As I pushed on into Bandelkand it began to look as though he was wrong and Nicholson was right – it was broken, hilly country, with jungle on the slopes and in the valleys, never a white face to be seen, and the black ones getting uglier by the mile. The roads were so atrocious, and the hackery jolted and rolled so sickeningly, that I was forced to take to my Pegu pony; there was devil a sign of civilisation, but only walled villages and every so often a sinister Maharatta fort squatting on a hilltop to remind you who really held the power in this land. ‘The toughest nut south of the Khyber’ – I was ready to believe it, as I surveyed those unfriendly jungly hills, seeing nothing cheerier than a distant tiger skulking among the waitabit thorn. And this was the country that we were ‘ruling’ – with one battalion of suspect sepoy infantry and a handful of British civilians to collect the taxes.
My first sight of Jhansi city wasn’t uplifting either. We rounded a bend on the hill road, and there it was under a dull evening sky – a massive fort, embattled and towered, on a great steep rock, and the walled city clustered at its foot. It was far bigger than I’d imagined; the walls must have been four miles round at least, and the air over the city was thick with the smoke of a thousand cooking fires. On this side of the city lay the orderly white lines of the British camp and cantonment – God, it looked tiny and feeble, beneath that looming vastness of Jhansi fort. My mind went back to Kabul, and how our camp had seemed dwarfed by the Bala Hissar – and even at Kabul, with an army of ten thousand, only a handful of us had escaped. I told myself that here it was different – that less than a hundred miles ahead of me there were our great garrisons along the Grand Trunk, and that however forbidding Jhansi might look, it was a British state nowadays, and under the Sirkar’s protection. Only there wasn’t much sign of that protection – just our pathetic little village like a flea on the lion’s lip, and somewhere in that great citadel, where our troops never went, that brooding old bitch of a Rani scheming against us, with her thousands of savage subjects waiting for her word. Thus my imagination – as if it hadn’t been full enough already, what with Ignatieff and Thugs and wild Pindaris and dissident sepoys and Nicholson’s forebodings.
My first task was to look up Skene, the political whose reports had started the whole business, so I headed down to the cantonment, which was a neat little compound of perhaps forty bungalows, with decent gardens, and the usual groups already meeting on the verandahs for sundown pegs and cordials; there were a few carriages waiting with their grooms and drivers to take people out for dinner, and one or two officers riding home, but I drove straight through, and got a chowkidar’s direction to the little Star Fort, where Skene had his office – he’d still be there, the chowkidar said, which argued a very conscientious political indeed.
Frankly, I hoped to find him scared or stupid; he wasn’t either. He was one of these fair, intent young fellows who fall over themselves to help, and will work all the hours God sends. He hopped from one leg to another when I presented myself, and seemed fairly overwhelmed to meet the great Flashy, but the steady grey eye told you at once that here was a boy who didn’t take alarm at trifles. He had clerks and bearers running in all directions to take my gear to quarters, saw to it that I was given a bath, and then bore me off for dinner at his own bungalow, where he lost no time in getting down to business.
‘No one knows why you’re here, sir, except me,’ says he. ‘I believe Carshore, the Collector, suspects, but he’s a sound man, and will say nothing. Of course, Erskine, the Commissioner at Saugor, knows all about it, but no one else.’ He hesitated. ‘I’m not quite clear myself, sir, why they sent you out, and not someone from Calcutta.’
‘Well, they wanted an assassin, you see,’ says I, easily, just for bounce. ‘It so happens I’m acquainted with the Russian gentleman who’s been active in these parts – and dealing with him ain’t a job for an ordinary political, what?’ It was true, after all; Pam himself had said it. ‘Also, it seems Calcutta and yourself and Commissioner Erskine – with all respect – haven’t been too successful with this titled lady up in the city palace. Then there are these cakes; all told, it seemed better to Lord Palmerston to send me.’
‘Lord Palmerston?’ says he, his eyes wide open. ‘I didn’t know it had gone that far.’
I assured him he’d been the cause of the Prime Minister’s losing a night’s sleep, and he whistled and reached for the decanter.
‘That’s neither here nor there, anyway,’ says I. ‘You cost me a night’s sleep, too, for that matter. The first thing is: have any of these Russian fellows been back this way?’
To my surprise, he looked confused. ‘Truth is, sir – I never knew they’d been near. That came to me from Calcutta – our frontier people traced them down this way, three times, I believe, and I was kept informed. But if they hadn’t told me, I’d never have known.’
That rattled me, if you like. ‘You mean, if they do come back – or if they’re loose in your bailiwick now – you won’t know of it until Calcutta sees fit to tell you?’
‘Oh, our frontier politicals will send me word as soon as any suspected person crosses over,’ says he. ‘And I have my own native agents on the look-out now – some pretty sharp men, sir.’
‘They know especially to look out for a one-eyed man?’
‘Yes, sir – he has a curious deformity which he hides with a patch, you know – one of his eyes is half-blue, half-brown.’
‘You don’t say,’ says I. By George, I hadn’t realised our political arrangements were as ramshackle as this. ‘That, Captain Skene, is the man I’m here to kill – so if any of your … sharp men have the chance to save me the trouble, they may do it with my blessing.’
‘Oh, of course, sir. Oh, they will, you know. Some of them,’ says he, impressively, ‘are Pindari bandits – or used to be, that is. But we’ll know in good time, sir, before any of these Ruski fellows get within distance.’
I wished I could share his confidence. ‘Calcutta has no notion what the Russian spies were up to down here?’ I asked him, but he shook his head.
‘Nothing definite at all – only that they’d been here. We were sure it must be connected with the chapattis going round, but those have dried up lately. None have passed since October, and the sepoys of the 12th N.I. – that’s the regiment here, you know – seem perfectly quiet. Their colonel swears they’re loyal – has done from the first, and was quite offended that I reported the cakes to Calcutta. Perhaps he’s right; I’ve had some of my men scouting the sepoy lines, and they haven’t heard so much as a murmur. And Calcutta was to inform me if cakes passed at any other place, but none have, apparently.’
Come, thinks I, this is decidedly better; Pam’s been up a gum-tree for nothing. All I had to do was make a show of brief activity here, and then loaf over to Calcutta after a few weeks and report nothing doing. Give ’em a piece of my mind, too, for causing me so much inconvenience.
‘Well, Skene,’ says I, ‘this is how I see it. There’s nothing to be done about what the Prime Minister calls “those blasted buns” – unless they make a reappearance, what? As to the Russians – well, when we get word of them, I’ll probably drop out of sight, d’you see?’ I would, too – to some convenient haven which the Lord would provide, and emerge when the coast was clear. But I doubted it would even come to that. ‘Yes, you won’t see me – but I’ll be about, never fear, and if our one-eyed friend, or any of his creatures, shows face … well …’
He looked suitably impressed, with a hint of that awe which my fearsome reputation inspires. ‘I understand, sir. You’ll wish to … er, work in your own way, of course.’ He blinked at me, and then exclaimed reverently: ‘By Jove, I don’t envy those Ruski fellows above half – if you don’t mind my saying so, sir.’
‘Skene, old chap,’ says I, and winked at him. ‘Neither