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

by George MacDonald Fraser

  For a moment I didn't believe my ears. Oh, I'd been threatened with torture before, by savages like Gul Shah and those beastly Malagassies—but this was a man of honour, a general, an aristocrat! I wouldn't believe it, not from someone who might have been Cardigan's own brother, dammit -

  "You don't mean it!" I yelped. "I don't believe you! It's a trick … a mean, cowardly trick! You wouldn't dare! But you're trying to frighten me, damn you … "

  "Yes, I am." His voice and eyes were dead level. "But it is no empty threat. There is too much at stake. We are beyond diplomatic niceties, or the laws of war. Very soon now, hundreds—perhaps thousands—of men will be dying in agony beyond the Sutlej, Indian and British alike. I cannot afford to spare you, when the fate of the war may depend on what you can tell me."

  By God, he did mean it—and before that iron stare I broke down utterly, weeping and begging him to believe me.

  "But I don't know a damned thing! For Christ's sake, it's the truth! Yes, yes, she's betraying you! She promised to warn us . and, yes! she's delayed, and made the astrologers bungle it —"

  "You tell me what I know already!" cries he impatiently.

  "But it's all I know, blast you! She never said a word of plans—oh, if she had I'd tell you! Please, sir, for pity's sake, don't let them torture me! I can't bear it—and it'd do no good, damn you, you cruel old bastard, because I've nothing to confess! Oh, God, if I had, I'd tell you, if I could —"

  "I doubt it. Indeed, I am sure you would not," says he, and before those words and tone, suddenly so flat, almost weary, I left off blubbering to stare. He was standing ramrod straight, but not in disgust or contempt at my ravings—if anything, he looked regretful, with a touch of ruptured nobility, even. I couldn't fathom it until, to my horrified amazement, he went on, in the same quiet voice:

  "You overplay the coward's part too far, Mr Flashman. You would have me believe you an abject, broken thing, dead to honour, a cur who would confess everything, betray everything, at a mere threat—and on whom, there-fore, torture would be wasted." He shook his head. "Major Broadfoot does not employ such people—and your own reputation belies you. No, you will tell nothing … until pain robs' you of your reason. You know your duty, as I know mine. It drives us both to shameful extremes—me, to barbarism for my country's sake; you, to this pretence of cowardice—a legitimate ruse in a political agent, but not convincing from the man who held Piper's Fort! I am sorry." His mouth worked for a moment, and I won't swear there wasn't a tear in his blasted eye. "I can give you an hour … before they begin. For God's sake, use it to see reason! Take him down!"

  He turned away, like a strong suffering man who's had the last word. He hadn't, though. "Pretence!" I screamed, as they hauled me from the chair. "You bloody old halfwit, it's true! I'm not shamming, damn you, I swear it! I can't tell you anything! Oh, Jesus! Please, please, let me be! Mercy, you foul old kite! Can't you see I'm telling the truth!"

  By that time they were dragging me through the garden to the back of the house, thrusting me through a low iron-shod door and down an immensely long flight of stone steps into the depths of a great cellar, a dank tomb of rough stone walls with only a small window high up on the far side. A choking acrid smell rose to meet us, and as the naik set a burning torch in a bracket by the stair foot, the source of that stench became horribly apparent.

  "Are you weary, Daghabazi Sahib?"*(* Daghabazi=treachery.) cries he. "See, we have a fine bed for you to rest on!"

  I looked, and almost swooned. In the centre of the earth floor lay a great rectangular tray in which charcoal glowed faintly under a coating of ash, and about three feet above it was a rusty iron grill like a bedstead—with manacles at head and foot. Watching my face, the naik cackled with laughter, and taking up a long poker, went forward and tapped open two little vents on either side of the tray. The charcoal near the vents glowed a little brighter.

  "Gently blows the air," gloats he, "and slowly grows the heat." He laid a hand on the grill. "A little warm, only … but in an hour it will be warmer. Daghabazi Sahib will begin to feel it, then. He may even find his tongue." He tossed the poker aside. "Put him to bed!"

  I can't describe the horror of it. I couldn't even scream as they ran me forward and flung me down on that diabolic gridiron, snapping the fetters on my wrists and ankles so that I was held supine, unable to do more than writhe on the rusty bars—and then the pock-marked fiend picked up a pair of bellows from the floor, grinning with savage delight.

  "You will be in some discomfort when we return, Daghabazi Sahib! Then we shall open the vents a little more—your punkah-wallah cooked slowly, for many hours—did he not, Jan? Oh, he spoke long before he began to roast … that followed, though I think he had no more to tell." He leaned down to laugh in my face. "And if you find it tedious, we may hasten matters—thus!"

  He thrust the bellows under the foot of the grill, pumping once, a sudden gust of heat struck my calves—and I found my tongue at last, in a shriek that tore my throat, again and again, as I struggled helplessly. They crowed with laughter, those devils, as I raved in terror and imagined agony, swearing I had nothing to tell, pleading for mercy, promising them anything—a fortune if they'd let me go, rupees and mohurs by the lakh, God knows what else. Then perhaps I swooned in earnest, for all I remember is the naik's jeering voice from far off: "In an hour's time! Rest well, Daghabazi Sahib!" and the clang of the iron door.

  There are, in case you didn't know it, five degrees of torture, as laid down by the Spanish Inquisition, and I was now suffering the fourth—the last before the bodily torment begins. How I kept my sanity is a mystery—I'm not sure but that I did go mad, for a spell, for I came out of my swoon babbling: "No, no, Dawson, I swear I didn't peach! 'twasn't me—it was Speedicut! He blabbed on you to her father—not me! I swear it—oh, please, please, Dawson, don't roast me!", and I could see the fat brute's great whiskered moon face leering into mine as he held me before the schoolroom fire, vowing to bake me till I blistered. I know now that that roasting at Rugby was worse, for real corporal anguish, than my ordeal at Lahore—but at least I'd known that Dawson must leave off at the last, whereas in Bibi Kalil's cellar, with the growing heat only beginning to make my back and legs tingle and run rivers of sweat, I knew that it would continue, hotter and ever hotter, to the unspeakable end. That's the horror of the fourth degree, as the Inquisitors knew—but while their heretics and religious idiots could always get off by telling the bloody Dagoes what they wanted to hear, I couldn't. I didn't know.

  The mind's a strange mechanism. Chained to that abominable grill, I began to burn, and strained to arch my body away from the bars, until I fainted again—and when I came to my senses, why, I was only uncomfortably warm for a moment—until I remembered where I was, and in an instant my clothes were catching fire, the flames were scorching my flesh, and I shrieked my way into oblivion once more. Yet it was only in my mind; my clothing was barely being singed—whereas Dawson burned my britches' arse out, the fat swine, and I couldn't sit for a week.

  I can't tell how long it was before I realised that, while And merrily we'll whoop and holloa!28

  Silence, except for my gasps and groans, then a scrambling rush, a thud, and through the suffocating mist a figure was looming over me, and a horrified face was peering into mine.

  "Holy Jesus!" cries Jassa—and as the bolt rasped back in the door he fairly flung himself away, burrowing among the rubble in the shadows along the wall. The door swung open, and the naik appeared on the threshold. For a long, awful moment he stood looking down at me as I struggled and panted on the grill—in a frenzy of fear that he'd seen Jassa, that the fatal hour was up . and then he sang out:

  "Is the bed to your liking, Daghabazi Sahib? What, not warm enough yet? Oh, patience … only a moment now!"

  He guffawed at his own priceless wit, and went out, leaving the door ajar—and here was Jassa, muttering hideous oaths as he worked at my fetters. They were simple bolts, and in a moment he had them loos
e and I had lurched off that hellish gridiron and was lying face down on the filthy cool earth, panting and retching. Jassa knelt beside me, urging haste, and I forced myself up; my back and legs were smarting, but didn't feel as though they were badly burned, and with the naik plainly about to return at any moment I was in a fever to be away.

  "Can you climb?" whispers Jassa, and I saw there was a camel rope dangling from the window fifteen feet above our heads. "I'll go first—if you can't make it, we'll haul you!" He seized the rope and walked up the wall like an acrobat, until he had his legs over the sill. "Up—quick!" he hissed, and I leaned on the wall a second to fetch my breath and my senses, rubbed my hands on the dirt, and laid hold on the rope.

  I may not be brave, but I'm strong, and exhausted as I was I climbed by my arms alone, hauling my dead weight hand over hand, bumping and scraping against the wall -no work for a weakling, but my mortal funk was such that I could have done it with Henry VIII-on my back. Up I went, nearly sick with hope, and the sill wasn't a yard above me when I heard the door thrown back in the cell below.

  I almost let go my hold in despair, but even as a yell sounded from the doorway, Jassa's hand was on my collar, and I heaved for my life. I got an elbow on the sill, looked down, and saw the naik bounding down the steps with his gang at his heels. Jassa was through the window, hauling at me, and I got a leg over the sill; from the tail of my eye I saw one of the ruffians below swinging back his hand, there was a flash of steel, and I winced away as a thrown knife struck sparks from the wall. Jassa's pistol banged deafeningly before my face, and I saw the naik stagger and fall. I yelled with joy, and then I was over the sill. "Drop!" shouts Jassa, and I fell about ten feet, landing with a jar that sent a stabbing pain through my left ankle. I took one step and went down, bleating, as Jassa dropped beside me and heaved me up again.

  My heart went out to Goolab Singh and his gouty foot in that moment, as I thought: crocked, bigod, and only one leg to run with. Jassa had me by the shoulders; he let out a piercing whistle and suddenly there was a man on my other side, stooping beneath my arm. Between them they half-carried me, howling at every step; two shots sounded somewhere to my left, I saw pistol-flashes in the gloom, people were yelling, branches whipped my face as we blundered along, and then we were in an alley, a mounted man was alongside, and Jassa was heaving me almost bodily up behind. I clasped the rider round the waist, turning to look back, and there was Bibi Kalil's gate, and a cowled black figure was cutting with a sabre at someone within and then sprinting after us.

  The alley seemed to be full of horsemen—in fact there were only four, including Jassa. Voices were yelling behind us, feet were pounding, a torch was flaring in the gateway—and then we were round the corner.

  "Gently does the trick," says Jassa, at my elbow. "They ain't horsed. You doing well there, lieutenant? Right, jemadar, walk-march—trot!" He urged his beast ahead, and we swung in behind him.

  However he came there, he was a complete hand, our Philadelphia sawbones. Left to myself I'd have been off full tilt, blundering heaven knows where and coming to grief like as not. Jassa knew just where he wanted to go, and what time he had in hand; we trotted round a corner into a little court which I recognised as the one in which Goolab and I had opened the batting, and lo! there were two more riders on post, and to my astonishment I recognised them, and my rescuers, as black robes of Alick Gardner's. Well, no doubt all would be made clear presently. They led the way up a long lane, and at the end Jassa reined in to look back—by George, there were torches entering the lane at a run, a bare fifty paces behind, and suddenly all my pain and fear and bewilderment vanished in overwhelming blind rage (as often hap-pens when I've been terrified to death, and reckon I'm safe). By God, I'd make 'em pay, the vile, torturing scoundrels; there was a pistol in my rider's saddle holster, and I plucked it out, bellowing, while Jassa demanded to know what the devil I was about.

  "I'm going to kill one of those murdering bastards!" I roared. "Lay hands on me, you poxy vermin, you! Broil me on a damned gridiron, will you? Take that, you sons-of-bitches!" I blazed away, and had the satisfaction of seeing the torches scatter, though none of them went down.

  "Say, won't that larn 'em, though!" cries Jassa. "You feel better now, lieutenant? You're sure—don't want to go back and burn their barn down? Fine—achha, jemadar, jildi jao!"

  Which we did, at a steady canter in the broader ways, and at a walk in the twisting alleys, and as we rode I learned from Jassa what had brought my saviours at the eleventh hour.

  He, it seemed, had been keeping a closer eye on me for weeks than ever I knew. He had spotted me leaving the Fort, and trailed me, wondering, to the French Soldiers' canteen and Bibi Kalil's house. Skulking in the shadows, he'd seen me received by the widow, and having a foul mind, supposed I was bedded for the night. Fortunately, he'd skulked farther, spied the Khalsa bigwigs downstairs, and realised that there was villainy afoot. Deciding that he could do nothing alone, he'd legged it for the Fort, and made straight for Gardner.

  "I figured you were treed, and needed help in numbers. Alick was the only hope—he may not cotton to me, exactly, but when I told him how you were under the same roof as Maka Khan and the Akali, didn't he jump, just? Didn't come himself, though—bad policy for him to be seen crossing the Khalsa, don't you know? But he told off the jemadar and a detail, and we hit the leather. I scouted the house, but no sign of you. A couple of sentries perambulating in the garden, though, and then I heard you hollering from the back of the house. I took a quiet slant that way, and marked the window your noise seemed to be coming from—say, you're a right audible soldier, ain't you? After that, two of the jemadar's fellows smoothed out the sentries, and took station while he and I slipped along to your window—and here you are. They're cap-able, Alick's boys, no error. But what took you into that bear's den—and what in Creation were they doing to you?"

  I didn't tell him. The events of the night were still a hideous jumble in my mind, and reaction had me in its grip. I was shaking so hard I barely kept the saddle, I wanted to vomit, and my ankle was throbbing with pain. Once again, when all seemed well, Lahore had become a nightmare, with enemies all about—the only bright side was that there seemed no lack of worthy souls eager to pluck me out of the soup. God bless America, if you like—they'd turned up trumps again, at no small risk to them-selves, for if the Khalsa got wind that Gardner was aiding enemies of the state, he'd be in queer street.

  "Don't you fret about Alick!" snorts Jassa. "He's got more lives'n a cat, and more nuts on the fire than you can count. He's Dalip's man, and Jeendan's man, and best chums with Broadfoot, and he's Goolab Singh's agent in Lahore, and —"

  Goolab Singh! That was another who took an uncommon interest in Flashy's welfare. I was beginning to feel like a fives pill being thrashed about in a four-hand fifteen-up, with my seams split and the twine showing. Well, to the devil with it, I'd had enough. I reined in and demanded of Jassa where we were going; I'd been half aware that we were threading our way through the alleys near the south wall, and once or twice we'd skirted under the wall itself; we'd passed the great Looharree Gate and the Halfmoon Battery and were abreast of the Shah Alumee, which meant we were holding east, and were no nearer the Fort than when we'd started. Not that I minded that.

  "For I'm not going back there, I can tell you! Broadfoot can peddle his pack and be damned! This bloody place ain't safe —"

  "That's what Gardner reckoned," says Jassa. "He thinks you should make tracks for British territory. You know the war's started? Yes, sir, the Khalsa's over the river at half a dozen places between Harree-ke-puttan and Ferozepore—eighty thousand horse, foot, and guns on a thirty-mile front. God knows where Gough is—halfway to Delhi with his tail between his legs if you believe the bazaar, but I doubt it."

  Seven thousand at Ferozepore, I was thinking. Well, Littler was done for—Wheeler, too, with his pitiful five thousand at Ludhiana … unless Gough had managed to reinforce. I'd had no sure word for three weeks, but
it didn't seem possible that he could have concentrated strongly enough to resist the overwhelming Sikh tide that was pouring over the Sutlej. I thought of the vast horde I'd seen on Maian Mir, the massed battalions of foot, the endless squadrons of horse, those superb guns … and of Gough frustrated at every turn by that ass Hardinge, our sepoys on the edge of desertion or mutiny, our piecemeal garrisons strung along the frontier and down the Meerut road. Now it had come, like a hammer-blow, and we'd been caught napping, as usual. Well, Gough had better have God on his side, for if he didn't … farewell, India.

  Which mattered rather less to me than the fact that I was a fugitive with a game ankle in the heart of the enemy camp. So much for Broadfoot's idiot notions—I'd be safe in Lahore during hostilities, indeed! A fat lot of protection Jeendan could give me now, with the Khalsa wise to her treachery; it would be a tulwar, not a diamond, that would be decorating her pretty navel shortly.

  "Moochee Gate," says Jassa, and over the low hovels I saw the towers ahead and to our right. We were approaching a broad street leading down to the gate, and the mouth of the alley was crowded with bystanders, even at that time of night, all craning to see; a band of music was playing a spirited march, there was the steady tramp of feet, and down the avenue to the gate came three regiments of Khalsa infantry—stalwart musketeers in white with black cross-belts, their pieces at the shoulder, bayonets fixed; then Dogra light infantry in green, with white trousers, muskets at the trail; a battalion of spearmen in white flowing robes, their sashes bristling with pistols, their broad turbans wound round steel caps surmounted by green plumes. They swung along with a fierce purpose that made my heart sink, the flaring cressets on the wall glittering on that forest of steel as it passed under the arch, the girls showering them with petals as they passed, the chi-cos striding alongside, shrilling with delight—half Lahore seemed to have left its bed that night to see the troops march away to join their comrades on the river.