Massacre at Cawnpore Read online

  “Get out while there’s still time, lady!” one of them urged her breathlessly but she shook her head and stayed with them, pointing mutely in the direction of the ward. They managed to haul some of the wounded out before the flames beat them back, grabbing any they could see by the legs and even the hair, shutting their ears to the sufferers’ moans. A big, bearded fusilier seized Emmy in strong arms and, ignoring her protests, carried her out and across the now mercifully darkened compound to one of the godowns at the rear of the quarter-guard building.

  “We can’t do no more, ma’am,” he told her bitterly. “Them bastards—begging your pardon, but that’s what they are—they’ve finished the hospital. There ain’t no one left alive in there now. And not that many got out alive—firing at little children, they was, filthy black swine! And then they attacked us at the perimeter, thinking they could sneak in because it was left unguarded! That was why we couldn’t come right away. The colonel, he ordered us to drive them off first and then he let us go. But he was right—if we’d all left our posts, they’d have been into the entrenchment and that would have been the end of us.”

  “The … colonel?” Emmy queried faintly. “Which colonel do you mean?”

  “Colonel Sheridan,” the Blue Cap told her. “Him with one arm.” He set her down gently and grinned, mopping at his sweat-streaked face. “Do you know him, ma’am?”

  “Yes,” Emmy said. “Yes, I know him.” She swayed, conscious of nausea, and he put an arm round her, holding her upright.

  “Better let me help you inside, ma’am. You need to lie down and rest. This is where most of the women and children have been taken.” He indicated the door of the godown. “Poor souls! It’s a poor enough shelter for them but there ain’t nowhere else, now the hospital’s gone.”

  Emmy thanked him and let him lead her into the dark, airless confines of the provision store. A single candle gleamed, at its far end, and the sound of weeping assailed her ears as she stumbled inside. It was a hopeless, defeated sound, which tore at her heart as she looked about her and saw, when her eyes became accustomed to the dimness, that the room was already crowded to capacity with blackened shapes, scarcely recognisable as women.

  “Please,” she requested the fusilier. “When you go back to your post, would you tell Colonel Sheridan that his wife is … is safe.”

  He stared at her uncomprehendingly for a moment and then drew himself to attention. “I’ll tell him, Mrs Sheridan, ma’am, don’t you worry. Here …” he divested himself of his torn and filthy jacket and, finding a space, spread the garment out for her. “Just you lie down now and try to sleep. I’ll tell the colonel where you are … and I’ll tell him something else, too. They don’t come no braver than his lady and that’s the gospel truth—he’s a right to be proud of what you did back there in the hospital, ma’am, if any man ever had.”

  He left her and Emmy sank down in the space he had cleared for her, so numb from shock and exhaustion that she fell instantly into unconsciousness, incapable of enquiring for William and lacking even the strength to attempt to identify the women huddled on either side of her. Twice during the night the crash of guns from within the entrenchment wakened her, as it wakened her neighbours but no one spoke and she drifted back into sleep, too spent in mind and body to lift her head from its malodorous pillow.

  It was not until the following morning that she learnt, from a sobbing and barely coherent Lucy that her little son was dead. He had died quietly, without pain and almost unnoticed, Lucy whispered brokenly, in the early hours of the morning. She had been wakened by the gunfire and had realised that he was no longer breathing.

  Emmy comforted the unhappy girl, herself feeling no grief, only a strange, cold numbness of the spirit that did not admit of pain. She wrapped the tiny, limp body in its ragged shawl, looked for the last time on her child’s still face and laid him, with the rest of the night’s dead, to await the burial party.

  There were a great many dead but they were not all there. Forty-two sick and wounded men had perished in the blackened ruins of the hospital, Mrs Chalmers told her, and their bodies would have to be left where they were, for it was impossible to remove them until the heat subsided. The surgeons had lost all save one small medicine chest, which one of them had risked his life to snatch from the flames. Their instruments, the bandages which the women had provided at such sacrifice, their precious reserves of water and a week’s rations had also been lost.

  As yet, it had not been possible to call a roll of the women and children; they were scattered throughout the entrenchment, wherever shelter could be found for them, but a number were known to have been wounded or injured or to have succumbed to sickness.

  “I think,” Mrs Chalmers said, a catch in her voice, as she looked down at Lucy’s bent head and despondently bowed shoulders, “I truly think that I envy your little William, Mrs Sheridan. At least he is at peace and nothing can hurt him now. The dead cannot hear those guns and for that I envy them. I thought my faith was strong but when I look about me, when I see the terrible change all this has wrought in Lucy, I find myself wondering if there is a God watching over us. I feel …” she sighed. “But there is Mr Montcrieff, good, kind man that he is, come to help us to renew our faith. I’d forgotten it was Sunday. Well, we can pray, I suppose, and hope that Almighty God will hear our prayers and send us deliverance.”

  The chaplain came limping in, white with fatigue, his once spotless surplice torn and blood-stained. Alex was with him, Emmy saw, and a dark-faced Eurasian drummer bearing the Communion vessels—now only a symbol, for both were empty.

  Alex crossed to her side and Emmy’s heart lifted at the sight of him, losing a little of its frozen numbness.

  “William … ” she began. “Oh, Alex, William is …”

  Gently he stopped her. “I know, my love, they told me. That’s why I’ve come. I’ll dig a grave for him in the garden, where the Hillersdon children are buried.” He took her hand in his and they knelt together, as the women gathered round and the chaplain’s tired voice started to intone the Lord’s Prayer.

  “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name …”

  They said the familiar words after him, as spent and weary as he, some kneeling but many lacking the strength to rise to their knees, their voices scarcely audible above the unremitting thunder of the guns and the high-pitched, hissing screech of approaching shells. Blistered hands trembling, the Rev Edward Montcrieff turned the pages of his prayer book. “Almighty God, King of all Kings and Governor of all things, whose power no creature is able to resist, to whom it belongeth justly to punish sinners, and to be merciful to them that truly repent. Save and deliver us, we humbly beseech Thee, from the hands of our enemies; abate their perils, assuage their malice and confound their devices; that we, being armed with Thy defence, may be preserved evermore from all perils, to glorify Thee, who are the only giver of all victory, through the merits of Thine only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

  “Amen,” Alex said. His fingers tightened about Emmy’s hand and she let her head rest against his shoulder, feeling his strength flowing into her to renew her own.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THAT EVENING—Sunday, 14th June—General Wheeler composed his appeal for help to Sir Henry Lawrence. Aware that it would have to be brief, since at his own request the missive was to be inserted into the messenger’s ear by a surgeon, the old general wrote: “We have been besieged since the sixth by the Nana Sahib, joined by the whole of the native troops, who broke out on the morning of the fourth. The enemy have two 24- and several 18-pounder guns —we have only eight 9-pounders. Our defence has been noble and wonderful, our losses heavy and cruel. All our carriages are more or less disabled, ammunition short; we have no instruments, no medicine; the British spirit alone remains but it cannot last for ever.” He paused, deep in thought and then his pen stabbed at the coarse, native-made paper as he added, underscoring the last three words: “We want aid, aid, aid!”

  At
least two hundred men would, he knew, be required to raise the siege but he had to leave it to Lawrence to decide what troops he could spare … “It is ready, Dr Newenham,” he announced. The surgeon of the 1st Native Infantry took the paper and without glancing at its contents, screwed it deftly into a thin spill.

  “Very good, sir,” he said. “I’ll attend to the matter immediately.”

  Accompanied by the general’s son, Godfrey, an ensign in the same regiment, he left the room and the old man leaned back in his chair, his heavy lids failing. He was tired, he thought, dear God how tired he was! Even to write a letter in this heat exhausted him and he longed for sleep. His wife was lying on the only bed the small room possessed—a string charpoy—but he hesitated, loth to disturb her or his two young daughters who lay, their arms clasped about each other, as if for mutual reassurance, on quilts spread out on the opposite side of the room. Poor girls, this was a terrible ordeal for them, as it was for all the women and children … and worse might be in store for them if Lawrence did not send aid and send it soon.

  Was it true, he wondered uneasily, the story the messenger had told him a few minutes ago, when he had paid him the agreed sum in gold for taking his letter to Lucknow … could it possibly be true? Was the Nana Sahib, who had been his friend, capable of such merciless cruelty? He stifled a sigh. The Eurasian messenger, Gillis, was a reliable man, who had been useful as a spy many times in the past few months and his information was, as a rule, accurate. He had reported growing lawlessness among the Nana’s troops, quarrels between their leaders and the brutal treatment of civilians—English-speaking babus and Eurasian Christians who had remained in hiding in the city—all of which had the ring of truth about them. But this last story must surely have been exaggerated, perhaps because the fellow wanted to justify the high price he had demanded for undertaking the journey to Lucknow … although it had been very detailed, even to the naming of names.

  According to his account, two boatloads of fugitives from Fategarh, numbering 126 in all—the majority women, children and civilians—had been seized by a detachment of the 2nd Native Cavalry at Bithur. Having, unhappily, no idea that Cawnpore was itself under siege, the Fategarh party had been on their way to seek refuge from a threatened mutiny of their own native troops. Although lightly armed, they had not expected to be attacked when almost within sight of their goal and they had put up little resistance, even when the troops they had supposed to be friendly had opened fire on them from the bank of the river. Taken in open carts to the Nana’s camp at Savada, deprived of food and water and subjected to the grossest abuse and humiliation, the wretched captives had been kept all day in the sun, bound tightly together.

  Finally, by the Nana’s orders, they had been savagely hacked to pieces in his presence by Muslim troopers of the 2nd Cavalry, who had spared none of them.

  “I did not witness this foul deed, General Sahib,” the messenger admitted. “But I was told of it by one who did—Nerput, the opium agent, who was at the camp on business. He said that the bodies were cast into the river and many who saw them there spoke of it to me. It is said that one child, a girl, survived and that she has been taken by a golandaze to his home to be cared for.”

  The general shivered as he visualised the ghastly scene. He did not want to believe the horrors which Gillis had described. The Nana had betrayed his friendship, it was true, but he was a civilised man, a Hindu Mahratta of Brahmin caste. It was inconceivable that he should have had women and innocent, defenceless children barbarously tortured and done to death by Rampoorie Muslims of the 2nd Cavalry … unless, of course, the other rumours were true and he had failed to maintain discipline in his mutinied regiments. If he had lost control of them or delegated authority to his degenerate brother, Bala Bhat, and to Azimullah and the Moulvi of Fyzabad, then anything was possible. Even this … the old man slumped further back in his chair, willing himself to sleep, to shut out the vision of mutilated bodies, of women pleading for mercy and violated by their pitiless killers before being put to the sword. It could not be true … the Nana Sahib would never permit such licence. Azimullah and Bala Bhat were his creatures, they …

  “Sir—” it was his son Godfrey, punctiliously carrying out the duties of aide-de-camp and the general sat up, blinking in the light of the lantern the boy had brought with him.

  “Yes?” he invited, shrugging off his weariness.

  “The messenger is on his way, sir. Captain Williamson has undertaken to see him through our pickets. And Captain Moore is here, requesting to speak to you.”

  “Moore?” John Moore was a splendid officer, possessed of outstanding courage and powers of leadership, who had already proved himself one of the heroes of the defence but … he was so devilishly tired, the old general thought. “What does he want, Godfrey, do you know? Can it not wait till morning?”

  His son shook his head. “No, sir, I don’t think it can. He and Colonel Sheridan want your permission to make a raid tonight —a morale-raiser, they call it, to show the Pandies that we’re not giving up just because they managed to burn down the hospital. Captain Moore would like to take fifty men and spike the twenty-four-pounder in the east battery—the one in the Church compound, sir—and—”

  “Fifty men!” the general exclaimed, shocked out of his desire for sleep. “But that would leave the ramparts seriously undermanned!”

  “He can’t do it with less, Father,” Godfrey Wheeler pointed out. “And it would give a tremendous boost to morale if he could put that battery out of action—it’s done us more hurt than any of the others.”

  “No doubt it would,” his father said dryly. “If it succeeds and if the party don’t suffer any casualties. We cannot afford to lose a single man, Godfrey—you know that—still less can we afford to risk fifty lives in what, by any standards, is a most hazardous undertaking. Where does Moore think he can find fifty fit men?”

  “Colonel Sheridan has picked them, sir. He—”

  “Officers, I suppose?”

  “A proportion, of course,” the boy admitted. “As you say, they’ve got to be fit. Those who volunteered for the raid and weren’t considered up to it are to man the defences …” He talked on enthusiastically and his father listened, conscious of the stirring of a spirit he had imagined long since dead. Damn it, the old general told himself, the idea was one after his own heart. To attack, when your enemy imagined you were beaten; to come out fighting, when you should have been licking your wounds; to show defiance, instead of fear … he had said, in his appeal to Lawrence, that the defence had been noble and wonderful and, for all the risk involved, this proposed raid was in the true British spirit. He had to permit them to make it, if for no other reason than because Gillis’s story of the massacre of the Fategarh fugitives might be true.

  “Very well,” he said, his mind made up. “Tell Captain Moore that he has my permission. I’d better see him, I suppose. I’ll come with you, I don’t want to disturb your mother and the girls.” He rose stiffly to his feet. “On you go, Godfrey. I’ll follow you.”

  Godfrey held his ground. “There’s just one other request I’d like to make, sir,” he said formally. “May I go with the raiding party?”

  The general stared at him in shocked surprise. He had not expected the request and it had caught him off guard. The boy was so young; unwashed and unshaven, as they all were, he was still a fine-looking boy, with all the makings of a first-rate officer. It would break his heart if anything happened to this son of his and as for the boy’s mother … he glanced across at the charpoy, willing his wife to waken, to open her eyes and add her pleas to the excuses he was about to offer. But she remained silent, oblivious to what Godfrey was asking of him and he turned back to meet the boy’s gaze uneasily.

  “You’re my A.D.C., Godfrey,” he began. “I don’t feel, in the circumstances, that—”

  “I am also an officer of this garrison, Father,” Godfrey reminded him. “And I hold a Company’s commission, I’m not a child. Please, sir,
I beg you to let me go. I’m fit—unlike Colonel Sheridan and Captain Moore, I have the use of both my arms.”

  Sir Hugh Wheeler hesitated, unable to restrain the unmanly tears which pricked at his eyes. He had no justification for refusing his son’s request, he knew. If he permitted other officers to risk their lives, he must also allow his son the same privilege. He bowed his white head and said gruffly, “All right, my dear boy, go if you wish. I … you can see Captain Moore for me. He doesn’t need me to plan his raid for him—he knows what to do, better than I do. Ask him not to take the Artillery officers, if he can do without them, that’s all.”

  “Yes, of course, sir.” Godfrey’s blue eyes held a glow of excitement. “Goodnight, sir, and … thank you. I’m most grateful to you, believe me.”

  Grateful … dear heaven! The general expelled his breath in a long-drawn sigh. “Good luck,” he said, still gruffly and, when the boy had gone, eager as a puppy, he sank back once more into his chair and closed his eyes. But now they were closed in prayer; for all his weariness, he knew that he would not sleep this night …

  The raiding party gathered on the north-east corner of the entrenchment, behind Ashe’s guns, their faces blackened, looking more like the company of a pirate ship than soldiers. The officers had pistols thrust into the waistbands of their trousers and most of them, like the men, had Enfields or Miniés, to which in response to a whispered order, bayonets were silently fixed. They had all been told what was expected of them and they were grinning, in high spirits, eager to hit back at the enemy now that at last the chance had come.

  Alex, waiting with Francis Whiting and Henry Delafosse, listened to John Moore, as he issued last minute instructions to the men who had been selected to spike the guns. By common consent, command of these raids was Moore’s responsibility; he had been on all of them and knew the ground so intimately that he could have found his way blindfolded to any point he wished to reach. He, with Lieutenants Saunders of the 84th and Wren of the Native Cavalry, were to disable the guns, backed up by two sergeants and half a dozen men of the two Queen’s regiments, and they carried hand-spikes, sponge-staffs and a supply of powder for this purpose, in addition to pistols.