Rogue Officer (30 page)

‘Oh – ’ Kashmar waved a hand – ‘don’t worry, I soon put him in his place. I’m not used to being spoken to as if I’m a servant. I told him I would open his wounds and let him bleed to death if he called me names.’

Jack gritted his teeth. ‘He abused you?’

‘Lieutenant, I did not
allow
it. He only did it once and I’m sure the fury with which I attacked him made sure it never entered his head to do so again.’

‘I sincerely apologize for my soldier,’ Sergeant King said, ‘and would like to be shown the man so I can kick him in front of you.’

‘Be my guest,’ said the nawab.

Clearly he was not as forgiving as he appeared on the surface. Crossman and King did not blame him. They could only imagine what insults Wynter had flung at everyone once he had recovered. Wynter was a grovelling weasel who believed that in the natural order of things he was a lord in the presence of anyone he felt of lower status than himself. The fact that Kashmar was a nawab, the ruler of a province, would have meant nothing to Wynter. Kashmar was not a white man, and therefore he was classified in Wynter’s book as his minion.

‘I would appreciate it, sir, if you remained here,’ said King to Jack firmly. ‘I shall be back in a short while.’

Jack was about to protest, then thought better of it.

‘Quite, Sergeant – I need to finish my cup of tea.’

Kashmar took Sergeant King to a cool room on the far side of the lodge. Wynter was lying on his bed asleep, dressed only in a loin cloth, while a punkah wallah fanned him gently. Kashmar indicated that the punkah wallah should leave the room, which he did. When he was gone, to the nawab’s great surprise, King carried out his threat. He took a swinging kick, hard, at Wynter’s thigh.

Wynter yelled, leaping from his bed, his eyes blazing. He swung instinctively at King’s head with his fist. King blocked the blow and butted Wynter in the face, knocking him back down on his
charpoy.
Wynter tried to get up yet again, but his dead leg collapsed under him and he fell to the floor. He clawed at King’s ankle. The sergeant trod on his fingers and pressed them into the stone flags.

‘Ow! Ow!’ yelled Wynter. ‘What’s all this then, eh? Attackin’ a defenceless man in his sleep, eh? I’ll ‘ave you, you bastard.’

King ground the fingers into the stone floor.

‘You will have no one, Private Wynter. You will get on your feet and stand to attention before your superior officer. If I get one more word out of you I’ll knock you senseless, do you understand, you ungrateful cur? Now, soldier,
on your feet
!’

Wynter staggered to his feet, while Kashmar felt it prudent to look far away, out of the window.

‘You do that to me?’ shouted Wynter, suddenly realizing who was present, ‘with that black sod in the room?’

King struck the soldier cleanly on the jaw and laid him out on the bed. A bucket of water was fetched and thrown over him. He came to his senses again and was again made to get to his feet and stand to attention. King walked round him and in a sergeant major’s voice told Wynter exactly what he thought of him. Wynter was left in no doubt as to his deficiencies as a soldier and a human being. He was forced to apologize to the nawab for his foul manners and abuse. Then King told Wynter he was going to be flogged before they went back to Gwalior.

‘What? I’m a sick man, I am. You can’t flog someone on the sick list. What’ve I done to deserve it then, eh? Nothin’.’

‘You either take your flogging like a man or I take you back to Gwalior to be shot like the cur you are, Wynter.’

Wynter now saw that none of the fury with which King had attacked him had dissolved in the violence. Normally men, especially King, came out of their rage once a few blows had been exchanged. King was clearly still white with anger. Wynter knew he was within an ace of being struck down dead on the spot. What he did not understand was the reason for King’s anger. He knew the nawab and King were thick as thieves, but that surely did not account for such treatment as he was receiving. By now King’s voice and manner should have softened, yet the sergeant was clearly only just on the edge of reason.

‘What’ve I done, then? I’ll answer for it, if you just tell me what I’ve gone an’ done.’

‘Do you deny you sent the lieutenant a threatening letter?’

‘I never done no such thing,’ Wynter protested vehemently. ‘Who says I did? Whoever says it’s a liar!’

‘Captain Swing?’

Wynter stared at his sergeant.

King repeated his words, adding, ‘You deny you’ve heard that name before?’

‘Course I heard of it. But not in India. In England.’

‘Enough of this,’ snapped King. ‘Will you take your punishment or will you take your chances with a court martial?’

Wynter quickly assessed his chances at winning a court martial. His normally dull mind was lively and alert when it came to such matters. The lieutenant obviously had hard evidence – no doubt the letter was in his possession – and Wynter came to the conclusion that he stood very little chance of walking away from a court martial, whether he was innocent or guilty.

‘I’ll take the floggin’,’ he said in a surly tone. ‘Won’t be the first.’

King led his man outside and requested a rope end from a stable boy.

Kashmar went back to where Jack was sipping cold tea. He sat down opposite the officer.

‘You have a good man in that sergeant, Lieutenant.’

‘Yes, I do.’

After a while, during which neither man said anything, Jack asked, ‘Is King returning?’

‘He is whipping your soldier.’

Jack straightened his back. ‘What?’

‘There was something about a letter. Sergeant King gave the soldier a choice – court martial or whipping. He chose the whipping.’

‘Oh.’

Finally, King came back, grim-faced.

‘Wynter is repentant, sir.’

‘I expect he is, Sergeant.’

‘Sir, shall we say no more about the matter?’

Jack was at a loss to think of any other course which would improve the situation. ‘I think so, Sergeant.’ He then went to see Wynter himself.

The private was having the lacerations on his back caused by the lashing treated with a creamy balm by a matronly looking woman with a very proud Roman nose. She looked a no-nonsense sort of female who was certainly not putting up with Wynter’s complaints, for both were speaking at once and neither listening to what the other had to say. It was as if they were both talking to a separate crowd of people, their voices both loud and penetratingly insistent in their views. Finally the woman slapped Wynter’s back to show she was finished and the soldier put on his shirt. Then he climbed slowly to his feet and went to attention.

‘Sir!’ he said, but without his usual tonal insolence.

Jack stared at the man before him. He was a very sorry-looking individual. One of his eyes was half-closed and crazed with whiteness. His hair was as grey and grizzled as that of a man twice his age. Hollow cheeks and sallow skin, covered in pock-wounds from the thorns, did nothing to improve his countenance, which was dry and cracked, especially around his mean-looking mouth. Wynter now stooped like a washerwoman with a heavy burden to carry, his thin frame bent and crooked. His shoulder blades stuck out and upward like stunted wings from his back, stretching the skin taut. His ribs formed deep furrows on his chest, between which were nasty sores. The bare feet were gnarled and corn-infested, the filthy toenails having cracked and split away in places to leave a rawness that must have been painful.

It was impossible not to feel pity for the soldier.

‘Private Wynter,’ said Jack in a softer tone than he had intended to use, ‘stand at ease. Wynter, I’m sorry to see you in such a poor state. A man who has marched from the Crimea to India deserves that his body should be in a better condition. How is your wounded eye?’

‘Blind, sir. Black as death.’

‘Is it indeed? Well, that’s a great pity.’

Wynter managed a crooked smile which was made more sinister by the stare of the milky eye. ‘But at least
I
got both me hands, an’t I?’

Jack shook his head slowly. There was, in his tone, the implication that at least he was not a cripple like Jack. The man’s natural bent was to kick back at any authority, no matter what his condition. There was something rather tragic and strangely admirable in that. It was impossible for Wynter to shed his contempt, no matter how much punishment his body received, either by accident or from the army. He could be lying broken to the point of death and he would try to spit on the shoe of the man who had put him there. Wynter’s bitterness was constant.

‘You took your punishment, we shall say no more.’

‘I never wrote no letter.’

Jack noticed the small single-shot pistol given to Wynter by the Dutchman. It rested by his pillow.

‘I said we shall say no more on the matter. Your wrongs have been accounted for.’

‘I never did no wrongs. You lot did. You left me to bleed to death,’ said Wynter, his voice full of emotion with the memory of his night in the thorn bush. ‘I was like Christ on the cross out there – the life just drainin’ from me. Jesus Christ himself just wore a crown of thorns on his head – I wore ’em like a bloody greatcoat.’

‘There was no help for it. We could not reach you.’

Wynter shrugged. ‘Anyway, I didn’t die, like you wanted. I got saved by that foreign bastard and his men.’

‘Do not call the nawab names, Wynter, or you will be in serious trouble again. The nawab saved all our lives with his timely arrival, just when I had given up hope. I have had my fill of your insubordination. Be assured that if you anger me again you will spend the rest of your miserable life in prison. I don’t care what it takes, I’ll have you behind bars. My patience is at an end. Am I understood?’

‘But . . .’

‘I mean it, soldier. Believe me.’

Wynter nodded. ‘You got me, sir, you and your kind. You’ve always had me down and I an’t now got the strength to fight it. But I’ll always think I’m the better man. You can’t take that from me. I come up from nothin’ to be a respected soldier, while you was spoon fed from your cradle to your manhood. But I’ll buckle, if it needs it. I’ll buckle. When do we leave this heathen place? I’m fed up with bein’ among pagans. I need to be back among Christians like meself again.’

Jack did not point out the obvious flaws in this speech, but allowed Wynter the luxury of believing himself to be a respected Christian. He pointed at the pistol lying on the hair-filled mattress.

‘I hope you were not contemplating using that, Wynter – it’s a tragic way to leave the world.’

Wynter glanced at the weapon which he believed elevated him above his normal station and then shrugged his shoulders.

‘That? I already tried.’

Jack was puzzled. ‘You’ve used it?’

Wynter’s face twisted into a wry grimace. ‘I missed.’

Jack realized Wynter was serious and he believed he knew what had happened. It was not rare. A suicidal man might put the pistol to his temple, even squeeze the trigger, intending to blow out his own brains. But at the last moment life-grasping reflexes thwart those intentions. He finds his hand has jerked the muzzle aside. Jack looked at the wall behind the bed. There was indeed a hole at the right height.

Jack nodded. ‘Next time you’ll have to put in a marker shot first.’

Wynter snorted with laughter at this attempt at humour.

‘What, you mean practise on the left side of me head, afore doin’ it to the right?’

‘It could improve your aim.’

Jack could hear Wynter’s snorting long after he turned his back and left the room and walked along the passageway. Maybe humour was the way to deal with this difficult and complicated man?

C
aptain Deighnton had arrived back at Gwalior just a week before Lieutenant Fancy Jack Crossman. Before his servant had had time to take off his boots and brush the riding dust from his coat, the captain was summoned to appear before the colonel of his regiment. The subaltern who delivered the message came in for a deal of abuse, but of course Deighnton’s sword and pistol, along with his short temper, were feared amongst the younger officers.

An older man when challenged would simply remind Deighnton that duelling had been against the law since the second decade of the century and that they were in a no-win situation: if they were shot by their opponent they were likely to die, yet if they hit
their
target they would probably never be able to go back to Britain. Older officers knew that duels proved nothing. They knew their mettle having faced musket ball, cannon, grapeshot, canister and all manner of iron missile. They had cut and been cut with sabres, had horses shot from under them, had looked down countless barrels of death and had survived. They would not be likely to throw away their lives at the whim of a maniac duellist.

The young officers, however, were still more afraid of being labelled a coward than being run through or shot. They were still afraid of disgracing their family name. They were still afraid of losing the good opinion of others, especially loved ones back home in Britain.

Deighnton marched into the office of Colonel Weightmane.

The colonel was standing, leaning on a false mantle on which were photographs of his wife and children, all slaughtered in the uprising. He waved a piece of paper at Captain Deighnton.

‘Is this your handiwork?’ asked the colonel, who then let the paper fall to the floor.

Deighnton stared down at it. It was a letter. Deighnton’s eyes were legendary. The eyes of an eagle. He recognized the handwriting as his own, even from halfway across the room. It was the letter he had sent to Jane Crossman, the wife of Lieutenant Jack Crossman. Deighnton said nothing. He simply stared in contempt at his colonel: a similar sort of contempt to the one Wynter bore towards his superior officer.

Finally, after a long period of silence, the captain asked, ‘Where did you get that letter? Who gave it to you?’

‘Why, are you going to call him out?’

The colonel’s voice was calm, but his hands trembled as he reached for a glass of whisky on the mantle.