Amitav Ghosh - Flood of Fire

She was dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief.

‘Goodbye, Mr Reid.’

He opened the door and stepped out.

*

It wasn’t till the end of January that Kesri learnt where the Bengal Volunteers were going. It was Captain Mee who told him: ‘Havildar, I have some important news. The Burra Laat, Lord Auckland, and the Jangi Laat, General Sir Hugh Gough, have received formal instructions from London. Our orders are to proceed to southern China.’

This stunned Kesri. China had seemed to him so unlikely a destination that he had discounted all the rumours. But when Captain Mee asked if he wanted to reconsider his decision to volunteer he answered without hesitation. ‘No, Mee-sahib. I’ve given my word and I will go. But about others I don’t know.’

‘You think we’ll lose a lot of men?’

‘Let’s see, sir,’ said Kesri. ‘Some we are better without.’

Kesri mustered the company the next day and Captain Mee made the announcement in his usual businesslike way, speaking through an interpreter. He ended by telling the sepoys that if they wanted to change their minds they had three days to do so. Later, when it was Kesri’s turn to speak to the company, he elaborated on this a little, explaining that anyone who wanted to withdraw from the unit would have to return the travel battas and other emoluments they had received for volunteering. This too would have to be done within three days; after that no withdrawals would be permitted: anyone who developed second thoughts would be treated as a malingerer.

Kesri knew that the prospect of having to return battas and emoluments would be a deterrent to most of the sepoys. He did not expect many withdrawals — but in this he was wrong. Nine men, almost a tenth of the company, came to see him and asked to be sent back to their units. He released them immediately and had them removed under escort, so that they would have no further contact with the company: better to be rid of them now than to have them lingering and spreading their poison.

After the third day had passed, Kesri reminded the company that the time for withdrawals was over. From then on he kept the men under even closer watch. Mutiny or disaffection was not what he was afraid of — in the enclosed circumstances of Fort William signs of recalcitrance would be easy to detect and quell. What worried him more was another possibility: desertion. Now that the eastern expedition was public knowledge, the men were free to apply for permission to leave the fort for short periods. Kesri knew that in the company’s present state of morale, a few desertions were inevitable and resigned himself to dealing with them when they came.

But the disclosure of the expedition’s destination did have one fortunate consequence: Kesri was free at last to visit the paltani-bazars and Sepoy Lines, to make a start on something that he had had to postpone all this while: the business of putting together the company’s contingent of camp-followers — a body that would exceed the fighting men in number when all the necessary dhobis, darzies, cobblers, bhistis, bhandari-walas, porters and baggage handlers had been recruited. On top of that there were the auxiliaries and daftardars to be considered, which would consist of another sizeable contingent, including medical attendants, clerks, interpreters, accountants, gun-lascars, golondauzes, fifers, drummers and the like.

Recruiting the camp-followers was a tedious business but it was not without its rewards. The followers were usually provided by sirdars, ghat-serangs and other labour contractors, many of whom made handsome profits from the army’s contracts and were willing to pay good dastoories in order to secure them. The officers generally left this matter to the senior NCOs and clerical staff who were often able to collect quite substantial sums from the contractors. This was an accepted perquisite and Kesri knew that he could count on it to bring in a tidy little sum.

There were no such benefits attached to the choice of auxiliaries, who were all employees of the military establishment. But in this matter too Kesri was able, with Captain Mee’s support, to pick and choose his men. He was particularly careful when it came to choosing the drummers and fifers, who were provided by the army’s Boy Establishment. These youngsters, some of whom were as young as ten or eleven, were mainly Eurasians. Some were the illegitimate sons of British soldiers and came from orphanages; some were descended from the legendary ‘topaz’ corps — the Goan and Portuguese artillerymen who had served the British during their early conquests in India.

Although the ‘banjee-boys’, as they were known, were relatively few in number, Kesri knew that they played a disproportionate role in keeping up morale. They often became mascots for their units, and the sepoys sometimes grew so attached to them that they treated them like their own sons.

Kesri insisted on auditioning the boys himself, calling on them to step out of line, one by one, when they mustered for inspection. During one audition a boy accidentally dropped his fife; he was eleven or twelve but tall for his age, with amber eyes, brown hair and a snub nose. He carried on bravely, but at the end of the performance his lower lip began to quiver. Kesri understood that he was afraid that he would not be picked so he beckoned to him to step forward.

Naam kya hai tera? What’s your name?

Dicky Miller, havildar-sah’b.

Do you know where the expedition is going?

Ji, sir. China.

And you’re not scared?

The boy’s amber eyes suddenly brightened. No, sir! he replied, puffing out his chest: Main to koi bhi cheez se nahin darta! I’m not scared of anything!

His eagerness drew a laugh from Kesri and he made sure that the boy was included in the company’s contingent of fifers and drummers. And when the fifers made their first appearance at the parade ground he knew he had made a good choice: with his bright eyes and jaunty step young Dicky Miller was just the kind of lad who was likely to keep up the unit’s spirits.

*

After his abrupt dismissal from Mrs Burnham’s sewing room, Zachary walked back to the budgerow with his head a-whirl, hardly aware of what he was doing. He had known all along, of course, that his visits to the boudoir would end one day, but he could never have imagined that it would happen so suddenly — and now that it had, he realized that a proper period of preparation would have diminished his pain and bewilderment only by a very small measure, which was that he would not have had to cope also with the bitterness of being denied the last night of leave-taking that he had been promised.

The truth was that despite all of Mrs Burnham’s warnings he had never abandoned the hope that their liaison would somehow continue, in secret: it had never crossed his mind that he might one day be thrown overboard without a plank or raft to hold on to. But along with anger, bitterness, grief and jealousy, he was aware also of a powerful sense of gratitude towards Mrs Burnham for all that she had given him, money being the least of it; nor was his admiration of her in any way diminished by his abrupt discharge.

This too served to deepen his confusion, making him wonder about the nature of their connection: what exactly was it that had come into being between them? It was not love, surely, for that word had never been used by either of them; nor was it only lust, for her voice, her words and the things she talked about were at least as bewitching to him as her body. She had opened a window into a world of wealth and luxury where the finest and most voluptuous pleasures were those that were stolen — and it was that very act of thievery, as when he was in her bed, that made them so delectable, so intoxicating. It was as though she had placed his feet on the threshold of this world: all that remained was for him to make his way in — and he was determined to do it, if only to prove to her that he was capable of it.