Nizams Daughters

‘It seems a distant cry from trade, this,’ smiled Hervey.

‘Then let me disabuse you, sir, of any notion that trade is what the Company is about nowadays. At first, yes — in Queen Elizabeth’s day. Then it was truly a company of merchants trading spices from the east. It began to change with King Charles’s Braganza dowry — Bombay — and then later when that enfeebled Mughal Shah Alam made the Company his dewan — his administrator — for the Bengal revenues. But this much you surely know?’

Hervey was relieved that the collector had some appetite for conversation, even at this hour, for Locke was bearing the signs of little sleep, promising to be no sort of companion at all. ‘I have not heard it stated so definitively, sir.’ He was not without the art of flattery in a good cause.

The collector was more than happy to continue, definitively. ‘Mr Pitt’s India Act established the Board of Control. Doubtless he would have preferred to appropriate the Company lock, stock and barrel, but that would have put too much patronage in his hands for the Whigs to stomach. It was a half-baked scheme, for it gave no-one the necessary freedom to act. And it made worse the differences between the three presidencies. Madras and Bombay were all but pursuing contrary policies towards Mysore at one juncture.’

Hervey pressed him to more as he leaned forward to remove a monstrous horsefly from his gelding’s ear.

‘The amending act three years ago has done much to tidy things up — the president of the Board now has a seat in the cabinet and such like — but it spells the end for the Company. Of that I’m sure. We are in all effects a department of state even at the present, and it will not be long, in my judgement, before parliament sees fit to wind up all trading interests. What worries me, Captain Hervey, is that our new administrators are becoming too imperious in their dealings with the country powers and with the natives in the presidencies. Warren Hastings knew the continent, you see, from his engagement with trade. The new breed does not.’

Hervey thanked him for his candid opinion.

The collector made light of it. ‘But I heard you asking Templer if there is any difference between the armies of the three presidencies.’

‘Yes; he said he would explain when we made camp tonight.’

‘He will indeed, but I shall first tell you the root of those differences.’ He flicked his whip against his mare’s quarters, she having become disunited. ‘You would say that there is a difference in the fighting qualities of men from the various parts of our own islands, would you not? You would no doubt say that the Scotchman is a fearsome soldier, but without his officers he is at a loss; that the man from East Anglia is steadfast in adversity and so on. But these are but fine shades in men whose red coats make of them all fine soldiers. Here things are a matter of greater extremes — as they are in all things. From a military point of view there is no doubt that the Rajpoots of northern India are the noblest, the finest of the races. The Rajpoot is tall and well-built, clean-limbed. He may not marry a woman who is not of a Rajpoot family. Where you find him — in the Bombay regiments — he is peerless.’

Hervey nodded in appreciation. ‘Then I hope I shall soon meet them.’

‘Not this side of the Nerbudda river, I think,’ replied the collector, shaking his head. ‘You shall have to go to what is Hindoostan proper — to the north of the Nerbudda. But that is as may be. The Bombay presidency’s forces are well-tried: that is the material point. And, incidentally, what a city Bombay is, Captain Hervey! You would consider it alone worth the journey to see what its women will dare in the matter of dress! Nowhere on earth will you see any more colourful sight than a Parsi girl — brilliant beyond measure!’

Hervey and Locke were all attention.

‘A Bombay street is as splendid and lively a sight as a Calcutta one is ugly and dispiriting.’

‘I think you have no very great regard for the Bengali, sir?’

‘Not in the main. He’s feeble and effete beyond measure. He holds personal cowardice to be no disgrace. Do you know of any other race in the world to which that accusation might be directed?’

‘Which leaves the soldiers of the presidency of Madras,’ said Hervey, smiling.

The collector sighed. ‘The glories of the ancient Telinga kingdoms are long past, and — it must be said — their martial spirit. When the French occupied the Karnatic, and when Clive was campaigning in Mysore, the Telinga fought with ferocity and intelligence.’ He touched his mare’s flank again with the whip as she fell back half a length. ‘But the Madrasi now is a man of peace, a better servant than a soldier. The Telinga makes a better-looking sepoy, being of superior physique, but he possesses on the whole less stamina than the Tamil. The Tamil can exhibit fine fighting qualities, mark you: Subedar Thangraj overcame more than a dozen mutineers at Vellore with only a clubbed carbine.’

Hervey glanced across at the subedar. In his native dignity there was the stamp of Serjeant Strange. He looked back further along the column, seeing in a face here and there more than a vestige of that fighting spirit which the collector said was now dimmed. He found it hard to believe that men who wore their uniforms as well as these did, or who sat their horses so, were not as determined when it came to drawing the sword.

The collector strove at once to correct the impression he had given. ‘Captain Hervey, do not suppose for one moment that I am saying these men lack fighting spirit. It is only that by comparison Madras is not thought to have so martial a people. If you were to see the men of the northern parts — Rajpoots, Sikhs, Jats, Punjabis, Pathans — big men, not enervated by climate, you would understand my meaning. Have no fear: Cornet Templer’s men will fight as well as you would wish. And I for one am content to place my security in their hands.’

Next day

The sun had been up for only an hour, but in that cool, fresh, first sixty minutes of another Indian day the patrol had made ten miles. Chota hazree — sweet tea and a plantain — had been brought to the officers in their bivouac tents a half-hour before sunrise, and they had been in the saddle as the first shafts of light searched them out on the plateau from behind the hills to the east. Nothing that Hervey had seen before made him so conscious of his own insignificance.

The collector had intended to ride for another hour, at a reduced pace, before halting for a breakfast of cold chikor, of which they had bagged a dozen brace the afternoon before. But there was to be no burra hazree just yet. ‘Pindarees, sahib,’ exclaimed Subedar Thangraj, his eyes seeing clearly what Templer and Hervey could only confirm with the telescope.

From a mile away the village, which had no name that any in the patrol knew of, and none on any map, bore the signs of having been assailed. More than the usual number of vultures circled above, and there was a continual glide earthwards. And instead of the many wisps of smoke that would ordinarily have marked the cooking fires and ovens of a village of this size, there was a single, large pall of black smoke.

Cornet Templer’s face changed at once from ease to tautness. ‘Subedar sahib: extended line, draw swords!’

Hervey had to check his instincts. Templer intended, it seemed, to gallop straight to the village without any preliminary reconnaissance or indirect approach. This was dangerously more than audacity, surely? This was more than the boldness which Peto’s book advocated and which Hervey approved. It was recklessness, was it not? He looked at Henry Locke, who shrugged. ‘He orders the troop to form line and draw swords,’ he explained; to which Locke simply raised both his eyebrows.

‘Captain Hervey,’ said the collector with perfect calm, seeing his concern, ‘in the Company’s cavalry it is the practice to charge the enemy at once — instantly, without hesitation. He invariably outnumbers you and hesitation is fatal; by the very action of attempting to throw over the greater number there somehow comes the ability to do so. And the enemy, who in his rational appreciation would know that such a thing is impossible, is denied the time to think, and so is afeard that it must in truth be so. Rarely will he stand his ground — unless his escape is closed off.’

By the time the collector had finished his elegant if somewhat elliptical explanation, the troop had extended into line. ‘Draw swords!’ ordered the subedar. Fifty and more sabres came rasping from their scabbards. Hervey winced at the noise, as he always did — the sound of sword edges blunting. But he also suspected that these sepoys had begun the patrol with blades as sharp as razors.

‘Walk march!’ called Cornet Templer, his voice carrying easily to both flanks — in all a frontage of 150 yards.

All Hervey could think of was the duke’s instructions to his cavalry commanders: ‘Cavalry is to attack in three