The Durham deception

The Lucknow Dagger

Helen and Tom were having an early supper in Major Marmont’s room at the County Hotel. He said that he could not appear on stage unless he had eaten beforehand. He welcomed their company – the slight prickliness of their earlier discussion in the Assembly Rooms had disappeared – and he wanted to give them his personal account of the Lucknow Dagger.

‘You’ve got my notes, Mr Ansell, though as I said I don’t require an affidavit now. But I feel I owe it to you to tell you both how I came by the wretched thing.’

So over cold pork, chicken and hard-boiled eggs together with pickles and warm potatoes and a bottle of Sauternes, Major Marmont related how he had been a junior officer in the Native Infantry at the time of the Mutiny less than twenty years before. Efficiently, he sketched out the circumstances leading to the Lucknow siege. The attack on Meerut, the terrible massacre at Cawnpore which filled every true-born Englishman with horror and fury, and then nearer to Lucknow the rebellions at Sitapur and Faizabad. Fortunately the quick action of Sir Henry Lawrence, the Commissioner at Lucknow, resulted in the higher parts of the town around the Residency being fortified or at least made defendable.

‘But we must come to the immediate reason you are here, Mr and Mrs Ansell. It is to hear how I acquired the Dagger of Lucknow. We hung on by our fingertips, as I say, but we hung on. We had a great piece of good fortune when we discovered more stores hidden beneath the Residency. Good old Lawrence had had them put there but he had neglected to tell anyone – his death got in the way of imparting the information, you see. But what we found in the cellars was enough to provision us for a couple more months and the relief parties were starting to get through. One of them had secured a place called Alum Bagh about four miles south of the city. It wasn’t a town or settlement, more of what they sometimes call a pleasaunce in that part of the world, a kind of park. But it had walls and was capable of being defended. More importantly, messages could be got through from Alum Bagh to Cawnpore, which had been retaken by this stage. Of course someone first had to cover the ground between Lucknow and Alum Bagh. Later they worked out a system of signalling by semaphore but before that they depended on foolhardy volunteers to carry messages.’

As he was speaking, Major Marmont laid out a salt cellar and pepper pot close together and put a knife-rest on Tom and Helen’s side of the table to show the relative position of the three places. This was hardly necessary but Tom supposed it was a habit acquired from years in the army. Given his other trade, perhaps Marmont would shortly make the salt cellar disappear.

‘I was young and reckless enough to volunteer to deliver a message to Alum Bagh, information which had to be carried forward to Cawnpore. Also someone was required to guide the next relief column into Lucknow. We were surrounded by rebels and, poorly organized though they were, the sepoys were scattered at points around the city which were known only to the defenders. Having volunteered myself and received a pat on the back from Colonel Sir John Inglis, I decided that I would carry out my mission in native disguise as a sepoy. It was a foolish thing to volunteer, no doubt. I had every reason to live, even though all our lives were in peril. But I had found a girl, you see. An Indian girl. I suppose I wanted to show off.

‘You may not think it, but I was once a lithe young man, quick and nimble. Months in the sun had darkened my complexion but I darkened it further by the application of walnut dye, not forgetting arms and legs, and I clad myself in native garb. I must have had the desire to dress up even then. I was accompanied by a local man called Lal. He was a little younger than me, almost a boy in fact, and although a fairly recent arrival in Lucknow he was familiar with every inch of the ground.

‘The distance between the Residency and Alum Bagh was only a few miles as the crow flies but we decided not to go through the city which lies to the south of the Residency compound – it was too full of rebel sepoys and dark alleys where any peril or patrol might be lurking. For safety’s sake we would take the longer route through the open country in the east and past the entrenchments before we circled back to the west and so towards Alum Bagh. It was a night with a crescent moon and a few stars. Although the rains had started it was very hot and humid.

‘I remember sitting with Lal while we waited for it to grow dark enough for us to get started. I hadn’t eaten. I couldn’t have kept anything down. Concealed under my shirt was a pouch containing various letters from Inglis which were to be forwarded to Cawnpore. They were to do with the number of soldiers and civilians left in the Residency, our dwindling stock of ammunition and so on. I also carried hastily drawn maps showing the best routes into Lucknow, although these might change from day to day. The pouch was secured by a cord about my neck. In the event of danger I was to dispose of the maps and letters, although no one told me exactly how. Eat them perhaps.

‘I noticed that Lal also had an object secured by a cord about his neck and, seeing my gaze, he drew out a sheath attached to the cord, withdrew a dagger from the sheath and handed it to me. It was one of those fine Hindoo artefacts, half for use and half for ornament. It sat nicely in my hand but I felt very uneasy holding it. There were ivory designs on the handle. We were sitting in the half-dark but the ivory gleamed like a skull. I was surprised that an ordinary young man should be carrying something so apparently precious – and indeed he had shown it to me with an odd sort of reluctance – but I said nothing and handed back the dagger. Seeing the weapon made me think that I should equip myself with a knife or a pistol. But I had no knife handy, and I thought that if I took my pistol it would conflict with my disguise. I was setting out, unarmed.

‘Anyway, to distract ourselves we talked a lot, talked about anything and everything. Lal had pretty good English. I didn’t know much about him before except that he was an admirer of the British. Turned out that he’d been born outside Lucknow and that he was much grander than I thought. He was the son of some prince in those parts. There are more Badshahs and Rajas and Nawabs and Nizams up there than you can shake a stick at. That no doubt explained how he came by the dagger.

‘Anyway I suppose I spoke to Lal with a touch more respect than I would have done otherwise but I didn’t spend much time thinking of his lineage. You don’t when you might be walking to your imminent death.’

Marmont paused for a mouthful of food and half a glass of Sauternes and to catch his breath. Tom thought, old Mackenzie said I’d enjoy meeting the Major and listening to his tales and he was right.

‘The going was straightforward at first,’ resumed Marmont. ‘We had to cross a canal at the point where it met the Gumti River but we already knew that the sepoys had damned the canal so that a stretch to the south would flood and make it harder for any relief to get across with their heavy guns. We crept across the nullah – that’s their word for the canal – which was little more than a dried-out depression in the earth at that point. It was eerie. There was no one about but we imagined sepoys waiting to jump out at us from behind every palm or pepul tree. They weren’t expecting any trouble in the eastern quarter but only from the south, you see, which was why they’d flooded the canal down there.

‘Anyway, Lal and I made our slow progress to east and south. When we began to go parallel to the line of the nullah between Dilksuka and Char Bagh Bridges, which were half submerged, we could see what little moonlight there was glinting on the flooded plain. There was the occasional spark of a campfire on the far side. Eventually we arrived at Char Bagh itself, which was a kind of landmark no more than a couple of miles from our destination. Char Bagh was another walled-off area. That part of northern India is full of gardens and secluded areas. This one, though, was in a dilapidated state, its walls broken down in places because of the fighting which had already occurred there.

‘Lal and I had been on the move for about three hours now and I suppose we were growing a little tired and careless. Because we had so far encountered no trouble, we’d forgotten that we were crossing what was literally enemy territory. I was even regretting that I hadn’t had anything to eat before we started. I spotted a gap in a wall and, with gestures, indicated that we might rest up for a few moments. I scrambled through the gap. Lal followed, only more quietly. I walked forward and stepped on something soft, something that squealed. At first I thought it was an animal but the squeals were soon followed by curses and a man rose up before us in the open space beyond the wall. He must have been sleeping and was as surprised to see us as we were to see him.

‘I was frozen not with fear exactly but with uncertainty. I did not know what to do next. But Lal did. The moment he heard the noises he’d started to circle round the man and was now on his far side. The man opened his mouth – he was about to shout, to scream, to call for help – I could distinctly see the black hole of his mouth and a raggedy circle of teeth, dark as it was. He was about to shout, I say, and bring down ruin on both of us, when Lal clapped one hand over his gaping mouth and with the other seemed to punch the unfortunate fellow between the ribs. The man arched forward and toppled on to the ground, and Lal almost fell on top of him. He continued to strike at him and I realized that he was using not his fists but the dagger. The dagger with the ivory handle.

‘After a time the man lay still and Lal scrambled to his feet, though not before he’d wiped the blade on the dry grass. He was panting hard and muttering some words I couldn’t make out. I sensed rather than saw the fresh blood on his garments. We looked down at the prone body. I said something like “Well done.” He said that he had not meant to kill the man but that the dagger had a mind of its own. That’s how he expressed it, a mind of its own.

‘I glanced at the corpse. It crossed my mind that this might have been not one of the rebel sepoys neglecting his duties as a sentry but an innocent who’d lain down to sleep in the wrong place – a peasant or what they call a ryot over there.

‘But he was no innocent. From the far side of the wall there came cries of alarm and within moments we saw shapes on the other side of the gap. Lal and I took to our heels, dodging among the trees and looking for another way out of this enclosure. I risked a glance back and saw a few of them, now equipped with flaming torches, gathered about the fallen body of the sentry. There was a collective cry of rage and grief. We knew that if we were taken by the sepoys they’d show no mercy, particularly as my companion, a fellow Indian, was covered in the blood of the one he’d killed.

‘As I’ve said, the Char Bagh wall was pierced in plenty of places and we slithered through the next gap we came to, fast as rabbits. I’d lost my bearings by now, as you tend to if you’re being pursued by a crowd with murderous intentions. In fact the only idea in my head, apart from not falling into the hands of the sepoys, was to get rid of the pouch containing the letters and maps which I could feel knocking against my own ribs as I ran. Before we knew it we’d reached the edge of the area that had been flooded by the damning of the canal. Unawares we’d turned back in a northerly direction, the opposite one to the Alum Bagh route. Too late now!

‘The water stretched in front of us for several hundred yards. By luck, there were no signs of sepoys on the far side of the floodwater, or at least no camp fires. Behind us were our pursuers, their torches like angry fireflies. We could hear them crashing through the grass and brush. There was a crack as one of them loosed off a rifle shot. We didn’t need any more encouragement to wade out into the floodwater. It was no more than knee-high at first and very spongy underfoot. Altogether I thought it would not prove much of a deterrent to those behind us.

‘But of course we were soon out of our depth. While we’d been wading in I unfastened my pouch and I half scattered, half thrust the documents into the water as soon as it got deep enough. I reckoned whatever was on ’em would soon be erased by the water – which by the way was turbid and foul-smelling. The sheets of paper floated away under the stars. But by that stage I had other things to worry about. Lal was floundering, his head bobbing on the surface. He couldn’t swim of course and he was in a muck-sweat. The only mercy was that our pursuers weren’t minded to follow us into the water. I could see them clustering on the edge. I’m no mean swimmer myself but it was a struggle to get hold of Lal and avoid being dragged down with him. I managed it, though, after swallowing and spluttering out mouthfuls of filthy water while I was ordering him to keep still and allow himself to be saved – if I could do it!

‘As long as we’d been in difficulties, the watchers on the bank had done nothing, neither shouted, nor loosed off any shots. Perhaps they could see the shape of our heads regularly dipping underneath the water and must have been expecting us not to reappear. But when I started to pull strongly with one arm, cradling Lal with the other, they realized we might get away. They began to shoot and run up and down, shouting to attract attention on the side we were heading for. It was our great good fortune that their shots went wide and that we were opposite a vacant stretch of ground. The only way across was to swim since the bridge at Char Bagh was impassable. Lal and I struggled out, dripping and exhausted, and crawled into the shelter of some trees.

‘We couldn’t stay there. It would be getting light in two or three hours. We retraced our steps although this time on the inner side of the flooded canal. Again we were lucky because it was that point in the night when everyone is least alert, even those who have been tasked with keeping watch. We reached the half submerged Dilksuka Bridge and then made a sweep north and west, skirting Lucknow. It might have been a dead city, there was no movement, no sound except for the barking of the pye-dogs. Just as the first streaks of light were creeping into the eastern sky, the two of us were also creeping under the steep embankment by Secunder Bagh, knowing that the sepoys had fortified that area.

‘We nearly got ourselves shot on the edge of the stronghold around the Residency. Each corner of the defended area had a battery dug-in. By now there was enough light for the guard to see two bedraggled figures in native costume staggering towards his battery. He raised his rifle and shouted out to his sleeping companions and if I hadn’t called out in English, giving my name and rank, we might have fallen to a bullet from our own side. Anyway we were welcomed back and were soon fed, washed and changed as best as our straitened circumstances would allow.

‘Our mission had been a failure, a complete failure. I must say that Inglis was very decent about it. He patted me on the back just as he’d done before I set out, and praised me for having the presence of mind to destroy the documents I was carrying. “No harm done,” he said. “No good either,” I might have replied. And within a day or so, a second volunteer did manage to reach Alum Bagh to guide in the next relief column. He was a civilian although a soldier’s son, a fellow by the name of Thomas Kavanagh. He received a medal for his achievement, and well deserved it was too. The relief column broke through to Lucknow under Campbell and then the Residency was finally abandoned.’

Here Major Marmont paused and his expression took on the introspective look of earlier. Tom wondered whether he was thinking that that medal might have been his, if the mission had turned out right. But there was something else on his mind.

‘Before any of this happened, the relief and so on, I was back on my feet and ready to do my part in defending the depleted population in the Residency. But Lal was not so fortunate. He was a fit young man but he must have picked up something in that filthy canal as we were floundering across it in our escape from Char Bagh. I went to see him in the makeshift infirmary on the first floor of the Residency. I felt an obligation to him – I might have saved his life in the water, even if only for a brief time, but he had preserved mine first of all by killing the sentry. It was the end of the day when I visited the infirmary and the sun was a great ball of red above the horizon. The light burned through the tattered muslin screen over the window which was meant to keep out the bugs.

‘Lal was lying on a narrow cot, shaking and sweating profusely. His skin was a queer greenish tint and his eyes were wild. The doctor shook his head at me as I looked towards him. The doctor was a civilian but could have passed for a soldier for he had a brisk, clipped manner and used as few words as possible. Mind you, we never said much to each other. This doctor was no friend of mine. I mentioned to you, Mr Ansell, that my wife Padma was Indian. She was the girl I met in Lucknow. The doctor fancied himself a rival to me for the hand of this beautiful girl. Padma means lotus flower, you know. Thank God, she chose me – but that was later.

‘Anyway, on this occasion the doctor didn’t have to speak. Anyone would have known what that head-shake meant. It might have been different in a well-appointed hospital but here we were, under siege, without medicines.

‘I bent over Lal to offer him some words of comfort. He didn’t recognize me at first but then he seized my wrist and gabbled some words I couldn’t understand. Eventually I made them out. “It is fate,” he was saying. “It is deserved.”

‘At the same time he was struggling to untie the cord which secured the sheath and dagger that still hung about his neck. It might seem strange that no one had removed – or stolen – the dagger with its strange ivory handle but it is a measure of those desperate days that we all had other more important things on our minds. He pressed sheath and dagger into my hand. I thought he wanted me to examine them again and reluctantly I withdrew the weapon from its sheath. It’s not fanciful to say that the blade seemed to gather to itself the furious red light of the setting sun, as if it was once more steeped in blood. I made to return it to Lal but, no, he wanted me to have the dagger. He pushed it back with all his strength. It was a gift, a dying gift if you like. He whispered, “It is yours. May it bring you better fortune, Lieutenant Marmont.”

‘Naturally I didn’t know what he was talking about and nor was I to find out because he was seized with a worse bout of shaking, amounting almost to a convulsion. I stood there, helpless. At length the doctor more or less ordered me from the room. Lal had subsided into an exhausted sleep or something deeper.

‘When I had a moment to myself I looked more carefully at the dagger. It was a fine piece of work, no doubt, but I would have been glad to return it to Lal. I don’t know why, but there was some quality to it which made me uneasy. It had been used recently to kill a man, and had very likely despatched other men in the past. But it wasn’t that exactly. After all, we were surrounded by carnage in Lucknow and any weapon you touched might have been used to kill and maim.

‘But I was the possessor of the dagger whether I liked it or not, Mr and Mrs Ansell. Lal died a few hours later, and his last words to me had been a request, a command even, that I should take the thing. There was a witness too in the shape of the doctor. He had some more unwelcome information, which was probably why this medical man took pleasure in passing it on to me. It seemed that Lal had been talking half lucidly during his brief sickness, and that he had referred to having left his father’s house in disgrace. In fact, he appeared to be some kind of fugitive. I remembered that he had mentioned his background before we set off on our mission and that I’d been surprised he came of princely stock. Perhaps it wasn’t true, perhaps it was all fantasy. But plainly there was some sinister association with the dagger. Why else should he have said, “May it bring you better fortune”?

‘I learned later that the dagger was indeed cursed. One of Lal’s brothers had died while he, Lal that is, was wielding it in what was supposed to be a playful tussle and the young man had fled his family home in shame. Hearing all this, I examined the dagger carefully and, imagination or not, it took on a very malevolent aspect. A weapon with a mind of its own, Lal had said, as if the spirit of Kali dwelt within the thing.’

Major Marmont might have had more to say but he was interrupted by Dilip Gopal and his nephews, the Major’s sons, arriving from their lodging-house nearby. It was time to go to the Assembly Rooms for that evening’s performance.