The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  When it got too bad I would loaf up to the Mall, and gape at the mem-sahibs with their big hats and parasols, driving by, and watch the officers cantering past, flicking their crops as I clumped my big boots and saluted, or squat near the church to listen to them singing “Greenland’s Icy Mountains” of a Sunday evening. Dammit, I missed my own folk then – far worse than if they’d been a hundred miles away. I missed Lakshmibai, too – odd, ain’t it, but I think what riled me most was the knowledge that if she’d seen me as I now was – well, she wouldn’t even have noticed me. However, it had to be stuck out – I just had to think of Ignatieff – so I would trudge back to barracks and lie glowering while the sowars chattered. It had this value – I learned more about Indian soldiers in three weeks than I’d have done in a lifetime’s ordinary service.

  You’ll think I’m being clever afterwards, but I soon realised that all wasn’t as well with them as I’d have thought at first sight. They were Northern Muslims, mostly, with a sprinkling of high-caste Oudh Hindoos – the practice of separating the races in different companies or troops hadn’t come in then. Good soldiers, too; the 3rd had distinguished itself in the last Sikh War, and a few had frontier service. But they weren’t happy – smart as you’d wish on parade, but in the evening they would sit about and croak like hell – as first I thought it was just the usual military sore-headedness, but it wasn’t.

  At first all I heard was vague allusions, which I didn’t inquire about for fear of betraying a suspicious ignorance – they talked a deal about one of the padres in the garrison, Reynolds sahib, and how Colonel Carmik-al-Ismeet (that was the 3rd’s commander, Carmichael-Smith) ought to keep him off the post, and there was a fairly general repeated croak about polluted flour, and the Enlistment Act, but I didn’t pay much heed until one night, I remember, an Oudh sowar came back from the bazaar in a tremendous taking. I don’t even remember his name, but what had happened was that he’d been taking part in a wrestling match with some local worthy, and before he’d got his shirt back on afterwards, some British troopers from the Dragoon Guards who were there at the time had playfully snapped the sacred cord which he wore over his shoulder next the skin – as his kind of Hindoos did.

  “Banchuts!h Scum!” He was actually weeping with rage. “It is defiled – I am unclean!” And for all that his mates tried to cheer him up, saying he could get a new one, blessed by a holy man, he went on raving – they take these things very seriously, you know, like Jews and Muslims with pork. If it seems foolish to you, you may compare it with how you’d feel if a nigger pissed in the font at your own church.

  “I shall go to the Colonel sahib!” says he finally, and one of the Hindoos, Gobinda Dal, sneered:

  “Why should he care – the man who will defile our attai will not rebuke an English soldier for this!”

  “What’s all this about the atta?” says I to Pir Ali, and he shrugged.

  “The Hindoos say that the sahibs are grinding cow bones into the sepoys’ flour to break their caste. For me, they can break any Hindoo’s stupid caste and welcome.”

  “Why should they do that?” says I, and Sita Gopal, who overheard, spat and says:

  “Where have you lived, Hasanzai? The Sirkar will break every man’s caste – aye, and what passes for caste even among you Muslims: there are pig bones in the atta, too, in case you didn’t know it. Naik Shere Afzul in the second troop told me; did he not see them ground at the sahibs’ factory at Cawnpore?”

  “Wind from a monkey’s backside,” says I. “What would it profit the sahibs to pollute your food – since when do they hate their soldiers?”

  To my astonishment about half a dozen of them scoffed aloud at this – “Listen to the Black Mountain munshi!”j “The sahibs love their soldiers – and so the gora-cavalry broke Lal’s string for him tonight!” “Have you never heard of the Dum-Dum sweeper, Makarram Khan?” and so on. Ram Mangal, who was the noisiest croaker of them all, spat out:

  “It is of a piece with the padre sahib’s talk, and the new regulation that will send men across the kala pani – they will break our caste to make us Christians! Do they not know this even where you come from, hillman? Why, it is the talk of the army!”

  I growled that I didn’t put any faith in latrine-gossip – especially if the latrine was a Hindoo one, and at this one of the older men, Sardul something-or-other, shook his head and says gravely:

  “It was no latrine-rumour, Makarram Khan, that came out of Dum-Dum arsenal.” And for the first time I heard the astonishing tale that was, I discovered, accepted as gospel by every sepoy in the Bengal army – of the sweeper at Dum-Dum who’d asked a caste sepoy for a drink from his dish, and on being refused, had told the sepoy that he needn’t be so dam’ particular because the sahibs were going to do away with caste by defiling every soldier in the army by greasing their cartridges with cow and pig fat.

  “This thing is known,” says old Sardul, positively, and he was the kind of old soldier that men listen to, thirty years’ service, Aliwal medal, and clean conduct sheet, damn your eyes. “Is not the new Enfield musket in the armoury? Are not the new greased cartridges being prepared? How can any man keep his religion?”

  “They say that at Benares the jawans have been permitted to grease their own loads,” says Pir Ali,16 but they hooted him down.

  “They say!” cries Ram Mangal. “It is like the tale they put about that all the grease was mutton-fat – if that were so, where is the need for anyone to make his own grease? It is a lie – just as the Enlistment Act is a lie, when they said it was a provision only, and no one would be asked to do foreign service. Ask the 19th at Behrampore – where their officers told them they must serve in Burma if they refused the cartridge when it was issued! Aye, but they will refuse – then we’ll see!” He waved his hands in passion. “The polluted atta is another link in the chain – like the preaching of that owl Reynolds sahib with his Jesus-talk, which Carmik-al-Ismeet permits to our offence. He wants to put us to shame!”

  “It is true enough,” says old Sardul, sadly. “Yet I would not believe it if such a sahib as my old Colonel MacGregor – did he not take a bullet meant for me at Kandahar? – were to look in my eye and say it was false. The pity is that Carmik-al-Ismeet is not such a sahib – there are none such nowadays,” says he with morbid satisfaction, “and the Army is but a poor ruin of what it was. You do not know today what officers were – if you had seen Sale sahib or Larrinshk sahib or Cotton sahib, you would have seen men!” (Since he’d served in Afghanistan I’d hoped he would mention Iflass-man sahib, but he didn’t, the croaking old bastard.) “They would have died before they would have put dishonour on their sepoys; their children, they used to call us, and we would have followed them to hell! But now,” he wagged his head again, “these are cutch-sahibs, not pakka-sahibs – and the English common soldiers are no better. Why, in my young day, an English trooper would call me brother, give me his hand, offer me his water-bottle (not realising that I could not take it, you understand). And now – these common men spit on us, call us monkeys and hubshis – and break Lal’s string!”

  Most of their talk was just patent rubbish, of course, and I’d no doubt it was the work of agitators, spreading disaffection with their nonsense about greased cartridges and polluted food. I almost said so, but decided it would be unwise to draw attention to myself – and anyway it wasn’t such a burning topic of conversation most of the time that one could take it seriously. I knew they put tremendous store by their religion – the Hindoos especially – and I supposed that whenever an incident like Lal’s string stirred them up, all the old grievances came out, and were soon forgotten. But I’ll confess that what Sardul had said about the British officers and troops reminded me of John Nicholson’s misgivings. I had hardly seen a British officer on parade since my enlistment; they seemed content to leave their troops to the jemadars and n.c.o.s – Addiscombe17 tripe, of course – and there was no question the British rankers in the Meerut garrison were a poorer type than,
say, the 44th whom I’d known in the old Afghan days, or Campbell’s Highlanders.

  I got first-hand evidence of this a day or two later, when I accidentally jostled a Dragoon in the bazaar, and the brute turned straight round and lashed out with his boot.

  “Aht the way, yer black bastard!” says he. “Think yer can shove a sahib arahnd – banchut!” And he would have taken a swipe at me with his fist, too, but I just put my hand on my knife-hilt and glared at him – it wouldn’t have been prudent to do more. “Christ!” says he, and took to his heels until he got to the end of the street, where he snatched up a stone and flung it at me – it smashed a plate on a booth nearby – and then made off. I’ll remember you, my lad, thinks I, and the day’ll come when I’ll have you triced up and flogged to ribbons. (And I did, as good luck had it.) I’ve never been so wild – that the scum of a Whitechapel gutter should take his boot to me! I’ll be honest and say that if I’d seen him do it to a native two months earlier I wouldn’t have minded a bit – and still wouldn’t, much: it’s a nigger’s lot to be kicked. But it ain’t mine, and I can’t tell you how I felt afterwards – filthy, in a way, because I hadn’t been able to pay the swine back. That’s by the way; the point is that old Sardul was right. There wasn’t the respect for jawans among the British that there had been in my young day; we probably lashed and kicked niggers just as much (I know I did), but there was a higher regard for the sepoys at least, on the whole.

  I doubt if any commander in the old days would have done what Carmichael – Smith did in the way of preaching-parades, either. I hadn’t believed it in the barrack gossip, but sure enough, the next Sunday this coffin-faced Anglican fakir, the Rev. Reynolds, had a muster on the maidan, and we had to listen to him expounding the Parable of the Prodigal Son, if you please. He did it through a brazen-lunged rissaldar who interpreted for him, and you never heard the like. Reynolds lined it out in English, from the Bible, and the rissaldar stood there with his staff under his arm, at attention, with his whiskers bristling, bawling his own translation:

  “There was a zamindar,l with two sons. He was a mad zamindar, for while he yet lived he gave to the younger his portion of the inheritance. Doubtless he raised it from a moneylender. And the younger spent it all whoring in the bazaar, and drinking sherab.m And when his money was gone he returned home, and his father ran to meet him, for he was pleased – God alone knows why. And in his foolishness, the father slew his only cow – he was evidently not a Hindoo – and they feasted on it. And the older son, who had been dutiful and stayed at home, was jealous, I cannot tell for what reason, unless the cow was to have been part of his inheritance. But his father, who did not like him, rebuked the older son. This story was told by Jesus the Jew, and if you believe it you will not go to Paradise, but instead will sit on the right-hand side of the English Lord God Sahib who lives in Calcutta. And there you will play musical instruments, by order of the Sirkar. Parade – dismiss!”

  I don’t know when I’ve been more embarrassed on behalf of my church and country. I’m as religious as the next man – which is to say I’ll keep in with the local parson for form’s sake and read the lessons on feast-days because my tenants expect it, but I’ve never been fool enough to confuse religion with belief in God. That’s where so many clergymen, like the unspeakable Reynolds, go wrong – and it makes ’em arrogant, and totally blind to the harm they may be doing. This idiot was so drunk with testaments that he couldn’t conceive how ill-mannered and offensive he was making himself look; I suppose he thought of high-caste Hindoos as being like wilful children or drunken costermongers – perverse and misguided, but ripe for salvation if he just pointed ’em the way. He stood there, with his unctuous fat face and piggy eyes, blessing us soapily, while the Muslims, being worldly in their worship, tried not to laugh, and the Hindoos fairly seethed. I’d have found it amusing enough, I dare say, if I hadn’t been irritated by the thought that these irresponsible Christian zealots were only making things harder for the Army and Company, who had important work to do. It was all so foolish and unnecessary – the heathen creeds, for all their nonsensical mumbo-jumbo, were as good as any for keeping the rabble in order, and what else is religion for?

  In any event, this misguided attempt to cure Hindoo souls took place, not just at Meerut but elsewhere, according to the religious intoxication of the local commanders, and in my opinion was the most important cause of the mischief that followed.18 I didn’t appreciate this at the time – and couldn’t have done anything if I had. Besides, I had more important matters to engage my attention.

  A few days after that parade, there was a gymkhana on the maidan, and I rode for the skirmishers in the nezabazi.n Apart from languages and fornication, horsemanship is my only accomplishment, and I’d been well-grounded in tent-pegging by the late Muhammed Iqbal, so it was no surprise that I took the greatest number of pegs, and would have got even more if I’d had a pony that I knew, and my lance hadn’t snapped in a touch peg on the last round. It was enough to take the cup, though, and old Bloody Bill Hewitt, the garrison commander, slipped the handle over my broken lance-point in front of the marquee where all the top numbers of Meerut society were sitting applauding politely, the ladies in their crinolines and the men behind their chairs.

  “Shabash, sowar,” says Bloody Bill. “Where did you learn to manage a lance?”

  “Peshawar Valley, hussor,” says I.

  “Company cavalry?” says he, and I said no, Peshawar police.

  “Didn’t know they was lancers,” says he, and Carmichael-Smith, who was on hand, laughed and said to Hewitt in English:

  “No more they are, sir. It’s a rather delicate matter, I suspect – this bird here pretends he’s never served the Sirkar before, but he’s got Guide written all over him. Shouldn’t wonder if he wasn’t rissaldar – havildar at least. But we don’t ask embarrassing questions, what? He’s a dam’ good recruit, anyway.”

  “Ah,” says Hewitt, grinning; he was a fat, kindly old buffer.”’Nough said, then.” And I was in the act of saluting when a little puff of wind sprang up, scattering the papers which were on the table behind him, and blowing them under the pony’s hooves. Like a good little toady, I slipped out of the saddle and gathered them up, and without thinking set them on the table and put the ink-pot on top of them, to hold them steady – a simple, ordinary thing, but I heard an exclamation, and looked up to see Duff Mason, one of the infantry colonels, staring at me in surprise. I just salaamed and saluted and was back in my saddle in a second, while they called up the next man for his prize, but as I wheeled my pony away I saw that Mason was looking after me with a puzzled smile on his face, and saying something to the officer next to him.

  Hollo, thinks I, has he spotted something? But I couldn’t think I’d done anything to give myself away – until next morning, when the rissaldar called me out of the ranks, and told me to report to Mason’s office in the British lines forthwith. I went with my heart in my mouth, wondering what the hell I was going to do if he had seen through my disguise, only to find it was the last thing my guilty conscience might have suspected.

  “Makarram Khan, isn’t it?” says Mason, when I stood to attention on his verandah and went through the ritual of hilt-touching. He was a tall, brisk, wiry fellow with a sharp eye which he cast over me. “Hasanzai, Peshawar policeman – but only a few weeks’ Army service?” He spoke good Urdu, which suggested he was smarter than most, and my innards quaked.

  “Well, now, Makarram,” says he, pleasantly. “I don’t believe you. Nor does your own Colonel. You’re an old soldier – you ride like one, you stand like one, and what’s more you’ve held command. Don’t interrupt – no one’s trying to trap you, or find out how many throats you’ve cut in the Khyber country in your time: that’s nothing to me. You’re here now, as an ordinary sowar – but a sowar who gathers up papers as though he’s as used to handling ’em as I am. Unusual, in a Pathan – even one who’s seen service, don’t you agree?”

  “In the po
lice, husoor,” says I woodenly, “are many kitabso and papers.”

  “To be sure there are,” says he, and then added, ever so easily, in English, “What’s that on your right hand?”

  I didn’t look, but I couldn’t help my hand jerking, and he chuckled and leaned back in his chair, pleased with himself.

  “I guessed you understood English when the commander and your Colonel were talking in front of you yesterday,” says he. “You couldn’t keep it out of your eyes. Well, never mind; it’s all to the good. But see here, Makarram Khan – whatever you’ve done, whatever you’ve been, where’s the sense in burying yourself in the ranks of a native cavalry pultan?p You’ve got education and experience; why not use ’em? How long will it take you to make subedar,q or havildar even, in your present situation? Twenty years, thirty – with down-country cavalry? I’ll tell you what – you can do better than that.”

  Well, it was a relief to know my disguise was safe enough, but the last thing I wanted was to be singled out in any way. However, I listened respectfully, and he went on:

  “I had a Pathan orderly, Ayub Jan; first-class man, with me ten years, and now he’s gone back home, to inherit. I need someone else – well, you’re younger than he was, and a sight smarter, or I’m no judge. And he wasn’t a common orderly – never did a menial task, or anything of that order; wouldn’t have asked him to, for he was Yusufzai – and a gentleman, as I believe you are, d’you see?” He looked at me very steady, smiling. “So what I want is a man of affairs who is also a man of his hands – someone I can trust as a soldier, messenger, steward, aide, guide, shield-on-shoulder –” He shrugged. “When I saw you yesterday, I thought ‘That’s the kind of man.’ Well – what d’ye say?”