Dust and Steel. Patrick Mercer

for Morgan’s word of command; once it came it was passed down the sweating ranks, bringing the scarlet and white-belted lines to a dusty stop.

      ‘The wing will advance…’ Morgan paused whilst the ranks tensed, ‘…left face.’ The British troops pivoted, backs now to the crowd, and stared at the native regiments, no more than thirty yards away from them across the road.

      Under Bolton’s words of command the guns wheeled into position between the slabs of infantry, the sparkling brass barrels being unhooked and thrown about to stare at the sepoys, bombardiers’ yells sending gunners scurrying to the ammunition limbers, ramrods whirling and thrusting as the charges were pushed home, the black, menacing muzzles silently challenging the native troops. The whole, slick process ended when by each gun a lance-bombardier stood hefting a linen bag of canister shot.

      ‘Wait a moment, sir, let the fuckers see what’s in store for ’em,’ McGucken growled quietly. ‘D’you want to untie ten now, sir?’

      ‘Yes, do that, please, Colour-Sar’nt.’ Morgan knew that the sepoys were studying their every move, and as the men fiddled to take the string and greased paper from one little parcel of ten paper cartridges that sat in their pouches, he looked across at his targets.

      The sepoys swayed slightly in the heat, the odd tongue quickly licking dry lips, fingers flexing nervously on the stocks of the rifles that they all held by their sides, expressions fixed but difficult to read under the sweeping, exaggerated moustaches that all the jawans wore. Morgan saw the native officers, swords drawn, standing just behind the trembling ranks. They were all older men, most grey-haired, some wearing campaign medals. The subadar-majors waited at the centre of each battalion’s line, where the colour-parties would normally have been with long strings of ‘joys’, the religious beads that looked, to the British at least, so odd around the neck of a uniform coatee. To their rear were a handful of white faces, the European officers.

      ‘Right y’are, sir, let ’em see we mean business.’ Quietly, McGucken guided Morgan.

      ‘Right Wing, Ninety-Fifth Regiment…’ Morgan’s mind flew back to the first time that he had spoken the order that he was about to give, ‘…with ball cartridge…load’, it had been at the Alma. Despite the heat, Morgan shivered.

      Rifles were canted forward before each man reached to the black, leather pouch on the front of his belt and pulled out a single, paper tube. After a regulation pause, the tops were bitten off the cartridges before the powder was poured down the muzzle of every Enfield, then the steel ramrods were pulled from below the barrel of each weapon before the charge and lead bullet were rammed home. Another pause, then the rifles were lifted obliquely across the men’s bodies, left hands catching the stocks at the point of balance before each right hand thumbed back the steel hammers to half cock.

      Right down the line the sergeants craned their heads, making sure that all the troops were ready for the fiddly operation of fitting their percussion caps. The sergeants nodded to McGucken, now standing at the centre of the four companies beside Morgan.

      He quietly prompted, ‘Right, sir.’

      ‘Caps!’ Morgan’s word of command was repeated and four hundred right hands groped in the little leather pouches that sat just beside the brass buckles on their waist belts for the pea-sized, hollow copper percussion caps to fit over the nipples at each rifle’s breech. One or two men fluffed it, dropping the caps, the tense silence being broken with the customary sergeants’ cries of: ‘You wouldn’t drop it if it was wet and slippery, would you? Pick the fucker up!’ And the offenders, embarrassed at their own clumsiness, scrabbled in the dust.

      Then again came sergeants’ nods and McGucken’s, ‘Right, sir,’ before Morgan’s command, ‘Front rank…kneel.’ Half the men pushed their right feet back and then sank to their knees, the rank behind bringing their rifles level with their waists, pointing over the heads of those in front.

      ‘Ready.’ At Morgan’s order, each hammer was clicked to full cock, making every weapon ready to fire.

      ‘Right Wing…targets front, preee…sent!’ Morgan’s final word of command from the centre of the line brought all the rifles into the aim. As damp white faces squinted down the Enfields’ sights at the bellies of the sepoys no more than a handful of paces away, a gasp and an involuntary flinch swept down the Indian ranks. The native troops blinked, hardly believing their eyes. They were only too aware of the devastation that a rifle volley would cause at that range; they’d been shown when the Enfields were issued to them that the bullet would scythe down not just one man, but any who stood packed closely behind him as well.

      The crowd at the rear of the 95th had gone still and quiet, and Morgan believed that he could read the thoughts of the men in front of him. Their great brown eyes stared at his own men’s muzzles and it was if an unspoken belief in their innocence loomed over them. Morgan hoped he was right, for the time of reckoning was almost upon them.

      ‘Left, right, left, right…get ’ere, can’t you?’ A flat, Sheffield twang was clear on the hot air.

      ‘’Ere’s Sar’nt Ormond and the commanding officer, sir,’ said McGucken. ‘’Bout time, too.’

      The detachment of the Grenadier Company had formed a hollow, marching square around the prisoners – Morgan couldn’t yet see how many – as they tramped down the slope towards the rest of the troops. Sergeant Ormond’s face was as expressionless now as it had been when he slashed Russians down at Sebastapol, thought Morgan, all stumpy, five-foot six of him, as dependable at issuing the bread ration as he would certainly prove to be at eviscerating Hindus.

      The detachment had their bayonets fixed and just beyond the bobbing points came a gaggle of horsemen, the commanding officers of the native battalions, a cloud of adjutants, and Colonel Hume, who’d been lent a cob of dubious age and wind that hardly did him justice. It was difficult to see exactly what was going on in the centre of the square, but Morgan could hear shouts in what he guessed was Hindi and, quite distinctly, in best Wirksworth, ‘Coom on, yer barnshoot, keep up with the sergeant.’ Predictably, Corporal Pegg had landed the job of escorting the prisoners. As they came closer, Morgan could see Pegg’s stubby arm thrusting first one and then the other of the two leading prisoners hard in the small of the back. Each time the yellow cuff shot forward, so the sepoys staggered and shouted; each time they shouted, so the piston-like wrist administered another shove.

      ‘Stow all that bollocks, you two; you can try to persuade Joe Gunner not to jerk ’is lanyard, if you like, but you’re wastin’ yer breath.’ Pegg was as sympathetic as Morgan had come to expect. ‘Stop draggin’ them chains in the dust, won’t you?’

      Morgan and McGucken marched forward to meet Hume and the party. They could see that the two prisoners who stumbled side by side were shackled ankle and wrist, they were barefoot and had exchanged their uniform trousers for shabby dhotis. Their swallow-tailed coatees hung open where the buttons had been cut away – on sentencing by the court martial, Morgan supposed. Despite Pegg’s attentions, both continued to yell, whilst the third man, who was bound only by rope at the wrists, was utterly silent.

      There were a few hisses and hoots from within the crowd and Morgan thought he could make out the words ‘Mungal Pandy’ being chanted by a handful, but for the most part the advancing party was surrounded by an awed silence.

      ‘Sir, the right wing and Captain Bolton’s troop deployed as you ordered.’ Morgan braced to attention and saluted with a graceful sweep of his drawn sword as Hume clattered up on his borrowed mount.

      ‘Stop, you damn screw, can’t you?’ Hume hauled on the reins of the scruffy cob, whilst the other mounted officers came to a more elegant halt. ‘Mouth like bloody iron,’ he muttered as the horse jerked its head round bad-temperedly. ‘Good, thank you, Morgan. I see you’ve got the men ready to fire. Any sign of trouble?’

      ‘No, sir, the poor lambs look quite wretched, but the crowd might give us a problem.’ Morgan looked round at the rabble, who were beginning to get a little bolder, advancing step by step closer to the backs of the 95th and Bolton’s men.