A Breach of Promise Page 5

  He was uncertain. Hope flickered in his eyes that he might not be alone in his memories and his understanding.

  “I saw the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava,” she said very quietly. She found she still could not control her voice when she spoke of it. Even the words choked in her throat and brought a prickle of tears to her eyes and an ache to her chest. The sweet, cloying smell of blood always brought it back to her, the drowning pain would never leave her, the bodies of so many mutilated and dying men, many of them barely into their twenties. Behind her closed eyelids she could see them bent in fantastic attitudes, trying to staunch their own wounds with scarlet hands.

  Gabriel shook his head silently, and in that moment she knew he had seen things just as terrible. They brimmed behind his eyes, a haunting of the dreams, needing to be shared, not openly, but enough to break the terrible aloneness of being among those who were unaware, who could speak of it as history, as from the pages of a newspaper or a book, to whom the pain was only words.

  She asked him the inevitable question. The Mutiny had ravaged all India from Calcutta and Delhi to the mountain passes into Afghanistan where the altitude thinned the air and peaks towered into the sky, the snow unmelted in millennia.

  “Were you at Cawnpore?”

  He nodded.

  “In the relief column?”

  “No … I …” He looked at her very steadily. “There were over nine hundred of us, counting women and children and civilians. I was one of the four people who survived.” He looked at her, his eyes filled with tears.

  What could one possibly say to that?

  “I have never faced such savagery.” She spoke very quietly, a simple, bare truth. “All the death I have seen has been either on the battlefield, incredibly stupid, senseless and pointless, men outmatched by numbers and by guns, ordered to charge impossible targets, but still soldiers even though their lives were squandered. Or people dying of starvation, cold and disease. Far more died of disease than of gunfire, you know.” She shook her head a little. “Yes, of course you know. But I have never seen hatred like that, barbarism that would massacre every living soul. The siege of Sebastopol was at least … military.”

  He clung to her understanding, his eyes fixed on hers unwaveringly.

  “It began on the fifth of June,” he said. “The Mutiny had already been sweeping across the country since the end of February. There had been disturbances because of the cartridges in Meerut and Lucknow. You know all about the cartridges?” He was watching her face. “They were greased with animal fat. If it was pork it was unclean to the Muslim soldiers, and if it was beef it was blasphemous to the Hindus, to whom the cow is a sacred animal. On May seventh open mutiny broke out in Lucknow; on May sixteenth the sappers and miners mutinied in Meerut. By the twentieth it had spread to Murdan and Allygurh. The day after that we began our intrenchment at Cawnpore.”

  She nodded.

  “On the twenty-fourth Gwalior Horse mutinied at Hattrass,” he went on. “By the twenty-eighth it had spread to Nuseer-bad. On the thirty-first it was Shahjehanpoor. June third, Alzimghur, Seetapoor, Mooradabad and Neemuch. The day after, Benares and Jhansi. On the fifth it was us.” He took a deep breath, but his voice did not alter. “I learned after that on the sixth it was Allahabad, Hansi and Bhurtpore. The following week, Jullunur, Fyzabad, Badulla Derai, Sultanpore, Futtehpore, Pershadeepore … and on and on. I could name every garrison in India. There was no one to help us.”

  She could not imagine it. The isolation, the consuming terror must have been like a tidal wave, drowning everything.

  He needed to know she could bear to hear it.

  “How did it begin?” she asked. “Guns?”

  “No. No, the whole of the native troops set fire to their lines and marched on the treasury, where they were joined by the troops of Nena Sahib … which is a name I can still hardly say.” His face was tight with misery and the spectacle of horror was dark in his eyes.

  She waited, sitting quite still.

  “He had thousands of native soldiers,” he went on after a moment. “We were only a couple of hundred, with three hundred women and as many children, and of course the civilian population, ordinary people: merchants and shopkeepers, servants, pensioners. General Sir Hugh Wheeler was in command. He ordered us to retreat to the barracks and military hospital. We couldn’t possibly hold the whole town.” He frowned, as if even now uncertain and puzzled. “Why he didn’t choose the treasury instead I don’t know. That was on high ground and had far more solid walls. In there we might have held out. I think … I think he couldn’t really believe we would have to face them alone. He couldn’t imagine that the sepoys wouldn’t be loyal to us when it came to it.” He stopped again. His hand curled and uncurled on the edge of the sheet. “Of course he was wrong.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “Did you have food and ammunition?”

  He looked at her steadily.

  “Food was modest; ammunition was good. But there was no shelter. After only a few days the walls were so riddled with shot we dug trenches and pulled carts and trunks and furniture over us to protect ourselves as much as we could. The heat was unbearable for many.”

  She tried to imagine India in July. It was hotter than anything she had ever known.

  “I don’t know how many died of it,” he said, still watching her closely. He needed to speak of the loss of his friends, the human beings he had seen in the utmost extremity of suffering, and yet a part of him was still aware of what such knowledge might do to her. And he needed to know they were not empty descriptions she could not follow. He needed her companionship in his grief.

  “I imagine it was worse than the cold,” she said thoughtfully. “I’ve seen men freeze, and animals too.”

  “The smell,” he answered. “It was the smell … and the flies I hated most. I still can’t bear the sound of flies. It makes me sick and I can’t get my breath. I feel as if I am suffocating and my heart is going to burst.”

  “You weren’t relieved?” She remembered reading it in the Illustrated London News. The account had been terrible, even after censorship for the general public.

  “No.” The word fell like a stone. “Every day we kept expecting help would come. We didn’t know the whole country was under the sword. We fell one by one, taking as many of the enemy with us as we could. I’ve never seen greater courage. Every able-bodied person did what they could, men and women alike. Every man stood his watch. The women nursed the sick, carried food and water, tried to protect the children.”

  His hand rubbed the edge of the sheet, gripping it so hard the fabric must have hurt his skin. The movement was some kind of release of tension, even though his muscles were locked tight. She had seen it before in men recalling events of nightmare proportions. The room was silent in the spring evening.

  “We were good shots,” he resumed. “We kept them at bay. They didn’t charge us and overrun. But there were so many of them, and their guns could reach us easily. They fired at everything that moved. Every day we thought help would come. It was so hot. No escape from it. You could smell the heat, feel it everywhere. The sweat dried the instant it broke. Skin hurt to touch. It cracked and blistered.” He shrugged very slightly. “I don’t know why I mentioned that. It hardly mattered. We died of heat stroke and dysentery … those who didn’t die of their wounds. What did it matter if groins or armpits were on fire?”

  “The one thing too much to bear,” she answered. “For me it was the rats … rats everywhere, dropping off the walls.”

  He smiled, a sudden wide grin, beautiful in spite of his disfigured face. It was not any kind of amusement, simply the dazzling, wonderful relief of being not alone.

  “But you survived,” she said. She guessed that was part of the private torture inside him. She had known it before in men who had seen companions fall all around them, for no reason other than chance as to where they were standing. A yard this way or that and it would have been someone else. One moment they
were alive, full of intelligence and feeling, the next just mangled blood and bone, torn flesh and pain … or nothing at all, the fire and the soul gone. One could not get rid of the guilt of being the one who survived. Part of you wanted to be with them.

  His smile vanished, but he did not avoid her eyes.

  “On June twenty-fourth Mrs. Greenway came to the intrenchment with a note from Nena Sahib. I can still see her face. She was old, very old indeed. She seemed like an embodiment of Time to me … or of Death. She had been a prisoner of the rebels and they sent her with terms of surrender.” His voice was harsh, filled with emotion so great it almost choked him. “Nena Sahib promised that if we gave up all the money, stores and arms in the intrenchment he would not only allow all the survivors of the garrison to retreat unmolested but he would provide means of conveyance for the women and children as well.”

  She looked steadily at his eyes. The horror was still so deep inside him it seemed to fill his being. It was like a storm about to break.

  “The treaty was agreed upon.” His voice became strained almost to a whisper. “On June twenty-seventh we surrendered according to the terms and filed out of the garrison. The women and children were led aboard boats on the river … there were small thatched coverings on them … protection from the sun. The man in charge was called Tanteea Topee. He was sitting on a platform watching it all. A bugle sounded at his command, and they ran out the guns which had been concealed up to that point. They fired on the boats. The thatch caught alight. Women and children were burned alive. Some jumped into the stream, but the sepoys rode their horses into the water and clubbed and sabered them to pieces. Some managed to struggle to the farther shore.”

  Hester closed her eyes and put her hands up to cover her face. She had not meant to, but she did it without thinking.

  “Then Nena Sahib ordered all the remaining men shot,” Gabriel went on as if he could not now stop himself. “The women and children who had made it as far as the shore he had taken to his residence. They were hacked to pieces too, and their bodies thrown down the well.”

  She looked up at him again. She must not run away from this. It was all past. They could hurt no more. But Gabriel needed not to be alone in his horror. He was the only one still alive she could help.

  He went on talking.

  “When General Havelock’s men found it eventually, the floor of the room was two inches deep in human blood. They found the hacked-up limbs and bodies in the well. They pulled up the body of one of General Wheeler’s daughters. They sent a lock of her hair home as a memento, to her family in England.” His voice was low in the quiet room smelling of clean linen and candle wax. “The rest of the scalp they divided up among themselves and then each man counted the individual hairs in his portion and swore an oath by heaven, and by the God who created him, that he would kill one mutineer for every hair he had. I know, because one of those men was a friend of mine. He wept even as he told me of it. He used to scream in his sleep when he remembered that house and what they found in it.”

  “How did you escape?” she asked him.

  “I was hit on the head and nearly drowned,” he replied. “But I was washed up by the river further downstream. I lay senseless for so long I suppose they thought I was dead and not worth bothering with. When I came to myself they had taken the plunder and the prisoners who were still alive and gone. Then followed the worst two weeks of my life…. I don’t know how I lived, but I made my way towards Futtehpore and met up with General Havelock’s men. I was nearly dead and of no use for the fight, but they took care of me. I recovered.” He smiled as if it still surprised him. “I wasn’t even badly hurt, just burned and half starved and on the point of exhaustion.” He glanced at his empty sleeve. “I didn’t lose that until a few months ago. It was a stupid street brawl I tried to stop. But you don’t need to hear about that.”

  What he meant was that he did not want to relive it.

  “No, of course not,” she agreed, standing up slowly, finding her legs shaking and her balance not very good. She put out a hand to steady herself.

  “Thank you for listening to me,” he said gravely. “I … I hope I haven’t disturbed you too much … but there is no one else. They don’t wish to know. They think it would be much better for me if I were to forget … but how can I? It would be such a betrayal … even if it were possible!” He wanted reassurance he was right. “What kind of man would I be if I could just go on as if they had never lived … and died like that?”

  “One never forgets,” she agreed, thinking of some of her own memories, men, and women too, who had been fragile and brave and who had died terribly. “But you can’t expect other people to share what they don’t understand.” She straightened the bedclothes unnecessarily. “It is a part of your life, and it always will be … but it isn’t all of it.”

  He looked at her ruefully, acknowledgment in his eyes, but he did not answer.

  She glanced at his bedside table to make sure he had water and a clean glass.

  “Is there anything else you would like?”

  “No,” he said flatly. “No, thank you. Are—are you going to sit with Perdita?”

  She knew what he really meant. She was aware of his deep sense of inadequacy to be the husband, companion and protector that he had promised his wife he would be. Instead he was in need of her strength and help, not only physically but emotionally.

  “Yes,” she said with a smile of assurance. “As soon as I can see you are settled I shall go and find her.”

  He relaxed. At least for tonight he need not worry. “Thank you. Good night, Hester.” Without being aware of it he had used her Christian name.

  “Good night, Gabriel,” she answered from the doorway, then went out and closed the door quietly.

  It was after eleven o’clock, but since she had promised, she made her way downstairs to see if Perdita was still up. Most probably she was not, but she must look.

  However, as soon as she opened the withdrawing room door Perdita sat up from the sofa where she had been curled half asleep. Her hair was tousled and she blinked even in the dim light of the one wall lamp still lit.

  “How is he?” she asked anxiously. “Is he all right?”

  Hester closed the door and walked over to the chair near Perdita and sat down. She looked at the younger woman’s frightened eyes and her soft cheek, marked now where she had lain against the crease in the cushions. She was about twenty-two, but in some ways no more than a child. She had been married at eighteen after a year’s betrothal to a man who was in every way her ideal. She had seen him through the eyes of a girl who expected everything of marriage. It was not only what was required of her, it was her own dream, and Gabriel Sheldon was the perfect husband: handsome, brave, charming, well-bred and with a promising career. And for all that it had been a socially suitable marriage, they had also been in love.

  Now her whole world was in ruins, for no reason she could comprehend, and she was overwhelmed by it.

  “He is settled for the night,” Hester answered. “I think he will sleep well.” She had no idea whether he would or not, but there was no purpose in saying that to Perdita.

  Perdita frowned. “Are you sure? You were in there a long time….”

  “Oh … I suppose I was. We were just talking. There was nothing wrong, I promise you.”

  Perdita looked unhappy, twisting her hands together in her lap.

  “I never know what to say to him,” she murmured. “I can’t keep asking how he is feeling. He only says he’s all right. And I know he isn’t, but there’s nothing I can do.” She glanced up suddenly. She had very blue eyes, but in this somber light they seemed almost black. “What do you find to say, Miss Latterly?”

  Hester hesitated. She should not answer with the truth. He had not said so, but what Gabriel had told her was implicitly a confidence. It was something neither of them could share with anyone else. As close as she had been to William Monk at times—all the causes they had fought for toget
her, the tragedies they had seen—she would not share her experiences of the battlefield or the siege or the hospital at Scutari with him. But Gabriel understood.

  She must find an answer which did not make Perdita feel even more helpless and excluded.

  “It is easier for me,” she began, watching Perdita’s face. “We are not emotionally concerned with each other. There cannot be the same … the same sort of hurt. We were discussing places we had been to, what it was like, the things that are different, and those that are the same.”

  “Oh …”

  Had Perdita disbelieved her? It was impossible to tell from her downcast expression and the hesitation in her voice. Her loneliness was so sharp it was almost like a cry.

  “I told him a few of my experiences in the Crimea,” Hester went on, impelled to add to what she had said.

  “The Crimea?” Perdita did not immediately understand. Then realization flooded her face. “You were in the Crimea?”

  Hester perceived instantly that she had made a mistake. Perdita had heard and read enough to know that that conflict, with its horror and its losses, had had so much in common with the Mutiny in India that Hester and Gabriel must share feelings and memories she could never know. It was clear in her eyes that she was uncertain how she felt about it. Part of her was relieved, grateful that there was someone he could turn to; another part, easily as great, felt frightened and excluded because it was not her.

  “Yes.” It would be absurd to deny it. “That is where I learned my nursing abilities. I imagine that is why your brother-in-law chose me to come here.”

  “So you could talk to Gabriel?”

  “Rather more so I would have some knowledge of what his needs would be,” Hester answered.

  Perdita stared at the embers of the fire. “He doesn’t think I can learn to do that. He doesn’t think I will be any use or comfort at all.”

  What was there to say that was even remotely honest and yet not so hurtful it was destructive?