Red Earth and Pouring Rain (6 page)

La Borgne recovered speedily from heat-stroke and starvation. Again, his stature and bearing and his air of mystery, the electric,
dangerous smell of purpose that hovered around his body, assured that he was provided with money and letters of introduction;
strangers reached into their pockets, strangers fed and clothed him. Armed and outfitted, La Borgne set sail for Madras over
calm seas, the curved bow parting even, complaisant water at the Cape of Good Hope, then past Madagascar, through long, quiet
days with a good wind behind. There were no more storms. La Borgne leaned against a bulkhead, at peace. The Hindustan that
he was approaching was witnessing the decline of the Moghul empire and suffering the consequent fratricidal struggles. There
would be place for a soldier.

Ten years after he had left his father’s house, La Borgne smelt the odour of grass and mud and knew he was home; a skiff carried
him to a flat, wide beach. He fell to his knees and scooped up handfuls of sand and flung them over his head. The sand clung
to his hair, making him look older than his twenty-seven years. La Borgne laughed; he felt the sun on his face. He stripped
off his jacket and flung it into the water. A few children, dark and curious, dressed in many folds of fine white cloth, emerged
from the line of trees that ran around the beach. La Borgne laughed again.

In Madras he found Moulin, a tall, thin French officer with white hair and a scar that stretched from a corner of his forehead
across an empty socket to just above his lip. Moulin read La Borgne’s letters of introduction and took him back to his sprawling
house in the middle of a thicket of trees and pointed him firmly towards the bathroom; when La Borgne emerged he found a new
set of clothing laid out for
him, a pair of closely-fitting cotton pants and a finely-embroidered, light coat that seemed to float against his skin. Moulin
and La Borgne sat in a balcony, a breeze shifting their hair. Servants brought out plates of food.

‘This is a pulau: rice and meat,’ and La Borgne found himself leaning low over a dish, stuffing food into his mouth with both
hands, the insides of his mouth dancing. ‘I have a cook from Lucknow, and this is zarda, sweet rice with saffron and raisins,
and this is kabab, ground beef, and this is paratha, bread,’ and La Borgne was dizzy with the spices and the smells, rich
and thick and heavy; later, the servants brought out hookahs that burbled gently, and La Borgne felt the quiet of the evening
settle around him.

He was awakened from a deep dreamless sleep by the hollow click of hooves against stone. He sat up, and Moulin was looking
away, to the west, where a line of horsemen drifted across the sun. ‘Learn their languages,’ Moulin said, and pointed to his
scar. ‘They can do this, but often they send a message to you on the evening before they attack, asking to be granted the
honour of combat.’ He shook his head. ‘Somebody is going to take all this. On the field they fight each to himself, like it’s
a personal quarrel. I was a barber in Lyons, and now I eat like this.’ He rubbed his face, and then said morosely: ‘You’re
going to get dysentery soon. Diarrhoea.’

‘No, I won’t,’ said La Borgne, and he didn’t, and the days and then the years flashed by with an increasing velocity; fulfilled,
he found a commission with the French forces stationed in Pondicherry; here, for the first time, he drilled Indian troops
and encountered, irrespective of the age or religion of the men, that particular and peculiar mixture of pride, loyalty and
anarchistic self-importance that distinguished these soldiers from any other martial caste in the world; La Borgne drilled,
ordered and trained —he was at peace; then, predictably, he had to move on.

This time, there was a different kind of vision, a stirring of the flesh; he was found in the bed of another officer’s wife;
officers trained in the European way were scarce, and no duels were allowed, so La Borgne mounted a black horse and rode into
the beckoning interior, into the boiling confusion of the clans and states and castes seeking to inherit the mantle of the
Moghuls; let us say that he rode across dusty plains
and swollen rivers, from Calcutta to Lucknow to Delhi (where the Moghul Shah Alam huddled in his palace and sought release
from the misery of his life in piety) and down to the south again; let us say that finally he attracted the attention of a
power-broker named Madhoji Sindhia, a man who ruled in the name of the Peshwa but insisted on being referred to as a Patel,
a village head-man; let us say that La Borgne entered the service of this crafty Maratha whose armies circled the Deccan and
sniffed at the outskirts of Delhi; let us say that La Borgne raised and trained two battalions of infantry for Madhoji, using
all his skill, presence and sometimes his physical strength to transmute immensely skilled, courageous, individualistic and
unruly men from every clan and class into a single mass, a thing of mechanics, a phalanx, a machine which finally turned and
wheeled on order, coerced into synchronization by La Borgne’s magical certitude (wheeling and turning while sometimes enduring
the laughter and sneers of the proud wild cavalrymen who passed by, sniffing elegantly at roses); La Borgne persisted, driven,
and was, finally, to a degree, successful.

Let us say, then, that La Borgne found himself one morning on a field near the village of Lalsot, near Jaipur, with his two
battalions ranged to the left of the enfeebled imperial army of Shah Alam, in line with the Maratha cavalry of Madhoji Sindhia;
let us say that these men were ranged against the armies of Jaipur and Jodhpur and the troops led by the Moghul nobles Muhammed
Beg Hamadani and Ismail Beg; the particulars of this war are now confusing and dimmed by the years —as always, the causes
could be said to include the lust for power, greed, fear, anger, ignorance and also courage, loyalty and love; let us just
say that on this field of Lalsot, Benoit La Borgne became Benoit de Boigne, that years of wandering had pointed the boy who
had been fascinated by the clock-work motion of the flour-mill towards this morning.

Horses danced uneasily as the whoosh of shells tore at the air, followed, a fraction of a moment later, by the dull thudding
of the artillery pieces; Muhammed Hamadani was disintegrated by a cannon ball; his head spiralled through the air, sprinkling
blood over his men, who moved back uneasily, muttering. Ismail Beg, sensing panic, spurred his horse to the forefront; shouting,
he led the ranked squadrons against the Maratha cavalry ranged opposite him. The Marathas reeled; on their left, La Borgne
saw a twinkling, silver mass beginning to move towards
him. A convulsion seemed to pass through the ranks of his brigades, a whisper moving in quick waves, back and forth:

‘Rathor.’

‘Stand to!’ La Borgne shouted, his voice breaking; ten thousand Rathor horsemen were coming against him, men dressed in chain
mail and steel helmets, men from the Rathor clan of the Rajputs of the desert, ten thousand incredibly handsome men, the flower
of the chivalry of Rajputana, ten thousand men who claimed descent from the sun, men of the clan which claimed to have forgotten
the feeling of fear; sunlight glanced off their helmets as they broke into a trot. There was laughter as they swept down onto
the infantry drawn into a hollow square, because no infantry had ever withstood the onslaught of the Rathor cavalry (there
were songs that floated through the dry, windswept valleys of Rajputana, songs about the Rathor horsemen, the Rathor swordsmen);
they broke into a gallop, coming steadily at La Borgne’s lines; closer, closer, then the musket-men pulled back, revealing
La Borgne’s guns —the Rathors riding on, swords raised —then the hot yellow and red belch of grape-shot swept into the horsemen,
spilling them over, and he thinks, I will henceforth be known as Benoit de Boigne; torn apart, they come on, keep coming,
coming into the guns, slashing at the gunners, beyond, at de Boigne’s line, closer, closer, then on command, a vast, long
sheet of fire blossoms from two thousand muskets, tearing down the Rathors, spinning them down into the mud, sudden spurt
of blood blackening the sand till it is too wet to rise into the air (horses fall into this, eyes rolling, with a wet slipping
sound), the volleys ring out one after the other, regular, crack-crack-crack, and de Boigne’s men stand elbow-to-elbow like
figures made of rock, refusing to rise to the taunts that the baffled horsemen are screaming at them, the invitations to come
out and test their skill. De Boigne’s men are quiet; there is no cheering because no one has ever seen anything like this;
the Rathors are trying to rally, eyes red, but de Boigne sounds the advance, and his battalions move forward, steady themselves,
and again, precise and coordinated, the muskets swing up and spit. The Rathors flee.

The forces aligned with de Boigne’s battalions won that morning, but that is of no consequence to us now. That evening, when
other officers came to de Boigne’s tent, bringing gifts, they found him seated outside,
his gaze focused on the horizon. The officers laid their gifts around him and backed away, bowing, thinking that he was reliving
the events of the morning, that facing the dreaded Rathors was an experience that needed to be faced again and again, till
it faded away. They were wrong. De Boigne was seeing visions of the future, and was fighting them; he saw other villages,
other fields where he would fulfil the destiny of his flesh and breeding and history, where he would be the instrument of
the perverse gods who moulded events and decided the fate of soldiers and nations. De Boigne fought his private battles at
night and in the morning, on horse-back and in the perfumed rooms of palaces, but to no avail. On other fields, near other
quiet villages with names like Chaksana and Patan, his battalions, moving like clock-work, decimated other hosts. Again and
again, the infuriated cavalrymen hurled themselves against de Boigne’s unnatural unmoving ranks. At Patan, the Rathors broke
and ran again, and a song was heard in the passes of the desert mountains:

At Patan, the Rathors lost five things:

Horse, shoes, turban,

the upturned moustache of the warrior

And the sword of Marwar
…

Incensed at this shame, every Rathor capable of bearing a weapon made his way to Merta, near Ajmer. Eighty thousand Rathors
collected in this dry brown valley, and awaited the arrival of de Boigne’s battalions and their Maratha allies. The armies
collected and formed their lines; on the night before the final battle, the Rathors slept well, glad for the chance to avenge
themselves; they were awakened by what had never been heard of before —an attack before dawn, under cover of the last darkness.
As shot and shell showered the camp, the Rathors awoke from an opiumed sleep to find the day already lost in confusion. Calmly,
a certain Rana of Ahwa called twenty-two other chiefs to his side, and calmly they gathered four thousand horsemen; these
four thousand prepared an opium draught, raised it to the sky and drank; they wrapped themselves in shawls of yellow silk,
the colour of death; calmly, every last action prescribed by tradition was completed, and then the four thousand rode out
to the field where de Boigne’s battalions were advancing. The cry ‘Remember Patan’ was heard, and then
the yellow horsemen dashed onto the ranks in front of them. Four bodies of men retreated before them, and then they faced
de Boigne’s main force, which was already settling into a hollow square. The Rathors split and enveloped the square and charged,
to be faced by a wall of bayonets and muskets; again, the volleys tore through the mass of horsemen, again, the Rathors, the
yellow-clad-ones, plunged madly forward; de Boigne watched, silenced, as they came back again and again; clenching his teeth,
he looked up at the sky, looked away, then back, and they came on; finally, with grey smoke and the smell of powder and blood
thickening the air and stinging his eyes, he understood that a man can become a general despite himself, that for some there
is no escape from the siren call of the future; he looked about and saw with great clarity the frozen faces of his men as
they reloaded, the gobulets of sweat on a soldier’s forehead, a torn turban being blown about in the backwash from a cannon
discharge, a horse on its side, kicking, and something wet and moving and red and white pulsing in a long tear in its neck,
a shawl of yellow silk torn and floating and tugging with each volley, a hand poised, palm upward, as if begging, and they
came again, and then again —there is no retreat in yellow —till there were only fifteen left.

There was a silence as the fifteen dismounted, a silence that is often heard in battle, when, incredibly, the chirping and
twittering and flapping of birds can be heard in distant trees. De Boigne watched as the Rana of Ahwa dismounted and stood
by his horse, stroking its forehead, between its eyes. The Rana looked up at the sky, then slapped the horse on its rump.
He straightened his yellow shawl, then turned and walked towards de Boigne, the other Rathors following him. De Boigne looked
at the Rana’s face, noting the grey moustache and the bushy eyebrows, the bushy beard and the large, accepting grey eyes with
bags beneath them. The Rathors walked, and there was no fire for them, no one to grant them the promise of their yellow silk;
de Boigne opened his mouth but found that his lips were parched, that no words would emerge; in his great clearness, he felt
an emptiness within him, a finishedness, and understood that there would be no more visions for him; looking into the Rana’s
calm grey eyes —so very close now —de Boigne understood that these eyes, clear and far-seeing, had freed him from private
phantom sight; he knew that what he had to do now was
the end of all romance; gathering all his strength in his throat, de Boigne shouted, and there were no words, no sense, only
a howl was heard, a howl like that of an animal trapped by steel teeth, but every man in the line understood, and there was
flame, and the grey eyes disappeared.

Sandeep raised a cup to his mouth and sipped. Something moved in the trees up on the mountain side, and a cicada called in
alarm. Shanker wrapped a shawl around his shoulders. Sandeep began again: