‘And he died but a year ago,’ said the collector, ‘a major general — sword in hand fighting the Nepalis. A fine soldier and an equally fine gentleman. But this is to stray from the material point, Lucie: we were discussing the cause of the mutiny.’
‘Indeed we were. Well, Hervey, the cause, lying in a nutshell, the
‘Did you know the Abbe Dubois, sir?’ asked Hervey, the abbe’s book having lain open in his cabin for much of his voyage. ‘He was a missioner was he not? I have been reading his study of the Hindoos and their customs. It seems to me an admirable work.’
‘I knew him imperfectly: I met him but a half-dozen times — to converse with him on his perceptions of the country. I do not include him in my general censure. In any case, the French here had a rather different intention.’
‘So you will be acquainted with his book?’
‘Indeed I am. I first read it at Cambridge. Lucie, you must surely have a copy?’ he said, in a manner implying a request.
‘Why, yes — but in translation only, if such you do not disdain!’ he replied, already on his feet at the collector’s challenge, searching the shelves which ran the whole length of one wall. ‘I saw it only a day or so ago… Yes, here!’ He pulled out a handsome leather-bound volume and presented it to the collector.
‘Then I shall now quote to you from it,’ he said, leafing through as if he knew it well. ‘This is a most telling passage: “I venture to predict that Britain will attempt in vain to effect any very considerable changes in the social condition of the people of India, whose character, principles, customs, and ineradicable conservatism will always present insurmountable obstacles.” How say you to that?’
‘Just so,’ agreed Lucie.
‘A counsel of some despair, however,’ sighed Emma Lucie, ‘for India had the Word of Our Lord before our own lands. The apostle Thomas brought the gospel to these shores.’
‘Madam,’ began the collector, leaning forward with a look of keen anticipation, ‘I should like very much to speak with you at greater length on these matters, but a question of Captain Hervey has just this minute occurred to me, and which I should wish to put instead at this time.’
She nodded obligingly, while Hervey braced himself for what he sensed was a question that would test his guard.
‘Urdu, Captain Hervey, was the language of the Mughal court and is the language of those parts where the heirs of Babur still rule. Yet these parts are largely to the west and north, and you are — you say — making for Calcutta?’
‘That is correct,’ replied Hervey without difficulty; ‘propriety demands that I first present myself to the commander-in-chief at Fort William. But I understand that the finest exponents of the lance are to be found, however, in Haidarabad, where I believe my Urdu would be most apt.’
‘Haidarabad?’ said Lucie, in a tone implying that this was somehow to be deprecated.
Hervey was put on alert. ‘It was the duke’s remembrance thus, sir. It is of no necessity that I go to Haidarabad if there be some difficulty, and if there are other apt exponents of the weapon. No doubt the commander-in-chief will direct me appropriately.’
Lucie clearly wished the condition of Haidarabad had not been broached, and his discomfort was now compounded by Somervile’s blithe indifference to his sensibilities in this respect. ‘There is some uncertainty in our relations with the nizam at present, is there not, Lucie?’ he called from the other end of the table.
There was nothing for it but to brazen things out, as if it were of no great moment. ‘There is indeed,’ replied the fourth in council, ‘and want of intelligence is our greatest affliction. I fancy that the commander-in-chief would welcome your seconding there, if such could be arranged — which I very much doubt. Haidarabad is a closed book to the Company.’
‘Why do you doubt it?’ asked Hervey, with as little air of concern as he could manage.
‘Because,’ smiled Lucie, ‘the nizam appears to be in one of his periodic bouts of inscrutability.’
‘And not helped by the Company’s resident, and the Pindarees,’ added the collector.
Lucie shot an urgent look at him. ‘Somervile has also the rather tedious difficulty of having as a neighbour a small state which seems to be permanently at odds with Haidarabad. He is especially sensitive thereby, for when elephants fight — so to speak — they trample on a good deal of their neighbours’ crops. You understand what is the function of a Company resident, I take it?’
Hervey took the opportunity to learn more. ‘Perhaps if you would remind—’
‘By all means, sir. The Company’s policy for some years — initiated, indeed, by the brother of your Duke of Wellington when he was in Calcutta — has been to conclude treaties with the country powers whereby their security is guaranteed by the Company in exchange for their surrendering the right to engage in war on their own account. These subsidiary alliances, as they are known, are bolstered by a force raised and officered by the Company but paid for by the country power itself. And a resident is appointed to the court as an ambassador of the Company.’
Hervey was intrigued by the earlier intimation of difficulty with the Haidarabad resident — and the Pindarees (whoever they might be). He judged it inexpedient to pursue the question, however, for there was more than a suggestion that the nizam might be not nearly so well disposed towards the Duke of Wellington as imagined. He would try to change rein for the time being at least. ‘And this state which is at odds with its neighbour?’ he asked, again as innocently as he might.
‘Chintal,’ replied the collector, helping himself to whiskey and seltzer from the decanter making its slow progress around the table. And the Rajah of Chintal was largely to be pitied, he continued, for he was a Hindoo and wholly in awe of the nizam, in whose territory the princely state of Chintal would have occupied no more than a fraction of a corner. ‘If all the nizam’s subjects spat at once in the same direction,’ he sighed (to Lucie’s evident distaste), ‘Chintal would be drowned out of sight.’ ‘Just so, Somervile. I myself would have described Chintal as a nine-gun state, however. Less colourful than your description, but more telling.’
Hervey seemed not to understand the claim.
‘I mean that the rajah receives a nine-gun salute from the Company — the minimum.’
‘The nizam gets twenty-one,’ added the collector; ‘as do only four others.’
‘Others?’ enquired Hervey.
The collector looked at Lucie, who took up the challenge: the country powers were his business, after all. ‘Mysore, Gwalior, Kashmir… and Baroda, though heaven knows why, for it is a trifling place.’
Hervey wondered how he might enquire of Chintal’s condition, but could think of no way that might not arouse suspicion.
Lucie was growing more agitated by the minute, however. The collector had often enough made known his view that circumspection was no asset in India, so he now sought emphatically to deflect the conversation away from matters that might lead to graver indiscretion. ‘Come,’ he said firmly, ‘it is time for some air. Shall we go and see your horse, Hervey? And perhaps Somervile will show us his too, for they carried off all the trophies at the racecourse last evening!’
The stables at Fort George were solid, whitewashed affairs which would have been the envy of London. The Governor’s Bodyguard, a hundred native troopers under a British officer, were as pampered as His Majesty’s Life Guards — though hardened by not infrequent forays into the field. The numerous little fires about the yards, lit in the evenings to drive away the flying insects which otherwise plagued the occupants, were dying down, and although it was now much cooler, the punkahs were still swinging. The syces had gone to their own charpoys some hours ago, leaving the lines to the chowkidars, each of whom made low namaste as the visitors passed.
Jessye was lying at full stretch, perhaps pleased at last there was no motion beneath her bed. She raised her head as the four approached, her ears pricked with her habitual alertness, and she drew up her forelegs in preparation to rise should the disturbance threaten her. But on seeing Hervey in the lantern light she relaxed visibly, her ears flattening to the sides in anticipation of some word from him, and she whickered — scarcely more than a grunt, but enough to alert the other horses in the lines, each of whom echoed the sound of pleasant expectation. Hervey bade her stay down, pulling her ears a little and giving her candied fruit which he had stuffed into his pockets as they left the dining room.
The collector made approving noises: he could see her obvious handiness, he said.
Lucie was less restrained: ‘She is not a looker, but I can vouch that she swims well!’
