Or so I thought, in my complacent ignorance, as the winter wore through, and our campaign in the north approached its climax. I knew it was as good as over when Billy Russell of The Times showed up to join Campbell's final march on Lucknow — it's a sure sign of victory when the correspondents gather like vultures. We marched with 30,000 men and strong artillery, myself piling up great heaps of useless paper in Mansfield's intelligence section and keeping out of harm's way. It was an inexorable, pounding business, as our gunners blew the pandy defences systematically to bits, the Highlanders and Irish slaughtered the sepoy infantry whenever it stood, the engineers demolished shrines and temples to show who was master, and everyone laid hands on as much loot as he could carry.
It was a great bloody carnival, with everyone making the most of the war: I recall one incident, in a Lucknow courtyard (I believe it may have been in the Begum's pal-ace) in which I saw Highlanders, their gory bayonets laid aside, smashing open chests that were simply stuffed with jewels, and grinning idiot little Goorkhas breaking mirrors for sheer sport and wiping their knives on silks and fabrics worth a fortune — they didn't know any better. There were Sikh infantry dancing with gold chains and necklaces round their necks, an infantry subaltern staggering under a great enamelled pot overflowing with coins, a naval gunner bleeding to death with a huge shimmering bolt of cloth-of-gold clasped in his' arms — there were dead and dying men everywhere, our own fellows as well as pandies, and desperate hand-to-hand fighting going on just over the courtyard wall; muskets banging, men shrieking, two Irishmen coming to blows over a white marble statuette smeared with blood, and Billy Russell stamping and damning his luck because he had no rupees on him to buy the treasures which private soldiers were willing to trade away for the price of a bottle of rum.
"Gi'es a hunnerd rupees, now!" one of the Micks was shouting, as he flourished a gold chain set with rubies — they were as big as gull's eggs. "Jist a hunnerd, yer honour, an' dey're yours!"
"But … but they're worth fifty times that!" cries Russell, torn between greed and honesty.
"Ah, the divil wid that!" cries Paddy. "Oi'm sayin' a hunnerd, an' welcome!"
All right, says Russell, but the man must come to his tent for the money that night. But at this Paddy cries out:
"Oh, God, Oi can't, sorr! How do Oi know you or me won't be dead by then? Ready money, yer honour — say jist fifty chips, an' yer spirit flask! Come, now?"
But Billy hadn't even fifty rupees, so the Mick shook his head sorrowfully and swore he couldn't trade, except for cash down. Finally he burst out:
"But Oi can't see a gintleman in yer honour's position goin' empty-handed! Here, take dis for nuthin', an' say a prayer for O'Halloran, Private Michael," and he thrust a diamond brooch into Russell's hand and ran off, whooping, to join his mates.
You may wonder what I was doing there, so close to the fighting: the answer is I was keeping an eye on my two Rajput orderlies, who were picking up gold and jewellery for me at bargain prices, using intelligence section funds. I paid it all back, mind, out of profits, no irregularities, and finished with the handsome surplus which built Gandamack Lodge, Leicestershire, for my declining years. (My Rajputs bought O'Halloran's ruby chain, by the way, for ten rupees and two ounces of baccy — say for £2 all told. I sold it to a Calcutta jeweller for £7,500, which was about half its true value, but not a bad stroke of business, I think.)40
I asked Billy later what value he would have put on all the loot that we saw piled up and scrambled for in that one yard, and he said curtly: "Millions of pounds, blast it!" I'd believe it, too: there were solid gold and silver vessels and ornaments, crusted with gems, miles of jewel-sewn brocade, gorgeous pictures and statues that the troops just hacked and smashed, beautiful enamel and porcelain trampled underfoot, weapons and standards set with rubies and emeralds which were gouged and hammered from their settings — all this among the powder-smoke and blood, with native soldiers who'd never seen above ten rupees in their lives, and slum-ruffians from Glasgow and Liverpool, all staggering about drunk on plunder and killing and destruction. One thing I'm sure of: there was twice as much treasure destroyed as carried away, and we officers were too busy bagging our share to do anything about it. I daresay a philosopher would have made heavy speculation about that scene, if he'd had time to spare from tilling his pockets.
I was well satisfied with my winnings, and pondered that night on how I'd employ them when I went home, which couldn't be long now: I remember thinking "This is the end of the war, Flash, old buck, or near as dammit, and well out of it you are." I was very much at ease, sitting round the mess-fire in the dusk of a Lucknow garden, smoking and swigging port and listening to the distant thump of the night guns, while I yarned idly with Russell and "Rake" Hodson (who'd fagged me at Rugby) and Macdonald the Peeler and Sam Browne and little Fred Roberts, who wasn't much more than a griff,41 but knew enough to hang around us older hands, warming himself in the glow of our fame. Thinking of them, it strikes me how many famous men I've run across in the dawn of their careers — not that Hodson had long to go, since he was shot while looting next day, with his glory all behind him. But Roberts has gone to the very top of the tree (pity I wasn't more civil to him when he was green; I might have been higher up the ladder myself now), and I suppose Sam Browne's name is known today in every army on earth. Just because he lost an arm and invented a belt, too — get them to call some useful article of clothing after you, and your fame's assured, as witness Sam and Raglan and Cardigan. If I had my time over again I'd patent the Flashman fly-button, and go down in history.42
I don't remember much of what we discussed, except that Billy was full of indignation over how he'd seen some' Sikhs burning a captured pandy alive, with white soldiers looking on and laughing: he and Roberts said such cruelty oughtn't to be allowed, but Hodson, who was as near a wild beast as I ever met, even among British irregular cavalry, said the viler deaths the rebels died, the better; they'd be less ready to mutiny again. I can see him yet, sitting forward glaring into the fire, pushing back his fair hair with that nervous gesture he had, and steady Sam Browne squinting at him quizzically, drawing on his cigar, saying nothing. I know we talked too of light cavalry, and Russell was teasing Hodson with the prowess of the Black Sea Cossacks, winking at me, when Destiny in the unlikely shape of General Mansfield tapped me on the shoulder and said: "Sir Colin wants you, directly."
I didn't think twice about it, but pitched my cheroot into the fire and sauntered through the lines to the Chief's tent, computing my loot in my mind and drinking in the warm night air with sleepy content. Even when Campbell's greeting to me was: "How well d'ye know the Rani of Jhansi?" I wasn't uncomfortably surprised — there'd been a dispatch in about the Jhansi campaign that very day, and Campbell already knew about my mission for Palmerston; it all seemed a long way away now.
I said I had known her very well; we had talked a great deal together.
"And her city — her fortress?" says Campbell.
"Passably, sir. I was never in her fort proper — our meetings were at the palace, and I'm not over-familiar with the city itself -
"More familiar than Sir Hugh Rose, though, I'll be bound," says he, tapping a paper in front of him. "And that's his own opeenion — he mentions ye by name in his latest dispatch." I didn't care for that; it don't do to have generals talking about you. I didn't care for the way Campbell was looking at me, either, tapping a nail against those beautifully-kept teeth that shone so odd in his ancient (face.
"This Rani," says he at length. "What's she like?"
I began to say that she was a capable ruler and nobody's fool, but he interrupted with one of his barbarous Scotch noises.
"Taghaway-wi-ye! Is she pretty, man? Eh? How pretty?" I admitted that she was strikingly beautiful, and he grinned and shook his grizzly head.
"Aye, aye," says he, and squinted at me. "Ye're a strange man, Flashman. I'll confess to ye, I've even-on had my doots aboot ye — don't ask me what, for I don't
know. I'm frank wi' ye, d'ye see?" I'll say that for him, he always was. "This much I'm certain of," he went on, "ye always win. God kens how — and I'm glad I don't ken mysel', for I wish to think well of ye. But there — Sir Hugh needs ye at Jhansi, and I'm sending ye south."
I didn't know what to think of this — or of his curious opinion of me. I just stood and waited anxiously.
"This mutiny mischief is just aboot done — it's a question of scattering the last armies — here, in Oudh and Rohilkand, and there, in Bandelkand — and hanging Nana and Tantia and Azeemoolah higher than Haman. Jhansi is one of the last nuts tae be cracked — and it'll be a hard one, like enough. This bizzum of a Rani has ten thousand men and stout city walls. Sir Hugh will have her under siege by the time ye get there, and nae doot he'll have to take the place by storm. But that's not enough — which is why you, wi' your particular deeplomatic knowledge of the Rani and her state, are essential to Sir Hugh. Ye see, Flashman, Lord Canning and Sir Hugh and mysel' are agreed on one thing — and your experience of this wumman may be the key to it." He looked me carefully in the eye. "Whatever else befalls, we must contrive tae capture the Rani of Jhansi alive."
If she'd been ugly as sin, or twenty years older and scrawny, it would never have happened. Jhansi would have been taken, and if a plain, elderly Rani had been bayoneted or shot in the process, no one would have given a damn. But Canning, our enlightened Governor-General, was a sentimental fool, intent on suppressing the Mutiny with the least possible bloodshed, and already alarmed at the toll of vengeance that people like Neill and Havelock had taken. He guessed that sooner or later the righteous wrath of Britons at home would die down, and that if we slaughtered too many pandies a revulsion would set in — which, of course, it did. My guess is that he also feared the death of a young and beautiful rebel princess (for her fame and likeness had spread across India by now) might just tip the balance of public conscience — he didn't want the liberal press depicting her as some Indian Joan of Arc. So, however many other niggers died, male and female, she was to be taken alive.
Mind you, I could see Canning's point, and personally I was all for it. There wasn't a life anywhere — except Elspeth's and little Havvy's — that was as precious to me then as Lakshmibai's, and I don't mind admitting it. But fair's fair; I wanted her saved without any dangerous intervention on my part, and the farther I could have kept away from Jhansi the better I'd have liked it. It wasn't a lucky place for me.
So I took as long as I decently could getting there, in the hope that it might be all over by the time I arrived. I had the excuse that the two hundred miles between Lucknow and Jhansi was damned dangerous country, with pandies and the armies of rebel chiefs all over the place; I had a strong escort of Pathan Horse, but even so we went warily, and didn't sight that fort of ill-omen on its frowning rock until the last week in March. Rose was just getting himself settled in by then, battering away at the city defences with his guns, his army circling the walls in a gigantic ring, with observation posts and cavalry pickets all prettily sited to bottle it up.
He was a good soldier, Rose, careful as Campbell but twice as quick, and one glance at the rebel defences told you that he needed to be. Jhansi lay massive and impregnable under the brazen sun, with its walls and outworks and the red rebel banner floating lazily above the fort. Outside the walls the dusty plain had been swept clear of every scrap of cover, and the rebel batteries thundered out in reply to our gunners, as though warning the besiegers what would happen if they ventured too close. And inside there were ten thousand rebels ready to fight to the finish. A tough nut, as Campbell had said.
"We'll have them out in a week, though, no fears about that," was Rose's verdict. He was another Scotsman (India was crawling with them, of course, as always), brisk and bright-eyed and spry; I knew him well from the Crimea, where he'd been liaison at the Frog headquarters, and less objectionable than most diplomat-soldiers. He was new to India, but you'd never have guessed it from his easy confidence and dandy air — to tell the truth, I have difficulty in memory separating his appearance from George Custer's, for they both had the same gimlet assurance, as well as the carefully wind-blown blond hair and artless moustaches. There the resemblance ended — if we'd had Rose at Little Big Horn, Crazy Horse and Gall could have whistled for their dinners.
"Yes, a week at most," says he, and pointed out how he had sited his left and right attacks opposite the strongest points in the rebel defences, which our gunners were pounding with red-hot shot, keeping the pandy fire-parties busy quelling the flames which you could see here and there behind the walls, flickering crazily through the heat-haze. "Frontal night assault as soon as the breaches are big enough, and then …" He snapped his telescope shut. "Bloody work, since the pandies are sure to fight to the last — but we'll do the business. The question is: in all that carnage, how do we preserve her ladyship? You must be our oracle on that subject, what? Would she personally surrender, d'you suppose?"
I looked about me from the knoll on which we stood, with his staff officers. Just before us were the lines of siege-guns in their earthworks, shaking the ground with their explosions, the smoke wraithing back towards us as the gunners, crawling like ants round their pieces, reloaded and fired again. Either side the pickets of the flying cavalry I amps were strung out as far as the eye could see — the red jackets of the Light Dragoons, and the grey khakee of the Hyderabad troopers' coats, dusty with the new curry-powder dye. Two miles behind us, near the ruins of the old cantonment, were the endless tent-lines of the infantry brigades, waiting patiently till the guns had done their work on the massive walls of Jhansi city, behind which the jumble of distant houses stretched in the smoky haze up to the mighty crag of the fortress. She'd be up there, somewhere, perhaps in that cool durbar room, or on the terrace, playing with her pet monkeys; perhaps she was with her chiefs and soldiers, looking out at the great army that was going to swallow her up and reduce her city and fairy palace to rubble. Mera Jhansi denge nay, thinks I.
"Surrender?" says I. "No, I doubt if she will."
"Well, you know her." He gave me that odd, leery look that I'd got used to even in the few hours I'd been at his headquarters, whenever her name was mentioned. The popular view was that she was some gorgeous human tigress who prowled half-naked through sumptuous apartments, supervising the torture of discarded legions of lovers — oh, my pious generation had splendid imaginations, I may tell you.43
"We've tried proclamation, of course," says Rose, "but since we can't guarantee immunity to her followers, we might as well save our breath. On the other hand, she may not be eager to see her civilians exposed to continuous bombardment followed by the horrors of assault, what? I mean, being a woman … what is she like, by the way?"
"She's a lady," says I, "extremely lovely, uses French scent, is kind to animals, fences like a Hungarian hussar, prays for several hours each day, recreates herself on a white silk swing in a room full of mirrors, gives afternoon tea-parties for society ladies, and hangs criminals up in the sun by their thumbs. Useful horse-woman, too."
"Good God!" says Rose, staring, and behind him his staff were gaping at me round-eyed, licking their lips. "Are you serious?"
"What about lovers, hey?" says one of the staff, sweating and horny-eyed. "They say she keeps a hareem of muscular young bucks, primed with love-potions —"
"She didn't tell me," says I, "and I didn't ask her. Even you wouldn't, I fancy."
"Well," says Rose, glancing at me and then away. "We must certainly consider what's to be done about her."
That was how I employed myself for the next three days, while the guns and eight-inch mortars smashed away in fine style, opening a sizeable breach in the south wall, and burning up the rebels' repair barricades with red-hot shot. We blew most of their heavy gun posts into rubble, and by the 29th Rose was drawing up final orders for his infantry stormers — and still we had reached no firm plan for capturing Lakshmibai unharmed. For the more I thought about it, the more certain I b
ecame that she'd fight it out, in person, when our infantry fought their way hand-to-hand into her palace — it was easy, after Lucknow, to imagine bloody corpses on that quilted Chinese carpet, and the mirrors shattered by shot, and yelling looters smashing and tearing in those priceless apartments, sabring and bayoneting everything that stood in their way. God knows it was nothing new to me, and I'd lent a hand in my time, when It had been safe to do so — but these would be her rooms, her possessions, and I was sentimental enough to be sorry for that, because I'd liked them and been happy there. By George, I'd got her into my bloodstream though, hadn't I lust, when I started worrying about her damned furniture.
And what would happen to her, in that madhouse of blood and steel? Try as I might, I could see nothing for it but to tell off a picked platoon with orders to make straight for the palace and secure her unharmed At any price — provided she didn't get in the way of a stray shot, there was no reason why they shouldn't bring her out safe. By God, though, that was one detail I'd have to avoid — no, my job would be her reception and safe-keeping when the slaughter was safely over: Flashy the stern and sorrowful jailer, firm but kindly, shielding her from prying eyes and lecherous staff-wallopers with dirty minds, that was the ticket. She'd have to be escorted away, perhaps even to Calcutta, where they'd decide what to do with her. A nice long journey, that, and she'd be grateful for a friendly face among her enemies — especially one for which she'd shown such a partiality in the past. I thought of that pavilion, and that gleaming bronze body undulating towards me, quivering voluptuously to the music — we'll have dancing every night, thinks I, in our private hackery, and if I'm not down to twelve stone by the time we reach Calcutta, it won't be for want of nocturnal exercise.
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