The Gallant (48 page)

jemadar.

“The order!” she screeched at him. “I bring the Nana Sahib’s sealed order, Yusef Khan!

March your men from the compound if they fear to carry it out!”

Crouched behind the door, with Andy and little Bella Gillespie, Jenny heard its timbers crack, as the men outside put their shoulders to it. Within the dirty, littered room that had been their prison, the poor hostages waited petrified, the children wailing as, one by one, the pathetic wisps of cloth that held the door shut burst from the handle and a hatchet split the timber panel in two.

The door broke open. Two of the men stumbled into the room, the suddenness of the door’s collapse bringing them to

their knees. For an instant the aperture was clear, and, blind instinct guiding her, Jenny exerted the last of her flagging strength to push Andy through it.

“Run!” she bade him breathlessly. “Seek out the

jemadar!

He will help you-run!”

The boy had no choice but to obey her. She saw him start to run unsteadily across the courtyard, and then the door was slammed shut and the butchers Hosainee had summoned were among the helpless captives, wielding their knives and hatchets with pitiless effect.

Aware that her last hour had come, Jenny dropped to her knees. Caroline Moore’s prayer book was in her hands. Trembling uncontrollably, her voice a whisper of sound that was inaudible above the shrieks and sobs filling the room, she knelt in front of two cowering children and began to read from one of the open pages.

The print blurred before her eyes, and it was her husband’s face she saw as death came, with merciful swiftness, at the practiced hands of one of the Muslim butchers.

Two days later, on the morning of July 17, General Havelock’s relief force entered Cawnpore. They had fought like tigers every foot of the way, opposed by eight thousand rebel troops who had fiercely contested each village and whose great guns had wrought terrible havoc before a gallant bayonet charge had silenced first one and then another.

Spurred on by the thought of the women and children held hostage by the treacherous Nana-those poor innocents who had endured so much and whose lives must, at all costs, be saved-Havelock’s soldiers had not counted the cost, although it had been high.

William had neither eaten nor slept. With Lousada Barrow’s handful of gentlemen volunteers, he had ridden until he was close to falling from his saddle from exhaustion. He had charged with them, and-in a manner he remembered from the charge of the Heavy Brigade on the Russian cavalry division at Balaclava-Barrow’s twenty-strong troop had galloped straight at the white-robed ranks of the Nana’s massed thousand-in William Stuart Long

credibly, for the loss of only three men wounded and one killed comhad driven through them and put them to craven flight.

He had seen the 78th Highlanders, led by their pipers, take the Nana’s giant

twenty-four-pounder cannon at the point of bayonet, when it blocked the road to Cawnpore, and had cheered the Enfield riflemen of the Queen’s 64th as they hurled themselves at the enemy’s entrenched positions, firing as they went. Like the Sikhs, and like the men of the 84th-with memories of comrades who had defended the entrenchment at Cawnpore-they asked for and gave no quarter; and the Fusiliers, in the blue linen caps their commander had devised for them, had the gallant Renaud to avenge, and savagely they bought that revenge in blood.

But despite the speed of their advance, despite the heroism and the sacrifices, it had been in vain.

Native spies, sent forward to reconnoiter the approaches to the city, had finally brought them to a halt. The women and children were dead. They had been massacred by the Nana’s orders, the spies told Havelock, and the Nana himself was in flight-there was no longer any need for haste.

The advance guard of the Highlanders and the 64th marched through the empty, ravaged streets of Cawnpore’s native city and, after entering the yellow-painted house known as the Bibigarh, emerged sickened and appalled, to confirm the truth of the spies’ report.

William went to the house of death, some hours later, his last hope that Jenny might miraculously have survived bitterly fading as he looked about him. He had gone with Harry Cook, and both of them wept unashamedly at the ghastly scene before them.

. The bodies had been removed, yet for all that the place was a charnal house, steeped in blood, with here and there a woman’s bonnet, the frilled muslin of a child’s torn frock, books, a bloodstained Bible, and, still hanging from the door, the flimsy rags that had been tied there in a vain attempt to bar the way to the murderers. The walls were scarred with sword slashes and the marks of bullets, with some of the sword-cuts low down, where some poor crouching woman or a tiny child had tried to ward off the blows aimed at them by their pitiless assassins.

William could not bring himself to cross the fifty feet between the door of the house and the well, into which the pathetic bodies of the victims had been thrown.

Others had done so, but none more than once. A tough, hardened sergeant of the 64th had said, in his hearing, “I’ve faced death in every form, but never anything like this. If they shot me for it, I could not look down that well again.”

Harry Cook grasped his arm, and they started to move away, when suddenly William heard a high-pitched, childish voice calling his name. He turned, half expecting to see a ghost, and a little boy, in torn and filthy clothing, flung himself from the arms of the tall Highlander who had been holding him and came limping forward on legs so spindle-thin that they could barely sustain his weight.

“C-Colonel De Lancey, it’s me, Andy Melgund,” the poor little apparition whispered.

“They-they killed them all, sir, every one of them.

M-Mrs. De Lancey made me run,

when the door was broken open, and the jemadar

hid me. He-he saved my life, but the-the soldiers shot him, before I could tell them what he had done.”

The boy was sobbing, his words almost unintelligible, and William bent to gather him into his arms, his heart breaking as he listened.

Jenny was dead, he knew now, beyond all shadow of doubt; his beloved wife was dead because he had taken her from her homeland to … to

this.

He caught his breath, the knowledge almost beyond bearing as he remembered the horrors of the dark prison he had just left.

But this thin, tortured little boy was alive, and he held him close, having to summon all the control he possessed to answer him.

“I’ll send you to Australia, Andy,” he promised. “Where you’ll be safe. I shall have some more fighting to do, but when, please God, it is over, I’ll follow you home.”

Andy’s arms were around his neck, and after a while his sobs ceased, and William saw that he slept.

Seated in front of a blazing log fire in the big, comfortable living room of the Bundilly homestead, Michael, for the first time since he had made his escape from the Port Arthur Penitentiary, was conscious of a sense of well-being that transcended fear.

Outside, the torrential rainstorm, which had led Luke and him to beg for shelter, continued unabated, and despite his earlier misgivings, he was thankful now that Luke had convinced him that he would be running no risk if he were to throw himself on the station owner’s mercy.

“It’s a tradition in this country,” Luke had asserted. “Food and shelter is always given to passing wayfarers, if they’re in need. Not in the towns, maybe; but out here in the bush you can count on it. And folk don’t ask questions, Michael. I know-I worked on a sheep station in New South Wales for a good while, and no traveler was ever turned away.”

Michael sipped the brandy he had been given and let his weary body relax, smiling across at Luke, who was warming his chilled hands at the fire while carrying on a lively conversation with their absent host’s two young sons. It seemed the boys had been at the Ballarat diggings at the same time as Luke, and from what Michael could make of the exchange, both had been caught up in some trouble with officialdom, which had resulted in the arrest of the elder, Angus, who had since been freed under a general amnesty. They were talking of the pitched bat tie at the Eureka field, and Michael heard Luke say wryly that he knew a little about it, having served at the time as a police trooper.

Luke, Michael thought, was constantly surprising him with tidbits of information concerning his past; but these had to be wrung from him, for he was not one to talk about himself, and he never boasted. A fine fellow, Luke Murphy, and he had proved a good friend. Indeed, Michael decided, the best thing he had ever done was to agree to team up with the

Mercedes’

second mate and go prospecting with him after they left the ship. Luke knew the truth about him-or most of it, anyway-and had had no qualms about entering into partnership with an absconder. And for himself … Michael took another sip of his brandy.

It had been a shock to read about Price’s death-his

murder

comin the local Geelong newspaper. He had felt at once angry and-yes, deprived of purpose when the fact of Price’s death sank in. For so long he had been sustained by the determination to avenge himself on the late commandant of Norfolk Island. It had been to that end that he had planned his escape. But suddenly, without any warning, the reason for his escape, the reason he was in the state of Victoria, had ceased to exist.

Others, convicts like himself, motivated as he had been, had set on Price and killed him, and now Michael was left with a terrible emptiness in his very soul. In consequence, Luke’s suggestion that they become prospectors and head north to the most recently discovered goldfields in the Murray Valley had seemed like a lifeline, held out and ready for him to grasp. And Silas Deacon, the Mercedes’

master, had accepted the story Luke had concocted-though whether the old man had believed that the Port Arthur stowaway was a newly arrived immigrant was another matter. Certainly he had not questioned the tale, and had permitted Luke and Michael to quit the ship in Geelong without objection-the

Mercedes

had a full crew, and there wereeaalw disillusioned diggers ready to sign on as seamen in order to work their passage to New South Wales.

He and Luke had lacked money when they finally went ashore-Luke had only his pay, while Michael had had nothing to contribute toward their mining equipment-so they had

William Stuart Long

hired themselves out as laborers, and that had delayed them for almost a month. Winter was setting in when they had started on the trek north with little more than the basic tools, a packhorse that had seen better days, and an old canvas tent, which let in the rain but had been going cheap.

Michael leaned back in his chair, enjoying the almost forgotten pleasure of being dry and warm. Idly he listened to Luke’s conversation with William Broome’s two boys, unable to make sense of it but realizing, as he listened, that the three young men had more in common than he had supposed.

“That foul rogue Brownlow is in these parts,”

Lachlan was saying. “He recovered from the wounds he sustained at the Eureka Stockade-more’s the pity-and has become a rich man. He

retired from the police service and set up our nearest township-Urquhart Falls, which is about forty miles from here comand he owns most of it. A couple of taverns, the hotel, a gaming den, and if you can believe it, the bank. Lord knows where he got his money from. Extortion, probably.” Lachlan shrugged. “Anyway, he’s the mayor, and folk reckon they’ll change the name of the town soon to Brownlow Falls.”

Angus Broome laughed at that. “But at least Captain Humphrey got his just deserts at the stockade. They say a police trooper shot him, and-was

“No!” Luke’s interruption was vehement, and both the young Broomes turned to look at him in surprise when he went on. “No-one of the diggers shot him, Angus. A red-haired fellow whose name, I believe, was Carboni-Rafaello Carboni.

He shot him from behind the stockade, when the soldiers were going in.”

“How the devil do you know that?” Angus demanded.

“Were you there, for God’s sake, Murphy?”

His interest awakened, Michael sat up. Beyond saying that he had been, for a short time, a police trooper in Ballarat, Luke had not

hinted at the part he had played in suppressing the diggers’ brief revolt, but now he nodded, in answer to Angus Broome’s question.

“I was with the police, under Captain Brownlow’s command. And I went after the fellow who called himself Humphrey with

the intention of killing him-but Carboni’s shot got him before I could. I watched him die.”

The two young brothers continued to stare at him in evident surprise, and Luke said, his voice suddenly harsh and strained, “I followed him from California, and his name wasn’t Humphrey. When I first knew him he was calling himself Morgan-Captain Jasper Morgan. My brother Dan and I and two Australians, Tom and Frankie Gardener, were in partnership with him in the” California fields. We made a big strike, a really big strike, and Morgan stole it and blew up our mine shaft, with Dan and the other two inside.” His voice lost its harsh note, and he sighed. “It’s a long story, and I don’t suppose you’ll want to hear it all.”

The brothers exchanged glances and then protested in unison. “For crying out loud, Murphy, of course we want to hear it!”

“We

were in partnership with Humphrey in the Eureka field,” Angus exclaimed excitedly. “And I swear he conspired with that policeman Brownlow to have me arrested. The night a mob of diggers burned down the Eureka Hotel, that was. I was there, but I’d nothing to do with setting Bentley’s hotel on fire comyet the troopers picked on me and hauled me off to jail. That’s right, isn’t it, Lachie?”

Lachlan confirmed his brother’s claim. “It’s God’s truth, Mr. Murphy. Angus and I were together the whole time. He didn’t do a thing, yet the troopers swore he was one of the ringleaders!”

“It’s all water under the bridge now,” Angus put in. “All the leaders of the Eureka Stockade revolt were either brought to trial and acquitted or pardoned, as I was, under a general amnesty-including Rafaello Carboni. But let us hear your story-it promises to be very interesting, Mr. Murphy.” He grinned. “I guess