The Flashman Papers 09 - Flashman and the Mountain of Light fp-9

by George MacDonald Fraser

  "Oh, my Christ!" groans Jassa, and I looked past him and saw Jawaheer, crimson from head to foot, slide over the side of the howdah and fall headlong in the dust with his life flooding out of him—and still those fiends hacked and stabbed at his corpse, while some even emptied their muskets and pistols into it, until the air was thick with the reek of black powder smoke.

  It was Gardner who hustled us to one of the smaller tents while his black robes surrounded Jeendan, Dalip, and the screeching women, shepherding them to the main pavilion. He cast a quick glance at the mob struggling about Jawaheer's corpse, and then twitched our tent curtain shut. He was breathing hard, but cool as you please.

  "Well, how d'ye like that for a drumhead court-martial, Mr Flashman?" He laughed softly. "Khalsa justice—the damned fools!"

  I was a-tremble at the shocking, sudden butchery of it. "You knew that was going to happen?"

  "No, sir," says he calmly, "but nothing in this country surprises me. By the holy, you're a sight! Josiah, get some water and clean him up! You're not wounded? Good-now, lie low and be quiet, both of you! It's over and done, see? The damned fools—listen to 'em, celebrating their own funerals! Now, don't you budge till I come back!"

  He strode out, leaving us to collect our breath and our wits—and if you wonder what my thoughts were as Jassa sponged the blood from my face and hands, I'll tell you. Relief, and some satisfaction that Jawaheer was receipted and filed, and that I'd come away with nothing worse than a ruined frock coat. Not that they'd been out to get me, but when you walk away from a scrimmage of that sort, you're bound to put it down on Crusoe's good side, in block capitals.

  Jassa and I shared my flask, and for about half an hour we sat listening to the babble of shouting and laughter and feux de joie of the murderers' celebration, and the lamentations from the neighbouring tent, while I digested this latest of Lahore's horrors and wondered what might come of it.

  I suppose I'd seen the signs the previous day, in the rage of the Khalsa panches, and Jawaheer's own terrors last night—but this morning the talk had been that all was well … aye, designed, no doubt, to bring him out to the Khalsa in false hope, to a doom already fixed, Had his peacemakers, Azizudeen and Dinanath, known what would happen? Had his sister? Had Jawaheer himself known, even, but been powerless to avert it? And now that the Khalsa had shown its teeth … would it march over the Sutlej? Would Hardinge, hearing of yet another bloody coup, decide to intervene? Or would he still wait? After all, it was nothing new in this horrible country.

  I didn't know, then, that Jawaheer's murder was a turning-point. To the Khalsa, it was just another demonstration of their own might, another death sentence on a leader who displeased them. They didn't realise they'd handed power to the most ruthless ruler the Punjab had seen since Runjeet Singh … she was in the next tent, having hysterics so strident and prolonged that the noisy mob outside finally gave over celebrating and looting the gear from the royal procession; the shouting and laughter died away, and now there was the sound of her voice alone, sobbing and screaming by turns—and then it was no longer in her tent, but outside, and Gardner slipped back through our curtain, beckoning me to join him at the entrance. I went, and peered out.

  It was full dark now, but the space before the tents was lit bright as day by torches in the hands of a vast semi-circle of Khalsa soldiery, thousands strong, staring in silence at the spot where Jawaheer's body still lay on the blood-soaked earth. The elephants and the regiments had gone; all that remained was that great ring of bearded, silent faces (and one of 'em was wearing my tall hat, damn his impudence!), the huddled corpse, and kneeling over it, wailing and beating the earth in an ecstasy of grief, the small white-clad figure of the Maharani. Close by, their hands on their hilts and their eyes on the Khalsa, a group of Gardner's black robes stood guard.

  She flung herself across the body, embracing it, calling to it, and then knelt upright again, keening wildly, and began to rock to and fro, tearing at her clothing like a mad thing until she was bare to the waist, her unbound hair flying from side to side. Before that dreadful uncontrolled passion the watchers recoiled a step; some turned away or hid their faces in their hands, and one or two even started towards her but were pulled back by their mates. Then she was on her feet, facing them, shaking her little fists and screaming her hatred.

  "Scum! Vermin! Lice! Butchers! Coward sons of dishonoured mothers! A hundred thousand of you against one—you gallant champions of the Punjab, you wondrous heroes of the Khalsa, you noseless bastard offspring of owls and swine who boast of your triumphs against the Afghans and the prowess you'll show against the British! You, who would run in terror from one English camp sweeper and a Kabuli whore! Oh, you have the courage of a pack of pi-dogs, to set on a poor soul unarmed—aiee, my brother, my brother, my Jawaheer, my prince!" From raging she was sobbing again, rocking from side to side, trailing her long hair across the body, then stooping to cradle the horrid thing against her breast while she wailed on a tremulous high note that slowly died away. They watched her, some grim, some impassive, but most` shocked and dismayed at the violence of her grief.

  Then she laid down the body, picked up a fallen tulwar from beside it, rose to her feet, and began slowly to pace to and fro before them, her head turned to watch their faces. It was a sight to shiver your spine: that small, graceful figure, her white sari in rags about her hips, her bare arms and breasts painted with her brother's blood, the naked sword in her hand. She looked like some avenging Fury from legend as she threw back her hair with a toss of her head and her glare travelled along that silent circle of faces. A stirring sight, if you know what I mean—there's a picture I once saw that could have been drawn from her: Clytemnestra after Agamemnon's death, cold steel and brazen boobies and bedamned to you. Suddenly she stopped by the body, facing them, and her voice was hard and clear and cold as ice as she passed her free hand slowly over her breasts and throat and face.

  "For every drop of this blood, you will give a million. You, the Khalsa, the pure ones. Pure as pig dung, brave as mice, honoured as the panders of the bazaar, fit only for —" I shan't tell you what they were fit for, but it sounded all the more obscene for being spoken without a trace of anger. And they shrank from it—oh, there were angry scowls and clenched fists here and there, but the mass of them could only stare like rabbits before a snake. I've seen women, royal mostly, who could cow strong men: Ranavalona with her basilisk stare, or Irma (my second wife, you know, the Grand Duchess) with her imperious blue eye; Lakshmibai of Jhansi could have frozen the Khalsa in its tracks with a lift of her pretty chin. Each in her own way—Jeendan did it by shocking 'em out of their senses, flaunting her body while she lashed them quietly with the language of the gutter. At last one of them could take no more of it—an old white-bearded Sikh flung down his torch and cries:

  "No! No! It was no murder—it was the will of God!"

  Some murmured in support of him, others cried him down, and she waited until they were silent again.

  "The will of God. Is that your excuse … you will blaspheme, and hide behind God's will? Then hear mine—the will of your Maharani, mother of your king!" She paused, looking from one side to the other of the silent crowd. "You will give me the murderers, so that they may pay. You will give them to me, or by that God with whose will you make so free, I shall throw the snake in your bosom!"

  She struck the tulwar into the earth on the last word, turned her back on them and walked quickly towards the tents—Clytemnestra as ever was. With this difference, that where Mrs Agamemnon had committed one murder, she was contemplating a hundred thousand. As she passed into her tent the light from within fell full on her face, and (here wasn't a trace of grief or anger. She was smiling.24

  If there was one thing worse than Jawaheer's murder it was his funeral, when his wives and slave-girls were roasted alive along with his corpse, according to custom. Like much beastliness in the world, suttee is inspired by religion, which means there's no sense or reason to it—I've
yet to meet an Indian who could tell me why it's done, even, except that it's a hallowed ritual, like posting a sentry to mind the Duke of Wellington's horse fifty years after the old fellow had kicked the bucket. That, at least, was honest incompetence; if you want my opinion of widow-burning, the main reason for it is that it provides the sort of show the mob revels in, especially if the victims are young and personable, as they were in Jawaheer's case. I wouldn't have missed it myself, for it's a fascinating horror—and I noticed, in my years in India, that the breast-beating Christians who denounced it were always first at the ringside.

  No, my objection to it is on practical, not moral grounds; it's a shameful waste of good womanhood, and all the worse because the stupid bitches are all for it. They've been brought up to believe it's meet and right to be broiled along with the head of the house, you see—why, Alick Gardner told me of one funeral in Lahore where some poor little lass of nine was excused burning as being too young, and the silly chit threw herself off a high building. They burned her corpse anyway. That's what comes of religion and keeping women in ignorance. The most educated (and devout) Indian female I ever knew, Rani Lakshmibai, thought suttee beneath contempt; when I asked her why, as a widow, she hadn't hopped on the old man's pyre herself, she looked at me in disbelief and asked: "Do you think I'm a fool?"

  She wasn't, but her Punjabi sisters knew no better.

  Jawaheer's body was brought, in several pieces, to the city on the day after his death, and the procession to the ground of cremation took place under a red evening sky, before an enormous throng, with little Dalip and Jeendan and most of the nobility prostrating themselves before the suttees—two wives, stately handsome girls, and three Kashmiri slaves, the prettiest wenches ever you saw, all in their best finery with jewelled studs in their ears and noses and gold embroidery on their silk trousers. I ain't a soft man, but it would have broken your heart to see those five little beauties, who were made for fun and love and laughter, walking to the pyre like guardsmen, heads up and not a blink of fear, serenely scattering money to the crowd, according to custom—and you wouldn't credit it, those unutterable bastards of Sikh soldiers who were meant to be guarding 'em, absolutely tore the money from their hands, and yelled taunts and insults at them when they tried to protest. Even when they got to the pyre, those swine were tearing their jewels and ornaments from them, and when the fire was lit one villain reached through the smoke and tore the gold fringe from one of the slaves' trousers—and these, according to their religion, were meant to be sacred women.

  There were groans from the crowd, but no one dared do anything against the all-powerful military—and then an astounding thing happened. One of the wives stood up among the flames, and began to curse them. I can see her still, a tall lovely girl all in white and gold, blood on her face where her nose-stud had been ripped away, one hand gripping her head-veil beneath her chin, the other raised as she damned 'em root and branch, foretelling that the race of Sikhs would be overthrown within the year, their women widowed, and their land conquered and laid waste—and suttees, you know, are supposed to have the gift of prophecy. One of the spoilers jumped on the pyre and swung his musket butt at her, and she fell back into the fire where the--four others were sitting calmly as the flames rose and crackled about them. None of them made a sound.25

  I saw all this from the wall, the black smoke billowing up to mingle with the low clouds under the crimson dusk, and came away in such a boiling rage as I never felt on behalf of anyone except myself. Aye, thinks I, let there be a war (but keep me out of it) so that we can stamp these foul woman-butchers flat, and put an end to their abominations. I guess I'm like Alick Gardner: I can't abide wan-ton cruelty to good-looking women. Not by other folk, anyway.

  That brave lass's malediction filled the crowd with superstitious awe, but it had an even more important effect—it put the fear of God into the Khalsa, and that shaped their fate at a critical time. For after Jawaheer's death they were in a great state of uncertainty and division, with the hotheads clamouring for an immediate war against us, and the more loyal element, who'd been dismayed by Jeendan's harangue at Maian Mir, insisting that nothing could be done until they'd made their peace with her, the regent of their lawful king. The trouble was, making peace meant surrendering those who'd plotted the murder of Jawaheer, and they were a powerful clique. So the debate raged among them, and meanwhile Jeendan played her hand to admiration, refusing even to acknowledge the Khalsa's existence, going daily to weep at Jawaheer's tomb, heavily veiled and bowed with grief, and winning the admiration of all for her piety; the rumour ran that she'd even sworn off drink and fornication—a portent that reduced the Khalsa to a state of stricken wonder by all accounts.

  In the end they gave in, and in response to their appeals for audience she summoned them not to durbar but to the yard under the Summum Boorj, receiving them in cold silence while she sat veiled and swathed in her mourning weeds, and Dinanath announced her terms. These sounded impressively severe—total submission to her will, and instant delivery of the murderers—but were in fact part of an elaborate farce stage-managed by Mangla. She and Lal Singh and a few other courtiers had been taken prisoner by the Khalsa at the time of the murder, but released soon after, since when they'd been politicking furiously with Dinanath and the panches, arranging a compromise.

  It amounted to this: the Khalsa grovelled to Jeendan, gave up a few token prisoners, and promised to deliver Pirthee Singh and the other leading plotters (who had already decamped to the hills, by previous arrangement) as soon as they were caught. In the meantime, would she please forgive her loyal Khalsa, since they were showing willing, and consider making war on the damned British in the near future? For their part, they swore undying loyalty to her as Queen Regent and Mother of All Sikhs. To this she replied through Dinanath that while it was hardly good enough, she was graciously pleased to accept their submission, and hand back the token prisoners as a liberal gesture. (Sensation and loyal cheers.) They must now give her a little time to complete her mourning and recover from the grievous shock of her brother's death; thereafter she would receive them in full durbar to discuss such questions as making war and appointing a new Wazir.

  It was the kind of face-saving settlement that's arranged daily at Westminster and in parish councils, and no one's fooled except the public—and not all of them, either.

  You may ask, where was Flashy during all these stirring events? To which the answer is that, having mastered an impulse to steal a horse and ride like hell for the Sutlej, I was well in the background, doing what I'd ostensibly come to Lahore for—namely, negotiate about the Soochet legacy. This entailed sitting in a pleasant, airy chamber for several hours a day, listening to interminable submissions from venerable government officials who cited precedents from Punjabi and British law, the Bible, the Koran, The Times, and the Bombay Gazette. They were the most tireless old bores you ever struck, red herring worshippers to a man, asking nothing from me beyond an occasional nod and an instruction to my babu to make a note of that point. That kept 'em happy, and was good for another hour's prose—none of which advanced the cause one iota, but since the Punjabi taxpayers were stumping up their salaries, and I was content to sit under the punkah sipping brandy and soda, all was for the best in the best of all possible civil services. We could have been there yet—my God, they probably are.

  I was busy enough in my spare time, though, chiefly writing cypher reports for Broadfoot and committing them to Second Thessalonians, from which they vanished with mysterious speed. I still couldn't figure who the post-man (or postmistress) was, but it was a most efficient service to Simla and back; within a week of my writing off about Jassa a note turned up in my Bible saying, among other things: "Number 2 A2", which meant that, notwithstanding his colourful past, my orderly was trustworthy to the second degree, which meant only a step below Broad-foot and his Assistants, including myself. I didn't tell Jassa this, but contrived a quick word with Gardner to give him the glad tidings. He grunt
ed: "Broadfoot must be sicker than I thought," and passed on, the surly brute.

  For the rest, Broadfoot's communication amounted to little more than "Carry on, Flash". The official news from British India, through the vakil, was that Calcutta deplored the untimely death of Wazir Jawaheer and trusted that his successor would have better luck—that was the sense of it, along with a pious hope that the Punjab would now settle down to a period of tranquillity under Maharaja Dalip, the only ruler whom the British power was prepared to recognise. The message was clear: murder each other as often as you please, but any attempt to depose Dalip and we shall be among you, horse, foot and guns.

  So there it was, status quo, the question of the hour being, would Jeendan, for her own and Dalip's safety, give way before the Khalsa's demand for war, and turn 'em loose over the Sutlej? I couldn't for the life of me see why she should, in spite of her half-promise to them; she seemed to be able to deal with them as her brother had failed to do, dividing and ruling and keeping them guessing; if she could hold the rein on them while she tightened her grip on the government of the country, I couldn't see how war would be in her interest.

  Time would tell; a more pressing matter began to vex me as the first week lengthened into the second. Lal Singh had assured me that Jeendan was anxious to know me better, politically and personally, but devil a sign of it had there been for almost a fortnight, and I was champing at the bit. As the horrors of those first two days receded, the pleasures became more vivid, and I was plagued by fond memories of that painted little trollop writhing against me in the durbar room, and strutting wantonly before her troops at Maian Mir. Quite fetching, those recollections were, and bred a passion which I knew from experience could be satisfied by the lady herself and no other. I'm a faithful soul, you see, in my fashion, and when a new bundle takes my fancy more than ordinary, as about a score have done over the years, I become quite devoted for a spell. Oh, I'd done the polite by Mangla (and repeated the treatment when she called clandestine three nights later) but that was journeyman work which did nothing to quench my romantic lust to put Jeendan over the jumps again, and the sooner the better.