‘Villagers, sir, or Pindarees?’
‘The latter.’
‘Seventy, not fewer.’
The collector nodded approvingly, even though a prisoner or two would have been helpful. ‘You showed great address, Mr Templer. I shall commend your conduct this day to Fort St George.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ replied Templer, flatly, for there was too much otherwise to dull any satisfaction with his exertions.
The jemadar’s patrol left with little expectation of catching any more of the fleeing Pindarees. If they could trace their route of withdrawal from the Circars it would at least indicate something of what freedom of movement they enjoyed in the neighbouring states. Meanwhile, all that the remainder of the troop could do was wait in the hope that some of the ryots would return to the village, and that they would be able to say something which might help in any subsequent encounter. It was a mournful bivouac that night.
The first hour of daylight the following morning was given over to what Hervey’s regiment called ‘interior economy’. Saddles, bridles and other tackling were laid out with great precision for the scrutiny of Cornet Templer and Subedar Thangraj. And after inspecting every piece of leather they went to the horses with the farrier-naik. Hervey walked with the collector through the lines of country-breds, recalling as if yesterday the condition of his own regiment in Spain after a similar march.
‘What do you think of them, Captain Hervey?’ asked Somervile.
Hervey replied that he found them very much better than he had been led to believe, that they compared very favourably indeed with the remounts they were receiving towards the end of the campaign in the Peninsula.
‘The Company of late has been much exercised by the need of good horses. Left to itself, India breeds indifferent mounts, though there are a dozen or so native breeds. Seven or eight years ago — before my time here — the directors engaged a distinguished London veterinarian — a Mr Moorcroft. Do you know the name?’
Hervey said he had some notion of it.
‘It was he who began the reform of the Company’s stud department. And great work he has done, too. But much buying is still, perforce, in the hands of regimental purchasing officers.’
‘Then I perceive that the Madras Cavalry’s purchasing officer has an affinity for Arabs.’
‘You would be right,’ replied the collector, smiling. ‘Mr Blacker has bought many hundreds of pure Kehilans, and is most adept at putting them to native mares.’
‘You are very evidently an apostle of the breed,’ Hervey smiled back, conscious of the energy of the little horse the collector rode, though he had not yet become accustomed to its curious lines.
‘Yes, indeed I am. See how full-chested those troopers are, how broad across the loins, and how round-sided and deep-barrelled they are. You will not see one horse in ten in England as short-limbed yet with such qualities. That chest is what gives the Kehilan his endurance. You would scarcely ever be able to exhaust him, unless unreasonably. And he can live on air if needs be. The only inconvenience I perceive is that the entire needs considerably more bleeding than does an English stallion, and in this country he is more prone to miasmic fevers. You will see the farrier bleed as many this morning as he finds in need of a new shoe.’
Hervey expressed himself surprised at the number of entires generally. ‘I’m afraid we find them altogether too untractable. We cannot pick and choose our remounts whilst on campaign, and they must stand side by side with the mares.’
The collector understood. ‘But there is none so brave as a stallion. I would not wish to surrender such an advantage were I a military man.’
Hervey smiled. He had to acknowledge the point. Though, as he explained, when considering the normal method of operation of European cavalry — in squadrons, knee-to-knee — some concession had to be made to the need for tractability.
‘But if you are pleased by what you see with our native
Hervey paused while he searched his mind for the meaning of the Urdu. ‘I do not know this word,’ he concluded.
‘A Maratha corruption of the pure Persian
Hervey was intent on learning more. What, for instance, impelled a sowar to hazard his horse if this were the means of his livelihood? But Cornet Templer reported that the troop was ready to resume, and the collector was keen for the off. The jemadar’s patrol had already sent word that the marauders were a halfday’s forced march ahead of them and had crossed into the Rajah of Chintal’s territory. They would remain on the border to watch for a day and then rejoin. Hervey asked if Chintal was where they would take refuge, but the collector thought not. They would plunder the place and pass through with as much impunity as they had here, for the rajah’s forces were meagre and ineffectual. But Somervile wished nevertheless for a reconnaissance along a fair length of the border to be sure there was no doubling back, and so he asked to be left with an escort to conclude his business with the village — a business which, Hervey soon learned, was impelled by humanity rather than any actuarial concern of the Company’s — and pressed Templer to make a good show along the border en route for home.
Templer was about to leave, and Hervey and Locke with him, when there came another of what Somervile called India’s infinite curiosities. A solitary trail of dust, not very high, first revealed the presence on the road from the east. One by one the soldiers of the patrol turned to watch, until all were fixed on the little bullock cart as it made its slow way towards them. Two of the thinnest-looking oxen Hervey had seen, yoked side by side and standing no higher at the shoulder than Jessye as a yearling, plodded patiently before the hackery, their cream- coloured tails swaying with the movement of their quarters but otherwise still, not yet needed for relief from the plague of flies that would beset them in an hour or so. And in the cart itself sat a shrivelled little figure, sun-hatted, smiling. Without any apparent urging, the oxen made for the shade of a banyan at the edge of the village, and there they stopped. The little man took off his hat and bowed his head.
Hervey looked quizzically at the collector.
‘The priest,’ explained Somervile.
‘Ah,’ said Hervey. ‘I had imagined someone more…’
‘The Catholic priest, I mean.’
‘
‘Well, do not suppose the roots are as deep as St Thomas would have wished. In these villages it is but a superficial creed — to the unread ryots merely an intelligible alternative to unintelligible Hindoo. The Virgin Mary is to them but a beneficent goddess, and the transition from Krishna to Christ is one which offers no material difficulty to their limited faculties.’
It seemed a harsh judgement, but it was said with kindness. ‘Where does he come from?’
‘Who knows?’ shrugged Somervile. ‘The cart is his travelling residence, but beyond that… Rajahmundry perhaps? But priests were ministering here before the French came. And he will go on ministering and hoping for the best until he dies. And then a few sticks with rags tied to them will decorate his grave, and he will rank as a departed fakir or yogi.’
The collector seemed full of admiration. Hervey would never have thought it.
‘Oh, mistake me not, sir. I do not hold with any faith, but I cannot but be moved by the devotion of these bullock-cart priests — and the constancy of their flock by return. There are easier things to be in India than a native Christian.’
The noise was like that which the greenhead recruit makes when, wagered by the sweats that he cannot get a clear note from a bugle, he blows hard with full lungs and open lips in a terrible, straining distress-call. Except that no human lungs could blow so long and so loud.
‘Elephant, sahib,’ said Subedar Thangraj, seeing Hervey’s astonished look. ‘Elephant very angry, very not- content.’
Hervey had somehow supposed elephants to be entirely mute. There had been no reason to suppose
