A Dark and Distant Shore (97 page)

We have no way of cooking, and the native servants who have agreed to cook our rations for us say everything must be put in together, because there are so few pots. They have only one, of untinned copper, and the horrible stew that emerged from it today was perfectly green. It
cannot
be good for us, eating verdigris, and the children, who have little appetite because of the heat, wouldn’t touch it at all. I am so afraid for little Luke, because although I try to feed him, I have not enough milk after all the stresses of the last weeks. Dear God, surely someone must come to our rescue soon!

July 4
Sir Henry Lawrence, the good, kind man who has been in charge here, died this morning from a wound he received two days ago. It is said that even he will have no privacy in the grave, but will be sewn up, like everyone else, in his own bedding, and consigned to the pit dug every night for those who have died in the day. So
many
are dying every day – men, and sometimes women, killed or injured in the dreadful bombardment that seems as if it will never stop. The mutineers are using the guns they captured from us at Chinhut a few days ago.

July 12
I
have not felt able to write for some days. On the 8th I was standing in the doorway of our room, with the baby in my arms, hoping for a breath of air. There was a little girl playing in the courtyard of the building, and even as I watched, something flew through the air and...

I can’t write it. I can’t think about it. There was a funny noise, and then a spray of red all round her, and I fainted dead anyway. Thank God I had tied little Luke to my waist to relieve me of some of his weight, or I would have dropped him. I have only now recovered enough strength to do more than sit and hold him to me, and try not to think. I don’t know whose daughter the little girl was.

Mr Ommanney, of the Civil Service, died the other day, and Mr Polehampton, one of the chaplains, was wounded, but not seriously. He was actually in the hospital when it happened. Fifteen or twenty people die every day, and have to be buried after dark. One of the ladies in our room is ill today. It is said to be smallpox. How I tremble for my poor baby. We are so confined, and there is no fresh air. The mosquitoes are fearful. Perhaps Mrs Thomas doesn’t have smallpox. We are all suffering from boils now; it might be that.

July 1
6 Mrs Thomas died this morning. It was smallpox, but no one else has caught it yet.

July 20
Mr Polehampton, after recovering from his wound, has died of cholera. His widow is coming to occupy the room next to ours; may God comfort her. Mrs Clark gave birth to a daughter this morning. I don’t believe either of them will live. Her mind is wandering, and I sit beside her and hold her hand, but I can’t make out what she is saying.

July 30
Mrs Clark died this evening, poor thing, scarcely older than I am, and such a gentle person. Her infant daughter seems unlikely to survive.

August 3
It has happened, as I knew it must. Last night, Dr Wells told me that my baby was dying. He has cholera, and he is so small. Mrs Polehampton came to help me nurse him. We gave him the strongest remedies the doctor said could be given to one so young. I have been kneeling at his bedside all night, and today I believe – God, I pray! – that he is better. But he is so weak from the cholera and the remedies that I don’t dare hope.

August 8
The baby is a little better, but I have been ill myself. Mrs Clark’s orphaned daughter died yesterday, and we have just put Mrs Kendall’s sweet little girl in an ammunition box that someone found for a coffin. The enemy have been firing all night lately, hoping to reduce the garrison by exhaustion since they have not succeeded by other means. They found the range of the Begum Kothi one night last week and several shells exploded in the upper part of the building. I believe someone was killed. It was the night we thought Luke was dying of cholera.

It can’t go on like this. Everyone is ill some way or other. My fingers are covered with boils, and Dr Darby has lanced some of them. He says I mustn’t use my hands, but I have to. Feeble though I am, I am the strongest of the ladies still left in this room, and there is so much to do, especially now that we have no one to cook for us. I can’t keep everyone and everything clean on my own, but I try. It is so important for things to be clean when there is disease about. I remember Gideon telling me how insistent Miss Nightingale was about that at Scutari. The trouble is that my hands are so painful, and it makes everything so slow and clumsy. It takes hours to get the lice out of the baby’s hair, and I try to do Mrs Kendall’s too. Although she is almost prostrate, she does mine in return, but not very well because nervous exhaustion has taken all the strength from her. It is the flies that are the worst; Lucknow is famous for them. When I open my mouth to swallow my boiled-lentil soup, the flies swarm into it instead. And then they fall in the plate and float about, and I can’t face trying to eat any more of it.

I feel so sorry for Dr Darby. His wife was at Cawnpore, and we have heard that although most of the hundreds of unfortunates there were massacred, a few escaped. He doesn’t know whether she is alive or dead; almost worse, if she is dead it was not peacefully, or quickly. The tales we hear are horrible beyond belief. Poor Dr Darby. Poor me. Richard, my dearest, if only I knew whether
you
were alive or dead. If only I knew anything at all!

Nothing has been heard of anyone coming to our aid here.

August 19
One of the officers who escorted us here from Sikrora has shot himself.

August 20
Baby is still so weak and poorly. I have no milk now, and am feeding him mostly on arrowroot that Dr Darby brings me, and a little goat’s milk that Mrs Martin gives me every day. It is as precious as gold. It is very difficult to cook now because of building a fire. The wood is so wet that it won’t burn. A soldier brought me some that was dry, but I have only a dinner knife to chop I with, so it is very difficult. Our rations are to be reduced, which means, I suppose, that there is no likelihood of the garrison being relieved yet. All our problems were near to being solved two days ago, when the enemy blew a great breach in the defences, but nothing came of it.

September 18
I have written nothing these last weeks. My hands have been too bad, and there seems little purpose in repeating a catalogue of miseries and worries and disappointments. All that happens is that the people in the Residency become steadily fewer. The Rev. Mr Harris now not only reads the burial service at nights in the cemetery, but has to dig the graves himself.

There is a partial eclipse of the sun today, from which the natives foretell famine. If we were still capable of laughing, we would. We are all so accustomed to being hungry that words like famine have no meaning at all. The bombardment goes on, and on, and every so often there is an assault in which the enemy are repulsed and a few more of the garrison die. The soldiers are beyond admiration. They loot when they can, and steal when they have the opportunity, and get drunk when by some miracle liquor comes in their way. They are walking skeletons, clad in rags or in other soldiers’ cast-offs that they have bought on credit at the auction of some corpse’s effects. They bid astonishing sums, because everyone is agreed that the accounting date shall be when their next pay is disbursed, and none of them expects to live to see it. And yet somehow they fight on, with a kind of dogged madness that nothing can overcome. I believe the plan is to blow up the entrenchments, with all of us inside, rather than give up. I was thinking, just the other day, how utterly insane such an idea would have seemed to me a year ago. And yet now it sounds perfectly reasonable.

There is no news at all from the outside world, or none that filters through to Mrs Kendall and myself in our underground cell. Perhaps Colonel Inglis knows something. Perhaps
Mrs
Colonel Inglis knows something.

Fortunate Mrs Colonel Inglis!

September 23
There is a rumour that the relieving force is on its way at last. Do I believe it? I don’t know. I prefer to doubt it, because the disappointment will not be so great.

Oh, God!
Can
it be true?

Later
It
is
true. We can hear the guns. Dr Darby says they are no more than three miles away. General Havelock and Sir James Outram are in command. Is Richard with them?
Is Richard with them
?

September 24
No sleep last night. My poor, weak little baby lies there and stares at me, his eyes enormous with wonderment at something he has never seen before – his mama not only smiling, but laughing with excitement. The guns seem further away this morning, but it may just be a trick of sound. The important thing is that we are not forgotten, not deserted. That has been harder to bear than almost anything. Oh, Richard! Can it be that after all these weary months we will soon be together again?
You must
be with General Havelock, mustn’t you?

September 25
A bad night, with the enemy attacking us violently several times, as if in a last effort to break into the Residency before General Havelock arrives. But this morning there is no doubt that the General has already reached the outskirts of the city.

I know it was silly and vain of me, but I spent most of yesterday trying to make myself pretty again for Richard. I rubbed and rubbed at my second gown – poor Mrs Clark’s – but it is so difficult to get it clean without soap or even
dhal,
and plain water has no effect on the grease marks or the insects, bred, born, reared and fattened as they are on monsoon rains and human perspiration. So I put a few grains from our tiny salt ration on every one I could see. Mrs Kendall says salt only kills greenfly, not lice or fleas. But whether because of the salt or my vigorous rubbing, most of them seem to have gone. If only there were some way of ironing things! But baby and I are clean, at least, if somewhat creased. My hair is so lank, and my face so hollow; my hands so swollen and scarred; and all of me covered with bruises. Dr Darby says that, like everyone else, I am suffering from scurvy because of the lack of fresh vegetables, which is why even the slightest bump produces a bruise. But Richard won’t mind – will you, my dearest? When we are restored to each other, I will be myself in no time at all, you’ll see!

We have all been most sternly instructed to stay under cover until the relief force is actually within the gates. But it is so hard to be patient now, after all we have been through! Eighty-seven days since the siege began.

Later
There is so much shouting going on! I think I hear someone beginning to cheer. I must go out. I
must
go out!

September 25. Eight o’clock
It is so strange to see how immaculate our saviours are, the generals in their shooting coats and solar topees, and all the soldiers in their beautiful uniforms, only a little dusty. They look so stout and healthy, throwing their arms round our own poor fellows, who appear like the worst kind of bandit by comparison. The pipers of the 78th Highlanders – first in,
of course
!
–
were playing, which nearly made an end of me. I could see nothing for the tears in my eyes and streaming down my cheeks. Everyone was shaking hands with everyone else, and the rough-bearded soldiers holding the babies up in the air, and crying and laughing and thanking God they had arrived in time to save them from the fate that had overtaken the poor little mites at Cawnpore.

I am trying to write this very slowly and legibly to calm myself down. For I must be patient just a little longer before I can be reunited with Richard. The very first officer I asked told me he shared a makeshift tent with Richard just last night, so I know now that he
is
with the force. But I have been walking up and down by the Baillie Guard gate for almost three hours and he has not come in. Someone told me at last that ‘young Curtis’ is with the rearguard, and will probably pass the night at the old palace, the Moti Mahal, before breaking through the mutineers still in the city during the course of tomorrow. So I must be patient. I must be patient. And I think I can be, now I know he is so near. But my heart is so full I don’t expect to sleep.

Such a noise, still. I can hear the Highlanders dancing a reel, and a good deal of singing and laughing. My dear,
dear
Highlanders. I promise I will never say a word against the bagpipes again! There, another splash of tears on my beautiful calligraphy! I must try to stop crying or my face will be all swollen in the morning. I never knew what happiness was, until now.

September 26
I’m not
really
worried. I have been waiting all day, but Richard has not come yet. I thought it best to sit by the door, because he is sure to ask directions as soon as he comes in and I must be here. It is surer than for me to wander around with baby in the hope of seeing him arrive. Mr Freeling promised me this morning that Richard would certainly be here today; he said they had been together for a good part of the march, and that Richard was in the wildest spirits yesterday at the prospect of seeing his wife and child again. So it is very disappointing that he has not come yet. But
no more than
disappointing.

September 27
It is noon, and he has not come yet. I am afraid. Dear God, I am so afraid.

It was the last entry Juliana made in her diary. In the afternoon, Dr Darby came to see her, his face drawn. She knew already that the relief force had brought with it bitter news for some of the garrison. Dr Darby’s wife had given birth to their baby during the siege at Cawnpore, with no other shelter than one of the guns in the entrenchment. Afterwards, she and the child had died in the massacre, cut to pieces by the butchers from the bazaar and tossed down into a well in the grounds, already crammed with women and children, dead or dying.