God Is an Englishman Read Free

them to his bandaged leg. He said, surprised by the thin timbre of his voice, “How bad is it, Bobs? Where am I hit?”
    Roberts withdrew the beaker and stared down at him, thumbs hooked in his belt, small head cocked to one side.
    “You weren’t hit. Marryatt took a good look at you when he was here yesterday and I doubt if he’ll bother to come back. Heavy bruising, a cut or two, and a touch of the sun. By God, Swann, the devil must have a lease on you! One of the lucky thirty-four again, eh? Even that damned fool Cardigan couldn’t kill you.” He sat down on the stool, crossing his legs neatly and methodically, the way he did everything, the way Swann remembered from their Addiscombe days. A small, well-knit man, with skin the colour of newly tanned leather and sharp intelligent eyes that smiled when Swann threatened to quarrel with his diagnosis.
    “Canvass your system as carefully as you please, Adam, you’ll find nothing to keep you here more than a day or two. ‘Circus’ Howard was killed, and about a dozen others. Your party had thirty-two casualties but most of them will live.
    ‘Circus’ was shot through the head when the first wave went in. That leaves just the two of us. It was hot for an hour or so before we blew in the gate, but once the Highlanders got a footing in the town it was over in minutes.”
    “The squadron didn’t stand a chance,” Swann said, sullenly. “You told me I was to contain the stragglers. You didn’t say there would be an army of them.”
    “I transmit orders, I don’t write them. Two regiments have gone in pursuit, the 17th and your lot. They won’t take prisoners. An hour or so after you were detached we found the mass grave of the garrison. It was Cawnpore over again, but no children, thank God.”
    Adam made no comment. He and Roberts had helped to empty the well at Cawnpore in July. In common with every other European in Havelock’s relieving force they had since done what they could to seal the horror of the task in a remote attic of consciousness. Swann was surprised that Bobs should refer to it now.
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    Man with a Casket: 1857–1858 5
    Roberts said, “This is the end, Adam. The rest is no more than a mop-up. It’s the end of something else, too. I missed watching the executions to come here and tell you.”
    “Well?”
    “The Company rule is over. From here on India is the Crown’s concern. It wasn’t a rumour, after all. The news came from Delhi yesterday, and Rose announced it as a near-certainty in the Mess. He wouldn’t have done that if there was any doubt.”
    He waited and when Swann said nothing he looked vaguely irritated. “I don’t have to tell you what difference this will make to all of us. Promotion will be speeded up, irrespective of our casualties. You’re a fool if you don’t take advantage of it.” He paused, hopefully, looking directly at the bed.
    Swann said, “I don’t give a damn for our prospects here. If I needed confirmation I got it in that order you brought me just before that mob came storming down on us. Eighty men, posted in the open, to ambush two thousand! I’m lucky, you tell me. Well, maybe I am, but not in the sense that you meant it. First Cardigan’s charge in the Crimea and now this. Nine solid months of senseless slaughter, encompassing the murder of God knows how many women and children. If I’m lucky it’s because my contract has expired, and for no other reason that I can think of.”
    “It will be different now, Adam. Everything will change.”
    “Soldiering won’t. Or your prospects either in the long run. You’ll die, like all the rest of the ’51 draft, shot down or speared in some Godforsaken village or river bottom with an unpronounceable name, and in what kind of cause, for God’s sake?”
    “In my own, Adam.”
    It was no more than a restatement of the old argument between them, an argument that would continue, if the paths ran parallel, for the