The Mango Tree
A Short Story.
10th June, 1857.
We live in rough times. It is interesting how quickly the calm of a summer breeze can turn to a raging storm threatening to engulf everything. One's world falls apart around him, and all he has left to do is sift through the rubble and find a way out. I know there won't be a way out for me though. My journey ends here, within a day's time. I do not really know how to confront my feelings. My thoughts keep wandering from place to place.
Cawnpore, rebellion, sedition, war.
It is not going to be my war to fight, and yet I shall be its casualty all the same. I am writing this down with the futile hope that it shall allow me to accept my thoughts and feelings. If nothing else at least those who come after Cornet Hercules Lake will know who he was, and what he did.
The guards standing outside my tent don't really understand why I write, they never have. I suppose the natives don't have patience for such frivolities. A sentinel's task is that of concentration and dullness. Every hour or so I see one of them peek in curiously, trying to see what I am doing. They never meet my gaze though, never look straight into my eyes, and I try to every single time. The aura of Company Sahib still stands strong enough that they treat me with a bit of hesitance. Outside our camp ofcourse the entire land is burning, burning with a thousand fires of rebellion. That is the thankless task of Empire, always swatting a hundred mosquitoes, cutting them down before it reaches malaria. We've failed this time though, the disease is raging now, spread across all our Presidencies. We must put it out now through steel and fire. Except I remind myself, this isn't my war to fight. All I have left to do is write my letter and then wait, for I am a condemned man. Condemned by my name, my loyalty, and my decisions.
The men who stood guard outside my tent yesterday to protect me, now stand there to imprison me. To make sure I don't flee for Kashmir, or Hyderabad to one of the rulers still loyal to Queen and Country. I know my fate is to face a firing line at dawn. Rifles up high.
Ready…Aim…Fire!
I can see it in front of my eyes, as if I am an outside witness to my own demise. They'll probably choose to do it in the muddy field outside, next to the mango tree. The mangoes will have gone by now. I see myself tied to the tree. Maybe they'll allow me to keep my uniform on, after all I haven't disgraced it. I had always appreciated the fact that the colours of our regiment were distinct from the redcoats of the other Company regiments. Now I find myself wishing we wore those, at least you can't see the blood on them. Our pale yellow tunics will only make worse the splotch of blood that a musket ball brings to a man's torso. I can see them line up, six men waiting to shoot me. There is no Queen's justice, no trial. The muskets crack and I slump forward barely hanging from the tree trunk. The dust swirls around the blood pooling near my feet, and just like that it's done. My whole life gone. Their rebellion complete. I can see it all.
A clap brings me out of my reverie though. Somebody outside has been fighting actual mosquitoes. Mosquitoes fighting mosquitoes I think ironically. The monsoon brings hordes of them, turning a beautiful climate into an annoying nuisance. They buzz in your ears incessantly, right at the moment one is about to fall asleep, then they disappear into the darkness to come back once you're comfortable again. Much like rebellion once more, one thinks he has stamped out disloyalty and unrest in a province, the subjects all bow down and salute you, the taxes come in well, the magistrates do their duty. This goes on for a while and one gets complacent, nay confident. We are the rulers of the land, the empire whom the sun never sets on. That is exactly when rebellion sparks again, when you least expect it. Just when you rest and sit down the mosquito flies back into your ear. It's a cycle as old as time, at least as old as empires have been. Rome of Antiquity swatted mosquitoes for centuries until they finally reached its gates. It is the fate of those like me, imperial servants, to die in this never ending saga.
I take out my watch and check the time, it is three in the morning. Soon my hour of reckoning will come. They wanted to execute me and the other officers at dawn so they could march early to aid some rebels holding a fortress three towns away. I had hoped that the force that is besieging them would have done so and come to save us, but that is not to happen.
I looked around at my tent, they took away my weapons when they arrested me. My beloved saber that graced my arm in so many glorious cavalry charges, my pistols who were to be my last defenders, even the knife I use to open my letters. They didn't want to leave anything to chance, the satisfaction of punishing the imperial officers could not be lost to a vain attempt at deciding one's end on their own terms. Without the swords and the guns my tent feels empty, emasculated. The pride of a warrior in his instruments is all he really has at the end of the day, it is what sustains him through the violence, the chaos, the pain. Without that I am nothing but a boy sitting in a tent scratching with his quill futilely.
One of the more humorous lieutenants in the regiment had a phrase about people like me. Those who are neither English nor native. It is said that we have one foot here, and the other in Albion. In the middle, we stand with our manhood in the sand. That poor man died long before the rebellion, Malaria took him not the lead from a disgruntled Sepoy. Maybe that is also why I am stuck here in this strange situation. One of my fellow Cornets, a lad from Ulster had said to me when we were being rounded up,
“Maybe they’ll pardon you, since you're one of them.”
I did not know how to tell him that's exactly why they would not pardon me. Because to them I am one of you. My father was an artilleryman, a Scot who came to this land chasing wealth and fame. Maybe he saw what Clive made of himself here and thought, I'd want some of that meself. He served The Company loyally for years and while the fame never really materialized, now he has a grand mansion with many servants and more money than he knows what he can do with. For the son of a tailor from Glasgow, it's not too bad. I, being the son of an artilleryman who was the son of a tailor, had greater things expected of me. Father wanted me to join the Company army like him and become an officer but that was not fated to be. I was half native through my mother, a glorious woman of her own and that disqualified me from serving. Hence to rectify this, I found my own way. I couldn't break the poor old man's heart, all he'd wanted was to see his scions serving Her Majesty with honour. I suppose they will mention honour in the letter they send him back home, after they register my death. I ended up signing here, in a cavalry regiment, because they had less stringent codes regarding race and birth. The natives call us Sowars. In fact the majority of the regiment is native, Moslems and Hindoos both together. The Companymen thought this would be best, as the native's own way of war is suited to cavalry. Now it is a death sentence for me and the other white officers.
I'd mentioned before that my mother was a glorious woman, in this my last testament I would like to add a few lines for her too. She was from Kashmir, that's why I thought of running there. Her family are fairly prosperous, influential princes of that land. I get my nose from her, and an aristocratic provenance that flows through my blood. Most Companymen here who go native end up marrying nautch girls or singers, but my father had the good fortune and qualities that impressed a blue-blood princess. Despite the opposition and scorn from the traditionals they went through with it.
It made me much more than cavalryman Lake. It gave birth to two different worlds inside me, native and Anglo-Saxon. Often I have been confused when I was a child, about whether I was a son of Kashmir or a loyal servant of Her Majesty. I suppose in some ways I still am, but the choice has been made for me now. My father gave me a proper English education with the other children of company officials and soldiers. I dotted my eyes and learned Latin, and yet I was always stuck in between. Occasionally my mother would tell me stories about my ancestors, her progenitors who had fought and won great victories in the lofty mountains of her homeland. It ignited something inside me to know I came from a lineage such as this. It wasn't enough, unfortunately, to make me truly native. Once I was done with my education, knowingly or unknowingly I made my choice. Joining the company as a Sowar was enough to make it clear to everyone except myself where my loyalties lay. I had chosen The Empire. Now the men waiting outside my tent shall judge me with flint and brimstone for it. Is it dawn already? I can't tell. Time does not really hold much value for me now that I am condemned, it is only so much. The sepoys and Sowars outside who stand to sentence me have decided that I am an Englishman and should be punished as such. The truth sadly is I don't blame them. I have become one even though I had the choice not to do so. I could have rebelled, or gone across to my mother's family who last I was told had also joined the Mutiny. I could have offered my rifle and saber with my horse to my grandfather, and stormed down with my uncles in a charge of freedom and pride. No such deliverance lies in wait for me. I shall crumple before the fog of muskets and that will be it. I regret making this choice now, but it might just be my cowardice. If the rebellion fails then I would have made the right choice, even if I won't live to see it. I hear some movement outside, it is time.
They are here.
Coronet Hercules Gerard Lake, Captain Granger's 1st Bengal Irregular Cavalry.