As he was speaking, Major Marmont laid out a salt cellar and pepper pot close together and put a knife-rest on Tom and Helen’s side of the table to show the relative position of the three places. This was hardly necessary but Tom supposed it was a habit acquired from years in the army. Given his other trade, perhaps Marmont would shortly make the salt cellar disappear.
‘I was young and reckless enough to volunteer to deliver a message to Alum Bagh, information which had to be carried forward to Cawnpore. Also someone was required to guide the next relief column into Lucknow. We were surrounded by rebels and, poorly organized though they were, the sepoys were scattered at points around the city which were known only to the defenders. Having volunteered myself and received a pat on the back from Colonel Sir John Inglis, I decided that I would carry out my mission in native disguise as a sepoy. It was a foolish thing to volunteer, no doubt. I had every reason to live, even though all our lives were in peril. But I had found a girl, you see. An Indian girl. I suppose I wanted to show off.
‘You may not think it, but I was once a lithe young man, quick and nimble. Months in the sun had darkened my complexion but I darkened it further by the application of walnut dye, not forgetting arms and legs, and I clad myself in native garb. I must have had the desire to dress up even then. I was accompanied by a local man called Lal. He was a little younger than me, almost a boy in fact, and although a fairly recent arrival in Lucknow he was familiar with every inch of the ground.
‘The distance between the Residency and Alum Bagh was only a few miles as the crow flies but we decided not to go through the city which lies to the south of the Residency compound – it was too full of rebel sepoys and dark alleys where any peril or patrol might be lurking. For safety’s sake we would take the longer route through the open country in the east and past the entrenchments before we circled back to the west and so towards Alum Bagh. It was a night with a crescent moon and a few stars. Although the rains had started it was very hot and humid.
‘I remember sitting with Lal while we waited for it to grow dark enough for us to get started. I hadn’t eaten. I couldn’t have kept anything down. Concealed under my shirt was a pouch containing various letters from Inglis which were to be forwarded to Cawnpore. They were to do with the number of soldiers and civilians left in the Residency, our dwindling stock of ammunition and so on. I also carried hastily drawn maps showing the best routes into Lucknow, although these might change from day to day. The pouch was secured by a cord about my neck. In the event of danger I was to dispose of the maps and letters, although no one told me exactly how. Eat them perhaps.
‘I noticed that Lal also had an object secured by a cord about his neck and, seeing my gaze, he drew out a sheath attached to the cord, withdrew a dagger from the sheath and handed it to me. It was one of those fine Hindoo artefacts, half for use and half for ornament. It sat nicely in my hand but I felt very uneasy holding it. There were ivory designs on the handle. We were sitting in the half-dark but the ivory gleamed like a skull. I was surprised that an ordinary young man should be carrying something so apparently precious – and indeed he had shown it to me with an odd sort of reluctance – but I said nothing and handed back the dagger. Seeing the weapon made me think that I should equip myself with a knife or a pistol. But I had no knife handy, and I thought that if I took my pistol it would conflict with my disguise. I was setting out, unarmed.
‘Anyway, to distract ourselves we talked a lot, talked about anything and everything. Lal had pretty good English. I didn’t know much about him before except that he was an admirer of the British. Turned out that he’d been born outside Lucknow and that he was much grander than I thought. He was the son of some prince in those parts. There are more Badshahs and Rajas and Nawabs and Nizams up there than you can shake a stick at. That no doubt explained how he came by the dagger.
‘Anyway I suppose I spoke to Lal with a touch more respect than I would have done otherwise but I didn’t spend much time thinking of his lineage. You don’t when you might be walking to your imminent death.’
Marmont paused for a mouthful of food and half a glass of Sauternes and to catch his breath. Tom thought, old Mackenzie said I’d enjoy meeting the Major and listening to his tales and he was right.
‘The going was straightforward at first,’ resumed Marmont. ‘We had to cross a canal at the point where it met the Gumti River but we already knew that the sepoys had damned the canal so that a stretch to the south would flood and make it harder for any relief to get across with their heavy guns. We crept across the nullah – that’s their word for the canal – which was little more than a dried-out depression in the earth at that point. It was eerie. There was no one about but we imagined sepoys waiting to jump out at us from behind every palm or pepul tree. They weren’t expecting any trouble in the eastern quarter but only from the south, you see, which was why they’d flooded the canal down there.
‘Anyway, Lal and I made our slow progress to east and south. When we began to go parallel to the line of the nullah between Dilksuka and Char Bagh Bridges, which were half submerged, we could see what little moonlight there was glinting on the flooded plain. There was the occasional spark of a campfire on the far side. Eventually we arrived at Char Bagh itself, which was a kind of landmark no more than a couple of miles from our destination. Char Bagh was another walled-off area. That part of northern India is full of gardens and secluded areas. This one, though, was in a dilapidated state, its walls broken down in places because of the fighting which had already occurred there.
‘Lal and I had been on the move for about three hours now and I suppose we were growing a little tired and careless. Because we had so far encountered no trouble, we’d forgotten that we were crossing what was literally enemy territory. I was even regretting that I hadn’t had anything to eat before we started. I spotted a gap in a wall and, with gestures, indicated that we might rest up for a few moments. I scrambled through the gap. Lal followed, only more quietly. I walked forward and stepped on something soft, something that squealed. At first I thought it was an animal but the squeals were soon followed by curses and a man rose up before us in the open space beyond the wall. He must have been sleeping and was as surprised to see us as we were to see him.
‘I was frozen not with fear exactly but with uncertainty. I did not know what to do next. But Lal did. The moment he heard the noises he’d started to circle round the man and was now on his far side. The man opened his mouth – he was about to shout, to scream, to call for help – I could distinctly see the black hole of his mouth and a raggedy circle of teeth, dark as it was. He was about to shout, I say, and bring down ruin on both of us, when Lal clapped one hand over his gaping mouth and with the other seemed to punch the unfortunate fellow between the ribs. The man arched forward and toppled on to the ground, and Lal almost fell on top of him. He continued to strike at him and I realized that he was using not his fists but the dagger. The dagger with the ivory handle.
‘After a time the man lay still and Lal scrambled to his feet, though not before he’d wiped the blade on the dry grass. He was panting hard and muttering some words I couldn’t make out. I sensed rather than saw the fresh blood on his garments. We looked down at the prone body. I said something like “Well done.” He said that he had not meant to kill the man but that the dagger had a mind of its own. That’s how he expressed it, a mind of its own.
‘I glanced at the corpse. It crossed my mind that this might have been not one of the rebel sepoys neglecting his duties as a sentry but an innocent who’d lain down to sleep in the wrong place – a peasant or what they call a ryot over there.
‘But he was no innocent. From the far side of the wall there came cries of alarm and within moments we saw shapes on the other side of the gap. Lal and I took to our heels, dodging among the trees and looking for another way out of this enclosure. I risked a glance back and saw a few of them, now equipped with flaming torches, gathered about the fallen body of the sentry. There was a collective cry of rage and grief. We knew that if we were taken by the sepoys they’d show no mercy, particularly as my companion, a fellow Indian, was covered in the blood of the one he’d killed.