Nizams Daughters

from nothing derive what that something is. What should be our strategy?’

There was scarcely an eye but on the rajah as he spoke. Now there was not an eye that was elsewhere but on Hervey. He was all too aware of it, all too conscious of the expectations of him. He had nipped in the bud the mutiny at Jhansikote with little more than a whiff of grapeshot, just as resolutely as Bonaparte had defended the Convention. But did his art lie any more than in the skirmish? He had, in the rajah’s conviction, made a thorough and accurate estimate of the situation that faced them. Yet it had been one thing to make an appreciation — that much could have been done, with varying degrees of percipience, by anyone in the chamber. It was quite another to determine a strategy. And he dared not betray any doubt, for to do so would challenge the resolve that each would need for his strategy to have the remotest chance of success.

He began resolutely. ‘We know that we have not one-hundredth of the power needed to fight the nizam’s army.’ It was not an auspicious beginning. The rajah looked all but dismayed, which hastened Hervey to his purpose. ‘We must therefore take care to fight only those of his forces that it is supremely necessary to fight. By the boldest action we must prevent the enemy from reaching the battlefield in the first instance. These great guns of his — the nizam’s daughters as everyone seems wont to call them — are the cornerstone of his attempt to overawe us. If we are able somehow to neutralize that advantage then the nizam’s own stratagem is thwarted. Then we may turn our backs on him, so to speak, and make ready to deal in turn with the Pindarees on the plain of the Godavari — for that, surely, is where they will erupt from Nagpore.’

The rajah looked disappointed. Was this a strategy of substance or of evasion? he asked himself. How, for instance, were the nizam’s guns to be dealt with by so insufficient a force as Hervey had at his disposal? Had he placed too much faith, after all, in this captain of cavalry — cornet a little but a year ago? ‘Captain Hervey, how, by all that is reasonable, do you suppose we may confront guns as powerful as these? Did not Napoleon himself say that it is with artillery that war is made?’

Hervey blanched at hearing the imperial name, for ‘Bonaparte’ was the best that any Englishman would allow. But it was no time for strict form, and he had to counter the rajah’s proposition — difficult though that task was. He could think of only one response, turning on the rajah’s own exposition of the strategic and the tactical. ‘Your Highness,’ he said, smiling confidently, ‘you have had occasion already to place your faith in my tactics, and not without gratification. Treating with those guns is merely an affair of tactics.’

The rajah, even if he retained doubts, looked intensely relieved. He left for his temple prayers with something of a smile, too.

‘I see you have reconciled where duty lies then, Captain Hervey,’ whispered Emma Lucie with a wry sort of frown.

‘Have I?’ he sighed. ‘I fear I have merely chosen the easier course.’

Later, in the seclusion of the palace gardens where they could not be overheard, Hervey spoke with Locke. Henry Locke, stout-hearted, in love with the most beguiling of the Maharashtri nautch girls because she looked him full in the face; though their positions of a decade before, when Hervey had stood in awe of him at Shrewsbury, were reversed, he bore no sign of disaffection. ‘What do you wish me to do?’

‘My dear friend,’ sighed Hervey, ‘this isn’t your fight. It’s not even my fight. I cannot tell you everything, but —’

‘Matthew Hervey, don’t try to send me away!’ Locke protested

He smiled. What simple loyalties fighting men enjoyed! ‘You don’t understand. I’m doing this because I’ve left myself no other course — because I’ve made such a hopeless job of the thing I was sent here to do!’

‘I could not care less. I have my reasons too. Just tell me what it is you would have of me!’

Hervey would lose no time with any expression of gratitude, for he knew he could not express it sufficiently with brevity. ‘First, you could see that no harm comes to Emma Lucie. Get her out of Chintalpore — to Guntoor if you can.’

He nodded.

‘And then I want you to go to Jhansikote and take charge there.’

Locke nodded again, and smiled broadly. ‘I do have one question though. Would it not be better to see off the Pindarees first before turning to the nizam’s redoubts? If, as you say, he will take no offensive action against Chintal, what’s to be feared having him at our rear?’

He had a point, though not one that Hervey had overlooked. ‘Do you recall what the Duke of Marlborough was said to have declared about campaigning — that no war could be fought without good and early intelligence?’

Locke nodded.

‘Well, that’s more the essence of our problem than those guns themselves. We are, so to speak, like a prizefighter who’s blindfold. We surmise the purpose of the nizam’s men on the lower plains is no more than to rattle our nerve, that they have no offensive intent.’

‘Ay,’ said Locke, furrowing his brow more, ‘but you claimed — and convincingly — that the nizam could not risk taking such action. And for him to do so on the plains, which are so much closer to the Company’s territories, makes no sense at all.’

Hervey nodded. ‘Yes, but what if his troops gave battle not as soldiers of Haidarabad but as Pindarees? They would be able to throw the whole of lower Chintal into confusion, cause the rajah to flee and give the nizam pretext for marching in to restore order.’

Locke’s mouth fell open. ‘Hervey, that’s fiendish. Why did you not say all this in the rajah’s chamber?’

‘For two reasons. First, I could not be sure who might hear — nor even could I be sure of the discretion, perhaps even the loyalty, of all that were in the chamber. And second — and I am most loath to say this, for I admire so much in the man — the rajah is not of the most resolute disposition, at least for the present. If he flees Chintalpore it will be the end.’

Locke blew out his breath in a gesture that acknowledged the true extent of the danger. ‘And you still believe that disabling those guns is the key?’

‘Yes,’ said Hervey, and with some assurance. ‘We may take our chances with the Pindarees, but if they were backed by those guns, I think it another matter.’

‘You think the nizam could simply move those great things the other side of Chintal?’

‘Let me put it to you thus, my dear fellow,’ replied Hervey, smiling. ‘From my reading of history, whenever a plan has depended upon the enemy’s not being able to move guns into a certain position, it has been overthrown by the very fact of his doing so!’

‘Yes, but here—’

‘Even here — even with these forests and hills. What about the Godavari? Now that Haidarabad appears, in practice, to have immunity from dastak, who knows what is moved along the river? Don’t lose heart, though. We shall be fighting the Pindarees with relief at hand — for I can’t think it will be long before the Company is able to despatch the subsidiary force. In any case, I’ll send urgent appeal to the collector this very day. What I want you to do, my dear Locke, is to drill the rajah’s infantry as light companies, for we shall have to bustle them about as nobody’s business. And have them ready, if you will, in three days’ time to take to the field. Tonight I shall leave with half a troop and the galloper guns for the west — I would do so earlier if this heat were not so punishing. And first I shall have it spread abroad that all of the rajah’s troops are to march on the nizam’s redoubts — for having us so march is their purpose. There are agents aplenty in Chintalpore: the false news will not take long to reach the guns.’

Locke looked puzzled. ‘Why do you want them to believe that all the rajah’s men are marching west?’

‘So that, my good friend, they are not tempted to move the guns. If they do, I cannot very well destroy them!’

Locke, knowing now the full risk of the enterprise, would hold Hervey in even higher regard than he had after the mutiny. He knew he could never match the acuity with which his erstwhile junior examined a problem. He could count himself just as brave in battle, but he knew that courage was more than that. It required nerve. That, indeed, was how Nelson and Hoste would have had it. And he did not, in his heart, trust he had nerve in the same measure.

All this he admitted freely to his nautch girl, the Maharashtrian beauty whom Hervey had first been suspicious of for her cloying attachment, but whom latterly he had come to believe was, in her affections, wholly genuine. She helped him make ready for his ride to Jhansikote, bringing him ripe figs from the palace gardens for the journey. And as he set out, when the full heat of the day was beginning to abate, there were large tears in her eyes, and