The Sabre's Edge mh-5 Read online

  'Keep him proper upright, and hold his head back, one of you,' said Ritchie, wiping the sweat from his brow with his left arm. 'Probe-point bistoury, please, Magan.'

  One of the assistants handed him the curved knife.

  'Corporal, be aware that I might be doing your captain no favour in this. I may remove the ball, but if the shoulder is more damaged than I surmise it would be better that I disarticulate the limb now.'

  Corporal Wainwright nodded. 'Sir.'

  'Stand easy, man,' said Peto, kindly.

  'But first there'll be more blood,' warned Ritchie, wiping his forehead again. 'Turn him round a wee bit more to the light.'

  The marines turned him carefully with the linen sling.

  'First I have to enlarge the wound.' He dipped the bistoury in the hot water. 'Curious thing how the patient afterwards says he felt the cold blade. Nelson did. Might as well make things as comfortable as possible.' He wiped the bistoury on his sleeve then deftly elongated the wound two ways, pulling the flesh apart either side with the thumb and finger of his left hand while he probed for the ball with the knifepoint.

  Blood began to run copiously again. The assistants dabbed at it with lint.

  'Forceps.'

  Magan handed them to him and took the bistoury. Ritchie, as he had done with the knife, warmed the bullet-extracting forceps before putting them to the flesh.

  Peto began silently to pray, although he was not a praying man. Wainwright was a praying man; he had scarcely ceased praying since first lifting Hervey into the saddle.

  'Hold him hard. I don't want a struggle,' growled Ritchie as he pulled aside the flesh again and inserted the forceps.

  But Hervey was in too deep a syncope to know how the instrument probed.

  In the end it was done quickly. Out came forceps and ball in less than a minute. Ritchie examined the missile for signs of having struck bone. Then, satisfied, he tossed it to Corporal Wainwright. 'Your captain may want to see the intruder.'

  'Sir. Will that mean he'll be well now, sir?'

  Ritchie was already back to work with magnifying glass and the smaller forceps. 'I dare say so.' He tutted, picking out particles of blue serge from the wound. 'Lord, but this cloth's bitty. More light, there! A candle or two.'

  It was Peto who obliged him quickest.

  'But no braid, though, it seems,' said Ritchie in a tone of some relief, and peering even closer. 'Well, he's as good a chance as any. I'll suture now, Magan. Keep him steady, my lads. Good work.'

  'And then to my cot,' said Peto, nodding with the greatest appearance of approval. 'Well done, Mr Ritchie. Well done, sir!'

  'I could do no better, Captain. But your praise may be premature. It will be two weeks, perhaps three, before we see the laudable pus - the exuviae of the sickness. Only then can we say the arm is saved. What he needs now is to rest, and to be still. I'll bleed him tomorrow.'

  PART TWO

  HOME TRUTHS

  CHAPTER SIX

  CAMP FOLLOWERS

  Calcutta, four months later

  The girl ran a finger down the neat line of the scar. Hervey felt no pain. Quite the opposite, for her touch was always delicate and accompanied by the gentlest of kisses. He sighed with the pleasure of their intimacy. 'You had better go, Neeta. Manu will be here shortly, and you know how you dislike him.'

  The girl hissed. 'I do not know why you keep him as your bearer when you have so good a servant as Mr Johnson!'

  Hervey smiled. ‘Manu is a good bearer too. And he does Johnson's bidding willingly.'

  The girl rose from the bed, tied a lungi about her, then sat at Hervey's dressing table and took one of his brushes to her long black hair, as Henrietta used to do.

  What a solace she was - companion these past two years, and nurse these last two months. Yet how dismayed he had been when first she had come to Calcutta looking for him. Chittagong had seemed so far behind. He rose, put on his dressing gown, then took her shoulders, watching in the mirror as she brushed - so very like Henrietta, and yet in appearance so different. It was all very safe, therefore. But he broke the rules. A bibi did not visit; she was but a 'sleeping-dictionary'. He kissed the top of her head, then went outside.

  It was a quiet afternoon in the lines, even allowing for the usual retreat to the shade and the punkah, although the worst of the south-west monsoon's clammy heat was long past. There were a few mounted men about the cantonment, but no hawkers, no rumble of wheels. The Company was at war with Ava, but the war was so far distant that the seat of government was undisturbed.

  It had no right to be. Hervey had seen the effects of that detachment, men dying for want of the staples of war. And if the Calcutta quality, and the clerks and the merchants, really knew how badly went things they would be busy burying their silver and taking passage home. Not that the war would ever come to this. Ava might boast of marching into Bengal, and her great general, Maha Bundula, might lead the army, but the Burmans could never prevail against redcoats. In the end, he believed there was no one who could, for however ill he was served, a redcoat - a King's redcoat - fought with the ferocious conviction of his own superiority. That was why so many of them died: they did not accept defeat, because redcoats were never defeated. Too many people had traded on that simple notion in years past. They did so now with the army in the east.

  Hervey wondered how many of those good companions he had known in Rangoon had since been stilled by the enemy's shot or the fever. He scarcely dared think of how Peto was faring, for he knew that gallant man would be everywhere his sailors faced danger, be it the enemy or the country. There would be so many widows' letters, or to other kin. And none of them would say that such and such a good servant of the King had died because other servants of the King had been careless of his life. But, in the end, the merchants of the Honourable Company would not need to bury their silver. The Burmans were no martial race. Their armies had been formed neither by the British, the Moghuls nor the French. Indeed, by what right did they begin a fight they could not win?

  But it would be some time. Yesterday, Eyre Somervile had come, as he had every day since Hervey's return weak with fever, and the news from the east had been as dispiriting as might have been. General Campbell's force had fewer than three thousand effectives, and the flotilla was in a poor way too, with whole crews laid low by remittent fevers - even the bigger ships (Larne was so incapacitated she had had to be replaced by Arachne). There had been some successes, but Campbell was besieged still, by Nature and the Burmans. And now there was speculation that Maha Bundula himself, at the head of his army of Arakan, twice the strength of anything Campbell could muster, might soon be marching through the Irawadi's delta.

  Well, he must put it all out of his mind. Today he was to dine with Somervile and Emma for the first time since leaving for Rangoon; Ledley, the regimental surgeon, had at last pronounced him fit (Hervey had pronounced himself fit more than a week ago). It was near six o'clock and his bearer would soon be here to supervise the team of bhistis who filled his bath with hot water. The surgeon had been most explicit in his warning against any chill, for he was advised that the fever was born of the malaria of the Rangoon marshes and could recur at any time, perhaps even in severer form.

  Hervey took care to put on a good lawn shirt when he had bathed, and a linen coat, for as soon as the sun set he would otherwise feel the cool of the evening keenly. He took up his brushes and smiled as he picked the strands of black hair from them. One evening soon he would dine with his bibi here - whatever the rules said. But she dared not return this evening. He would go instead to her at the bibi khana beyond the civil lines towards the Chitpore road, where the rich Bengali merchants lived. It was a comfortable and private place. He liked it there. He was pleased he kept her properly.

  Emma Somervile greeted him with a kiss to the lips. ‘I never doubted you would be restored,' she said, smiling. 'But it has been many weeks, and you looked so fevered when last we visited.’

  Hervey took a glass of
champagne from the khitmagar and sat, as she bade him, beside her.

  'Eyre will be here presently. There is an express boy come.’

  'He is much occupied, I think. It must be the hardest thing to be so at odds with the Governor-General.’

  Emma raised an eyebrow. 'It wears him more than I could have imagined. Oh, I do not mean the disagreements themselves, but the dismay at seeing so much going wrong when he had counselled against it from the start. And still Lord Amherst is not inclined to listen.’

  Hervey frowned. 'There's a certain sort of man who would rather exhaust all his stock than admit to a wrong course and take a new one at half the cost. I fear there's many a grave that will be testimony to our Governor-General's obduracy. I'm only glad there are men such as Eyre who will expose the folly of it.'

  Moments later Eyre Somervile entered the room with a look half triumphant and half exasperated. He dispensed with formal greetings. 'This is just as I had expected - worse.' He waved a letter at them. 'Maha Bundula is now in Ava. Bagyidaw's recalled Prince Tharrawaddy and Bundula is to have command of the army they've been assembling these past three months.'

  'Do you have any notion how large?' asked Hervey.

  'Thirty thousand - over and above the same number back from Arakan.' Somervile consulted the letter again. 'Also, three hundred jingals, the Cassay Horse from Manipur - about a thousand of them - artillery on elephant-back . . .'

  'What is a jingal?' asked Emma.

  'A gun,' replied Hervey, turning to her. 'Very light - the ball weighs less than a pound - but they tote them anywhere. And very destructive they are too.'

  'Campbell will be thrown out of Rangoon in very short order indeed,' added her husband.

  'How do you come by the intelligence, Eyre?'

  Somervile seemed rapt in thought.

  'Eyre?'

  'I'm sorry, my dear. I was thinking how much time we had, for the report says that Bundula boasted to Tharrawaddy he would feast in Rangoon in eight days. He could not, of course - not from the time of making the boast. The distance is too great in the best of weather. I suspect he meant eight days after once besieging the place.'

  Emma stayed her questions for the time being.

  Hervey looked uncertain. 'Unless, that is, Bundula were to engage Campbell piecemeal.'

  'That is against the best precepts, is it not?'

  'As a rule, but there would be advantage in bringing pressure to bear gently on Rangoon, for Campbell's so weakened that he might seek terms—'

  Emma looked shocked. 'Do you mean to say that General Campbell could surrender?'

  Hervey shook his head. 'I think it the last thing he would do. But Maha Bundula might not. The Burmans do not have a very high opinion of the Company.'

  'Well’ said Somervile, making to turn. 'I must send to the commander-in-chief and to Amherst. They will surely now wish to reinforce Campbell's garrison. That, or order its withdrawal. You will excuse me for the moment.'

  Hervey sat down again, taking a second glass of champagne.

  'Do you know the source of his intelligence, Matthew?' asked Emma. 'Is it the same as before?'

  'I imagine so,' he replied, cautiously. Somervile's best intelligence had come thence, and he knew of no other capable of yielding such precise and valuable information. Not the girl herself - she had merely been the cause for the boundless gratitude of a father whose abducted daughter had been returned unsullied, an unexpected prize from Hervey's action against the war boats on the Chittagong three years before. But Somervile had played up Hervey's chivalry in the jungled hill tracts to great purpose - like Rama and Sita, he had described her rescue. Indeed, he considered himself to be an intriguer of the first water on account of it. And so a favourite of King

  Bagyidaw's had become a most willing collaborator with the Company. 'And very good intelligence it is, too. Though I fear that neither Campbell nor the commander-in-chief can make the best of it.' 'How do you mean?'

  'I don't know what plans Paget has in hand to reinforce Rangoon, but if there are none it is almost certainly too late to do so. And what will Campbell do when he learns that an army twenty times his strength is bearing down on him? He has the flotilla's guns, of course, but they might not be in a position to intervene decisively. If he is so reduced in numbers through sickness as we hear, then he would be best advised to quit the place, to use the ships to take off his force before it is utterly destroyed.'

  'He is not likely to do that, surely? You yourself said as much.'

  'I said he would not surrender. But he was with Moore at Corunna. And so was Paget for that matter. He has seen good precedent, therefore.'

  Emma suddenly looked worried. 'Matthew, what if the intelligence is false?'

  Hervey raised his eyebrows, and nodded. 'Just so. It is highly favourable to the Burmans, that is for sure. And for that reason it must be regarded circumspectly. Campbell's quitting Rangoon on a false report would be a most sorry business indeed.'

  'You will warn Eyre of this, Matthew?'

  'He will not need my warning, but, yes, I will speak my mind.'

  Emma was relieved. She had felt the perturbation of the past year very keenly. Lord Amherst had set his face very decidedly against her husband's opinion. Somervile was a relatively junior member of the presidency council, although he was the acknowledged authority on the country powers and their neighbours. But he was an interventionist. Or rather, he advocated military action to obtain conditions favourable to the Company; the action itself - as in the case of Ava - did not have to take the form of an offensive. And so he found himself frequently in contention with the Governor-General, who thought him contrary, one minute seeming to urge boldness in meddling in native affairs, and in the next seeming to recoil from it. Somervile confided much in his wife, but she knew he did not tell all. That was too often apparent in his countenance and disposition.

  'What about the regiment, Matthew,' said Emma abruptly, if brightly. Tve not seen much of them since Sir Ivo left for England.'

  Hervey was pleased to oblige her, for although he could not give the best of reports, or the fullest, he would rather be speaking of the regiment now than contemplating the mournful situation in Rangoon. 'I think they are well. But there's little for them to do save guards and drill, says Serjeant-Major Armstrong. And I'm not sure Eustace Joynson is happy with the regiment's reins entirely in his hands.'

  'How long shall he have them?'

  'A full twelve months, less the two already gone.’

  'I do wish it were not so long. We are in need of society here, and Lady Lankester will be a welcome increase. Do you know anything of her?’

  'Her people are from Hertfordshire, Lankester’s seat. Her father is Sir Delaval Rumsey. I have not met her but it is said she is a very handsome woman.’

  'I knew Sir Delaval at one time,’ said Emma, just as brightly as before. 'Rather, I knew Lady Rumsey. She was a kindly woman, and herself quite a beauty, and a wit too.’

  'Then we should all be content. Did I say that poor Joynson is having trouble with his daughter again?’

  'Indeed?’

  'According to my lieutenant. Seems she's been a deal too wayward since first we arrived. The attentions of so many officers have sorely tested her senses, it would seem. I’m sure Joynson would wish you would take her in hand.’

  Emma raised her eyebrows. 'I should not say it, but I have observed many times how it is the plainer girls whose senses are the least apt for testing.’

  Hervey frowned again, but more playfully. 'Frances Joynson is not so very plain, Emma.’

  Emma frowned, but more determinedly. 'I rather fancy that that is an acclimated opinion, Matthew.’

  Hervey thought it indelicate, and unsafe, to proceed.

  'In any case, her reputation has not been remarked on in the drawing rooms yet, so her behaviour cannot be so very bad.' Emma sipped at her champagne. 'Your name has been spoken of, however, Matthew.'

  'Oh yes?' He intended to sound o
nly the merest degree interested . . . curious.

  'Lately, at the general's.'

  Hervey simply raised an eyebrow and took another sip at his champagne.

  'I fancy by the time Sir Ivo's bride is brought here it will be the talk of every drawing room.'

  Hervey put his glass down, scarcely troubling now to hide his real sentiments. 'Emma, what is the matter with Calcutta? In Madras—'

  'She visits, Matthew. That is what is the matter. And do not be angry with me because I tell you.'

  He sighed. 'I am not angry with you, Emma. When I first came to India, almost ten years ago, things were ... I am just astonished at so much canting.'

  Emma would not be drawn. 'And another thing, Matthew. You have refused all society with Bishop Heber.'

  Hervey frowned impatiently and held out his glass to the khitmagar. 'Please do not think I include Heber in my strictures, Emma. He is a good man from all I hear. But I do not feel the need of a bishop's society.'

  'He only presses his claim on your acquaintance because your Mr Keble wrote to him.'

  'Mr Keble presumes a deal too much.' 'Oh, Matthew!'

  She touched a nerve, but he was not minded to give in. 'I sometimes think that Mr Keble believes the prospect from his parsonage window is the only one in the world.'

  She frowned again. 'And you have seen so much more of the world!'

  'Yes; I have.'

  Emma sighed deeply. Had she not known him better it might have been a sigh of despair. Instead it was the mildly rebuking but tolerant sigh that his sister might have breathed. 'Then I should be careful not to see excess of it, Matthew.'

  Eyre Somervile returned, to Hervey's relief. 'Well, it is done. I have sent my opinion to both Amherst and Paget. Doubtless they'll think it unreliable. But nothing I've sent them to date has been other than borne out by events. Paget's no fool. He may be a little too ready to defer to Amherst, but he's no fool.'

  'You are perfectly certain of your intelligence?' Hervey held his gaze until an answer came.

  Somervile inclined his head very slightly. 'There is, of course, the possibility that it was sent to me with but one object. In which case I might well precipitate an evacuation of Rangoon for no reason. That is what you allude to, I imagine? This I have laid out in my memoranda to Amherst and Paget. The veracity of the report is unknowable, unless some corroboration is received, but the possibility of it is certain, and in consequence the peril of Campbell's force. One way or another, it is imperative to act. That is the material point.'