X. THE BOURRH LANDS
‘Choose which you would, Captain Hervey,’ said the rajah. ‘You will have an eye for quality, and Mr Selden has told you of the requirements for hunting the boar.’
The rajah’s stables were indeed full of quality, and punkahs in each stall drove air over the fifty saddlehorses that were his pride. However, he had had all the stall-names covered for Hervey’s visit so that he might choose one horse above the rest without knowing anything of them (though since the Sanskrit names were written in the Devanagari script he could hardly have gained anything from seeing them).
‘A greater test than merely spearing the biggest boar,’ Selden had smiled as Hervey began to appraise each animal.
Fifty horses and ponies, perhaps two minutes to run over each — there were two whole hours before them, unless he was to come across perfection before then. The trouble was that he knew little enough about the Arab, let alone the other breeds, to make a choice. What made one better than another? All he could do, therefore, was apply the trusted principle of eye, wind and limb. Wind would have to be judged by depth of chest alone. As for limb, the feet, and leg blemishes, seemed his safest indicators, since these were horses too superior to possess significant faults of conformation. Up and down the lines he went, into each stall — Arab, Turkoman, country-bred, Akhal Tekke (much prized for their legendary endurance) and the hardy Khatgani from Afghanistan. He looked at every eye. More, even, than with a man or a woman, it could tell so much. He glanced at the chest and ran a hand up and down the legs, then looked at each foot, lifting one here and there. It took him the best part of two hours, but noone — the rajah especially — showed the least concern, until at length he chose a jet-black Turkoman gelding, about fifteen and a half hands.
‘Why do you choose him?’ asked the rajah.
‘Your Highness,’ replied Hervey, his hesitation speaking of the difficulty he had, ‘I could say that it was his quarters, which seem especially powerful, and his legs, which look to me to have exactly the right amount of bone to make him at once both hardy and fleet. His chest is deep; I like his head, too, which is set on well, and gives him a most noble appearance. But above all, this horse has a look of intelligence. His eye says to me that he would see what I could not, and would take the right course in spite of my inaptness.’
Selden had smiled broadly during the verdict, the reason apparent when the rajah clapped his hands together and made a little sound of delight. ‘Truly, Captain Hervey, I could not better have expressed why this gelding is my own favourite. And you shall ride him when we hunt the boar. His name is Badshah.’
‘ “The King”?’ replied Hervey; ‘Your Highness, I am greatly honoured.’
Next day, Private Johnson arrived with Jessye and two bat-horses carrying the remainder of Hervey’s baggage in yakhdans almost as big as the horses themselves. He had lost no time in setting out, but progress from Guntoor to Chintalpore — a full ninety miles — had been slow. As soon as Cornet Templer had returned with Hervey’s message to join him, Johnson had assembled his little equipage and demanded that one of the sepoys accompany him as guide. This brought no great advantage, however, for the Madrasi sepoy had no English — though even had he been able to speak it tolerably well he would have found that Johnson’s vowels and the truncation of his consonants rendered his speech incomprehensible. There was certainly little chance that Johnson himself had acquired any native words that might have aided discourse: four years in Spain had not seen him with more than a dozen, and these of a basic, alimentary, nature. And yet, as they arrived at the gates of the rajah’s palace, where Hervey was just returned from morning exercise with the lancers of the palace guard, Johnson and the sepoy, formerly a cinnamon-peeler from the southernmost part of the presidency, were enjoying some joke together.
Later, as he and Hervey were sluicing a hot but still fresh-looking Jessye, with the aid of a chain of syces passing buckets from one of the running-tanks, Johnson at last spoke his mind. ‘Captain ’Ervey, sir, what are we
Hervey paused before answering, but he had already concluded that it was time to take his groom into his confidence. ‘See here, Johnson,’ he said at length. ‘I will tell you all we’re about, since I may have to rely on you to act independently, and you’ll be no earthly good if you don’t know everything.’
Once in the seclusion of Jessye’s stall, Hervey began to explain his purpose, while Johnson continued with the sweat-scraper as if it were nothing of any moment. The best way to judge the nizam’s general disposition, suggested Hervey, was indirectly, by observing him during the coming visit to Chintalpore. And as for the business of expunging all trace of the jagirs — well, he would have to trust to Selden’s address. ‘And so, in the circumstances the very best thing is to remain here in Chintalpore for the time being. If I were to go directly to Haidarabad I don’t see that it could fail to arouse suspicion, both here
‘Tha knows best, Captain ’Ervey, sir,’ shrugged Johnson, taking a stable rubber to Jessye’s head. ‘But tha’s in a spot o’ bother right enough.’
* * *
The environs of Chintalpore were not the best hunting grounds, but a dozen or so miles to the north, across the Godavari river, at the jungle’s edge, there was game to be had in large numbers in the sandy undulating downs — the bourrh lands. Here, gaur (or bison, as some knew them) left the seclusion of the dense forest occasionally to graze. Muggurs sulked on the shoals, great gaggles of wild geese crossed the sky in one direction and then another, and the sorrowful cries of Brahminy ducks made the solitude yet more desolate. Hervey was captivated by its wild emptiness. The fardistant forest, the small scattered groves of mangoes, with here and there a lordly banyan rising unmistakably above the jhow, but above all the graceful palmyra palm, told him they were elsewhere than the Great Plain of his own county. But the emptiness of that wonderful downland came at once to mind, and his rides there with Daniel Coates. How
Selden closed up. His horse’s ears were pricked, nostrils flexing at what the country promised. ‘
Some of the words were familiar, and so sensuous that the English must surely be as arresting. ‘Meaning?’ enquired Hervey simply.
The salutri smiled. ‘An old Persian couplet: “If there is a paradise on earth, It is this, it is this, it is this!” ’ He smiled broadly. ‘Ride hard, Matthew Hervey!’
The rajah was unusual in his pleasure in the chase, Selden had explained, for in his experience princely Indians had no great appetite for it — and those who had, confined themselves largely to the pursuit of tiger from the lofty vantage of the howdah. The rajah’s favourite hunting ground for pig was the Sukri kadir, where Hervey had first made his acquaintance with Chintal, but the bourrh lands were within a day’s ride and could provide sport for his lancer officers — although compared with the Sukri kadir the country was rather too treacherous for his liking. He explained that the rissalahs were soon to take to the field for their last drill before the onset of the hot season, and today was the rajah’s last opportunity to give them a run.
The mounted party numbered near twenty, the rajah himself accompanied by a jemadar and an orderly. The raj kumari, who rode astride, as Selden had told him, was escorted by one of the shikaris as pilot — an express provision of the rajah rather than of her own choosing. She carried a jobbing spear, but only to gain first blood with, for to hold off a charging boar required every ounce of a man’s strength. Her pilot was therefore her covering-spear. Locke, Selden and Hervey were accompanied by six of the lancer officers, by any measure an intriguing group. The commandant (as in Chintal the commanding officer was called) was a Piedmontese, a minor member of the House of Savoy who, shamed at the surrender of Turin to Bonaparte seventeen years earlier, had come east. Hervey liked him from first meeting. Commandant Cadorna was about Joseph Edmonds’s age, and it was this connection, perhaps, as much as anything that accounted for the immediate affinity. Cadorna’s captain was German, a Wurttemberger who had likewise sought his fortune elsewhere once the Confederation of the Rhine had required him otherwise to take an oath of loyalty to his former enemy. Captain Steuben was not many years older than Hervey, but his face was lined and sun-dried, and unlike his commandant he spoke no English. Yet he seemed to have little regard for Hervey’s facility with his own language. Indeed, he seemed almost to resent it, displaying a distinct coldness from their first meeting at the rajah’s banquet. Hervey was doubly puzzled by this want of the fellowship of the ‘yellow circle’ — the universal spirit of the cavalry — but for the time being at least was content to
