soil. This could go on for hours, until they are stupefied with the toddy.”
“I thought sacrifice had been suppressed,” Wauchope said.
“Human sacrifice, yes, decades ago, but not animal sacrifice, though it’s discouraged.” Howard slumped, suddenly overwhelmed with lassitude. “This is what those idiots at the Board of Revenue don’t understand. I’ve brought Campbell’s book on the suppression of human sacrifice with me. You can read it yourself He says we can’t use morality to persuade a people to give up their age-old customs. Our morality means nothing to them. You have to show them that their life will be improved as a consequence. If you then take away their greatest pleasures, they will return to their old ways. We broke the cycle by showing them their land could be fertile without needing sacrifice. Now a stroke of the pen in Calcutta and it is all undone. It was all lurking just below the surface, just inside the jungle, but now they want us to see it. You can hardly blame them.”
“Tell me about these people.”
“They’re Koya,” Howard said. “Descendants of the ancient Dravidian inhabitants of India, here at the time of Alexander the Great. But you couldn’t get a greater contrast to the civilization of the Mughals or the Sikhs. These people are more akin to your Red Indians. They hunt in the jungle and burn small clearings for crops. Hardly any of them have a notion of the world outside.”
“Maybe no bad thing,” Wauchope murmured, drawing on his pipe. “Do we have their language?”
“I possess a slight colloquial knowledge of the vocabulary. But we have our interpreter, who tells me about their customs.” Howard jerked his head toward a small, wiry man of indeterminate age sitting cross-legged on the foredeck, his skin deeply tanned and wearing only a white loincloth. His hair was dark brown, almost auburn, curly like his straggle of beard, and his face was wizened. In one hand he was holding a bow and arrows, and in the other a tubular section of bamboo about a foot long. His only embellishment was a gold chain hanging from the top of one ear to the lobe, with a small pendant dangling below. He was smoking a cheroot, and his eyes seemed dazed.
“He’s half-cut on palm wine,” Howard said. “It can’t be helped. It’s their lifeline during the monsoon. That’s what this rebellion is all about. How much did Colonel Rammell tell you?”
Wauchope shook his head. “I only had time to report my arrival at the field force headquarters in Dowlaishweram. The boat with the sapper reinforcements was already waiting to take me upriver. And Rammell and his adjutant were both prostrate with fever. Like almost all the other officers.”
Howard exhaled forcibly. “Well here’s the nub of it. If some imbecile on the Board of Revenue hadn’t decided to impose a tax on palm toddy, then we wouldn’t be here. That, and the native policemen. For months at a time the only outside presence among these people has been the constables, lowlanders the hill people despise. The British superintendent of police and the agency commissioner hardly ever come up here because of the jungle fever. The constables are free to intimidate and exploit the hill people as lowlanders always have done. And now that we need them, they’re worse than useless. Hardly a man of them can be got to smell gunpowder. The rebels’ first act was to capture half a dozen of them. It’s good riddance as far as I’m concerned.”
A ragged volley erupted from the riverbank, but no sound of bullets overhead. “Matchlocks again, Sergeant. Hold your fire.”
Wauchope peered over the metal plate at the smoke. “Where do they get their powder?”
“When I took my first party into the jungle last week, I searched a village and seized their guns, all matchlocks,” Howard replied. “The women were making saltpeter by urinating into bags of manure suspended over pans, and then letting the liquid that seeped out crystallize. Ingenious, really. They’re always burning jungle to open up new patches for cultivation so they have plenty of charcoal, and sulphur they get from traders. The powder’s pretty poor, but it’s good enough for small game. Some of them also get powder and ball from the lowland moneylenders who enslave them in debt. But I fear they now have a new source of weapons.”
A bullet smacked against the smokestack of the steamer, causing an almighty clang, followed by a sharper crack from the shore. “Speak of the devil.” Howard peered through his glass again. “An old East India Company percussion musket, native police issue. Some of the constables have supplied the rebels with arms and ammunition in return for their own safety. The police really are perfectly useless. They can be trusted to do nothing, they are disobedient and insubordinate. But Government wishes us to employ them. That’s what happens when a war is run by clerks in Calcutta. And there’s another problem. In the infantry regiments deployed in the field force, there are sepoy officers who still can’t use maps properly, even the rudimentary ones we’ve made of this place. Without a map and bearings you’re lost in the jungle. But all of our sappers are excellent map readers. So here we are, the Queen’s Own Sappers and Miners, employed as infantry and police. It really is a most lamentable state of affairs.”
“What’s the quality of the official maps?”
Howard snorted. “That’s the final rub. We’ve had to make them up as we go along. When Lieutenant George Everest came here in 1809 with the Great Trigonometric Survey, they hadn’t even set up their trig posts on the hills before they were all struck down by fever. Half of them perished, and Everest never came back. This place is a great black hole smack in the middle of India. It may as well be Baluchistan, or the depths of central Asia.” He glanced at the foredeck, and saw O’Connell glaring at him, his lower lip quivering. “Very well, Sergeant, bring your men to the ready. Another ball in our direction and you can open fire. First volley above their heads. Wait for my command.”
“Sir.” O’Connell instantly barked an order in Hindi and the line of rifles came up to the horizontal along the deck railing, followed by the clicks of hammers being pulled back to full-cock. O’Connell was positively chomping at the bit, breathing like a bull ready to charge.
“I had a look at your native fellow when I came on board.” Wauchope pointed his pipe at the man. “The pendant in his ear’s a Roman coin, you know. Do you remember when we were cadets, I took you to the coin room in the British Museum? It’s very worn, but I think it’s from the time of the Roman Republic, possibly Julius Caesar.”
“You come across them around Bangalore, and farther south,” Howard said. “Edward’s ayah has one, a gold coin. I’m told the Romans traded them for pepper.”
“Who is he, anyway, our Koya friend?” Wauchope angled his pipe again.
“He’s a muttadar, a local headman from Rampa, the village that gives its name to the district. He holds some kind of grudge against Chendrayya, the leader of the revolt. The muttadar acts from motives of self-interest. Once satisfied on that point, his time and labor have been most zealously and indefatigably given, when he’s been sober enough.” Howard lowered his voice. “He’s also a vezzugada, a sorcerer. The Koya know nothing of the Hindu religion. They worship deities of their own, ancient Dravidian gods, animistic gods and goddesses. Tigers, hyenas, buffalo. Sometimes the deities possess people, who are known then as the konda devata. Sacrifices are made to a dread deity called Ramaya. That hollow bamboo he’s holding supposedly contains some kind of idol, the supreme velpu. He calls it the Lakkala Ramu, and it’s rumored to be ornamented with eyes of olivine and lapis lazuli. He won’t show it to anyone. It’s supposed to be kept in a sacred cave, a shrine near Rampa village, to placate the deity. The muttadar took it from the shrine when he fled Chendrayya and came to us. But now the deity needs it back, and is apparently becoming agitated. Our side of the bargain is to help the muttadar replace it.”
“Will you keep your promise?”
“Of course. We need to instill fear among the rebels, and confidence among those who are well-disposed toward us.”
“Quite so.”
There was a sudden commotion and a curse, and a hatch into the hold opened behind them. An indescribable smell wafted out, followed by a burly man stripped to the waist except for a luridly stained apron. He was only a few years older than the two subalterns, the same age as Sergeant O’Connell, and like O’Connell sported the long sideburns fashionable among a previous generation.
“Surgeon Walker,” Howard said, looking at the man with concern. “How goes it in the black hole?”
“Most of the men have had repeated malarious attacks, and are in a very debilitated state.” Walker spoke with the hard consonants of his birthplace, Kingston in Upper Canada, and six years at the Queen’s University in Belfast. “There are serious after consequences-enlarged spleen, anemia, partial paralysis, extreme emaciation, disorders of the stomach and bowels, and other complaints of a grave nature. Many of the men are passing through the hot stage of a febrile paroxysm, and their sufferings and distress are painful to witness.”
“That vile odor?”
“Indeed. A singular putrid efflorescence.” Walker wiped something unpleasant off his hand onto his apron. “I’m here for a breath of fresh air. Is Lieutenant Hamilton back yet?”
