I told him pretty sharp to keep his proverbs to himself; if there’s one thing I bar it’s croakers disturbing my peace of mind, especially when they’re leery coves who know their business. Mind you, I began to wonder if he did, for now, after the terrors and transports of my first weeks in Lahore, there came a long spell in which nothing happened at all. We prosed daily about the Soochet legacy, and damned dull it was. The Inheritance Act of 1833 ain’t a patch on the Police Gazette, and after weeks of listening to the drivel of a garlic-breathing dotard in steel spectacles on the precise meaning of “universum jus” and “seisin” I was bored to the point where I almost wrote to Elspeth. Barra choop, indeed.
But if there was no sign of the tempest foretold by Jassa, there was no lack of rumour. As the Dasahra passed, and October lengthened into November, the bazaars were full of talk of British concentration on the river, and Dinanath, of all people, claimed publicly that the Company was preparing to annex Sikh estates on the south bank of the Sutlej; it was also reported that he had said that “the Maharani was willing for war to defend the national honour”. Well, we’d heard that before; the latest definite word was that she’d moved from Amritsar to Shalamar, and was rioting the nights away with Lal. I was surprised that he was still staying the course; doubtless Rai and the Python were spelling him.
Then late in November things began to happen which caused me, reluctantly, to sit up straight. The Khalsa began to reassemble on Maian Mir, Lal was confirmed as Wazir and Tej as commander-in-chief, both made proclamations full of fire and fury, and the leading generals took their oaths on the Granth, pledging undying loyalty to young Dalip with their hands on the canopy of Runjeet’s tomb. You may be sure I saw none of this; diplomatic immunity or not, I was keeping my head well below the parapet, but Jassa gave me eye-witness accounts, taking cheerful satisfaction at every new alarm, curse him.
“They’re just waiting for the astrologers to name the day,” says he. “Even the order of march is cut and dried – Tej Singh to Ferozepore with 42,000 foot, while Lal crosses farther north with 20,000 gorracharra. Yes, sir, they’re primed and ready to fire.”
Not wanting to believe him, I pointed out that strategically the position was no worse than it had been two months earlier.
“Except that there isn’t a rupee left in the Pearl Mosque, and nothing to pay ’em with. I tell you, they either march or explode. I just hope Gough’s ready. What does Broadfoot say?”
That was the most disquieting thing of all – for two weeks I hadn’t had a line from Simla. I’d been cyphering away until Second Thessalonians was dog-eared, without reply. I didn’t tell Jassa that, but reminded him that the final word lay with Jeendan; she’d charmed the Khalsa into delay before, and she could do it again.
“I’ve got ten chipsb says she can’t,” says he. “Once the astrologers say the word, it’d be more than her pretty little hide was worth to hold back. If those stars say ‘Go’, she’s bound to give ’em their heads – and God help Ferozepore!”
He lost his bet. “I shall instruct the astrologers,” she had told me, and she must have done, for when the wise men took a dekko at the planets, they couldn’t make head or tail of them. Finally, they admitted that the propitious day was obvious enough, but unfortunately it had been last week and they hadn’t noticed, dammit. The panches weren’t having that, and insisted that another date be found, and sharp about it; the astrologers conferred, and admitted that there was a pretty decent-looking day about a fortnight hence, so far as they could tell at this distance. That didn’t suit either, and the soldiery were ready to string them up, at which the astrologers took fright and said tomorrow was the day, not a doubt of it; couldn’t think how they’d missed it before. Their credit was pretty thin by this time, and although the gorracharra were ordered out of Lahore, Lal took them only a little way beyond Shalamar before hurrying back to the city and the arms of Jeendan, who was once more in residence at the Fort. Tej sent off the infantry by divisions, but stayed at home himself, and the march was petering out, Jassa reported.
I heaved a sigh of relief; plainly Jeendan was being as good as her word. Now that she was back, under the same roof, I considered and instantly dismissed the notion of trying to have a word with her; nothing could have been worse just then than talk spreading in the bazaar and the camp that she’d been colloguing with a British officer. So I sat down to compose a cypher to Broadfoot, describing the confusion caused by the astrologers, and how the Khalsa were marching round in rings without their two leading generals. “In all this (I concluded) I think we may discern a certain lady’s fine Punjabi hand.” Elegant letter-writers, we politicals were in those days – sometimes too elegant for our own good.
I sent it off by way of the Scriptures, and suggested to Jassa that he might canvass Gardner, who had returned with Jeendan, to find out the state of play, but my faithful orderly demurred, pointing out that he was the last man in whom Gardner would confide at any time, “and if the jealous son-of-a-bitch gets the idea that I’m nosing about right now, he’s liable to do me harm. Oh, sure, he’s Broadfoot’s friend – but it’s Dalip’s salt he eats – and Mai Jeendan’s. Don’t forget that. If it comes to war, he can’t be on our side.”
I wasn’t sure about that, but there was nothing to do but wait – for news of the Khalsa’s intentions, and word from Broadfoot. Three days went by, and then a week, in which Lahore buzzed with rumours: the Khalsa were marching, the British were invading, Goolab Singh had declared first for one side then for the other, the Raja of Nabla had announced that he was the eleventh incarnation of Vishnu and was raising a holy war to sweep the foreigners out of India – all the usual twaddle, contradicted as soon as it was uttered, and I could do nothing but endure the Soochet legacy by day, and pace my balcony impatiently in the evening, watching the red dusk die into purple, star-filled night over the fountain court, and listen to the distant murmur of the great city, waiting, like me, for peace or war.
It was nervous work, and lonely, and then on the seventh night, when I had just climbed into bed, who should slip in, all unannounced, but Mangla. News at last, thinks I, and was demanding it as I turned up the lamp, but all the reply she made was to pout reproachfully, cast aside her robe, and hop into bed beside me.
“After six weeks I have not come to talk politics,” says she, rubbing her bumpers across my face. “Ah, taste, bahadur – and then eat to your heart’s content! Have you missed me?”
“Eh? Oh, damnably!” says I, taking a polite munch. “But hold on … what’s the news? Have you a message from your mistress? What’s she doing?”
“This – and this – and this,” says she, teasing busily. “With Lal Singh. Rousing his manhood – but whether for an assault on herself or on the frontier, who knows? Are you jealous of him, then? Am I so poor a substitute?”
“No, dammit! Hold still, can’t you? Look, woman, what’s happening, for heaven’s sake? One moment I hear the Khalsa’s marching, the next that it’s been recalled – is it peace or war? She swore she’d give warning – here, don’t take ’em away! But I must know, don’t you see, so that I can send word –”
“Does it matter?” murmurs the randy little vixen. “At this moment … does it truly matter?”
She was right, of course; there’s a time for everything. So for the next hour or so she relieved the tedium of affairs and reminded me that life isn’t all policy, as old Runjeet said before expiring blissfully. I was ready for it, too, for since my protracted bout with Jeendan I hadn’t seen a skirt except my little maids, and they weren’t worth turning to for.
Afterwards, though, when we lay beneath the punkah, drowsing and drinking, there wasn’t a scrap of news to be got out of her. To all my questions she shrugged her pretty shoulders and said she didn’t know – the Khalsa were still on the leash, but what was in Jeendan’s mind no one could tell. I didn’t believe it; she must have some word for me.
“Then she has not told me. Do you know,” says Mangla, gnawing
at my ear, “I think we talk too much of Jeendan – and you have ceased to care for her, I know. All men do. She is too greedy of her pleasure. So she has no lovers – only bed-men. Even Lal Singh takes her only out of fear and ambition. Now I,” says the saucy piece, teasing my lips with hers, “have true lovers, because I delight to give pleasure as well as to take it – especially with my English bahadur. Is it not so?”
D’you know, she was right again. I’d had enough of Punjabi royalty to last a lifetime, and she’d put her dainty finger on the reason: with Jeendan, it had been like making love to a steam road roller. But I still had to know what was in her devious Indian mind, and when Mangla continued to protest ignorance I got in a bate and swore that if she didn’t talk sense I’d thrash it out of her – at which she clapped her hands and offered to get my belt.
So the night wore out, and a jolly time we had of it, with only one interruption, when Mangla complained of the cold draft from the fan. I bawled to the punkah-wallah to go easy, but with the door closed he didn’t hear, so I turned out, cursing. It wasn’t the usual ancient, but another idiot – they’re all alike, fast asleep when you want a cool waft, and freezing you with a nor’easter in the small hours. I leathered the brute, and scampered back for some more Kashmiri culture; it was taxing work, and when I awoke it was full morning, Mangla had gone … and there was a cypher from Broadfoot waiting in Second Thessalonians.
So Jassa had been right – she was the secret courier after all. Well, the little puss … mixing business with pleasure, if you like. I’d wondered if it was she, you remember, on that first day, when she and others had had the opportunity to be at my bedside table. She was the perfect go-between, when you thought about it, able to come and go about the palace as she pleased … the slave-girl who was the richest woman in Lahore – easy for her to bribe and command other couriers, one of whom must have deputised while she was away in Amritsar. How the deuce had Broadfoot recruited her? My respect for my chief had always been high, but it doubled now, I can tell you.
Which was just as well, for if anything could have shaken my faith it was the contents of that cypher. When I’d decoded it I sat staring at the paper for several minutes, and then construed it again, to be sure I had it right. No mistake, it was pukka, and the sweat prickled on my skin as I read it for the tenth time:
Most urgent to Number One alone. On the first night after receipt, you will go in native dress to the French Soldiers’ cabaret between the Shah Boorj and the Buttee Gate. Use the signals and wait for word from Bibi Kalil. Say nothing to your orderly.
Not even an “I remain” or “Believe me &c”. That was all.
The trouble with the political service, you know, is that they can’t tell truth from falsehood. Even members of Parliament know when they’re lying, which is most of the time, but folk like Broadfoot simply ain’t aware of their own prevarications. It’s all for the good of the service, you see, so it must be true – and that makes it uncommon hard for straightforward rascals like me to know when we’re being done browner than an ape’s behind. Mind you, I’d feared the worst when he’d assured me: “It’ll never come to disguise, or anything desperate.” Oh, no, George, never that! Honestly, you’d be safer dealing with lawyers.
And now here it was, my worst fears realised. Flashy was being sent into the deep field – clean-shaven, too, and never a bolt-hole or friend-in-need to bless himself with. Come, you may say, what’s the row – it’s only a rendezvous in disguise, surely? Aye … and then? Who the blazes was this Bibi Kalil – the name might mean anything from a princess to a bawd – and what horror would she steer me to at Broadfoot’s bidding? Well, I’d find out soon enough.
The disguise was the least of it. I had a poshteen in my valise, and had gathered a few odds and ends since coming to Lahore – Persian boots, pyjamys and sash for lounging on the hotter days, and the like. My own shirt would do, once I’d trampled it underfoot, and I improvised a puggaree from a couple of towels. Ordinarily I’d have borrowed Jassa’s gear, but he was to be kept in the dark – that was something about the cypher that struck me as middling odd: the last sentence was unnecessary, since the word “alone” at the beginning meant that the whole thing was secret to me. Presumably George was just “makin’ siccar”, as he would say.
Leaving the Fort was less simple. I’d strolled out once or twice of an evening, but never beyond the market at the Hazooree Gate on the inner wall, which was the better-class bazaar serving the quality homes which lay south of the Fort, before you came to the town proper. I daren’t assume my disguise inside the palace, so I stuffed it into a handbag, all but the boots, which I put on under my unutterables.c Then it was a case of making sure that Jassa wasn’t on hand, and slipping out to the gardens after dark. There were few folk about, and in no time I was behind a bush, staggering about with my foot tangled in my pants, damning Broadfoot and the mosquitoes. I wrapped the puggaree well forward over my head, dirtied my face, put the bag with my civilised duds into a cleft in the garden wall, prayed that I might return to claim them, and sallied forth.
Now, I’ve “gone native” more times than I can count, and it’s all a matter of confidence. Your amateur gives himself away because he’s sure everyone can see through his disguise, and behaves according. They can’t, of course; for one thing, they ain’t interested, and if you amble along doing no harm, you’ll pass. I’ll never forget sneaking out of Lucknow with T. H. Kavanaugh during the siege;d he was a great Irish murphy without sense or a word of Hindi, figged out like the worst kind of pantomime pasha with the lamp-black fairly running off his fat red cheeks, and cursing in Tipperary the whole way – and not a mutineer gave him a second look, hardly. Now, my beardless chops were my chief anxiety, but I’m dark enough, and an ugly scowl goes a long way.
I had my pepperbox, but I bought a belt and a Kashmiri short sword in the market for added security, and to test my appearance and elocution. I’m at my easiest as a Pathan ruffler speaking Pushtu or, in this case, bad Punjabi, so I spat a good deal, growled from the back of my throat, and beat the booth-wallah down to half-price; he didn’t even blink, so when I reached the alleys of the native town I stopped at a stall for a chapatti and a gossip, to get the feel of things and pick up any shavee that might be going. The lads of the village were full of the impending war, and how the gorracharra had crossed the river unopposed at the Harree ghat, and the British were abandoning Ludhiana – which wasn’t true, as it happened.
“They have lost the spirit,” says one know-all. “Afghanistan was the death of them.”
“Afghanistan is everyone’s death,” says another. “Didn’t my own uncle die at Jallalabad, peace be on him?”
“In the British war?”
“Nay, he was cook to a horse caravan, and a bazaar woman gave him a loathsome disease. He had ointments, from a hakim,f to no avail, for his nose fell off and he died, raving. My aunt blamed the ointments. Who knows, with an Afghan hakim?”
“That is how we should slay the British!” cackles an ancient. “Send the Maharani to infect them! Hee-hee, she must be rotten by now!”
I didn’t care for that, and neither did a burly cove in a cavalry coat. “Be decent, pig! She is the mother of thy king, who will sit on the throne in London Fort when we of the Khalsa have eaten the Sirkar’s army!”
“Hear him!” scoffs the old comedian. “The Khalsa will march on the ocean then, to reach London?”
“What ocean, fool? London lies only a few cosg beyond Meerut.”
“Is it so far?” says I, playing the yokel. “Have you been there?”
“Myself, no,” admitted the Khalsa bird. “But my havildar was there as a camel-driver. It is a poor place, by all accounts, not so great as Lahore.”
“Nay, now,” cries the one with the poxy uncle. “The houses in London are faced with gold, and even the public privies have doors of silver. This I was told.”
“That was before the war with the Afghans,” says the Khalsa’s prize liar, whose st
yle I was beginning to admire. “It beggared the British, and now they are in debt to the Jews; even Wellesley sahib, who broke Tipoo and the Maharattas aforetime, can get no credit, and the young queen and her waiting-women sell themselves on the streets. So my havildar tells; he had one of them.”
“Does he have his nose still?” cries another, and there was great merriment.
“Aye, laugh!” cries the ancient. “But if London is grown poor, where is all this loot on which we are to grow fat when you heroes of the Pure have brought it home?”
“Now God give him wit! Where else but in Calcutta, in the Hebrews’ strong-boxes. We shall march on thither when we have taken London and Glash-ka where they grow tobacco and make the iron boats.”
About as well-informed, you see, as our own public were about India. I lingered a little longer, until I was thinking in Punjabi, and then, with that well-known hollow feeling in my innards, set off on my reluctant way.
The Shah Boorj is at the south-western corner of Lahore city, less than a mile away as the crow flies, but nearer two when you must pick your way through the winding ways of the old town. Foul ways they were, too, running with filth past hovels tenanted by ugly beggar folk who glared from doorways or scavenged among the refuse with the rats and pi-dogs; the air was so poisonous that I had to wrap my puggaree over my mouth, as though to strain the pestilential vapours as I picked my way past pools of rotting filth. A few fires among the dung-heaps provided the only light, and everywhere there were bright, wicked eyes, human and animal, that shrank away as I approached, lengthening my stride to get through that hellish place, but always I could imagine horrid shapes pressing behind me, and blundered on like the chap in the poem who daren’t look back because he knows there’s a hideous goblin on his heels.
The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection Page 113
