Читать книгу Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 2: Flashman and the Mountain of Light, Flash For Freedom!, Flashman and the Redskins - George Fraser MacDonald - Страница 19

Reviewing my career in India, I’d say that of all the wonders I saw there, that was the greatest. I dare say one should be prepared for anything in a land where an illiterate peasant girl can give you the square root of a six-figure number at first glance, but when I reflect on the skill and speed of those copyists, and the analytical genius that penetrated that code … well, it can still rob me of breath. Not as entirely as it did at the time, though.

“Your punkah-wallah confessed how you wrote your cyphers with the aid of a book,” sneers the Akali. “It was copied in your absence, and compared with the intercepted cyphers by these men, who are skilled in cryptography – an Indian invention, as Major Broadfoot should have borne in mind!”

“Oah, indeed! A veree simple cypher,” chirps the chi-chi, while the babus beamed and nodded. “Quite elementaree, you know, page numbers, dates of Christian calendar, initial letters of arl-tarnate lines –”

“That will do,” says Maka Khan, and dismissed them, but one of the babus couldn’t resist a backward gleek at me. “Doctor Folliott and Mr McQuedy are jolly good fun!” squeaks he, and waddled out as fast as he could go.

I sat sick and trembling. No wonder they’d been able to fake a message to trap me – with one tiny error of style which I’d been fool enough to ignore. What the devil had I written in my cyphers, though … they’d spotted the allusion to Jeendan, but I hadn’t named her … but what else had I said …?

“You see?” says Maka Khan. “What you have written of late, we know. What else have you learned, up at the Fort yonder?”

“Nothing, as God’s my witness!” I bleated. “General, upon my honour, sir! I protest … your cryptographers are mistaken – or lying! Yes, that’s it!” I hollered. “It’s a beastly plot, to discredit me – to give you an excuse for war! Well, it won’t serve, you scoundrels! What? Yes, it will, I mean – you’ll learn fast enough –”

“Let’s have him below!” snarls the Akali. “He’ll babble as freely as his creature did!” There were growls of agreement from the others, and I fairly neighed in alarm.

“What d’you mean, damn you? I’m a British Officer, and if you lay a finger –” They clapped the gag over my mouth again, and I could only listen in horror while the Akali swore that time was pressing, so the sooner they set about me the better, and they argued to and fro until Maka Khan turned them all out of the room, except for my three guards and the pock-marked naik – his face gave me the shudders, but I took some comfort from the fact that Maka had taken matters on himself; damned uncivil he’d been, what with “spy” and “murderer”, but he was a gentleman and a soldier, after all, and like calls to like, you know. Why, standing there tall and erect, glaring at me and twisting his grizzled moustache, he might have been any staff colonel at Horse Guards, bar the turban. Better still, he addressed me in English, so that the others should be none the wiser.

“You spoke of war,” says he. “It has begun. Our advance guard is already across the Sutlej.²⁷ In a few days there will be a general engagement between the Khalsa and the Company army under Sir Hugh Gough. I tell you this so that you may understand your position – you are now beyond help from Simla.”

So it had finally come, and I was a prisoner of war. Well, better here than there – at least I’d be out of harm’s way.

“No, you are not a prisoner!” snaps Maka Khan. “You are a spy! Be quiet!” He took a turn about, and leaned down to stare grimly into my face. “We of the Khalsa know that our queen regent has turned traitor. We also suspect the loyalty of Lal Singh, our Wazir, and Tej Singh, our field commander. You have been Mai Jeendan’s intimate – her lover. We know she has sent assurances through you to Broadfoot – so much is plain from your recent cyphers. But what has she betrayed, in detail, of our plan of campaign – numbers, dispositions, lines of march, objectives, equipment?” He paused, his black eyes boring into mine. “Your one hope, Flashman, lies in full disclosure … immediately.”

“But I don’t know anything, I tell you! Nothing! I’ve not heard a word of … of plans or objectives or any such thing! And I haven’t even seen Mai Jeendan for weeks –”

“Her woman Mangla visited you last night!” His words came out like rapid fire. “You spent hours together – what did she tell you? How have you passed it to Simla? Through her? Or the man Harlan, who poses as your orderly? Or by some other means? We know you sent no cypher today –”

“As God’s my judge, it ain’t true! She told me nothing!”

“Then why did she visit you?”

“Why … why … because, well, we’ve grown friendly, don’t you know? I mean … we talk, you see, and … Not a word of politics, I swear! We just … converse … and so forth …”

God, it sounded lame, as the truth often does, and it drove him into a rage. “Either you’re a fool, or you think I am!” he rasped. “Very well, I’ll waste no more time! Your punkah-wallah spoke under persuasion … in unspeakable pain, which I trust you will spare yourself. You have a choice: speak to me now, in this room … or to this fellow …” He indicated the pock-marked naik, who took a pace forward, scowling “… in the cellar below.”

For a moment I didn’t believe my ears. Oh, I’d been threatened with torture before, by savages like Gul Shah and those beastly Malagassies – but this was a man of honour, a general, an aristocrat! I wouldn’t believe it, not from someone who might have been Cardigan’s own brother, dammit –

“You don’t mean it!” I yelped. “I don’t believe you! It’s a trick … a mean, cowardly trick! You wouldn’t dare! But you’re trying to frighten me, damn you …”

“Yes, I am.” His voice and eyes were dead level. “But it is no empty threat. There is too much at stake. We are beyond diplomatic niceties, or the laws of war. Very soon now, hundreds – perhaps thousands – of men will be dying in agony beyond the Sutlej, Indian and British alike. I cannot afford to spare you, when the fate of the war may depend on what you can tell me.”

By God, he did mean it – and before that iron stare I broke down utterly, weeping and begging him to believe me.

“But I don’t know a damned thing! For Christ’s sake, it’s the truth! Yes, yes, she’s betraying you! She promised to warn us … and, yes! she’s delayed, and made the astrologers bungle it –”

“You tell me what I know already!” cries he impatiently.

“But it’s all I know, blast you! She never said a word of plans – oh, if she had I’d tell you! Please, sir, for pity’s sake, don’t let them torture me! I can’t bear it – and it’d do no good, damn you, you cruel old bastard, because I’ve nothing to confess! Oh, God, if I had, I’d tell you, if I could –”

“I doubt it. Indeed, I am sure you would not,” says he, and before those words and tone, suddenly so flat, almost weary, I left off blubbering to stare. He was standing ramrod straight, but not in disgust or contempt at my ravings – if anything, he looked regretful, with a touch of ruptured nobility, even. I couldn’t fathom it until, to my horrified amazement, he went on, in the same quiet voice:

“You overplay the coward’s part too far, Mr Flashman. You would have me believe you an abject, broken thing, dead to honour, a cur who would confess everything, betray everything, at a mere threat – and on whom, therefore, torture would be wasted.” He shook his head. “Major Broadfoot does not employ such people – and your own reputation belies you. No, you will tell nothing … until pain robs you of your reason. You know your duty, as I know mine. It drives us both to shameful extremes – me, to barbarism for my country’s sake; you, to this pretence of cowardice – a legitimate ruse in a political agent, but not convincing from the man who held Piper’s Fort! I am sorry.” His mouth worked for a moment, and I won’t swear there wasn’t a tear in his blasted eye. “I can give you an hour … before they begin. For God’s sake, use it to see reason! Take him down!”

He turned away, like a strong suffering man who’s had the last word. He hadn’t, though. “Pretence!” I screamed, as they hauled me from the chair. “You bloody old halfwit, it’s true! I’m not shamming, damn you, I swear it! I can’t tell you anything! Oh, Jesus! Please, please, let me be! Mercy, you foul old kite! Can’t you see I’m telling the truth!”

By that time they were dragging me through the garden to the back of the house, thrusting me through a low iron-shod door and down an immensely long flight of stone steps into the depths of a great cellar, a dank tomb of rough stone walls with only a small window high up on the far side. A choking acrid smell rose to meet us, and as the naik set a burning torch in a bracket by the stair foot, the source of that stench became horribly apparent.

“Are you weary, Daghabazi Sahib?”^a cries he. “See, we have a fine bed for you to rest on!”

I looked, and almost swooned. In the centre of the earth floor lay a great rectangular tray in which charcoal glowed faintly under a coating of ash, and about three feet above it was a rusty iron grill like a bedstead – with manacles at head and foot. Watching my face, the naik cackled with laughter, and taking up a long poker, went forward and tapped open two little vents on either side of the tray. The charcoal near the vents glowed a little brighter.

“Gently blows the air,” gloats he, “and slowly grows the heat.” He laid a hand on the grill. “A little warm, only … but in an hour it will be warmer. Daghabazi Sahib will begin to feel it, then. He may even find his tongue.” He tossed the poker aside. “Put him to bed!”

I can’t describe the horror of it. I couldn’t even scream as they ran me forward and flung me down on that diabolic gridiron, snapping the fetters on my wrists and ankles so that I was held supine, unable to do more than writhe on the rusty bars – and then the pock-marked fiend picked up a pair of bellows from the floor, grinning with savage delight.

“You will be in some discomfort when we return, Daghabazi Sahib! Then we shall open the vents a little more – your punkah-wallah cooked slowly, for many hours – did he not, Jan? Oh, he spoke long before he began to roast … that followed, though I think he had no more to tell.” He leaned down to laugh in my face. “And if you find it tedious, we may hasten matters – thus!”

He thrust the bellows under the foot of the grill, pumping once, a sudden gust of heat struck my calves – and I found my tongue at last, in a shriek that tore my throat, again and again, as I struggled helplessly. They crowed with laughter, those devils, as I raved in terror and imagined agony, swearing I had nothing to tell, pleading for mercy, promising them anything – a fortune if they’d let me go, rupees and mohurs by the lakh, God knows what else. Then perhaps I swooned in earnest, for all I remember is the naik’s jeering voice from far off: “In an hour’s time! Rest well, Daghabazi Sahib!” and the clang of the iron door.

There are, in case you didn’t know it, five degrees of torture, as laid down by the Spanish Inquisition, and I was now suffering the fourth – the last before the bodily torment begins. How I kept my sanity is a mystery – I’m not sure but that I did go mad, for a spell, for I came out of my swoon babbling: “No, no, Dawson, I, swear I didn’t peach! ’twasn’t me – it was Speedicut! He blabbed on you to her father – not me! I swear it – oh, please, please, Dawson, don’t roast me!”, and I could see the fat brute’s great whiskered moon face leering into mine as he held me before the schoolroom fire, vowing to bake me till I blistered. I know now that that roasting at Rugby was worse, for real corporal anguish, than my ordeal at Lahore – but at least I’d known that Dawson must leave off at the last, whereas in Bibi Kalil’s cellar, with the growing heat only beginning to make my back and legs tingle and run rivers of sweat, I knew that it would continue, hotter and ever hotter, to the unspeakable end. That’s the horror of the fourth degree, as the Inquisitors knew – but while their heretics and religious idiots could always get off by telling the bloody Dagoes what they wanted to hear, I couldn’t. I didn’t know.

The mind’s a strange mechanism. Chained to that abominable grill, I began to burn, and strained to arch my body away from the bars, until I fainted again – and when I came to my senses, why, I was only uncomfortably warm for a moment – until I remembered where I was, and in an instant my clothes were catching fire, the flames were scorching my flesh, and I shrieked my way into oblivion once more. Yet it was only in my mind; my clothing was barely being singed – whereas Dawson burned my britches’ arse out, the fat swine, and I couldn’t sit for a week.

I can’t tell how long it was before I realised that, while undoubtedly getting hotter and being half-suffocated by fumes, I had not yet burst into flames. The discovery steadied me enough to leave off my incoherent squealing and weeping, and rave to some purpose, bellowing my name, rank, and diplomatic status at the very top of my voice, in the faint hope that it might carry through that high window to the distant alleys around the house and attract the attention of a friendly passer-by – you know, some reckless adventurer or knight errant who’d think nothing of invading a house full of Khalsa thugs to rescue a perfect stranger who was browning nicely in the cellar.

Aye, laugh, but it saved me – and taught me the folly of stoic silence. If I’d been Dick Champion, biting the bullet and disdaining to cry out, I’d have been broiled to cinders; roaring my coward head off did the trick – but only just in time. For my hollering was starting to fade to a hoarse whimper, and the growing heat beating up from below was forcing me to toss and turn continuously, when I heard the noise. I couldn’t place it at first … a distant scraping, too heavy for a rat, coming from overhead. I forced myself to lie still, labouring for breath … there it was again! Then it stopped, to be followed by a different sound, and for a dreadful moment I knew I had gone mad in that hellish dungeon … it wasn’t possible, it could only be a tortured delusion, that in the darkness above me someone, very softly, was whistling “Drink, puppy, drink”.

Suddenly I knew it was real. I was in my senses, writhing on that grill, gasping for air – but there it was again, faint but clear from outside the window, the little hunting song that I’ve whistled all my life – “Harry’s Pibroch”, Elspeth calls it. Someone was using it to signal – I tried to moisten my parched lips with a tongue like leather, found I couldn’t, and in desperation began to croak:

For he’ll grow into a hound,

So we’ll pass the bottle round,

And merrily we’ll whoop and holloa!²⁸

Silence, except for my gasps and groans, then a scrambling rush, a thud, and through the suffocating mist a figure was looming over me, and a horrified face was peering into mine.

“Holy Jesus!” cries Jassa – and as the bolt rasped back in the door he fairly flung himself away, burrowing among the rubble in the shadows along the wall. The door swung open, and the naik appeared on the threshold. For a long, awful moment he stood looking down at me as I struggled and panted on the grill – in a frenzy of fear that he’d seen Jassa, that the fatal hour was up … and then he sang out:

“Is the bed to your liking, Daghabazi Sahib? What, not warm enough yet? Oh, patience … only a moment now!”

He guffawed at his own priceless wit, and went out, leaving the door ajar – and here was Jassa, muttering hideous oaths as he worked at my fetters. They were simple bolts, and in a moment he had them loose and I had lurched off that hellish gridiron and was lying face down on the filthy cool earth, panting and retching. Jassa knelt beside me, urging haste, and I forced myself up; my back and legs were smarting, but didn’t feel as though they were badly burned, and with the naik plainly about to return at any moment I was in a fever to be away.

“Can you climb?” whispers Jassa, and I saw there was a camel rope dangling from the window fifteen feet above our heads. “I’ll go first – if you can’t make it, we’ll haul you!” He seized the rope and walked up the wall like an acrobat, until he had his legs over the sill. “Up – quick!” he hissed, and I leaned on the wall a second to fetch my breath and my senses, rubbed my hands on the dirt, and laid hold on the rope.

I may not be brave, but I’m strong, and exhausted as I was I climbed by my arms alone, hauling my dead weight hand over hand, bumping and scraping against the wall – no work for a weakling, but my mortal funk was such that I could have done it with Henry VIII on my back. Up I went, nearly sick with hope, and the sill wasn’t a yard above me when I heard the door thrown back in the cell below.

I almost let go my hold in despair, but even as a yell sounded from the doorway, Jassa’s hand was on my collar, and I heaved for my life. I got an elbow on the sill, looked down, and saw the naik bounding down the steps with his gang at his heels. Jassa was through the window, hauling at me, and I got a leg over the sill; from the tail of my eye I saw one of the ruffians below swinging back his hand, there was a flash of steel, and I winced away as a thrown knife struck sparks from the wall. Jassa’s pistol banged deafeningly before my face, and I saw the naik stagger and fall. I yelled with joy, and then I was over the sill. “Drop!” shouts Jassa, and I fell about ten feet, landing with a jar that sent a stabbing pain through my left ankle. I took one step and went down, bleating, as Jassa dropped beside me and heaved me up again.

My heart went out to Goolab Singh and his gouty foot in that moment, as I thought: crocked, bigod, and only one leg to run with. Jassa had me by the shoulders; he let out a piercing whistle and suddenly there was a man on my other side, stooping beneath my arm. Between them they half-carried me, howling at every step; two shots sounded somewhere to my left, I saw pistol-flashes in the gloom, people were yelling, branches whipped my face as we blundered along, and then we were in an alley, a mounted man was alongside, and Jassa was heaving me almost bodily up behind. I clasped the rider round the waist, turning to look back, and there was Bibi Kalil’s gate, and a cowled black figure was cutting with a sabre at someone within and then sprinting after us.

The alley seemed to be full of horsemen – in fact there were only four, including Jassa. Voices were yelling behind us, feet were pounding, a torch was flaring in the gateway – and then we were round the corner.

“Gently does the trick,” says Jassa, at my elbow. “They ain’t horsed. You doing well there, lieutenant? Right, jemadar, walk-march – trot!” He urged his beast ahead, and we swung in behind him.

However he came there, he was a complete hand, our Philadelphia sawbones. Left to myself I’d have been off full tilt, blundering heaven knows where and coming to grief like as not. Jassa knew just where he wanted to go, and what time he had in hand; we trotted round a corner into a little court which I recognised as the one in which Goolab and I had opened the batting, and lo! there were two more riders on post, and to my astonishment I recognised them, and my rescuers, as black robes of Alick Gardner’s. Well, no doubt all would be made clear presently. They led the way up a long lane, and at the end Jassa reined in to look back – by George, there were torches entering the lane at a run, a bare fifty paces behind, and suddenly all my pain and fear and bewilderment vanished in overwhelming blind rage (as often happens when I’ve been terrified to death, and reckon I’m safe). By God, I’d make ’em pay, the vile, torturing scoundrels; there was a pistol in my rider’s saddle holster, and I plucked it out, bellowing, while Jassa demanded to know what the devil I was about.

“I’m going to kill one of those murdering bastards!” I roared. “Lay hands on me, you poxy vermin, you! Broil me on a damned gridiron, will you? Take that, you sons-of-bitches!” I blazed away, and had the satisfaction of seeing the torches scatter, though none of them went down.

“Say, won’t that larn ’em, though!” cries Jassa. “You feel better now, lieutenant? You’re sure – don’t want to go back and burn their barn down? Fine – achha, jemadar, jildi jao!”

Which we did, at a steady canter in the broader ways, and at a walk in the twisting alleys, and as we rode I learned from Jassa what had brought my saviours at the eleventh hour.

He, it seemed, had been keeping a closer eye on me for weeks than ever I knew. He had spotted me leaving the Fort, and trailed me, wondering, to the French Soldiers’ canteen and Bibi Kalil’s house. Skulking in the shadows, he’d seen me received by the widow, and having a foul mind, supposed I was bedded for the night. Fortunately, he’d skulked farther, spied the Khalsa bigwigs downstairs, and realised that there was villainy afoot. Deciding that he could do nothing alone, he’d legged it for the Fort, and made straight for Gardner.

“I figured you were treed, and needed help in numbers. Alick was the only hope – he may not cotton to me, exactly, but when I told him how you were under the same roof as Maka Khan and the Akali, didn’t he jump, just? Didn’t come himself, though – bad policy for him to be seen crossing the Khalsa, don’t you know? But he told off the jemadar and a detail, and we hit the leather. I scouted the house, but no sign of you. A couple of sentries perambulating in the garden, though, and then I heard you hollering from the back of the house. I took a quiet slant that way, and marked the window your noise seemed to be coming from – say, you’re a right audible soldier, ain’t you? After that, two of the jemadar’s fellows smoothed out the sentries, and took station while he and I slipped along to your window – and here you are. They’re capable, Alick’s boys, no error. But what took you into that bear’s den – and what in Creation were they doing to you?”

I didn’t tell him. The events of the night were still a hideous jumble in my mind, and reaction had me in its grip. I was shaking so hard I barely kept the saddle, I wanted to vomit, and my ankle was throbbing with pain. Once again, when all seemed well, Lahore had become a nightmare, with enemies all about – the only bright side was that there seemed no lack of worthy souls eager to pluck me out of the soup. God bless America, if you like – they’d turned up trumps again, at no small risk to themselves, for if the Khalsa got wind that Gardner was aiding enemies of the state, he’d be in queer street.

“Don’t you fret about Alick!” snorts Jassa. “He’s got more lives’n a cat, and more nuts on the fire than you can count. He’s Dalip’s man, and Jeendan’s man, and best chums with Broadfoot, and he’s Goolab Singh’s agent in Lahore, and –”

Goolab Singh! That was another who took an uncommon interest in Flashy’s welfare. I was beginning to feel like a fives pill being thrashed about in a four-hand fifteen-up, with my seams split and the twine showing. Well, to the devil with it, I’d had enough. I reined in and demanded of Jassa where we were going; I’d been half aware that we were threading our way through the alleys near the south wall, and once or twice we’d skirted under the wall itself; we’d passed the great Looharree Gate and the Halfmoon Battery and were abreast of the Shah Alumee, which meant we were holding east, and were no nearer the Fort than when we’d started. Not that I minded that.

“For I’m not going back there, I can tell you! Broadfoot can peddle his pack and be damned! This bloody place ain’t safe –”

“That’s what Gardner reckoned,” says Jassa. “He thinks you should make tracks for British territory. You know the war’s started? Yes, sir, the Khalsa’s over the river at half a dozen places between Harree-ke-puttan and Ferozepore – eighty thousand horse, foot, and guns on a thirty-mile front. God knows where Gough is – halfway to Delhi with his tail between his legs if you believe the bazaar, but I doubt it.”

Seven thousand at Ferozepore, I was thinking. Well, Littler was done for – Wheeler, too, with his pitiful five thousand at Ludhiana … unless Gough had managed to reinforce. I’d had no sure word for three weeks, but it didn’t seem possible that he could have concentrated strongly enough to resist the overwhelming Sikh tide that was pouring over the Sutlej. I thought of the vast horde I’d seen on Maian Mir, the massed battalions of foot, the endless squadrons of horse, those superb guns … and of Gough frustrated at every turn by that ass Hardinge, our sepoys on the edge of desertion or mutiny, our piecemeal garrisons strung along the frontier and down the Meerut road. Now it had come, like a hammer-blow, and we’d been caught napping, as usual. Well, Gough had better have God on his side, for if he didn’t … farewell, India.

Which mattered rather less to me than the fact that I was a fugitive with a game ankle in the heart of the enemy camp. So much for Broadfoot’s idiot notions – I’d be safe in Lahore during hostilities, indeed! A fat lot of protection Jeendan could give me now, with the Khalsa wise to her treachery; it would be a tulwar, not a diamond, that would be decorating her pretty navel shortly.

“Moochee Gate,” says Jassa, and over the low hovels I saw the towers ahead and to our right. We were approaching a broad street leading down to the gate, and the mouth of the alley was crowded with bystanders, even at that time of night, all craning to see; a band of music was playing a spirited march, there was the steady tramp of feet, and down the avenue to the gate came three regiments of Khalsa infantry – stalwart musketeers in white with black cross-belts, their pieces at the shoulder, bayonets fixed; then Dogra light infantry in green, with white trousers, muskets at the trail; a battalion of spearmen in white flowing robes, their sashes bristling with pistols, their broad turbans wound round steel caps surmounted by green plumes. They swung along with a fierce purpose that made my heart sink, the flaring cressets on the wall glittering on that forest of steel as it passed under the arch, the girls showering them with petals as they passed, the chicos striding alongside, shrilling with delight – half Lahore seemed to have left its bed that night to see the troops march away to join their comrades on the river.

As each regiment approached the arch it gave a great cheer, and I thanked God for the shadows as I saw that they were saluting a little knot of mounted officers in gorgeous coats, with the rotund figure of Tej Singh at their head. He was wearing a puggaree as big as himself, and enough jewellery to start a shop; he shook a sheathed tulwar over his head in response to the troops’ weapons brandished in unison as they chanted: “Khalsa-ji! Wa Guru-ji ko Futteh! To Delhi! To London! Victory!”

After them came cavalry, regular units, lancers in white and dragoons in red, jingling by, and finally a baggage train of camels, and Tej left off saluting, the band gave over, and people turned away to the booths and grog shops. Jassa told the jemadar to have the riders follow us singly, and then my rider dismounted and Jassa began to lead my beast down towards the gate.

“Hold on,” says I. “Where away?”

“That’s your way home, wouldn’t you say?” says he, and when I reminded him that I was all in, dry, famished, and one-legged, he grinned all over his ugly mug and said that would be attended to directly, I’d see. So I let him lead on under the great arch, past the spearmen standing guard in their mail coats and helms; my puggaree, like my sword and pepperbox, had gone during the evening’s activities, but one of the riders had lent me a cloak with a hood, which I kept close about my face; no one gave us a second glance.

Beyond the gate were the usual shanties and hovels of the beggars, but farther out on the maidan a few camp fires were winking, and Jassa made for one beside a little grove of white poplars, where a small tent was pitched, with a couple of horses picketed close by. The first streak of dawn was lightening the sky to the east, silhouetting the camels and wagons on the southern road; the night air was dry and bitter cold, and I was shivering as we reached the fire. A man squatting on a rug beside it rose at our approach, and before I saw his face I recognised the long rangy figure of Gardner. He nodded curtly to me, and asked Jassa if there had been any trouble, or pursuit.

“Now, Alick, you know me!” cries that worthy, and Gardner growled, that he did, and how many signatures had he forged along the way. The same genial Gurdana Khan, I could see – but just the sight of that fierce eye and jutting nose made me feel safe for the first time that night.

“What’s wrong with your foot?” snaps he, as I climbed awkwardly down and leaned, wincing, on Jassa. I told him, and he swore.

“You have a singular gift for making the sparks fly upward! Let’s have a look at it.” He prodded, making me yelp. “Damnation! It’ll take days to mend! Very well, Doctor Harlan, there’s cold water in the chatti – let’s see you exercise the medical skill that was the talk of Pennsylvania, I don’t doubt! There’s curry in the pan, and coffee on the fire.”

He picketed the horse while I wolfed curry and chapattis and Jassa bound my ankle with a cold cloth; it was badly sprained and swollen like a football, but he had a soothing touch and made it feel easier. Gardner came back to squat cross-legged beyond the fire, drinking coffee with the aid of his iron neck-clamp and eyeing me sourly. He’d left off his bumbee tartan rig, no doubt to avoid notice, and wore a cowled black robe, with his Khyber knife across his knees: a damned discouraging sight all round, with questions to match.

“Now, Mr Flashman,” growls he. “Explain yourself. What folly took you among the Khalsa – and at such a time, too? Well, sir – what were you doing in that house?”

I knew I would be relying on him for my passage home, so I told him – all of it, from the false message to Jassa’s rescue, and he listened with a face like flint. The only interruption came from Jassa, when I mentioned my encounter with Goolab Singh.

“You don’t say! The old Golden Hen! Now what would he be doing so far from Kashmir?” Gardner rounded on him.

“Minding his own dam’ business! And you’ll do likewise, Josiah, you hear me? Not a word about him! Yes … while I think on it, you’d best take yourself out of earshot.”

“That’s for Mr Flashman to say!” retorts Jassa.

“Mr Flashman agrees with me!” barks Gardner, fixing me with a cold eye, so I nodded, and Jassa loafed off in a pet. “He did well by you tonight,” says Gardner, watching him go, “but I still wouldn’t trust him across the street. Go on.”

I finished my tale, and he observed with grim satisfaction that it had all fallen out for the best. I said I was glad he thought so, and pointed out that it wasn’t his arse that had been toasted over a slow fire. He just grunted.

“Maka Khan’d never ha’ gone through with it. He’d try to scare you, but torture isn’t his style.”

“The devil it ain’t! Good God, man, I was half-broiled, I tell you! Those swine would have stopped at nothing! Why, they roasted my punkah-wallah to death –”

“So they told you. Even if they did, a no-account nigger’s one thing, a white officer’s another. Still, you were lucky … thanks to Josiah. Yes, and to Goolab Singh.”

I asked him why he thought Goolab and the widow had taken such risks on my behalf, and he stared at me as though I were half-witted.

“He told you plain enough, I’d say! The more good turns he does the British, the better they’ll like him. He’s promised to stand by ’em in the war, but protecting you is worth a thousand words. He’s counting on you to do him credit with Hardinge – and you do it, d’you hear? Goolab’s an old fox, but he’s a brave man and a strong ruler, and deserves to have your people confirm him as king in Kashmir when this war’s over.”

It seemed to me he was being optimistic in thinking we’d be in a position to confirm anyone in Kashmir when the Khalsa had done with us, but I didn’t care to croak in front of a Yankee, so I said offhand: “You think we’ll beat the Khalsa quite handily, then?”

“There’ll be some damned long faces in Lahore Fort if you don’t,” says he bluntly, and before I could ask him to explain that bewildering remark, he added: “But you’ll be able to watch the fight from the ringside yourself, before the week’s out.”

“I don’t see that,” says I. “I agree I can’t stay in Lahore, but I’m in no case to ride for the frontier in a hurry, either – not with this confounded leg. I mean, even in disguise, you never know – I might have to cut and run, and I’d rather have two sound pins for that, what?” So you’d best find me a safe, comfortable spot to lie up in meanwhile, was what I was hinting, and waited for him to agree. He didn’t.

“We can’t wait for your leg to mend! This war is liable to be won and lost in a few days at most – which means you must be across the Sutlej without delay, even if you have to be carried!” He glared at me, whiskers bristling. “The fate of India may well depend on that, Mr Flashman!”

The sun couldn’t have got him, not in December, and he wasn’t tight. Tactfully I asked him how the fate of India came into it, since I had no vital intelligence to take with me, and my addition to the forces of the Company, while no doubt welcome in its small way, could hardly be decisive.

“Forces of the Company my aunt’s petticoat!” snarls he. “You’re going in with the Khalsa!”

a Daghabazi=treachery.