Читать книгу Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 1: Flashman, Royal Flash, Flashman’s Lady - George Fraser MacDonald - Страница 19

In fact, Akbar Khan did not return next day, or for a week afterwards, so I had plenty of time to speculate, I was kept under close guard in the room, but comfortably enough; they fed me well and allowed me to exercise on a little closed verandah with a couple of armed Barukzis to keep an eye on me. But not a word would anyone say in answer to my questions and demands for release. I couldn’t even discover what was going on in Kabul, or what our troops were doing – or what Akbar Khan himself might be up to. Or, most important of all, why he was keeping me prisoner.

Then, on the eighth day, Akbar returned, looking very spruce and satisfied. When he had dismissed the guards he inquired after my wounds, which were almost better, asked if I was well cared for and so forth, and then said that if there was anything I wished to know he would do his best to inform me.

Well, I lost no time in making my wishes known, and he listened smiling and stroking his short black beard. At last he cut me off with a raised hand.

“Stop, stop, Flashman huzoor. I see you are like a thirsty man; we must quench you a little at a time. Sit down now, and drink a little tea, and listen.”

I sat, and he paced slowly about the room, a burly, springy figure in his green tunic and pyjamys which were tucked into short riding boots. He was something of a dandy, I noticed; there was gold lace on the tunic, and silver edging to the shirt beneath it. But again I was impressed by the obvious latent strength of the man; you could see it even in his stance, with his broad chest that looked always as though he was holding a deep breath, and his long, powerful hands.

“First,” he said, “I keep you here because I need you. How, you shall see later – not today. Second, all is well in Kabul. The British keep to their cantonment, and the Afghans snipe at them from time to time and make loud noises. The King of Afghanistan, Shah Sujah” – here he curled his lip in amusement – “sits doing nothing among his women in the Bala Hissar, and calls to the British to help him against his unruly people. The mobs rule Kabul itself, each mob under its leader imagining that it alone has frightened the British off. They do a little looting, and a little raping, and a little killing – their own people, mark you – and are content for the moment. There you have the situation, which is most satisfactory. Oh, yes, and the hill tribes, hearing of the death of Sekundar Burnes, and of the rumoured presence in Kabul of one Akbar Khan, son of the true king Dost Mohammed, are converging on the capital. They smell war and plunder. Now, Flashman huzoor, you are answered.”

Well, of course, in answering half a dozen questions he had posed a hundred others. But one above all I had to be satisfied about.

“You say the British keep to their cantonment,” I cried. “But what about Burnes’s murder? D’you mean they’ve done nothing?”

“In effect, nothing,” says he. “They are unwise, for their inaction is taken as cowardice. You and I know they are not cowards, but the Kabuli mobs don’t, and I fear this may encourage them to greater excesses than they have committed already. But we shall see. However, all this leads me to my purpose in visiting you today – apart from my desire to inquire into your welfare.” And he grinned again, that infectious smile which seemed to mock but which I couldn’t dislike. “You understand that if I satisfy your curiosity here and there, I also have questions which I would wish answered.”

“Ask away,” says I, rather cautious.

“You said, at our first meeting – or at least you implied – that Elfistan Sahib and McLoten Sahib were … how shall I put it? … sometimes less than intelligent. Was that a considered judgement?”

“Elphinstone Sahib and McNaghten Sahib,” says I, “are a pair of born bloody fools, as anyone in the bazaar will tell you.”

“The people in the bazaar have not the advantage of serving on Elfistan Sahib’s staff,” says he drily. “That is why I attach importance to your opinion. Now, are they trustworthy?”

This was a deuced odd question, from an Afghan, I thought, and for a moment I nearly replied that they were English officers, blast his eyes. But you would have been wasting your time talking that way to Akbar Khan.

“Yes, they’re trustworthy,” I said.

“One more than the other? Which would you trust with your horse, or your wife – I take it you have no children?”

I didn’t think long about this. “I’d trust Elphy Bey to do his best like a gentleman,” I said. “But it probably wouldn’t be much of a best.”

“Thank you, Flashman,” says he, “that is all I need to know. Now, I regret that I must cut short our most interesting little discussion, but I have many affairs to attend to. I shall come again, and we shall speak further.”

“Now, hold on,” I began, for I wanted to know how long he intended to keep me locked up, and a good deal more, but he turned me aside most politely, and left. And there I was, for another two weeks, damn him, with no one but the silent Barukzis for company.

I didn’t doubt what he had told me about the situation in Kabul was true, but I couldn’t understand it. It made no sense – a prominent British official murdered, and nothing done to avenge him. As it proved, this was exactly what had happened. When the mob looted the Residency and Sekundar was hacked to bits, old Elphy and McNaghten had gone into the vapours, but they’d done virtually nothing. They had written notes to each other, wondering whether to march into the city, or move into the Bala Hissar fort, or bring Sale – who was still bogged down by the Gilzais at Gandamack – back to Kabul. In the end they did nothing, and the Kabuli mobs roamed the city, as Akbar said, doing what they pleased, and virtually besieging our people in the cantonment.

Elphy could, of course, have crushed the mobs by firm action, but he didn’t; he just wrung his hands and took to his bed, and McNaghten wrote him stiff little suggestions about the provisioning of the cantonment for the winter. Meanwhile the Kabulis, who at first had been scared stiff when they realised what they had done in murdering Burnes, got damned uppish, and started attacking the outposts near the cantonment, and shooting up our quarters at night.

One attempt, and only one, was made to squash them, and that foul-tempered idiot, Brigadier Shelton, bungled it handsomely. He took a strong force out to Beymaroo, and the Kabulis – just a damned drove of shopkeepers and stablehands, mark you, not real Afghan warriors – chased him and his troops back to the cantonment. After that, there was nothing to be done; morale in the cantonment went to rock-bottom, and the countryside Afghans, who had been watching to see what would happen, decided they were on a good thing, and came rampaging into the city. The signs were that if the mobs and the tribesmen really settled down to business, they could swarm over the cantonment whenever they felt like it.

All this I learned later, of course. Colin Mackenzie, who was through it all, said it was pathetic to see how old Elphy shilly-shallied and changed his mind, and McNaghten still refused to believe that disaster was approaching. What had begun as mob violence was rapidly developing into a general uprising, and all that was wanting on the Afghan side was a leader who would take charge of events. And, of course, unknown to Elphy and McNaghten and the rest of them, there was such a leader, watching events from a house in Kabul, biding his time and every now and then asking me questions. For after a fortnight’s lapse Akbar Khan came to me again, polite and bland as ever, and talked about it and about, speculating on such various matters as British policy in India and the rate of march of British troops in cold weather. He came ostensibly to gossip, but he pumped me for all he was worth, and I let him pump. There was nothing else I could do.

He began visiting me daily, and I got tired of demanding my release and having my questions deftly ignored. But there was no help for it; I could only be patient and see what this jovial, clever gentleman had in mind for me. Of what he had in mind for himself I was getting a pretty fair idea, and events proved me right.

Finally, more than a month after Burnes’s murder, Akbar came and told me I was to be released. I could have kissed him, almost, for I was fed up with being jailed, and not even an Afghan bint to keep me amused. He looked mighty serious, however, and asked me to be seated while he spoke to me “on behalf of the leaders of the Faithful”. He had three of his pals with him, and I wondered if he meant them.

One of them, his cousin, Sultan Jan, he had brought before, a leery-looking cove with a fork beard. The others were called Muhammed Din, a fine-looking old lad with a silver beard, and Khan Hamet, a one-eyed thug with the face of a horse-thief. They sat and looked at me, and Akbar talked.

“First, my dear friend Flashman,” says he, all charm, “I must tell you that you have been kept here not only for your own good but for your people’s. Their situation is now bad. Why, I do not know, but Elfistan Sahib has behaved like a weak old woman. He has allowed the mobs to rage where they will, he has left the deaths of his servants unavenged, he has exposed his soldiers to the worst fate of all – humiliation – by keeping them shut up in cantonments while the Afghan rabble mock at them. Now his own troops are sick at heart; they have no fight in them.”

He paused, picking his words.

“The British cannot stay here now,” he went on. “They have lost their power, and we Afghans wish to be rid of them. There are those who say we should slaughter them all – needless to say, I do not agree.” And he smiled. “For one thing, it might not be so easy—”

“It is never easy,” said old Muhammed Din. “These same feringhees took Ghuznee Fort; I saw them, by God.”

“—and for another, what would the harvest be?” went on Akbar. “The White Queen avenges her children. No, there must be a peaceful withdrawal to India; this is what I would prefer myself. I am no enemy of the British, but they have been guests in my country too long.”

“One of ’em a month too long,” says I, and he laughed.

“You are one feringhee, Flashman, who is welcome to stay as long as he chooses,” says he. “But for the rest, they have to go.”

“They came to put Sujah on the throne,” says I. “They won’t leave him in the lurch.”

“They have already agreed to do so,” said Akbar smoothly. “Myself, I have arranged the terms of withdrawal with McLoten Sahib.”

“You’ve seen McNaghten?”

“Indeed. The British have agreed with me and the chiefs to march out to Peshawar as soon as they have gathered provisions for the journey and struck their camp. Sujah, it is agreed, remains on the throne, and the British are guaranteed safe conduct through the passes.”

So we were quitting Kabul; I didn’t mind, but I wondered how Elphy and McNaghten were going to explain this away to Calcutta. Inglorious retreat, pushed out by niggers, don’t look well at all. Of course, the bit about Sujah staying on the throne was all my eye; once we were out of the way they’d blind him quietly and pop him in a fortress and forget about him. And the man who would take his place was sitting watching how I took the news.

“Well,” says I at last, “there it is, but what have I to do with it? I mean, I’ll just toddle off with the rest, won’t I?”

Akbar leaned forward. “I have made it sound too simple, perhaps. There are problems. For example, McLoten has made his treaty to withdraw not only with myself, but with the Douranis, the Gilzais, the Kuzzilbashies, and so on – all as equals. Now, when the British have gone, all these factions will be left behind, and who will be the master?”

“Shah Sujah, according to you.”

“He can rule only if he has a united majority of the tribes supporting him. As things stand, that would be difficult, for they eye each other askance. Oh, McLoten Sahib is not the fool you think him, he has been at work to divide us.”

“Well, can’t you unite them? You’re Dost Mohammed’s son, ain’t you – and all through the passes a month ago I heard nothing but Akbar Khan and what a hell of a fellow he was.”

He laughed and clapped his hands. “How gratifying! Oh, I have a following, it is true—”

“You have all Afghanistan,” growls Sultan Jan. “As for Sujah—”

“I have what I have,” Akbar interrupted him, suddenly chilly. “It is not enough, if I am to support Sujah as he must be supported.”

There was a moment of silence, not very comfortable, and Akbar went on:

“The Douranis dislike me, and they are powerful. It would be better if their wings were clipped – theirs and a few others. This cannot be done after the British have left. With British help it can be done in time.”

Oho, I thought, now we have it.

“What I propose is this,” says Akbar, looking me in the eye. “McLoten must break his treaty so far as the Douranis are concerned; he must assist me in their overthrow. In return for this, I will allow him – for with the Douranis and their allies gone I shall have the power – to stay in Kabul another eight months. In that time I shall become Sujah’s Vizier, the power at his elbow. The country will be so quiet then – so quiet, that the cheep of a Kandahar mouse will be heard in Kabul – that the British will be able to withdraw in honour. Is not this fair? The alternative now is a hurried withdrawal, which no one here can guarantee in safety, for none has the power to restrain the wilder tribes. And Afghanistan will be left to warring factions.”

I have observed, in the course of a dishonest life, that when a rogue is outlining a treacherous plan, he works harder to convince himself than to move his hearers. Akbar wanted to cook his Afghan enemies’ goose, that was all, and perfectly understandable, but he wanted to look like a gentleman still – to himself.

“Will you carry my proposal secretly to McLoten Sahib, Flashman?” he asked.

If he’d asked me to carry his proposal of marriage to Queen Victoria I’d have agreed, so of course I said “Aye” at once.

“You may add that as part of the bargain I shall expect a down payment of twenty lakhs of rupees,” he added, “and four thousand a year for life. I think McLoten Sahib will find this reasonable, since I am probably preserving his political career.”

And your own, too, thinks I. Sujah’s Vizier, indeed. Once the Douranis were out of the way it would be farewell Sujah, and long live King Akbar. Not that I minded; after all, I would be able to say I was on nodding terms with a king – even if he was only a king of Afghanistan.

“Now,” went on Akbar, “you must deliver my proposals to McLoten Sahib personally, and in the presence of Muhammed Din and Khan Hamet here, who will accompany you. If it seems” – he flashed his smile – “that I don’t trust you, my friend, let me say that I trust no one. The reflection is not personal.”

“The wise son,” croaked Khan Hamet, opening his mouth for the first time, “mistrusts his mother.” Doubtless he knew his own family best.

I pointed out that the plan might appear to McNaghten to be a betrayal of the other chiefs, and his own part in it dishonourable; Akbar nodded, and said gently:

“I have spoken with McLoten Sahib, remember. He is a politician.”

He seemed to think that was answer enough, so I let it be. Then Akbar said:

“You will tell McLoten that if he agrees, as I think he will, he must come to meet me at Mohammed’s Fort, beyond the cantonment walls, the day after tomorrow. He must have a strong force at hand within the cantonment, ready to emerge at the word and seize the Douranis and their allies, who will be with me. Thereafter we will dispose matters as seems best to us. Is this agreed?” And he looked at his three fellows, who nodded agreement.

“Tell McLoten Sahib,” said Sultan Jan, with a nasty grin, “that if he wills he may have the head of Amenoolah Khan, who led the attack on Sekundar Burnes’s Residency. Also, that in this whole matter we of the Barukzis have the friendship of the Gilzais.”

If both Gilzais and Barukzis were in the plot, it seemed to me that Akbar was on solid ground; McNaghten would think so too. But to me, sitting looking at those four faces, bland Akbar and his trio of villains, the whole thing stank like a dead camel. I would have trusted the parcel of them as much as Gul Shah’s snakes.

However, I kept a straight face, and that afternoon the guard at the cantonment’s main gate was amazed by the sight of Lieutenant Flashman, clad in the mail of a Barukzi warrior, and accompanied by Muhammed Din and Khan Hamet,¹⁵ riding down in state from Kabul City. They had thought me dead a month ago, chopped to bits with Burnes, but here I was larger than life. The word spread like fire, and when we reached the gates there was a crowd waiting for us, with tall Colin Mackenzie¹⁶ at their head.

“Where the devil have you come from?” he demanded, his blue eyes wide open.

I leaned down so that no one else should hear and said, “Akbar Khan”; he stared at me hard, to see if I was mad or joking, and then said: “Come to the Envoy at once,” and cleared a way through the crowd for us. There was a great hubbub and shouting of questions, but Mackenzie shepherded us all three straight to the Envoy’s quarters and into McNaghten’s presence.

“Can’t it wait, Mackenzie?” says he peevishly. “I’m just about to dine.” But a dozen words from Mackenzie changed his tune. He stared at me through his spectacles, perched as always on the very tip of his nose. “My God, Flashman! Alive! And from Akbar Khan, you say? And who are these?” And he indicated my companions.

“Once you suggested I should bring you hostages from Akbar, Sir William,” says I. “Well, here they are, if you like.”

He didn’t take it well, but snapped to me to come in directly to dinner with him. The two Afghans, of course, wouldn’t eat at an unbeliever’s table, so they waited in his office, where food was brought to them. Muhammed Din reminded me that Akbar’s message must be delivered only in their presence, so I contented myself by telling McNaghten that I felt as though I was loaded with explosives, but that it must wait till after dinner.

However, as we ate I was able to give him an account of Burnes’s murder and my own adventures with Gul Shah; I told it very plain and offhand, but McNaghten kept exclaiming “Good God!” all the way through, and at the tale of my tug-of-war his glasses fell into his curry. Mackenzie sat watching me narrowly, pulling at his fair moustache, and when I was done and McNaghten was spluttering his astonishment, Mackenzie just said: “Good work, Flash.” This was praise, from him, for he was a tough, cold ramrod of a man, and reckoned the bravest in the Kabul garrison, except maybe for George Broadfoot. If he told my tale – and he would – Flashy’s stock would rise to new heights, which was all to the good.

Over the port McNaghten tried to draw me about Akbar, but I said it must wait until we joined the two Afghans; not that I minded, much, but it made McNaghten sniffy, which was always excuse enough for me. He said sarcastically that I seemed to have gone native altogether, and that I did not need to be so nice, but Mackenzie said shortly that I was right, which put His Excellency into the sulks. He muttered that it was a fine thing when important officials could be bearded by military whipper-snappers, and the sooner we got to business the better it would be.

So we adjourned to his study, and presently Muhammed and Hamet came in, greeted the Envoy courteously, and received his cool nod in reply. He was a conceited prig, sure enough. Then I launched into Akbar’s proposal.

I can see them still: McNaughten sitting back in his cane chair, legs crossed, finger-tips together, staring at the ceiling; the two silent Afghans, their eyes fixed on him; and the tall, fair Mackenzie, leaning against the wall, puffing a cheroot, watching the Afghans. No one said a word as I talked, and no one moved. I wondered if McNaghten understood what I was saying; he never twitched a muscle.

When I was finished he waited a full minute, slowly took off his glasses and polished them, and said quietly:

“Most interesting. We must consider what the Sirdar Akbar has said. His message is of the greatest weight and importance. But of course it is not to be answered in haste. Only one thing will I say now: the Queen’s Envoy cannot consider the suggestion of bloodshed contained in the offer of the head of Amenoolah Khan. That is repugnant to me.” He turned to the two Afghans. “You will be tired, sirs, so we will detain you no longer. Tomorrow we will talk again.”

It was still only early evening, so he was talking rot, but the two Afghans seemed to understand diplomatic language; they bowed gravely and withdrew. McNaghten watched the door close on them; then he sprang to his feet.

“Saved at the eleventh hour!” cried he. “Divide and conquer! Mackenzie, I had dreamed of something precisely like this.” His pale, worn face was all smiles now. “I knew, I knew, that these people were incapable of keeping faith with one another. Behold me proved right!”

Mackenzie studied his cigar. “You mean you’ll accept?”

“Accept? Of course I shall accept. This is a heaven-sent opportunity. Eight months, eh? Much can happen in that time: we may never leave Afghanistan at all, but if we do it will be with credit.” He rubbed his hands and set to among the papers on his desk. “This should revive even our friend Elphinstone, eh, Mackenzie?”

“I don’t like it,” says Mackenzie. “I think it’s a plot.”

McNaghten stopped to stare at him. “A plot?” Then he laughed, short and sharp. “Oho, a plot! Let me alone for that – trust me for that!”

“I don’t like it a bit,” says Mackenzie.

“And why not, pray? Tell me why not. Isn’t it logical? Akbar must be cock o’ the walk, so out must go his enemies, the Douranis. He’ll use us, to be sure, but it is to our own advantage.”

“There’s a hole in it,” says Mac. “He’ll never serve as Vizier to Sujah. He’s lying in that, at least.”

“What of it? I tell you, Mackenzie, it doesn’t matter one per cent whether he or Sujah rules in Kabul, we shall be secured by this. Let them fight among themselves as they will; it makes us all the stronger.”

“Akbar isn’t to be trusted,” Mac was beginning, but McNaghten pooh-poohed him.

“You don’t know one of the first rules of politics: that a man can be trusted to follow his own interest. I see perfectly well that Akbar is after undisputed power among his own people; well, who’s to blame him? And I tell you, I believe you wrong Akbar Khan; in our meetings he has impressed me more than any other Afghan I have met. I judge him to be a man of his word.”

“The Douranis are probably saying that, too,” says I, and had the icy spectacles turned on me for my pains. But Mackenzie took me up fast enough, and asked me what I thought.

“I don’t trust Akbar either,” says I. “Mind you, I like the chap, but he ain’t straight.”

“Flashman probably knows him better than we do,” says Mac, and McNaghten exploded.

“Now, really, Captain Mackenzie! I believe I can trust my own judgement, do you know? Against even that of such a distinguished diplomatist as Mr Flashman here.” He snorted and sat down at his desk. “I should be interested to hear precisely what Akbar Khan has to gain by treachery towards us? What purpose his proposal can have other than that which is apparent? Well, can you tell me?”

Mac just stubbed out his cheroot. “If I could tell you, sir, – if I could see a definite trick in all this – I’d be a happier man. Dealing with Afghans, it’s what I don’t see and don’t understand that worries me.”

“Lunatic philosophy!” says McNaghten, and wouldn’t listen to another word. He was sold on Akbar’s plan, plain enough, and so determined that next morning he had Muhammed and Hamet in and signified his acceptance in writing, which they were to take back to Akbar Khan. I thought that downright foolish, for it was concrete evidence of McNaghten’s part in what was, after all, a betrayal. One or two of his advisers tried to dissuade him from putting pen to paper, at least, but he wouldn’t budge.

“Trouble is the man’s desperate,” Mackenzie told me. “Akbar’s proposal came at just the right moment, when McNaghten felt the last ray of hope was gone, and he was going to have to skulk out of Kabul with his tail between his legs. He wants to believe Akbar’s offer is above board. Well, young Flash, I don’t know about you, but when we go out to see Akbar tomorrow I’m taking my guns along.”

I was feeling pretty nervous about it myself, and I wasn’t cheered by the sight of Elphy Bey, when McNaghten took me along to see him that afternoon. The old fellow was lying on a daybed on his verandah, while one of the garrison ladies – I forget who – was reading the Scriptures to him. He couldn’t have been more pleased to see me, and was full of praise for my exploits, but he looked so old and wasted, in his night-cap and gown, that I thought, my God, what chance have we with this to command us?

McNaghten was pretty short with him, for when Elphy heard of Akbar’s plan he looked down in the mouth, and asked if McNaghten wasn’t afraid of some treachery.

“None at all,” says McNaghten. “I wish you to have two regiments and two guns got ready, quickly and quietly, for the capture of Mohammed Khan’s fort, where we shall met Sirdar Akbar tomorrow morning. The rest you can leave to me.”

Elphy looked unhappy about this. “It is all very uncertain,” says he, fretting. “I fear they are not to be trusted, you know. It is a very strange plot, to be sure.”

“Oh, my God!” says McNaghten. “If you think so, then let us march out and fight them, and I am sure we shall beat them.”

“I can’t, my dear Sir William,” says old Elphy, and it was pathetic to hear his quavering voice. “The troops aren’t to be counted on, you see.”

“Well, then, we must accept the Sirdar’s proposals.”

Elphy fretted some more, and McNaghten was nearly beside himself with impatience. Finally he snapped out: “I understand these things better than you!” and turned on his heel, and stamped off the verandah.

Elphy was much distressed, and lamented on about the sad state of affairs, and the lack of agreement. “I suppose he is right, and he does understand better than I. At least I hope so. But you must take care, Flashman; all of you must take care.”

Between him and McNaghten I felt pretty down, but evening brought my spirits up, for I went to Lady Sale’s house, where there was quite a gathering of the garrison and wives, and found I was something of a lion. Mackenzie had told my story, and they were all over me. Even Lady Sale, a vinegary old dragon with a tongue like a carving knife, was civil.

“Captain Mackenzie has given us a remarkable account of your adventures,” says she. “You must be very tired; come and sit here, by me.”

I pooh-poohed the adventures, of course, but was told to hold my tongue. “We have little enough to our credit,” says Lady Sale, “so we must make the most of what we have. You, at least, have behaved with courage and common sense, which is more than can be said for some older heads among us.”

She meant poor old Elphy, of course, and she and the other ladies lost no time in taking his character to pieces. They did not think much of McNaghten either, and I was surprised at the viciousness of their opinions. It was only later that I understood that they were really frightened women; they had cause to be.

However, everyone seemed to enjoy slanging Elphy and the Envoy, and it was quite a jolly party. I left about midnight; it was snowing, and bright moonlight, and as I walked to my billet I found myself thinking of Christmastime in England, and the coach-ride back from Rugby when the half ended, and warm brandy-punch in the hall, and the roaring fire in the dining-room grate with Father and his cronies talking and laughing and warming their backsides. I wished I was there, with my young wife, and at the thought of her my innards tightened. By God, I hadn’t had a woman in weeks and there was nothing to be had in the cantonments. That was something I would speedily put right after we had finished our business with Akbar in the morning, and things were back to normal. Perhaps it was reaction from listening to those whining females, but it seemed to me as I went to sleep that McNaghten was probably right, and our plot with Akbar was all for the best.

I was up before dawn, and dressed in my Afghan clothes; it was easier to hide a brace of pistols beneath them than in a uniform. I buckled on my sword, and rode over to the gate where McNaghten and Mackenzie were already waiting, with a few native troopers; McNaghten, in his frock coat and top hat, was sitting a mule and damning the eyes of a Bombay Cavalry cornet; it seemed the escort was not ready, and Brigadier Shelton had not yet assembled the troops who were to overpower the Douranis.

“You may tell the Brigadier there is never anything ready or right where he is concerned,” McNaghten was saying. “It is all of a piece; we are surrounded by military incompetents; well, it won’t do. I shall go out to the meeting, and Shelton must have his troops ready to advance within the half hour. Must, I say! Is that understood?”

The cornet scuttled off, and McNaghten blew his nose and swore to Mackenzie he would wait no longer. Mac urged him to hold on at least till there was some sign that Shelton was moving, but McNaghten said:

“Oh, he is probably in his bed still. But I’ve sent word to Le Geyt; he will see the thing attended to. Ah, here are Trevor and Lawrence; now gentlemen, there has been time enough wasted. Forward!”

I didn’t like this. The plan had been that Akbar and the chiefs, including the Douranis, should be assembled near Mohammed’s Fort, which was less than a quarter of a mile from the cantonment gates. Once McNaghten and Akbar had greeted each other, Shelton was to emerge from the cantonment at speed, and the Douranis would be surrounded and overcome between our troops and the other chiefs. But Shelton wasn’t ready, we didn’t even have an escort, and it seemed to me that the five of us and the native troopers – who were only half a dozen or so strong – might have an uncomfortable time before Shelton came on the scene.

Young Lawrence thought so, too, for he asked McNaghten as we trotted through the gate if it would not be better to wait; McNaghten snapped his head off and said we could simply talk to Akbar until Shelton emerged, when the thing would be done.

“Suppose there’s treachery?” says Lawrence. “We’d be better to have the troops ready to move at the signal.”

“I can’t wait any longer!” cries McNaghten, and he was shaking, but whether with fear or cold or excitement I didn’t know. And I heard him mutter to Lawrence that he knew there might be treachery, but what could he do? We must just hope Akbar would keep faith with us. Anyway, McNaghten would rather risk his own life than be disgraced by scuttling hangdog out of Kabul.

“Success will save our honour,” says he, “and make up for all the rest.”

We rode out across the snowy meadow towards the canal. It was a sparkling clear morning, bitterly cold; Kabul City lay straight ahead, grey and silent; to our left Kabul River wound its oily way beneath the low banks, and beyond it the great Bala Hissar fort seemed to crouch like a watchdog over the white fields. We rode in silence now, our hooves crunching the snow; from the four in front of me the white trails of breath rose over their shoulders. Everything was very quiet.

We came to the canal bridge, and just beyond it was the slope running down from Mohammed’s Fort beside the river. The slope was dotted with Afghans; in the centre, where a blue Bokhara carpet was spread on the snow, was a knot of chieftains with Akbar in their midst. Their followers waited at a distance, but I reckoned there must be fifty men in view – Barukzis, Gilzais, Douranis, yes, by God, and Ghazis.¹⁷ That was a nasty sight. We’re mad, I thought, riding into this; why, even if Shelton advances at the double, we could have our throats cut before he’s half way here.

I looked back over my shoulder to the cantonment, but there was no sign of Shelton’s soldiers. Mind you, at this stage that was just as well.

We rode to the foot of the slope, and what I was shivering with was not the cold.

Akbar rode down to meet us, on a black charger, and himself very spruce in a steel back-and-breast like a cuirassier, with his spiked helmet wrapped about with a green turban. He was all smiles and called out greetings to McNaghten; Sultan Jan and the chiefs behind were all looking as jovial as Father Christmas, and nodding and bowing towards us.

“This looks damned unhealthy,” muttered Mackenzie. The chiefs were advancing straight to us, but the other Afghans, on the slopes on either side, seemed to me to be edging forward. I gulped down my fear, but there was nothing for it but to go on now; Akbar and McNaghten had met, and were shaking hands in the saddle.

One of the native troopers had been leading a lovely little white mare, which he now took forward, and McNaghten presented it to Akbar, who received it with delight. Seeing him so cheerful, I tried to tell myself it was all right – the plot was laid, McNaghten knew what he was doing. I really had nothing to fear. The Afghans were round us now, anyway, but they seemed friendly enough still; only Mackenzie showed, by the cock of his head and his cold eye, that he was ready to drop his hand on his pistol butt at the first sign of a false move.

“Well, well,” cries Akbar. “Shall we dismount?”

We did, and Akbar led McNaghten on to the carpet. Lawrence was right at their heels, and looking pretty wary; he must have said something, for Akbar laughed and called out:

“Lawrence Sahib need not be nervous. We’re all friends here.”

I found myself with old Muhammed Din beside me, bowing and greeting me, and I noticed that Mackenzie and Trevor, too, were being engaged in friendly conversation. It was all so pally that I could have sworn there was something up, but McNaghten seemed to have regained his confidence and was chatting away smoothly to Akbar. Something told me not to stand still, but to keep on the move; I walked towards McNaghten, to hear what was passing between him and Akbar, and the ring of Afghans seemed to draw closer to the carpet.

“You’ll observe also that I’m wearing the gift of pistols received from Lawrence Sahib,” Akbar was saying. “Ah, there is Flashman. Come up, old friend, and let me see you. McLoten Sahib, let me tell you that Flashman is my favourite guest.”

“When he comes from you, prince,” says McNaghten, “he is my favourite messenger.”

“Ah, yes,” says Akbar, flashing his smile. “He is a prince of messengers.” Then he turned to look McNaghten in the eye, and said: “I understand that the message he bore found favour in your excellency’s sight?” The buzz of voices around us died away, and it seemed that everyone was suddenly watching McNaghten. He seemed to sense it, but he nodded in reply to Akbar.

“It is agreed, then?” says Akbar.

“It is agreed,” says McNaghten, and Akbar stared him full in the face for a few seconds, and then suddenly threw himself forward, clapping his arms round McNaghten’s body and pinning his hands to his sides.

“Take them!” he shouted, and I saw Lawrence, who had been just behind McNaghten, seized by two Afghans at his elbows. Mackenzie’s cry of surprise sounded beside me, and he started forward towards McNaghten, but one of the Barukzis jumped between, waving a pistol. Trevor ran at Akbar, but they wrestled him down before he had gone a yard.

I take some pride when I think back to that moment; while the others started forward instinctively to aid McNaghten, I alone kept my head. This was no place for Flashman, and I saw only one way out. I had been walking towards Akbar and McNaghten, remember, and as soon as I saw the Sirdar move I bounded ahead, not at him, but past him, and so close that my sleeve brushed his back. Just beyond him, on the edge of the carpet, stood the little white mare which McNaghten had brought as a gift; there was a groom at her head, but I was too fast for him.

I mounted in one flying leap, and the little beast reared in astonishment, sending the groom flying and causing the others to give back from her flashing fore-hooves. She curvetted sideways before I got her under control with a hand in her mane; one wild glance round for a way out was all I had time for, but it showed me the way.

On all sides Afghans were running in towards the group on the carpet; the knives were out and the Ghazis were yelling blue murder. Straight downhill, ahead of me, they seemed thinnest; I jammed my heels into the mare’s sides and she leaped forward, striking aside a ruffian in a skullcap who was snatching at her head. The impact caused her to swerve, and before I could check her she was plunging towards the struggling crowd in the centre of the carpet.

She was one of your pure-bred, mettlesome bitches, all nerves and speed, and all I could do was clamp my knees to her flanks and hang on. One split second I had to survey the scene before she was in the middle of it; McNaghten, with two Afghans holding his arms, was being pushed headlong down the hill, his tall hat falling from his head, his glasses gone, and his mouth open in horror. Mackenzie I saw being thrown like a bolster over the flanks of a horse with a big Barukzi in the saddle, and Lawrence was being served the same way; he was fighting like a mad thing. Trevor I didn’t see, but I think I heard him; as my little mare drove into the press like a thunderbolt there was a horrid, bubbling scream, and an exultant yell of Ghazi voices.

I had no time for anything but clinging to the mare, yet even in my terror I noticed Akbar, sabre in hand, thrusting back a Ghazi who was trying to come at Lawrence with a knife. Mackenzie was shouting and another Ghazi thrust at him with a lance, but Akbar, cool as you please, struck the lance aside with his sword and shouted with laughter.

“Lords of my country, are you?” he yelled. “You’ll protect me, will you, Mackenzie Sahib?”

Then my mare had bounded past them. I had a few yards to steady her and to move in, and I set her head downhill.

“Seize him!” shouted Akbar. “Take him alive!”

Hands grabbed at the mare’s head and at my legs, but we had the speed, thank God, and burst through them. Straight downhill, across the canal bridge, there was the level stretch beside the river, and beyond lay the cantonment. Once over the bridge, on this mare, there wasn’t a mounted Afghan who could come near me. Gasping with fear, I clung to the mane and urged her forward.

It must have taken longer to seize my mount, burst through the press, and take flight than I had imagined, for I was suddenly aware that McNaghten and the two Afghans who were carrying him off were twenty yards down the hill, and almost right in my path. As they saw me bearing down on them one of them sprang back, grasping a pistol from his belt. There was no way of avoiding the fellow, and I lugged out my sword with one hand, holding on grimly with the other. But instead of shooting at me, he levelled his piece at the Envoy.

“For God’s sake!” McNaghten cried, and then the pistol banged and he staggered back, clutching at his face. I rode full tilt into the man who had shot him, and the mare reared back on her haunches; there was a mob around us now, slashing at McNaghten as he fell, and bounding over the snow at me. I yelled in rage and panic, and swung my sword blindly; it whistled through the empty air, and I nearly overbalanced, but the mare righted me, and I slashed again and this time struck something that crunched and fell away. The air was full of howls and threats; I lunged furiously and managed to shake off a hand that was clutching at my left leg; something cracked into the saddle beside my thigh, and the mare shrieked and bounded forward.

Another leap, another blind slash of my sword and we were clear, with the mob cursing and streaming at our heels. I put my head down and my heels in, and we went like a Derby winner in the last furlong.

We were down the slope and across the bridge when I saw ahead of me a little party of horsemen trotting slowly in our direction. In front I recognised Le Geyt – this was the escort that was to have guarded McNaghten, but of Shelton and his troops there was no sign. Well, they might just be in time to convoy his corpse, if the Ghazis left any of it; I stood up in the stirrups, glancing behind to make sure the pursuit was distanced, and hallooed.

But the only effect was that the cowardly brutes turned straight round and made for the cantonment at full pelt; Le Geyt did make some effort to rally them, but they paid no heed. Well, I am a poltroon myself, but this was ridiculous; it costs nothing to make a show, when all is said. Acting on the thought, I wheeled my mare; sure enough, the nearest Afghans were a hundred yards in my rear, and had given up chasing me. As far again beyond them a crowd was milling round the spot where McNaghten had fallen; even as I watched they began to yell and dance, and I saw a spear upthrust with something grey stuck on the end of it. Just for an instant I thought: “Well, Burnes will get the job now,” and then I remembered, Burnes was dead. Say what you like, the political service is a chancy business.

I could make out Akbar in his glittering steel breastplate, surrounded by an excited crowd, but there was no sign of Mackenzie or Lawrence. By God, I thought, I’m the only survivor, and as Le Geyt came spurring up to me I rode forward a few paces, on impulse, and waved my sword over my head. It was impressively bloody from having hit somebody in the scramble.

“Akbar Khan!” I roared, and on the hillside faces began to turn to look down towards me. “Akbar Khan, you forsworn, treacherous dog!” Le Geyt was babbling at my elbow, but I paid no heed.

“Come down, you infidel!” I shouted. “Come down and fight like a man!”

I was confident that he wouldn’t, even if he could hear me, which was unlikely. But some of the nearer Afghans could; there was a move in my direction.

“Come away, sir, do!” cries Le Geyt. “See, they are advancing!”

They were still a safe way off. “You dirty dog!” I roared. “Have you no shame, you that call yourself Sirdar? You murder unarmed old men, but will you come and fight with Bloody Lance?” And I waved my sabre again.

“For God’s sake!” cries Le Geyt. “You can’t fight them all!”

“Haven’t I just been doing that?” says I. “By God, I’ve a good mind—”

He grabbed me by the arm and pointed. The Ghazis were advancing, straggling groups of them were crossing the bridge. I didn’t see any guns among them, but they were getting uncomfortably close.

“Sending your jackals, are you?” I bawled. “It’s you I want, you Afghan bastard! Well, if you won’t, you won’t, but there’ll be another day!”

With which I wheeled about, and we made off for the cantonment gate, before the Ghazis got within charging distance; they can move fast, when they want to.

At the gate all was chaos; there were troops hastily forming up, and servants and hangers-on scattering everywhere; Shelton was wrestling into his sword-belt and bawling orders. Red in the face, he caught sight of me.

“My God, Flashman! What is this? Where is the Envoy?”

“Dead,” says I. “Cut to bits, and Mackenzie with him, for all I know.”

He just gaped. “Who – what? – how?”

“Akbar Khan cut ’em up, sir,” says I, very cool. And I added: “We had been expecting you and the regiment, but you didn’t come.”

There was a crowd round us – officers and officials and even a few of the troops who had broken ranks.

“Didn’t come?” says Shelton. “In God’s name, sir, I was coming this moment. This was the time appointed by the General!”

This astonished me. “Well, he was late,” says I. “Damned late.”

There was a tremendous hubbub about us, and cries of “Massacre!” “All dead but Flashman!” “My God, look at him!” “The Envoy’s murdered!” and so on. Le Geyt pushed his way through them, and we left Shelton roaring to his men to stand fast till he found what the devil was what. He spurred up beside me, demanding to know what had taken place, and when I told him all of it, damning Akbar for a treacherous villain.

“We must see the General at once,” says he. “How the devil did you come off alive, Flashman?”

“You may well ask, sir,” cries Le Geyt. “Look here!” And he pointed to my saddle. I remembered having felt a blow near my leg in the skirmish, and when I looked, there was a Khyber knife with its point buried in the saddle bag. One of the Ghazis must have thrown it; two inches either way and it would have disabled me or the mare. Just the thought of what that would have meant blew all the brag I had been showing clean away. I felt ill and weak.

Le Geyt steadied me in the saddle, and they helped me down at Elphy’s front door, while the crowd buzzed around. I straightened up, and as Shelton and I mounted the steps I heard Le Geyt saying:

“He cut his way through the pack of ’em, and even then he would have ridden back in alone if I hadn’t stopped him! He would, I tell you, just to come at Akbar!”

That lifted my spirits a little, and I thought, aye, give a dog a good name and he’s everyone’s pet. Then Shelton, thrusting everyone aside, had us in Elphy’s study, and was pouring out his tale, or rather, my tale.

Elphy listened like a man who cannot believe what he sees and hears. He sat appalled, his sick face grey and his mouth moving, and I thought again, what in God’s name have we got for a commander? Oddly enough, it wasn’t the helpless look in the man’s eyes, the droop of his shoulders, or even his evident illness that affected me – it was the sight of his skinny ankles and feet and bedroom slippers sticking out beneath his gown. They looked so ridiculous in one who was a general of an army.

When we had done, he just stared and said:

“My God, what is to be done? Oh, Sir William, Sir William, what a calamity!” After a few moments he pulled himself together and said we must take counsel what to do; then he looked at me and said:

“Flashman, thank God you at least are safe. You come like Randolph Murray, the single bearer of dreadful news. Tell my orderly to summon the senior officers, if you please, and then have the doctors look at you.”

I believe he thought I was wounded; I thought then, and I think now, that he was sick in mind as well as in body. He seemed, as my wife’s relatives would have said, to be “wandered”.

We had proof of this in the next hour or two. The cantonment, of course, was in a hubbub, and all sorts of rumours were flying. One, believe it or not, was that McNaghten had not been killed at all, but had gone into Kabul to continue discussions with Akbar, and in spite of having heard my story, this was what Elphy came round to believing. The old fool always fixed on what he wanted to believe, rather than what common sense suggested.

However, his daydream didn’t last long. Akbar released Lawrence and Mackenzie in the afternoon, and they confirmed my tale – They had been locked up in Mohammed Khan’s fort, and had seen McNaghten’s severed limbs flourished by the Ghazis. Later the murderers hung what was left of him and Trevor on hooks in the butchers’ stalls of the Kabul bazaar.

Looking back, I believe that Akbar would rather have had McNaghten alive than dead. There is still great dispute about this, but it’s my belief that Akbar had deliberately lured McNaghten into a plot against the Douranis to test him; when McNaghten accepted Akbar knew he was not to be trusted. He never intended to hold power in Afghanistan in league with us: he wanted the whole show for himself, and McNaughten’s bad faith gave him the opportunity to seize it. But he would rather have held McNaghten hostage than kill him.

For one thing, the Envoy’s death could have cost Akbar all his hopes, and his life. A more resolute commander than Elphy – anyone, in fact – would have marched out of the cantonment to avenge it, and swept the killers out of Kabul. We could have done it, too; the troops that Elphy had said he couldn’t rely on were furious over McNaghten’s murder. They were itching for a fight, but of course Elphy wouldn’t have it. He must shilly-shally, as usual, so we skulked all day in the cantonment, while the Afghans themselves were actually in a state of fear in case we might attack them. This I learned later; Mackenzie reckoned if we had shown face the whole lot would have cut and run.

Anyway, this is history. At the time I only knew what I had seen and heard, and I didn’t like it a bit. It seemed to me that having slaughtered the Envoy the Afghans would now start on the rest of us, and having seen Elphy wringing his hands and croaking I couldn’t see what was to stop them. Perhaps it was the shock of my morning escape, but I was in the shivering dumps for the rest of the day. I could feel those Khyber knives and imagine the Ghazis yelling as they cut us to bits; I even wondered if it might not be best to get a fast horse and make off from Kabul as quickly as I could, but that prospect was as dangerous as staying.

But by the next day things didn’t look quite so bad. Akbar sent some of the chiefs down to express his regrets for McNaghten’s death, and to resume the negotiations – as if nothing had happened. And Elphy, ready to clutch at anything, agreed to talk; he didn’t see what else he could do, he said. The long and short of it was that the Afghans told us we must quit Kabul at once, leaving our guns behind, and also certain married officers and their wives as hostages!

It doesn’t seem credible now, but Elphy actually accepted. He offered a cash subsidy to any married officer who would go with his family as hostages to Akbar. There was a tremendous uproar over this; men were saying they would shoot their wives sooner than put them at the mercy of the Ghazis. There was a move to get Elphy to take action for once, by marching out and occupying the Bala Hissar, where we could have defied all Afghanistan in arms, but he couldn’t make up his mind, and nothing was done.

The day after McNaghten’s death there was a council of officers, at which Elphy presided. He was in terribly poor shape; on top of everything else, he had had an accident that morning. He had decided to be personally armed in view of the emergency, and had sent for his pistols. His servant had dropped one while loading it, and the pistol had gone off, the ball had passed through Elphy’s chair, nicking his backside but doing no other damage.

Shelton, who could not abide Elphy, made the most of this.

“The Afghans murder our people, try to make off with our wives, order us out of the country, and what does our commander do? Shoots himself in the arse – doubtless in an attempt to blow his brains out. He can’t have missed by much.”

Mackenzie, who had no great regard for Elphy either, but even less for Shelton, suggested he might try to be helpful instead of sneering at the old fellow. Shelton rounded on him.

“I will sneer at him, Mackenzie!” says he. “I like sneering at him!”

And after this, to show what he thought, he took his blankets into the council and lay on them throughout, puffing at a cheroot and sniffing loudly whenever Elphy said anything unusually foolish; he sniffed a good deal.

I was at the council, in view of my part in the negotiations, I suppose, and for pure folly it matches anything in my military career – and I was with Raglan in the Crimea, remember. It was obvious from the first that Elphy wanted to do anything that the Afghans said he must do; he desired to be convinced that nothing else was possible.

“With poor Sir William gone, we are at a nonplus here,” he kept repeating, looking around dolefully for someone to agree with him. “We can serve no purpose that I can see by remaining in Afghanistan.”

There were a few spoke out against this, but not many. Pottinger, a smart sort of fellow who had succeeded by default to Burnes’s job, was for marching into the Bala Hissar; it was madness, he said, to attempt to retreat through the passes to India in midwinter with the army hampered by hundreds of women and children and camp followers. Anyway, he didn’t trust Akbar’s safe conduct; he warned Elphy that the Sirdar couldn’t stop the Ghazis cutting us up in the passes, even if he wanted to.

It seemed good sense to me: I was all for the Bala Hissar myself, so long as someone else led the way and Flashy was at his post beside Elphy Bey, with the rest of the army surrounding us. But the voices were all against Pottinger; it wasn’t that they agreed with Elphy, but they didn’t fancy staying in Kabul through the winter under his command. They wanted rid of him, and that meant getting him and the army back to India.

“God knows what he’ll do if we stay here,” someone muttered. “Make Akbar Political Officer, probably.”

“A quick march through the passes,” says another. “They’ll let us go rather than risk trouble.”

They argued on, until at last they were too tired and dispirited to talk any further. Elphy sat glooming round in the silence, but not giving any decision, and finally Shelton got up, ground out his cheroot, and snaps:

“Well, I take it we go? Upon my word, we must have a clear direction. Is it your wish, sir, that I take order for the army to remove to India with all possible speed?”

Elphy sat looking miserable, his fingers twitching together in his lap.

“It will be for the best, perhaps,” he said at last. “I could wish it were otherwise, and that you had a commander not incapacitated by disease. Will you be so kind, Brigadier Shelton, as to take what order you think most fitting?”

So with no proper idea of what lay ahead, or how we should go, with the army dispirited and the officers divided, and with a commander announcing hourly that he was not fit to lead us, the decision was taken. We were to quit Kabul.

It took about a week to conclude the agreement with the Aghans, and even longer to gather up the army and all its followers and make it even half-fit for the road. As Elphy’s aide I had my hands full, carrying his orders, and then other orders to countermand the first ones, and listening to his bleating and Shelton’s snarling. One thing I was determined on, that Flashy at any rate was going to get back to India, whoever else did not. I had my idea about how this should be done, and it did not consist of taking my simple chance with the rest. The whole business of getting the army to pull up its roots, and provisioned and equipped for the journey, proved to be such a mess that I was confident most of them would never see Jallalabad, beyond the passes, where Sale was now holding out and we could count ourselves safe.

So I looked out Sergeant Hudson, who had been with me at Mogala, and was as reliable as he was stupid. I told him I wanted twelve picked lancers formed into a special detail under my command – not my Gilzais, for in the present state of the country I doubted whether they would be prepared to get their throats cut on my behalf. The twelve would make as good an escort as I could hope for, and when the time came for the army to founder, we could cut loose and make Jallalabad on our own. I didn’t tell Hudson this, of course, but explained that this troop and I would be employed on the march as a special messenger corps, since orders would be forever passing up and down the column. I told Elphy the same thing, and added that we could also act as mounted scouts and general busybodies. He looked at me like a tired cow.

“This will be dangerous work, Flashman,” says he. “I fear it will be a perilous journey, and this will expose you to the brunt of it.”

“Never say die, sir,” says I, very manful. “We’ll come through, and anyway, there ain’t an Afghan of the lot of them that’s a match for me.”

“Oh, my boy,” says he, and the silly old bastard began piping his eye. “My boy! So young, so valiant! Oh, England,” says he, looking out of the window, “what dost thou not owe to thy freshest plants! So be it, Flashman. God bless you.”

I wanted rather more insurance than that, so I made certain that Hudson packed our saddlebags with twice as much hardtack as we would need; supplies were obviously going to be short, and I believed in getting our blow in first. In addition to the lovely little white mare I had taken from Akbar, I picked out another Afghan pony for my own use; if one mount sank I should have the other.

These were the essentials for the journey, but I had an eye to the luxuries as well. Confined to the cantonments as we were, I had not had a woman for an age, and I was getting peckish. To make it worse, in that Christmas week a messenger had come through from India with mails; among them was a letter from Elspeth. I recognised the handwriting, and my heart gave a skip; when I opened it I got a turn, for it began, “To my most beloved Hector,” and I thought, by God, she’s cheating on me, and has sent me the wrong letter by mistake. But in the second line was a reference to Achilles, and another to Ajax, so I understood she was just addressing me in terms which she accounted fitting for a martial paladin; she knew no better. It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark.

It was a commonplace enough letter, I suppose, with news that she and my father were well, and that she was Desolate without her True Love, and Counted the Hours till my Triumphant Return from the Cannon’s Mouth, and so on. God knows what young women think a soldier does for a living. But there was a good deal about how she longed to clasp me in her arms, and pillow my head on her breast, and so on (Elspeth was always rather forthright, more so than an English girl would have been), and thinking about that same breast and the spirited gallops we had taken together, I began to get feverish. Closing my eyes, I could imagine her soft, white body, and Fetnab’s, and Josette’s, and what with dreaming to this tune I rapidly reached the point where even Lady Sale would have had to cut and run for it if she had happened to come within reach.

However, I had my eye on younger game, in the excellent shape of Mrs Parker, the merry little wife of a captain in the 5th Light Cavalry. He was a serious, doting fellow, about twenty years older than she, and as fondly in love as only a middle-aged man with a young bride can be. Betty Parker was pretty enough, in a plump way, but she had buck teeth, and if there had been Afghan women to hand I would hardly have looked at her. With Kabul City out of all bounds there was no hope of that, so I went quickly to work in that week after Christmas.

I could see she fancied me, which was not surprising in a woman married to Parker, and I took the opportunity at one of Lady Sale’s evenings – for the old dragon kept open house in those days, to show that whoever was dismayed, she was full of spirit – to play loo with Betty and some others, and press knees with her beneath the table. She didn’t seem to mind by half, so I tested the ground further later on; I waited till I could find her alone, and gave her tits a squeeze when she least expected it. She jumped, and gasped, but since she didn’t swoon I guessed that all was well and would be better.

The trouble was Parker. There was no hope of doing anything while we remained in Kabul, and he was sure to stick close as a mother hen on the march. But chance helped me, as she always does if you keep your wits about you, although she ran it pretty fine and it was not until a couple of days before we were due to depart that I succeeded in removing the inconvenient husband.

It was at one of those endless discussions in Elphy’s office, where everything under the sun was talked about and nothing done. In between deciding that our men must not be allowed to wear rags round their legs against the snow as the Afghans did to keep off frost-bite, and giving instructions what fodder should be carried along for his fox-hounds, Elphy Bey suddenly remembered that he must send the latest instructions about our departure to Nott at Kandahar. It would be best, he said, that General Nott should have the fullest intelligence of our movements, and Mackenzie, coming as near to showing impatience as I ever knew him, agreed that it was proper that one half of the British force in Afghanistan should know what the other half was doing.

“Excellent,” says Elphy, looking pleased, but not for long. “Who shall we send to Kandahar with the despatches?” he wondered, worrying again.

“Any good galloper will do,” says Mac.

“No, no,” says Elphy, “he must be a man in whom we can repose the most perfect trust. An officer of experience is required,” and he went rambling on about maturity and judgement while Mac drummed his fingernails on his belt.

I saw a chance here; ordinarily I never intruded an opinion, being junior and not caring a damn anyway, but now I asked if I might say a word.

“Captain Parker is a steady officer,” says I, “if it ain’t out of place for me to say so. And he’s as sure in the saddle as I am, sir.”

“Didn’t know that,” says Mac. “But if you say he’s a horseman, he must be. Let it be Parker, then,” says he to Elphy.

Elphy hummed a bit. “He is married, you know, Mackenzie. His wife would be deprived of his sustaining presence on our journey to India, which I fear may be an arduous one.” The old fool was always too considerate by half “She will be a prey to anxiety for his safety …”

“He’ll be as safe on the road to Kandahar as anywhere,” says Mac. “And he’ll ride all the harder there and back. The fewer loving couples we have on this march the better.”

Mac was a bachelor, of course, one of these iron men who are married to the service and have their honeymoon with a manual of infantry drill and a wet towel round their heads; if he thought sending off Parker would cut down the number of loving couples he was going to be mistaken; I reckoned it would increase it.

So Elphy agreed, shaking his head and chuntering, and I rounded off the morning’s work later by saying to Mac when we were outside that I was sorry for naming Parker, and that I’d forgotten he was a married man.

“You too?” says Mac. “Has Elphy infected you with his disease of worrying over everything that don’t matter and forgetting those that do? Let me tell you, Flash, we shall spend so much time wagging our heads over nonsenses like Parker and Elphy’s dogs and Lady McNaghten’s chest-of-drawers that we’ll be lucky if we ever see Jallalabad.” He stepped closer and looked at me with those uncomfortable cold eyes of his. “You know how far it is? Ninety miles. Have you any notion how long it will take, with an army fourteen thousand strong, barely a quarter of ’em fighting troops, and the rest a great rabble of Hindoo porters and servants, to say nothing of women and children? And we’ll be marching through a foot of snow on the worst ground on earth, with the temperature at freezing. Why, man, with an army of Highland ghillies I doubt if it could be done in under a week. If we’re lucky we might do it in two – if the Afghans let us alone, and the food and firing hold out, and Elphy doesn’t shoot himself in the other buttock.”

I’d never seen Mackenzie in such a taking before. Usually he was as cool as a trout, but I suppose being a serious professional and having to work with Elphy had worn him thin.

“I wouldn’t say this to anybody but you, or George Broadfoot if he were here,” says he, “but if we come through it’ll be by pure luck, and the efforts of one or two of us, like you and me. Aye, and Shelton. He’s a surly devil, but he’s a fighting soldier, and if Elphy will let him alone he might get us to Jallalabad. There, now, I’ve told you what I think, and it’s as near to croaking as I hope I’ll ever get.” He gave me one of his wintry smiles. “And you’re worried about Parker!”

Having heard this, I was worried only about me. I knew Mackenzie; he wasn’t a croaker, and if he thought our chances were slim, then slim they were. Of course, I knew from working in Elphy’s office that things weren’t shaping well; the Afghans were hampering us at every turn in getting supplies together, and there were signs that the Ghazis were moving out of Kabul along the passes – Pottinger was sure they were going to lie in wait for us, and try to cut us up in the really bad defiles, like Khoord-Kabul and Jugdulluk. But I had reasoned that an army fourteen thousand strong ought to be safe, even if a few fell by the wayside; Mac had put it in a different light, and I began to feel again that looseness low down in my guts and the sick sensation in my throat. I tried to tell myself that soldiers like Shelton and Mackenzie, yes, and Sergeant Hudson, weren’t going to be stopped by a few swarms of Afghans, but it was no good. Burnes and Iqbal had been good soldiers, too, and that hadn’t saved them; I could still hear the hideous chunk of those knives into Burnes’s body, and think of McNaghten swinging dead on a hook, and Trevor screaming when the Ghazis got him. I came near to vomiting. And half an hour back I had been scheming so that I could tumble Mrs Parker in a tent on the way back to Jallalabad; that reminded me of what Afghan women do to prisoners, and it didn’t bear thinking about.

I was hard put to it to keep a good face on things at Lady Sale’s last gathering, two nights before we left. Betty was there, and the look she gave me cheered me up a little; her lord and master would be half way to Kandahar by now, and I toyed with the notion of dropping in at her bungalow that night, but with so many servants about the cantonment it would be too risky. Better to wait till we’re on the road, thinks I, and nobody knows one tent from another in the dark.

Lady Sale spent the evening as usual, railing about Elphy and the general incompetence of the staff. “There never was such a set of yea-and-nays. The only certain thing is that our chiefs have no mind for two minutes on end. They seem to think of nothing but contradicting each other, when harmony and order are most needed.”

She said it with satisfaction, sitting in her last chair while they fed her furniture into the stove to keep the room tolerably warm. Everything had gone except her chest-of-drawers, which was to provide fuel to cook her meals before our departure; we sat round on the luggage which was piled about the walls, or squatted on the floor, while the old harpy sat looking down her beaky nose, her mittened hands folded in front. The strange thing was that no one thought of her as a croaker, although she complained unendingly; she was so obviously confident that she would get to Jallalabad in spite of Elphy’s bungling that it cheered people up.

“Captain Johnson informs me,” says she, sniffing, “that there is food and fodder for ten days at the most, and that the Afghans have no intention of providing us with an escort through the passes.”

“Better without ’em,” says Shelton. “The fewer we see the better I’ll like it.”

“Indeed? And who, then, is to guard us from the badmashes and brigands lurking in the hills?”

“Good God, ma’am,” cries Shelton, “aren’t we an army? We can protect ourselves, I hope.”

“You may hope so, indeed. I am not so sure that some of your native troops will not take the first opportunity to make themselves scarce. We shall be quite without friends, and food, and firewood.”

She then went on to tell us cheerfully that the Afghans certainly meant to try to destroy our whole force, in her opinion, that they meant to get all our women into their possession, and that they would leave only one man alive, “who is to have his legs and hands cut off and is to be placed at the entrance of the Khyber pass, to deter all feringhees from entering the country again.”

“My best wishes to the Afghan who gets her,” growled Shelton as we were leaving. “If he’s got any sense he’ll stick her up in the Khyber – that’ll keep the feringhees out with a vengeance.”

The next day I spent making sure that my picked lancers were all in order, that our saddle-bags were full, and that every man had sufficient rounds and powder for his carbine. And then came the last night, and the chaos of last-minute preparations in the dark, for Shelton was determined to be off before first light so that we might pass Khoord-Kabul in the first day’s march, which meant covering fifteen miles.