The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  We skirted under the high city walls, thronged with folk who threw blossoms and shouted blessings on the little Maharaja; they were swarming like bees on the ramparts of the Kashmir Gate, and then as we rounded the angle of the wall beneath the huge Half-moon Battery there came from far ahead the report of cannon – a continuous rumble of firing, one gun after another (a hundred and eighty, I’m told, though I didn’t count ’em). The elephants squealed in alarm, and the howdahs bucked from side to side so hard that we had to cling on to prevent being pitched out, with the mahouts flat on their beasts’ heads, steadying them with goad and voice. As we came under the Delhi Gate the firing ceased, to be replaced by a distant measured tread, thousands of marching men, and I craned out to look as the procession swung away from the city, and saw an astonishing sight.

  Coming towards us, all in immaculate line, were four battalions of the Khalsa, a solid wall of infantry half a mile from wing to wing, the dust rising before them in a low cloud, their drummers and standard bearers to the fore. I didn’t know it then, but they were absolutely marching on Lahore to bring Jawaheer out by force, having lost patience after waiting for him all day; you could almost read the purpose in the grim inexorable approach of that disciplined host, the green jackets of Sikh infantry and the blue turbans of the Dogras on the left, the scarlet coats and shakos of regular foot on the right.

  Our procession slowed and half-halted, but with the howdahs of Jeendan and the chamberlains in front I couldn’t see what was happening with Jawaheer – I could hear him, though, shouting shrilly, and the armoured horsemen converged on his elephant, while the yellow Guardsmen tramped stolidly on. Our procession forged ahead towards the centre of the Khalsa line, and just as it seemed as though we must collide the advancing host split into two, wheeling into columns which advanced down either side of us – and I’ve never seen anything to match it for drill, not even on Horse Guards. I watched them striding by beyond our yellow Guardsmen, and wondered for a moment if they meant to pass us altogether, but a burly rissaldar-major came tearing out on the flank, reining in midway down the procession, rose in his stirrups, and at the exact moment bawled in a voice you could have heard in Delhi: “Battalions – abou-tah!”

  There was the tremendous one-two-three-four crash as they marked time and turned – and then they were marching with us, a solid mass of two thousand infantry on either flank, shakos and red coats to the right, blue and green turbans to the left. Well, thinks I, whether Jawaheer takes it for a prisoner’s escort or a guard of honour, he can’t complain that they haven’t received him in style. I could hear him, crying “Shabash!” in compliment, and on the elephant ahead of us the chamberlains were on their feet, scooping up rupees in little hand-shovels, and hurling them over the yellow Guardsmen at the Khalsa battalions. They glittered in the air like silver rain, falling among the marching Sikhs – and not a man wavered in his step or even glanced aside. The chamberlains shovelled away for dear life, emptying the panniers and spraying the dust with their rupees, screaming to the troops that this was the gift of their loving monarch and his Wazir, Raja Jawaheer Singh, God bless him, but for all the heed the Khalsa paid it might as well have been bird-droppings, and behind me I heard Jassa mutter: “Save your dollars, boys, they ain’t buying you a thing.”

  Another roar from the rissaldar-major and the escorting battalions crashed to a halt, stock-still in the swirling dust. Our procession lumbered on, wheeling left as we emerged from between those grim ranks, and as our beast turned to follow the leaders, there all of a sudden on our right flank was the whole Khalsa, drawn up in review, horse, foot, and guns, squadron upon squadron, battalion upon battalion, as far as the eye could see.

  I’d seen it before, and been impressed; what I felt now was awe. Then it had been at exercise; now it was dead still, at attention, eighty thousand men and not a movement except for the gentle stirring of the standards before the battalions, the flutter of pennons on the lances at rest, and the occasional tossing of a horse’s mane. And it’s strange: the tramp of our Guardsmen and the groaning of the elephants’ harness must have been loud enough to wake the dead, but all I remember now is the silence as we passed slowly before that tremendous army.

  There was a sudden shrill voice from the second elephant, and damme if Jeendan and Mangla weren’t flinging out baksheesh, too, as the chamberlains had done, and calling out to the soldiers to accept their bounty, to remember their oaths to the Maharaja, and to stand true to their salt for the honour of the Khalsa. Still not a man moved, and as the women’s voices died away I felt a chill in spite of the heat of the westering sun, and then someone shouted a command to halt, and the elephants lumbered to a standstill.

  There was a little cluster of tents ahead, beside the leading beast, and a group of senior officers before it. Akalis were moving down the line, shouting to the mahouts to dismount, and as our elephant sank to its knees I felt nothing but relief – you’re uncomfortably conspicuous in a howdah, I can tell you, especially with eighty thousand bearded graven images glaring blindly at you from point-blank range. There was a clatter of hooves, and there was Gardner by the second elephant, ordering servants who helped Jeendan and Mangla down and led them towards one of the pavilions, where handmaidens were waiting to receive them – pretty butterfly figures in silks and gauzes altogether out of place before that great martial host in leather and serge and steel. Gardner caught my eye and jerked his head, and without waiting for a ladder I dropped to the ground with as much dignity as I could, clutching my topper in place. Jassa followed, and I saw that Lal Singh and the courtiers had also descended. I walked towards Gardner’s horse, and noticed that only Jawaheer’s elephant was still standing; he was sitting in the howdah, clutching little Dalip to him and complaining shrilly to the Akalis who were angrily ordering his mahout to make the elephant kneel.

  Another order was shouted, and now the yellow Guardsmen began to march away, the armoured horsemen cantering ahead of them. At this Jawaheer was on his feet, demanding to know where his escort was going, shouting to his mahout not to take the elephant down; he was in a great passion, and as his head turned I caught the gleam of the great diamond in his turban aigrette – Good Lord, that’s Jeendan’s belly-button, thinks I, how it does get about … and now Gardner was leaning down from his saddle and addressing me rapidly in English:

  “Go and help the Maharaja down – go on, man, quickly! It’ll please the troops – make a fine impression! Get him, Flashman!”

  It all happened in split seconds. There I was, aware only that Jawaheer was in a fine taking about the reception he was receiving, that Gardner was making what sounded like an excellent diplomatic suggestion – kindly old John Bull giving the heathen princeling a piggy-back before his powers assembled, and all that – but even as he spoke I saw that an Akali had scrambled up into the howdah and seemed to be trying to pull Dalip away; Jawaheer screamed, the Akali hit him in the face, Jawaheer dropped the child and cowered away, there was a zeep! of drawn steel at my back – and I started round to find half a dozen Sikhs almost on top of me, tulwars drawn and yelling blue murder.

  I didn’t wait to advise Gardner to help the Maharaja down himself. I was past his horse like a stung whippet – and ran slap into the elephant’s arse, fell back with a yell of terror into the path of the charging Sikhs, made a dive to get under the elephant’s trailing saddle-cloth, stumbled and became entangled, struggled free – and something hit me an almighty blow across the shoulders, driving me to my knees. I clutched wildly behind me, and found myself with little Dalip in my arms, fallen from aloft, and a mob of raging madmen hurling me aside to get at the elephant.

  There was a choking scream from overhead, and there was Jawaheer sprawling over the side of the howdah, arms outstretched, with a spear shaft buried in his chest, blood spewing from his mouth and showering down on me. The attackers were swarming into the howdah, slashing at him; suddenly his face was a bloody mask, his turban slipped from his head, a great length of blood-s
odden silk snaking down at me. Gardner’s horse reared above me, men were yelling and women shrieking, I could hear the hideous sound of the tulwars cutting into Jawaheer’s body, and still he was screaming and blood was everywhere, in my eyes and mouth, on the gold coat of little Dalip in my arms – I tried to throw him away, but the young blighter had me fast round the neck and wouldn’t leave go. Someone seized me by the arm – Jassa, a pistol in his free hand. Gardner urged his horse between us and the slaughter, knocking Jassa’s pistol from his grasp and shouting to him to get us away, and I blundered towards the tents with that confounded infant hanging from my neck – and not a sound out of him, either.

  The turban cloth had draped itself across my face, and as I dragged the disgusting thing clear and sank to my knees, Dalip still clung to me with one hand, and in the other, dripping with his uncle’s gore, was the great diamond that had fallen from Jawaheer’s aigrette. How the brat had got hold of it, God knows, but there it was, almost filling his small hand, and he stared at me with great round eyes and piped: “Koh-i-Noor! Koh-i-Noor!” Then he was whisked away from me, and as I came to my feet I saw he was clasped in his mother’s arms beside the tent, bloodying her veil and white sari.

  “Oh, my Christ!” groans Jassa, and I looked past him and saw Jawaheer, crimson from head to foot, slide over the side of the howdah and fall headlong in the dust with his life flooding out of him – and still those fiends hacked and stabbed at his corpse, while some even emptied their muskets and pistols into it, until the air was thick with the reek of black powder smoke.

  It was Gardner who hustled us to one of the smaller tents while his black robes surrounded Jeendan, Dalip, and the screeching women, shepherding them to the main pavilion. He cast a quick glance at the mob struggling about Jawaheer’s corpse, and then twitched our tent curtain shut. He was breathing hard, but cool as you please.

  “Well, how d’ye like that for a drumhead court-martial, Mr Flashman?” He laughed softly. “Khalsa justice – the damned fools!”

  I was a-tremble at the shocking, sudden butchery of it. “You knew that was going to happen?”

  “No, sir,” says he calmly, “but nothing in this country surprises me. By the holy, you’re a sight! Josiah, get some water and clean him up! You’re not wounded? Good—now, lie low and be quiet, both of you! It’s over and done, see? The damned fools – listen to ’em, celebrating their own funerals! Now, don’t you budge till I come back!”

  He strode out, leaving us to collect our breath and our wits – and if you wonder what my thoughts were as Jassa sponged the blood from my face and hands, I’ll tell you. Relief, and some satisfaction that Jawaheer was receipted and filed, and that I’d come away with nothing worse than a ruined frock coat. Not that they’d been out to get me, but when you walk away from a scrimmage of that sort, you’re bound to put it down on Crusoe’s good side, in block capitals.

  Jassa and I shared my flask, and for about half an hour we sat listening to the babble of shouting and laughter and feux de joie of the murderers’ celebration, and the lamentations from the neighbouring tent, while I digested this latest of Lahore’s horrors and wondered what might come of it.

  I suppose I’d seen the signs the previous day, in the rage of the Khalsa panches, and Jawaheer’s own terrors last night – but this morning the talk had been that all was well … aye, designed, no doubt, to bring him out to the Khalsa in false hope, to a doom already fixed. Had his peacemakers, Azizudeen and Dinanath, known what would happen? Had his sister? Had Jawaheer himself known, even, but been powerless to avert it? And now that the Khalsa had shown its teeth … would it march over the Sutlej? Would Hardinge, hearing of yet another bloody coup, decide to intervene? Or would he still wait? After all, it was nothing new in this horrible country.

  I didn’t know, then, that Jawaheer’s murder was a turning-point. To the Khalsa, it was just another demonstration of their own might, another death sentence on a leader who displeased them. They didn’t realise they’d handed power to the most ruthless ruler the Punjab had seen since Runjeet Singh … she was in the next tent, having hysterics so strident and prolonged that the noisy mob outside finally gave over celebrating and looting the gear from the royal procession; the shouting and laughter died away, and now there was the sound of her voice alone, sobbing and screaming by turns – and then it was no longer in her tent, but outside, and Gardner slipped back through our curtain, beckoning me to join him at the entrance. I went, and peered out.

  It was full dark now, but the space before the tents was lit bright as day by torches in the hands of a vast semi-circle of Khalsa soldiery, thousands strong, staring in silence at the spot where Jawaheer’s body still lay on the blood-soaked earth. The elephants and the regiments had gone; all that remained was that great ring of bearded, silent faces (and one of ’em was wearing my tall hat, damn his impudence!), the huddled corpse, and kneeling over it, wailing and beating the earth in an ecstasy of grief, the small white-clad figure of the Maharani. Close by, their hands on their hilts and their eyes on the Khalsa, a group of Gardner’s black robes stood guard.

  She flung herself across the body, embracing it, calling to it, and then knelt upright again, keening wildly, and began to rock to and fro, tearing at her clothing like a mad thing until she was bare to the waist, her unbound hair flying from side to side. Before that dreadful uncontrolled passion the watchers recoiled a step; some turned away or hid their faces in their hands, and one or two even started towards her but were pulled back by their mates. Then she was on her feet, facing them, shaking her little fists and screaming her hatred.

  “Scum! Vermin! Lice! Butchers! Coward sons of dishonoured mothers! A hundred thousand of you against one – you gallant champions of the Punjab, you wondrous heroes of the Khalsa, you noseless bastard offspring of owls and swine who boast of your triumphs against the Afghans and the prowess you’ll show against the British! You, who would run in terror from one English camp sweeper and a Kabuli whore! Oh, you have the courage of a pack of pi-dogs, to set on a poor soul unarmed – aiee, my brother, my brother, my Jawaheer, my prince!” From raging she was sobbing again, rocking from side to side, trailing her long hair across the body, then stooping to cradle the horrid thing against her breast while she wailed on a tremulous high note that slowly died away. They watched her, some grim, some impassive, but most shocked and dismayed at the violence of her grief.

  Then she laid down the body, picked up a fallen tulwar from beside it, rose to her feet, and began slowly to pace to and fro before them, her head turned to watch their faces. It was a sight to shiver your spine: that small, graceful figure, her white sari in rags about her hips, her bare arms and breasts painted with her brother’s blood, the naked sword in her hand. She looked like some avenging Fury from legend as she threw back her hair with a toss of her head and her glare travelled along that silent circle of faces. A stirring sight, if you know what I mean – there’s a picture I once saw that could have been drawn from her: Clytemnestra after Agamemnon’s death, cold steel and brazen boobies and bedamned to you. Suddenly she stopped by the body, facing them, and her voice was hard and clear and cold as ice as she passed her free hand slowly over her breasts and throat and face.

  “For every drop of this blood, you will give a million. You, the Khalsa, the pure ones. Pure as pig dung, brave as mice, honoured as the panders of the bazaar, fit only for –” I shan’t tell you what they were fit for, but it sounded all the more obscene for being spoken without a trace of anger. And they shrank from it – oh, there were angry scowls and clenched fists here and there, but the mass of them could only stare like rabbits before a snake. I’ve seen women, royal mostly, who could cow strong men: Ranavalona with her basilisk stare, or Irma (my second wife, you know, the Grand Duchess) with her imperious blue eye; Lakshmibai of Jhansi could have frozen the Khalsa in its tracks with a lift of her pretty chin. Each in her own way – Jeendan did it by shocking ’em out of their senses, flaunting her body while she lashed them quie
tly with the language of the gutter. At last one of them could take no more of it – an old white-bearded Sikh flung down his torch and cries:

  “No! No! It was no murder – it was the will of God!”

  Some murmured in support of him, others cried him down, and she waited until they were silent again.

  “The will of God. Is that your excuse … you will blaspheme, and hide behind God’s will? Then hear mine – the will of your Maharani, mother of your king!” She paused, looking from one side to the other of the silent crowd. “You will give me the murderers, so that they may pay. You will give them to me, or by that God with whose will you make so free, I shall throw the snake in your bosom!”

  She struck the tulwar into the earth on the last word, turned her back on them and walked quickly towards the tents – Clytemnestra as ever was. With this difference, that where Mrs Agamemnon had committed one murder, she was contemplating a hundred thousand. As she passed into her tent the light from within fell full on her face, and there wasn’t a trace of grief or anger. She was smiling.24

  * * *

  a Coppers.

  b Litter, usually curtained.

  Chapter 8

  If there was one thing worse than Jawaheer’s murder it was his funeral, when his wives and slave-girls were roasted alive along with his corpse, according to custom. Like much beastliness in the world, suttee is inspired by religion, which means there’s no sense or reason to it – I’ve yet to meet an Indian who could tell me why it’s done, even, except that it’s a hallowed ritual, like posting a sentry to mind the Duke of Wellington’s horse fifty years after the old fellow had kicked the bucket. That, at least, was honest incompetence; if you want my opinion of widow-burning, the main reason for it is that it provides the sort of show the mob revels in, especially if the victims are young and personable, as they were in Jawaheer’s case. I wouldn’t have missed it myself, for it’s a fascinating horror – and I noticed, in my years in India, that the breast-beating Christians who denounced it were always first at the ringside.