By Eastern windows Read online

  Lachlan agreed. ‘Even the eighteen-pounders would need to be at least four hundred yards nearer to the fort.’

  Colonel Balfour beamed. He had expected that answer, but pretended surprise. ‘Why! – That’s exactly the distance Major Jones suggested! How very astute of you, Lieutenant!’

  It was something any junior officer would know, but Balfour raised a palm to Lachlan's protest. ‘You are absolutely right, dear boy, bang on, just as I knew you would be, at least four hundred yards nearer! Major Jones was just as specific.’

  Lachlan stemmed a sigh. Whenever Balfour was in a state of such sweet flattery it was best to remain silent.

  ‘We shall, of course, need to detail a number of working parties to attend to it...’

  Balfour paused to swat irritably at a fly near his face, and with that gesture Lachlan suddenly realised why he had been summoned, because he knew all of Balfour’s tricks. For all his pretended geniality, Colonel Balfour had the skill of a scorpion. He always started with a smile and flattery, paused to swat a fly ... then dished out the dirty work.

  And sure enough, minutes later, Colonel Balfour was pulling off his scarlet jacket in preparation for a rest while Lachlan left the tent to form a working party which would spend the night building a battery for the guns, four hundred yards closer to the enemy's fort.

  A detachment from 5th Company collected their tools and began to move down the valley, but with every few yards they marched forward, the enemy sent out musket fire in their direction.

  Private McKenzie, a big strong Jock who had enlisted simply to get drink, and had never experienced being under fire, nearly jumped out of his skin. ‘Bluidy hell! The buggers are firing at us, sir! At us!’

  Lachlan looked at him wryly. ‘So what did you expect them to do, McKenzie – wave to us in greeting!’

  ‘But, sir – we canna be expected to work wi' bullets flying towards us!’

  Lachlan called a halt to the march and turned to face the men: dealing with new recruits on the ground was always hard, but they had signed up as soldiers and so must learn to think and act like soldiers.

  He decided to shift their minds away from the dangers of India and focus their concentration on the land they all loved.

  ‘This may be India,’ he said gravely, ‘but this is also the British Army. And not only are you soldiers of the British Army, you are also Scottish soldiers. So although Colonel Balfour says that you all look as if you only enlisted to get drink, I know that is not true.’

  A number of the men glanced uneasily at each other, because they had only enlisted to get drink – a soldier’s daily ration of a third of a pint of rum, to be exact, and for no other reason. A fact Lachlan was well aware of.

  ‘And General Abercrombie may say that you all appear to be the worst picture of men, the absolute scum of Scotland’s earth,’ he continued, ‘but I know that’s also not true. So here’s what I want you to do – I want you to prove them wrong! Show them what fine men you truly are. Do your families and your homeland proud. Show the generals who have brought us here that you are not Scotland’s scum – but Scotland’s best!’

  The men cheered, animated and rallied, and seconds later they were marching forcefully down the valley as if the musket-fire in the distance caused them no fear. On reaching the site designated for the batteries they energetically threw themselves into the task of shovelling earth into sandbags.

  It was hard and filthy work and by midnight the emplacements were only half completed, their progress hampered by the darkness. Private McKenzie could not restrain another complaint. ‘Heck, sir, the night's as dark as a rajah's arse.’

  As if in reply, a succession of shots suddenly cracked through the night – one of the Indian sepoys standing on sentry duty dropped like a sandbag. Lachlan swiftly drew out his pistol and ran forward, firing into the darkness at the unseen enemy snipers who could be heard shuffling away through the undergrowth.

  ‘McKenzie's been hit!’ someone shouted.

  ‘I've been het!’ McKenzie cried in astonishment. ‘I've been het!’

  Lachlan turned to see the big Scotsman half-lying on the ground with a hand over his heart. He rushed back and knelt down beside the soldier. ‘Let me see.’

  He lifted the big-knuckled hand covering the area of McKenzie's breastbone and peered curiously. ‘There's no blood.’

  ‘Wha'?’ McKenzie began pawing his chest. He stared at Lachlan in horror. ‘Ma bescets!’ he yelled in outrage. ‘The buggers have smashed ma bescets!’

  The rest of the men grinned with relief. The worst that had happened to McKenzie was a dud musket ball had broken the biscuits he carried in a leather bag inside his tunic.

  McKenzie pulled out the small leather bag which hung from a string around his neck and which contained all his worldly wealth. He uptilted it morosely and watched the crumbling biscuit pieces fall on to his palm

  ‘Hell's teeth,’ he said sadly. ‘I was savin' them bescets to have later wi' ma tae.’

  ‘You're unhurt so look lively!’ Lachlan snapped. ‘And from now on, McKenzie, you are forbidden to speak without my permission to do so. In short – keep that bloody blaring gob of yours shut.’

  Lachlan turned his attention to the sepoy sentry who had been wounded. He instructed two of the men to carry him back to the camp.

  ‘Permission to speak, sir!’ McKenzie called out.

  Lachlan swiftly returned to where McKenzie was still lying and smacked him hard on the back of his head. ‘Permission denied, you bloody idiot!’ he snapped in a loud whisper. ‘Do you want your voice to mark you as a target? Now get back to work – in bloody silence.’

  *

  Just before dawn the battery was finished. An hour after dawn a bombardment of cannon balls from a line of eighteen-pounders crashed against the walls of Fort Avery, informing the enemy that the British had finished breakfast and were now ready for business.

  The Fort gates opened, a surge of shock troops charged out screaming vengeance, only to be met by a line of free-riding cavalry waving sabres who sent them screaming back to the safety of their fort.

  By noon the front walls of Fort Avery had been severely damaged, the gates were breached, and the scarlet lines swept forward. By dusk the inhabitants of the Fort were stacking their arms in surrender.

  Having worked through the night and fought through the day, Lieutenant Macquarie and his men were glad of the rest. Many of them were inspecting and comparing their wounds. ‘We didna do a bad job, did we, sir!’ McKenzie shouted.

  Lachlan allowed the big Scotsman a small smile. ‘You did very well.’

  ‘Is that a fact now, is that a fact?’ McKenzie murmured, then stood in a silence of his own heroic emotions.

  ‘But remember, McKenzie, this is just the beginning. Our real battle will be at Mysore, with the army of Tipu Sultan.’

  ‘Eh? Wha’?’ McKenzie jerked round. ‘Ye mean we’re not done, sir? Ye mean we have to do it all again!’

  ‘`Fraid so.’ Lachlan offered McKenzie a cynical glance. ‘But with you in our ranks, McKenzie, with all your bulk and brawn and that blathering blaring voice of yours, I’m sure the Sultan’s troops will flee at the first sight and sound of you.’

  McKenzie’s face twitched in a spasm of surprised joy. ‘Ye reckon? So why do ye always place me at the back then, sir?’

  ‘Just saving the worst till last,’ Lachlan replied sarcastically, mounting his horse.

  After a long pause, McKenzie’s suddenly gushed, ‘Och, sweet Jesus! Ye mean like a hidden weapon that’s kept back to take ‘em by surprise?’

  His words were ignored as Lachlan rode off and another soldier ambled up to McKenzie, saying scathingly, ‘So what’s he been saying to ye now? Our fine young officer. Didna we prove to him that none of us are cowards?’

  McKenzie turned his head and replied coolly, ‘Our fine young officer is a gentleman which ye ain’t. He knows what needs to be done which ye don’t. And wha’ he just told me in private �
� in private mind – is none of your bluidy business.’

  *

  The marching resumed, day after day, over wild stretches of land towards the Indian hills. The soldiers sweltered in the heat. Teams of oxen pulled the cannons and sturdy elephants carried the baggage and tents. After ten days they were ready to make their way up the treacherous jungle pass to the head of the Poodicherum Ghaut. The ascent was ten miles high and dangerously steep, almost up a precipice, a task made worse by the falling of rain.

  At first the men were refreshed by the rain but it quickly proved worse than the heat as they found themselves plodding in mud. The artillery train came to a halt, bogged in the slough.

  Lachlan received a summons from his commanding officer. Colonel Balfour greeted him grimly. ‘Ah, Lieutenant Macquarie. What say you about these mud slopes, eh?’

  ‘Our progress will be slow, sir. The wheels and guns will continue to get bogged down no matter how many times we pull them clear.’

  ‘Quite so, quite so.' Balfour hesitated, there was a reason of course for the summons, but he always considered it only fair to compliment an officer in some way before making him miserable. ‘Efficient work you and the men did building the batteries,’ he said. ‘Major Jones's guns were perfectly positioned and right on time. Good show.’

  ‘Just doing our duty, sir.’

  ‘Ah yes, duty. The First Commandment for all soldiers. Duty is what makes us push on when we long to turn back. And we, poor dutiful souls, must push on through all this ruddy mud...’ Balfour sighed bleakly. ‘So, Lieutenant, my orders are to command you to take six subalterns and one hundred men to build a road over the mud to make it easier for the artillery train and stores to be hauled up the Pass.’

  ‘Build ... a road?’

  ‘Not you personally, Lieutenant, no indeed no! Your men will do the actual work. All you will have to do is instruct and supervise them.’

  Lachlan recovered from his shock, staring angrily at Balfour. ‘But the men, sir … the men are half-dead with exhaustion.’

  Balfour’s eyes also flashed anger. ‘Our dead we bury immediately and respectfully, but those soldiers who are alive and can still walk – we keep working! Now set to it, Lieutenant, as soon as you can.’

  At daybreak Lachlan and his men were already out, cutting down trees and laying a timber road, mile by mile, over which the guns were hauled. Some days the going was so tough only two miles could be covered. Each night Lachlan wearily splashed through the mud of the camp into the dryness of the tent he shared with Dr Anderson, falling down in sleep in his hammock without removing his scarlet coat.

  The timber road finally reached the head of the Poodicherum Ghaut, overlooking Tipu Sultan’s country of Mysore; one of the most beautiful parts of India that Lachlan had ever seen, saturated with groves of orange trees and lush green gardens throughout the wide-ranging plains. It had taken them three months of marching and numerous halts before they at last joined with Lord Cornwallis's troops in one great army outside Seringaptam.

  The first attack would be a night attack, Cornwallis decided. Surrounding the walls and storming the city was the first business he wanted done. The men waited in the darkness and while they did, Private McKenzie took it upon himself to instruct his comrades.

  ‘Now listen lads, ye’ll all be doin’ Scotland proud when ye go out there fightin’ like soldiers! Like real soldiers, like proper soldiers! An’ remember – I’ll be reet behind ye!’

  A hard whack on the back of his head by a pistol butt sent McKenzie staggering forward in mid-sentence. `You stupid sod!’ Lachlan hissed furiously. `Does that big gob of yours never shut?’

  ‘But, sir …’ McKenzie steadied himself and rubbed the back of his head in puzzlement. ‘I was only – ‘

  ‘Only marking our spot for every murderous skirmisher hiding out there in the groves.’ Lachlan quickly pointed the pistol at McKenzie’s head and the sound of the hammer being cocked made the big man freeze. ‘If you ever put my men in such danger again, McKenzie, I swear I’ll not hesitate to blow your brains out. Is that clear?’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ McKenzie stuttered, `clear as d-daylight.’

  ‘Now back into line!’

  ‘Aye, s-sir,’ McKenzie mumbled, but seemed unable to move.

  ‘So do it!’ Lachlan lowered the gun and holstered it as Lieutenant Grant and an ensign approached him.

  ‘Dispatches have been going back and forth between Cornwallis and Tipu,’ Grant told him quietly. ‘It seems the sultan is not too happy at the sight of all the Indian regiments of the British Army gathered at his threshold. The latest news is that he has decided to call a halt to all hostilities and enter into a Peace Treaty with the British.’

  ‘Until the next time he gets in a bad mood?’ Lachlan asked cynically.

  ‘Probably,’ Grant agreed, ‘but all the signs now are that the big battle will not be fought this night or even this year. Still, the fat old darling is obviously as good a strategist as Cornwallis – knows not only when to fight, but when not to fight.’

  Throughout the night and the following day the troops remained in their positions while inside the sultan's palace Lord Cornwallis and his staff negotiated the terms of the treaty, which was that Tipu would relinquish control of at least half of his dominions, as well as contributing three million rupees towards the expense of the war that he had started.

  Tipu Sultan readily signed the Peace Treaty and then sent down to his vast treasury and paid over the three million rupees demanded.

  ‘We will meet again,’ he said coldly to Lord Cornwallis.

  Cornwallis nodded. ‘I have no doubt that we will.’

  ‘You red-coated Angrezi will not always win the battles here in India.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Cornwallis replied curtly, removing the hat from under his arm and placing it on his head. ‘But I think we can agree that the Angrezi have very easily won this one.’

  *

  The soldiers of the 77th left the plains of Mysore under a torrent of hard monsoon rain, every fibre of their tunics soaked, and many wondering why they had gone to Mysore in the first place? All they had defeated was the treacherous passes of the Ghauts, and now they must wade through the mud and tramp up and down them again.

  The return journey was horrific. Bullocks hauling the cannons dropped dead in the mud from exhaustion and men were forced to take their places under the harness. Baggage and supplies had to be dropped and left behind in the slough. The men's rice rations diminished, leaving them only a handful of biscuits to sustain them at the end of each tortuous day.

  Boats were hired to sail them down the swollen Belliapatam River. Lachlan sat in his boat as if in a nightmare, trying to swiftly identify the corpses that swirled past, the corpses of soldiers who had drowned from capsized boats.

  Lachlan began to feel sick, very sick. He was soaked to the skin and had not eaten for three days. He had lost his tent and most of his baggage on the Ghauts. He had also lost his horse that had slipped and foundered, breaking two of her legs; he had almost wept when her big eyes had pleaded with him to take out his pistol and shoot away her pain.

  Back on land, Lachlan trudged with his men through miles of mud and rain until finally they came within five miles of Tellicherry on the Malabar Coast. Tellicherry was civilisation, a coastal town with well-built houses and a small British community.

  Three miles from Tellicherry, Lachlan received the news that General Abercromby and all the officers of the High Command had already reached the town, and even junior officers were being offered accommodation in the houses of the British community.

  His head thumping with pain, Lachlan felt too wet and dirty to resume the gilded role of an officer in the civilisation of Tellicherry, choosing instead to roll up in his camp cloak and sleep on the floor of a deserted old hut near to the main camp. Outside the hut, the jungle steamed under the heat of a new sun.

  Some hours later he awoke inside his mother's comfortable home on Mull, Donald was
bending over him, a hand on his brow.

  ‘Donald?'

  Delirious at seeing his brother again he attempted to raise himself, but the pain banged inside his head, his bloodshot eyes blinking in puzzlement, unable to understand why Donald's face was shrouded in fog.

  ‘Fever,’ McKenzie said, turning to the soldier standing beside him. ‘Make speed an' tell Surgeon Anderson that Lieutenant Macquarie is lying in a filthy hut shiverin' and shakin' wi' fever.’

  Lieutenant Dr Colin Anderson was in his twenty-seventh year, the same age as his closest friend, Lachlan Macquarie. He arrived at the double, his face white with apprehension as he examined his patient.

  ‘Malaria,’ he said finally.

  McKenzie was staring hard at his lieutenant; at the dark patches under his closed eyes; his tanned skin had a grey hue, his face drenched in perspiration, and every breath he drew sounded like a strangled rasp.

  McKenzie whispered. ‘Will he make it?’

  ‘Hopefully,’ Dr Anderson replied. ‘He is fit and strong which always helps. I've given him a large dose of quinine and mercury, as well as a few opium pills to deaden the headaches. But he is dangerously ill and could take a fatal turn for the worse. He will need a servant to look after him, day and night.’

  ‘He's already got one,’ McKenzie said stoutly. ‘He's got me, hasna he?’

  Dr Anderson looked dubiously at the big Scotsman who had just promoted himself from the ranks into the personal service of an officer – an enormous man, built like a bull.

  ‘Is this simply your way of escaping the drudgery of the ranks?’

  ‘Nae sir.’ McKenzie glared. ‘It’s ma way of looking after ma own lieutenant until he is well and fet again. Then I'll go back to ma comrades in the ranks.’