Hervey could say nothing. He could think of no reason to decline, not least if the regiment was to move anyway. Except for Kezia.

Somervile sensed his concern. ‘I know Agra to be the best of places, and the heat less unrelenting than here.’

Hervey knew likewise, but … ‘I believe I must ask Milne’s opinion first.’

‘And what shall the surgeon say?’

Hervey sighed. He knew he ought to be overjoyed. ‘What saith the Preacher indeed?’

Somervile was about to make reply when St Alban’s words of command came clear across the maidan and the band struck up Young May Moon, the regiment’s quick march.

Hervey’s stomach tightened – the sight and the sound. And now the promise: major-general in India, brevet colonel, and yet for a little longer to remain lieutenant-colonel of the Sixth. What more could he reasonably desire? For who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?

He watched as they marched off, till the band changed to Lillibulero, another of the dragoons’ favourites, and then turned to his old friend.

‘Somervile, I’m excessively obliged to you. With your leave, then, I shall tell the regiment this day.’

HISTORICAL AFTERNOTE

The suppression of thuggee, along with that of suttee and female infanticide, stands as a monument to the humanity and capability of the Company’s officials. ‘Thuggee’ Sleeman, as he became known, eventually took charge of the Department for the Suppression of Thuggee and Dacoity, in 1839, and with the help of various legal acts of the government of India expanded its operations, including efforts at rehabilitation. During these years, some four thousand ‘thugs’ were arrested, of whom half were convicted and hanged or transported for life. One of them, by the name of Bahram, confessed to having strangled over 900.

By the 1870s thuggee had been effectively eradicated, though the department remained in existence until 1904, when it was replaced by the Central Criminal Investigation Department. The suppression acts were replaced by the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, by which ethnic or social groups defined as ‘addicted to the systematic commission of non-bailable offences’ were systematically registered by the government, with restrictions on their movements. The act was repealed in 1949 after Indian independence, de-stigmatizing some two and a half million people. However, there was such an upsurge in the criminal activity thitherto draconically suppressed that in 1953 the Habitual Offenders Act was passed, effectively re-stigmatizing the ‘criminal tribes’. It is safe to say that the issue is still unresolved today.

For those who would read more on thuggee, there are Sleeman’s own books, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, the first volume in particular. Philip Meadows Taylor’s 1839 novel Confessions of a Thug, based on actual confession, provides much grisly detail, some of which is no doubt true. Sir Francis Tuker’s The Yellow Scarf (1961) is a lively, robust and imaginative account of thuggee and its suppression. John Masters’s The Deceivers (1952), like all his India novels, is gripping. Mike Dash’s Thug (2005) is the most up-to-date and scholarly account.