Dust and Steel

Other than the heavy chaise-longue that had been used to bar the door, and the lake of blood, things were remarkably orderly. There was no sign of a struggle, but lying just inside the entrance was the body of a young woman. Both arms were pierced with bone-handled carving knives, which pinned her to the floor, whilst a brown satin dress was pulled up around her waist, showing her underwear and a bush of pubic hair between the separate legs of muslin drawers. There was blood on her thighs whilst round her mouth and neck a towel had been wound. Her auburn hair was thrown into chaos, both blue eyes wide open but seeing nothing.

‘God, that’s Kathy Forgett.’ McGowan instantly leant down and pulled her dress back over her bloody knees and ankles, returning a little modesty to her in death.

‘Oh, no…’ Morgan had seen dead women before during the famines back in Skibberean – but those corpses were different – and more dead men killed on the field of battle than he wanted to remember, but nothing like this. He, like the other two, pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and pushed it against his nose and mouth, for there was the most ghastly, foetid stench of blood and abused femininity all about them.

‘If this is what they’ve done to Mrs Forgett, where’s the Thanadar?’ McGowan dreaded the answer to his question, but as the three officers moved from the tiny hall of the bungalow to the sitting room and lit the oil lamp there, the answer was apparent.

‘What the hell’s that in his mouth?’ asked Carmichael.

‘It’s a pig’s tail,’ answered McGowan matter-of-factly.

There was very little blood, for Forgett had been executed with a butcher’s axe. The policeman lay sprawled on the floor. One blow had fallen obliquely across his neck, severing, Morgan guessed, the spinal column and causing almost instant death, and then the horrid little iron spike that backed the axe’s blade had been buried deep in Forgett’s sternum. Lying on his back with his legs folded under him, the chief of police could almost have been laid out ceremonially, and the impression was only underlined by the pink, curly gristle that emerged from his mouth.

‘Aye, that’s what it is.’ Between finger and thumb Morgan delicately pulled the distasteful bit of pork from Forgett’s lolling lips. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Well, at a guess, it’s an allusion to the biting of pig-fat-greased cartridges,’ McGowan volunteered. ‘I told you that Forgett had enemies.’

‘Yes, and we need to get after them.’ Carmichael led the others back to the hall and gestured towards the open kitchen door and the yawning back door beyond, which showed as a black oblong of night air. ‘Look at the trail – that’s the way they’ve gone.’ He indicated some smears of blood on the floor, drew his revolver and led the others back to the hall and towards the open kitchen door.

‘Wait. What on earth’s this…oh!’ McGowan exclaimed, noticing a rolled bundle of curtain cloth close to the woman’s cadaver.

The mainly buff, floral-patterned cotton curtain had been pulled from the pole above the window, that much was obvious, and something wrapped within it had bled into the material, staining it a rusty red.

McGowan pulled the tight-wrapped fabric to one side, revealing a crushed baby’s head, blue and deep purple with bruises and contusions. ‘It’s baby Gwen. They’ve beaten the poor little mite to death.’

Morgan had seen plenty of starvation-dead babies back in Ireland, and one of the servants’ still-born children at Glassdrumman, but nothing like this. The toddler had been deliberately wrapped in the curtain to drown any noise, then, from the look of things, heels had stamped hard on the delicate bones of her head, thumping the skull almost flat, making the grey matter of the infant’s brain ooze from her nostrils and ears.

‘Dear Lord.’ Carmichael was genuinely appalled. ‘Come on, there’s not a second to lose.’

‘Yes, but they’re almost cold.’ McGowan was too squeamish to touch Gwen, but reached down to Kathy Forgett. ‘They’ve been dead for at least a couple of hours.’

But Carmichael wasn’t having any of it and went charging through the house, out of the back door and into the night, towards the sallyport of the fort.

‘Right, I’ve got you, you murderin’ Pandy, you.’ The officer commanding Number One Company had run two hundred yards down the cinder path that led from the married officers’ quarters to the back gate of the fort, and there seized a sentry from the 10th, thrusting his pistol against the forehead of a terrified sepoy.

One minute Sepoy Puran Gee had been quietly standing at ease, belching curried goat, guarding the least used gate of the fort and expecting an agreeably undemanding couple of hours, and the next an angry sahib had come running at him, thrown his rifle to the ground and pushed a steely-cold revolver hard against his head whilst yelling a stream of incomprehensible Angrezi at him. It was bad enough having the Feringees blow his friend Mungal Guddrea to dog meat, without this sort of indignity.

‘For heaven’s sake, Carmichael,’ McGowan exclaimed, running across after him. ‘He’s not your man!’

Carmichael had forced the sepoy to his knees, one hand twisting the soldier’s collar, the other ramming the barrel of the revolver into his temple, a series of jerks causing the man’s cap to fall off and his face to twist in a combination of fright and pain, whilst his hands shot out sideways to steady himself against the officer’s assault.

‘Forgett and his family must have been dead for hours.’ McGowan grabbed Carmichael’s wrist and pistol. ‘Puran came on guard, what…about an hour ago?’ He looked to the soldier for confirmation, but the man was too scared to follow the question in English. ‘Besides, that wasn’t the work of soldiers – not from the Tenth, anyway.’

Carmichael allowed McGowan to push the pistol away from the sentry’s head, and released the hold on Puran’s collar. ‘How can you be sure?’

‘It stands to reason: the Forgetts have been dead since this afternoon, when the whole battalion was being trained by you lot, every man jack accounted for. All ranks are under curfew, either here in the fort or down in the cantonment, and believe me, all the officers and NCOs are on a hair trigger. And anyway, those executions have put the fear of the Almighty into the lads; the mood’s not right for this sort of thing now. I’ve never seen the troops so obedient and keen to please,’ McGowan answered. ‘No, this has been done by bazaar wallahs or perhaps soldiers from another battalion, though I doubt that.’

‘Oh, I see, you’re probably right.’ Now the aggression had gone out of Carmichael, who lowered the pistol and even stooped to pick up Puran’s cap.

‘May I suggest an apology to the man, Carmichael?’ Morgan asked. He could see how this story would spread like plague back to the ranks of the 10th, the very men whose trust they were trying to restore.

‘Apologise to some damned…’ Carmichael blurted, whilst the Indian brushed the grit off his rifle and rubbed his bruised forehead with offended gusto.

‘Yes, Carmichael, apologise to a man you’ve wronged, even if he is a private soldier and a mere native.’ Morgan thought the apology just as important for McGowan to hear as for Puran.

Carmichael looked hard into Morgan’s steel-blue eyes, opened his mouth to object, but then changed his mind. ‘Er…I’m very sorry, my man.’ He was still holding Puran’s cap; now Carmichael brushed the dust off it before handing it back. ‘Hasty of me and needlessly rough.’ He thrust his hand out to the soldier whilst McGowan translated.

Puran looked perplexed at the big, pink mitt. McGowan uttered something more before the sepoy awkwardly put his rifle between his knees and made namasti, cocking his head to one side and grinning so widely that his teeth flashed below his moustache.

Carmichael was equally confused. Not to be outdone, he grasped both of Puran’s hands that were now pressed, palms together, in front of his face and gave them a vigorous waggle. ‘No hard feelings then, old boy,’ he said, just as he might have done after accidentally tripping a fellow team player at Harrow.

‘Right, thank you, Carmichael. I’m sure that’s soothed the poor fellow,’ McGowan said with a note of sarcasm. ‘I doubt that these troops have been involved in this outrage, but they may well have turned a blind eye to those who did. After all, whilst we accepted Forgett, he was a policeman; the executions were pretty well all his own work. The colonel will want this investigated.’

Women and babies getting torn to bits; what sort of a war is this? It’s going to be a nasty bloody bitter fight that’s not really any of our business. We should have left it to the John Company boys to sort out. After all, they got themselves into it…thought Morgan as the little group of officers trudged back to the mess, skirting the horror of the bungalow.

All eight hundred men of the 10th Bengal Native Infantry stood in two ranks arranged in three sides of a square whilst Commandant Brewill, the British officers and McGowan, the adjutant, stood in the middle of the fort’s parade ground in the early morning cool. The sun had hardly risen, the dust lay still, whilst the monkeys blinked sleepily from the branches of the trees that peeped from just beyond the high stone walls.

The men had breakfasted on dates and chapattis before parading by companies and filing down to the square under the voice of the subadar-major; now they waited for the word of their commanding officer.

‘Boys…’ Brewill’s Hindi was clear and firm, if not especially grammatical, for he had learnt it from the lips of the men with whom he’d served over the past thirty years rather than from any babu, ‘…yesterday Forgett sahib was murdered in his bungalow here inside the fort. Some baboon slew him with a butcher’s meat cleaver and left a pig’s tail in the dead man’s mouth.’ There was complete silence from the troops, not a flicker of emotion. ‘As if that’s not bad enough, memsahib Forgett was dishonoured and murdered as well; and there’s worse: their baby daughter was beaten to death by these same criminals.’

Where the chief of police’s death had caused no reaction, a quiet ripple of disgust and dismay came now from the throats of the 10th.

‘Men, you know how bad things are in this country and how many sins have already been committed, but the death of women and babes-in-arms is unforgivable, and I pray you to tell any details that you know,’ Brewill continued.

‘What the fuck’s ’e on about, Corp’l?’ Private Beeston and Lance-Corporal Pegg had made it their business to collect Captain Skene’s and Ensign Keenan’s chargers as well as the little bat-horse from the syce in the stables when the urgent message had come down to the Grenadier Company’s lines. The visitors were in a sudden hurry to return to Jhansi; their mounts needed full saddlebags and their pony had to be carrying enough fodder for three days’ march, whilst Pegg and Beeston wanted to see their old pal and boon companion – now a grand officer – James Keenan before he disappeared. Now they waited outside the officers’ mess, reins in hand, watching the 10th.

‘Dunno, Jono.’ Pegg could hear the passion in Brewill’s speech without understanding a word. ‘But ’e’s layin’ into ’em. It’s about that peeler’s murder, ain’t it?’

‘So they say. Them sods did it – revenge for the executions – but the wife and nipper as well…’ John Beeston could understand the desire to murder any officer of the law, but the death of white women and children was too much.

‘Aye, it’s out of order an’—’ Pegg was about to produce some solemn judgement when voices and clattering spurs came from within the dark entrance of the mess. ‘Stand up!’

Pegg brought Beeston to attention and saluted as Skene and Keenan came hurrying out.

‘Well, Charlie Pegg, ye fat wee sod, as I live an’ breathe; what about ye?’ Ensign James Keenan recognised his old friend instantly.

‘Doin’ rightly…’ Pegg did his best to imitate Keenan’s brogue, ‘…your honour!’ Pegg swept down from the salute and the two men clasped each other’s hands and slapped shoulders as if no chasm of rank now existed between them.

‘An’ Jono Beeston, heard you was both out here with the Old Nails.’ There was more delight from Beeston and Keenan. ‘Ain’t it just the devil’s own luck that I’ve not time for even a swally with ye?’

‘No, lads, I know how much you’d like to keep Mr Keenan here with you…’ Captain Skene was obviously eager to get moving, pushing one foot into the nearside stirrup of the horse that Beeston held and reaching up to the saddle’s pommel, ‘…and talk about old times, but the Twelfth have turned in Jhansi and it’s going to take us twelve days or more to get back; I knew we shouldn’t have left the garrison when things were so bloody touchy.’

‘What’s happened, sir?’ Pegg asked.

‘We don’t know, exactly, but the news came over the telegraph in the early hours and some clown of an operator didn’t want to disturb us too early, damn him,’ Skene continued. ‘A fire had been started near the royal palace. Most of the Europeans – and that’s not many – turned out to fight it, and whilst the officers were away, the sepoys stormed the armouries and marched on the Rhani’s quarters and the officers’ cantonment.’

‘Ain’t your missus there, Mr Keenan, sir?’ asked Beeston without an ounce of tact.