Irawadi, Like the River


Kicking his heels in Calcutta, a widowed and wounded Lord Edrington struggles with regret and uncertainty about his future. India is won, with the last of France's allies defeated in the final battles of the Mahratta wars. A renewed war on the Continent beckons, but until he is called to duty once more, Edrington will find himself in need of solace, lest "abstinance and idleness together will drive him mad."

Part 1

Calcutta, India 1803

The facade of Government House was lit up like the day, ablaze with the light of a hundred torches that stood at the base of its gleaming white marble walls and soaring colonnade. More torches lined and illuminated the long, straight drive that sliced through a deep green lawn that was flat as a millpond and wide as a lake, and shorn to the perfection of velvet.

Eyre Edrington leaned back against the squabs, looking up as the open carriage swept through the impressive arch of the west gate, also massively columned and flanked by a pair of smaller arches, the whole topped off by a triumvirate of stone lions, regally recumbent, and haughtily surveying their wide dominion.

"They say it is a near copy of Kedleston Hall, in Derbyshire," said his brother-in-law, Julian Summerfield.

"It is," Eyre replied, "Very like."

"At least the structure itself, " Julian went on. "I won't credit the interior, as the original is known to be Adam's most exemplary work, but I dare say the Marble Hall compares favorably in terms of sheer grandeur. The pillars are twenty-five feet tall, of pink alabaster…have you seen Kedleston, then?"

Eyre nodded, a little absently. "On several occasions."

Jocasta, sitting beside her husband, interjected softly, "Our dear Harriet was a close cousin of Lady Scarsdale's, my love."

"Ah. Of course," Julian smiled sympathetically, briefly, and carried on hurriedly, "Of course the irony is that the rage in England now is all for Mughal arches and onion domes! I've a drawing for a folly I mean to have to center the maze at Byerly Park…"

Eyre exchanged a look with his sister, who smiled at him lovingly, and a little sadly, then lowered her gaze. Her hand rested on the barely discernable swell beneath the skirts of her evening gown of apple green silk, shot through with threads of gold. A matching veil wrapped her bare shoulders and covered her golden hair, and diamonds sparkled at her ears and throat. She was a beautiful woman who had never looked lovelier, Eyre thought. It was something about a breeding woman, he concluded. Harriet had been the same when she carried their daughter, radiant in a way that had raised her unremarkable countenance to almost passing prettiness. A year. It had been a year, and already it was difficult for him to remember that face. The miniature he carried was not a good likeness. The artist had been generous, had flattered his subject, but Eyre wished now that the man might have rendered her more honestly. Yet if he himself were to be honest, he may well question how a stranger might have seen in that face what he, who had known it all of his life, could not appreciate until it had been much too late: the childhood friend and schoolroom companion; the quiet, funny, and joyful presence that had been a constant of his boyhood years; the patience and faith through the years of absence; the love he had scarce had cause to notice, because it had always been there, like a heartbeat.

The marble steps and wide entry doors were guarded by splendid red-coated British soldiers and East India Company sepoys, magnificent in their yellow kurtas and white turbans, their lance tips glittering in the torchlight. One by one the carriages drew up before the great steps, discharging a quality of passenger in a degree of finery that would rival anything to be seen at the height of a London Season. A great victory had been won, and this occasion would mark the ascendancy of an Empire—and of one family.

"Oh my, all of these steps, Eyre!"

"It's perfectly all right, Jo," and indeed he found that the knee did not pain him much. He took the steps with one hand braced on the hilt of his dress sword as a counterbalance.

"Of the Seventy-Fourth Regiment of Foot, Colonel the Earl of Edrington! Lord and Lady Byerly!" called out the Master of Ceremony as they joined the reception in the Marble Hall, which did indeed impress, with it's tall pink pillars ending in massive gilded capitals which supported a vast, barrel-vaulted ceiling where a painted sky suggested a serenity of open space high above the roar of conversation, the light and smoke of the chandeliers, the swirl of colour, of uniforms, of gowns, of jewels and polished steel.

Eyre found himself immediately drawn into a jubilant crowd of his fellow officers. Fairleigh, a captain of the Nineteenth Light Dragoons clapped him on the shoulder.

"By God, it's good to see you on your feet, my lord! Pray, how's the knee?"

Edrington smiled. He liked this young man with his steady grey eyes and open face.  "Tolerable, sir. He barely got a bite, you know."

"Law! I saw him! Bloody big Mahratta bastard on a bitch of a Marwari mare, comes down on him, bloody great tulwar, swinging like Samson, and his lordship does the pas de deux and takes him down with a perfect cut six! Prettiest I ever saw!" Fairleigh grinned, and Edrington recognized the giddy joy of a young man drunk on victory, on the incredible elation of having come through the fire, of being alive when he might have been dead.

"Our boys were ready to run when Colonel Maxwell went down, for all that I knew we had the bastards, damn me, I couldn't stop 'em, and the Colonel here, he rides 'em down, screaming, 'Goddamn you fuckers, charge!' And damned if they didn't! You’re a born cavalryman, sir, if you'll pardon my saying so, and wasted on the infantry!"

Eyre's smile was wry. "I will allow that it is every infantry officer's dream to lead a cavalry charge, but now, having realized that great ambition, I am content to huddle in my comfortable square and smoke my cigars," he said, giving good-natured voice to the common slur of the mounted regiments towards officers of the foot, and winning a guffaw from the assembled company.

His sangfroid had been his stock in trade for more years than he could remember, but in truth he felt as giddy this night as that young officer who had drawn his first blood on the field of Assaye. Never had he come through such a fight, and never had he seen a commander as cool and as sure as Arthur Wellesley. With seven thousand men, only eighteen hundred of whom were British, the rest being three regiments of native cavalry and five battalions of sepoys, Wellesley had attacked an army of forty thousand Mahratta soldiers, led by French officers, with over a hundred pieces of artillery ranged against him, all manned by efficient French-trained gunners. In the thick of it Eyre remembered only thinking that he was fighting to the death, and that his only purpose was to keep his own men alive and killing until the last possible moment. If the Nineteenth had broken when they saw their Colonel fall, they'd have had nowhere to run but over and through his own battalions, whom they were meant to be supporting, with the enemy right behind them. His act of valor had been as instinctive as raising an arm to ward off a blow, and as unpreventable, but the troopers had followed him, by God, pouring through the enemy like a torrent that had burst its banks, and the day, the glory, the reckless, uncontainable joy had been theirs---and his.

"And what of our esteemed Major-General?" he asked. "I've seen nothing of him since we took orders for Argaum."

"Alas, the guest of honour does not deign to grace us with is presence." Edrington turned at the sound of a rather high, nasal voice, strange, but a bit familiar.

"Richard Wellesley, my lord Edrington, I do not believe we have had the pleasure?" The Governor-General of India, Marquess Wellesley, Earl of Mornington, Knight of the Garter, and newly-minted Viscount of Mysore, had in fact been at Eton still when Eyre had begun there, but Eyre expected he had long ago left behind the memory. After all, he and his brothers, three sons of a penurious Anglo-Irish family from County Meath, had risen very high indeed since then. Richard, the politician, Henry, the man of business, and Arthur, the genius of war, had between them at last handed the prize of India over to the East India Company and the British Crown.

"An honour, your Excellency," Eyre made his bow.

"Summerfield here tells me you were wounded at Assaye," said the governor-general, and Eyre noted the resemblance to his younger brother in the high, thin arch of his nose and the pale blue of his eyes beneath strong black brows.

"A sword cut to the knee," Edrington replied. "Inconsequential. It heals well, and has not prevented my taking the field."

"That is well, that is well," Wellesley nodded. "I had not heard of it, but I am told by my brother that your intervention, pressing the attack of the Nineteenth Horse on the left virtually saved the entire assault. I am told also that the Seventy-Fourth sustained the greatest part of our loss. Regrettable, sir, regrettable, but the alternative—unthinkable, yes?"

Eyre could only nod. Those losses weighed heavily on him, as he knew they did on General Wellesley. He had seen the General, having given what orders he could to succor the wounded, sink down on the ground, his head between his knees, absolutely silent. Of the seven thousand men under his command at Assaye, sixteen hundred were casualties. Eyre had lost a little more than half a battalion.

Julian, standing at Wellesley's shoulder, spoke up. "His Excellency has offered a tour of the private apartments, Eyre. The plaster mouldings, in particular I have read, are very fine, and there are several superb canvases as well. Will you join us?"

Coming from a long line of talented diplomats, Julian had a seemingly irresistible compulsion to divert the topic of any conversation that touched on the uncomfortable. He projected an outward personality that was bumptious and a bit frivolous, but Eyre knew him to be a brilliant, even ruthless negotiator when the need arose. Indeed, he had managed to turn the family gift into a highly profitable collectorship of the nearby province of Chattapore, and would no doubt retire to his Hertfordshire estate a very rich, and still very young man. If his enthusiasm for his various passions---for art, for architecture, for music---seemed at times overblown, Eyre could not fault him, for Julian's interests were intense, but never fleeting, and the greatest of these was Jocasta. Eyre would be eternally grateful that his sister would be cherished in a way he knew he had failed to cherish his own wife.

"Indeed," said Wellesley, personally extending the invitation. "I don't know about you, my lord, but I have never had much of a taste for champagne and canary. Come along, and we shall raise a toast to absent friends---and absent generals---in twenty-five-year old Irish whiskey, what say you? ' Tis a piss pot of a country, I'll say it myself, but it is good for something!"


*****


"And so what now, my lord Edrington?" Wellesley asked as he watched the khitmagar refill Eyre's glass with the whiskey that was deep amber in colour and silky smooth on the tongue. Eyre was feeling most pleasantly relaxed. Looking about him, he might have been in his club in St. James. The marquess's private study was a comfortable, masculine space, richly paneled in what had been quickly determined to be, in fact, native cypress, rather than mahogany, and with a "truly extraordinary" coffered ceiling, it's intermittent panels carved ("and admirably so!") by a Bengali craftsman in imitation of the Italian style.

"Now?" drawled Edrington. "I am kicking my heels in Calcutta, visiting with my sister, waiting for my wounded to recover and trying to keep the healthy ones from falling sick whilst we wait for the second shoe to drop."

"And you believe that second shoe will fall in Europe?" mused the Marquess. "I can assure you, at the moment our army causes Bonaparte not the least bit of bother, and that does not look to change at any time in the near future."

"Bonaparte can be beaten," Eyre said. "It wants only the man who knows how. And I do mean to be there when it happens. There are careers still to be made in this army, but I think perhaps no longer in India. French interests are finished here and they look elsewhere, as do we."

Wellesley gave a low chuckle. "You sound like another I know."

"Indeed, sir? That is, in fact, my hope." He smiled and savored another swallow of Wellesley's excellent liquor.

"Ah! Superb! By Vigee-LeBrun is it?" Julian, having nearly completed his meticulous circuit of the room, had stopped behind Eyre's chair, and was looking at a canvas hung in an alcove between two ornately carved bookcases. "It is your wife, sir?"

"Yes," replied Wellesley, with a low growl in his voice that caused Eyre to raise an eyebrow as he turned slightly in his chair to look.  "That is Hyacinthe."

"Remarkable," said Julian, bending forward to examine the painting more closely. The canvas showed a rather abundant young woman whose flashing dark eyes glanced saucily to one side. The smile on her lips and the blush on her cheeks made her look as if she'd just tumbled out of passion's bed, and a riot of golden brown hair fell about creamy, bare shoulders and a bosom that was exposed to the very tips of the pink nipples that showed through the transparent muslin of her shift. What was remarkable, Eyre thought, was that a man would place a portrait of his wife in such an extraordinary state of deshabille on display in a place where he entertained other men. But then he remembered some gossip of Jocasta's regarding the marchioness, who had been Wellesley's mistress and the mother of his child a good five years before he'd married her.

"Hyacinthe," the Marquess purred again. "My wife is French," he said, as if by way of explanation. "Can't hardly bear London, can't go to Paris, thinks Calcutta will kill her, so I must live without her, the silly bitch. Brought your wife to India, have you, Edrington?"

"The brushwork is extraordinary—" Julian began, a bit desperately.

"My wife was on her way to join me here," Eyre replied. "She became ill and she died before reaching Madras. "

"Damn," said Wellesley. "I am most sorry to hear of it. Have you children?"

"We have a daughter, four years old, still in England."

Wellesley tossed back the contents of his glass and motioned to the khitmagar to bring the decanter. Eyre shook his head as he was offered more whiskey, and the servant melted silently back into the woodwork.

"Damned difficult thing to do without a woman in this climate," remarked Wellesley. "The heat of the tropics thins the blood, it is said, and arouses a certain appetite, do you not find?"

Eyre could barely suppress a smirk in spite of himself as he heard Julian half-choking on a swallow of whisky.

"It is a rare European woman who will thrive in the Indies," continued the Marquess. "Still, it doesn't do to live alone. Would you permit me to ask, sir, if you have a satisfactory arrangement? For if you require…" he broke off as a knock came on the door and an aide in regimentals and an elaborate powdered wig entered the room.

"Your pardon, Excellency," the man said with a bow. "There is a message for Lord Byerly. Her ladyship finds herself unwell and desires to be carried home."

"The dear thing!" exclaimed Julian, and Eyre thought he might leap over the sofa in his haste get to the door. "My poor darling can barely keep her eyes open past ten o'clock these days. I must beg your leave, your Excellency. Will you come, Eyre? Or stay?"

*****

"Damn, I'm sorry, Eyre!" Julian fussed as they made their way down a long, marble corridor. Their footsteps echoed loudly, and the light of sconces threw dramatic shadows from the mounted heads of buffalo, tiger and boar that lined the walls almost to the ceiling. "Wellesley can be an ass, particularly when he's drunk. Mind, if he'd been sober, he'd probably have tried to sell you the sister---damn it! Now I must be drunk! Forgive me!"

"Not at all," said Eyre. "Calm yourself, dear fellow. There's a sister?"

"Two, in fact. Anne married Lord Somerset's heir. But I'm speaking of Barbara. Don't know what's wrong with her, but the mamma saw fit to pack her off to Calcutta after her first Season. Perfectly fine looking girl, but no one'll touch her. Afraid of her stamping their get with that Wellesley phiz p'rhaps? Still, I've known men as would marry a rhinoceros with a big enough portion," Julian stopped himself suddenly, then said quickly, "Not that you…of course I don't mean that Harriet—oh, Jesus, I am drunk."

Eyre could not help but laugh, and placed a companionable hand on his brother-in-law's shoulder. "Never mind."

They walked a few more steps in silence, and Julian stopped again. "But you know, Eyre, Wellesley may be an ass, but he does make a point." He sighed. "There is a certain…comfort that a man requires, is there not? It is not a natural thing, after all, that a man should live as a monk. What I mean is…well, see here, Edrington, we've all had our bibis."

"Have we?" Eyre inquired with a raised eyebrow. He could not help but enjoy poor Julian's fluster.

"Of course, even I…" Julian blushed to the roots of his hair. "Most certainly not since Jocasta and I—" he stammered. "I mean, now, naturally, I have no need--- Oh, Lord, I will make a cake of it, won't I?"

"Julian, you needn't," Eyre shook his head.

"No, I will just say it, Eyre, make of it what you will. I am your brother, and also, I hope, your friend. I am talking only of a man’s primary needs, the want for comfort, not anything of a permanent nature," Julian said quietly. "And I don't mean some common thing from the bazaar. A decent girl that you can keep properly, talk to—with a bit of Portuguese in the blood, perhaps. Just send word to my babu. He knows everything, and he's discreet. He'd never breathe a word, not even to me."

 Eyre did not respond, except to begin walking again, slowly, down the corridor.

Go to Part Two