Читать книгу Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 3: Flashman at the Charge, Flashman in the Great Game, Flashman and the Angel of the Lord - George Fraser MacDonald - Страница 15

I suppose my life has been full of poetic justice – an expression customarily used by Holy Joes to cloak the vindictive pleasure they feel when some enterprising fellow fetches himself a cropper. They are the kind who’ll say unctuously that I was properly hoist with my own petard at Arabat, and serve the bastard right. I’m inclined to agree; East would never have abandoned me if I hadn’t heaved Valla out of the sled in the first place. He’d have stuck by me and the Christian old school code, and let his military duty go hang. But my treatment of his beloved made it easy for him to forget the ties of comradeship and brotherly love, and do his duty; all his pious protestations about leaving me were really hypocritical moonshine, spouted out to salve his own conscience.

I know my Easts and Tom Browns, you see. They’re never happy unless their morality is being tried in the furnace, and they can feel they’re doing the right, Christian thing – and never mind the consequences to anyone else. Selfish brutes. Damned unreliable it makes ’em, too. On the other hand, you can always count on me. I’d have got the news through to Raglan out of pure cowardice and self-love, and to hell with East and Valla both; but your pious Scud had to have a grudge to pay off before he’d abandon me. Odd, ain’t it? They’ll do for us yet, with their sentiment and morality.

In the meantime he had done for me, handsomely. If you’re one of the aforementioned who take satisfaction in seeing the wicked go arse over tip into the pit which they have digged, you’ll relish the situation of old Flashy, a half-healed crack in his head, a broken rib crudely strapped up with rawhide, lousy after a week in a filthy cell under Fort Arabat, and with his belly muscles fluttering in the presence of Captain Count Nicholas Pavlovitch Ignatieff.

They had hauled me into the guard-room, and there he was, the inevitable cigarette clamped between his teeth, those terrible hypnotic blue-brown eyes regarding me with no more emotion than a snake’s. For a full minute he stared at me, the smoke escaping in tiny wreaths from his lips, and then without a change of expression he lashed me across the face with his gloves, back and forth, while I struggled feebly between my Cossack guards, trying to duck my head from his blows.

“Don’t!” I cried. “Don’t, please! Pajalsta! I’m a prisoner! You’ve no right to … to treat me so! I’m a British officer … please! I’m wounded … for God’s sake, stop!”

He gave me one last swipe, and then looked at his gloves, weighing them in his hand. Then, in that icy whisper, he said: “Burn those,” and dropped them at the feet of the aide who stood beside him.

“You,” he said to me, and his voice was all the more deadly for not bearing the slightest trace of heat or emotion, “plead for mercy. You need expect none. You are forsworn – a betrayer of the vilest kind. You were treated with every consideration, with kindness even, by a man who turned to you in his hour of need, laying on you the most solemn obligation to protect his daughter. You repaid him by abducting her, by trying to escape, and by abandoning her to her death. You …”

“It’s a lie!” I shouted. “I didn’t – it was an accident! She fell from the sled – it wasn’t my fault! I was driving, I wasn’t even with her!”

His reply to this was a gesture to the aide, who struck me with the gloves again.

“You are a liar,” says Ignatieff. “The officer of the pursuing troop saw you. Pencherjevsky himself has told me how you and your comrade East left Starotorsk, how you basely seized the opportunity to escape …”

“It wasn’t base … we’d given no parole … we had the right of any prisoners of war … in all honour …”

“You talk of honour,” says he softly. “You thought to escape all censure, because you believed Pencherjevsky was doomed. Fortunately, he was not a hetman of Cossacks for nothing. He cut his way clear, and in spite of your unspeakable treatment of his daughter, she too survived.”

“Thank God for that!” cries I. “Believe me, sir, you are quite mistaken. I intended no betrayal of the Count, and I swear I never mistreated his daughter – it was all an accident …”

“The only accident for you was the one that prevented your escaping. I promise you,” he went on, in that level, sibilant voice, “that you will live to wish that sled had crushed your life out. For by your conduct, you understand, you have lost every right to be treated as an honourable man, or even as a common felon. You are beyond the law of nations, you are beyond mercy. One thing alone can mitigate your punishment.”

He paused there, to let it sink in, and to take another cigarette. The aide lit it for him, while I waited, quaking and sweating.

“I require an answer to one question,” says Ignatieff, “and you will supply it in your own language. Lie to me, or try to evade it, and I will have your tongue removed.” His next words were in English. “Why did you try to escape?”

Terrified as I was, I daren’t tell him the truth. I knew that if he learned that I’d found out about his expedition to India, it was all up with me.

“Because … because there was the opportunity … and there wasn’t any dishonour in it. And we meant … ah, Miss Pencherjevsky no harm, I swear we didn’t …”

“You lie. No one, in your situation, would have attempted such a foolhardy escape, let alone such a dishonourable one, without some pressing reason.” The blue-brown eyes seemed to be boring into my brain. “I believe I know what it was – the only thing it could possibly be. And I assure you, in five minutes from now you will be dying, in excruciating agony, unless you can tell me what is meant by –” he paused, inhaling on his cigarette “–Item Seven.” He let the smoke trickle down his nostrils. “If, by chance, you are unaware of what it means, you will die anyway.”

There was nothing for it; I had to confess. I tried to speak, but my throat was dry. Then I stammered out hoarsely, in English:

“It’s a plan … to invade India. Please, for God’s sake, I found out about it by accident, I …”

“How did you discover it?”

I babbled it out, how we had eavesdropped in the gallery and heard him talking to the Tsar. “It was just by chance … I didn’t mean to spy … it was East, and he said we must try to escape … to get word to our people … to warn them! I said it was dishonourable, that we were bound as gentlemen …”

“And Major East was with you, and overheard?”

“Yes, yes … it was his notion, you see! I didn’t like it … and when he suggested we escape, when those beastly peasants attacked Starotorsk … what could I do? But I swear we meant no harm, and … and it’s a lie that I mistreated Miss Pencherjevsky – I’ll swear it, by my honour, on the Bible …”

“Gag him,” says Ignatieff. “Bring him to the courtyard. And bring a prisoner. Any one in the cells will do.”

They stuffed a rag into my mouth, and bound it, stifling my pleas for mercy, for I was sure he was going to make away with me horribly, now that he had his information. They pinioned my wrists, and thrust me brutally out into the yard; it was freezing, and I had nothing but my shirt and breeches. I waited, trembling with cold and funk, until presently another Cossack appeared, driving in front of him a scared, dirty-looking peasant with fetters on his legs. Ignatieff, who had followed us out, and was pinching the paper of a cigarette, beckoned the Cossack.

“What was this fellow’s offence?”

“Insubordination, Lord Count.”

“Very good,” says Ignatieff, and lit his cigarette.

Two more Cossacks appeared, carrying between them a curious bench, like a vaulting horse with very short legs and a flat top. The prisoner shrieked at the sight of it, and tried to run, but they dragged him to it, tearing off his clothes, and bound him on it face down, with thongs at his ankles, knees, waist and neck, so that he lay there, naked and immovable, but still screaming horribly.

Ignatieff beckoned one of the Cossacks, who held out to him a curious thick black coil, of what looked for all the world like shiny liquorice. Ignatieff hefted it in his hands, and then stepped in front of me and placed it over my head; I shuddered as it touched my shoulders, and was astonished by the weight of the thing. At a sign from Ignatieff the Cossack, grinning, drew it slowly off my shoulders, and I realized in horror as it slithered off like an obscene black snake that it was a huge whip, over twelve feet long, as thick as my arm at the butt and tapering to a point no thicker than a boot-lace.

“You will have heard of this,” says Ignatieff softly. “It is called a knout. Its use is illegal. Watch.”

The Cossack stood opposite the bench with its howling victim, took the knout in both hands, and swept it back over his shoulder so that its hideous lash trailed behind him in the snow. Then he struck.

I’ve seen floggings, and watched with fascination as a rule, but this was horrible, like nothing imaginable. That diabolical thing cut through the air with a noise like a steam whistle, so fast that you couldn’t see it; there was a crack like a pistol-shot, a fearful, choked scream of agony, and then the Cossack was snaking it back for another blow.

“Wait,” says Ignatieff, and to me: “Come here.” They pushed me forward to the bench, the bile nearly choking me behind the gag; I didn’t want to look, but they forced me. The wretched man’s buttocks were cut clean across, as by a sabre, and the blood was pouring out.

“The drawing stroke,” says Ignatieff. “Proceed.”

Five more shrieking cuts, five more explosive cracks, five more razor gashes, and the snow beneath the bench was sodden with blood. The most horrible thing was that the victim was conscious still, making awful animal noises.

“Now observe,” says Ignatieff, “the effect of a flat blow.”

The Cossack struck a seventh time, but this time he didn’t snap the knout, but let it fall smack across the patient’s spine. There was a dreadful sound, like a wet cloth slapped on stone, but from the victim no cry at all. They unstrapped him, and as they lifted the bleeding wreck of his body from the bench, I saw it was hanging horribly limp in the middle.

“The killing stroke,” said Ignatieff. “It is debatable how many of the drawing blows a man can endure, but with the flat stroke one is invariably fatal.” He turned to look at me, and then at the blood-soaked bench, as though considering, while he smoked calmly. At last he dropped his cigarette in the snow.

“Bring him inside.”

I was half-fainting with fear and shock when they dropped me sprawling in a chair, and Ignatieff sat down behind the table and waved them out. He lit himself another cigarette, and then said quietly:

“That was a demonstration, for your benefit. You see now what awaits you – except that when your turn comes I shall take the opportunity of ascertaining how many of the drawing strokes a vigorous and healthy man can suffer before he dies. Your one hope of escaping that fate lies in doing precisely as you are told – for I have a use for you. If I had not, you would be undergoing destruction by the knout at this moment.”

He smoked in silence for a minute, never taking his eyes off me, and I watched him like a rabbit before a snake. Not only the hideous butchery I had watched, but the fact that he had condemned a poor devil to it just to impress me, appalled me utterly. And I knew I would do anything – anything, to escape that abomination.

“That you had somehow learned of Item Seven I already suspected,” says Ignatieff at last. “Nothing else would have led you to flee. Accordingly, for the past week, we have proceeded on the assumption that intelligence of our expedition would reach Lord Raglan – and subsequently your government in London. We can now be certain that it has done so, since your companion, Major East, has not been recaptured. This betrayal is regrettable, but by no means disastrous. Indeed, it can be made to work to our advantage, for your authorities will suppose that they have seven months to prepare against the blow that is coming. They will be wrong. In four months from now our army will be advancing over the Khyber Pass, thirty thousand strong, with at least half as many Afghan allies eager to descend across the Indus. If every British soldier in India were sent to guard the frontier – which is impossible – it would not serve to stem our advance. No adequate help can arrive from England in time, and your troops will have a rebellious Indian population at their backs while we take them by the throat. Our agents are already at work, preparing that insurrection.

“You may wonder how it is possible to advance the moment of our attack by three months. It is simple. General Khruleff’s original plan for an attack through the Syr Daria country to Afghanistan and India will be adhered to – our army had been preparing to take this route, which was abandoned only lately because of minor difficulties with native bandits and because the southern road, through Persia, offered a more secure and leisurely progress. The change of plan will thus be simple to effect, since the army is still poised for the northern route, and the arrangements for its transport by sea across Caspian and Aral can proceed immediately. This will ensure progress at twice the speed we could hope for if we went through Persia. And we will consolidate our position among the Syr Daria and Amu Daria tribesmen in passing.”

I didn’t doubt a word of it – not that I cared a patriotic damn. They could have India, China, and the whole bloody Orient for me, if only I could find a way out for myself.

“It is as well that you should know this,” went on Ignatieff, “so that you may understand the part which I intend that you should play in it. A part for which you are providentially qualified. I know a great deal about you – so much, indeed, that you will be astonished at the extent of my knowledge. It is our policy to garner information, and I doubt,” went on this cocky bastard, “whether any state in Europe can boast such extensive secret dossiers as we possess. I am especially aware of your activities in Afghanistan fourteen years ago – of your work, along with such agents as Burnes and Pottinger, among the Gilzais and other tribes. I know even of the exploit which earned you the extravagant nickname of ‘Bloody Lance’, of your dealings with Muhammed Akbar Khan, of your solitary survival of the disaster which befell the British Army^a – a disaster in which, you may be unaware, our own intelligence service played some part.”

Now, shaken and fearful as I was, one part of my mind was noting something from all this. Master Ignatieff might be a clever and devilish dangerous man, but he had at least one of the besetting weaknesses of youth: he was as vain as an Etonian duke, and it led him to commit the cardinal folly in a diplomatic man. He talked too much.

“It follows,” says he, “that you can be of use to us in Afghanistan. It will be convenient, when our army arrives there, to have a British officer, of some small reputation in that country, to assist us in convincing the tribal leaders that the decay of British power is imminent, and that it will be in their interests to join in the conquest of India. They will not need much convincing, but even so your betrayal will add to the impression our armed force will make.”

For all his impassivity, I knew he was enjoying this; it was in the tilt of his cigarette, and the glitter in his gotch eye.

“It is possible, of course, that you will prefer death – even by the knout – to betrayal of your country. I doubt it, but I must take into consideration the facts which are to be found in your dossier. They tell me of a man brave to the point of recklessness, of proved resource, and of considerable intelligence. My own observation of you tends to contradict this – I do not judge you to be of heroic material, but I may be mistaken. Certainly your conduct at Balaclava, of which I have received eye-witness accounts, is of a piece with your dossier. It does not matter. If, when you have been taken to Afghanistan with our army, you decline to make what the Roman priests call a propaganda on our behalf, we shall derive what advantage we can from displaying you naked in an iron cage along the way. The knouting will take place when we arrive on Indian soil.”

He had it all splendidly pat, this icy Muscovite bastard, and well pleased with himself he was, too. He pinched another cigarette between his fingers, thinking to himself to see if there was any other unpleasant detail he could rub into me, and deciding there wasn’t, called to the Cossack guard.

“This man,” says he, “is a dangerous and desperate criminal. He is to be chained wrist and ankle at once, and the keys are to be thrown away. He will accompany us to Rostov tomorrow, and if, while he is in your charge he should escape or die” – he paused, and when he went on it was as casually said as though he were confining them to barracks – “you will be knouted to death. And your families also. Take him away.”

You may not credit it, but my feelings as they thrust me down into my underground pit, clamped chains on my wrists and ankles, and slammed the door on me, were of profound relief. For one thing, I was out of the presence of that evil madman with his leery optic – that may seem small enough, but you haven’t been closeted with him, and I have. Point two, I was not only alive but due to be preserved in good health for at least four months – and I was old soldier enough to know that a lot can happen in that time. Point three, I wasn’t going into the unknown: Afghanistan, ghastly place though it is, was a home county hunt to me, and if once I could get a yard start, I fancied I could survive the going a sight better than any Russian pursuers.

It was a mighty “if,” of course, but funny things happen north of the Khyber – come to that, I wondered if Ignatieff and his brother-thugs knew exactly what they were tackling in taking an army through that country. We’d tried it, and God knew we were fitter to go to war than the Russians ever were, yet we’d come most horribly undone. I remembered my old sparring chums, the Gilzais and Baluchis and Khels and Afridis – and those fiends of Ghazis – and wondered if the Ruskis knew precisely the kind of folk they’d be relying on for safe-conduct and alliance.

They had their agents in Afghanistan, to be sure, and must have a shrewd notion of how things were; I wondered if they had secured their alliances in advance, perhaps with the King? And one thing was certain, the Afghans hated the British, and would join in an attack on India like Orangemen on the Twelfth. It would be all up with the Honourable East India Company then, and no bones about it.

Thinking about that, I could make a guess that if there was a point where the Russian force might run into trouble, it would be in the wild country that they must pass through before they reached Afghanistan. In my days at Kabul, Sekundar Burnes had told me a bit about it – of the independent Khanates at Bokhara and Samarkand and the Syr Daria country, where the Russians had even then been trying to extend their empire, and getting a bloody nose in the process. Fearsome bastards those northern tribes were, Tajiks and Uzbeks and the remnants of the great hordes, and from the little I’d heard from folk like Pencherjevsky, they were still fiercely resisting Russian encroachment. We’d had a few agents up that way ourselves, in my time, fellows like Burnes and Stoddart, trying to undermine Russian influence, but with our retreat from Afghanistan it was well out of our bailiwick now, and the Russians would no doubt eat up the tribes at their leisure. That’s what Ignatieff had hinted, and I couldn’t see the wild clans being able to stand up to an army of thirty thousand, with ten thousand Cossack cavalry and artillery trains and the rest of it.

No, setting aside a few minor rubs, this Russian expedition looked to me to be on a good firm wicket – but that mattered nothing as far as I was concerned. What I had to bide my time for was Afghanistan, and the moment when they brought me out of my blinkers to make what Ignatieff called a propaganda on Russia’s behalf. That would be the moment to lift up mine eyes unto the hills, or the tall trees, or the nearest hole in the ground – anywhere at all, so long as it offered a refuge from Ignatieff. I didn’t even think about the price of failure to escape – it was quite unthinkable.

You may think it strange, knowing me, that even in the hellish mess I found myself, with the shadow of horrible death hanging over me, I could think ahead so clearly. Well, it wasn’t that I’d grown any braver as I got older – the reverse, if anything – but I’d learned, since my early days, that there’s no point in wasting your wits and digestion blubbering over evil luck and folly and lost opportunities. I’ll admit, when I thought how close I’d been to winning clear, I could have torn my hair – but there it was. However fearful my present predicament, however horrid the odds and dangers ahead, they’d get no better with being fretted over. It ain’t always easy, if your knees knock as hard as mine, but you must remember the golden rule: when the game’s going against you, stay calm – and cheat.

In this state of philosophic apprehension, then, I began my journey from Fort Arabat the following day – a journey such as I don’t suppose any other Englishman has ever made. You can trace it on the map, all fifteen hundred miles of it, and your finger will go over places you never dreamed of, from the edge of civilization to the real back of beyond, over seas and deserts to mountains that perhaps nobody will ever climb, through towns and tribes that belong to the Arabian Nights rather than to the true story of a reluctant English gentleman (as the guide books would say) with two enormous scowling Cossacks brooding over him the whole way.

The first part of the journey was all too familiar, by sled back along the Arrow of Arabat, over the bridge at Yenitchi, and then east along that dreary winter coast to Taganrog, where the snow was already beginning to melt in the foul little streets, and the locals still appeared to be recovering from the excesses of the great winter fair at Rostov. Russians, in my experience, are part-drunk most of the time, but if there’s a sober soul between the Black Sea and the Caspian for weeks after the Rostov kermesse he must be a Baptist hermit; Taganrog was littered with returned revellers. Rostov I don’t much remember, or the famous river Don, but after that we took to telegues, and since the great Ignatieff was riding at the front of our little convoy of six vehicles, we made good speed. Too good for Flashy, bumping along uncomfortably on the straw in one of the middle wagons; my chains were beginning to be damned uncomfortable, and every jolt of those infernal telegues bruised my wrists and ankles. You may think fetters are no more than an inconvenience, but when every move you make means lifting a few pounds of steel, which chafes your flesh and jars your bones, and means you can never lie without their biting into you, they become a real torture. I pleaded to have them removed, if only for an hour or two, and got a kick in my half-mended rib for my pains.

Cossacks, of course, never wash (although they brush their coats daily with immense care) and I wasn’t allowed to either, so by the time we were rolling east into the half-frozen steppe beyond Rostov I was filthy, bearded, tangled, and itchy beyond belief, stinking with the garlic of their awful food, and only praying that I wouldn’t contract some foul disease from my noisome companions – for they even slept either side of me, with their nagaikas knotted into my chains. It ain’t like a honeymoon at Baden, I can tell you.

There were four hundred miles of that interminable plain, getting worse as it went on; it took us about five days, as near as I remember, with the telegues going like blazes, and new horses at every post-house. The only good thing was that as we went the weather grew slightly warmer until, when we were entering the great salt flats of the Astrakhan, the snow vanished altogether, and you could even travel without your tulup.

Astrakhan city itself is a hell-hole. The land all about is as flat as the Wash country, and the town itself lies so low they have a great dyke all round to prevent the Volga washing it into the Caspian, or t’other way round. As you might expect, it’s a plague spot; you can smell the pestilence in the air, and before we passed through the dyke Ignatieff ordered everyone to soak his face and hands with vinegar, as though that would do any good. Still, it was the nearest I came to making toilet the whole way.

Mark you, there was one good thing about Astrakhan: the women. Once you get over towards the Caspian the people are more slender and Asiatic than your native Russian, and some of those dark girls, with their big eyes and long straight noses and pouting lips had even me, in my unkempt misery, sitting up and dusting off my beard. But of course I never got near them; it was into the kremlin for Flash and his heavenly twins, and two nights in a steaming cell before they put us aboard a steamer for the trip across the Caspian.

It’s a queer sea, that one, for it isn’t above twenty feet deep, and consequently the boats are of shallow draught, and bucket about like canoes. I spewed most of the way, but the Cossacks, who’d never sailed before, were in a fearful way, vomiting and praying by turns. They never let go of me, though, and I realized with a growing sense of alarm that if these two watch-dogs were kept on me all the way to Kabul, I’d stand little chance of giving them the slip. Their terror of Ignatieff was if anything even greater than mine, and in the worst of the boat’s heaving one of them was always clutching my ankle chains, even if he was rolling about the deck retching at the same time.

It was four days of misery before we began to steam through clusters of ugly, sandy little islands towards the port of Tishkandi, which was our destination. I’m told it isn’t there any longer, and this is another strange thing about the Caspian – its coastline changes continually, almost like the Mississippi shores. One year there are islands, and next they have become hills on a peninsula, while a few miles away a huge stretch of coast will have changed into a lagoon.

Tishkandi’s disappearance can have been no loss to anyone; it was a dirty collection of huts with a pier, and beyond it the ground climbed slowly through marshy salt flats to two hundred miles of arid, empty desert. You could call it steppe, I suppose, but it’s dry, rocky heart-breaking country, fit only for camels and lizards.

“Ust-Yurt,” says one of the officers, as he looked at it, and the very name sent my heart into my boots.

It’s dangerous country, too. There was a squadron of lancers waiting for us when we landed, to guard us against the wild desert tribes, for this was beyond the Russian frontiers, in land where they were still just probing at the savage folk who chopped up their caravans and raided their outposts whenever they had the chance. When we made camp at night it was your proper little laager, with sangars at each corner, and sentries posted, and half a dozen lancers out riding herd. All very business-like, and not what I’d have expected from Ruskis, really. But this was their hard school, as I was to learn, like our North-west Frontier, where you either soldiered well or not at all.

It was five days through the desert, not too uncomfortable while we were moving, but freezing hellish at night, and the dromedaries with their native drivers must have covered the ground at a fair pace, forty miles a day or thereabouts. Once or twice we saw horsemen in the distance, on the low rocky barchans, and I heard for the first time names like “Kazak” and “Turka”, but they kept a safe distance. On the last day, though, we saw more of them, much closer, and quite peaceable, for these were people of the Aral coast, and the Russians had them fairly well in order on that side of the sea. When I saw them near I had a strange sense of recognition – those swarthy faces, with here and there a hooked nose and a straggling moustache, the dirty puggarees swathed round the heads, and the open belted robes, took me back to Northern India and the Afghan hills. I found myself stealing a look at my Cossacks and the lancers, and even at Ignatieff riding with the other officers at the head of our caravan, and thinking to myself – these ain’t your folk, my lads, but they’re mighty close to some I used to know. It’s a strange thing, to come through hundreds of miles of wilderness, from a foreign land and moving in the wrong direction, and suddenly find yourself sniffing the air and thinking, “home”. If you’re British, and have soldiered in India, you’ll understand what I mean.

Late that afternoon we came through more salty flats to a long coastline of rollers sweeping in from a sea so blue that I found myself muttering through my beard “Thalassa or thalatta, the former or the latter?,” it seemed so much like the ocean that old Arnold’s Greeks had seen after their great march. And suddenly I could close my eyes and hear his voice droning away on a summer afternoon at Rugby, and smell the cut grass coming in through the open windows, and hear the fags at cricket outside, and from that I found myself dreaming of the smell of hay in the fields beyond Renfrew, and Elspeth’s body warm and yielding, and the birds calling at dusk along the river, and the pony champing at the grass, and it was such a sweet, torturing longing that I groaned aloud, and when I opened my eyes the tears came, and there was a hideous Russian voice clacking “Aralskoe More!”,^b and bright Asian sunlight, and the chains galling my wrist and ankle-bones, and foreign flat faces all round, and I realized that my earlier thoughts of home had been an illusion, and this was alien, frightening land.

There was a big military camp on the shore, and a handy little steamer lying off, and while the rest of us waited Ignatieff was received with honours by a group of senior officers – and he only a captain, too. Of course, I’d realized before this that he was a big noise, but the way they danced attendance on him you’d have thought he was the Tsar’s cousin. (Maybe he was, for all I know.)

They put us aboard the steamer that evening, and I was so tuckered out by the journey that I just slept where I lay down. And in the morning there was a coast ahead, with a great new wooden pier, and a huge river flowing down between low banks to the sea. As far as I could see the coast was covered with tents, and there was another steamer, and half a dozen big wooden transports, and one great warship, all riding at anchor between the pier and the river mouth. There were bugles sounding on the distant shore, and swarms of people everywhere, among the tents, on the pier, and on the ships, and a great hum of noise in the midst of which a military band was playing a rousing march; this is the army, I thought, or most of it, this is their Afghan expedition.

I asked one of the Russian sailors what the river might be, and he said: “Syr Daria” and then pointing to a great wooden stockaded fort on the rising land above the river, he added: “Fort Raim.”³⁵ And then one of the Cossacks pushed him away, cursing, and told me to hold my tongue.

They landed us in lighters, and there was another delegation of smart uniforms to greet Ignatieff, and an orderly holding a horse for him, and all around tremendous bustle of unloading and ferrying from the ships, and gangs of orientals at work, with Russian non-coms bawling at them and swinging whips, and gear being stowed in the newly-built wooden sheds along the shore. I watched gun limbers being swung down from a derrick, and cursing, half-naked gangs hauling them away; the whole pier was piled with crates and bundles, and for all the world it looked like the levee at New Orleans, except that this was a temporary town of huts and tents and lean-to’s. But there were just as many people, sweating and working in orderly chaos, and you could feel the excitement in the air.

Ignatieff came trotting down to where I was sitting between my Cossacks, and at a word they hauled me up and we set off at his heels through the confusion, up the long, gradual slope to the fort. It was farther off than I’d expected, about a mile, so that it stood well back from the camp, which was all spread out like a sand-table down the shore-line. As we neared the fort he stopped, and his orderly was pointing at the distant picket lines and identifying the various regiments – New Russian Dragoons, Romiantzoff’s Grenadiers, Astrakhan Carabiniers, and Aral Hussars, I remember. Ignatieff saw me surveying the camp, and came over. He hadn’t spoken to me since we left Arabat.

“You may look,” says he, in that chilling murmur of his, “and reflect on what you see. The next Englishman to catch sight of them will be your sentry on the walls of Peshawar. And while you are observing, look yonder also, and see the fate of all who oppose the majesty of the Tsar.”

I looked where he pointed, up the hill towards the fort, and my stomach turned over. To one side of the gateway was a series of wooden gallows, and from each one hung a human figure – although some of them were hard to recognize as human. A few hung by their arms, some by their ankles, one or two lucky ones by their necks. Some were wasted and blackened by exposure; at least one was still alive and stirring feebly. An awful carrion reek drifted down on the clear spring air.

“Unteachables,” says Ignatieff. “Bandit scum and rebels of the Syr Daria who have been unreceptive to our sacred Russian imperial mission. Perhaps, when we have lined their river with sufficient of these examples, they will learn. It is the only way to impress recalcitrants. Do you not agree?”

He wheeled his horse, and we trailed up after him towards the fort. It was bigger, far bigger, than I’d expected, a good two hundred yards square, with timber ramparts twenty feet high, and at one end they were already replacing the timber with rough stone. The Russian eagle ensign was fluttering over the roofed gatehouse, there were grenadiers drawn up and saluting as Ignatieff cantered through, and I trudged in, clanking, to find myself on a vast parade, with good wooden barracks around the walls, troops drilling in the dusty square, and a row of two-storey administrative buildings down one side. It was a very proper fort, something like those of the American frontier in the ’seventies; there were even some small cottages which I guessed were officers’ quarters.

Ignatieff was getting his usual welcome from a tubby chap who appeared to be the commandant; I wasn’t interested in what they said, but I gathered the commandant was greatly excited, and was babbling some great news.

“Not both of them?” I heard Ignatieff say, and the other clapped his hands in great glee and said, yes, both, a fine treat for General Perovski and General Khruleff when they arrived.

“They will make a pretty pair of gallows, then,” says Ignatieff. “You are to be congratulated, sir. Nothing could be a better omen for our march through Syr Daria.”

“Ah, ha, excellent!” cries the tubby chap, rubbing his hands. “And that will not be long, eh? All is in train here, as you see, and the equipment arrives daily. But come, my dear Count, and refresh yourself.”

They went off, leaving me feeling sick and hang-dog between my guards; the sight of those tortured bodies outside the stockade had brought back to me the full horror of my own situation. And I felt no better when there came presently a big, brute-faced sergeant of grenadiers, a coiled nagaika in his fist, to tell my Cossacks they could fall out, as he was taking me under his wing.

“Our necks depend on this fellow,” says one of the Cossacks doubtfully, and the sergeant sneered, and scowled at me.

“My neck depends on what I’ve got in the cells already,” growls he. “This offal is no more precious than my two birds. Be at peace; he shall join them in my most salubrious cell, from which even the lizards cannot escape. March him along!”

They escorted me to a corner on the landward side of the fort, down an alley between the wooden buildings, and to a short flight of stone steps leading down to an iron-shod door. The sergeant hauled back the massive bolts, thrust back the creaking door, and then reached up, grabbing me by my wrist-chains.

“In, tut!” he snarled, and yanked me headlong down into the cell. The door slammed, the bolts ground to, and I heard him guffawing brutally as their footsteps died away.

I lay there trembling on the dirty floor, just about done with fatigue and fear. At least it was dim and cool in here. And then I heard someone speaking in the cell, and raised my head; at first I could make nothing out in the faint light that came from a single window high in one wall, and then I started with astonishment, for suspended flat in the air in the middle of the cell, spread-eagled as though in flight, was the figure of a man. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness I drew in a shuddering breath, for now I could see that he was cruelly hung between four chains, one to each limb from the top corners of the room. More astonishing still, beneath his racked body, which hung about three feet from the floor, was crouched another figure, supporting the hanging man on his back, presumably to take the appalling strain of the chains from his wrists and ankles. It was the crouching man who was speaking, and to my surprise, his words were in Persian.

“It is a gift from God, brother,” says he, speaking with difficulty. “A rather dirty gift, but human – if there is such a thing as a human Russian. At least, he is a prisoner, and if I speak politely to him I may persuade him to take my place for a while, and bear your intolerable body. I am too old for this, and you are heavier than Abu Hassan, the breaker of wind.”

The hanging man, whose head was away from me, tried to lift it to look. His voice, when he spoke, was hoarse with pain, but what he said was, unbelievably, a joke.

“Let him … approach … then … and I pray … to God … that he has … fewer fleas … than you … Also … you are … a most … uncomfortable … support … God help … the … woman … who shares … your bed.”

“Here is thanks,” says the crouching man, panting under the weight. “I bear him as though I were the Djinn of the Seven Peaks, and he rails at me. You, nasrani,”^c he addressed me: “If you understand God’s language, come and help me to support this ingrate, this sinner. And when you are tired, we shall sit in comfort against the wall, and gloat over him. Or I may squat on his chest, to teach him gratitude. Come, Ruski, are we not all God’s creatures?”

And even as he said it, his voice quavered, he staggered under the burden above him, and slumped forward unconscious on the floor.

a See Flashman.

b “Aral Sea!”

c Christian.