The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  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-mar
ch – 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 dismoun
ted 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.”