The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [627]
They found the ground-floor rooms full of dead, wounded and dying men, but there was no sign of the Doctor-Sahib, and his exhausted hospital assistant, Rahman Baksh, looking up briefly from tying a pad made from a towel over a hole in a sepoy's thigh, said that the Sahib had been called upstairs and that Hassan Gul had better take the Naik up there – there was no room down here for any more wounded.
The two jawans climbed the stairs in search of the doctor, and peering in through an open doorway saw him leaning over Sir Louis, who was lying on a bed with his knees drawn up and one hand to his head. The sight did not dismay them, since everyone knew that the ‘Burra-Sahib’ had been wounded in the head early on in the siege; and supposing him to be suffering from the after-effects of that wound (and being unwilling to call the doctor away from such an exalted patient) they turned back and went below again to wait until he should come down.
But Sir Louis had not collapsed from concussion. He had been hit again: this time in the stomach and by a bullet that had smashed through the wooden shutter into the room in which he had been standing, a bullet fired from one of the English-made rifles that a previous Viceroy, Lord Mayo, had presented to Yakoub Khan's father, Shere Ali, as a good-will gift from the British Government…
Sir Louis had managed to reach the bed, and the sowar who had been firing through a loophole to one side of the window had run down to fetch Surgeon-Major Kelly. But there was nothing that Rosie could do beyond giving him water to drink – for he was very thirsty – and something to deaden the pain. And hoping that the end would come quickly.
He could not even stay with him, for there were too many others who needed his help, some of whom could be patched up sufficiently to continue fighting. Nor was there any point in letting it be known that Cavagnari-Sahib was mortally wounded, since such news could only serve to take the heart out of everyone in the garrison, and the assault upon their spirits was already severe enough without that, the rabble in the street and on the house-tops immediately behind it having begun to call upon their fellow-Mussulmans to join them, exhorting them to slay the four Sahibs and help themselves to the treasure in the Residency…
‘Kill the Unbelievers and join us!’ urged the stentorian voices of unseen men who were sapping the flimsy, mud-brick wall. ‘We have no quarrel with you. You are our brothers and we wish you no harm. Only give up the Angrezis to us and you will all go free. Join us – join us!’
‘Thank God for young Wally,’ thought Rosie, listening to that continual stream of exhortations. ‘If it wasn't for him, some of our fellows might be tempted to do just that and save their own skins.’ But Wally seemed to know just how to counter those shouted lures and keep up the spirits of the garrison, not only of his own jawans but of the countless non-combatants who had taken refuge in the Residency, both servants and clerical staff. He also appeared to have mastered the art of being in half-a-dozen places at once – one moment on the roof of one or other of the two houses, the next over at the barracks or in the courtyard, and the third in the rooms in which the wounded and dying lay – praising, encouraging, comforting; rallying the fainthearted, cracking jokes, singing as he raced up the stairs to hearten the dwindling band of Guides who held out on the