The day was four hours old, the sun well up but with only moderate heat – a perfect morning for a parade. Sleeman was determined, too, that the despatch of the thugs would be business-like, and had brought three of the most experienced hangmen from Saugor District, wanting no ropes breaking and the hangman having to strangle the prisoners on the ground, as at Nagpore (nor any hamstringing afterwards to prevent the dead man’s spirit returning to haunt the executioner). He also wanted the drop long enough so as not to have to place heavy fetters on their legs, which had also excited the sympathy of the crowd at Nagpore, Indian and European alike. No, these men from Saugor knew their business. And he certainly didn’t want these thugs going defiantly to the gallows: they’d not be allowed to declare they were self-offerings to Kali. He intended making a solemn impression on those still fettered by error’s chain: the spectacle was not simply the ultimate penalty of the law but moral example.

At ten o’clock precisely – or as precisely as the gun at the fort made it – the condemned men were brought out in two tumbrils pulled by oxen, hands bound behind their backs so that they could make no salute to the onlookers, and gags to prevent all but muffled protest. Men of the Fifty-fifth guarded them, with orders to use the butt of the musket if any became agitated, while others marched in close escort, with mounted dragoons of the Thirteenth to front and rear.

When after a quarter of an hour the procession reached the scaffold, Sleeman and his waiting hangmen ascended the ladders. The Sixth, in hollow square, were standing easy, resting on their sabres. Suddenly they were braced by Armstrong’s ‘Parade!’, three hundred blades coming back to the shoulder.

The crowd fell silent.

Sleeman began reading the proclamation, first detailing the condemned men’s crimes – the last of which was the murder of Bunda Ali and his family – and the sentence of death passed by court martial. Carefully rehearsed repeaters with speaking trumpets translated for the crowd. Then came the exhortation:

‘We must oppose to the progress of thuggee and dacoitee a greater dread of immediate punishment, and where our present establishments are not sufficient or suitable for the purpose, we shall employ others that are, till the evil be removed; for it is the imperious duty of the supreme government of this country to put an end in some way or other to this dreadful system of murder, by which thousands of human beings are now annually sacrificed upon every great road throughout India.’

The words were meant as much for the newspapers of Calcutta and Madras, and even London, as for the crowd and the troops on parade. They were not without effect, however.

‘What a perfectly noble man is Major Sleeman,’ said Georgiana, sitting astride, twenty yards or so behind the Sixth.

‘He is,’ said Annie, though knowing she’d have to close her eyes when the moment came.