty, that the men who had accompanied them in the boats had been condemned to death by the Nana.

“On the orders of His Highness the Peishwa, all were executed,” she had said, pleased when some of the bereaved had wept and cried out. “The sowars under the command of General Teeka Singh carried out the execution, and no one was spared, not even those who begged for their lives!”

But the grief of the Ranpur survivors-paled into insignificance when compared with what the poor souls who had survived the massacre of General Wheeler’s garrison had suffered… . Jenny sighed again, wishing that she could forget what some of the women had told her. They had been full of hope when they had gone down to the Suttee Chowra Ghat, Caroline Moore had said. The Nana had offered them honorable surrender, after their brave resistance; he had sworn a solemn oath that they should be permitted to leave the entrenchment under William Stuart Long

arms, and had promised that boats and boatmen would be provided, to convey them to Allahabad. And the boats had been there, but … so, also, had been the hidden guns on the heights above and the sepoys waiting in ambush. The rifles and pistols the men of the garrison had carried had been of scant use.

The Nana had been seated in a small temple overlooking the landing stage, and he had given the signal for the guns to open fire. The boatmen had flung burning torches onto the straw awnings covering the boats and then swum to safety, and the sowars of the Light Cavalry, who had escorted their former officers and the women and children from the entrenchment with every appearance of pleasure and respect, had ridden their horses into the water and sabered those struggling there, when they had attempted to escape the flames.

They had seen their husbands slaughtered in front of their eyes, the poor, unhappy women .

. . then, when the ghastly massacre was over, they had been driven at musket point into a building known as the Savada Koti. There they had been left, without food or water or medical aid, for twenty-four hours, before being brought, in bullock carts, to the Bibigarh. And-Tears welled into Jenny’s eyes. They had been here for eighteen days, and only recently had their captors permitted a native doctor to visit them and dress their wounds; only during the past few days had fresh water been brought, to replace that which had long since been used up or gone stale and putrid, so that they dared not drink it.

She had been spared much, Jenny thought, looking down at Andy Melgund’s sleeping face, so thin and pale now as almost to be unrecognizable. She had not had to watch her husband die, and perhaps, if God were merciful, William might still be alive. She prayed often that he was, and yet, recalling Caroline Moore’s words, when she had first entered this place of suffering, she did not really believe that he could be.

“We are all widows here,” Caroline had said, and had then gone on reading from her prayer book to the children clustered about her. Poor, sweet Caroline had grown weaker as the days passed; she could no longer read to the children or lead them in the hymns they had sung each evening, and … Jenny’s tears fell unchecked. She had tried to take Caroline’s place, but the children had not listened, after a while, and only a few of them had summoned the strength and the will to sing.

But, after Caroline had died in her sleep, they had made the effort to give voice to her favorite hymn before her body had been taken away, and now a group of the women who had been her friends greeted the dawning of each new day with a tuneless rendering of “All Things Bright and Beautiful” in her memory.

They were frail and sick, all of them, but few had lost their courage, and all, even the weakest, had resisted Hosainee’s cruel attempts to shatter their morale. Amelia Hall constantly defied her; she gave orders to their unpleasant warders over Hosainee’s head, and when Martha Lund had been brought to bed for a premature delivery, a few days after their incarceration, the nabob’s widow had, by the sheer strength of her personality, obtained clothing for the babe and the native physician’s aid for the mother.

The gunfire thundered again, more prolonged this time, and Jenny sat up. Surely the sound was nearer than it had been before. Could there be a force of British soldiers coming to their rescue, in spite of the

jemadar’s

denial? There had been time, surely, for the news of Cawnpore’s fate to reach the governor general in Calcutta; time for troops to be dispatched upcountry in substantial numbers-

“Listen!” Elizabeth Vibart, widow of a major of the Light Cavalry and the mother of two small, fair-haired girls, gently set down her younger child and got unsteadily to her feet. “Those are

guns, and they are close at hand. And listen to the sepoys of our guard-they can hear them, and they know what gunfire as close as this must mean!” She tottered across to the barred window that looked out into the courtyard, straining to listen to the subdued voices of the guard outside. After a few minutes, she turned back, the last vestige of color draining from her pale cheeks. “Hosainee Khanum is there. She is-she has ordered the guard to shoot us!”

But the sepoy guard seemingly ignored the order, and in response to the cries of several of the women, the

jemadar

came to the window. At first he denied all knowledge of Hosainee’s order but then, reluctantly, admitted that the woman had

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brought verbal instructions from the Nana that the hostages were to be shot if the British column attacked Cawnpore.

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

“There

is

a British column!” Amelia Hall

exclaimed. “He has admitted it!” She dropped to her knees, offering her thanks aloud in inarticulate prayer, and several of the other women followed her example.

Elizabeth Vibart, her hands trembling as they grasped the bars of the window, called out to the jemadar,

in brave defiance, “Our soldiers will attack, rest assured of that,

Jemadarji!”

“And if they do, memsahib, they will be defeated,” the native officer returned. “They are few and we are many, and the Nana Sahib has placed great guns on the road to bar their way.” But he sounded uneasy, and they heard him respond angrily to Hosainee’s shrill-voiced reproaches.

The native doctor, coming to pay his daily visit, confirmed the

jemadar’s

admission. He-the only one of their jailers who had shown them pity or kindness-now raised their flagging spirits. “A British force is nearing the city,” he told them. “It is not large, but it is led by a resolute general, whose name they say is Havelock. Since leaving Allahabad just over a week ago, they have marched a hundred and twenty miles and have three times defeated the Nana Sahib’s army. Now I have heard they have fought their way across the Panda Nudi River. The Nana’s brother, Bala Bhat, was wounded in the battle, and it is said that his general of cavalry, Teeka Singh, had his elephant killed under him. Their troops flee the field like jackals as soon as General Havelock’s redcoat soldiers are sighted. Soon, ladies, your countrymen will be here to set you free, and your terrible ordeal will be over!”

They hung on his words, repeating them to each other again and again as the 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 recognized as being the Nana’s. Soon, Jenny told the suddenly wakeful Andy, soon they would be free, guarded by British soldiers, their suffering at an end. The little boy hugged her, and together they went to join those 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 roused from their apathy to add their voices to the rest.

It fell to Hosainee to shatter their brief hour of ecstasy. She had been absent for most of the day; when she came back to the house, one of the Eurasian captives abused her, whereupon the former nurse rounded on her savagely, saying with conscious malice that the Nana had ordered their execution.

“A written order will be sent here,” she screamed.

“Pray that the

lal-kote

soldiers never reach Cawnpore. For you will die before one of them sets foot in the city!”

A stunned silence greeted her threatening words, and Hosainee went out, refusing to retract them, and again the anxious prisoners heard her arguing fiercely with their guards. After a long and heated exchange, the jemadar

came to the window, indicating that he wished to speak with them.

“Memsahibs, do not fear,” he said, when they gathered on their side of the window. “True, the accursed serving woman claims she will bring an order, under the Nana’s sign and seal, commanding us to execute you. But we will not harm you.”

“If you preserve our lives, General

Havelock will reward you,” Amelia Hall promised recklessly, and half a dozen others reiterated this promise. Mrs. Hall added, “If you take our lives,

Jemadar,

and General Havelock learns of it, he and his soldiers 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!”

She spoke with conviction, and the

jemadar

smiled at her. “Memsahib, I have said that you have nothing to fear at our hands. But so as not to incur the Nana’s wrath, should the serving woman spy on us, we will fire through the windows into the walls and ceiling.

If you lie down, our musket balls will not touch you. I,

Jemadar

Yusef Khan, swear it!”

They thanked him tearfully, but Hosainee had again vanished, and, still apprehensive, they followed the suggestion of a

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white-haired Eurasian woman and started to tear strips from their dresses and petticoats, with which they attempted to secure the door into the courtyard.

Exhausted by their efforts, the women sank down to the floor to join once again in prayer, mothers holding their children to them in nameless fear. Andy Melgund clasped Jenny’s hand and urged her to lie down, seeking to place his small, puny body between her and the courtyard window. Suddenly, from somewhere close at hand, they heard the crackle of musketry, and 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 very still, that we may fire over your heads!”

They did so, and, true to his promise, the sepoys’ volley passed harmlessly over their heads. But now they again heard Hosainee’s hated, strident voice, and in the gathering dusk the terrified prisoners watched her approach. With her, Jenny saw, were five men, one wearing the scarlet uniform of the Nana’s bodyguard, the other four peasants of low caste-two, by their stained robes, appeared to be butchers from the bazaar. All were armed with hatchets and knives, the bodyguard with a saber, and they strode arrogantly past the sepoy guards, who, not having reloaded their muskets, stood helplessly by as Hosainee waved a paper at the