William Monk 09 - A Breach of Promise

had ever known.
    “I don’t know how many died of it,” he said, still watching her closely. He needed to speak of the loss of his friends, the human beings he had seen in the utmost extremity of suffering, and yet a part of him was still aware of what such knowledge might do to her. And he needed to know they were not empty descriptions she could not follow. He needed her companionship in his grief.
    “I imagine it was worse than the cold,” she said thoughtfully. “I’ve seen men freeze, and animals too.”
    “The smell,” he answered. “It was the smell … and the flies I hated most. I still can’t bear the sound of flies. It makes me sick and I can’t get my breath. I feel as if I am suffocating and my heart is going to burst.”
    “You weren’t relieved?” She remembered reading it in the
Illustrated London News.
The account had been terrible, even after censorship for the general public.
    “No.” The word fell like a stone. “Every day we kept expecting help would come. We didn’t know the whole country was under the sword. We fell one by one, taking as many of the enemy with us as we could. I’ve never seen greater courage. Every able-bodied person did what they could, men and women alike. Every man stood his watch. The women nursed the sick, carried food and water, tried to protect the children.”
    His hand rubbed the edge of the sheet, gripping it so hard the fabric must have hurt his skin. The movement was some kind of release of tension, even though his muscles were locked tight. She had seen it before in men recalling events of nightmare proportions. The room was silent in the spring evening.
    “We were good shots,” he resumed. “We kept them at bay. They didn’t charge us and overrun. But there were so many of them, and their guns could reach us easily. They fired at everything that moved. Every day we thought help would come. It was so hot. No escape from it. You could smell the heat, feel iteverywhere. The sweat dried the instant it broke. Skin hurt to touch. It cracked and blistered.” He shrugged very slightly. “I don’t know why I mentioned that. It hardly mattered. We died of heat stroke and dysentery … those who didn’t die of their wounds. What did it matter if groins or armpits were on fire?”
    “The one thing too much to bear,” she answered. “For me it was the rats … rats everywhere, dropping off the walls.”
    He smiled, a sudden wide grin, beautiful in spite of his disfigured face. It was not any kind of amusement, simply the dazzling, wonderful relief of being not alone.
    “But you survived,” she said. She guessed that was part of the private torture inside him. She had known it before in men who had seen companions fall all around them, for no reason other than chance as to where they were standing. A yard this way or that and it would have been someone else. One moment they were alive, full of intelligence and feeling, the next just mangled blood and bone, torn flesh and pain … or nothing at all, the fire and the soul gone. One could not get rid of the guilt of being the one who survived. Part of you wanted to be with them.
    His smile vanished, but he did not avoid her eyes.
    “On June twenty-fourth Mrs. Greenway came to the intrenchment with a note from Nena Sahib. I can still see her face. She was old, very old indeed. She seemed like an embodiment of Time to me … or of Death. She had been a prisoner of the rebels and they sent her with terms of surrender.” His voice was harsh, filled with emotion so great it almost choked him. “Nena Sahib promised that if we gave up all the money, stores and arms in the intrenchment he would not only allow all the survivors of the garrison to retreat unmolested but he would provide means of conveyance for the women and children as well.”
    She looked steadily at his eyes. The horror was still so deep inside him it seemed to fill his being. It was like a storm about to break.
    “The treaty was agreed upon.” His voice became strained almost to a whisper. “On June twenty-seventh we surrenderedaccording to the terms and filed out of the garrison. The women and children were led aboard boats on the river … there were small thatched coverings on them … protection from the sun. The man in charge was called Tanteea Topee. He was sitting on a platform watching it all. A bugle sounded at his command, and they ran out the guns which had been concealed up to that point. They fired on the