Rogue Officer (29 page)

Jack raised an eyebrow. ‘Would you?’

‘Of course. It is a point of honour. If they did such a terrible thing, they would have lost theirs. They would be dregs.’

Jack knew this would be the opinion of many.

‘Well, I’m sure it won’t come to that. . .’

At that moment Jack heard a splashing sound, down below on the river. There was a bump, as if the boat had hit a log, followed by a grunting sound. Both men rose and went to the side, looking down at the water. There was a glowing circle in the darkness below caused by a lantern which was being held up by the hand of a boatman. Its light showed a man in a European broadcloth coat leaving the boatman’s canoe and climbing up a scrambling net which hung over the side of the
moorpunkey.
When the man reached the top, and he leaned over the rail, a ‘wideawake’ hat fell off his head and on to the deck. The man swung himself easily over and landed lightly on his feet, picking up his hat before he straightened. He placed it back on his head and stared into Jack’s eyes.

‘A European gentleman? Good evening, sir. I am Reginald Lee.’

Jack shook a proffered hand automatically, answering, ‘Good evening – a rather unorthodox boarding?’

‘But necessary,’ replied Mr Lee, a Eurasian with some obvious Chinese blood in his veins.

The boarder began to look around him with keen eyes, when the Holy Man suddenly appeared from aft and on seeing Jack started his infuriating shrill whistling. Then Mr Lee moved under a lamp and, just as suddenly, the whistling stopped. The Holy Man remained standing there, naked as usual, with his thumb still in his mouth. He looked for all the world like an infant interrupted by a parent in the middle of the night.

Reginald Lee reached into his coat and said, ‘Excuse me, sir,’ to Jack, then shot the Holy Man between the eyes.

Jack stepped backwards, shocked, the noise of the gunshot ringing in his ears. The boat came alive. There was pandemonium for a short while as men came running from forward and aft, the captain of the craft amongst them, to stare first at the dead man, then at his killer. Mr Lee seemed quite unperturbed. He replaced his pistol in its holster, stepped forward, and took the Holy Man’s bundle. Undoing it carefully he produced five thick discs the size of teaplates.

He held one up for Jack to see. ‘Opium cakes,’ said Mr Lee. ‘This man was a thief. I have been chasing him for three days.’ Then he said to the captain, ‘Do you have a berth for me?’

The captain gasped, then closed his mouth, before opening it again to say, ‘There is no spare cabin, sir.’

Mr Lee looked around. ‘Then I’ll sleep on this rope box, if I may. I will pay the fare accordingly.’

The corpse was dragged away and tossed unceremoniously over the side. It was obvious no one knew what else to do with it. These were not pleasant times and even if they were, India had corpses by the plenty. Everyone knew the body would start to deteriorate very quickly in the heat. The river was used to receiving corpses, both from funeral parties and from incidents such as this.

The captain told Jack, sagely, ‘This man did not foresee
our
deaths, but his own – he had not the wisdom to know which from which, sahib. He must have been taking his own substances. He was not a wise man at all.’

Jack was more interested in speaking with Reginald Lee as the assassin arranged a borrowed blanket on the rope box.

‘You work for the opium farmers?’ asked Jack.

‘For Sir Matthew Martlesham, yes. I am the runner.’

‘The runner?’

Mr Lee gave him a smile. ‘I chase thieves. There are many, sir. It is always thus. If they work in a diamond mine, they try to steal the diamonds. If in a gold mine, the gold. This pig worked as a labourer in the poppy fields – he stole my master’s opium.’

Jack did not doubt the punishment for such theft was death.

‘You are the judge, jury and executioner?’

‘I have not the time, sir, to take a prisoner back with me – it is costly, is it not, to transport someone? And there is the chance he will escape. It is better to do it here and save a great deal of trouble.’

‘Do you not find your work a little distasteful?’ Jack asked with interest. ‘A hunter of men?’

‘It is very lucrative, sir. My master is a very rich man. Very rich. I am fortunate to have such an employer. He is very kind.’

Ever since the opium wars of the 1840s, when the Chinese Emperor ordered the destruction of the drug which was destroying his people, Jack’s brother James had been assiduous in his attempts to ban the commercial growing of opium poppies on British-controlled soil. James was a member of a political group (led by the Quaker Whig, Lord Holbrook) which was appalled by the devastation opium was causing throughout Asia and especially in China. Jack was aware that opium was still smuggled into China from estates in India.

‘There is obviously a lot of money to be made in opium,’ Jack said.

‘Oh, sir, the riches are bountiful. Once upon a time my master grew tea, but opium is needed much more. Some people would sell everything they have for opium.’

‘And do you use it?’

Reginald Lee smiled. ‘Sir, if I were to smoke opium I would be sacked by my master. I am a runner. I must keep my wits about me. And you, sir? Do you indulge?’

Some ugly memories came to Jack. ‘No, I was once obsessed with a tincture of opium – laudanum. It was not a pleasant experience. Well, at the time it seemed to be. It was only after I broke the habit that I could see what it had been doing to me. I never want to go there again and I pity the man who has been hooked into such a state.’

Jack recalled vivid dreams. So vivid it was difficult to separate them from events in real life. Having been an addict he could well imagine why others had trouble in separating dreams from reality. Those were times when he had dreams within dreams: when he fell asleep even though already asleep, and went down to a deeper level. Those dreams could be terrifying or enlightening. He sometimes wondered if there were even further levels to which a man might fall during unconsciousness: a place so deep it would be a struggle to surface again.

Lee shrugged. ‘You and I, sir, are not the sort of men to participate in the idle smoking of opium. Those are worthless creatures who have no pride in themselves, no honour in them. You and I, sir, would spit on them in the street, they are so beggarly in appearance. It is no wonder they seek escape from this world, for their lives are lived in the company of low creatures like themselves. They have nothing else to live for. Many of them die in the filth of the gutter. They are of no account.’

‘Yet they have made Sir Matthew Martlesham a rich man.’

Lee smiled. ‘They can always find a coin for opium. It is a miracle that they do.’

Some of what Lee was telling him was undoubtedly true, however distasteful, regarding the determination of the opium fiend. And it was also a fact that such people managed, however short of money, to chase the next dragon. He had seen this in the Crimea, mostly amongst Chinese workers, but even amongst some British and French soldiers. What was dawning on Jack, an appalling thought, was that there must be tens of thousands of users in China, perhaps millions, to make so many men like Martlesham the wealth they were purported to own.

Reginald Lee got off the boat at the next stop, while Jack and his men waited for a larger town. Finally they were able to disembark at a place called Vidisha, on the river Betwa. There was a writer from the East India Company stationed there – a man called Fanthorpe who had been so long amongst the locals without European company he had trouble recalling his English – who helped them obtain horses. Once fed, watered and rested Jack and his men were ready to ride north again. King and Raktambar were much recovered from their fevers and were once again full members of the team. They encountered no insurmountable problems and were back in Gwalior within a few days.

Once back in a British Army stronghold, Jack shed his worries along with his dirt. He was in his bath, behind a screen of sweet-scented grass known as a
tatti
– when Rupert Jarrard paid a call. Throwing a silk robe round himself, an awkward business with only one hand, he went out to meet Rupert. The newspaperman grinned at him.

‘Well, back safe and sound, eh?’

‘Only just,’ remarked Jack, pouring himself some gin. ‘Would you care for a whisky?’

‘No thanks – too early for me.’

‘Well, I’m just catching up from a position of deprivation.’

‘How was it? Out in the field, that is? I understand you left two men with a nawab on the way?’

‘Well, a man and a boy. Wynter, and King’s adopted son, Sajan. I trust they’re still somewhere around.’

‘Oh – ’ Jarrard reached into his pocket – ‘by-the-by, I picked this up at the mess. It was left for you – apparently a
choki
from some outlying village delivered it. Luckily I was around when the fellow arrived with it and no one else saw it.’

He held out a torn sheet of folded paper. Jack took it hesitantly, wondering if it was a note from Deighnton. He would not put it past that idiot to call him out just as soon as he was back in camp. But on unfolding it he saw that it was not from Deighnton at all. He read the note and his face twisted into what might have been mistaken for a smile.

‘Trouble?’ asked Jarrard casually.

‘Oh, come on, Rupert, you must have read it – it wasn’t sealed – and you a newspaper man?’

‘Guilty – but who is this Captain Swing? Is he a somewhat illiterate friend of Deighnton’s?’

Jack looked at the note again. It read:

To Leftenant Crosman.

Be ware of peeple who hav been put upon. Look to your bed that it dont get atention from insenderees. You hav not done rite by sertan peeple and that will be your undoing. You may be torched if you dont watch out and keep your wits about you. Be warned. Just becus your a criple won’t help to save you from fate.

Captain Swing

‘You need to know English history, Rupert – especially the history of the rural poor in places like East Anglia. Captain Swing was the name used on letters written by anonymous incendiaries: labourers who burned down haystacks and farmhouses in the early part of this century. It’s not commonly known but we in England were close to revolution during the first few decades. I remember the troubles as a boy . . .’

‘Really? As in the French revolution?’

‘Well, it didn’t get to those proportions, but it was touch and go for a while, in the rural areas. I remember accompanying my father to London by coach and on the way we saw a young man – couldn’t have been more than twenty years of age – being hung by the neck on some gallows at a crossroads. Apparently he had set fire to some corn sheaves. They had to almost carry him up to the noose he was so frightened. It made a marked impression on me, I can tell you. I had some bad dreams.’

‘I’m not surprised. Hung for firing some sheaves, eh?’

The magistrates wanted to make a point. Farms had been attacked. Vicars had been beaten with cudgels and stoned out of villages . . .’

‘Wait just a second,’ interrupted Jarrard for the second time. ‘Priests?’

‘Certainly. The reason for the unrest was the poor wages paid to the farm workers by the farmers. The farmers themselves maintained they were unable to pay more because of the tithe. The tithe was collected, under the law of the land, by the clergy every year. It was supposed to be a tenth of the harvest, but vicars and farmers had long come to an arrangement whereby the farmer paid the vicar in cash, rather than cut away a tenth of his crops. Over the centuries this cash sum became a fixed amount and even though the yield might be poor – when the rains didn’t arrive in time or were too much – the vicar got his money.’

‘So the mobs blamed the clergy? Heck, you old-worlders live complicated lives, don’t you?’

‘Exactly.’ Jack looked again at the note and then waved it in front Jarrard like a flag. ‘This is of course from Private Harry Wynter. His father or grandfather was probably a Captain Swing in their time, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘What will you do to him?’

Jack frowned. ‘I don’t know. If I reported it, he would probably be shot, of course. You can’t threaten an officer of Her Majesty. Serious business. At the very least he would be severely flogged. The trouble with Wynter is he does things without thinking. I’m not sure what to do about this. If I ignore it, Wynter will only get worse and do something that really will have him climbing the scaffold steps.’

‘Discipline him yourself.’

‘I don’t like it, but I might have to.’

The next day Jack rode out with Sergeant King to the nawab’s palace. They stopped off at the house where Sajan was staying. King was reunited with his adopted son, while Jack renewed his acquaintance with Cadiz, his magnificent little Karashahr. The pair then left Sajan and continued along the road to Kashmar’s hunting lodge.

After one night out in the open, they reached the nawab’s province. Kashmar received them both royally and seemed genuinely delighted to meet with King again. After they had drunk tea and exchanged greetings, Jack asked about Wynter.

‘He is alive,’ said the nawab, ‘but he complains a lot.’

Jack and King gave each other a sideways look, knowing that Wynter had probably not stopped whining since he had been well enough to give voice. Undoubtedly he would have tried the hospitality of a saint and most likely requested all manner of things which the nawab might have felt obliged to give him.

‘I’m sorry for that,’ Jack said. ‘I hope he has not been too much of a burden. Unfortunately it is in his nature to complain about his lot. He feels God and the world is against him. I hope you did not feel obliged to give him alcohol?’

‘Not that, nor the women he requested we supply him with. We have no alcohol in my hunting lodge, and the women . . .’

King was horrified at the audacity of his private soldier.

‘Yes, yes, of course. I am absolutely mortified that he asked for . . . I shall take the man to task. You may rest assured, sir, that he will be made to pay for his insolence!’ King then remembered Wynter’s arrogance when dealing with natives of the country. ‘He – he didn’t insult you, I hope? He’s a man of very limited intelligence.’