I explained my thoughts to Rose – the first part, about the special platoon, not the rest – at dinner in his tent, and he frowned and shook his head.
“Too uncertain,” says he. “We need something concerted and executed before the battle has even reached her palace; we must have her snug and secure by then.”
“Well, I don’t for the life of me see how you’re going to do that,” says I. “We can’t send anyone in ahead of the troops, to kidnap her or any such thing. They wouldn’t get a hundred yards through the streets of Jhansi – and if they did, she has a Pathan guard hundreds strong covering every inch of the palace.”
“No,” says he, thoughtfully, picking at his cheroot. “Force wouldn’t serve, I agree – but diplomacy, now? What d’ye think, Lyster?”
This was young Harry Lyster, Rose’s galloper, and the only other person present at our talk. I’d known him any time the past ten years; he’d been a special constable with me at the Chartist farce of ’48 when I took up old Morrison’s truncheon and did his duty for him – me and Gladstone and Louis Napoleon holding the plebeian mob at bay, I don’t think. Lyster was a smart ’un, though; given a silver spoon he’d have been a field marshal by now.
“Bribery, perhaps – if we could smuggle a proposal to some of her officers?” says he.
“Too complicated,” says Rose, “and you’d probably just lose your money.”
“They’ve eaten her salt,” says I. “You couldn’t buy ’em.” I was far from sure of that, by the way, but I wanted to squash all this talk of intrigue and secret messages – I’d heard it too often before, and I know who finishes up sneaking through the dark with his bowels gurgling and his hair standing on end in the enemy’s lair. “I’m afraid it comes down to the special platoon after all, sir. A good native officer, with intelligent jawans –”
“Counsel of despair, Flashman.” Rose shook his head decisively. “No – we’ll have to trick her out. Here’s a possibility – storm the city, as we intend, but leave her a bolt-hole. If we draw off our cavalry pickets from the Orcha gate, they’ll spot the weakness, and when our rebel lady sees that her city’s doomed, I’ll be much surprised if she don’t try to make a run for it. How well do Indian women ride?”
“This one? Like a Polish lancer. It might work,” says I, “If she don’t suspicion what we’re up to. But if she smells a rat –”
“She’ll be smelling too much powder-smoke by then to notice anything else,” says Rose confidently. “She’ll break for the open, to try to join Tantia, or some other rebel leader – and we’ll be waiting for her on the Orcha road. What d’you say, gentlemen?” says he, smiling.
Well, it suited me, although I thought he underrated her subtlety. But Lyster was nodding agreement44 and Rose went on:
“Yes, I think we’ll try that – but only as a long stop. It’s still not enough. Lord Canning attaches the utmost importance to capturing the Rani unscathed; that being so, we must play every card in our hand. And we have a trump which it would be folly not to use for everything it’s worth.” He turned and snapped a pointing finger at me. “You, Flashman.”
I choked on my glass, and covered my dismay with a shuddering cough. “I, sir?” I tried to get my breath back. “How, sir? I mean, what –?”
“We can’t afford to neglect the opportunity which your knowledge of this woman – your familiarity with her – gives us. I don’t suppose there’s a white man living who has been on closer terms with her – isn’t that so?”
“Well, now, sir, I don’t know –”
“I still think we can talk her out. Public offers of surrender are useless, we agree – but a private offer, now, secretly conveyed, with my word of honour, and Lord Canning’s, attached to it … that might be a different matter. Especially if it were persuasively argued, by a British officer she could trust. You follow me?”
All too well I followed him; I could see the abyss of ruin and despair opening before my feet once again, as the bright-eyed lunatic went eagerly on:
“The offer would assure her that her life would be spared, if she gave herself up. She doesn’t have to surrender Jhansi, even – just her own person. How can she refuse? She could even keep her credit intact with her own people – that’s it!” cries he, smacking the table. “If she accepts, all she has to do is take advantage of the bolt-hole we’re going to leave her, through the Orcha Gate! She can pretend to her own folk that she’s trying to escape, and we’ll snap her up as she emerges. No one would ever know it was a put-up business – except her, and ourselves!” He beamed at us in triumph.
Lyster was frowning. “Will she accept – and leave her city and people to their fate?” He glanced at me.
“Oh, come, come!” cries Rose. “She ain’t European royalty, you know! These black rulers don’t care a snuff for their subjects – ain’t that so. Flashman?”
I seized on this like a drowning man. “This one does, sir,” says I emphatically. “She wouldn’t betray ’em – never.” The irony of it was, I believed it to be true.
He stared at me in disappointment. “I can’t credit that,” says he. “I can’t. I’m positive you’re mistaken, Flashman.” He shook his head. “But we have nothing to lose by trying, at any rate.”
“But if I went in, under a flag of truce, demanding private audience with her –”
“Pshaw! Who said anything about a flag of truce? Of course, that would blow the gaff at once – her people would know there was something up.” He tapped the table, grinning at me, bursting with his own cleverness. “Didn’t I say you were the trump card? You not only know her well, you’re one of the few men who can get inside Jhansi, and into her presence, with no one the wiser – as a native!” He sat back, laughing. “Haven’t you done it a score of times –? why, all the world knows about how you brought Kavanaugh out of Lucknow! What d’ye think they’re calling you down in Bombay these days – the Pall Mall Pathan!”
There are times when you know it absolutely ain’t worth struggling any longer. First Palmerston, then Outram, and now Rose – and they were only the most recent in a long line of enthusiastic madmen who at one time or another had declared that I was just the chap they were looking for to undertake some ghastly adventure. I made one attempt at a feeble excuse by pointing out that I didn’t have a beard any longer; Rose brushed it aside as of no importance, poured me another brandy, and began to elaborate his idiot plan.
In essence it was what I’ve already described – I was to convince Lakshmibai of the wisdom of giving herself up (which I reckoned she’d never agree to do), and if she accepted, I was to explain how she must make an attempt to escape through the unguarded Orcha Gate at the very height of our attack on Jhansi city – the timing, said Rose, was of the utmost importance, and the further advanced our attack was before she made her bolt, the less suspicion her people might feel. (I couldn’t see that this mattered much, but Rose was one of these meticulous swine who’ll leave nothing to chance.)
“And if she rejects the offer – as I know she will?” I asked him.
“Then on no account must you say anything about the Orcha Gate,” says he. “Only when she has accepted the offer must you explain how her ‘capture’ is to be contrived. But if she does refuse – well, she may still be tempted to use a bolt-hole in the last resort, if we leave her one. So we shall nab her anyway,” he concluded smugly.
“And I – if she refuses?”
“My guess,” says he airily, puffing at his cheroot, “is that she’ll try to keep you as a hostage. I hardly think she’d do more than that, what? Anyway,” says he, clapping me on the arm, “I know you’ve never counted risk yet – I saw you at Balaclava, by George! Did you know about that, Lyster?” he went on, “charging with the Heavies wasn’t enough for this beauty – he had to go in with the Lights as well!” And, do you know, he actually sat laughing at me in admiration? It would turn your stomach.
So there it was – again. Hell in front and no way out. I tried to balance the od
ds in my mind, while I kept a straight face and punished the brandy. Would Lakshmibai listen to me? Probably not; she might try to escape when all was lost, but she’d never give herself up and leave her city to die. What would she do with me, then? I conjured up a picture of that dark face, smiling up at me with parted lips when I pinned her and kissed her against the mirrored wall; I remembered the pavilion – no, she wouldn’t dome harm, if she could help it. Unless … had she set those Thugs after me? No, that had been Ignatieff. And yet – there was the Jhansi massacre – how deep had she been in that? Who knew what went on in an Indian mind, if it came to that? Was she as cruel and treacherous as all the rest of them? I couldn’t say – but I was going to find out, by God, whether I liked it or not. I’d know, when I came face to face with her – and just for an instant I felt a leap of eagerness in my chest at the thought of seeing her once more. It was only for an instant, and then I was sweating again.
I’ll say this for Hugh Rose – along with his fiendish ingenuity for dreaming up dangers for me, he had an equally formidable talent of organisation. It took him a good thirty seconds to think of a fool-proof way of getting me safe inside Jhansi – I would have the next day to prepare my disguise, with skin-dye and the rest, and the following night he would loose a squadron of Hyderabad Cavalry in a sudden raid on the breach in the city wall. They would break through the flimsy barrier which the defenders had thrown up, sabre a few sentries, create a hell of a row, and then withdraw in good order – leaving behind among the rubble one native badmash of unsavoury appearance, to wit, Colonel Flashman, late of the 17th Lancers and General Staff. I’d have no difficulty, said Rose breezily, in lying low for half an hour, and then emerging as one of the defenders. After that, all I had to do was tool up through the streets to the palace and knock on the door, like Barnacle Bill.
Speaking from a safe distance, I can say it was a sound scheme. Hearing it propounded at the time I thought it was fit to loosen the bowels of a bronze statue – but the hellish thing is, whatever a general suggests, you can do nothing but grin and agree. And, I have to admit, it worked.
I don’t remember the agonising day I must have spent waiting, and attiring myself in a filthy sepoy uniform, so that I could pass in my old role of 3rd Cavalry mutineer. But I’ll never forget the last moment of suspense beside the siege guns, with the Hyderabadi troopers round me in the gloom, and Rose clasping my hand, and then the whispered order, and the slow, muffled advance through the cold dark, with only the snorting of the horses and the creak of leather to mark our passing towards that looming distant wall, with the dull crimson glow of the city behind it, and the broad gap of the breach where the watch-fires twinkled, and we could even see figures silhouetted as they moved to and fro.
Away to our left flank the night-batteries were firing, distant tiny jets of flame in the dark, pounding away at the flank of the city which faced the old cantonment. That was for diversion; I could smell the bazaar stink from Jhansi, and still we hadn’t been spotted. Even through my genuine funk, I could feel that strange tremor of excitement that every horse-soldier knows as the squadrons move forward silently in the gloom towards an unsuspecting enemy, slowly and ponderously, bump-bump-bump at the walk, knee to knee, one hand on the bridle, t’other on the hilt of the lamp-blacked sabre, ears straining for the first cry of alarm. How often I’d known it, and been terrified by it – in Afghanistan, at Cawnpore with Rowbotham, in the Punjab, under the walls of Fort Raim when I rode against the Russians with old Izzat Kutebar and the Horde of the Blue Wolves, and that lovely witch, Ko Dali’s daughter, touching my hand in the dark …
The crack of a rifle, a distant yell, and the thunderous roar of the rissaldar: “Aye-hee! Squah-drahn – charge!” The dark mass either side seemed to leap forward, and then I was thundering along, flat down against my pony’s flanks like an Oglala, as we tore across the last furlong towards the breach. The Hyderabadis screamed like fury as they spread out, except for the four who remained bunched ahead and either side of me, as a protective screen. Beyond them I could see the smoky glare of the fires in the breach, a rubble-strewn gap a hundred yards wide, with a crazy barricade thrown across it; pin-points of flame were twinkling in the gloom, and shots whistled overhead, and then the first riders were at the barrier, jumping it or bursting through, sabres swinging. My front-gallopers swerved in among the jumble of fallen masonry and scorched timbers, howling like dervishes; I saw one of them sabring down a pandy who thrust up at him with musket and bayonet, while another rode slap into a big, white-dhotied fellow who was springing at him with a spear. His horse stumbled and went down, and I scrambled my own beast over a pile of stones and plaster, from which a dark figure emerged, shrieking, and vanished into the gloom.
There was a fire straight ahead, and men running towards me, so I jerked my beast’s head round and made for the shadows to my right. Two Hyderabadis surged up at my elbow, charging into the advancing group, and under their cover I managed to reach the lee of a ruined house, while the clash of steel, the crack of musketry, and the yells of the fighters sounded behind me. Close by the house there was a tangle of bushes – one quick glance round showed no immediate enemy making for me, and I rolled neatly out of the saddle into what seemed to be a midden, crawled frantically under the bushes, and lay there panting.
I’d dropped my sabre, but I had a stout knife in my boot and a revolver in my waist under my shirt; I snuggled back as far into cover as I could and kept mum. Feet went pounding by towards the tumult at the barricade, and for two or three minutes the pandemonium of shooting and yelling continued. Then it died down, to be replaced by a babble of insults from the defenders – presumably directed at our retreating cavalry – a few shots went after them, and then comparative peace descended on that small corner of Jhansi. So far, so good – but, as some clever lad once said, we hadn’t gone very far.
I waited perhaps quarter of an hour, and then burrowed through the bushes and found myself in a narrow lane. There was no one about, but round the corner was a watch-fire, with a few pandies and bazaar-wallahs round it; I ambled past them, exchanging a greeting, and they didn’t do more than give me an idle glance. Two minutes later I was in the bazaar, buying a chapatti and chili, and agreeing with the booth-wallah that if the sahib-log couldn’t do better than the feeble skirmish there had just been down at the breach, then they’d never take Jhansi.
Although it was three in the morning, the narrow streets were as busy as if it had been noon. There were troops on the move everywhere – rebels of the 12th N.I., regulars of the Rani’s Maharatta army, Bhil soldiers-of-fortune, and every sort of armed tribesman from the surrounding country, with spiked helmets, long swords, round shields, and all kinds of firearm from Minies to matchlocks. It looked to me as though Jhansi knew our main attack was soon coming, and they were moving reserves down to the walls.
There were ten civilian townsfolk about for every soldier, and the booths were doing a roaring trade. Here and there were ruined shops and houses where some of our stray shots had fallen, but there was no sign of unease, as you’d have expected – rather a sense of excitement and bustle, with everyone wideawake and chattering. A party of coolies went by, dragging a cart piled with six-pounder cartridges, and I took the opportunity to remark to the booth-wallah:
“There go a thousand English lives, eh, brother?”
“Like enough,” says he, scowling. “And every cannon-shot means another anna in market-tax. Lives can be bought too dear – even English ones.”
“Nay, the Rani will pay it from her treasury,” says I, giving him my shrill sepoy giggle.
“Ho-ho-ho, hear him!” says he, scornfully. “You should set up a stall, soldier, and see how fat you get. When did the Rani ever pay – or any other prince? What are we for but to pay, while the great ones make war?”
Just what they’d be saying in the Reform Club or the Star and Garter, thinks I. Aloud I said:
“They say she holds a great council in the fort tonight. Is i
t true?”
“She did not invite me,” says he, sarcastically. “Nor, strangely enough, did she offer me the use of the palace when she left it. That will be three pice, soldier.”
I paid him, having learned what I wanted to know, and took the streets that led up to the fort, with my knees getting shakier at every step. By God, this was a chancy business; I had to nerve myself with the thought that, whatever her feelings towards my country and army, she’d never shown anything but friendliness to me – and she’d hardly show violence to an envoy from the British general. Even so, when I found myself gazing across the little square towards that squat, frowning gateway, with the torches blazing over it, and the red-jacketed Pathan sentries of her personal guard standing either side, I had to fight down the temptation to scuttle back into the lanes and try to hide until it was all over. Only the certainty that those lanes would shortly be a bloody battleground sent me reluctantly on. I wound my puggaree tightly round head and chin, hiding half my face, slipped from my pocket the note which Rose and I had carefully prepared, walked firmly across to the sentry, and demanded to see the guard commander.
Flashman Papers Omnibus Page 285
