Jack Windrush Collection - Books 5-8

Chapter 6-1

"O"Neill"s back!" Riley was first with the news, and soon the words spread around the company. Jack looked up as Sergeant O"Neill marched in, gaunt-faced but as erect as ever, with his uniform clean and his rifle in his hand.

"Sergeant O"Neill reporting for duty, sir!" O"Neill gave a smart salute.

"Good to have you back, Sergeant," Jack said. "How"s the wound?" O"Neill had been injured during the fighting in the tunnels underneath Lucknow, when Campbell had relieved the siege earlier in the war.

"The medical men saved my arm, thank you."

Jack nodded. "Are you fit for a long march? Don"t say you are, if you"re not."

"I"m fit, sir. I could outmarch any Johnny Raw."

"Aye, you probably could, O"Neill. Sheer bloody determination would see you through." Jack looked around. He had moved his company of the 113th outside the walls of Bareilly, away from the temptation of looting and the dangers of women and drink. The men had grumbled at first and, being British soldiers, many had tried to sneak back into the city. Now they were panting in the heat, or under fatigues, or cleaning their rifles. "I hope so, O"Neill because we"re on the march soon."

"Where are we going, sir?"

"I"m not sure, sergeant," Jack said. "Have you ever heard of a woman called Jayanti?"

"I can"t say that I have, sir." O"Neill looked suddenly defensive. "Has she been asking for me, sir?"

"No." Jack had no desire to ask about O"Neill"s amorous adventures. "She is the leader of a band of fighting women, like Uda Devi."

"I remember that name, sir. That"s the bint that hid up a tree and shot some of our lads." O"Neill stamped his feet. "I hoped we didn"t meet others like her."

"There are others, sergeant, and this Jayanti woman is their leader. We"ve been ordered to find her."

"And kill her, sir?"

"If we can, sergeant." Jack waited for O"Neill"s reaction. "What do you think of that?"

"I don"t normally hold with killing women, sir." O"Neill gave the reply Jack would expect from any British soldier. "But if this Jayanti is anything like Uda Devi, well, she killed some of ours, sir, so she"s fair game."

Jack asked O"Neill a question he would never have asked Greaves. "How will the men react to being ordered to kill or capture a woman?"

O"Neill screwed up his face as he considered the question. "I"m not sure, sir. Our lads won"t be too happy about it, sir. They won"t want to kill a woman, even that one. Some of the others, though," he shrugged, "they"d kill their grannies for the price of a drink."

Jack nodded. He understood what O"Neill meant. By “our lads”, O"Neill meant the Burma and Crimea veterans that bloody battles had bonded together. Jack shared O"Neill"s opinion of others that the Army had recruited from the criminal class, the lowest of the low, men rejected by other regiments to end up in the 113th.

"When do we leave, sir?"

"In two days, sergeant," Jack said. "I"m taking fifty men and a Pathan prisoner who claims to know where Jayanti may be based."

"Oh, does he claim that, sir?" O"Neill looked sceptical. "And who told him? Some fellow down the public, or maybe his granny heard it when she was washing her clothes in the river?"

Jack smiled. "I share your disbelief, sergeant. That"s why he"ll be under close guard all the time, and if he tries to bolt, we"ll shoot him like a dog."

O"Neill grunted. "He"s a Pathan, you say? They are the most devious devils under the sun, sir. He"ll cut a few of our throats at night, steal half a dozen rifles and slip back to the Khyber."

"He won"t" Jack said. "Not with you watching him."

"Yes, sir." There was a hint of a smile on O"Neill"s face. "I thought you were coming to that."

Both men stopped to watch a regiment of Gurkhas march past, small, stocky men resplendent in red coats and blue pantaloons, very much like the Zouaves the 113th had known in the Crimea.

"Cocky little buggers," O"Neill said. "I"m told there are 16,000 of them with us now."

"They fight well, I"ve heard," Jack said.

O"Neill eyed them sourly. "Aye; we"ll see. Since the sepoys turned traitor, I have little time for native troops. I won"t trust them again, and that"s the truth."

"There"s a lot of people think like that," Jack murmured. "Nothing will be quite the same in India after the Mutiny."

An hour before dawn they marched out of Bareilly, heading north and east. Jack led with Elliot and Lieutenant Bryce behind him, and Ensigns Wilden and Peake at the rear. In between marched fifty men with Sergeants Greaves and O"Neill. All were in khaki, with handkerchiefs to protect their necks from the sun and Enfield rifles at their shoulders.

"You"d better not be leading us into an ambush," O"Neill warned Batoor. "If you try any funny stuff, I"ll ram six inches of steel up your arse."

Batoor replied in Pushtu and spread his hands in an expression of innocence that would have made Jack smile in other circumstances.

"Try it once, son, just try it once." The diminutive Logan was a full head shorter than Batoor. "I"ll gut you."

Batoor only grinned, with his shaven head bobbing above Logan"s hat and his wrists chained together.

Jack stepped aside and watched his men march past. As well as Logan, the truculent Glasgow man, there was Riley, the gentleman-thief, Coleman and Thorpe, forever arguing until the fighting started. There was the ex-poacher Whitelam, Parker from Liverpool with his love of animals, and the Welshman Williams who had done sterling work during the defence of Lucknow the previous year. Hutton was next, a quiet man, steadier than the majority of the 113th, and beside him slouched Armstrong. Jack didn"t like Armstrong, the one-time deserter who had been inside the army"s detention centre at Greenlaw and harboured resentment against authority, but he was useful in a fight.

Jack kept them marching until the sun grew too hot and then they camped in the shade of a small clump of trees, with the men dropping to the ground and gasping for air.

"There"s still pandies around!" O"Neill and Greaves kicked them back to their feet. "Get this camp in order! Hutton, Armstrong, Smith, Monaghan, you"re on picket duty! The rest of you, get the tents up!

"Leave it to the sergeants," Jack advised the ensigns. "They know what they"re doing, and the men listen to them."

"Yes, sir," Wilden said. "But I"m an officer, I hold the Queen"s commission. I outrank the sergeant."

Jack stared at the boy while Elliot looked away to hide his smile. "Sergeant O"Neill fought in Burma against dacoits and faced the Russians at the battle of Inkerman and the Redan. He was in the first relief of Lucknow; he fought at Cawnpore and was wounded defending Lucknow. What have you done?"

Ensign Wilden coloured.

"Exactly," Jack said. "Now take two men and patrol back the way we have come. March one mile, check to see if there are any pandies and return. Move!"

"What was that for?" Elliot asked.

"To get the young Griff out of my way," Jack replied.

"We were young too, once." Elliot said.

"I"m sure we were never that young," Jack said with a smile.

The officers had a tent each, while a dozen men had to share. When the heat reached its zenith, officers and men not on duty would lie near naked on their charpoys, struggling for breath in the scorching atmosphere and wishing the monsoon would come. With pickets posted and the men eating and drinking, Jack could relax a little. He checked his half company. A few years ago, the 113th had been the worst regiment in the British Army, and now they were slowly gaining a reputation as a hard-fighting unit able to take care of itself.

"We"re still at the bottom of the pile, Jack." Elliot had known him long enough to gauge what he was thinking.

"Are we, Arthur?"

"We"ll never be socially acceptable like the Brigade of Guards or the Royals." Elliot lit a cheroot and allowed the aromatic smoke to coil around them. "We"ll always be the regiment that generals turn to for the dirty jobs." He passed over a cheroot to Jack.

"Could you imagine the Guards or the Royal Malverns tracking a woman across India?" Jack shook his head. "It would be far beneath their dignity. You"re right, Arthur. We"re here for the tasks nobody else wants."

"Or the tasks nobody else can do," Elliot said. "Our men have skills the Guards or Royals may lack."

Jack glanced over at Riley and Whitelam. "We have thieves, housebreakers and poachers. Yes, we have a fine collection of men; they are quite the pick of the country."

"You"re in a bad mood," Elliot said. "What"s bothering you, Jack?"

"Where are we headed, Arthur? What is all this about? We"ve broken the back of this mutiny, killed God-only-knows how many pandies and civilians, and lost thousands of our men and women. What then? India carries on, and the Army will send you, the 113th, and me somewhere else to squash another trouble spot, lose more men to disease and the bullet. What"s it all about, Arthur?"

"I"m damned if I know," Elliot said. "This was the only career open to a duffer like me. I"m the third son, with no money and no prospects." He shrugged. "What else can I do? I haven"t the head for business or the inclination to follow my father into the church."

Jack pulled on his cheroot. "I know your people wish you to be a general," he said. "General Sir Arthur Elliot. That sounds good. I was always intended to be a career soldier, as you know."

"I know," Elliot said. "Like your father and your grandfather."

"And my great grandfather and great-great grandfather and as far back as records go." Jack blew out a perfect smoke ring and watched as it wavered in the heat. "I do not doubt that there was a Windrush at the Battle of Hastings, although God knows which side he was on, and when Boadicea faced the Romans, there was probably a Windrush in her army as well."

"The Romans must have viewed her as we view Jayanti or Hussaini Khanum or the Rani of Jhansi," Elliot lay back and contemplated a pair of hunting birds high amidst the clouds. "And now we are the foreigners invading other countries to bring civilisation. How times change."

"Except India was not a country when we came here, so we are not foreign," Jack said. "Or at least, we"re no more foreign than the Sikhs or Ghurkhas or Pathans."

"And we"re better rulers." Elliot watched as one of the birds swooped down on its prey. "We are benevolent, kindly and honourable."

"Tell that to all the mutineers we"ve hanged or blown from guns," Jack said. "Or the hundreds of men General Neill executed without trial."

"I was being sarcastic," Elliot said. "Halloa, something"s up. Whitelam"s all of an agitation there."

Jack looked up. Whitelam was talking to O"Neill, his arms flapping and his voice raised. "I"d better go and see before he talks himself into trouble. You stay here and rest, Arthur. All that deep thinking must be very tiring for you."

"I"m telling you, sergeant, that"s what I saw!" Whitelam was shouting, nearly pressing his face against that of O"Neill.

"And I am telling you, Whitelam, that you will not be disturbing Captain Windrush with any of your nonsense. Now go and dig a latrine trench like I told you."

"What"s the trouble, sergeant?" Jack had a final pull on his cheroot and flicked the stub away.

"It"s nothing to worry about, sir." O"Neill gave a smart salute. "Private Whitelam here is just leaving."

"What did you see, Whitelam?" Jack asked.