The Cannons of Lucknow, page 5
Alex sighed, making an abortive effort to remember. “Dear heaven, Lou, was I really that bad?”
“You were like a living corpse, old man,” Barrow told him. “By rights you ought to have stayed in the field hospital, under the surgeons’ care, but you wouldn’t hear of it. Le Presle was worried about you. He predicted that you would drop from your saddle with exhaustion or that your head wound would kill you, if the sun did not. ‘And then, Captain Barrow,’ he informed me, with such severity that he clearly thought I was the one who insisted on keeping you with us, ‘we shall have lost the only surviving officer of the Cawnpore garrison!’”
“Thank you for bearing with me. Good heavens, I—”
“You’ve made a miraculous recovery, for which we can both thank God. And now …” again a faint smile twitched Barrow’s lips. “Now I’m asking you to do the impossible and make reasonably efficient cavalrymen out of fifty foot soldiers.”
“In less than a week?” Alex demurred. “It’s a hell of a tall order, Lou.”
“I’m aware of that, but if you can’t do it, then nobody can. I can let you have an officer to assist you—Palliser or young Fergusson, if you like, and Palliser’s Rissaldar. Try, at least, Alex, if you will, because we need those fifty men very badly indeed. It’s going to be harder to fight our way to Lucknow than it was to reach here, I’m very much afraid.”
He was right, Alex knew. He bowed his head resignedly. “Very well, I’ll try. I can’t promise you that I shall succeed, but I’ll do the best I can. Which,” he added cynically, “would seem to prove—if proof is needed—that I’m still out of my mind! But it’s a strange way to recruit cavalry, you must admit.”
Lousada Barrow’s smile widened. “Beggars can’t be choosers, my friend, and this is a makeshift little army if ever there was one. We’ve too few men and too little of everything—except, perhaps, guts and determination. But they go a long way.” He clapped a big hand on Alex’s shoulder. “You can take over men and horses as soon as we get back to camp. I’ll collect what weapons and equipment I can for you, but once Neill arrives, I imagine that the rest of us will be required on the Oudh side of the river.” He shrugged. “At least you’ll be better off in one respect than we are, Alex … we’re in for a deluge by the look of that sky. And tents are, I understand, to be left behind—the general wishes us to travel light!”
The deluge he had predicted struck soon after the column reached Cawnpore. Heralded by a heavy thunderstorm which brought out every variety of insect pest, the monsoon rain hurtled down, soaking men, horses, and equipment, and turning the road into a quagmire. The patient bullocks, cursed by their drivers, strained and tugged at the heavy guns, and the Volunteer Cavalry men had to dismount and, reins looped over their arms, put their shoulders to the churning wheels. It was midday before the guns were delivered to Captain Francis Maude’s newly established artillery park south of the city, and every man in the column was exhausted and filthy.
Alex changed into a clean shirt, snatched a hasty meal in the mess tent, and then went with Lieutenant Palliser and his Rissaldar, Nujeeb Khan, to take over the Oudh Irregulars’ troop horses in the old Native Cavalry Lines. Each horse was furnished with saddlery and—their previous owners having been disarmed before being ordered back to Allahabad in disgrace—the weapons they had carried were in the custody of the 78th. Alex despatched Palliser with a small party and an ammunition tumbril to claim them and, aided by young Cornet Fergusson and the Rissaldar, led his new recruits to the old Cavalry Riding School to put them through their paces.
The Riding School, which had been used during the siege as the site of a twenty-four-pounder gun battery, was in a sorry state, its roof leaking and the once immaculately sanded floor covered with the filth and litter left behind by the mutineer gunners in their flight with the guns. The dripping men set to work to clear the place. There were curses and grumbles, but these were mostly good-humoured, for all the infantry men were enthusiastic and eager to assume the new role for which they had volunteered. Alex had to harden his heart when it came to selecting the best of them; there were only 53 horses, some of which, he knew, would have to be retained as remounts. Rissaldar Nujeeb Khan, a tall, fine-looking man with grey in his beard, was an expert judge of the potential skill of the would-be horsemen. He had been wounded in the head and legs when he had intervened to save his British commander from a threatened attack by the Irregulars, but he bore himself with stoic dignity and, seated astride a mettlesome grey stallion, trotted from group to group, offering advice and pointing out mistakes, his keen eyes missing little.
On his advice, eight of the volunteers were returned, crestfallen, to their regiment. The remaining forty-two mustered in two lines and, on Palliser’s return with the tumbril, each was issued arms, and the three British officers, with Nujeeb Khan, took them in small groups for instruction in the rudiments of sabre drill.
It was a wearying business, with the heavy monsoon rain pounding relentlessly at the broken roof and the damp heat bringing men and horses out in what Palliser described inelegantly as “a muck sweat.” But the foot soldiers managed well enough and finally, as reward for their efforts, Alex led them out onto the open plain to enable them to get the feel of their horses and of their unfamiliar weapons in a less confined space than the Riding School could provide. His new training ground was within sight of General Wheeler’s now-crumbling entrenchment, but he scarcely spared it a glance, although the men, without exception, displayed a lively curiosity concerning its shell-pitted buildings and rode up to inspect, in the fading light, the battered nine-pounders which still stood—as they had stood throughout the nightmare three weeks of the siege—as guardians of the place Azimullah had called “The Fort of Despair.”
“I don’t know,” Palliser observed, after he too had ridden round the perimeter, “how this place withstood the attacks which were launched against it for as long as it did. To me it’s inconceivable that close on a thousand men, women, and children found shelter inside it. With all due respect, Colonel Sheridan, poor old Wheeler must have been mad to select such a site for his defence. Damme, the walls could not have been proof against even musket balls … and a resolute cavalryman could have ridden his horse over it without much trouble.”
“But only one ever did,” Alex told him shortly.
“A sowar, you mean—a Pandy?”
“No, a British officer—young Bolton of the Seventh Light Cavalry from Lucknow, halfway through the siege.” Alex hesitated and then, his voice flat and without expression, he repeated the excuses he had made earlier to Lousada Barrow, feeling once more impelled to defend his brave old general’s inexplicable choice of such a site. Turning away, he glimpsed, through the driving rain, a column of marching men moving slowly toward them along the Allahabad road and, thankful for a chance to change the subject, he drew Palliser’s attention to them. “Look,” he said, pointing. “Can those be our reinforcements from Allahabad?”
“Indeed they are!” the Irregulars’ commander exclaimed eagerly. “And with General Neill riding at their head … that’s a sight for sore eyes, is it not, sir? Shall I send word to General Havelock and form our men up to receive him?”
Alex gave his assent. Lieutenant Palliser trotted off to give the necessary orders, and Alex waited, sitting his horse in the rain and watching the approach of the column with a bitter sense of irony. Almost against his will, he returned in memory to the entrenchment, and memory, sharp and poignant, peopled it with ghosts. He saw the sagging perimeter and the line of gaunt, unkempt riflemen crouching behind it, saw young St. George Ashe and Henry Delafosse, with their motley gun teams, working the worn-out nine-pounders, all of them in tattered remnants of clothing that had once been uniforms, their skins burned black by the sun. He glimpsed a dozen remembered faces—John Moore’s, Francis Whiting’s, Edward Vibart’s, Mowbray Thomson’s, Corporal Henegan’s, that of old General Wheeler himself—and heard the whine of shells overhead and the terrible, heart-breaking sound of a woman, screaming her agony aloud, as round shot thudded onto the rock-hard ground and bounced on its deadly way across the open compound.
The sweat broke out, streaming damply with the rain down his cheeks and drenching his body. Then the vision faded and his gaze returned to the road. How often had those weary, half-starved defenders—himself included—looked out toward the Allahabad road and prayed for the sight of a relief column, with James Neill at its head, marching into Cawnpore? Alex shivered, remembering. That he was here to receive them was, he knew, little short of a miracle. He had never expected to live to shake Neill’s hand or bid him welcome to Cawnpore … yet here he was, within sight of the entrenchment, whose stubborn, useless defence had cost the lives of almost a thousand others; here he was, waiting to greet the very man who might, had he come in time, have saved at least half of them. The man who might have spared Emmy and the rest—those poor ghosts he had just seen—from the horrors of the Suttee Chowra Ghat and the hideous slaughter which had taken place in the Bibigarh.
Dear heaven, he asked himself bitterly, how could he absolve Neill from blame, even in the clear, cold light of reason and with the excuse of military expediency? Neill had had a choice, but he had also had his orders.
Frowning, he studied the tall, upright figure in dun-coloured drill, riding a horse’s length ahead of the trio of officers who accompanied him along the rain-soaked road. Like himself, James Neill had served with the Turkish Army in the Crimea, where he had won an enviable reputation as a cavalry commander. They had never met; Alex had been wounded at Balaclava and had returned to India after a brief convalescence, and Neill, who had arrived later, had remained with the Turkish Contingent until shortly before the war ended. He had commanded at Yenikale, with the rank of brigadier-general, in 1855, and had enhanced his reputation with the British High Command for the strict discipline he had managed to enforce among his unruly troops. He was said to have hanged a number of them for looting and similar crimes in order to achieve this end, Alex recalled, and the French troops, who had formed part of his garrison, had apparently regarded him with loathing.
But he had a presence, even at this distance, an air of almost arrogant authority which had evidently made itself felt among the men marching at his back. They formed a compact body, their rifles shouldered and every man in step to the beat of the drums and fifes playing them in. They were wet and obviously tired but they held their heads high and even the camp followers and the baggage train seemed to have kept pace with the rest of the column instead of straggling behind it, as most such cumbersome trains did.
Impressed in spite of his earlier critical thoughts, Alex rode over to join his own men. Lieutenant Palliser had formed them up in two lines by the road verge, intending to receive the new arrivals with the ceremony of a salute, but they looked a bedraggled little party in their sodden red cotton infantry tunics, and the horses were restive and hard to control. Four or five of the men failed entirely to control their mounts and, as they backed awkwardly out of line, they unsettled the horses nearest them, which had hitherto been giving their riders no trouble. One animal reared, depositing its rider in the mud; flustered and cursing, the others endeavoured to get back into line and Palliser, exasperated by their incompetence, roared at them to hold steady. They managed finally to obey him and reform ranks, but their salute, when General Neill drew level with them, was anything but ceremonious. He recognised Palliser and gave vent to a bellow of laughter.
“Devil take it, Charlie, what’s this rabble you’re with? They don’t look much like cavalrymen to me. Surely these aren’t the Gentlemen Volunteers who’ve covered themselves with glory, according to the Old Gentleman’s despatches?”
Palliser, scarlet with annoyance, shook his head. He was an admirer of Neill’s and had served under him prior to General Havelock’s arrival in Allahabad. During that period, his Irregulars had behaved in exemplary fashion, and their attempted defection at Fatepur still rankled. “Good Lord, no, sir!” he retorted indignantly. “The horses are mine—my fellows were made to hand them over with their arms. But the clowns who are now endeavouring to ride them are General Havelock’s latest idea—recruits from the infantry, if you please.”
“I see.” General Neill permitted himself an amused and tolerant smile. “Well, perhaps you had better dismiss them, before they do any more damage either to themselves or their horses.” His dark eyes rested for a moment, indifferently, on Alex’s face, but he wore no badges of rank and made no attempt to introduce himself, and the older man was turning away when Charles Palliser, recovering his temper, made the introduction with a murmured apology.
“Lieutenant-Colonel Sheridan, sir. I beg you to forgive my bad manners, Colonel Sheridan, I—”
“Sheridan … Colonel Sheridan?” James Neill took in Alex’s empty sleeve and the scar on his face and waited, lips above the recently grown black beard suddenly tightening. “Damme, I’ve heard of you but the connection eludes me for the moment. Aren’t you a cavalryman?”
Alex bowed. He had his emotions under stern control and his expression was carefully blank. “Yes, sir, Third Light Cavalry,” he supplied. “Brevet rank of lieutenant-cColonel, at present serving as a Volunteer in Captain Barrow’s Horse.”
“A lieutenant-colonel serving as a Volunteer … good Gad! What times we live in.” Neill was clearly puzzled but Alex did not enlighten him. Instead he answered quietly, “Indeed so, General. If you’ll permit me, sir, I should like to take my recruits back to their lines. They’ve had rather a grueling first day on horseback and—”
“No, no, hold on, if you please.” Neill’s smile returned. “Let Charlie Palliser take ’em, for God’s sake, and ride in with me. I’ve remembered who you are now—General Havelock mentioned you in one of his letters. Damme, you’re the sole survivor of the Cawnpore garrison, are you not?”
“As far as can be ascertained, the survivors are myself and a Commissariat clerk, General,” Alex admitted reluctantly. He hesitated, anxious to phrase his request so as not to give offence but determined, as much for Neill’s sake as his own, to make his escape before he could be subjected to a barrage of questions. “If you would not consider it a discourtesy, sir, I’d like to remain with my men. I’ve been given a week in which to turn them into cavalrymen and I should be failing in my duty if I did not utilise every hour of daylight I have at my disposal for their instruction. They’ve a lot to learn, as I fear you will have observed.”
“Yes, of course,” Neill agreed, with unexpected readiness. His tone, as well as his smile, was friendly. “Congratulations on your escape, Sheridan. No doubt there will be another opportunity to talk to you about it when you’re less pressed for time. But spare me Charlie Palliser, if you will—he can bring me up to date with the news before I present myself to General Havelock.”
The column moved off with Palliser riding happily beside his old commander, and Alex led his crestfallen troopers back to the cavalry lines. He made a point of talking to them individually during the short ride across the flooded plain, offering advice and encouragement and, assisted by young Fergusson and Nujeeb Khan, supervised them at evening stables. The men began to recover their spirits. Drenched and saddle sore though most of them were, they groomed and bedded down their horses with more enthusiasm than Alex had expected, and he made them a brief speech before dismissing them to their own quarters.
“It’s not quite as easy as it looks, serving in the Cavalry, my lads,” he warned them. “If you’ve only volunteered in the hope of saving your legs on the way to Lucknow, you may well wish you’d stayed with your own regiments before I’ve done with you. But you’ve all had to do with horses before—you know they must be fed, watered, and groomed before you can attend to your own needs, however bone tired you are at the end of a march.” There was a murmur of assent from the assembled men. Alex outlined the training programme he hoped to arrange for them and ended with a few words of praise for their efforts during the afternoon, at which they brightened visibly. “I’ll make cavalrymen of you,” he promised, smiling. “But I shall have to make you work as you’ve never worked before. If any man is not prepared to give me all he’s got during the next week, I would rather he said so now and I’ll return him to his regiment without holding it against him. I want you to understand that a man who is unable, for any reason, to reach the standard I require will be a liability to his comrades—so think well, all of you.”
He waited, but, after glancing from one to another of them, saw only one man step forward in response to his challenge, hesitate, and when no one else followed his example, step sheepishly back into the ranks again. He was a stocky, grey-haired private with a face the colour of teak, whose name, Alex learned from his list, was Cullmane. He was a good horseman, which made his change of mind the more puzzling, but he said no more and Alex let him go with the rest, making no attempt to question or single him out. As he himself was preparing to make his way to the mess tent, however, he found the stocky figure of his reluctant recruit barring his path.
“If I moight have a word wit ya, sorr,” the man said, his voice betraying his Irish ancestry. “I’d take it as a favour.”
“Certainly.” Alex halted, eyeing him searchingly. “Before you do, though, I think I should tell you that you appear to be one of the best riders we have. And you did your horse well—you obviously know your way about a stable. What were you in civilian life, Cullmane, a groom?”
Private Cullmane’s brown face split into a gap-toothed grin. “I was whipper-in to the ‘Gallant Tips’—the Tipperary Hunt, sorr, in me younger days.”
“Then there’s not much I can teach you about horsemanship, is there, lad? You’ll only have to master the drill, and you shouldn’t find that beyond your capabilities.”
“No, yer honour,” the man admitted. “But ’twas what ye was sayin’ about being a liability—’twas that made me step forward. I wouldn’t want to be lettin’ yez down, sorr. But there’s this …” He pulled back the sleeve of his mud-spattered red jacket to reveal an ugly wound which extended from forearm to elbow. It was partially healed and evidently of recent origin, and the elbow joint was so swollen that he had difficulty in bending it. “I got this at Aong, sorr, and ’tis me roight arm, ye see. I’ll not be a great deal of use if I can’t handle me sabre, will I, sorr?”
