The Sabre's Edge Read online

  The guard company now stood to, hastily, dressing in two ranks.

  Their captain scaled the ladder to the palisade to see for himself. He raised his telescope; a hundred yards the rider had closed to.

  The lieutenant rued his own want of so useful an instrument.

  ' Two men, Torrance - one leading. They're not wearing red, but they're not niggers either.' He turned and hailed his ensign. 'Out, Wilks, and give a hand!'

  They brought Hervey to the surgeon in a dhoolie. Corporal Wainwright, every muscle weary, stayed with him despite the Serjeant's entreaties to fall out and take his ease. The horse, exhausted too, and lame, was led away by a corporal - fresh meat at last, joked the men.

  The hospital occupied the town-eater's collecting house - and every building around it, now. Men lay everywhere, barely tended. The place stank worse than Calcutta when the Hooghly was on the turn.

  'Out you go, Corporal,' said the surgeon. He had come at once, tired and red-smeared from his ministrations with the bleeding stick.

  'I'd rather stay, if you don't mind, sir.'

  'I do mind. You're no use to me in here.'

  Hervey lay unconscious. The assistants were already cutting away the left sleeve of his coat. Corporal Wainwright did not move.

  'Oh very well,' grumbled the surgeon. 'But be out of my way. You both reek of rum.'

  Corporal Wainwright stepped back, allowing the surgeon and his assistants full play at the table. One of them held a lantern up close to Hervey's shoulder.

  'Too late,' said the surgeon.

  Corporal Wainwright's jaw dropped.

  'It'll have to come off. It looks like a ball in there. The shoulder will be a deal too smashed, and putrefaction too far advanced.' He sounded as tired as he was certain.

  'Sir, with respect, sir,' pleaded Wainwright, stepping forward. 'Captain Hervey couldn't draw his sword and hold the reins with but one arm.'

  The surgeon spun round. 'Damn your impudence, Corporal! I've a mind to have the guard throw you out! Another word and I'll have that stripe from your arm.' He turned back to his assistants. 'The saw, please!'

  Corporal Wainwright did not flinch. 'Sir, you must try and save Captain Hervey's arm!'

  The surgeon went purple. 'Throw 'im out!'

  Corporal Wainwright drew his sword and pulled the pistol from his belt. The assistants fell back. 'I'll take the captain with me then, sir.'

  'You damned fool,' spluttered the surgeon. 'This is gross insubordination - worse. The arm's got to be amputated, and quickly, otherwise it will gangrenate.'

  Wainwright sheathed his sword.

  'Sensible fellow,' said the surgeon, nodding. 'Now why not wait outside?'

  Wainwright levelled the pistol again. No one moved a muscle.

  He stepped forward, crouched slightly, beckoned an assistant to help, and took Hervey over his shoulder. He stood full upright in one movement, with a strength that awed the watchers, and walked out of the hospital.

  He walked past orderlies too alarmed by the fierce eyes and the pistol to stop him. Indeed, so compelling was Wainwright's bearing that soon there were sepoys supporting him.

  At the river he found more allies, this time in blue. 'It's Captain Hervey, sir,' he called to one of Liffey's officers in an approaching gig.

  Liffey's officer of the watch had also been observing from the quarterdeck. 'Fetch the captain,' he snapped at a midshipman. 'And the surgeon. I think it's Hervey.'

  Peto came at once with Surgeon Ritchie, both of them fresh-scrubbed and dressed for dinner. 'Hervey, you say?' The edge to the tone was obvious. Peto leaned well out as the boat bore alongside.

  'I believe so, sir,' said the lieutenant. 'And his—'

  'Great heavens,' exclaimed Peto, springing back from the rail. 'Mr Ritchie, your best work; your best work please!' He rushed to the gangway. 'Two marines - leave your muskets!'

  The sentries at the foot of the companionways grounded arms and followed the captain down.

  'Sir, Captain Hervey's shot, sir, in the shoulder,’ said Corporal Wainwright, as Peto bounded down the gangway. 'The army surgeon wanted to take his arm off, sir.'

  Peto pulled back the cloak to see for himself. He grimaced when he saw how much blood there was. The whole of the buff bib was red-brown. 'A hammock, there!' he shouted to the lieutenant, who had already anticipated the need.

  Another marine scuttled down the gangway with it.

  'Bear him up gently, men,' said Peto, more a plea than an order. 'Gently as you can.'

  Seamen and marines began lifting him into the hammock.

  'My cabin, if you please, Ritchie,' he called to the surgeon.

  Surgeon Ritchie raised his hand to acknowledge and sent the loblolly boys sprinting to the cockpit for his instruments and the medical chest.

  The marines, red in the face and sweating like pigs, bore Hervey up gently. Two more came to the job as they reached the main deck.

  'I'll have your table, if you will, sir,' said the surgeon, as Peto came back on deck.

  'Ay, of course, of course,' replied Peto absently. He pushed past, calling for his steward. Together they began clearing the table of its silver and fine china.

  'Save the tablecloth, sir, if you please,' called the surgeon. 'Sit Captain Hervey upright,' he said to the marines. 'Support him with the cloth until I know what we're about.' Back came his assistants.

  'Lay it all out here and give me the sharpest knife!'

  Corporal Wainwright's stomach heaved. 'Sir, I—'

  'One way or another the coat will have to come off, Corporal,' said Ritchie, moving candles closer.

  Corporal Wainwright's relief was palpable.

  'A bowl of hot water and some brandy, if you will, Flowerdew.'

  To anyone who observed the preliminaries of the two surgeons - the army's and Liffey's - the reason for the crew's high opinion of theirs would have been clear. Whereas, ashore, the man had worked in Stygian gloom, though there was no obvious cause to, and his prognosis was made after the most cursory of visual examinations, Surgeon Ritchie made full use of the evening sunlight that streamed through the stern windows - and his magnifying glass.

  His prognosis, however, tended to the same. 'Not good, I'm afraid. Lint, please.'

  An assistant rummaged in a haversack.

  'Clean lint. Let's not have any more stink than needs be.'

  Hervey opened his eyes.

  'Capital, my dear friend!' said a delighted Peto. 'You're in good hands, now.'

  Hervey appeared not to register where he was or even who was there.

  'An ill-timed recovery, I'm afraid, my dear sir,' muttered the surgeon, pouring brandy on the lint and wiping away some of the blood caked about the wound.

  Hervey's head rolled.

  Peto peered over the surgeon's shoulder at Hervey's. 'He reeks of rum, Ritchie,' he said, shaking his head. 'Little wonder he nods.'

  Ritchie threw the lint to the floor.

  'Hold hard there, my old friend!' Peto called, as if to a deaf man, which, to all intents and purposes, Hervey was.

  'How much rum has he drunk, Corporal?' asked Ritchie.

  'Only a very little, sir,' replied Wainwright, standing to attention by a bulkhead. 'I poured the most of it into Captain Hervey's shoulder, sir.'

  Ritchie turned and looked at him before more rubbing with new lint. 'And why, pray, did you do that?'

  'I know Lord Nelson's body was preserved in brandy, sir. I thought it could help Captain Hervey.'

  'You did, did you? Well, it can't have done too much harm, though it might have been better had you poured it all down his throat.' He took off his coat and pulled up his shirtsleeves. 'A digital examination, then, now the wound's exposed proper.'

  Peto screwed up his eyes, the better to see the work, although it anticipated the flinch too.

  Ritchie inserted a finger - the right index - with the utmost care, but the pain was so great that Hervey let out a cry and at once passed out.

  'Good,'
said Ritchie. 'Much the best way,' as he continued probing.

  Peto grimaced, but more in anticipation of what Ritchie might say. Wainwright stood stock-still, at attention. He could do no more now than trust.

  'There's been prodigious bleeding,' said Ritchie after a while. 'But no disruption of the glenoid cavity. No bone splinters either. And I believe I may feel the ball.' He withdrew his finger and wiped it on some lint, taking good care to observe Hervey's breathing as he did so.

  The marines shifted their weight a little.

  '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 soo
n 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.