Sword of Empire Read online

  Sword of Empire

  Christopher Nicole

  © Christopher Nicole 1991

  Christopher Nicole has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1991 by Random Century Group

  This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Bombay, 2 February, 1825

  Prologue

  Part One THE BEGUM

  Bombay, 4 April, 1825

  1 The Rajah

  Bombay 15 June 1825

  2 The Rani

  Bombay, Christmas Eve, 1825

  3 The Tragedy

  Bombay, 17 December 1827

  4 The Widow

  Sittapore, 8 January 1828

  5 The Thug

  Part Two THE FUGITIVE

  In Camp, 10 January 1828.

  6 The Bargain

  Bombay, 28 January 1828

  7 The Mountains

  Bombay, 16 September, 1830

  8 The Conquest

  Kandahar, 30 April 1839

  9 The Reunion

  Bombay, 12 August 1840

  10 The Massacre

  Part Three THE SWORD OF EMPIRE

  Peshawar, 1 February, 1842

  11 The Avengers

  Kabul, 20 September 1841

  12 The Flight

  Nowshera, 6 February 1843

  13 The Siege

  The Banks of the Indus, 17 February 1843.

  14 The Battle

  Hyderabad, 23 March 1843

  15 The Pursuit

  Bombay, 1 September 1843

  Extract from Sword of Fortune by Christopher Nicole

  Bombay, 2 February, 1825

  Since my life as an officer in the Honourable East India Company’s Army will, I hope, be a tremendous adventure, I have decided to keep a journal. I should, I suppose, have started to write it on leaving England, but the voyage proved so damnably tedious that there was precious little to tell. It lasted three months with but two stops, at St Helena and Cape Town. St Helena has fresh water, and that is all that can be said for it. I suspect Boney died of boredom. The Cape is magnificently beautiful, but the Boers gaze at one with frank dislike, and I did not care for them.

  We had several storms, which were at least exciting, and several periods of flat calm, which were desperately boring. I was dreadfully seasick. How happy I am that I chose the Army instead of the Navy. I would willingly never put to sea again.

  It is popularly supposed that a young man aboard ship, particularly if he is a handsome subaltern, twenty-three years old, in all the glory of crimson tunic and yellow sidewhiskers, is surrounded by marriageable females on their way to seek husbands among the lovelorn soldiery. Oh, that it had been so! While there was one female on board not quite old enough to be my mother, she was on her way to Bombay to marry a major in the artillery. Subalterns were not her line of country at all. I might have pressed the matter had she been in the least attractive. But she was not.

  Now, to write of Bombay. The place is an island, although connected to the mainland by a causeway. It is small, and must be the most crowded place on earth. Most of the inhabitants are Indians, as one would expect. They are a small people, dark of skin and hair and eye, but in many cases very handsome, especially the women, who go about very scantily covered, except for gold ornaments, which they wear in profusion, even in their noses, and which I am told constitute their entire wealth. The Colonel has warned me about the women, that they are diseased and deceitful, and really hate the sahibs.

  Well, if Colonel Partridge is correct and they are diseased, I am undoubtedly most confoundedly clapped, although as yet there is no manifestation of it. My brother junior officers considered it necessary that I be initiated into the regiment, and thus on my second night here while my friends stood around laughing I discovered myself bound hand and foot to my bed, and stripped naked besides, and introduced into the midst of a dusky charmer. I use the words advisedly. Within an hour I was sucked dry — and again the words are not mere figures of speech.

  I will confess I enjoyed it, at the time. Since then I have been racked with a variety of emotions: alarm, that I may at any moment discover myself incapable; lust, to repeat the performance with my hands free to investigate her as she investigated me; and most of all shame, that I should have coupled with a native and surely therefore left myself unfit for proper intercourse...and at such a moment! For I have just met the most heavenly creature on earth!

  Her name is Laura Dean, and she is perfectly beautiful. I am not alone in this opinion; she is much talked of in the Presidency, particularly among the young officers. Her hair is as yellow as mine — what a pair we would make, arm in arm —and she is tall for a woman, and statuesque. She makes one think of a Greek goddess, and moves like one too, back as straight as an infantryman’s, head held high; this posture shows off both her swanlike neck and her splendid bosom. I have no doubt at all that the rest of her is equally desirable.

  In short, I am besotted. You will say, gentle reader, but this young lady is the toast of the Presidency and the young gentleman is but a junior subaltern. Is he not preparing to tilt against windmills? But this is not necessarily so. Miss Dean is eighteen years of age, has lived in Bombay the better part of her life, and is unmarried! Not even betrothed! Ah, you will say, there must be some mystery here, one perhaps better not investigated. But it is really very simple.

  Miss Dean’s father is a humble clerk. True, his brother, Harrison Dean, is the Presidency’s leading factor, and as such is a man to be noted. But Carmichael Dean is merely in his brother’s employ and, as Harrison Dean is a miser, is kept in very short funds. Thus Miss Dean, save for her beauty, is not the catch she immediately appears. Most of the young men are desperately anxious to marry money, or at least advancement. Miss Dean promises neither. But she smiled most graciously upon me on the occasion of our first meeting. Thus...who knows?

  Should not I also be considering marrying money, having none of my own, or advancement? No doubt I should. But when I regard so ravishing a creature, surely crying out to be ravished, even if marriage lies at the end of it, I feel it better to remain a penniless subaltern all my life than let such an opportunity go by. Oh, a fellow needs to dream!

  For the rest, I am well settled here. The regiment consists entirely of Indians, who are called sepoys. This appears to be a corruption of the Turkish word sipahi. In the Turkish army, as I understand it, a sipahi is a mounted soldier, whereas our sepoys are infantry. They have their own corporals, or naiks, and their own sergeants, or havildars. They are splendid fellows, who wear red jackets and white trousers but prefer to go barefoot. Instead of shakos they wrap their heads in yards of white cloth, which they call a turban. Colonel Partridge is quite a good fellow, so is Major Hargreaves. My captain is called Smythe, and is not so good-natured. But I do not doubt we shall get along as I am determined to do my duty. My sole wish — after obtaining a closer acquaintance with Miss Dean — is to get to the mainland and see something of the country. But for the time being it is drill and whisky and cards, day in and day out.

  The food is mostly meat served in a sauce known as kari. The Hindus and the old India hands consider this a great delicacy. But the first time I tasted it, I supposed I had been poisoned with sulphuric acid. It is the hottest thing I have ever tasted. However, one can get used to anything, especially when there is little else. And the stuff is, apparently, very necessary. The mixture — I shall not describe what it looks like — contains certain spices which enable food to be kept for more than a few hours after cooking — otherwise it would go off in the heat.

  And I drink spirits. There is no wine
here, and to attempt to send any from England would be disastrous.

  I think I shall get myself a dog. There are a great number of them about. I already have a servant, a jovial rascal named Ramjohn. Of course, that is not his real name, but that is what he is called in the regiment.

  So here I am, broiling in the sun, drilling my dusky soldiers, dining in the mess — a very drunken affair — playing at cards, and dreaming of Miss Dean.

  Prologue

  ‘We will stop for tiffin in an hour, Partaj,’ announced Harrison Dean, peering down from his elephant.

  ‘I am thinking we should not stop for tiffin today, Harrison Sahib,’ replied the Indian who walked beside the huge beast. ‘Maybe we should keep on going.’

  ‘Not stop for tiffin?’ Dean was astounded. He was also quite hungry. ‘I never heard of such a thing.’

  ‘Ramdas has told me, sahib, that he has seen a man, and then another, looking at us from the trees.’ Partaj himself looked around at the jungle with some apprehension. The little caravan was following a well-trodden pathway between looming trees and concealing undergrowth, but it was only eight feet wide, and the elephants were strung out over nearly a mile.

  ‘What is so alarming in a man, or even two men, looking at us from the trees?’ Harrison Dean inquired.

  ‘Why, sahib, a man may look at us as much as he likes, but is it not strange that he does not step out and look at us openly? Or even speak with us?’

  ‘I am sure he has his reasons,’ Dean said equably. ‘We will stop for tiffin...’ he looked at his watch, ‘...in forty-five minutes.’

  He leaned back comfortably in the howdah, and allowed his ample body to sway in time to the slow movement of the elephant. Above his head the wide umbrella also swayed gently, keeping the sun from his face. Harrison Dean was at peace with the world.

  The annual jaunt to Madras was the highlight of his year. He had first made the journey, from Bombay to Madras and back, as a young writer soon after arriving in India forty years before. Those had been exciting times. In 1785, the East India Company’s hold on the Deccan had been slight indeed; apart from the Marathas, who were at war with everyone, the army of Tippoo Sahib in Mysore waged war specifically on the British. French renegades had been everywhere, and British too. The entire sub-continent had been in a state of endemic warfare.

  In those days no caravan would have dreamed of attempting to cross the peninsula without a large armed escort.

  But such men as the Duke of Wellington and his politician brother Lord Mornington had turned the tide irrevocably in favour of the Company. Now, not only almost all the southern half of the peninsula, but the huge eastern territories of Bengal and Bihar, as well as the rump of the Sultanate of Delhi, the heartland of the once-great Mughal empire, were under direct British control, the Emperor himself a helpless puppet. Even powerful native states like Hyderabad and Rajputana took care to remain on friendly terms with the Governor-General.

  It had been a time for growing rich and living well. It had not taken Harrison Dean long to grow rich. He had always been a hard worker; he drank little and gambled less; and he had no time for women — he had never married. His contemporaries, in fact, had always considered him rather a bore.

  But where were they all now? Most were dead of fever or venereal disease, or had died of drink. The rest had returned to England, their health shattered, with no more than a modest portion to see out their old age. Only some half dozen had found true wealth.

  Dean alone remained living in Bombay, enjoying the lifestyle of a monarch with none of the responsibilities. Many people wondered why Harrison Dean did not retire and go home. The truth was that he had nothing to go home for. He dearly loved his sister, but knew that he and she would remain the more fond of each other when separated by several thousand miles. He did not love his brother Carmichael, an indolent rascal who had got a woman into trouble and then been stupid enough to marry her, though she had had neither money nor prospects. Yet he considered it important to remain in Bombay and keep an eye on the scoundrel, lest he bring more disgrace on the family name.

  As a young man, Carmichael Dean’s peccadilloes had caused him to fall upon hard times, and to escape the debtors’ prison he had fled England with his pregnant wife, to throw himself upon the generosity of his successful brother. Their daughter had actually been born at sea.

  That had been eighteen years ago. Harrison had been scandalised at the appearance of the ne’er-do-well on his doorstep — but Carmichael was his brother. He could not be allowed to starve or rot in gaol. Of course, Harrison could, with the greatest of ease, have paid Carmichael’s debts and put him and his family on a ship back to England, but that was not Harrison Dean’s way. Men worked their way through life, in his opinion. Given the opportunity, Carmichael would only return to the dissolute existence from which he had been forced to flee.

  Harrison had given his brother a job as a writer in his factory, and told him to earn his keep.

  Carmichael had grumbled, but had had no option other than to obey. Thus he had lived and worked in Bombay for eighteen years, and was still a humble writer. The dolt had not the slightest spark of ambition to rise in the world.

  Harrison Dean felt no pity for his brother, only contempt, and he heartily disliked Marjorie Dean. While prepared to admit that their daughter Laura was a remarkably pretty girl, Dean was quite convinced that she was no better than she should be, just like her mother.

  He chose to see little of them socially, yet insisted that they remain in Bombay. Employing Carmichael was an act of charity sufficient to make all others unnecessary; and he took a malicious pleasure in the all-too visible difference between his brother’s modest life and his own success.

  Thus he pursued his own life with its simple pleasures, among them this annual pilgrimage to Madras. He had first gone as a boy, now he travelled in considerably more comfort. His determination to play the part of a junior clerk once a year caused gossip in both the Presidencies, he knew. But he could afford to ignore gossip, and relive in his mind those glorious years so long ago.

  Besides, the journey also allowed him to indulge his interest in botany. No sooner had the elephants been brought to a halt and the ladder erected so that he could climb down, than he got out his magnifying glass and basket, and set off into the bushes. It would be half an hour before Partaj had lunch on the table; in that time he might well find an interesting specimen.

  Partaj watched his master disappear into the trees with a quizzical expression. He knew that the British nabobs considered themselves the rulers of all the earth. Their confidence and arrogance were quite frightening. They had conquered most of India, and the certainty that they would mete out the most severe punishment to anyone who challenged their rule had turned it into a land of peace. Certainly, Partaj was sure, Dean Sahib could conceive of no change in that satisfactory situation.

  But why had those men stared at the caravan from behind the trees? Had they been afraid? Or were they to be feared?

  *

  Harrison Dean exclaimed in delight, and knelt beside a wild orchid. The purple and white flower was larger than usual, and beckoned him with an almost sensuous beauty. He opened his basket, reached for his shears, and slipped his hand down the stem, seeking to cut the flower as far down as possible, the better to preserve it until he regained Bombay. And discovered, on parting the bush from which the orchid emerged, that he was gazing at a pair of feet, brown, bare and mud-stained.

  Harrison reared back on his haunches in surprise. There were several men, all naked save for dhotis and turbans. This was not at all unusual among lower caste Indians; it was the faces of these men that disconcerted Harrison. There was a wildness in their eyes he had not seen before, except when an Indian had been chewing bhang, the intoxicating drug taken from the hemp plant.

  ‘That is Dean Sahib,’ one of the men said.

  The leader smiled. The man had a handsome face, with bold features and deep black eyes, and yet it was q
uite the most evil smile Harrison had ever seen. The face was vaguely familiar, but Harrison Dean was in no mood for remembering faces.

  Equally, he was not going to be browbeaten by a handful of coolies. He made to stand, but his shoulders were grasped to push him back to his knees. A hand whipped away his hat.

  ‘Now, look here,’ he protested.

  ‘Christians pray on their knees,’ the man said. ‘And you should pray.’

  ‘Pray?’ Harrison demanded. ‘If the slightest harm is done to me or my people, you will be hanged!’

  The man grinned again, his teeth white against his dark skin. ‘Pray, Dean Sahib,’ he said. ‘Pray to the Great Goddess Kali, Mother of Death. Pray to her, before she folds you in her embrace.’

  ‘Kali? Of all the...’ Harrison Dean’s mouth sagged as he saw the knotted silk cord. He had of course heard of Kali, and of her devotees who murdered as a way of life to feed her insatiable lust for death. But Kali ruled in the north, beyond the reach of the Company. That such a thing should be happening, here, in British India!

  ‘Now look here,’ he blustered. ‘If...’

  But the cord was thrown round his neck and drawn tight, the knots already eating into his flesh.

  ‘Pray,’ the man said again. ‘Pray to Kali. Or she will throw your soul to the dogs.’

  Part One THE BEGUM

  Bombay, 4 April, 1825

  There has been the most frightful to-do. A murder, no less! Or an act of rebellion. A most horrendous event, in any case.

  Harrison Dean, our leading factor, has been killed. Together with every man of his caravan!

  When he failed to return from a visit to Madras, an excursion he apparently takes with great regularity once a year, a company was sent out to look for him. Naturally I volunteered; it was my opportunity to see something of the country.

  The country is unbelievable. I shall have to write of it at a later date. Suffice it to say that I have seen tigers as big as a carriage, and crocodiles as long as a small ship. And snakes...