Ghost Fire Read online

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  They marched out that evening, two miles north, to where the frontier of the city met the jungle. Their commander was a lieutenant named Cole, so newly commissioned that the shining brass buttons on his coat bore traces of the grease they had been packed in. He had a high-pitched giggle, which he let out every time a gun went off from the enemy camp. Theo wondered if it was supposed to reassure the men.

  The redoubt was a small gun platform on the banks of the Hooghly, overlooking a gully where a rivulet flowed into the river. It had embrasures for six guns, but only one pointed north. The others faced the river.

  “Typical John Company,” said Nathan. “They were more worried about other merchants sailing upriver and stealing their commerce. They never conceived that their hosts might take against them.”

  “Not that it makes a great deal of difference, with these feeble guns,” said Theo. There were two cannons, but they were not much better than those he’d inspected on the wharf. On the first shot, the gun carriages would most likely disintegrate from the recoil. Worse, they were naval guns, made to be aimed at tall ships, and they would not depress low enough. When the enemy came, the shot would sail harmlessly over their heads.

  Theo crouched behind the walls of the redoubt and peered into the night. The enemy was not far off. The jungle was lit up like a great city, with all the watch fires and torches of the army camped inside. Sounds of war drifted from the trees: the rasp of whetstones sharpening blades, men discharging pistols to check the priming, the trumpeting of elephants and the crash of trees as they broke paths through the forest for their artillery.

  “That does not sound like an army planning to retreat,” said Nathan.

  “Do you think they will attack tonight?” asked Theo. Though they had barely known each other a day, he felt reassured by the lanky American’s calm presence.

  Nathan lit a match from their lamp and put it to the bowl of his pipe. “The nawab will attack in daylight.”

  Lieutenant Cole gave his high-pitched giggle. “What would an American sailor know of Indian warfare?”

  Nathan sucked on his pipe. “I know about men. The nawab will attack in daylight so that everyone can see his victory. He means to make an example of us.”

  “Then he has another think coming, by God,” scoffed Cole. He looked to the men, hoping for a huzzah. Twenty-four blank faces stared at him.

  Crammed into the guardhouse of the redoubt, their body heat and the high temperature of the night made the room an oven. No one slept.

  “Worse than being in the Black Hole,” said one of the soldiers. The Black Hole was their nickname for the jail at Fort William, a tiny cell where petty thieves and drunkards were sent to pay for their crimes.

  The night drew on. The sky turned gray, then pink, as the sun rose beyond the forest. Now Theo could see the landscape ahead of them: the gully in front of the redoubt that served as a defensive ditch, the demolished bridge that had spanned it and the high road disappearing into the forest a hundred yards distant.

  He loaded his musket and checked the priming on his pistols. Behind the loopholes, the men thumbed the edges of their bayonets, and laid out cartridges to grab when the fighting began.

  “They will come soon now,” said one of the soldiers, a small topass of Indian and Portuguese parentage, with floppy dark hair. “Before the heat is too great.”

  The day had begun, but across the ditch the mouth of the forest was still dark and empty. Drums beat from within it, accompanied by clashing cymbals and sometimes a trumpet blast. But no one came.

  “Where are they?” Cole fretted. “Have they decided to run away?”

  As if to mock him, a shrill, chilling scream rose from the jungle, like a man being flayed alive. Theo almost let off his pistol with the shock of it. A thousand more voices took up the cry. The jungle trembled, as if the trees themselves feared what was coming.

  “Ready your weapons,” Cole ordered.

  The nawab’s army came out of the jungle. They were led by men from the ghosia caste, crazed warriors who painted themselves white and daubed themselves with ashes, so that they took on the appearance of walking skeletons. They capered and scampered, howling their battle cry.

  Behind them came the main body of the nawab’s army. His banner, a white flag with a golden crescent, fluttered above them.

  “There are hundreds of them,” gasped Theo.

  “Some two thousand, by my reckoning,” said Nathan, surveying the advancing line.

  Theo stared. He felt a trembling in his veins, but it was not simple fear. It was something he had never felt before: anticipation, excitement, an energy rising through him like fire. The thrill of battle. He wanted the enemy to come. He gripped his musket tighter. “At least we won’t lack for targets.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said Nathan. He rested his gun on the parapet and sighted it. Unlike the others, who carried British-made smooth-bore muskets, he had equipped himself with an Indian jezail. With its heavy, rifled barrel, it could take a stronger charge, delivering the bullet further and more accurately than any musket could.

  He fired. Two hundred paces away, one of the nawab’s officers collapsed, blood spurting from his eye socket.

  “That was . . . incredible,” said Theo.

  Nathan winked. “I grew up on the frontier. Shooting and praying were the only entertainment we were allowed.”

  “Then we may need both your talents before the day is out.”

  The Indian line advanced. Some carried muskets, which at this distance they fired in the air, but most brandished scimitars, pikes and cutlasses.

  “Let us give them a taste of English lead!” Cole shouted. His face was a sickly green. “Ready.” He raised his sword.

  “They are still too far away for muskets,” Nathan murmured to Theo. “You will just be wasting shot and letting them closer while you reload.”

  “Aim.”

  There was a metallic clang as Cole’s sword dropped to the ground. He sank to his knees, then toppled over on his side. Blood spilled from the perfectly round hole that had been punched through his forehead.

  Twenty-four sepoys craned around. One was so shocked he discharged his musket. The others stared, dumbfounded. Across the battlefield, the enemy rushed on.

  Suddenly Theo realized all the men were looking at him. What did they want?

  “You are an Englishman,” Nathan whispered in his ear. “They expect you to lead.”

  It felt like the longest moment of Theo’s life, though it lasted only an instant. How could he, who had never seen battle, command these men? He was just a boy.

  Above the approaching army he glimpsed fluttering white banners. Probably the nawab’s, but Theo also saw the white flag of the King of France. The enemy.

  The fire returned to his veins. He grabbed Cole’s bloodied sword and raised it. “Aim!” he shouted, with the biggest voice he could muster.

  Several of the topassees glanced back over their shoulders, thinking of flight. Theo could not let that idea take hold. He marched to the nearest, slapped him across the face and pointed forward. “The enemy is that way, damn you.”

  Whooping and chanting, the opposing army rushed for the ditch. Theo’s heart pounded as if about to burst the buttons on his shirt. He was desperate to give the order to fire. But he knew he had to make the first volley tell.

  The front rank had reached the ditch. The ghosias leaped down on the rubble of the collapsed bridge, lost in the madness of battle, but the men behind hesitated on the edge. The line contracted, like a giant snake, as those further back pressed up against them.

  “Fire!” shouted Theo.

  Twenty-four muskets fired. The noise deafened him. The smell of the smoke brought back memories of Madras, lying on the rampart, hand stretched out, watching his father fall inexorably away . . .

  But he had to live now. Through the clearing smoke, he saw bodies cartwheeling down into the ditch. Some had been struck by the volley. Others w
ere pushed forward by the crowd of men behind and trampled underfoot.

  “Fire!” Theo shouted again.

  Nathan gave him an approving look. “You learn fast.”

  “I fear I have little choice.”

  It could easily have become a free-for-all, the sepoys and topassees firing and reloading as fast as they could. But Theo would not let them. Again and again, he forced them to wait for his command and fire in unison. He knew from his travels with Deegan that nothing intimidated Indian troops so much as British military discipline. He hoped the impact of regular volleys, each falling like a hammer blow, would blind them to how few troops he had.

  “It seems to be working!” he shouted to Nathan. His ears were ringing from the constant barrage—he had to shout at the top of his lungs to hear anything at all.

  “Aye,” said Nathan. Their enemy still had not crossed the ditch. They hung back, terrified of the onslaught from the redoubt, while Theo’s men crouched behind the walls. The bank of the ditch was piled high with bodies.

  In the dark shadows of the jungle, a light flashed. A deeper roar boomed over the battlefield. Theo barely heard it, but he felt it like a punch in the gut.

  The corner of the redoubt’s wall exploded. Theo was knocked off his feet by the shock wave, a blast of superheated air that threatened to tear off his limbs. A cloud of debris flew at the defenders. Two died instantly, struck in the face by jagged lumps of brick. More went down, blinded or stung by dust and sharp fragments. One grazed Theo’s cheek, half an inch from his eye. When he touched it, his hand came away wet with blood.

  They have cannon. Theo scrambled to his feet, dragging up two sepoys by the scruffs of their necks. All around him, men lay dazed and bleeding.

  “Up!” he shouted. “Up!” He took a fallen musket, jammed it into the nearest man’s hands and pointed him to the embrasure. The cannon had given the attackers new hope: they were already pouring forward down the ditch, leaping over their fallen comrades.

  The cannon fired again. The whole building shuddered with the impact. A section of wall wobbled, like a kite in a breeze, then toppled over. Three of the men, who had yet to rise after the first hit, were crushed under the rubble.

  There was no time to dig them out. Theo found Nathan and bellowed in his ear, “Can you see the gunners?”

  Nathan peered through the swirling smoke and dust. Nodding, he bit the end off a cartridge and tipped the powder down the rifle barrel. He wrapped the bullet in a patch of greased leather and shoved it in with the ramrod. The fit was so tight it took all his strength to get it down. He unstopped his powder horn, poured a small charge onto the pan, and snapped the frizzen shut.

  The process took less than twenty seconds.

  He aimed the rifle into the jungle, cushioned the stock against his cheek, and fired. Theo didn’t see if it hit, but Nathan seemed satisfied. He reloaded, quick as ever, and fired again.

  Theo crawled along the wall, ducking behind the piles of rubble as he exhorted his men back to their places. Musket balls rattled off the stonework.

  “We need reinforcements.” Theo spotted the youngest boy in his company, a lad named Eli barely thirteen years old. “Run to the fort and tell the governor I need more men now.”

  He said it loudly—partly because of the noise, but also so all the men would hear. He wanted them to believe that help was coming, that if they could hold on they would be relieved. They needed hope.

  It was a lie. The fort was two miles away. In that heat, the boy would need at least half an hour to reach it, longer to go through the company hierarchy and speak to anyone who mattered. Even if the governor agreed straight away, it would take at least two hours to assemble the reinforcements and bring them to the redoubt.

  Theo was down to seventeen men. They could not hold out nearly that long.

  Trying to disguise his dismay, he picked up a musket and started firing. There was no time for ordered volleys. Men fired as fast as they could. In the glare of the high sun, the barrels became so hot that they scalded any skin that touched them. The men sluiced their guns with buckets of water, which turned to steam almost the moment it touched the burning metal.

  The cannon had ceased firing, though whether because of Nathan’s marksmanship it was impossible to tell. The attackers had swarmed over the gully and were so close that it would be impossible for the cannons to fire without hitting their own men.

  Once again, Theo cursed the complacent minds that had built the redoubt without considering it might be attacked from the land. The walls were too low, the attackers too many and the defenders too few to keep them at bay. For every man the sepoys killed, three rushed forward to take his place. They had reached the walls. Theo dared not raise his head over the parapet for all the musket fire coming at him. When he did, he saw a sea of snarling faces, their owners jabbing and stabbing with their weapons.

  He knew they could not defend themselves for much longer. But neither could they flee. Once they broke ranks, the nawab’s army would charge them down and tear them apart. All he could hope to do was delay them long enough to afford the men in the fort time to prepare their defenses.

  Firing and reloading, firing and reloading, he thought of Constance. Would she weep when she heard he had died to save her? Would she know that she had driven him to this?

  Still the enemy came. Now the battle was fought hand to hand, with blades and bayonets and anything they could grab. Bodies piled up on the rubble of the collapsed walls, so that there was no longer anywhere to hide. Theo fought with a borrowed sword, hacking and punching and stabbing with no technique except blind desperation.

  An Indian vaulted over the remains of a battlement, brandishing his scimitar. Theo’s arm was so weary he could barely lift his sword. He brought it up just in time to parry the stroke, but too slow to move to the attack. The scimitar flashed again, a numbing blow that shivered up his arm. The sword flew from his sweaty hands, spinning away across the blood-slicked rampart.

  The man raised his scimitar. Theo tried to step back, but the press of fallen bodies behind him left no room to move. His opponent bared his teeth, stained red with betel juice.

  And then his head disintegrated in a spray of blood, like a melon crushed under a cart wheel. Whatever had struck him plowed on, cutting a bloody gash through the crowd on the rampart.

  Theo picked up his sword. Only then did he dare look out, through the western embrasure toward the river. The sight made his heart leap. An East Indiaman had come up, her boats straining to hold her against the current, like dogs on a leash. Her guns were run out. One flashed as she fired again, and another ball ripped through the attacking hordes.

  Victory turned to panic as the nawab’s army realized their flank was exposed. They began to fall back, giving Theo’s men precious seconds to reload and deliver a volley of musketry. From the rear, the Indian captains bellowed at their men to stand their ground and press home the assault.

  It was futile. Standing on the corpses of their fallen comrades, exhausted from intense fighting in the heat, the army had had enough. They poured back across the ditch, sped on their way by more shots from the exultant defenders.

  Theo embraced Nathan, who was using his jezail’s greater range and accuracy to pick off a few of the stragglers. “We did it.”

  “They will come again,” he warned.

  “With luck, our reinforcements will arrive first.”

  They were both wrong. The nawab’s army stayed skulking in the jungle, giving Theo time to repair the redoubt’s defenses as best he could. He kept gazing back down the high road toward Fort William, looking for the telltale plume of dust that would announce their relief. None came.

  Late in the afternoon, Nathan volunteered to scout out the enemy positions. Theo was reluctant, but Nathan persuaded him. “I grew up playing hide-and-seek with French fur-trappers and Mohawk Indians, with my scalp as the forfeit if I lost. I think I can keep out of the way of a fifty-thousand-strong army.”

  T
heo watched as Nathan crept across the battlefield, darting between the stumps of trees that had survived the fighting. He moved with lithe grace, alert to any danger, and disappeared into the forest.

  He returned half an hour later. “They’ve gone,” he announced.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Men, elephants, cannon—everything.”

  Theo stared at him in absolute joy. “Then we have won.” He was already seeing himself at the ball the governor would give to celebrate, the savior of Calcutta. He imagined the look on Constance’s face. “Everything they said about the Indians—that they could not stand up to English discipline, that they have no stomach for a fight—was true.”

  The men cheered; some let off their guns. Nathan did not join them. He looked thoughtful.

  “Come.” Theo clapped him on the arm. “When we get back to Fort William we will open a cask of rum.”

  A movement caught his eye. Someone was coming up the road from the fort. He smiled, thinking how sick they would look when they realized they had missed the battle.

  It was Eli, the boy he had dispatched earlier. He was running, his face so red Theo feared he would faint. He staggered the last few paces and fell in a sweating heap at Theo’s feet. He was trying to say something, but his parched mouth could not make the words.

  “Fetch water!” Theo shouted. Anxiety pricked him. Why had no one else arrived? Surely word of their victory had not spread so quickly.

  The boy gulped down the water. “Easy,” cautioned Nathan. “Too much too quick will be worse than none at all.”

  Eli looked up, his face dripping. “Governor’s respects, sir. You’re to fall back to the fort at once.”

  Theo stared at him. “But we have won.”

  “Siraj’s taken his army round to the east. They’ve crossed the ditch at Cow Cross Bridge and made their camp on the Dumdum road. If you don’t retreat now, you’ll be cut off.”

  Some of the men had gathered close and heard the news. Others, too tired to move, lay slumped out of earshot. Theo turned to address them. Heat and despair made him want to be sick, but he knew he must not let it show.