The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  He was shockingly Christian, Lawrence, but an Al political for all that. He turned me inside out about Lahore, and wanted me in at the high pow-wows, but Hardinge said I was far too junior, and “over-zealous”. The truth was he couldn’t abide me, and wanted to forget my existence. Here’s why.

  We’d had a bloody close call in India, and it was Hardinge’s fault. He’d failed to secure the frontier, through pussyfooting and hindering Gough, and the stark truth was that when the grip came, two men had saved the day – Gough and I. I ain’t bragging; you know I never do (well, maybe about women and horses, but never about small things). I’d instructed Lal and Tej’s treachery, and Paddy had held his ragbag army together, got it to the gate in time, and won his fights. Oh, they’d been costly, and he’d fought head on, and taken some hellish risks, but he’d done the business as few could have done it – Hardinge for one. But that wasn’t how Hardinge saw it: he believed he’d stopped Paddy from throwing the army away at Ferozeshah, and from that it was a short step to seeing himself as the Saviour of India. Well, he was Governor-General, after all, and India had been saved. Q.E.D.

  Indeed, he seemed to think he’d done it in spite of Gough – and inside a week of Ferozeshah he was writing to Peel in London urging that Paddy be given the sack. I saw the letter, accidental-like, when I was rummaging through his excellency’s effects in search of cheroots, and it was a beauty: Paddy wasn’t fit to be trusted with the war, the army was “unsatisfactory”, he’d no head for bandobast, he didn’t frame orders properly, etc. Well, dash my wig, thinks I, here’s gratitude – and the measure of Henry Hardinge. Framing orders, my foot – no doubt “On ye go, Mickey, give ’em one for me!” offended his staff college sensibilities, but he might have remembered another general of his acquaintance whose style wasn’t very different: “Stand up, Guards! Now, Maitland, now’s your time!” If I’d been a man I’d have scrawled it across his precious letter.

  It was plain why he was tattling to Peel, though: shift the blame for the butcher’s bill and the near squeak we’d had onto Gough, and who’d think back to the incompetence and fear of offending Lahore and Leaden-hall Street that had helped bring on the war in the first place, and damned near lost it? It was artfully done, too, with a tribute to Paddy’s energy and courage; you could imagine Peel shuddering at the name of Gough, and thanking God that Hardinge had been on hand.

  Don’t misunderstand. I ain’t championing the old Mick, who was a bloodthirsty savage, and a splendid chap to avoid – but I liked him, because he’d no side, and was jolly, and offended the Quality by commissioning rankers and damn the royal prerogative – aye, and by winning wars with his “Tipperary tactics”. Perhaps that was his greatest offence. Oh, I know Hardinge was an honourable man, who never stole a box-car in his life, and that most of what he said of Paddy was true. That ain’t the point. That letter would have been shabby if I’d written it, dammit; coming from a man of honour it was unpardonable. But it showed how the wind set, and I wasn’t surprised, on rooting farther through Hardinge’s satchels (most elusive, those cheroots were) to find a note in his day-book: “Politicals of no real use.” So there – plainly Flashy would get no credit, either; my work with Lal and Tej would be conveniently forgotten. Well, thank’ee, Sir Henry, and I hope your rabbit dies and you can’t sell the hutch.40

  I pondered about informing Paddy anonymously that he was being nobbled, but decided to let it be; mischief’s all very well, but you never know where it may end. So I lay low, running errands for Lawrence. He was a gaunt, ill-tempered scarecrow, but he’d known me in Afghanistan and thought I was another heroic ruffian like himself, so we dealt pretty well. He’d seen from Broadfoot’s papers that George had been meaning to send me back to Lahore, “but I can’t think why, can you? Anyway, I doubt if the G.G. would approve; he thinks you’ve meddled enough in Punjabi politics. But you’d best let your beard grow, just in case.”

  So I did, and the weeks went by while we waited for the Khalsa to move, and our own army recovered and grew strong. We celebrated Christmas with the first decorated tree ever I saw,41 a great fir brought down from the hills and sprinkled with flour to represent snow, our Caledonians boozed in the New Year with raucous mirth and unspeakable song, the reinforcements arrived from Umballa, and we saw the scarlet and blue of British Lancer regiments, the green of the little Gurkha hillmen strutting by with their knives bouncing on their rickety arses, the Tenth Foot with band playing and Colours flying, and everyone pouring out of the tents to sing them in:

  For ’tis my delight

  Of a shining night,

  In the season of the year!

  Behind came Native Cavalry and marching sepoy battalions, with Sappers and artillery – Paddy had 15,000 men now, and the young Lancer bucks strutted and haw-hawed and asked when were these Sikh wallahs goin’ to show us some sport, hey? God, I love newcomers in at the death, don’t I just? There was one quiet Lancer, though, a black-whiskered Scotch nemesis who said never a word, and played the bull fiddle for his recreation. He caught my eye then, and again fifteen years later when he led the march to Peking, the most terrible killing gentleman you ever saw: Hope Grant.

  So there we were, cocked and ready to fire, and beyond the river, although we didn’t know it, little Dalip’s throne was shaking, for it was touch and go whether the Khalsa, raging in defeat and convinced they’d been betrayed, would fight us or march on Lahore to slake their fury on Jeendan and the durbar. They’d have hanged Lal Singh if they could have caught him, but he’d hidden in a hayrick after Ferozeshah, and then in a baker’s oven, before sneaking back to Lahore, where Jeendan mocked and abused him when she was sober, and galloped him when she was drunk. Between bouts she was sending messages of encouragement to her half-mutinous army, telling them not to give up, but to march on and conquer; at the same time she shut the city gates against the fugitives from Lal’s contingent, who’d deserted in thousands, and even ordered Gardner to recall a Muslim brigade from the front to protect her in case the Khalsa Sikhs came looking for her. Resourceful lass, she was, egging on her army while she turned her capital into an armed camp against them.

  Goolab Singh was playing the same game from Kashmir. The Khalsa pleaded with him to bring his hillmen to the war, and even offered to make him Maharaja, but the old fox saw we had the game won, and put them off with promises that he’d join once the campaign was fully launched, while making a great display of sending them supply convoys which he made sure were only quarter loaded and moved at a snail’s pace.

  Meanwhile Tej Singh was scheming how to lead the Khalsa to final destruction. He had the bulk of them in hand, outnumbering us three to one, and must do something before they lost patience with him. So he threw a bridge of boats over the Sutlej at Sobraon and built a strong position on the south bank in a bend of the river where Paddy daren’t attack him without heavy guns, which we still lacked. At the same time, another Sikh army struck over the river farther up, threatening Ludhiana and our lines of communication, so Gough moved north to contain Tej’s bridgehead and sent Harry Smith to deal with the Ludhiana incursion. Smith, full of conceit and ginger as usual, stalked the invaders to and fro in the last week of January, and then handed them a fearful thrashing at Aliwal, killing 5000 and taking over fifty guns – and that did rattle the Khalsa, for the beaten commander, Runjoor Singh, was a first-class man, and Smith had licked him with a smaller force, and no excuse of treachery this time.

  I was in Gough’s camp at Sobraon when the news came through, for Hardinge was in the habit of riding the twenty miles from Ferozepore every other day with his new staff of toadies, to have a sniff and a carp at Gough’s dispositions,42 and Lawrence always went along, with your correspondent bringing up the rear. A great roar of cheering ran through the lines, and Paddy fairly danced with joy, and then scudded off to his tent for a pray. Lawrence and other Holy Joes took their cue, and I was about to sidle off to the staff mess when I heard a great groan close by, and there was old Gravedigger Ha
velock, clasping his bony paws in supplication and looking like Thomas Carlyle with rheumatics – I never seemed to see that man but he was calling on God for something or other: possibly it was the sight of me that did it. He’d prayed over me like a mad monk at Jallalabad, but the last I’d seen of him had been his boots, viewed from under the pool table while I rogered Mrs Madison.

  “Amen!” booms he, and left off addressing heaven to wring my hand, glaring joyfully. “It is Flashman! My boy, how long since last I saw you?”

  “Sale’s billiard-room at Simla,” says I, not thinking, and he frowned and said I hadn’t been there that evening, surely?

  “Neither I was!” says I hastily. “Must have been some other chap. Let’s see, when did we last meet? Church somewhere, was it?”

  “I have thought of you often since Afghanistan!” cries he, still mangling my fin. “Ah, we smelled the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting!”

  “Didn’t we just, though? Ah, yes. Well, now …”

  “But come – will you not join your voice with that of our Chief, in gratitude to Him who hath vouchsafed us this victory?”

  “Oh, rather! But, I say, you’ll have to give me a lead, Graved – skipper, I mean. You always put it so dashed well … praying, don’t you know?” Which tickled him no end, and in two shakes we were on our hams outside Gough’s tent, and it struck me as I looked at them – old Paddy, Havelock, Lawrence, Edwardes, Bagot, and I fancy Hope Grant was there, too – that I’d never seen such a pack of born blood-spillers at their devotions in my life. It’s an odd thing about deadly men – they’re all addicted either to God or the Devil, and I ain’t sure but what the holy ones aren’t the more fatal breed of the two.

  But mainly I recall that impromptu prayer meeting because it set me thinking of Elspeth again, when Havelock invoked a blessing not only on our fallen comrades, “but on those yet to fall in the coming strife, and on those dear, distant homes which will be darkened with mourning under the wings of Death’s angel”. Amen, thinks I, but steer him clear of 13a Brook Street, oh Lord, if you don’t mind. Listening to Gravedigger, I could absolutely picture the melancholy scene, with the wreath on our knocker, and the blinds drawn, and my father-in-law whining about the cost of crepe … and my lovely, golden-haired Elspeth, her blue eyes dim with tears, in her black veil and black gloves and dainty black satin slippers, and long clocked stockings with purple rosettes on her garters and that shiny French corset with the patent laces that you just had to twitch and she came bursting out …

  “Flashman was much moved, I thought,” Havelock said afterwards, and so I was, at the thought of all that voluptuous goodness so far away, and going to waste – at least, I hoped it was, but I had my doubts; heaven knew how many my melting little innocent had thrashed the mattress with in my absence. Brooding on that over supper, and finding no consolation in port and fond musings on my own indiscretions with Jeendan and Mangla and Mrs Madison, I found myself getting quite jealous – and hungry for that blonde beauty on t’other side of the world …

  Time for a brisk stroll in the cold night air, I decided. We were stopping in Gough’s camp by Sobraon, so that he and Hardinge could bicker over the next move, and I sauntered along the lines in the frosty dark, listening to our artillery firing a royal salute in celebration of Smith’s victory at Aliwal; barely a mile away I could see the watch-fires of the Khalsa entrenchments in the Sutlej bend, and as the crash of our guns died away, hanged if the enemy didn’t reply with a royal salute of their own, and their bands playing … you’ll never guess what. In some ways it was the eeriest thing in that queer campaign – the silence in our own lines as the gunsmoke drifted overhead, the golden moon low in the purple sky, shining on the rows of tents and the distant twinkling fires, and over the dark ground between, the solemn strains of “God Save the Queen”! I never heard it played so well as by the Khalsa, and for the life of me I don’t know to this day whether it was in derision or salute; with Sikhs, you can never tell.

  I was thinking about that, and the impossibility of ever knowing what goes on behind Indian eyes, and how I’d misread them all (especially Jeendan’s), and reflecting that with any luck I’d soon have seen the last of them, thank heaven – and in that very moment an orderly came running to say, please, sir, Major Lawrence’s compliments, and would I wait on the Governor-General at once?

  It never occurred to me that my thoughts had been tempting fate, and as I waited in the empty annexe which served as an ante-room to Hardinge’s pavilion I felt only mild curiosity as to why he wanted me. Voices sounded in the inner sanctum, but I gave no heed to them at first: Hardinge saying that something was a serious matter, and Lawrence replying that no time must be lost. Then Gough’s voice:

  “Well, then, a flyin’ column! Under cover o’ dark, an’ goin’ like billy-be-damned! Send Hope Grant wi’ two squadrons of the 9th, an’ he can be in and out before anyone’s the wiser.”

  “No, no, Sir Hugh!” cries Hardinge. “If it is to be done at all, it must be secret. That is insisted upon – if, indeed, we are to believe that fellow. Suppose it is some infernal plot … oh, bring him in again, Charles! And find whatever has happened to Flashman! I tell you, it troubles me that he is named in this …”

  I was listening now, all ears, as young Charlie Hardinge emerged, crying there I was, and bustling me in. Hardinge was saying that it was all most precarious, and no work for a junior man who had proved himself so headstrong … He had the grace to break off at sight of me, and sat looking peevish, with Lawrence and Van Cortlandt, whom I hadn’t seen since Moodkee, standing behind. Old Paddy, shivering in his cloak in a camp chair, gave me good evening, but no one else spoke, and you could feel the anxiety in the air. Then Charlie was back again, ushering in a figure whose un-expected appearance set my innards cartwheeling in nameless alarm. He sauntered in, no whit abashed by the exalted company, wearing his Afghan rags as though they were ermine, and his ugly face split into a grin as his eye lit on me.

  “Why, hollo there, lieutenant!” says Jassa. “How’s tricks?”

  “Stand there, under the lamp, if you please!” snaps Hardinge. “Flashman, do you know this man?”

  Jassa grinned even wider, and just from the glance between Lawrence and Van Cortlandt I guessed they’d already identified him ten times over, but Hardinge, as usual, was proceeding by laborious rote. I said yes, he was Dr Harlan, an agent of Broadfoot’s, lately posing as my orderly, and formerly of H.M.’s service in Burma. Jassa looked pleased.

  “Say, you remembered that! Thank’ee, sir, that’s proud!”

  “That will do,” says Hardinge. “You may go.”

  “How’s that, sir?” says Jassa. “But hadn’t I ought to stay? I mean, if the lieutenant is going to –”

  “That will be all!” says Hardinge, down his nose, so Jassa shrugged, muttered as he passed me that it wasn’t his goddam’ pow-wow, and loafed out. Hardinge exclaimed in irritation.

  “How came Broadfoot to employ such a person? He’s an American!” He said it as though Jassa were a fallen woman.

  “Yes, and a slippery one,” says Van Cortlandt. “He bore a bad name in the Punjab in my time. But if he comes from Gardner –”

  “That’s the point – does he?” Lawrence was brusque. He handed me a plain sealed note. “Harlan brought this, for you, from Colonel Gardner in Lahore. Says it will establish his bona fides. The seal hasn’t been touched.”

  Wondering what the deuce this was about, I broke the seal – and had a sudden premonition of what I would read. Sure enough, there it was, one word: Wisconsin.

  “He’s from Gardner,” says I, and they looked at it in turn. I explained it was a password known only to Gardner and me, and Hardinge sniffed.

  “Another American! Are we to rely on a foreign mercenary in the employ of the enemy?”

  “On this mercenary – yes,” says Van Cortlandt curtly. “He’s a sure friend. Without him, Flashman would not have left Lahore alive.” That
’s no way to boost Gardner’s stock, thinks I. Hardinge raised his brows and sat back, and Lawrence turned to me.

  “Harlan arrived an hour ago. It’s bad news out of Lahore. Gardner says the Maharani and her son are in grave peril, from their own army. There’s talk of plots – to murder her, to abduct the little Maharaja and place him in the heart of the Khalsa, so that the panches can do as they please, in his name. That would mean the end of Tej Singh, and the appointment of some trusted general, who might well give us a long war.” He didn’t need to add that it might be a disastrous war, for us; the Khalsa were still in overwhelming strength if they had a leader who knew how to use it.

  “The boy’s the key,” says Lawrence. “Who holds him, holds power. The Khalsa knows it, and so does his mother. She wants him out of Lahore, and under our protection. At once. It will be a week at least before we can finish the Khalsa in battle –”

  “Ten days, more like,” says Gough.

  “That is the time the plotters have in which to strike.” Lawrence paused, and my mouth went dry as I realised they were all watching me, Gough and Van Cortlandt keenly, Hardinge with gloomy disapproval.

  “The Maharani wants you to fetch him out, secretly,” says Lawrence. “That’s her message, given by Gardner to Harlan.”

  Steady now, thinks I, mustn’t puke or burst into tears. Keep a straight face, and remember that the last thing Hardinge wants is to have Flashy stirring the Punjab pot again – that’s your hole card, my boy, if this beastly proposal is to be scotched. So I made a lip, thoughtful-like, choked down my supper, and said straight out:

  “Very good, sir. I have a free hand, I suppose?”

  That did the trick; Hardinge leaped as though he’d been gaffed. “No, sir, you do not! No such thing! You will keep your place, until …” He glared, flustered, from Lawrence to Gough. “Sir Hugh, I know not what to think! This scheme fills me with misgivings. What do we know of these … these Americans … and this Maharani? If this were a plot to discredit us –”