Rogue Officer Read online

  ‘An old wound,’ he said, lying. ‘It opens on occasion. I’m afraid I can’t continue today. As you see –’ he held up his left arm with the missing hand – ‘I can’t use the other even if I wanted to.’

  The elderly officer nodded.

  ‘The duel is over, gentlemen.’

  Deighnton, still busy with his pistol, looked up sharply.

  He cried, ‘It’s over when we say so. You, sir, will simply do your duty.’

  The lieutenant spoke in measured tones. ‘Captain, I may have remained only a lieutenant but I am nearing my middle fifties. I have witnessed more duels than you have drunk bottles of port. I know when a duel is over. This man’s hand is not fit to hold a pistol. Besides, you have each had the opportunity to fire your weapon and both have done so. The fact that your pistol failed is neither here nor there, sir. One cannot continue to load and fire at will until someone is either dead or wounded. The duel has been fought, you have both come out of it alive with your honours untarnished, and there’s an end to it.’

  He spoke with finality in his voice. As he had said, he might only be a lieutenant, but he was quite senior in years, and therefore entitled to the respect those years should bring to him. This was not the battlefield. This was a private affair between gentlemen. Captains could not order lieutenants about in a mango orchard as they might on the parade ground.

  These facts did not prevent Captain Deighnton from trying to bully him.

  ‘I shall have satisfaction, sir.’

  ‘Not today,’ remarked the lieutenant, ‘and if it must be it will on someone else’s time, not mine. Good morning.’

  ‘You will regret this, lieutenant.’

  The older man turned and smiled wearily.

  ‘You threaten me too? Captain, I’m too long in the tooth for such games as these. You’ll need to find another playfellow.’

  Deighnton must have known then that he was beginning to look the fool, for he turned and threw his pelisse over his shoulder. There was no glory, no elan to be had, in forcing into a duel a passed-over lieutenant with grey hair and lank beard. Besides, the high clear notes of a bugle were sounding over the forest scrub. Deighnton had to be with his troopers. Before he left though he wagged a finger at Crossman, saying, ‘We will do this again.’

  ‘Go to hell, you pompous fart,’ Jack said under his breath. ‘I’ve had enough of you for one war.’

  ‘Connaught Rangers,’ Deighnton was still muttering to himself. ‘Irish Regiments of foot. Bloody peasant army of potato eaters.’

  ‘And it’s pronounced Connocht,’ Jack corrected him, for Deighnton had called it Con-nort. ‘Connaught, as in the Scottish loch. Time you went back to school.’

  However the last word was not to be Jack’s.

  ‘Damn cripples,’ snarled Deighnton, making reference to Jack’s missing left hand, where the sleeve was pinned back towards the elbow. ‘Chuck ’em out, I say. Send ’em back to their maters.’

  The original quarrel between Jack and Deighnton was both complicated and simple.

  Before Jack had married his wife Jane, she had been attached to an aristocrat by the name of Hadrow, a rake who eventually cast her aside. In deference to Jane’s wishes, Jack avoided any encounter with Hadrow, but the man had decided otherwise. Hadrow and two others from his club had followed Jack through the streets of London intent on conflict. The conflict indeed took place and ended with Jack drawing Hadrow’s cork with his wooden left fist, letting the claret flow on the flagstones.

  There ended the complicated part.

  The simple part was that Captain Deighnton claimed to be a ‘good friend’ of Hadrow and was determined to right his friend’s wrong. In Delhi, Deighnton had challenged Jack to a duel, which Jack had thought ridiculous and refused the offer. The captain persisted however, in front of witnesses, insulting Jack until he was honour-bound to accept the challenge. Jack suspected there was more to the thing than Deighnton simply acting for his friend Hadrow – Jack had never heard of a duel fought in proxy – but could not for the life of him think what it was. He had no recollection of ever meeting Deighnton before their encounter at Delhi and was completely bewildered by the man’s hostility.

  Someone came up to Deighnton and told him that General Martlesham awaited him in the officers’ mess. Deighnton trudged off, followed by his servant, who cradled the captain’s slippers, one under each arm, as if they were newborn twins.

  Jack took a cup of coffee from his Rajput’s hand. Surprisingly his own bloody fingers were now steady. The body could lie too.

  The coffee scalded his tongue; bitter but so welcome.

  ‘You will kill him next time,’ said Raktambar, his eyes revealing nothing. ‘When your hand heals.’

  ‘Yes – yes, I will.’

  He looked towards the part of the orchard where they had taken the corpse of the young ensign. It was empty. They had gone.

  The magnificent blood-red dawn that flowed across the sky above Oudh began to fade. In the bungalows and the palaces the servants had long been awake and busy, while those they served were just stirring in their warm beds. Mosquito nets were thrown back, copper washing-bowls were carried into bedrooms, the scent of tea was in the air. Inside the relatively cool mud or marble dwellings life was tolerable. Outdoors the heat would rise to savage levels bringing with it hot dry winds and choking dust storms. Any business not related to war was best done before the sun rose any higher in the heavens. Even killing another man, if it was a necessary thing, was carried out more comfortably in the early dawn.

  Jack walked back to his tent with Raktambar at his side. Both men were silent. Jack wondered whether the Rajput had guessed what had happened. Did Raktambar know of Jack’s cowardice? The fear had gone now, of course, with the removal of the threat. Now Jack simply felt appalled at his actions. To have faked a wound in order to avoid a duel? It was unthinkable. There was a hard lump in his throat. Guilt. It would clog his brain for a long while to come. Perhaps for ever? How disgusting of him. How despicable. Yet he was still alive, if indeed a coward.

  A horrible secret. Was it worth it? Surely it would have been better to die marching into the mouth of a cannon than give that bastard Deighnton the satisfaction.

  Yet that ugly word remained – coward.

  That poor but honourable young man with a hole in his chest: at that moment Jack would have changed places with him.

  Jack and Raktambar made their way towards the tents where Sergeant King, Corporal Gwilliams and King’s adopted son Sajan were waiting for them. There was relief on the faces of his waiting crew. Jack was touched by that. He and King did not always see eye to eye and though Gwilliams, the North American, was loyal enough, Jack believed the corporal did not have a sentimental bone in his body. He felt sure news of his death would have drawn a shrug at the most from both of them. Yet here they were, seemingly concerned for his well-being. Yes, he was touched.

  ‘Didn’t he even hit you anywhere?’ drawled Gwilliams, his eyes running over Jack’s form, presumably looking for signs of blood. ‘I thought he was supposed to be a dead shot?’

  ‘He is. He certainly mangled the poor boy who went before me.’

  ‘Then how come you’re all in one piece?’

  Jack said, ‘Don’t sound so disappointed, Gwilliams. His pistol misfired.’

  ‘What about yours?’

  ‘It went off.’

  Light came into Gwilliams’ eyes. ‘He’s dead then?’

  ‘No – he’s unharmed.’

  The light faded and Gwilliams now spat in disgust. ‘You missed!’

  ‘I missed.’

  ‘You should let me go next time – I’ll blow the bastard’s head off.’

  Jack smiled at Gwilliams’ enthusiasm. ‘You can’t, you’re a peasant. Deighnton won’t duel with peasants.’

  ‘We don’t have none of that malarkey back home,’ snarled Gwilliams. ‘Don’t matter whether a man’s a king or a cobbler.’ He paused before adding, ‘’Cept them
so-called Southern gentlemen can be a bit picky sometimes. Mostly though, you can fight who you like. I’d sure like a crack at this prig of a captain, sir, if it can be arranged.’

  Corporal Gwilliams was North American. Sometimes he claimed to be a Canadian. Other times he said he was from the United States. At all times he claimed to be the barber who had shaved every famous frontiersman from Kit Carson to Jim Bowie. Certainly he was very good with a razor, as Jack had found out when he’d sent the corporal sneaking into enemy camps at night. Gwilliams was also a crackshot with a rifle. His prowess was not confined to weapons. Raised by a preacher, Gwilliams had read all the classics in his adopted father’s book-shelves and reckoned he could ‘out-classic’ any Englishman he met. His association with Jack’s spies and saboteurs was not yet a long one: he had joined Jack’s peleton a short while before the end of the Crimean War and Jack’s eventual posting to India, but he had proved himself very able in that short time.

  ‘It’s my problem, but thank you for the offer, corporal.’ Jack turned his attention to his sergeant. ‘And you need not apply, Sergeant King, we all know your lack of prowess with a firearm.’

  King stiffened. ‘I’m getting better all the time, sir.’

  ‘Glad to hear it.’

  ‘But I wouldn’t fight a duel if I was the best shot in the regiment. I think it’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. What’s wrong with settling an argument with your fists?’

  Jack sighed. ‘It’s not permanent enough for some people,’ he said. ‘Nothing but my corpse will satisfy Deighnton. Now, you heard the trumpets and drums, let’s strike camp. It seems we’re off to Rohilkand at last. The sooner this rebellion is quelled, the better. Civil war is so ugly. We seem to commit more atrocities against friends than we do enemies.’

  ‘This is not civil war, sahib,’ interrupted Ishwar Raktambar, who was unhappily torn between two sides. ‘This is a war to drive you foreigners from India.’

  The reluctant Rajput bodyguard of Lieutenant Fancy Jack Crossman had been raised in a village in Rajputana, the son of a poor farmer. When he was eight years of age, his uncle, a gardener at the palace of the maharajah of Rajputana, sent for him with the promise that he would assist the boy in becoming a palace guard. When his father packed him off to the palace, his uncle simply used him as a personal slave until Raktambar reached the age of eighteen. He was by that time a muscular youth with a fine physique due to the hard work his uncle had put him through. Finally, the boy rebelled and wrestled with his uncle in the courtyard of the palace, a scene which was witnessed by the maharajah’s vizier.

  The Grand Vizier was impressed by the youth’s strength, as he saw him bodily throw his uncle, first into the goldfish fountain, then into some thorn bushes. Having come to the notice of the vizier, Ishwar Raktambar was then taken on as personal bodyguard to the maharajah himself. However, his good looks and natural ability with weapons also made him a favourite in the maharajah’s harem, a fact known to the maharajah himself, and when a British officer visited him he saw a way of ridding himself of this tall, handsome young warrior, without having to execute him and upset half his wives and most of his concubines. He offered the young man as a bodyguard to the lieutenant, hoping the pair of them would be dead within a few months from the bullets or swords of rebel sepoys.

  ‘As you say,’ replied Jack, not wishing to argue the rights and wrongs of the matter with Raktambar. ‘Now, Gwilliams, will you get the mounts up here. We need to join the division.’

  There were five of them altogether, including the boy Sajan. These intelligence-gatherers, being independent of the rest of the division and needing to move rapidly in the area of the fighting, had been provided with horses by their colonel. There had been some grumbling amongst the staff officers regarding the boy being mounted, but Jack pointed out that Sajan was sometimes an invaluable gleaner, being able to slip into a market place or village and listen to the gossip amongst the local population.

  As they were preparing to join the rest of the division in Lucknow, commanded by Brigadier Walpole, two young Eurasian girls came running up to greet Lieutenant Jack Crossman. These were daughters of a corporal drummer named Flemming and his Punjabi wife. To Jack they were a perfect nuisance. The older one, Silvia, a mere seventeen years old, was besotted with him, and the younger one, Delia, a year behind her, followed her big sister everywhere. They wore saris, ran around without shoes on their feet, and both had long black coils of hair hanging like a thick rope down their backs. They were slim, lithe and incredibly beautiful.

  ‘Captain, captain,’ called Silvia as they both rushed up to Jack, tears in their eyes. ‘You are going away from us. Please, please stay to protect us from the badmashes.’

  ‘Girls,’ he said in despair, as the square-faced Sergeant King’s face split with a grin, ‘please don’t bother me now. I’m trying to get ready to march with the rest of the division. You know what your father told you. You must stay away from me. I’m – I’m a bad man.’

  ‘No, no, you are not,’ cried the lovely Silvia, grasping his sleeve with her slim fingers. ‘Those cavalry officers, they are the bad ones.’ She and her sister both spat into the dust to physically register their disgust of officers of horse. ‘They want to steal the flower from us. You are a good man, sir. We will come with you. Delia and I cannot stay here while you are fighting war. We must be by your side, Captain.’

  ‘Yes, we must,’ cried Delia dutifully.

  This younger one had convinced herself she too was in love with her sister’s ‘captain’. If Silvia was so madly in love with this tall one-handed officer with the black hair and scarred but handsome face, there must be something very special about him. Thus Delia Flemming was also moon-struck. The pair of them were driving Jack mad. He had told them countless times he was not a captain – and indeed they knew it – but they had decided they were too proud to be in love with a mere lieutenant, so they had promoted him and insisted on that rank. He was their captain and even though he had informed them he was a happily married man, they were convinced he would one day come to hold them in high regard. All this because he had once shown them simple kindness by acknowledging them with a ‘good morning’ and a smile. Had he but known what he was bringing on his head he would definitely have snarled at them.

  ‘Girls, please,’ said Jack, ‘your father will bring me up in front of the commanding officer if you keep following me around. Do you want to get me into trouble? This is silly infatuation . . .’

  ‘No, no, it is true love,’ said Silvia, her large dark eyes full of sincerity. ‘You must believe it, sir. You must.’

  Gwilliams glanced back and forth between the two girls, chewing a quid of tobacco slowly. His expression told you nothing but Jack presumed the crusty corporal was wondering what he would do in such circumstances. Gwilliams was absolutely sure what he would do and it was not the act of a gentleman. King just grinned and shook his head, the bowl of the clay pipe between his clenched teeth red hot with being overpuffed. Sajan simply looked disgusted, and well he might for he was just a young boy.

  It was Raktambar who stepped in and saved the lieutenant.

  ‘Go away,’ he bellowed at the sisters. ‘Go away or I shall beat you with the flat of my sword! You are interfering baba-logue.’

  The girls did not like to be called ‘children’, and they glowered at the Rajput, who was not finished with them.

  ‘Here is an important man! He cannot be bothered with mere girls. Be off with you or I shall make smackings on your backsides.’

  Gwilliams’ eyes opened visibly wider at this last remark and registered expectation. But the girls were afraid of the tall Rajput in the red turban. They made faces at him, stuck out their tongues and waggled the tips, but they began to walk away. When Raktambar stepped forward quickly, they turned on their heels and ran back towards their father’s quarters, yelling something unintelligible over their shoulders.

  Jack heaved a sigh of relief. He let Gwilliams strap on his swor
d, since there was no time for him to fiddle one-handedly, then he checked his double-triggered Tranter revolver. He had become quite adept at holding the weapon between his knees and loading it with his right hand. When he felt sure they were all ready, he motioned his group forward.

  ‘Come on, before those two nuisances come back,’ he said.

  They mounted and moved up to join the column. There were one or two old acquaintances in the region: people he had met during the Crimean campaign just over a year ago. Sergeant-Major Jock Mclntyre was here with the 93rd. As was General Sir Colin Campbell, who had commanded the 93rd in their now infamous thin red streak stand at Balaclava. Sir Colin was commander-in-chief in this region. Now known as ‘Old Khabardar’ (Old Be-careful) he was the man who had ordered Walpole into Rohilkand to hunt down the rebel leader Nirpat Singh.

  Some known civilians were here too: war correspondents who had been in the Crimea. William Howard Russell, of The Times, and Rupert Jarrard, of the New York Banner, were present, though Jack had not before crossed paths in India with his good friend Rupert. This was one reason he liked the army. Comradeship. These were men he respected and they had known him under fire. Some of them not well, it was true: Colin Campbell would have difficulty in remembering a sergeant standing in line with his beloved 93rd during the Russian charge, but Jack remembered, and that was the important thing. It felt like a close-knit club, but not one of those London clubs like Whites, where the ton snubbed the little men. He knew if he were to say to Sir Colin, ‘I was there,’ he would receive a warm and knowing acknowledgement. Men who had fought beside each other under adversity were welded together until death, no matter what their rank. A corporal who stood with his king at Agincourt had that hour of his life when he was level with his liege and neither would deny it.