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For five minutes nothing happened; there was only the dripping of the fronds, and my own heart thumping. What made the suspense so hellish was the sheer unfairness of my predicament – I’d been in more tight corners before than I care to count, but always in some godless, savage part of the world like Afghanistan or Madagascar or Russia or St Louis – it was damnable that I should be lurking in fear of my life in England – or Scotland, even. I hadn’t been in this kind of terror on British soil since I’d been a miserable fag at Rugby, carrying Bully Dawson’s game bag for him, and we’d had to hide from keepers at Brownsover. They’d caught me, too, and I’d only got off by peaching on Dawson and his pals, and showing the keepers where … and suddenly, where there had been nothing a moment ago, a shadow moved in the gloom beneath the trees, stopped, and took on form in the half-light. Ignatieff was standing just inside the edge of the fir wood.
I stopped breathing, while he turned his head this way and that, searching the thickets; he had his gun cocked, and by God he wasn’t looking for stags. Then he snapped his fingers, and the moujik came padding out of the dimness of the wood; he was heeled and ready as well, his eyes glaring above his furze of beard. Ignatieff nodded to the left, and the great brute went prowling off that way, his piece presented in front of him; Ignatieff waited a few seconds and then took the way to the right. They both disappeared, noiselessly, and I was left fumbling feverishly for my caps. I slipped them under the hammers with trembling fingers, wondering whether to stay where I was or try to wriggle farther back into the undergrowth. They would be on either side of me shortly, and if they turned into the bracken they might easily … and with the thought came a steady rustling to my left, deep in the green; it stopped, and then started again, and it sounded closer. No doubt of it, someone was moving stealthily and steadily towards my hiding place.
It takes a good deal to stir me out of petrified fear, but that did it. I rolled on my side, trying to sweep my gun round to cover the sound; it caught in the bracken, and I hauled frantically at it to get it clear. God, what a din I must be making – and then the damned lock must have caught on a stem, for one barrel went off like a thunderclap, and I was on my feet with a yell, tearing downhill through the bracken. I fairly flung myself through the high fronds, there was the crack of a shot behind me, and a ball buzzed overhead like a hornet. I went bounding through, came out in a clearing with firs on either side, sprang over a bank of ferns – and plunged straight down into a peat cutting. I landed belly first in the stinking ooze, but I was up and struggling over the far side in an instant, for I could hear crashing in the bracken above me, and knew that if I lost an instant he’d get a second shot. I was plastered with muck like a tar-and-feather merchant, but I still had my gun, and then I must have trod on a loose stone, for I pitched headlong, and went rolling and bumping down the slope, hit a rock, and finished up winded and battered in a burn, trying frantically to scramble up, and slithering on the slimy gravel underfoot.
There was a thumping of boots on the bank, I started round, and there was the moujik, not ten yards away. I didn’t even have time to look for my gun; I was sprawling half out of the burn, and the bastard had his piece at his shoulder, the muzzle looking me straight in the face. I yelled and grabbed for a stone, there was the crash of a gunshot – and the moujik dropped his piece, shrieking, and clutched at his arm as he toppled backwards among the rocks.
‘Careful, colonel,’ says a voice behind me. ‘He’s only winged.’ And there, standing not five yards off, with a smoking revolver in his hand, was a tall fellow in tweeds; he just gave me a nod, and then jumped lightly over the rocks and stood over the moujik, who was groaning and clutching his bleeding arm.
‘Murderous swine, ain’t you?’ says the newcomer conversationally, and kicked him in the face. ‘It’s the only punishment he’ll get, I’m afraid,’ he added, over his shoulder. ‘No diplomatic scandals, you see.’ And as he turned towards me, I saw to my amazement who it was – Hutton, the tall chap with the long jaw who’d taken me to Palmerston only a few nights before. He put his pistol back in his arm-pit and came over to me.
‘No bones broken? Bless me, but you’re a sight.’ He pulled me to my feet. ‘I’ll say this, colonel – you’re the fastest man over rough country I ever hope to follow. I lost you in five minutes, but I kept track of our friends, all right. Nice pair, ain’t they, though? I wish to God it had been the other one I pulled trigger on – oh, we won’t see him again, never fret. Not until everyone’s down the hill, and he’ll turn up cool as you like, never having been near you all day, what?’
‘But – but … you mean, you expected this?’
‘No-o – not exactly, anyway. But I’ve been pretty much on hand since the Russian brotherhood arrived, you know. We don’t believe in taking chances, eh? Not with customers like Master Ignatieff – enterprising chap, that. So when I heard he’d decided to join the shoot today, I thought I’d look along – just as well I did, I think,’ says this astonishing fellow. ‘Now, if you’ve got your wind back, I suggest we make our way down. Never mind our little wounded bird yonder – if he don’t bleed to death he’ll find his way back to his master. Pity he shot himself by accident, ain’t it? That’ll be their story, I daresay – and we won’t contradict it – here, what are you about, sir?’
I was lunging for my fallen gun, full of murderous rage now that the danger was past. ‘I’m going to blow that bloody peasant’s head off!’ I roared, fumbling with the lock. ‘I’ll teach—’
‘Hold on!’ cries he, catching my arm, and he was positively grinning. ‘Capital idea, I agree – but we mustn’t, you see. One bullet in him can be explained away by his own clumsiness – but not two, eh? We mustn’t have any scandal, colonel – not involving Her Majesty’s guests. Come along now – let’s be moving down, so that Count Ignatieff, who I’ve no doubt is watching us this minute, can come to his stricken servant’s assistance. After you, sir.’
He was right, of course; the irony of it was that although Ignatieff and his brute had tried to murder me, we daren’t say so, for diplomacy’s sake. God knows what international complications there might have been. This didn’t sink in with me at once – but his reminder that Ignatieff was still prowling about was enough to lend me wings down the hill. Not that even he’d have tried another shot, with Hutton about, but I wasn’t taking chances.
I’ll say this for the secret service – which is what Hutton was, of course – they’re damned efficient. He had a gig waiting on the road, one of his assistants was despatched to the help of my ghillie, and within a half-hour I was back in Balmoral through the servants’ entrance, being cleaned up and instructed by Hutton to put it about that I’d abandoned the shoot with a strained muscle.
‘I’ll inform my chiefs in London that Colonel Flashman had a fortunate escape from an unexpected danger, arising from a chance encounter with an old Russian friend,’ says he, ‘and that he is now fit and well to proceed on the important task ahead of him. And that, in the meantime, I’m keeping an eye on him. No, sir, I’m sorry – I can’t answer any of your questions, and I wouldn’t if I could.’
Which left me in a fine state of consternation and bewilderment, wondering what to make of it all. My immediate thought was that Palmerston had somehow arranged the whole thing, in the hope that I’d kill Ignatieff, but even in my excited condition that didn’t make sense. A likelier explanation was that Ignatieff, coming innocently to Balmoral and finding me on the premises, had decided to take advantage of the chance to murder me, in revenge for the way I’d sold him the previous year. That, knowing the man and his ice-cold recklessness, was perfectly sound reasoning – but there was also the horrid possibility that he had found out about the job Palmerston had given me (God alone knew how – but he’d at least discovered from the idiot Elspeth that I was going to India) and had been out to dispose of me in the way of business.
‘A preposterous notion,’ was Ellenborough’s answer when I voiced my fears to him that night. ‘He could not know – why, the Board decision was highly secret, and imparted only to the Prime Minister’s most intimate circle. No, this is merely another example of the naked savagery of the Russian bear!’ He was full of port, and wattling furiously. ‘And virtually in Her Majesty’s presence, too! Damnable! But, of course, we can say nothing, Flashman. It only remains,’ says he, booming sternly, ‘for you to mete out conclusive justice to this villain, if you chance to encounter him in India. In the meantime, I’ll see that the Lord Chamberlain excludes him from any diplomatic invitations which may be extended to St Petersburg in future. By gad, I will!’
I ventured the cautious suggestion that it might be better, after what had happened, to send someone else to Jhansi – just in case Ignatieff had tumbled to me – but Ellenborough wasn’t even listening. He was just full of indignation at Ignatieff’s murderous impudence – not on my account, you’ll note, but because it might have led to a scandal involving the Queen. (Admittedly, you can’t have it getting about that her guests have been trying to slaughter each other; the poor woman probably had enough trouble getting people to visit, with Albert about the place.)
So, of course, we kept mum, and as Hutton had foreseen, it was put about and accepted that Ignatieff’s loader had had an accident with a gun, and everyone wagged their heads in sympathy, and the Queen sent the poor unfortunate fellow some shortbread and a tot of whisky. Ignatieff even had the crust to thank her after dinner, and I could feel Ellenborough at my elbow fairly bubbling with suppressed outrage. And to cap it all, the brute had the effrontery to challenge me to a game of billiards – and beat me hollow, too, in the presence of Albert and half a dozen others: I had to be certain there was a good crowd on hand, for God knows what he’d have tried if we’d gone to the pool-room alone. I’ll say it for Nicholas Ignatieff – he was a bear-cat for nerve. He’d have been ready to brain me and claim afterwards that it was a mis-cue.
So now – having heard the prelude to my Indian Mutiny adventure, you will understand why I don’t care much for Balmoral. And if what happened there that September was trivial by comparison with what followed – well, I couldn’t foresee that. Indeed, as I soothed my bruised nerves with brandy fomentations that night, I reflected that there were worse places than India; there was Aberdeenshire, with Ignatieff loose in the bracken, hoping to hang my head on his gunroom wall. I hadn’t been able to avoid him here, but if we met again on the coral strand, it wasn’t going to be my fault.
I’ve never been stag-shooting from that day to this, either. Ellenborough was right: the company’s too damned mixed.
I remember young Fred Roberts (who’s a Field-Marshal now, which shows you what pull these Addiscombe wallahs have got) once saying that everyone hated India for a month and then loved it forever. I wouldn’t altogether agree, but I’ll allow that it had its attractions in the old days; you lived like a lord without having to work, waited on hand and foot, made money if you set your mind to it, and hardly exerted yourself at all except to hunt the beasts, thrash the men, and bull the women. You had to look sharp to avoid active service, of course, of which there was a lot about; I never fell very lucky that way. But even so, it wasn’t a half-bad station, most of the time.
Personally, I put that down to the fact that in my young days India was a middle-class place for the British, where society people didn’t serve if they could help it. (Cardigan, for example, took one look and fled.) It’s different now, of course; since it became a safe place many of our best and most highly connected people have let the light of their countenances shine on India, with the results you might expect – prices have gone up, service has gone down, and the women have got clap. So they tell me.
Mind you, I could see things were changing even in ’56, when I landed at Bombay. My first voyage to India, sixteen years before, had lasted four months on a creaking East Indiaman; this time, in natty little government steam sloops, it had taken just about half that time, even with a vile journey by camel across the Suez isthmus in between. And even from Bombay you could get the smell of civilisation; they’d started the telegraph, and were pushing ahead with the first railways, there were more white faces and businesses to be seen, and people weren’t talking, as they’d used to, of India as though it were a wild jungle with John Company strongholds here and there. In my early days, a journey from Calcutta to Peshawar had seemed half round the world, but no longer. It was as though the Company was at last seeing India as one vast country – and realising that now the wars with the Sikhs and Maharattas and Afghans were things of the past, it was an empire that had to be ruled and run, quite apart from fighting and showing a nice profit in Leadenhall Street.
It was far busier than I remembered it, and somehow the civilians seemed more to the fore nowadays than the military. Once the gossip on the verandahs had all been about war in the north, or the Thugs, or the bandit chiefs of the Ghats who’d have to be looked up some day; now it was as often as not about new mills or factories, and even schools, and how there would be a railroad clear over to Madras in the next five years, and you’d be able to journey from Mrs Blackwell’s in Bombay to the Auckland in Calcutta without once putting on your boots.
‘All sounds very peaceful and prosperous,’ says I, over a peg and a whore at Mother Sousa’s – like a good little political, you see, I was conducting my first researches in the best gossip-mart I could find (fine mixed clientele, Mother Sousa’s, with nothing blacker than quarter-caste and exhibition dances that would have made a Paris gendarme blench – well, if it’s scuttle-butt you want, you don’t go to a cathedral, do you?). The chap who’d bought me the peg laughed and said:
‘Prosperous? I should just think so – my firm’s divvy is up forty per cent, and we’ll have new factories at Lahore and Allahabad working before Easter. Building churches – and when the universities come there’ll be contracts to last out my service, I can tell you.’
‘Universities?’ says I. ‘Not for the niggers, surely?’
‘The native peoples,’ says he primly – and the little snirp hadn’t been out long enough to get his nose peeled – ‘will soon be advanced beyond those of any country on earth. Heathen countries, that is. Lie still, you black bitch, can’t you see I’m fagged out? Yes, Lord Canning is very strong on education, I believe, and spreading the gospel, too. Well, that’s bricks and mortar, ain’t it? – that’s where to put your money, my boy.’
‘Dear me,’ says I, ‘at this rate I’ll be out of a job, I can see.’
‘Military, are you? Well, don’t fret, old fellow; you can always apply to be sent to the frontiers.’
‘Quiet as that, is it? Even round Jhansi?’
‘Wherever’s that, my dear chap?’
He was just a pipsqueak, of course, and knew nothing; the little yellow piece I was exercising hadn’t heard of Jhansi either, and when I asked her at a venture what chapattis were good for except eating, she didn’t bat an eye, but giggled and said I was a verree fonnee maan, and must buy her meringues, not chapattis, yaas? You may think I was wasting my time, sniffing about in Bombay, but it’s my experience that if there’s anything untoward in a country – even one as big as India – you can sometimes get a scent in the most unexpected places, just from the way the natives look and answer. But it was the same whoever I talked to, merchant or military, whore or missionary; no ripples at all. After a couple of days, when I’d got the old Urdu bat rolling familiarly off my palate again, I even browned up and put on a puggaree
and coat and pyjamys, and loafed about the Bund bazaar, letting on I was a Mekran coast trader, and listening to the clack. I came out rotten with fleas, stinking of nautch-oil and cheap perfume and cooking ghee, with my ears full of beggars’ whines and hawkers’ jabbering and the clang of the booths – but that was all. Still, it helped to get India back under my hide again, and that’s important, if you intend to do anything as a political.
Hullo, says you, what’s this? – not Flashy taking his duty seriously for once, surely. Well, I was, and for a good reason. I didn’t take Pam’s forebodings seriously, but I knew I was bound to go to Jhansi and make some sort of showing in the task he’d given me – the thing was to do it quickly. If I could have a couple of official chats with this Rani woman, look into the business of the sepoys’ cakes, and conclude that Skene, the Jhansi political, was a nervous old woman, I could fire off a report to Calcutta and withdraw gracefully. What I must not do was linger – because if there was any bottom to Pam’s anxieties, Jhansi might be full of Ignatieff and his jackals before long, and I wanted to be well away before that happened.
So I didn’t linger in Bombay. On the third day I took the road north-east towards Jhansi, travelling in good style by bullock-hackery, which is just a great wooden room on wheels, in which you have your bed and eat your meals, and your groom and cook and bearer squat on the roof. They’ve gone out now, of course, with the railway, but they were a nice leisurely way of travelling, and I stopped off at messes along the road, and kept my ears open. None of the talk chimed with what I’d heard at Balmoral, and the general feeling was that the country had never been so quiet. Which was heartening, even if it was what you’d expect, down-country.
I purposely kept clear of any politicals, because I wanted to form my own judgements without getting any uncomfortable news that I didn’t want to hear. However, up towards Mhow, who should I run into but Johnny Nicholson, whom I hadn’t seen since Afghanistan, fifteen years before, trotting along on a Persian pony and dressed like a Baluchi robber with a beard down to his belly, and a couple of Sikh lancers in tow. We fell on each other like old chums – he didn’t know me well, you see, but mostly by my fearsome reputation; he was one of your play-up-and-fear-God paladins, full of zeal and athirst for glory, was John, and said his prayers and didn’t drink and thought women were either nuns or mothers. He was very big by now, I discovered, and just coming down for leave before he took up as resident at Peshawar.
By rights I shouldn’t have mentioned my mission to anyone, but this was too good a chance to miss. There wasn’t a downier bird in all India than Nicholson, or one who knew the country better, and you could have trusted him with anything, money even. So I told him I was bound for Jhansi, and why – the chapattis, the Rani, and the Russians. He listened, fingering his beard and squinting into the distance, while we squatted by the road drinking coffee.
‘Jhansi, eh?’ says he. ‘Pindari robber country – Thugs, too. Trust you to pick the toughest nut south of the Khyber. Maharatta chieftains – wouldn’t turn my back on any of ’em, and if you tell me there have been Russian agitators at work, I’m not surprised. Any number of ugly-looking copers and traders have been sliding south with the caravans up our way this year past, but not many guns, you see – that’s what we keep our accounts by. But I don’t like this news about chapattis passing among the sepoys.’
‘You don’t think it amounts to anything, surely?’ I found all his cheerful references to Thugs and Pindaris damned disconcerting; he was making Jhansi sound as bad as Afghanistan.
‘I don’t know,’ says he, very thoughtful. ‘But I do know that this whole country’s getting warm. Don’t ask me how I know – Irish instinct if you like. Oh, I know it looks fine from Bombay or Calcutta, but sometimes I look around and ask myself what we’re sitting on, out here. Look at it – we’re holding a northern frontier against the toughest villains on earth: Pathans, Sikhs, Baluchis, and Afghanistan thrown in, with Russia sitting on the touchline waiting their chance. In addition, down-country, we’re nominal masters of a collection of native states, half of them wild as Barbary, ruled by princes who’d cut our throats for three-pence. Why? Because we’ve tried to civilise ’em – we’ve clipped the tyrants’ wings, abolished abominations like suttee and thugee, cancelled their worst laws and instituted fair ones. We’ve reformed ’em until they’re sick – and started the telegraph, the railroad, schools, hospitals, all the rest of it.’
This sounded to me like a man riding his pet hobby; I couldn’t see why any of this should do anything but please the people.
‘The people don’t count! They never do. It’s the rulers that matter, the rajas and the nabobs – like this rani of yours in Jhansi. They’ve squeezed this country for centuries, and Dalhousie put a stop to it. Of course it’s for the benefit of the poor folk, but they don’t know that – they believe what their princes tell ’em. And what they tell ’em is that the British Sirkar is their enemy, because it stops them burning their widows, and murdering each other in the name of Kali, and will abolish their religion and force Christianity on them if it can.’
‘Oh, come, John,’ says I, ‘they’ve been saying that for years.’
‘Well, there’s something in it.’ He looked troubled, in a stuffy religious way. ‘I’m a Christian, I hope, or try to be, and I pray I shall see the day when the Gospel is the daily bread of every poor benighted soul on this continent, and His praise is sung in a thousand churches. But I could wish our people went more carefully about it. These are a devout people, Flashman, and their beliefs, misguided though they are, must not be taken lightly. What do they think, when they hear Christianity taught in the schools – in the jails, even – and when colonels preach to their regiments?
Let the prince, or the agitator, whisper in their ears “See how the British will trample on thy holy things, which they respect not. See how they will make Christians of you.” They will believe him. And they are such simple folk, and their eyes are closed. D’you know,’ he went on, ‘there’s a sect in Kashmir that even worships me?’
‘Good for you,’ says I. ‘D’ye take up a collection?’
‘I try to reason with them – but it does no good. I tell you, India won’t be converted in a day, or in years. It must come slowly, if surely. But our missionaries – good, worthy men – press on apace, and cannot see the harm they may do.’ He sighed. ‘Yet can one find it in one’s heart to blame them, old fellow, when one considers the blessings that God’s grace would bring to this darkened continent? It is very hard.’ And he looked stern and nobly anguished; Arnold would have loved him. Then he frowned and growled, and suddenly burst out:
‘It wouldn’t be so bad, if we weren’t so confounded soft! If we would only carry things with a high hand – the reforms, and the missionary work, even. Either let well alone, or do the thing properly. But we don’t, you see; we take half-measures, and are too gentle by a mile. If we are going to pull down their false gods, and reform their old and corrupt states and amend their laws, and make ’em worthy men and women – then let us do it with strength! Dalhousie was strong, but I don’t know about Canning. I know if I were he, I’d bring these oily, smirking, treacherous princes under my heel—’ his eyes flashed as he ground his boot in the dust. ‘I’d give ’em government, firm and fair. I’d be less soft with the sepoys, too – and with some of our own people. That’s half the trouble – you haven’t been back long enough, but depend upon it, we send some poor specimens out to the army nowadays, and to the Company offices. “Broken-down tapsters and serving men’s sons”, eh? Well, you’ll see ’em – ignorant, slothful fellows of poor class, and we put ’em to officer high-caste Hindoos of ten years’ service. They don’t know their men, and treat ’em like children or animals, and think of nothing but drinking and hunting, and – and …’ he reddened to the roots of his enormous beard and looked aside. ‘Some of them consort with … with the worst type of native women.’ He cleared his throat and patted my arm. ‘There, I’m sorry, old fellow; I know it’s distasteful to talk of such things, but it’s true, alas.’
I shook my head and said it was heart-breaking.
‘Now you see why your news concerns me so? These omens at Jhansi – they may be the spark to the tinder, and I’ve shown you, I hope, that the tinder exists in India, because of our own blindness and softness. If we were stronger, and dealt firmly with the princes, and accompanied our enlightenment of the people with proper discipline – why, the spark would be stamped out easily enough. As it is—’ he shook his head again. ‘I don’t like it. Thank God they had the wit to send someone like you to Jhansi – I only wish I could come with you, to share whatever perils may lie ahead. It’s a strange, wild place, from all I’ve heard,’ says this confounded croaker with pious satisfaction, as he shook my hand. ‘Come, old fellow, shall we pray together – for your safety and guidance in whatever dangers you may find yourself?’
And he plumped down there and then on his knees, with me alongside, and gave God his marching orders in no uncertain fashion, telling him to keep a sharp eye on his servant. I don’t know what it was about me, but holy fellows like Nicholson were forever addressing heaven on my behalf – even those who didn’t know me well seemed to sense that there was a lot of hard graft to be done if Flashy was ever to smell salvation. I can see him yet – his great dark head and long nose against the sunset, his beard quivering with exhortation, and even the freckles on the back of his clasped hands. Poor wild John – he should have canvassed the Lord on his own behalf, perhaps, for while I’m still here after half a century, he was stiff inside the year, shot in the midriff by a pandy sniper in the attack on Delhi, and left to die by inches at the roadside. That’s what his duty earned for him; if he’d taken proper precautions he’d have made viceroy. And Delhi would have fallen just the same.
Whatever his prayers accomplished for my solid flesh, his talk about Jhansi had done nothing for my spirits. ‘A strange wild place,’ he’d said, and talked of the Pindari bandits and Thugs and Maharatta scoundrels – well, I knew it had been hell’s punch-bowl in the old days, but I’d thought since we’d annexed it that it must be quieter now. Mangles, at the Board of Control in London, had described it as ‘tranquil beneath the Company’s benevolent rule’, but he was a pompous ass with a talent for talking complete bosh about subjects on which he was an authority.
As I pushed on into Bandelkand it began to look as though he was wrong and Nicholson was right – it was broken, hilly country, with jungle on the slopes and in the valleys, never a white face to be seen, and the black ones getting uglier by the mile. The roads were so atrocious, and the hackery jolted and rolled so sickeningly, that I was forced to take to my Pegu pony; there was devil a sign of civilisation, but only walled villages and every so often a sinister Maharatta fort squatting on a hilltop to remind you who really held the power in this land. ‘The toughest nut south of the Khyber’ – I was ready to believe it, as I surveyed those unfriendly jungly hills, seeing nothing cheerier than a distant tiger skulking among the waitabit thorn. And this was the country that we were ‘ruling’ – with one battalion of suspect sepoy infantry and a handful of British civilians to collect the taxes.
My first sight of Jhansi city wasn’t uplifting either. We rounded a bend on the hill road, and there it was under a dull evening sky – a massive fort, embattled and towered, on a great steep rock, and the walled city clustered at its foot. It was far bigger than I’d imagined; the walls must have been four miles round at least, and the air over the city was thick with the smoke of a thousand cooking fires. On this side of the city lay the orderly white lines of the British camp and cantonment – God, it looked tiny and feeble, beneath that looming vastness of Jhansi fort. My mind went back to Kabul, and how our camp had seemed dwarfed by the Bala Hissar – and even at Kabul, with an army of ten thousand, only a handful of us had escaped. I told myself that here it was different – that less than a hundred miles ahead of me there were our great garrisons along the Grand Trunk, and that however forbidding Jhansi might look, it was a British state nowadays, and under the Sirkar’s protection. Only there wasn’t much sign of that protection – just our pathetic little village like a flea on the lion’s lip, and somewhere in that great citadel, where our troops never went, that brooding old bitch of a Rani scheming against us, with her thousands of savage subjects waiting for her word. Thus my imagination – as if it hadn’t been full enough already, what with Ignatieff and Thugs and wild Pindaris and dissident sepoys and Nicholson’s forebodings.
My first task was to look up Skene, the political whose reports had started the whole business, so I headed down to the cantonment, which was a neat little compound of perhaps forty bungalows, with decent gardens, and the usual groups already meeting on the verandahs for sundown pegs and cordials; there were a few carriages waiting with their grooms and drivers to take people out for dinner, and one or two officers riding home, but I drove straight through, and got a chowkidar’s direction to the little Star Fort, where Skene had his office – he’d still be there, the chowkidar said, which argued a very conscientious political indeed.
Frankly, I hoped to find him scared or stupid; he wasn’t either. He was one of these fair, intent young fellows who fall over themselves to help, and will work all the hours God sends. He hopped from one leg to another when I presented myself, and seemed fairly overwhelmed to meet the great Flashy, but the steady grey eye told you at once that here was a boy who didn’t take alarm at trifles. He had clerks and bearers running in all directions to take my gear to quarters, saw to it that I was given a bath, and then bore me off for dinner at his own bungalow, where he lost no time in getting down to business.
‘No one knows why you’re here, sir, except me,’ says he. ‘I believe Carshore, the Collector, suspects, but he’s a sound man, and will say nothing. Of course, Erskine, the Commissioner at Saugor, knows all about it, but no one else.’ He hesitated. ‘I’m not quite clear myself, sir, why they sent you out, and not someone from Calcutta.’
‘Well, they wanted an assassin, you see,’ says I, easily, just for bounce. ‘It so happens I’m acquainted with the Russian gentleman who’s been active in these parts – and dealing with him ain’t a job for an ordinary political, what?’ It was true, after all; Pam himself had said it. ‘Also, it seems Calcutta and yourself and Commissioner Erskine – with all respect – haven’t been too successful with this titled lady up in the city palace. Then there are these cakes; all told, it seemed better to Lord Palmerston to send me.’
‘Lord Palmerston?’ says he, his eyes wide open. ‘I didn’t know it had gone that far.’
I assured him he’d been the cause of the Prime Minister’s losing a night’s sleep, and he whistled and reached for the decanter.
‘That’s neither here nor there, anyway,’ says I. ‘You cost me a night’s sleep, too, for that matter. The first thing is: have any of these Russian fellows been back this way?’
To my surprise, he looked confused. ‘Truth is, sir – I never knew they’d been near. That came to me from Calcutta – our frontier people traced them down this way, three times, I believe, and I was kept informed. But if they hadn’t told me, I’d never have known.’
That rattled me, if you like. ‘You mean, if they do come back – or if they’re loose in your bailiwick now – you won’t know of it until Calcutta sees fit to tell you?’
‘Oh, our frontier politicals will send me word as soon as any suspected person crosses over,’ says he. ‘And I have my own native agents on the look-out now – some pretty sharp men, sir.’
‘They know especially to look out for a one-eyed man?’
‘Yes, sir – he has a curious deformity which he hides with a patch, you know – one of his eyes is half-blue, half-brown.’
‘You don’t say,’ says I. By George, I hadn’t realised our political arrangements were as ramshackle as this. ‘That, Captain Skene, is the man I’m here to kill – so if any of your … sharp men have the chance to save me the trouble, they may do it with my blessing.’
‘Oh, of course, sir. Oh, they will, you know. Some of them,’ says he, impressively, ‘are Pindari bandits – or used to be, that is. But we’ll know in good time, sir, before any of these Ruski fellows get within distance.’
I wished I could share his confidence. ‘Calcutta has no notion what the Russian spies were up to down here?’ I asked him, but he shook his head.
‘Nothing definite at all – only that they’d been here. We were sure it must be connected with the chapattis going round, but those have dried up lately. None have passed since October, and the sepoys of the 12th N.I. – that’s the regiment here, you know – seem perfectly quiet. Their colonel swears they’re loyal – has done from the first, and was quite offended that I reported the cakes to Calcutta. Perhaps he’s right; I’ve had some of my men scouting the sepoy lines, and they haven’t heard so much as a murmur. And Calcutta was to inform me if cakes passed at any other place, but none have, apparently.’
Come, thinks I, this is decidedly better; Pam’s been up a gum-tree for nothing. All I had to do was make a show of brief activity here, and then loaf over to Calcutta after a few weeks and report nothing doing. Give ’em a piece of my mind, too, for causing me so much inconvenience.
‘Well, Skene,’ says I, ‘this is how I see it. There’s nothing to be done about what the Prime Minister calls “those blasted buns” – unless they make a reappearance, what? As to the Russians – well, when we get word of them, I’ll probably drop out of sight, d’you see?’ I would, too – to some convenient haven which the Lord would provide, and emerge when the coast was clear. But I doubted it would even come to that. ‘Yes, you won’t see me – but I’ll be about, never fear, and if our one-eyed friend, or any of his creatures, shows face … well …’
He looked suitably impressed, with a hint of that awe which my fearsome reputation inspires. ‘I understand, sir. You’ll wish to … er, work in your own way, of course.’ He blinked at me, and then exclaimed reverently: ‘By Jove, I don’t envy those Ruski fellows above half – if you don’t mind my saying so, sir.’
‘Skene, old chap,’ says I, and winked at him. ‘Neither do I.’ And believe me, he was my slave for life, from that moment.
‘There’s the other thing,’ I went on. ‘The Rani. I have to try to talk some sense into her. Now, I daresay there isn’t much I can do, since I gather she’s shown you and Erskine that she’s not disposed to be friendly, but I’m bound to try, you see. So I’ll be obliged to you if you’ll arrange an audience for me the day after tomorrow – I’d like to rest and perhaps look around the city first. For the present, you can tell me your own opinion of her.’
He frowned, and filled my glass. ‘You’ll think it’s odd, sir, I daresay, but in all the time I’ve been here, I’ve never even seen her. I’ve met her, frequently, at the palace, but she speaks from behind a purdah, you know – and as often as not her chamberlain does the talking for her. She’s a stickler for form, and since government granted her diplomatic immunity after her husband died – as a sop, really, when we assumed suzerainty – well, it makes it difficult to deal with her satisfactorily. She was friendly enough with Erskine at one time – but I’ve had no change out of her at all. She’s damned bitter, you see – when her husband died, old Raja Gangadar, he left no children of his own – well, he was an odd bird, really,’ and Skene blushed furiously and avoided my eye. ‘Used to go about in female dress most of the time, and wore bangles and … and perfume, you see—’
‘No wonder she was bitter,’ says I.
‘No, no, what I mean is, since he left no legitimate heir, but only a boy whom he’d adopted, Dalhousie wouldn’t recognise the infant. The new succession law, you know. So the state was annexed – and the Rani was furious, and petitioned the Queen, and sent agents to London, but it was no go. The adopted son, Damodar, was dispossessed, and the Rani, who’d hoped to be regent, was deprived of her power – officially. Between ourselves, we let her rule pretty well as she pleases – well, we can’t do otherwise, can we? We’ve one battalion of sepoys, and thirty British civilians to run the state administration – but she’s the law, where her people are concerned, absolute as Caesar.’
‘Doesn’t that satisfy her, then?’
‘Not a bit of it. She detests the fact that officially she only holds power by the Sirkar’s leave, you see. And she’s still wild about the late Raja’s will – you’d think that with a quarter of a million in her treasury she’d be content, but there was some jewellery or other that Calcutta confiscated, and she’s never forgiven us.’
‘Interesting lady,’ says I. ‘Dangerous, d’you think?’
He frowned. ‘Politically, yes. Given the chance, she’d pay our score off, double quick – that’s why the chapatti business upset me. She’s got no army, as such – but with every man in Jhansi a born fighter, and robber, she don’t need one, do she? And they’ll jump if she whistles, for they worship the ground she treads on. She’s proud as Lucifer’s sister, and devilish hard, not to say cruel, in her own courts, but she’s uncommon kind to the poor folk, and highly thought of for her piety – spends five hours a day meditating, although she was a wild piece, they say, when she was a girl. They brought her up like a Maharatta prince at the old Peshwa’s court – taught her to ride and shoot and fence with the best of them. They say she still has the fiend’s own temper,’ he added, grinning, ‘but she’s always been civil enough to me – at a distance. But make no mistake, she’s dangerous; if you can sweeten her, sir, we’ll all sleep a deal easier at nights.’
There was that, of course. However withered an old trot she might be, she’d be an odd female if she was altogether impervious to Flashy’s manly bearing and cavalry whiskers – which was probably what Pam had in mind in the first place. Cunning old devil. Still, as I turned in that night I wasn’t absolutely looking forward to poodle-faking her in two days’ time, and as I glanced from my bungalow window and saw Jhansi citadel beetling in the starlight, I thought, we’ll take a nice little escort of lancers with us when we go to take tea with the lady, so we will.
But that was denied me. I had intended to pass the next day looking about the city, perhaps having a discreet word with Carshore the Collector and the colonel of the sepoys, but as the syce
was bringing round my pony to the dak-bungalow, up comes Skene in a flurry. When he’d sent word to the palace that Colonel Flashman, a distinguished soldier of the Sirkar, was seeking an audience for the following day, he’d been told that distinguished visitors were expected to present themselves immediately as a token of proper respect to her highness, and Colonel Flashman could shift his distinguished rump up to the palace forthwith.
‘I … I thought in the circumstances of your visit,’ says Skene, apologetically, ‘that you might think it best to comply.’
‘You did, did you?’ says I. ‘Does every Briton in Jhansi leap to attention when this beldam snaps her fingers, then?’
‘Shall we say, we find it convenient to humour her highness,’ says he – he was more of a political than he looked, this lad, so I blustered a bit, to be in character, and then said he might find me an escort of lancers to convoy me in.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ says he. ‘We haven’t any lancers – and if we had, we’ve agreed not to send troop formations inside the city walls. Also, since I was excluded from the, er … invitation, I fear you must go alone.’
‘What?’ says I. ‘Damnation, who governs here – the Sirkar or this harridan?’ I didn’t fancy above half risking my hide unguarded in that unhealthy-looking fortress, but I had to cover it with dignity. ‘You’ve made a rod for your own backs by being too soft with this … this woman. She’s not Queen Bess, you know!’
‘She thinks she is,’ says he cheerfully, so in the end of course I had to lump it. But I changed into my lancer fig first, sabre, revolver and all – for I could guess why she was ensuring that I visited her alone: up-country, on the frontier, they judge a man on his own looks, but down here they go on the amount and richness of your retinue. One mounted officer wasn’t going to impress the natives with the Sirkar’s power – well, then, he’d look his best, and be damned to her. So I figged up, and when I regarded myself in Skene’s cracked mirror – blue tunic and breeches, gold belt and epaulettes, white gauntlets and helmet, well-bristled whiskers, and Flashy’s stalwart fourteen stone inside it all, it wasn’t half bad. I took a couple of packages from my trunk, stowed them in my saddlebag, waved to Skene, and trotted off to meet royalty, with only the syce to show me the way.
Jhansi city lies about a couple of miles from the cantonment, and I had plenty of time to take in the scenery. The road, which was well-lined with temples and smaller buildings, was crowded into the city, with bullock-carts churning up the dust, camels, palankeens, and hordes of travellers both mounted and on foot. Most of them were country folk, on their way to the bazaars, but every now and then would come an elephant with red and gold fringed howdah swaying along, carrying some minor nabob or rich lady, or a portly merchant on his mule with a string of porters behind, and once the syce pointed out a group who he said were members of the Rani’s own bodyguard – a dozen stalwart Khyberie Pathans, of all things, trotting along very military in double file, with mail coats and red silk scarves wound round their spiked helmets. The Rani might not have a army, but she wasn’t short of force, with those fellows about: there was a hundred years’ Company service among them if there was a day.
And her city defences were a sight to see – massive walls twenty feet high, and beyond them a warren of streets stretching for near a mile to the castle rock, with its series of curtain walls and round towers – it would be the deuce of a place to storm, after you’d fought through the city itself; there were guns in the embrasures, and mail-clad spearmen on the walls, all looking like business.
We had to force our horses through a crowded inferno of heat and smells and noise and jostling niggers to get to the palace, which stood apart from the fort near a small lake, with a shady park about it; it was a fine, four-square building, its outer walls beautifully decorated with huge paintings of battles and hunting scenes. I presented myself to another Pathan, very splendid in steel back-and-breast and long-tail puggaree, who commanded the gate guard, and sat sweating in the scorching sun while he sent off a messenger for the chamberlain. And as I chafed impatiently, the Pathan walked slowly round me, eyeing me up and down, and presently stopped, stuck his thumbs in his belt, and spat carefully on my shadow.
Now, close by the gate there happened to be a number of booths and side-shows set up – the usual things, lemonade-sellers, a fakir with a plant growing through his palm, sundry beggars, and a kind of punch-and-judy show, which was being watched by a group of ladies in a palankeen. As a matter of fact, they’d already taken my eye, for they were obviously Maharatta females of quality, and four finer little trotters you never saw. There was a very slim, languid-looking beauty in a gold sari reclining in the palankeen, another plump piece in scarlet trousers and jacket beside her, and a third, very black, but fine-boned as a Swede, with a pearl headdress that must have cost my year’s pay, sitting in a kind of camp-chair alongside – even the ladies’ maid standing beside the palankeen was a looker, with great almond eyes and a figure inside her plain white sari like a Hindoo temple goddess. I was in the act of touching my hat to them when the Pathan started expectorating. At this the maid giggled, the ladies looked, and the Pathan sniffed contemptuously and spat again.
Well, as a rule anyone can insult me and see how much it pays him, especially if he’s large and ugly and carrying a tulwar.
But for the credit of the Sirkar, and my own face in front of the women, I had to do something, so I looked the Pathan up and down, glanced away, and said quietly in Pushtu:
‘You would spit more carefully if you were still in the Guides, hubshi.’
He opened his eyes at that, and swore. ‘Who calls me hubshi? Who says I was in the Guides? And what is it to thee, feringhee
