'And 'ow's 'e fight an elephant then, sir? 'E'd not stand as 'igh as its ear.'
'He doesn't do the fighting; the rider does. He gets the horse to leap up and takes the mahout in the flank with his lance. Then he can deal with the howdah.'
Johnson looked sceptical.
'I'll show you what he can do.' Hervey gathered up the reins again, though nothing like as taut as he would normally for proper collection.
Indeed, the reins themselves were unusual. They were stitched double towards the end, and Hervey held this doubled length, close to its fork, in his bridle hand and almost to his chest. It showed a long and graceful length such that his childhood riding master would have admired. But that old rittmeister would also have been intrigued, for Hervey was not wearing spurs, nor was he carrying a whip. Johnson could scarcely believe it either.
'The weight of the reins collects him onto the bit,' explained Hervey. 'I don't know how or why, for I've never heard of an animal trained so. In truth, I'd not have been inclined to believe it.'
After circling two or three times at a canter, he put the stallion into a pirouette, then into a reversed pirouette, then into what he knew as 'voltes on a small compass', stopping on the hocks and turning on them, and from that he had the horse jump into the gallop. Finally, and still at the gallop, he made the animal move obliquely, as Peto would have made headway with a weather helm.
Johnson stood silent but impressed. These were 'tricks' of self-evident utility in the field. It was not difficult to imagine the lance held across the body or out wide, the horse passaging left or right to take the enemy in the flank.
But Hervey had not finished. There were what his old rittmeister called the airs above ground. Jaswant Sing had shown him how to perform them, though in truth, as well Hervey knew, all he had done was show him how to sit a horse that knew its airs.
First a levade, the horse rising on its hind legs, hocks almost on the ground. Then forward from the levade a courbette, with three distinct leaps -or was it four? And finally the capriole, the stallion leaping into the air and kicking out long with its hind legs. Jaswant Sing had called it udaang - flying.
'You see?' called Hervey, panting almost as much as the horse as he walked him over to where Johnson stood - and rubbing his shoulder now, and more confidently, for he knew that to work like that meant he was all but whole again. 'You see how useful that could be!'
There was no doubting it. 'That were a vicious kick all right,' said his groom, shaking his head. 'I've never seen owt like it.'
'You see now how useful for elephant-fighting?'
'Oh ay, sir. Yon 'orse looked as if it would've scrambled up its 'ead.'
'That was the idea,' said Hervey, slipping from the saddle and loosening the girth. 'But all that's over with - elephants and the like. Just a pretty display now. Think how you might turn heads with it in England though, eh?'
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TOWERS OF SILENCE
Bhurtpore, a month later
Hervey sat on the crumbling wall of an old well, in a large straw hat and very unmilitary clothes, sketching. 'Sir David Ochterlony makes but one stipulation,' he had written to Emma's husband, before leaving Dehli:
He would have me do more than merely gawp at the walls of Bhurtpore; he would have me bring back a thorough knowledge of all its defences. And all this, of course, I am to accomplish without for a moment giving cause for anyone to know what I do in that city. To what end this spying may be directed I can little imagine, except that Sir David speaks darkly of the need, perhaps, of such information in years soon to come. At first I imagined him to mean that he himself, Sir David Ochterlony, might have to do what Lord Lake had been unable to accomplish. But although I believe Sir David to be game for the hardiest adventure still, I am certain he understands the circumstances would be no more favourable now than they were for Lord Lake. I have read much of his lordship's siege, and I cannot imagine that success could be accomplished with fewer men and guns, and Sir David does not have one half of Lord Lake's force at his own disposal. I believe, therefore, that Sir David would put before the Council in Calcutta a proposal for the stronger reinforcement of his command were it ever to come to a fight, and that meanwhile he is taking all prudent steps to acquire intelligence of any nature. He does not confirm me in this opinion when I ask him, but he does not oppose it either . . .
Hervey was not by any reckoning an artist, but he had been taught to draw, and his practice in field sketching in the Peninsula had made him proficient in the reproduction of landscape with correct proportion and perspective. For several days he had wandered about the city drawing anything he could see which was of no military significance in order to establish his credentials as a travelling antiquarian. No one had shown the slightest interest in him, but he had wanted an alibi - a portfolio of architectural drawings that would serve as evidence of his innocent intent when he began work on the defences.
One sketch he had been especially minded to hide, however. Its subject appalled him - sickened him indeed. He had scarcely been able to keep down his gorge as he drew. And it took him longer to complete than some of the more elaborate works of decorative detail, for he had wanted as faithful an impression as possible; one that might have the same effect on a viewer that the archetype had on him. It had been a repetitive work, a business of drawing skull after skull. He had tried to estimate how many there were: the column was as tall as Trajan's in Rome, and his guide had said it was neither hollow nor filled with sand. Here was no bas-relief of bones, but a solid pillar of Lord Lake's dead. No Christian burial or cremation according to native rites for these men - King's and sepoys alike. The gamekeepers at Longleat would string up their trophies to discourage predators and to impress by their zeal. The Futtah Bourge, the 'bastion of victory', was but the same. How loathsome it stood by comparison with that eloquent commemoration of Trajan's victory, an affront to every decent instinct of a Christian-raised man, and a gesture of contempt for the customs of war. Peaceful Hindoostan might be, but a sight such as this said that peace was an unnatural thing. Hervey considered it well that he concealed his sketch, and thought it best that he hide it from view of his fellows too.
This next stage of his work occupied him a full week. 'The fortress of Bhurtpore is without doubt the largest I have ever seen,' he wrote to Eyre Somervile towards the end of October:
It stands on a plain broken and rugged towards the west but otherwise bare, affording little cover, and I calculate the perimeter to be not very much short of five miles. Any siege force would have to be great indeed to invest the entire fortress. I have now been able to make a very faithful comparison of Lord Lake's dispositions, and it is at once apparent that his insufficiency in men was greater than I had supposed when reading the usual texts, for with the Maratha cavalry harassing him he was obliged to hold ready reserves to deal with them, and he had not thereby the means either to starve out the garrison in the old way or breach the walls in enough places and in sufficient strength to bolt the defenders.
A broad and deep ditch runs the entire length of the perimeter, from the inner edge of which rises a thick and lofty wall of sun-baked clay and stone, flanked by no fewer than thirty-five turreted bastions. I have been able to draw in plan the location of each, though for reasons of economy in time, and so as not to appear excessively interested should I have been accosted, I was minded to draw elevations of only those I judged would command the likely approaches. The citadel itself occupies a natural height, rising above all else in the city, and is itself enclosed by a ditch 1’0 feet wide and fifty feet deep. And, as if Vauban himself had directed the fortification, there are ravelins and lunettes, fleches and demi-lunes the entire length of the walls.