Flashman

They were in a ragged square, back to back on the hill-top, and even as we watched I saw the glitter of bayonets as they levelled their pieces, and a thin volley crashed out across the valley. The Afghans yelled louder than ever, and gave back, but then they surged in again, the Khyber knives rising and falling as they tried to hack their way into the square. Another volley, and they gave back yet again, and I saw one of the figures on the summit flourishing a sword as though in defiance. He looked for all the world like a toy soldier, and then I noticed a strange thing; he seemed to be wearing a long red, white and blue weskit beneath his posh teen.

I must have said something of this to Hudson, for he shouted out:

"By God, it's the colours! Damn the black bastards, give it to 'em, 44th!

Give 'em hot hell!"

"Shut up, you fool!" says I, although I needn't have worried, for we were too far away to be heard. But Hudson stopped shouting, and contented himself with swearing and whispering encouragement to the doomed men on the hilltop.

For they were doomed. Even as we watched the grey and black robed figures came charging up the slope again, from all sides, another volley cracked out, and then the wave had broken over them. It boiled and eddied on the hilltop, the knives and bayonets flashing, and then it rolled slowly back with one great, wailing yell of triumph, and on the hilltop there were no figures standing up. Of the man with the colours round his waist there was no sign; all that remained was a confusion of vague shapes scattered among the rocks, and a haze of powder smoke that presently drifted off into nothing on the frosty air.

Somehow I knew that I had just seen the end of the army of Afghanistan. Of course one would have expected the 44th to be the last remnant, as the only British regiment in the force, but even without that I would have known. This was what Elphy Bey's fine army of more than fourteen thousand had come to, in just a week. There might be a few prisoners; there would be no other survivors. I was wrong, as it turned out; one man, Dr Brydon, cut his way out and brought the news to Jallalabad, but there was no way of knowing this at the time.

There is a painting of the scene at Gandamack,(20) which I saw a few years ago, and it is like enough the real thing as I remember it. No doubt it is very fine and stirs martial thoughts in the glory-blown asses who look at it; my only thought when I saw it was, "You poor bloody fools!" and I said so, to the disgust of other viewers. But I was there, you see, shivering with horror as I watched, unlike the good Londoners, who let the roughnecks and jailbirds keep their empire for them; they are good enough for getting cut up at the Gandamacks which fools like Elphy and McNaghten bring 'em to, and no great loss to anybody.

Sergeant Hudson was staring down, with tears running over his cheeks. I believe, given a chance, he would have gone charging down to join them. All he would say was, "Bastards! Black bastards!" until I gave him the right about, pretty sharp, and we hurried away on our path, letting the rocks shut off the hellish sight behind us.

I was shaken by what we had seen, and to get as far away from Gandamack as we could was the thought that drove me on that day at a dangerous pace. We clattered along the rocky paths, and our ponies scrambled down the scree in such breakneck style that I go cold to look back on it. Only darkness stopped us, and we were well on our way next morning before I would rein in. By this time we had left the snow-line far behind us, and feeling the sun again raised my spirits once more.

It was as certain as anything could be that we were the only survivors of the army of Afghanistan still moving eastward in good order. This was a satisfactory thought. Why shouldn't I be frank about it? Now that the army was finished, there was little chance of meeting hostile tribesmen farther east than the point where it had died. So we were safe, and to come safe out of a disaster is more gratifying than to come safe out of none at all. Of course, it was a pity about the others, but wouldn't they have felt the same gratification in my place? There is great pleasure in catastrophe that doesn't touch you, and anyone who says there isn't is a liar. Haven't you seen it in the face of a bearer of bad news, and heard it in the unctuous phrases at the church gate after a funeral?

So I reflected, and felt mighty cheery, and perhaps this made me careless. At any rate, moralists will say I was well served for my thoughts, as our ponies trotted onwards, for what interrupted them was the sudden discovery that I was looking along the barrel of a jezzail into the face of one of the biggest, ugliest Afridi badmashes I have ever seen. He seemed to grow out of the rocks like a genie, and a dozen other ruffians with him, springing out to seize our bridles and sword-arms before we could say galloping Jesus.

"Khabadar, sahib!" says the big jezzailchi, grinning all over his villainous face, as though I needed telling to be careful. "Get down," he added, and his mates hauled me from the saddle and held me fast.

"What's this?" says I, trying to brave it out. "We are friends, on our way to Jallalabad. What do you want with us?"

"The British are everyone's friends," grins he, "and they are all going to Jallalabad - or were." And his crew cackled with laughter.

"You will come with us," and he nodded to my captors, who had a thong round my wrists and tied to my own stirrup in a trice.

There was no chance of putting up a fight, even if all the heart had not gone out of me. For a moment I had hoped they were just broken men of the hills, who might have robbed us and let us go, but they were intent on holding us prisoner. For ransom? That was the best I could hope for. I played a desperate card.

"I am Flashman huzoor," cries I, "the friend of Akbar Khan Sirdar. He'll have the heart and guts of anyone who harms Bloody Lance!"

"Allah protect us!" says the jezzailchi, who was a humorist in his way, like all his lousy kind. "Guard him close, Raisul, or he'll stick you on his little spear, as he did to the Gilzais at Mogala." He hopped into my saddle and grinned down at me. "You can fight, Bloody Lance. Can you walk also?" And he set the pony off at a brisk trot, making me run alongside, and shouting obscene encouragement. They had served Hudson the same way, and we had no choice but to stumble along, jeered at by our ragged conquerors.

It was too much; to have come so far, to have endured so much, to have escaped so often, to be so close to safety -and now this. I wept and swore, called my captor every filthy name I could lay tongue to, in Pushtu, Urdu, English, and Persian, pleaded with him to let us go in return for a promise of great payment, threatened him with the vengeance of Akbar Khan, beseeched him to take us to the Sirdar, struggled like a furious child to break my bonds -and he only roared so hard with laughter that he almost fell from the saddle.

"Say it again!" he cried. "How many lakhs of rupees? Ya'llah, I shall be made for life. What was that? Noseless bastard offspring of a leprous ape and a gutter-descended sow? What a description! Note it, Raisul, my brother, for I have no head for education, and I wish to remember. Continue, Flashman huzoor; share the riches of your spirit with me!"

So he mocked me, but he hardly slackened pace, and soon I could neither swear nor plead nor do anything but stumble blindly on. My wrists were burning with pain, and there was a leaden fear in my stomach; I had no idea where we were going, and even after darkness fell the brutes still kept going, until Hudson and I dropped from sheer fatigue. Then we rested a few hours, but at dawn they had us up again, and we staggered on through the hot, hellish day, resting only when we were too exhausted to continue, and then being forced up and dragged onwards at the stirrups.

It was just before dusk when we halted for the last time, at one of those rock forts that are dotted on half the hill-sides of Afghanistan. I had a vision of a gateway, with a rickety old gate swung back on rusty hinges, and beyond it an earth courtyard. They did not take us so far, but cut the thongs that held us and shoved us through a narrow door in the gatehouse wall. There were steps leading down, and a most fearsome stink coming up, but they pushed us headlong down and we stumbled on to a floor of mixed straw and filth and God knows what other debris. The door slammed shut, and there we were, too worn out to move.

I suppose we lay there for hours, groaning with pain and exhaustion, before they came back, bringing us a bowl of food and a chatti of water. We were famished, and fell on it like pigs, while the big jezzailchi watched us and made funny remarks. I ignored him, and presently he left us. There was just light enough from a high grating in one wall for us to make out our surroundings, so we took stock of the cellar, or dungeon, whichever it was.

I have been in a great variety of jails in my life, from Mexico (where they are truly abominable) to Australia, America, Russia, and dear old England, and I never saw a good one yet. That little Afghan hole was not too bad, all round, but it seemed dreadful at the time.

There were bare walls, pretty high, and a roof lost in shadow, and in the middle of the filthy floor two very broad flat stones, like a platform, that I didn't like the look of. For above them, swinging down from the ceiling, was a tangle of rusty chains, and at the sight of them a chill stabbed through me, and I thought of hooded black figures, and the Inquisition, and torture chambers that I had gloated over in forbidden books at school. It's very different when you are actually in one.

I told Hudson what I thought of them, and he just grunted and spat and then begged my pardon. I told him not to be such a damned fool, that we were in a frightful fix, and he could stop behaving as though we were on Horse Guards. I've never been one to stand on ceremony anywhere, and here it was just ridiculous. But it took Hudson time to get used to talking to an officer, and at first he just listened to me, nodding and saying, "Yes, sir," and "Very good, sir,"

until I swore with exasperation.

For I was in a funk, of course, and poured out my fears to him. I didn't know why they were holding us, although ransom seemed most likely. There was a chance Akbar might get to hear of our plight, which was what I hoped -but at the back of my mind was the awful thought that Gul Shah might hear of us just as easily. Hudson, of course, didn't understand why I should be so horrified at this, until I told him the whole story - about Narreeman, and how Akbar had rescued me from Gul's snakes in Kabul. Heavens, how I must have talked, but when I tell you that we were in the cellar a week together, without ever so much as seeing beyond the door, and myself in a sweat of anxiety about what our fate might be, you will understand that I needed an audience. Your real coward always does, and the worse his fear the more he blabs. I babbled some-thing sickening in that dungeon to Hudson. Of course, I didn't tell him the story as I've told it here - the Bloody Lance incident, for example, I related in a creditable light. But I convinced him at least that we had every reason to fear if Gul Shah got wind that we were in Afghan hands.

It was difficult to tell how he took it. Mostly he just listened, staring at the wall, but from time to time he would look at me very steady, as though he was weighing me up. At first I hardly noticed this, any more than one does notice a common trooper looking at one, but after a while it made me feel uncomfortable, and I told him pretty sharp to leave off. If he was scared at the fix we were in, he didn't show it, and I admit there were one or two occasions when I felt a sneaking regard for him; he didn't complain, and he was very civil in his speech, and would ask me very respectfully to translate what the Afridi guards said when they brought us our food - for he had no Pushtu or Hindustani.

This was little enough, and we had no way of telling how true it was. The big jezzailchi was the most talkative, . but mostly he would only recall how badly the British had been cut up on the march from Kabul, so that not a single man had been left alive, and how there would soon be no feringhees left in Afghanistan at all. Akbar Khan was advancing on Jallalabad, he said, and would put the whole garrison to the sword, and then they would sweep down through the Khyber and drive us out of India in a great jehad that would establish the True Faith from Peshawar to the sea. And so on, all bloody wind and water, as I told Hudson, but he considered it very thoughtfully and said he didn't know how long Sale could hold out in Jallalabad if they laid proper siege to it.

I stared at this, an ordinary trooper passing opinion on a general's business.

"What do you know about it?" says I.

"Not much, sir," says he. "But with respect to General Elphinstone, I'm powerful glad it's General Sale that's laying in Jallalabad and not him."

"Is that so, and be damned to you," says I. "And what's your opinion of General Elphinstone, if you please?"

"I'd rather not say, sir," says he. And then he looked at me with those grey eyes. "He wasn't with the 44th at Gandamack, was he, sir?

Nor a lot of the officers wasn't. Where were they, sir?"

"How should I know? And what concern is that of yours?"

He sat looking down for a moment. "None at all, sir," says he at last. "Beg pardon for asking."

"I should damned well think so," says I. "Anyway, whatever you think of Elphy Bey, you can rely on General Sale to give Akbar the right about turn if he shows his nose at Jallalabad. And I wish to God we were there, too, and away from this hellish hole, and these stinking Afridis. Whether it's ransom or not, they don't mean us any good, I can tell you." I didn't think much of Hudson's questions about Gandamack and Elphy at the time; if I had done I would have been as much amused as angry, for it was like a foreign language to me then. But I understand it now, although half our modern generals don't. They think their men are a different species still - fortunately a lot of 'em are, but not in the way the generals think.

Well, another week went by in that infernal cell, and both Hudson and I were pretty foul by now and well bearded, for they gave us nothing to wash or shave with. My anxieties diminished a little, as they will when nothing happens, but it was damned boring with nothing to do but talk to Hudson, for we had little in common except horses. He didn't even seem interested in women. We talked occasionally of escape, but there was little chance of that, for there was no way out except through the door, which stood at the top of a narrow flight of steps, and when the Afridis brought our food one of them always stood at the head of them covering us with a huge blunderbuss.

I wasn't in any great hurry to risk a peppering from it, and when Hudson talked of trying a rush I ordered him to drop it. Where would we have got to afterwards, anyway? We didn't even know where we were, except that it couldn't" be far to the Kabul road. But it wasn't worth the risk, I said - if I had known what was in store for us I'd have chanced that blunderbuss and a hundred like it, but I didn't. God, I'll never forget it. Never.

It was late one afternoon, and we were lying on the straw dozing, when we heard the clatter of hooves at the gate outside, and a jumble of voices approaching the door of the cell. Hudson jumped up, and I came up on my elbow, my heart in my mouth, wondering who it might be. It might be a messenger bringing news of ransom - for I believed the Afridis must be trying that game - and then the bolts scraped back and the door burst open, and a tall man strode in to the head of the steps. I couldn't see his face at first, but then an Afridi bustled past him with a flaring torch which he stuck in a crevice in the wall, and its light fell on the newcomer's face. If it had been the Devil in person I'd have been better pleased, for it was a face I had seen in nightmares, and I couldn't believe it was true, the face of Gul Shah.

His eye lit on me, and he shouted with joy and clapped his hands.

I believe I cried out in horror, and scrambled back against the wall.

"Flashman!" he cried, and came half down the steps like a big cat, glaring at me with a hellish grin. "Now, God is very good. When I heard the news I could not believe it, but it is true. And it was just by chance - aye, by the merest chance, that word reached me you were taken." He sucked in his breath, never taking his glittering eyes from me.

I couldn't speak; the man struck me dumb with cold terror. Then he laughed again, and the hairs rose on my neck at the sound of it.

"And here there is no Akbar Khan to be importunate," says he.

He signed to the Afridis and pointed at Hudson. "Take that one away above and watch him." And as two of them rushed down on Hudson and dragged him struggling up the steps, Gul Shah came down into the room and with his whip struck the hanging shackles a blow that set them rattling. "Set him" - and he points at me - "here. We have much to talk about."

I cried out as they flung themselves on me, and struggled helplessly, but they got my arms over my head and set a shackle on each wrist, so that I was strung up like a rabbit on a poulterer's stall.

Then Gul dismissed them and came to stand in front of me, tapping his boot with his whip and gloating over me.

"The wolf comes once to the trap," says he at last. "But you have come twice. I swear by God you will not wriggle out of it this time. You cheated me once in Kabul, by a miracle, and killed my dwarf by foul play. Not again, Flashman. And I am glad - aye, glad it fell out so, for here I have time to deal with you at my leisure, you filthy dog!" And with a snarl he struck me backhanded across the face.

The blow loosened my tongue, for I cried out:

"Don't, for God's sake! What have I done? Didn't I pay for it with your bloody snakes?"

"Pay?" sneers he. "You haven't begun to pay. Do you want to know how you will pay, Flashman?"

I didn't, so I didn't answer, and he turned and shouted something towards the door. It opened, and someone came in, standing in the shadows.

"It was my great regret, last time, that I must be so hurried in disposing of you," says Gul Shah. "I think I told you then, did I not, that I would have wished the woman you defiled to share in your departure? By great good fortune I was at Mogala when the word of your capture came, so I have been able to repair the omission. Come,"

says he to the figure at the top of the steps, and the woman Narreeman advanced slowly into the light.

I knew it was she, although she was cloaked from head to foot and had the lower half of her face shrouded in a flimsy veil: I remembered the eyes, like a snake's, that had glared up at me the night I took her in Mogala. They were staring at me again, and I found them more terrifying than all Gul's threats. She didn't make a sound, but glided down the steps to his side.

"You do not greet the lady?" says Gul. "You will, you will. But of course, she is a mere slut of a dancing girl, although she is the wife of a prince of the Gilzai!" He spat the words into my face.

"Wife?" I croaked. "I never knew . . . believe me, sir, I never knew.

If I ..."

"It was not so then," says Gul. "It is so now - aye, though she has been fouled by a beast like you. She is my wife and my woman none the less. It only remains to wipe out the dishonour."

"Oh, Christ, please listen to me," says I. "I swear I meant no harm . . . how was I to know she was precious to you? I didn't mean to harm her, I swear I didn't! I'll do anything, anything you wish, pay anything you like ..."

Gul leered at me, nodding, while the woman's basilisk eyes stared at me. "You will pay indeed. No doubt you have heard that our Afghan women are delicately skilled in collecting payment? I see from your face that you have. Narreeman is very eager to test that skill. She has vivid recollections of a night at Mogala; vivid recollections of your pride . . ."He leaned forward till his face was almost touching mine.

"Lest she forget it, she wishes to take certain things from you, very slowly and cunningly, for a remembrance. Is it not just? You had your pleasure from her pain; she will have hers from yours. It will take much longer, and be infinitely more artistic ... a woman's touch." He laughed. "That will be for a beginning."

I didn't believe it; it was impossible, outrageous, horrible; it was enough to strike me mad just listening to it.

"You can't!" I shrieked. "No, no, no, you can't! Please, please, don't let her touch me! It was a mistake! I didn't know, I didn't mean to hurt her!" I yelled and pleaded with him, and he crowed with delight and mocked me, while she never moved a muscle, but still stared into my face.

"This will be better than I had hoped," says he. "After-wards, we may have you flayed, or perhaps roasted over hot embers. Or we may take out your eyes and remove your fingers and toes, and set you to some slave-work in Mogala. Yes, that will be best, for you can pray daily for death and never find it. Is the price too high for your night's pleasure, Flashman?"

I was trying to close my ears to this horror, trying not to believe it, and babbling to him to spare me. He listened, grinning, and then turned to the woman and said:

"But business before pleasure. My dove, we will let him think of the joyous reunion that you two will have - let him wait for - how long?

He must wonder about that, I think. In the meantime, there is a more urgent matter." He turned back to me. "It will not abate your suffering in the slightest if you tell me what I wish to know; but I think you will tell me, anyway. Since your pathetic and cowardly army was slaughtered in the passes, the Sirdar's army has advanced towards Jallalabad. But we have no word of Nott and his troops at Kandahar. It is suggested that they have orders - to march on Kabul? On Jallalabad? We require to know. Well?"

It took a moment for me to clear my mind of the hellish pictures he had put there, and understand his question.

"I don't know," I said. "I swear to God I don't know."

"Liar," said Gul Shah. "You were an aide to Elfistan; you must know."

"I don't! I swear I don't!" I shouted. "I can't tell you what I don't know, can I?"

"I am sure you can," says he, and motioning Narreeman aside he flung off his poshteen and stood in his shirt and pyjamy trousers, skull-cap on head and whip in hand. He reached out and wrenched my shirt from my back.

I screamed as he swung the whip, and leaped as it struck me.

God, I never knew such pain; it was like a fiery razor. He laughed and swung again and again. It was unbearable, searing bars of burning agony across my shoulders, my head swam and I shrieked and tried to hurl myself away, but the chains held me and the whip seemed to be striking into my very vitals.

"Stop!" I remember shrieking, and over and over again. "Stop!"

He stepped back, grinning, but all I could do was mouth and mumble at him that I knew nothing. He lifted the whip again; I couldn't face it.

"No!" I screamed. "Not me! Hudson knows! The sergeant who was with me - I'm sure he knows! He told me he knew!" It was all I could think of to stop that hellish lashing.

"The havildar knows, but not the officer?" says Gul. "No, Flashman, not even in the British army. I think you are lying." And the fiend set about me again, until I must have fainted from the pain, for when I came to my senses, with my back raging like a furnace, he was picking his robe from the floor.

"You have convinced me," says he, sneering. "Such a coward as I know you to be would have told me all he knew at the first stroke. You are not brave, Flashman." But you will be even less brave soon."

He signed to Narreeman, and she followed him up the steps. At the door he paused to mock me again.

"Think on what I have promised you," says he. "I hope you will not go mad too soon after we begin."

The door slammed shut, and I was left sagging in my chains, sobbing and retching. But the pain on my back was as nothing to the terror in my mind. It wasn't possible, I kept saying, they can't do it ...

but I knew they would. For some awful reason, which I cannot define even now, a recollection came to me of how I had tortured others - oh, puny, feeble little tortures like roasting fags at school; I babbled aloud how sorry I was for tormenting them, and prayed that I might be spared, and remembered how old Arnold had once said in a sermon:

"Call on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."

God, how I called; I roared like a bull calf, and got nothing back, not even echoes. I would do it again, too, in the same position, for all that I don't believe in God and never have. But I blubbered like an infant, calling on Christ to save me, swearing to reform and crying gentle Jesus meek and mild over and over again. It's a great thing, prayer. Nobody answers, but at least it stops you from thinking.

Suddenly I was aware of people moving into the cell, and shrieked in fear, closing my eyes, but no one touched me, and when I opened them there was Hudson again, chained up beside me with his arms in the air, staring at me in horror.

"My God, sir," says he, "what have the devils done to you?"

"They're torturing me to death!" I roared. "Oh, dear saviour!" And I must have babbled on, for when I stopped he was praying, too, the Lord's Prayer, I think, very quietly to himself. We were the holiest jail in Afghanistan that night.

There was no question of sleep; even if my mind had not been full of the horrors ahead, I could not have rested with my arms fettered wide above my head. Every time I sagged the rusty manacles tore cruelly at my wrists, and I would have to right myself with my legs aching from standing. My back was smarting, and I moaned a good deal; Hudson did his best to cheer me up with the kind of drivel about not being done yet and keeping one's head up which is supposed to raise the spirits in time of trouble - it has never done a damned thing for mine. All I could think of was that woman's hating eyes coming closer, and Gul smiling savagely behind her, and the knife pricking my skin and then slicing - oh, Jesus, I couldn't bear it, I would go raving mad. I said so, at the top of my voice, and Hudson says:

"Come on, sir, we ain't dead yet."

"You bloody idiot!" I yelled at him. "What do you know, you clod?

They aren't going to cut your bloody pecker off! I tell you I'll have to die first! I must!"

"They haven't done it yet, sir," says he. "Nor they won't. While I was up yonder I see that half them Afridis have gone off - to join up wi'

the others at Jallalabad, I reckon - an' there ain't above half a dozen left, besides your friend and the woman. If I can just ..."

I didn't heed him; I was too done up to think of anything except what they would do to me - when? The night wore away, and except for one visit at noon next day, when the jezzailchi came to give us some water and food, no one came near us before evening. They left us in our chains, hanging like stuck pigs, and my legs seemed to be on fire one minute and numb the next. I heard Hudson muttering to himself from time to time, as though he was working at something, but I never minded; then, just when the light was beginning to fade, I heard him gasp with pain, and exclaim: "Done it, by God!"

I turned to look, and my heart bounded like a stag. He was standing with only his left arm still up in the shackle; the right one, bloody to the elbow, was hanging at his side.

He shook his head, fiercely, and I was silent. He worked his right hand and arm for a moment, and then reached up to the other shackle; the wrist-pieces were kept apart by a bar, but the fastening of the manacles was just a simple bolt. He worked at it for a moment, and it fell open. He was free.

He came over to me, an ear cocked towards the door. "If I let you loose, sir, can you stand?" I didn't know if I could, but I nodded, and two minutes later I was crouched on the floor, groaning with the pain in my shoulders and legs that had been cramped in one position so long. He massaged my joints, and swore softly over the weals that Gul Shah's whip had left.

"Filthy nigger bastard," says he. "Look'ee, sir, we've got to look sharp they don't take us unawares. When they come in we've got to be standing up, with the chains on our wrists, pretendin' we're still trussed up, like."

"What then?" says I.

"Why, sir, they'll think we're helpless, won't they? We can take

'em by surprise."

"Much good that'll do," says I. "You say there's half a dozen apart from Gul Shah."

"They won't all come," says he. "For God's sake, sir, it's our only hope."

I didn't think it was much of one, and said so. Hudson said, well, it was better than being sliced up by that Afghan tart, wasn't it, begging my pardon, sir, and I couldn't disagree. But I guessed we would only get slaughtered for our pains, at best.

"Well," says he, "we can make a bloody good fight of it. We can die like Englishmen, 'stead of like dogs."

"What difference does it make whether you die like an Englishman or like a bloody Eskimo?" says I, and he just stared at me and then went on chafing my arms. Pretty soon I could stand and move as well as ever, but we took care to stay close by the chains, and it was as well we did. Suddenly there was a shuffling at the door, and we barely had time to take our positions, hands up on the shackles, when it was thrown back.

"Leave it to me, sir," whispered Hudson, and then drooped in his fetters. I did the same, letting my head hang but watching the door out of the corner of my eye.

There were three of them, and my heart sank. First came Gul Shah, with the big jezzailchi carrying a torch, and behind was the smaller figure of Narreeman. All my terrors came rushing back as they descended the steps.

"It is time, Flashman,", says Gul Shah, sticking his sneering face up to mine. "Wake up, you dog, and prepare for your last love play."

And he laughed and struck me across the face. I staggered, but held right to the chains. Hudson never moved a muscle.

"Now, my precious," says Gul to Narreeman. "He is here, and he is yours." She came forward to his side, and the big jezzailchi, having placed the torch, came on her other side, grinning like a satyr. He stood about a yard in front of Hudson, but his eyes were fixed on me.

The woman Narreeman had no veil now; she was turbanned and cloaked, and her face was like stone. Then she smiled, and it was like a tigress showing its teeth; she hissed something to Gul Shah, and held out her hand towards the dagger at his belt.

Fear had me gripped, or I would have let go the chains and rushed blindly past them. Gul put his hand on his hilt, and slowly, for my benefit, began to slide the blade from its sheath.

Hudson struck. His right hand shot down to the big jezzailchi's waist band, there was a gleam of steel, a gasp, and then a hideous shriek as Hudson drove the man's own dagger to the hilt in his belly.

As the fellow dropped Hudson tried to spring at Gul Shah, but he struck against Narreeman and they both went sprawling. Gul leaped back, snatching at his sabre, and I let go my chains and threw myself out of harm's way. Gul swore and aimed a cut at me, but he was wild and hit the swinging chains; in that moment Hudson had scrambled to the dying jezzailchi, grabbed the sabre from his waist, and was bounding up the steps to the door. For a moment I thought he was deserting me, but when he reached the doorway it was to slam the door to and shoot the inside bolt. Then he turned, sabre in hand, and Gul, who had sprung to pursue him, halted at, the foot of the steps. For a moment the four ? of us were stock still, and then Gul bawls out:

"Mahmud! Shadman! Idderao, juldi!"

"Watch the woman!" sings out Hudson, and I saw Narreeman in the act of snatching up the bloody dagger he had dropped. She was still on hands and knees, and with one step I caught her a flying kick in the middle that flung her breathless against the wall. Out of the tail of my eye I saw Hudson spring down the steps, sabre whirling, and then I had thrown myself at Narreeman, catching her a blow on the head as she tried to rise, and grabbing her wrists. As the steel clashed behind me, and the door re-echoed to pounding from outside, I dragged her arms behind her back and held them, twisting for all I was worth.

"You bitch!" I roared at her, and wrenched so that she screamed and went down, pinned beneath me. I held her so, got my knee on the small of her back, and looked round for Hudson.

He and Gul were going at it like Trojans in the middle of the cell.

Thank God they teach good swordsmanship in the cavalry,(21) even to lancers, for Gul was as active as a panther, his point and edge whirling everywhere while he shouted oaths and threats and bawled to his rascals to break in. The door was too stout for them, though. Hudson fought coolly, as if he was in the gymnasium, guarding every thrust and sweep, then shuffling in and lunging so that Gul had to leap back to save his skin. I stayed where I was, for I daren't leave that hell-cat for a second, and if I had Gul might have had an instant to take a swipe at me.

Suddenly he rushed Hudson, slashing right and left, and the lancer broke ground; that was what Gul wanted, and he sprang for the steps, intent on getting to the door. Hudson was right on his heels, though, and Gul had to swing round halfway up the steps to avoid being run through from behind. He swerved outside Hudson's thrust, slipped on the steps, and for a moment they were locked, half-lying on the stairway. Gul was up like a rubber ball, swinging up his sabre for a cut at Hudson, who was caught all a-sprawl; the sabre flashed down, ringing on the stone and striking sparks, and the force of the blow made Gul overbalance. For a moment he was crouched over Hudson, and before he could recover I saw a glittering point rise out of the centre of his back; he gave a choked, awful cry, straightened up, his head hanging back, and crashed down the steps to the cell floor. He lay there writhing, mouth gaping and eyes glaring; then he was still.

Hudson scrambled down the steps, his sabre red to the forte. I let out a yell of triumph.

"Bravo, Hudson! Bravo, shabash!"

He took one look at Gul, dropped his sabre, and to my amazement began to pull the dead man out of the middle of the floor to the shadowy side of the cellar. He laid him flat on his back, then hurried over to me.

"Make her fast, sir," says he, and while I trussed Narreeman's arms with the jezzailchi's belt, Hudson stuffed a gag into her mouth.

We dropped her on the straw, and Hudson says:

"Only once chance, sir. Take the sabre - the clean one -and stand guard over that dead bugger. Put your point to his throat, an' when I open the door, tell 'em you'll slaughter their chief unless they do as we say. They won't see he's a corpse, in this light, an' the bint's silenced.

Now, sir, quick."

There could be no argument; the door was creaking under the Afridis' hammering. I ran to Gul's side, snatching up his sabre on the way, and stood astride him, the point on his breast. Hudson took one look round, leaped up the steps, whipped back the bolt, and regained the cell floor in a bound. The door swung open, and in surged the lads of the village.

"Halt!" roars I. "Another move, and I'll send Gul Shah to make his peace with Shaitan! Back, you sons of owls and pigs!"

They bore up sharp, five or six of them, hairy brutes, at the head of the steps. When they saw Gul apparently help-less beneath me one lets out an oath and another a wail. "Not another inch!" I shouted. "Or I'll have his life!" They stayed where they were, gaping, but for the life of me I didn't know what to do next. Hudson spoke up, urgently.

"Horses, sir. We're right by the gate; tell 'em to bring two - no, three ponies to the door, and then all get back to the other side o' the yard."

I bawled the order at them, sweating in case they didn't do it, but they did. I suppose I looked desperate enough for anything, stripped to the waist, matted and bearded, and glaring like a lunatic. It was fear, not rage, but they weren't to know that. There was a great jabbering among them, and then they scrambled back through the doorway; I heard them yelling and swearing out in the dark, and then a sound that was like music - the clatter of ponies' hooves.

"Tell 'em to keep outside, sir, an' well away," says Hudson, and I roared it out with a will. Hudson ran to Narreeman, swung her up into his arms with an effort, and set her feet on the steps.

"Walk, damn you," says he, and grabbing up his own sabre he pushed her up the steps, the point at her back. He disappeared through the doorway, there was a pause, and then he shouts:

"Right, sir. Come out quick, like, an' bolt the door."

I never obeyed an order more gladly. I left Gul Shah staring up sightlessly, and raced up the steps, pulling the door to behind me. It was only as I looked round the courtyard, at Hudson astride one pony, with Narreeman bound and writhing across the other, at the little group of Afghans across the yard, fingering their knives and muttering

- only then did I realise that we had left our hostage. But Hudson was there, as usual.

"Tell 'em I'll spill the bint's guts all over the yard if they stir a finger. Ask 'em how their master'll like that - an' what he'll do to 'em afterwards!" And he dropped his point over Narreeman's body.

It held them, even without my repetition of the threat, and I was able to scramble aboard the third pony. The gate was before us; Hudson grabbed the bridle of Narreeman's mount, we drove in our heels, and in a clatter of hooves we were out and away, under a glittering moon, down the path that wound from the fort's little hill to the open plain.

When we reached the level I glanced back; Hudson was not far behind, although he was having difficulty with Narreeman, for he had to hold her across the saddle of the third beast. Behind, the ugly shape of the fort was outlined against the sky, but there was no sign of pursuit.

When he came up with me he said:

"I reckon down yonder we'll strike the Kabul road, sir. We crossed it on the way in. Think we can chance it, sir?"

I was so trembling with reaction and excitement that I didn't care. Of course we should have stayed off the road, but I was for anything that would get that damned cellar far behind us, so I nodded and we rode on. With luck there would be no one moving on the road at night, and any-way, only on the road could we hope to get our bearings.

We reached it before very long, and the stars showed us the eastern way. We were a good three miles from the fort now, and it seemed, if the Afridis had come out in pursuit, that they had lost us. Hudson asked me what we should do with Narreeman.

At this I came to my senses again; as I thought back to what she had been preparing to do my gorge rose, and all I wanted to do was tear her apart.

"Give her to me," says I, dropping my reins and taking a grip on the sabre hilt.

He had one hand on her, sliding her out of the saddle; she slipped down on to the ground and wriggled up on her knees, her hands tied behind her, the gag across her mouth. She was glaring like a mad thing.

As I moved my pony round, Hudson suddenly reined into my way.

"Hold on, sir," says he. "What are you about?" "I'm going to cut that bitch to pieces," says I. "Out of my way."

"Here, now, sir," says he. "You can't do that." "Can't I, by God?"

"Not while I'm here, sir," says he, very quiet. I didn't credit my ears at first.

"It won't do, sir," says he. "She's a woman. You're not yourself, sir, what wi' the floggin' they gave you, an' all. We'll let her be, sir; cut her hands free an' let her go."

I started to rage at him, for a mutinous dog, but he just sat there, not to be moved, shaking his head. So in the end I gave in - it occurred to me that what he could do to Gul Shah he might easily do to me - and he jumped down and loosed her hands. She flew at him, but he tripped her up and remounted.

"Sorry, miss," says he, "but you don't deserve better, you know."

She lay there, gasping and staring hate at us, a proper handsome hell-cat. It was a pity there wasn't time and leisure, or I'd have served her as I had once before, for I was feeling more my old self again. But to linger would have been madness, so I contented myself with a few slashes at her with my long bridle, and had the satisfaction of catching her a ringing cut over the backside that sent her scurrying for the rocks. Then we turned east and drove on down the road towards India.

It was bitter cold, and I was half-naked, but there was a poshteen over the saddle, and I wrapped up in it. Hudson had another, and covered his tunic and breeches with it; between us we looked a proper pair of Bashi-Bazouks, but for Hudson's fair hair and beard.

We camped before dawn, in a little gully, but not for long, for when the sun came up I recognised that we were in the country just west of Futtehabad, which is a bare twenty miles from Jallalabad itself. I wouldn't feel safe till we had its walls around us, so we pushed on hard, only leaving the road when we saw dust-clouds ahead of us that indicated other travellers.

We took to the hills for the rest of the day, skirting Futtehabad, and lay up by night, for we were both all in. In the morning we pressed on, but kept away from the road, for when we took a peep down at it, there were Afghans thick on it, all travelling east. There was more movement in the hills now, but no one minded a pair of riders, for Hudson shrouded his head in a rag to cover his blond hair, and I always looked like a Khyberi badmash anyway. But as we drew nearer to Jallalabad I got more and more anxious, for by what we had seen on the road, and the camps we saw dotted about in the gullies, I knew we must be moving along with an army. This was Akbar's host, pushing on to Jallalabad, and presently in the distance we heard the rattle of musketry, and knew that the siege must be already under way.

Well, this was a pretty fix; only in Jallalabad was there safety, but there was an Afghan army between us and it.

With what we had been through I was desperate; for a moment I thought of by-passing Jallalabad and making for India, but that meant going through the Khyber, and with Hudson looking as much like an Afghan as a Berkshire hog we could never have made it. I cursed myself for having picked a companion with fair hair and Somerset complexion, but how could I have foreseen this? There was nothing for it but to push on and see what the chances were of get-ting into Jallalabad and of avoiding detection on the way.

It was a damned risky go, for soon we came into proper encampments, with Afghans as thick as fleas everywhere, and Hudson nearly suffocating inside the turban rag which hooded his whole head.

Once we were hailed by a party of Pathans, and I answered with my heart in my mouth; they seemed interested in us, and in my panic all I could think to do was start singing - that old Pathan song that goes: There's a girl across the river With a bottom like a peach -And alas, I cannot swim.

They laughed and let us alone, but I thanked God they weren't nearer than twenty yards, or they might have realised that I wasn't as Afghan as I looked at a distance.

It couldn't have lasted long. I was sure that in another minute someone would have seen through our disguise, but then the ground fell away before us, and we were sit-ting our ponies at the top of a slope running down to the level, and on the far side of it, maybe two miles away, was Jallalabad, with the Kabul river at its back.

It was a scene to remember. On the long ridge on either side of us there were Afghans lining the rocks and singing out to each other, or squatting round their fires; down in the plain there were thousands of them, grouped any old way except near Jallalabad, where they formed a great half-moon line facing the city. There were troops of cavalry milling about, and I saw guns and wagons among the besiegers. From the front of the half-moon you could see little prickles of fire and hear the pop-pop of musketry, and farther forward, almost up to the defences, there were scores of little sangars dotted about, with white-robed figures lying behind them. It was a real siege, no question, and as I looked at that tremendous host between us and safety my heart sank: we could never get through it.

Mind you, the siege didn't seem to be troubling Jallalabad-bad unduly. Even as we watched the popping increased, and we saw a swarm of figures running hell-for-leather back from before the earthworks - Jallalabad isn't a big place, and had no proper walls, but the sappers had got some good-looking ramparts out before the town.

At this the Afghans on the heights on either side of us set up a great jeering yell, as though to say they could have done better than their retreating fellows. From the scatter of figures lying in front of the earthworks it looked as though the besiegers had been taking a pounding.

Much good that was to us, but then Hudson sidled his pony up to mine, and says, "There's our way in, sir." I followed his glance, and saw below and to our right, about a mile from the foot of the slope and maybe as far from the city, a little fort on an eminence, with the Union Jack fluttering over its gate, and flashes of musketry from its walls.

Some of the Afghans were paying attention to it, but not many; it was cut off from the main fortifications by Afghan outposts on the plain, but they obviously weren't caring much about it just now. We watched as a little cloud of Afghan horsemen swooped down towards it and then sheered off again from the firing on its walls.

"If we ride down slow, sir," says Hudson, "to where them niggers are lying round sniping, we could make a dash for it."

And get shot from our saddles for our pains, thinks I; no thank

'ee. But I had barely had the thought when someone hails us from the rocks on our left, and without a word we put our ponies down the slope.

He bawled after us, but we kept going, and then we hit the level and were riding forward through the Afghans who were lying spread out among the rocks watching the little fort. The horsemen who had been attacking were wheeling about to our left, yelling and cursing, and one or two of the snipers shouted to us as we passed them by, but we kept on, and then there was just the last line of snipers and beyond it the little fort, three-quarters of a mile off, on top of its little hill, with its flag flying.

"Now, sir," snaps Hudson, and we dug in our heels and went like fury, flying past the last sangars. The Afghans there yelled out in surprise, wondering what the devil we were at, and we just put our heads down and made for the fort gate. I heard more shouting behind us, and thundering hooves, and then shots were whistling above us -

from the fort, dammit. Oh Jesus, thinks I, they'll shoot us for Afghans, and we can't stop now with the horsemen behind us!

Hudson flung off his poshteen, and yelled, rising in his stirrups.

At the sight of the blue lancer tunic and breeches there was a tremendous yelling behind, but the firing from the fort stopped, and now it was just a race between us and the Afghans. Our ponies were about used up, but we put them to the hill at top speed, and as the walls drew near I saw the gate open. I whooped and rode for it, with Hudson at my heels, and then we were through, and I was slipping off the saddle into the arms of a man with enormous ginger whiskers and a sergeant's stripes on his arm. "Damme!" he roars. "Who the hell are ye?" "Lieutenant Flashman," says I, "of General Elphinstone's army,"

and his mouth opened like a cod's. "Where's your commanding officer?"

"Blow me!" says he. "I'm the commanding officer, so far's there is one. Sergeant Wells, Bombay Grenadiers, sir. But we thought you was all dead ..."

It took us a little time to convince him, and to learn what was happening. While his sepoys cracked away from the parapet overhead at the disappointed Afghans, he took us into the little tower, sat us on a bench, gave us pancakes and water - which was all they had - and told us how the Afghans had been besieging Jallalabad three days now, in ever-increasing force, and his own little detachment had been cut off in this outlying fort for that time.

"It's a main good place for them to mount guns, d'ye see, sir, if they could run us out," says he. "So Cap'n Little - 'e's back o' the tower

'ere, wi' is 'ead stove in by a bullet, sir - said as we 'ad to "old out no matter what. To the last man, sergeant,' 'e sez, an' then 'e died - that was yesterday evenin", sir. They'd bin 'ittin' us pretty 'ard, sir, an' 'ave bin since. I dunno as we can last out much longer, 'cos the water's runnin' low, an' they damn near got over the wall last night, sir."

"But can't they relieve you from Jallalabad, for God's sake?" says I.

"I reckon they got their 'ands full, sir," says he, shaking his head.

"They can 'old out there long enough; ol' Bob Sale - Gen'l Sale, I should say - ain't worried about that. But makin' a sortie to relieve us 'ud be another matter."

"Oh, Christ," says I, "out of the frying pan into the fire!"

He stared at me, but I was past caring. There seemed no end to it; there was some evil genie pursuing me through Afghanistan, and he meant to get me in the end. To have come so far, yet again, and to be dragged down within sight of safety! There was a palliasse in the corner of the tower, and I just went and threw myself down on it; my back was still burning, I was half-dead with fatigue, I was trapped in this hellish fort -I swore and wept with my face in the straw, careless of what they thought.

I heard them muttering, Hudson and the sergeant, and the latter's voice saying: "Well, strike me, 'e's a rum one!" and they must have gone outside, for I heard them no more. I lay there, and must have fallen asleep out of sheer exhaustion, for when I opened my eyes again it was dark in the room. I could hear the sepoys outside, talking; but I didn't go out; I got a drink from the pannikin on the table and lay down again and slept until morning.

Some of you will hold up your hands in horror that a Queen's officer could behave like this, and before his soldiers, too. To which I would reply that I do not claim, as I've said already, to be anything but a coward and a scoundrel, and I've never play-acted when it seemed point-less. It seemed pointless now. Possibly I was a little delirious in those days, from shock - Afghanistan, you'll admit, hadn't been exactly a Bank Holiday outing for me - but as I lay in that tower, listening to the occasional crackle of firing outside, and the yelling of the besiegers, I ceased to care at all for appearances. Let them think what they would; we were all surely going to be cut up, and what do good opinions matter to a corpse?

However, appearances still mattered to Sergeant Hudson. It was he who woke me after that first night. He looked pouch-eyed and filthy as he leaned over me, his tunic all torn and his hair tumbling into his eyes. "How are you, sir?" says he.

"Damnable," says I. "My back's on fire. I ain't going to be much use for a while, I fear, Hudson."

"Well, sir," says he, "let's have a look at your back." I turned over, groaning, and he looked at it.

"Not too bad," says he. "Skin's only broke here an' there, and not mortifying. For the rest, it's just welts." He was silent a moment.

"Thing is, sir, we need every musket we can raise. The sangars are closer this morning, an' the niggers are massing. Looks like a proper battle, sir."

"Sorry, Hudson," says I, rather weak. "I would if I could, you know. But whatever my back looks like, I can't do much just yet. I think there's something broken inside."

He stood looking down at me. "Yes, sir," says he at length. "I think there is." And then he just turned and walked out.

I felt myself go hot all over as I realised what he meant by that; for a moment I almost jumped off the palliasse and ran after him. But I didn't, for at that moment there was a sudden yelling on the parapets, and the musketry crashed out, and Sergeant Wells was bawling orders; but above all I heard the blood-curdling shrieks of the Ghazis, and I knew they were rushing the wall. It was all too much for me; I lay shuddering on the straw while the sounds of fighting raged outside. It seemed to go on forever, and every moment I expected to hear the Afghan war-cries in the yard, hear the rush of feet, and see the bearded horrors dashing in the door with their Khyber knives. I could only hope to God that they would finish me off quickly.

As I say, I may genuinely have had a shock, or even a fever, at this time, although I doubt it; I believe it was just simple fear that was almost sending me out of my mind. At all events, I have no particular idea of how long that fight lasted, or when it stopped and the next assault began, or even how many days and nights passed by. I don't recall eating and drinking, although I suppose I must have, or even answering the calls of nature. That, incidentally, is one effect that fear does not have on me; I do not wet or foul myself. It has been a near thing once or twice, I admit. At Balaclava, for example, when I rode with the Light Brigade - you know how George Paget smoked a cigar all the way to the guns? Well, my bowels moved all the way to the guns, but there was nothing inside me but wind, since I hadn't eaten for days.

But in that fort, at the very end of my tether, I seemed to lose my sense of time; delirium funkens had me in its grip. I know Hudson came in to me, I know he talked, but I can't remember what he said, except for a few isolated passages, and those I think were mostly towards the end. I do remember him telling me Wells had been killed, and myself replying, "That's bad luck, by God, is he much hurt?" For the rest, my waking moments were less clear than my dreams, and those were vivid enough. I was back in the cell, with Gul Shah and Narreeman, and Gul was laughing at me, and changing into Bernier with his pistol raised, and then into Elphy Bey saying, "We shall have to cut off all your essentials, Flashman, I'm afraid there is no help for it. I shall send a note to Sir William." And Narreeman's eyes grew greater and greater, until I saw them in Elspeth's face - Elspeth smiling and very beautiful, but fading in her turn to become Arnold, who was threatening to flog me for not knowing my construe.

"Unhappy boy, I wash my hands of you; you must leave my pit of snakes and dwarves this very day." And he reached out and took me by the shoulder; his eyes were burning like coals and his fingers bit into my shoulder so that I cried out and tried to pull them free, and found myself scrabbling at Hudson's fingers as he knelt beside my couch.

"Sir," says he, "you've got to get up." "What time is it?" says I. "And what d'ye want? Leave me, can't you, leave me be - I'm ill, damn you."

"It's no go, sir. You can't stay here any longer. You must stand up and come outside with me."

I told him to go to the devil, and he suddenly lunged forward and seized me by the shoulders.

"Get up!" he snarled at me, and I realised his face was far more haggard than I'd ever seen it, drawn and fierce like an animal's. "Get up! You're a Queen's officer, by God, an' you'll behave like one! You're not ill, Mr Precious Flash-man, you're plain white-livered! That's all your sickness! But you'll get up an' look like a man, even if you aren't one!" And he started to drag me from the straw.

I struck out at him, calling him a mutinous dog, and telling him I'd have him flogged through the army for his insolence, but he stuck his face into mine and hissed:

"Oh, no, you won't! Not now nor never. Because you an' me ain't going back where there's drum-heads an' floggings or anything, d'ye see? We're stuck here, an' we'll die here, because there's no way out!

We're done for, lieutenant; this garrison is finished! We haven't got nothing to do, except die!"

"Damn you, then, what d'ye want me for? Go and die in your own way, and leave me to die in mine." I tried to push him away.

"Oh, no sir. It ain't as easy as that. I'm all that's left to fight this fort, me and a score of broken-down sepoys -and you. And we're going to fight it, Mr Flashman. To the last inch, d'ye hear?"

"You bloody fight it!" I shouted at him. "You're so con-founded brave! You're a bloody soldier! All right, I'm not! I'm afraid, damn you, and I can't fight any more - I don't care if the Afghans take the fort and Jallalabad and the whole of India!" The tears were running down my cheeks as I said it. "Now go to hell and let me alone!"

He knelt there, staring at me, and pushed the hair out of his eyes. "I know it," he said. "I half-knew it from the minute we left Kabul, an' I was near sure back in that cellar, the way you carried on.

But I was double certain sure when you wanted to kill that poor Afghan bitch - men don't do that. But I couldn't ever say so. You're an officer and a gentleman, as they say. But it doesn't matter now, sir, does it? We're both going, so I can speak my mind."

"Well, I hope you enjoy doing it," says I. "You'll kill a lot of Afghans that way."

"Maybe I will, sir," says he. "But I need you to help. And you will help, for I'm going to stick out here as long as I can."

"You poor ninny," says I. "What good'll that do, if they kill you in the end?"

"This much good, that I'll stop those niggers mounting guns on this hill. They'll never take Jallalabad while we hold out - and every hour gives General Sale a better chance. That's what I'm going to do, sir."

One meets them, of course. I've known hundreds. Give them a chance to do what they call their duty, let them see a hope of martyrdom - they'll fight their way on to the cross and bawl for the man with the hammer and nails.

"My best wishes," says I. "I'm not stopping you."

"Yes, you will, sir, if I let you. I need you - there's twenty sepoys out there who'll fight all the better if there's an officer to sick 'em on.

They don't know what you are -not yet." He stood, up. "Anyway, I'm not arguing, sir. You'll get up - now. Or I'll drag you out and I'll cut you to bits with a sabre, a piece at a time." His face was dreadful to see just then, those grey eyes in that drawn, worn skin. He meant it; not a doubt of it. "So just get up, sir, will you?" I got up, of course. I was well enough in body; my sick-ness was purely moral. I went outside with him, into a courtyard with half a dozen or so sepoy bodies laid in a row with blankets over them near the gate; the living ones were up on the parapet. They looked round as Hudson and I went up the rickety ladder to the roof, their black faces tired and listless under their shakos, their skinny black hands and feet ridiculous protruding from red uniform jackets and white trousers.

The roof of the tower was no more than ten feet square, and just a little higher than the walls surrounding it; they were no more than twenty yards long - the place was less a fort than a toy castle. From the tower roof I could see Jallalabad, a mile away, apparently unchanged, except that the Afghan lines seemed to be closer. On our own front they were certainly nearer than they had been, and Hudson hustled me quickly under cover before the Afghans could get a bead on us.

We were watching them, a great crowd of horsemen and hillmen on foot, milling about out of musket shot, when Hudson pointed out to me a couple of cannon that had been rolled up on their right flank.

They had been there since dawn, he said, and he expected they would start up as soon as powder and shot had been assembled. We were just speculating when this might be - or rather, Hudson was, for I wasn't talking to him - when there was a great roar from the horsemen, and they started to roll forward towards our fort. Hudson thrust me down the ladder, across the yard, and up to the parapet; a musket was shoved into my hands, and I was staring through an embrasure at the whole mob surging at us. I saw then that the ground outside the walls was thick with dead; before the gate they were piled up like fish on a slab.

The sight was sickening, no doubt, but not so sickening as the spectacle of those devils whooping in towards the fort. I reckoned there were about forty of them, with footmen trailing along behind, all waving their knives and yelling. Hudson shouted to hold fire, and the sepoys behaved as though they'd been through this before - as they had. When the chargers were within fifty yards, and not showing any great enthusiasm, it seemed to me, Hudson bawled "Fire!"; the volley crashed out, and about four went down, which was good shooting. At this they wavered, but still came on, and the sepoys grabbed up their spare muskets, rolling their eyes at Hudson. He roars "Fire!" again, and another half dozen were toppled, at which the whole lot sheered off.

"There they go!" yells Hudson. "Reload, handily now! By God,"

says he, "if they had the bottom for one good charge they could bowl us over like ninepins!"

This had occurred to me. There were hundreds of Afghans out yonder, and barely twenty men in the fort; with a determined rush they could have carried the walls, and once inside they would have chewed us up in five minutes. But I gathered that this had been their style all along - half-hearted charges that had been beaten off, and only one or two that had reached the fort itself. They had lost heavily; I believe that they didn't much care about our little place, really, but would rather have been with their friends attacking Jallalabad, where the loot was. Sensible fellows.

But it was not going to last; I could see that. For all that our casualties had not been heavy, the sepoys were about done; there was only a little flour left for food, and barely a pannikin of water a man in the big butt down by the gate; Hudson watched it like a hawk.

There were three more charges that day, or maybe four, and none more successful than the first. We banged away and they cleared out, and my mind began to go dizzy again. I slumped beside my embrasure, with a poshteen draped over me to try to keep off the hellish heat; flies buzzed everywhere, and the sepoy on my right moaning to himself incessantly. By night it was as bad; the cold came, so bitter that I sobbed to myself at the pain of it; there was a huge moon, lighting everything in brilliant silver, but even when it set the dark wasn't sufficient to enable the Afghans to creep up on us, thank God. There were a few alarms and shots, but that was all. Dawn came, and the snipers began to crack away at us; we kept down beneath the parapet, and the shots chipped flakes off the tower behind us.

I must have been dozing, for I was shaken awake by an almighty crash and a thunderous explosion; there was a great cloud of dust swirling about, and as it cleared I saw that a corner of the tower had gone, and a heap of rubble was lying in the courtyard.

"The cannon!" shouts Hudson. "They're using the cannon!"

Out across the plain, there it was, sure enough - one of their big guns, directed at the fort, with a mob of Afghans jostling round it. Five minutes it took them to reload, and then the place shook as if an earthquake had hit it, and there was a gaping hole in the wall beside the gate. The sepoys began to wail, and Hudson roared at them to stand fast; there was another terrific crash, and then another; the air was full of flying dust and stones; a section of the parapet along from me gave way, and a screaming sepoy went down with it. I launched myself for the ladder, slipped, and rolled off into the debris, and something must have struck my head, for the next thing I knew I was standing up, not knowing where I was, looking at a ruined wall beyond which there was an empty plain with figures running towards me.

They were a long way away, and it took me a moment to realise that they were Afghans; they were charging, sure enough, and then I heard a musket crack, and there at the ruined wall was Hudson, fumbling with a ramrod and swearing, the side of his face caked with blood. He saw me, and bawled:

"Come on! Come on! Lend a hand, man!"

I walked towards him, my feet weighing a ton apiece; a red-coated figure was moving in the shadow of the wall, beside the gate; it was one of the sepoys. Curiously, the wall had been shot in on either side, but the gate was still standing, with the flag trailing at its staff on top, and the cords hanging down. As the shrieks of the Ghazis drew nearer, a thought entered my head, and I stumbled over towards the gate and laid hold of the cords.

"Give in," I said, and tugged at the cords. "Give in, and make 'em stop!" I pulled at the cords again, and then there was another appalling crash, the gates opened as though a giant hand had whirled them inwards, the arch above them fell, and the flagstaff with it; the choking dust swirled up, and I blundered through it, my hands out to grab the colours that were now within reach.

I knew quite clearly what I wanted to do; I would gather up the flag and surrender it to the Afghans, and then they would let us alone; Hudson, even in that hellish din and horror, must have guessed somehow what was in my mind, for I saw him crawling towards the colours, too. Or perhaps he was trying to save them, I don't know. But he didn't manage it; another round shot ploughed into the rubble before me, and the dirty, blue-clad figure was suddenly swept away like a rag doll into an engulfing cloud of dust and masonry. I staggered forward over the stones, touched the flagstaff and fell on my knees; the cloth of the flag was within reach, and I caught hold of it and pulled it up from the rubbish. From somewhere there came a volley of musketry, and I thought, well, this is the finish, and not half as bad as I thought it would be, but bad enough for all that, and God, I don't want to die yet.

There was a thunder like a waterfall, and things were falling on me; a horrible pain went through my right leg, and I heard the shriek of a Ghazi almost in my car. I was lying face down, clutching at the flag, mumbling, "Here, take the bloody thing; I don't want it. Please take it; I give in." The musketry crashed again, the roaring noise grew louder, and then sight and hearing died.

There are a few wakenings in your life that you would wish to last forever, they are so blissful. Too often you wake in a bewilderment, and then remember the bad news you went to sleep on, but now and then you open your eyes in the knowledge that all is well and safe and right, and there is nothing to do but lie there with eyes gently shut, enjoying every delicious moment.

I knew it was all fine when I felt the touch of sheets beneath my chin, and a soft pillow beneath my head. I was in a British bed, somewhere, and the rustling sound above me was a punkah fan. Even when I moved, and a sudden anguish stabbed through my right leg, I wasn't dismayed, for I guessed at once that it was only broken, and there was still a foot to waggle at the end of it.

How I had got there I didn't care. Obviously I had been rescued at the last minute from the fort, wounded but otherwise whole, and brought to safety. Far away I could hear the tiny popping of muskets, but here there was peace, and I lay marvelling at my own luck, revelling in my present situation, and not even bothering to open my eyes, I was so contented.

When I did, it was to find myself in a pleasant, whitewashed room, with the sun slanting through wooden shutters, and a punkah wallah dozing against the wall, automatically twitching the string of his big fan. I turned my head, and found it was heavily bandaged; I was conscious that it throbbed at the back, but even that didn't discourage me. I had got clear away, from pursuing Afghans and relentless enemies and beastly-minded women and idiot commanders -

I was snug in bed, and anyone who expected any more from Flashy -

well, let him wish he might get it!

I stirred again, and my leg hurt, and I swore, at which the punkah wallah jumps up, squeaking, and ran from the room crying that I was awake. Presently there was a bustling, and in came a little spectacled man with a bald head and a large canvas jacket, followed by two or three Indian attendants.

"Awake at last!" says he. "Well, well, this is gratifying. Don't move, sir. Still, still. You've a broken leg here and a broken head there, let's have peace between 'em, what?" He beamed at me, took my pulse, looked at my tongue, told me his name was Bucket, pulled his nose, and said I was very well, considering. "Fractured femur, sir - thigh bone; nasty, but uncomplicated. Few months and you'll be bounding over the jumps again. But not yet - no; had a nasty time of it, eh? Ugly cuts about your back - ne'er mind, we'll hear about that later. Now Abdul," says he, "run and tell Major Havelock the patient's awake, juldi jao. Pray don't move, sir. What's that? - yes, a little drink. Better?

Head still, that's right - nothing to do for the present but lie properly still."

He prattled on, but I wasn't heeding him. Oddly enough, it was the sight of the blue coat beneath the canvas jacket that put me in mind of Hudson - what had become of him? My last recollection was of seeing him hit and probably killed. But was he dead? He had better be, for my sake - for the memory of our latter relations was all too vivid in my mind, and it suddenly rushed in on me that if Hudson was alive, and talked, I was done for. He could swear to my cowardice, if he wanted to - would he dare? Would he be believed? He could prove nothing, but if he was known as a steady man - and I was sure he would be - he might well be listened to. It would mean my ruin, my disgrace - and while I hadn't cared a button for these things when I believed death was closing in on me and everyone else in that fort, well, I cared most damnably for them now that I was safe again.

Oh, God, says I to myself, let him be dead; the sepoys, if any survived, don't know, and wouldn't talk if they did, or be believed. But Hudson - he must be dead!

Charitable thoughts, you'll say. Aye, it's a hard world, and while bastards like Hudson have their uses, they can be most inconvenient, too. I wanted him to be dead, then, as much as I ever wanted anything.

My suspense must have been written on my face, for the little doctor began to babble soothingly to me, and then the door opened and in walked Sale, his big, kind, stupid face all beaming as red as his coat, and behind him a tall, flinty-faced, pulpit-looking man; there were others peeping round the lintel as Sale strode forward and plumped down into a chair beside the bed, leaning forward to take my hand in his own. He held it gently in his big paw and gazed at me like a cow in milk.

"My boy!" says he, almost in a whisper. "My brave boy!"

Hullo, thinks I, this don't sound too bad at all. But I had to find out, and quickly.

"Sir," says I - and to my astonishment my voice came out in a hoarse quaver, it had been so long unused, I suppose - "sir, how is Sergeant Hudson?"

Sale gave a grunt as though he had been kicked, bowed his head, and then looked at the doctor and the gravedigger fellow with him.

They both looked damned solemn.

"His first words," says the little doctor, hauling out a handkerchief and snorting into it.

Sale shook his head sadly, and looked back at me.

"My boy," says he, "it grieves me deeply to tell you that your comrade - Sergeant Hudson - is dead. He did not survive the last onslaught on Piper's Fort." He paused, staring at me compassionately, and then says: "He died -like a true soldier."

"'And Nicanor lay dead in his harness'," says the gravedigger chap, taking a look at the ceiling. "He died in the fullness of his duty, and was not found wanting."

"Thank God," says I. "God help him, I mean - God rest him, that is." Luckily my voice was so weak that they couldn't hear more than a mumble. I looked downcast, and Sale squeezed my hand.

"I think I know," says he, "what his comradeship must have meant to you. We understand, you see, that you must have come together from the ruins of General Elphinstone's army, and we can guess at the hardships - oh, my boy, they are written all too plainly on your body - that you must have endured together. I would have spared you this news until you were stronger ..." He made a gesture and brushed his eye.

"No, sir," says I, speaking a little stronger, "I wanted to know now."

"It is what I would have expected of you," says he, wringing my hand. "My boy, what can I say? It is a soldier's lot. We must console ourselves with the thought that we would as gladly sacrifice ourselves for our comrades as they do for us. And we do not forget them."

'"Non omnis moriar'," says the gravedigger. "Such men do not wholly die."

"Amen," says the little doctor, sniffing. Really, all they needed was an organ and a church choir.

"But we must not disturb you too soon," says Sale. "You need rest." He got up. "Take it in the knowledge that your troubles are over, and that you have done your duty as few men would have done it. Aye, or could have done it. I shall come again as soon as I may; in the meantime, let me say what I came to tell you: that I rejoice from my heart to see you so far recovered, for your delivery is the finest thing that has come to us in all this dark catalogue of disasters. God bless you, my boy. Come, gentlemen."

He stumped out, with the others following; the gravedigger bowed solemnly and the little doctor ducked his head and shooed the nigger attendants before him. And I was left not only relieved but amazed by what Sale had said - oh, the everyday compliments of people like Elphy Bey are one thing, but this was Sale, after all, the renowned Fighting Bob, whose courage was a byword. And he had said my deliverance was "the finest thing", and that I had done my duty as few could have done it - why, he had talked as though I was a hero, to be reverenced with that astonishing pussy-footing worship which, for some reason, my century extended to its idols. They treated us (I can say "us") as though we were too delicate to handle normally, like old Chinese pots.

Well, I had thought, when I woke up, that I was safe and in credit, but Sale's visit made me realise that there was more to it than I had imagined. I didn't find out what, though, until the following day, when Sale came back again with the gravedigger at his elbow - he was Major Havelock, by the way, a Bible-moth of the deepest dye, and a great name now.(22) Old Bob was in great spirits, and entertained me with the latest news, which was that Jallalabad was holding out splendidly, that a relief force under Pollock was on its way, and that it didn't matter anyway, because we had the measure of the Afghans and would probably sally out and break the siege whenever we felt like it.

Havelock looked a bit sour at this; I gathered he didn't hold a high opinion of Sale - nobody did, apart from admiring his bravery - and was none too sure of his capabilities when it came to raising sieges.

"And this," says Bob, beaming with enthusiasm, "this we owe to you. Aye, and to the gallant band who held that little fort against an army. My word, Havelock, did I not say to you at the time that there never was a grander thing? It may not pay for all, to be sure; the catastrophe of Afghanistan will call forth universal horror in England, but at least we have redeemed something. We hold Jallalabad-bad, and we'll drive this rabble of Akbar's from our gates -aye, and be back in Kabul before the year is out. And when we do -" and he swung round on me again "- it will be because a handful of sepoys, led by an English gentleman, defied a great army alone, and to the bitter end."

He was so worked up by his own eloquence that he had to go into the corner and gulp for a little, while Havelock nodded solemnly, regarding me.

"It had the flavour of heroism," says he, "and heaven knows there has been little enough of that to date. They will make much of it at home."

Well, I'm not often at a nonplus (except when there is physical danger, of course), but this left me speechless. Heroism? Well, if they cared to think so, let 'em; I wouldn't contradict them - and it struck me that if I did, if I were idiot enough to let them know the truth, as I am writing it now, they would simply have thought me crazy as a result of my wounds. God alone knew what I was supposed to have done that was so brave, but doubtless I should learn in time. All I could see was that somehow appearances were heavily on my side - and who needs more than that? Give me the shadow every time, and you can keep the substance - it's a principle I've followed all my life, and it works if you know how to act on it.

What was obvious was that nothing must now happen to spoil Sale's lovely dream for him; it would have been cruel to the old fellow.

So I addressed myself to the task at once.

"We did our duty, sir," says I, looking uncomfortable, and Havelock nodded again, while old Bob came back to the bed.

"And I have done mine," says he, fumbling in his pocket. "For I conceived it no less, in sending my latest despatch to Lord Ellenborough - who now commands in Delhi - to include an account of your action. I'll read it," says he, "because it speaks more clearly than I can at present, and will enable you to see how others judged your conduct."

He cleared his throat, and began.

"Humph - let's see - Afghans in strength - demands that I surrender - aye, aye - sharp engagement by Dennie - ah, here we have it. 'I had despatched a strong guard under Captain Little to Piper's Fort, commanding an eminence some way from the city, where I feared the enemy might establish gun positions. When the siege began, Piper's Fort was totally cut off from us, and received the full force of the enemy's assault. In what manner it resisted I cannot say in detail, for of its garrison only five now survive, four of them being sepoys, and the other an English officer who is yet unconscious with his wounds, but will, as I trust, soon recover. How he came in the fort I know not, for he was not of the original garrison, but on the staff of General Elphinstone. His name is Flashman, and it is probable that he and Dr Brydon are the only survivors of the army so cruelly destroyed at Jugdulluk and Gandamack. I can only assume that he escaped the final massacre, and so reached Piper's Fort after the siege began."

He looked at me. "You shall correct me, my boy, if I go wrong, but it is right you should know what I have told his excellency."

"You're very kind sir," says I, humbly. Too kind by a damned sight, if you only knew.

"'The siege continued slowly on our own front, as I have already informed you," says Sale, reading on, "'but the violence of the assaults on Piper's Fort was unabated. Captain Little was slain, with his sergeant, but the garrison fought on with the utmost resolution.

Lieutenant Flash-man, as I learn from one of the sepoys, was in a case more suited to a hospital than to a battlefield, for he had evidently been prisoner of the Afghans, who had flogged him most shockingly, so that he was unable to stand, and must lie in the fort tower. His companion, Sergeant Hudson, assisted most gallantly in the defence, until Lieutenant Flashman, despite his wounds, returned to the action.

"'Charge after charge was resisted, and the enemy most bloodily repulsed. To us in Jallalabad, this un-expected check to the Sirdar's advance was an advantage beyond price. It may well have been decisive.'"

Well, Hudson, thinks I, that was what you wanted, and you got it, for all the good it did you. Meanwhile, Sale laid off for a minute, took a wipe at his eye, and started in again, trying not to quaver. I suspect he was enjoying his emotion.

"'But there was no way in which we could succour Piper's Fort at this time, and, the enemy bringing forward cannon, the walls were breached in several places. I had now resolved on a sortie, to do what could be done for our comrades, and Colonel Dennie advanced to their relief. In a sharp engagement over the very ruins of the fort - for it had been pounded almost to pieces by the guns - the Afghans were entirely routed, and we were able to make good the position and withdraw the survivors of the garrison which had held it so faithfully and well.'"

I thought the old fool was going to weep, but he took a great pull at himself and proceeded:

'"With what grief do I write that of these there remained only five? The gallant Hudson was slain, and at first it seemed that no European was left alive. Then Lieutenant ? Flashman was found, wounded and unconscious, by the ruins of the gate, where he had taken his final stand in defence not only of the fort, but of his country's honour. For he was found, in the last extremity, with the colours clutched to his broken body, his face to the foemen, defiant even unto death.'"

Hallelujah and good-night, sweet prince, says I to myself, what a shame I hadn't a broken sword and a ring of my slain around me. But I thought too soon.

"The bodies of his enemies lay before him,"' says old Bob, "'At first it was thought he was dead, but to our great joy it was discovered that the flame of life still flickered. I cannot think that there was ever a nobler deed than this, and I only wish that our countrymen at home might have seen it, and learned with what selfless devotion their honour is protected even at the ends of the earth. It was heroic! and I trust that Lieutenant Flashman's name will be remembered in every home in England. Whatever may be said of the disasters that have befallen us here, his valour is testimony that the spirit of our young manhood is no whit less ardent than that of their predecessors who, in Pitt's words, saved Europe by their example.'"

Well, thinks I, if that's how we won the battle of Waterloo, thank God the French don't know or we shall have them at us again. Who ever heard such humbug? But it was glorious to listen to, mind you, and I glowed at the thought of it. This was fame! I didn't understand, then, how the news of Kabul and Gandamack would make England shudder, and how that vastly conceited and indignant public would clutch at any straw that might heal their national pride and enable them to repeat the old and nonsensical lie that one Englishman is worth twenty foreigners. But I could still guess what effect Sale's report would have on a new Governor-General, and through him on the government and country, especially by contrast with the accounts of the inglorious shambles by Elphy and McNaghten that must now be on their way home.

All I must do was be modest and manly and wait for the laurel wreaths.

Sale had shoved his copy of the letter back in his pocket, and was looking at me all moist and admiring. Havelock was stern; I guessed he thought Sale was laying it on a deal too thick, but he couldn't say so. (I gathered later that .the defence of Piper's Fort wasn't quite so important to Jallalabad as Fighting Bob imagined; it was his own hesitation that made him hold off so long attacking Akbar, and in fact he might have relieved us sooner.)

It was up to me, so I looked Sale in the eye, man to man.

"You've done us great credit, sir," says I. "Thank'ee. For the garrison, it's no less then they deserve, but for myself, well you make it sound ... a bit too much like St George and the Dragon, if you don't mind my saying so. I just. . . well, pitched in with the rest, sir, that was all."

Even Havelock smiled at this plain, manly talk, and Sale nearly burst with pride and said it was the grandest thing, by heaven, and the whole garrison was full of it. Then he sobered down, and asked me to tell him how I had come to Piper's Fort, and what had happened to separate Hudson and me from the army. Elphy was still in Akbar's hands, along with Shelton and Mackenzie and the married folk, but for the rest they had thought them all wiped out except Brydon, who had come galloping in alone with a broken sabre trailing from his wrist.

With Havelock's eye on me I kept it brief and truthful. We had come adrift from the army in the fighting about Jugdulluk, I said, had escaped by inches through the gullies with Ghazis pursuing us, and had tried to rejoin the army at Gandamack, but had only been in time to see it slaughtered. I described the scene accurately, with old Bob groaning and damning and Havelock frowning like a stone idol, and then told how we had been captured and imprisoned by Afridis. They had flogged me to make me give information about the Kandahar force and other matters, but thank God I had told them nothing ("bravo!"

says old Bob), and had managed to slip my fetters the same night. I had released Hudson and together we had cut our way past our captors and escaped.

I said nothing of Narreeman - least said soonest mended - but concluded with an account of how we had skulked through the Afghan army, and then ridden into the fort hell-for-leather.

There I left it, and old Bob exclaimed again about courage and endurance, but what reassured me most was that Havelock, without a word, shook my right hand in both of his. I can say that I told it well -

off-hand, but not over-modest; just a blunt soldier reporting to his seniors. It calls for nice judgement, this art of bragging; you must be plain, but not too plain, and you must smile only rarely. Letting them guess more than you say is the kernel of it, and looking uncomfortable when they compliment you.

They spread the tale, of course, and in the next few days I don't suppose there was an officer of the garrison who didn't come in to shake hands and congratulate me on coming through safe. George Broadfoot was among the first, all red whiskers and spectacles, beaming and telling me what a devil of a fellow I was - and this from Broadfoot, mind you, whom the Afghans called a brave among braves.

To have people like him and Mayne and Fighting Bob making much of me - well, it was first-rate, I can tell you, and my conscience didn't trouble me a bit. Why should it? I didn't ask for their golden opinions; I just didn't contradict 'em. Who would?

It was altogether a splendid few weeks. While I lay nursing my leg, the siege of Jallalabad petered out, and Sale finally made another sortie that scattered the Afghan army to the winds. A few days after that Pollock arrived with the relief force from Peshawar, and the garrison band piped them in amongst universal cheering. Of course, I was on hand; they carried me out on to the verandah, and I saw Pollock march in. Later that evening Sale brought him to see me, and expounded my gallantries once again, to my great embarrassment, of course. Pollock swore it was tremendous, and vowed to avenge me when he marched on to Kabul; Sale was going with him to clear the passes, brink Akbar to book, if possible, and release the prisoners -who included Lady Sale - should they still be alive.

"You can stay here and take your well-earned repose while your leg mends," says Fighting Bob, at which I decided a scowl and a mutter might be appropriate.

"I'd rather come along," says I. "Damn this infernal leg."

"Why, hold on," laughs Sale, "we'd have to carry you in a palankeen. Haven't you had enough of Afghanistan?"

"Not while Akbar Khan's above ground," says I. "I'd like to take these splints and make him eat 'em."

They laughed at this, and Broadfoot, who was there, cries out:

"He's an old war-horse already, our Flashy. Ye want tae be in at the death, don't ye, ye great carl? Aye, well, ye can leave Akbar tae us; forbye, I doubt if the action we'll find about Kabul will be lively enough for your taste."

They went off, and I heard Broadfoot telling Pollock what a madman I was when it came to a fight - "when we were fighting in the passes, it was Flashman every time that was sent out as galloper to us with messages; ye would see him fleein' over the sangars like a daft Ghazi, and aye wi" a pack o' hostiles howling at his heels. He minded them no more than flies."

That was what he made out of the one inglorious occasion when I had been chased for my life into his encampment. But you will have noticed, no doubt, that when a man has a reputation good or bad, folk will always delight in adding to it; there wasn't a man in Afghanistan who knew me but who wanted to recall having seen me doing something desperate, and Broadfoot, quite sincerely, was like all the rest.

Pollock and Sale didn't catch Akbar, as it turned out, but they did release the prisoners he had taken, and the army's arrival in Kabul quieted the country. There was no question of serious reprisals; having been once bitten, we were not looking for trouble a second time. The one prisoner they didn't release, though, was old Elphy Bey; he had died in captivity, worn out and despairing, and there was a general grief in which I, for one, didn't share. No doubt he was a kindly old stick, but he was a damned disaster as a commander. He, above all others, murdered the army of Afghanistan, and when I reckon up the odds against my own survival in that mess - well, it wasn't Elphy's fault that I came through.

But while all these stirring things were happening, while the Afghans were skulking back into their hills, and Sale and Pollock and Nott were showing the flag and blowing up Kabul bazaar for spite; while the news of the catalogue of disasters was breaking on a horrified England; while the old Duke of Wellington was damning Auckland's folly for sending an army to occupy "rocks, sands, deserts, ice and snow"; while the general public and Palmerston were crying out for vengeance, and the Prime Minister was retorting that he wasn't going to make another war for the sake of spreading the study of Adam Smith among that Pathans - while all this was happening I was enjoying a triumphal progress back to India. With my leg still splinted, I was being borne south as the hero - or, at least, the most convenient of a few heroes - of the hour.

It is obvious now that the Delhi administration regarded me as something of a godsend. As Greville said later of the Afghan war, there wasn't much cause for triumph in it, but Ellenborough in Delhi was shrewd enough to see that the best way to put a good gloss on the whole horrible nonsense was to play up its few creditable aspects - and I was the first handy one.

So while he was trumpeting in orders of the day about "the illustrious garrison" who had held Jallalabad under the noble Sale, he found room to beat the drum about "gallant Flashman", and India took its cue from him. While they drank my health they could pretend that Gandamack hadn't happened.

I got my first taste of this when I left Jallalabad in a palankeen, to go down the Khyber with a convoy, and the whole garrison turned out to hurrah me off. Then at Peshawar there was old Avitabile, the Italian rascal, who welcomed me with a guard of honour, kissed me on both cheeks, and made me and himself riotously drunk in celebration of my return. That night was memorable for one thing - I had my first woman for months, for Avitabile had in a couple of lively Afghan wenches, and we made splendid beasts of ourselves. It isn't easy, I may say, handling a woman when your leg is broken, but where there's a will there's a way, and in spite of the fact that Avitabile was almost sick laughing at the spectacle of me getting my wench buckled to, I managed most satisfactorily.

From there it was the same all the way - at every town and camp there were garlands and congratulations and smiling faces and cheering, until I could almost believe I was a hero. The men gripped my hand, full of emotion, and the women kissed me and sniffled; colonels had my health drunk in their messes, Company men slapped me on the shoulder, an Irish subaltern and his young wife got me to stand godfather to their new son, who was launched into life with the appalling name of Flashman O'Toole, and the ladies of the Church Guild at Lahore presented me with a silk scarf in red, white, and blue with a scroll embroidered "Steadfast". At Ludhiana a clergyman preached a tremendous sermon on the text, "Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends" - he admitted, in a roundabout way, that I hadn't actually laid down mine, but it hadn't been for want of trying, and had been a damned near thing altogether.

Better luck next rime was about his view of it, and meanwhile hosannah and hurrah for Flashy, and let us now sing "Who would true valour see".

All this was nothing to Delhi, where they actually had a band playing "Hail the conquering hero comes", and Ellenborough himself helped me out of the palankeen and supported me up the steps. There was a tremendous crowd, all cheering like billy-o, and a guard of honour, and an address read out by a fat chap in a red coat, and a slap-up dinner afterwards at which Ellenborough made a great speech which lasted over an hour. It was dreadful rubbish, about Thermopylae and the Spanish Armada, and how I had clutched the colours to my bleeding breast, gazing proudly with serene and noble brow o'er the engorged barbarian host, like Christian before Apollyon or Roland at Roncesvalles, I forget which, but I believe it was both. He was a fearful orator, full of bombast from Shakespeare and the classics, and I had no difficulty in feeling like a fool long before he was finished. But I sat it out, staring down the long white table with all Delhi society gaping at me and drinking in Ellenborough's non-sense; I had just sense enough not to get drunk in public, and by keeping a straight face and frowning I contrived to look noble; I heard the women say as much behind their fans, peeping at me and no doubt wondering what kind of a mount I would make, while their husbands thumped the table and shouted

"bravo!" whenever Ellenborough said something especially foolish.

Then at the end, damned if he didn't start singing "For he's a jolly good fellow!" at which the whole crowd rose and roared their heads off, and I sat red-faced and trying not to laugh as I thought of what Hudson would have said if he could have seen me. It was too bad, of course, but they would never have made such a fuss about a sergeant, and even if they had, he couldn't have carried it off as I did, insisting on hobbling up to reply, and having Ellenborough say that if I must stand, it should be his shoulder I should lean on, and by God, he would boast about it ever after.

At this they roared again, and with his red face puffing claret beside me I said that this was all too much for one who was only a simple English gentleman ("amen to that," cries Ellenborough, "and never was proud title more proudly borne") and that what I had done was my duty, no more or less, as I hoped became a soldier. And while I didn't believe there was any great credit to me in it (cries of "No! No!"), well, if they said there was, it wasn't due to me but to the country that bore me, and to the old school where I was brought up as a Christian, I hoped, by my masters. (What possessed me to say this I shall never understand, unless it was sheer delight in lying, but they raised the roof.) And while they were so kind to me they must not forget those others who had carried the flag, and were carrying it still ("hear!

hear!"), and who would beat the Afghans back to where they came from, and prove what everyone knew, that Englishmen never would be slaves (thunderous applause). And, well, what I had done hadn't been much, but it had been my best, and I hoped I would always do it. (More cheering, but not quite as loud, I thought, and I decided to shut up.) So God bless them all, and let them drink with me to the health of our gallant comrades still in the field.

"Your simple honesty, no less than your manly aspect and your glorious sentiments, won the admiration and love of all who heard you," Ellenborough told me afterwards. "Flashman, I salute you.

Furthermore," says he, "I intend that England shall salute you also.

When he returns from his victorious campaign, Sir Robert Sale will be despatched to England, where I doubt not he will receive those marks of honour which become a hero."(23) (He talked like this most of the time, like a bad actor.(24) Many people did, sixty years ago.) "As is fitting, a worthy herald shall precede him, and share his glory. I mean, of course, yourself. Your work here is done, and nobly done, for the time being. I shall send you to Calcutta with all the speed that your disability allows, there to take ship for England."

I just stared at the man; I had never thought of this. To get out of this hellish country - for if, as I've said, I can now consider that India was kind to me, I was still overjoyed at the thought of leaving it - to see England again, and home, and London, and the clubs and messes and civilised people, to be feted there as I had been assured I would be, to return in triumph when I had set out under a cloud, to be safe beyond the reach of black savages, and heat, and filth, and disease, and danger, to see white women again, and live soft, and take life easy, and sleep secure at nights, to devour the softness of Elspeth, to stroll in the park and be pointed out as the hero of Piper's Fort, to come back to life again - why, it was like waking from a nightmare. The thought of it all set me shaking.

"There are further reports to be made on affairs in Afghanistan,"

says Ellenborough, "and I can think of no more fitting messenger."

"Well, sir," says I. "I'm at your orders. If you insist, I'll go."

It took four months to sail home, just as it had taken four months to sail out, but I'm bound to say I didn't mind this time. Then I had been going into exile; now I was coming home a hero. If I'd had any doubts of that the voyage dispelled them. The captain and his officers and the passengers were as civil as butter, and treated me as if I were the Duke himself; when they found I was a cheery sort who liked his bottle and talk we got along famously, for they never seemed to tire of hearing me tell of my engagements with Afghans - male and female -

and we got drunk most nights together. One or two of the older chaps were a bit leery of me, and one even hinted that I talked a deal too much, but I didn't care for this, and said so. They were just sour old package-rats, anyway, or jealous civilians.

I wonder, now, looking back, that the defence of Jallalabad made such a stir, for it was a very ordinary business, really. But it did, and since I was the first out of India who had been there, and borne a distinguished part, I got the lion's share of admiration. It was so on the ship, and was to prove so in England.

During the voyage my broken leg recovered almost entirely, but there was not much activity on shipboard anyway, and no women, and, boozing with the boys apart, I had a good deal of time to myself. This, and the absence of females, naturally turned me to thoughts of Elspeth; it was strange and delightful to think of going home to a wife, and I got that queasy feeling deep in my bowels whenever I found myself dreaming about her. It wasn't all lust, either, not more than about nine-tenths -after all, she wasn't going to be the only woman in England - but when I conjured up a picture of that lovely, placid face and blonde hair I got a tightness in my throat and a trembling in my hands that was quite apart from what the clergy call carnal appetites.

It was the feeling I had experienced that first night I rattled her beside the Clyde -a kind of hunger for her presence and the sound of her voice and the dreamy stupidity of her blue eyes. I wondered if I was falling in love with her, and decided that I was, and that I didn't care, anyway

- which is a sure sign.

So in this moonstruck state I whiled away the long voyage, and by the time we docked among the forest of shipping in London pool I was in a fine sweat, romantic and horny all at once. I made great haste for my father's house, full of excitement at the thought of surprising her -for of course she had no idea that I was coming - and banged the knocker so hard that passers-by turned to stare at the big, brown-faced fellow who was in such a devilish hurry.

Old Oswald opened, just as he-always did, and gaped like a sheep as I strode past him, shouting. The hall was empty, and both strange and familiar at once, as things are after a long absence.

"Elspeth!" I roared. "Halloo! Elspeth! I'm home!"

Oswald was gabbling at my elbow that my father was out, and I clapped him on the back and pulled his whiskers.

"Good for him," says I, "I hope they have to carry him home tonight. Where's your mistress? Elspeth! Hallo!"

He just went on clucking at me, between delight and amazement, and then I heard a door open behind me, and looked round, and who should be standing there but Judy. That took me aback a bit; I hadn't thought she would still be here.

"Hallo," says I, not too well pleased, although she was looking as handsome as ever. "Hasn't the guv'nor got a new whore yet?"

She was about to say something, but at that moment there was a step on the staircase, and Elspeth was standing there, staring down at me. God, what a picture she was:

corn-gold hair, red lips parted, blue eyes wide, breast heaving -

no doubt she was wearing something, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was. She looked like a startled nymph, and then the old satyr Flashy was bounding up the stairs, grabbing her, and crying:

"I'm home! I'm home! Elspeth! I'm home!" "Oh, Harry!" says she, and then her arms were round my neck and her lips were on mine.

If the Brigade of Guards had marched into the hall just then to command me to the Tower I'd not have heard them. I picked her up bodily, tingling at the feel of her, and without a word spoken carried her into the bedroom, and tumbled her there and then. It was superb, for I was half-drunk with excitement and longing, and when it was over I simply lay there, listening to her prattle a thousand questions, clasping her to me, kissing every inch of her, and answering God knows what. How long we spent there I can't imagine, but it was a long, golden afternoon, and ended only when the maid tapped on the door to say that my father was home again, and demanding to see me.

So we must get dressed, and straighten ourselves, giggling like naughty children, and when Elspeth had herself in order the maid came tapping again to say that my father was growing impatient. Just to show that heroes weren't to be hurried, I caught my darling up again, and in spite of her muffled squeals of protest, mounted her once more, without the formality of undressing. Then we went down. It should have been a splendid evening, with the family welcoming the prodigal Achilles, but it wasn't. My father had aged in two years; his face was redder and his belly bigger, and his hair was quite white at the temples. He was civil enough, damned me for a young rascal, and said he was proud of me: the whole town had been talking over the reports from India, and Ellenborough's eulogies for myself and Sale and Havelock were all over the place. But his jollity soon wore off, and he drank a good deal too much at dinner, and fell into a silence at last.

I could see then there was something wrong, although I didn't pay him much heed.

Judy dined with us, and I gathered she was now entirely one of the household, which was bad news. I didn't care for her any better now than I had two years before, after our quarrel, and I made it pretty plain. It seemed rather steep of my father to keep his dolly at home with my wife there, and treat them as equals, and I decided to speak to him about it. But Judy was cool and civil, too, and I gathered she was ready to keep the peace if I did.

Not that I minded her or my father much. I was all over Elspeth, revelling in the dreamy way she listened to my talk - I had forgotten what a ninny she was, but it had its compensations. She sat wide-eyed at my adventures, and I don't suppose anyone else got a word in edgeways all through the meal. I just bathed myself in that simple, dazzling smile of hers and persuaded her of what a wonderful husband she had. And later, when we went to bed, I persuaded her more so.

It was then, though, that the first little hint of something odd in her behaviour crossed my mind. She had dropped off to sleep, and I was lying there exhausted, listening to her breathing, and feeling somehow dissatisfied - which was strange, considering. Then it came to me, this little doubt, and I dismissed it, and then it came back.

I had had plenty of experience with women, as you know, and can judge them in bed as well as anyone, I reckon. And it seemed to me, however hard I pushed the thought away, that Elspeth was not as she had been before I went away. I've often said that she only came to life when she was at grips with a man - well, she had been willing enough in the few hours of my homecoming, I couldn't deny, but there hadn't been any of the rapturous passion on her part that I remembered.

These are fine things, and difficult to explain - oh, she was active enough at the time, and content enough afterwards, but she was easier about it all, somehow. If it had been Fetnab or Josette, I wouldn't have noticed, I dare say; it was their work as well as their play. But I had a different emotion about Elspeth, and it told me there was something missing. It was just a shadow, and when I woke next morning I had forgotten it. If I hadn't, the morning's events would have driven it from my mind. I came down late, and cornered my father in his study before he could slip out to his club. He was sitting with his feet along the couch, preparing for the rigours of the day with a glass of brandy, and looking liverish, but I plunged right in, and told him my thoughts about Judy.

"Things have changed," says I, "and we can't have her seen about the place nowadays." You'll gather that two years among the Afghans had changed my attitude to parental discipline; I wasn't so easy to cow as I had been. "Oh, aye," says he, "and how have things changed?"

"You'll find," I told him, "that I'm known about the town henceforth.

What with India and so on. We'll be more in the public eye now, and folk will talk. It won't do for Elspeth, for one thing." "Elspeth likes her," says he.

"Does she, though? Well, that's no matter. It ain't what Elspeth likes that counts, but what the town likes. And they won't like us if we keep this . . . this pet pussy in the house."

"My, we're grown very nice." He sneered and took a good pull at his brandy. I could see the flush of temper on his face, and wondered why he hadn't lost it yet. "I didn't know India bred such fine sensibilities," he went on. "Quite the reverse, I'd have thought."

"Oh, look, father, it won't do and you know it. Send her up to Leicestershire if you want, or give her a maison of her own - but she can't stay here."

He looked at me a long while. "By God, maybe I've been wrong about you all along. I know you're a wastrel, but I never thought you had the stuff to be brave - in spite of all the tales from India. Perhaps you have, or perhaps it's just insolence. Anyway, you're on the wrong scent, boy. As I said, Elspeth likes her - and if she don't want her away, then she stays."

"In God's name, what does it matter what Elspeth likes? She'll do as I tell her."

"I doubt it," says he.

"What's that?"

He put down his glass, wiped his lips, and said:

"You won't like it, Harry, but here it is. Who pays the piper calls the tune. And your Elspeth and her damned family have been calling the tune this year past. Hold on, now. Let me finish. You'll have plenty to say, no doubt, but it'll wait."

I could only stare at him, not understanding.

"We're in Queer Street, Harry. I hardly know how, myself, but there it is. I suppose I've been running pretty fast, all my life, and not taking much account of how the money went - what are lawyers for, eh? I took some bad tumbles on the turf, never heeded the expenses of this place, or Leicestershire, didn't stint any way at all - but it was the damned railway shares that really did the trick. Oh, there are fortunes being made out of 'em - the right ones. I picked the wrong ones. A year ago I was a ruined man, up to my neck with the Jews, ready to be sold up. I didn't write to you about it - what was the point? This house ain't mine, nor our place in Leicestershire; it's hers - or it will be, when old Morrison goes. God rot and damn him, it can't be too soon."

He jumped up and walked about, finally stopping before the fireplace.

"He met the bill, for his daughter's sake. Oh, you should have seen it! More canting, head-wagging hypocrisy than I've seen in years in Parliament, even! He had the effrontery to stand in my own hall, by God, and tell me it was a judgement on him for letting his daughter marry beneath herself! Beneath herself, d'ye hear? And I had to listen to him, and keep myself from flooring the old swine! What could I do? I was the poor relation; I still am. He's still paying the bills - through the simpering nitwit you married. He lets her have what she wants, and there you are!" "But if he's settled an allowance on her ..." "He's settled nothing! She asks him, and he provides. Damned if I would if I was him - but, there, perhaps he thinks it worth while. He seems to dote on her, and I'll say this for the chit, she's not stingy. But she's the pay-mistress, Harry, my son, and you'd best not forget it. You're a kept man, d'you see, so it don't become you, or me, to say who'll come and who'll go. And since your Elspeth is astonishingly liberal-minded -

why, Miss Judy can stay, and be damned to you!"

I heard him out, flabbergasted at first, but perhaps because I was a more practical man than the guv'nor, or had fewer notions of gentility, through having an aristocratic mother, I took a different view of the matter. While he splashed more brandy into his glass, I asked:

"How much does he let her have?" "Eh? I told you, whatever she wants.

The old bastard seems to be warm enough for ten. But you can't get your hands on it, I tell you."

"Well, I don't mind," says I. "As long as the money's there, it don't signify who draws the orders."

He gaped at me. "Jesus," he said, in a choked voice, "have you no pride?"

"Probably as much as you have," says I, very cool. "You're still here, ain't you?"

He took on the old familiar apoplectic look, so I slid out before he threw a bottle at me, and went upstairs to think. It wasn't good news, of course, but I didn't doubt I could come to a good understanding with Elspeth, which was all that mattered. The truth was, I didn't have his pride; it wasn't as if I should have to sponge off old Morrison, after all.

No doubt I should have been upset at the thought of not inheriting my father's fortune - or what had been his fortune - but when old Morrison ceased to trouble the world I'd have Elspeth's share of the will, which would quite probably make up for all that.

In the meantime, I tackled her on the subject at the first opportunity, and found her all brainless agreement, which was highly satisfactory.

"What I have is yours, my love," says she, with that melting look.

"You know you have only to ask me for anything - anything at all."

"Much obliged," says I. "But it might be a little inconvenient, sometimes. I was thinking, if there was a regular payment, say, it would save all the tiresome business for you."

"My father would not allow that, I'm afraid. He has been quite clear, you see."

I saw, all right, and worked away at her, but it was no use. A fool she might be, but she did what Papa told her, and the old miser knew better than to leave a loophole for the Flashman family to crawl in and lighten him. It's a wise man that knows his own son-in-law. So it was going to have to be cash on demand - which was better than no cash at all. And she was ready enough with fifty guineas when I made my first application - it was all cut and dried, with a lawyer in Johnson's Court, who advanced her whatever she asked for, in reason.

However, apart from these sordid matters there was quite enough to engage me in those first days at home. No one at the Horse Guards knew quite what to do with me, so I was round the clubs a good deal, and it was surprising how many people knew me all of a sudden.

They would hail me in the Park, or shake hands in the street, and there was a steady stream of callers at home; friends of my father's whom he hadn't seen for years popped up to meet me and greet him; invitations were showered on us; letters of congratulation piled up on the hall table and spilled on to the floor; there were paragraphs in the press about "the first of the returned heroes from Cabool and Jellulabad", and the new comic paper Punch had a cartoon in its series of "Pencillings"(25) which showed a heroic figure, some thing like me, wielding an enormous scimitar like a panto mime bandit, with hordes of blackamoors (they looked no more like Afghans than Eskimos) trying to wrest the Union Jack from me in vain. Underneath there was the caption: "A Flash(ing) Blade", which give you some idea of the standard of humour in that journal.

However, Elspeth was enchanted with it, and bought a dozen copies; she was in whirl of delight at being the centre of so much attention - for the hero's wife gets as many of the garlands as he does, especially if she's a beauty. There was one night at the theatre when the manager insisted on taking us out of our seats to a box, and the whole audience cheered and stamped and clapped. Elspeth was radiant and stood there squeaking and clasping her hands with not the least trace of embarrassment, while I waved, very good-natured, to the mob.

"Oh, Harry!" says she, sparkling. "I'm so happy I could die! Why, you are famous, Harry, and I . . ."

She didn't finish, but I know she was thinking that she was famous too. At that moment I loved her all the more for thinking it.

The parties in that first week were too many to count, and always we were the centre of attraction. They had a military flavour, for thanks to the news from Afghanistan, and China - where we had also been doing well(26) - the army was in fashion more than usual. The more senior officers and the mamas claimed me, which left Elspeth to the young blades. This delighted her, of course, and pleased me - I wasn't jealous, and indeed took satisfaction in seeing them clustering like flies round a jampot which they could watch but couldn't taste.

She knew a good many of them, and I learned that during my absence in India quite a few of the young sparks had squired her in the Park or ridden in the Row with her - which was natural enough, she being an army wife. But I just kept an eye open, all the same, and cold-shouldered one or two when they came too close - there was one in particular, a young Life Guards captain called Watney, who was often at the house, and was her riding partner twice in the week; he was a tall, curly-lipped exquisite with a lazy eye, who made himself very easy at home until I gave him the about-turn.

"I can attend Mrs Flashman very well, thank'ee," says I.

"None better," says he, "I'm sure. I had only hoped that you might relinquish her for a half-hour or so."

"Not for a minute," says I.

"Oh, come now," says he, patronising me, "this is very selfish. I am sure Mrs Flashman wouldn't agree."

"I'm sure she would."

"Would you care to test it?" says he, with an infuriating smile. I could have boxed his ears, but I kept my temper very well.

"Go to the devil, you mincing pimp," I told him, and left him standing in the hall. I went straight to Elspeth's room, told her what had happened, and cautioned her against seeing Watney again.

"Which one is he?" she asked, admiring her hair in the mirror.

"Fellow with a face like a horse and a haw-haw voice."

"There are so many like that," says she. "I can't tell one from the other. Harry, darling, would I look well with ringlets, do you think?"

This pleased me, as you can guess, and I forgot the incident at once. I remember it now, for it was that same day that everything happened all at once. There are days like that; a chapter in your life ends and another one begins, and nothing is the same afterwards.

I was to call at the Horse Guards to see my Uncle Bindley, and I told Elspeth I would not be home until the afternoon, when we were to go out to tea at someone-or-others. But when I got to Horse Guards my uncle bundled me straight into a carriage and bore me off to meet - of all people - the Duke of Wellington. I'd never seen him closer than a distance, and it made me fairly nervous to stand in his ante-room after Bindley had been ushered in to him, and hear their voices murmuring behind the closed door. Then it opened, and the Duke came out; he was white-haired and pretty wrinkled at this time, but that damned hooked nose would have marked him anywhere, and his eyes were like gimlets.

"Ah, this is the young man," says he, shaking hands. For all his years he walked with the spring of a jockey, and was very spruce in his grey coat.

"The town is full of you just now," says he, looking me in the eyes.

"It is as it should be. It was a damned good bit of work - about the only good thing in the whole business, by God, whatever Ellenborough and Palmerston may say."

Hudson, thinks I, you should see me now; short of the heavens opening, there was nothing to be added.

The Duke asked me a few sharp questions, about Akbar Khan, and the Afghans generally, and how the troops had behaved on the retreat, which I answered as well as I could. He listened with his head back, and said "Hmm," and nodded, and then said briskly:

"It is a thorough shame that it has been so shockingly managed.

But it is always the way with these damned politicals; there is no telling them. If I had had someone like McNaghten with me in Spain, Bindley, I'd still be at Lisbon, I dare say. And what is to happen to Mr Flashman? Have you spoken to Hardinge?"

Bindley said they would have to find a regiment for me, and the Duke nodded.

"Yes, he is a regimental man. You were in the 11th Hussars, as I remember? Well, you won't want to go back there," and he gave me a shrewd look. "His lordship is no better disposed to Indian officers now than he ever was, the more fool he. I have thought of telling him, more than once, that I'm an Indian officer myself, but he would probably just have given me a setdown. Well, Mr Flash-man, I am to take you to Her Majesty this afternoon, so you must be here at one o'clock." And with that he turned back to his room, said a word to Bindley, and shut the door.

Well, you can guess how all this dazzled me; to have the great Duke chatting to me, to learn that I was to be presented to the Queen -

all this had me walking on the clouds. I went home in a rosy dream, hugging myself at the way Elspeth would take the news; this would make her damned father sit up and take notice, all right, and it would be odd if I couldn't squeeze something out of him in consequence, if I played my cards well.

I hurried upstairs, but she wasn't in her room; I called, and eventually old Oswald appeared and said she had gone out.

"Where away?" says I.

"Well, sir," says he, looking mighty sour, "I don't rightly know."

"With Miss Judy?"

"No, sir," says he, "not with Miss Judy. Miss Judy is downstairs, sir."

There was something damned queer about his manner, but there was nothing more to be got from him, so I went downstairs and found Judy playing with a kitten in the morning room.

"Where's my wife?" says I.

"Out with Captain Watney," says she, cool as you please. "Riding.

Here, kitty-kitty. In the Park, I dare say."

For a minute I didn't understand.

"You're wrong," says I. "I sent him packing two hours ago."

"Well, they went riding half an hour ago, so he must have unpacked." She picked up the kitten and began to stroke it.

"What the devil d'you mean?"

"I mean they've gone out together. What else?"

"Dammit," says I, furious. "I told her not to."

She went on stroking, and looked at me with her crooked little smile.

"She can't have understood you, then," says she. "Or she would not have gone, would she?"

I stood staring at her, feeling a chill suddenly settle on my insides.

"What are you hinting, damn you?" I said. "Nothing at all. It is you who are imagining. Do you know, I believe you're jealous."

"Jealous, by God! And what have I to be jealous about?"

"You should know best, surely."

I stood looking thunder at her, torn between anger and fear of what she seemed to be implying.

"Now, look'ee here," I said, "I want to know what the blazes you're at. If you have anything to say about my wife, by God, you'd best be careful ..."

My father came stumping into the hall at that minute, curse him, and calling for Judy. She got up and walked past me, the kitten in her arms. She stopped at the door, gave me a crooked, spiteful smile, and says:

"What were you doing in India? Reading? Singing hymns? Or did you occasionally go riding in the Park?"

And with that she slammed the door, leaving me shot to bits, with horrible thoughts growing in my mind. Suspicion doesn't come gradually; it springs up suddenly, and grows with every breath it takes. If you have a foul mind, as I have, you think foul thoughts readier than clean ones, so that even as I told myself that Judy was a lying bitch trying to frighten me with implications, and that Elspeth was incapable of being false, at the same time I had a vision of her rolling naked in a bed with her arms round Watney's neck. God, it wasn't possible! Elspeth was an innocent, a completely honest fool, who hadn't even known what "fornication" meant when I first met her . . .

That hadn't stopped her bounding into the bushes with me, though, at the first invitation. Oh, but it was still unthinkable! She was my wife, and as amiable and proper as a girl could be; she was utterly different from swine like me, she had to be. I couldn't be as wrong in my judgement as that, could I?

I was standing torturing myself with these happy notions, and then common sense came to the rescue. Good God, all she had done was go riding with Watney - why, she hadn't even known who he was when I warned her against him that morning. And she was the most scatter-brained thing in petticoats; besides, she wasn't of the mettle that trollops are made of. Too meek and gentle and submissive by half-she wouldn't have dared. The mere thought of what I'd do would have terrified . . . what would I do? Disown her? Divorce her? Throw her out? By God, I couldn't! I didn't have the means; my father was right!

For a moment I was appalled. If Elspeth was making a mistress for Watney, or anyone else, there was nothing I could do about it. I could cut her to ribbons, oh, aye, and what then? Take to the streets? I couldn't stay in the army, or in town, even, without means . . .

Oh, but to the devil with this. It was pure moonshine, aye, and deliberately put into my mind to make me jealous by that brown-headed slut of my father's. This was her making mischief to get her own back for the hammering I'd given her three years ago. That was it.

Why, I didn't have the least reason to think ill of Elspeth; everything about her denied Judy's imputations - and, by God, I'd pay that cow out for her lies and sneers. I'd find a way, all right, and God help her when I did.

With my thoughts back in more genial channels, I remembered the news I'd been coming home to tell Elspeth - well, she would have to wait for it until after I'd been to the Palace. Serve her right for going out with Watney, damn him. In the meantime, I spent the next hour looking out my best clothes, arranging my hair, which was grown pretty long and romantic, and cursing Oswald as he helped me with my cravat - I'd have been happier in uniform, but I didn't have a decent one to my name, having spent my time in mufti since I came home. I was so excited that I didn't bother to lunch, but dandied myself up to the nines, and then hurried off to meet His Nose-ship.

There was a brougham at his door when I arrived, and I didn't have to wait two minutes before he came down, all dressed and damning the secretary and valet who were stalking along behind him.

"There probably isn't a damned warming-pan in the place," he was barking. "And it is necessary that every-thing should be in the finest order. Find out if Her Majesty takes her own bed-linen when she travels. I imagine she does, but don't for God's sake go inquiring indiscreetly. Ask Arbuthnot; he'll know. You may be sure that something will be amiss, in the end, but it can't be helped. Ah, Flashman,"

and he ran his eye over me like a drill sergeant. "Come along, then."

There was a little knot of urchins and people to raise a cheer as he came out, and some shouted: "There's the Flash cove! Hurrah!" by which they meant me. There was a little wait after we got in, because the coachman had some trouble with his reins, and a little crowd gathered while the Duke fretted and swore.

"Dammit, Johnson," growls he, "hurry up or we shall have all London here."

The crowd cheered and we rolled off in the pleasant autumn sunshine, with the guttersnipes running behind whooping and people turning on the pavements to lift their hats as the Great Duke passed by.

"If I knew how news travelled I'd be a wiser man," says he. "Can you imagine it? I'll lay odds they know in Dover by this time that I am taking you to Her Majesty. You've never had any dealings with royalty, I take it?"

"Only in Afghanistan, my lord," says I, and he barked a little short laugh.

"They probably have less ceremonial than we do," he says. "It is a most confounded bore. Let me tell you, sir, never become a field-marshal and commander-in-chief. It is very fine, but it means your sovereign will honour you by coming to stay, and not a bed in the place worth a damn. I have more anxiety over the furnishing of Walmer, Mr Flashman, than I did over the works at Torres Vedras."(27)

"If you are as successful this time as you were then, my lord,"

says I, buttering him, "you have no cause for alarm."

"Huh!" says he, and gave me a sharp look. But he was silent for a minute or two and then asked me if I felt nervous.

"There is no need why you should be," says he. "Her Majesty is most gracious, although it is never as easy, of course, as it was with her predecessors. King William was very easy, very kind, and made people entirely at home. It is altogether more formal now, and pretty stiff, but if you stay by me and keep your mouth shut, you'll do."

I ventured to say that I'd felt happier at the prospect of charging into a band of Ghazis than I did at going to the palace, which was rubbish, of course, but I thought was probably the thing to say.

"Damned nonsense," says he, sharply. "You wouldn't rather anything of the sort. But I know that the feeling is much the same, for I've experienced both myself. The important thing is never to show it, as I am never tired of telling young men. Now tell me about these Ghazis, who I understand are the best soldiers the Afghans can show."

He was on my home ground there, and I told him about the Ghazis and Gilzais and Pathans and Douranis, to which he listened very carefully until I realised that we were rolling through the palace gates, and there were the Guards presenting arms, and a flunkey running to hold the door and set the steps, and officers clicking to attention, and a swarm of people about us.

"Come on," says the Duke, and led the way through a small doorway, and I have a hazy recollection of stairs and liveried footmen, and long carpeted corridors, and great chandeliers, and soft-footed officials escorting us - but my chief memory is of the slight, grey-coated figure in front of me, striding along and people getting out of his way.

We brought up outside two great double doors with a flunkey in a wig at either side, and a small fat man in a black tail coat bobbed in front of us, and darted forward muttering to twitch at my collar and smooth my lapel.

"Apologies," he twittered. "A brush here." And he snapped his fingers. A brush appeared and he flicked at my coat, very deftly, and shot a glance in the Duke's direction. "Take that damned thing away,"

says the Duke, "and stop fussing. We know how to dress without your assistance."

The little fat man looked reproachful and stood aside, motioning to the flunkeys. They opened the door, and with my heart thumping against my ribs I heard a rich, strong voice announce:

"His Grace the Duke of Wellington. Mr Flashman." It was a large, magnificently furnished drawing-room, with a carpet stretching away between mirrored walls and a huge chandelier overhead. There were a few people at the other end, two men standing near the fireplace, a girl sitting on a couch with an older woman standing behind, and I think another man and a couple of women near by. We walked forward towards them, the Duke a little in advance, and he stopped short of the couch and bowed.

"Your Majesty," says he, "may I have the honour to present Mr Flashman."

And only then did I realise who the girl was. We are accustomed to think of her as the old queen, but she was ? just a child then, rather plump, and pretty enough beneath the neck. Her eyes were large and popped a little, and her teeth stuck out too much, but she smiled and murmured in reply - by this time I was bowing my backside off, naturally. When I straightened up she was looking at me, and Wellington was reciting briskly about Kabul and jallalabad -

"distinguished defence", "Mr Flashman's notable behaviour" are the only phrases that stay in my mind. When he stopped she inclined her head at him, and then said to me:

"You are the first we have seen of those who served so bravely in Afghanistan, Mr Flashman. It is realty a great joy to see you returned safe and well. We have heard the most glowing reports of your gallantry, and it is most gratifying to be able to express our thanks and admiration for such brave and loyal service."

Well, she couldn't have said fairer than that I suppose, even if she did recite it like a parrot. I just made a rumbling sound in my throat and ducked my head again. She had a thick, oddly-accented voice, and came down heavy on her words every now and then, nodding as she did so.

"Are you entirely recovered from your wounds?" she asked.

"Very well, thank'ee, your majesty," says I.

"You are exceedingly brown," says one of the men, and the heavy German accent startled me. I'd noticed him out of the tail of my eye, leaning against the mantel, with one leg crossed over the other. So this is Prince Albert, I thought; what hellish-looking whiskers.

"You must be as brown as an Aff-ghan," says he, and they laughed politely.

I told him I had passed for one, and he opened his eyes and said did I speak the language, and would I say some-thing in it. So without thinking I said the first words that came into my head: "Hamare ghali ana, achha din," which is what the harlots chant at passers-by, and means "Good day, come into our street". He seemed very interested, but the man beside him stiffened and stared hard at me.

"What does it mean, Mr Flashman?" says the Queen.

"It is a Hindu greeting, marm," says the Duke, and my guts turned over as I recalled that he had served in India.

"Why, of course," says she, "we are quite an Indian gathering, with Mr Macaulay here." The name meant nothing to me then; he was looking at me damned hard, though, with his pretty little mouth set hard. I later learned that he had spent several years in government out there, so my fat-headed remark had not been lost on him, either.

"Mr Macaulay has been reading us his new poems,"(28) says the Queen. "They are quite stirring and fine. I think his Horatius must have been your model, Mr Flashman, for you know he defied great odds in defence of Rome. It is a splendid ballad, and very inspiring. Do you know the story, Duke?"

He said he did, which put him one up on me, and added that he didn't believe it, at which she cried out and demanded to know why.

"Three men can't stop an army, marm," says he. "Livy was no soldier, or he would hardly have suggested they could."

"Oh, come now," says Macaulay. "They were on a narrow bridge, and could not be outnumbered."

"You see, Duke?" says the Queen. "How could they be overcome?"

"Bows and arrows, marm," says he. "Slings. Shoot 'em down.

That's what I'd have done."

At this she said that the Tuscans were more chivalrous than he was, and he agreed that very likely they were.

"Which is perhaps why there are no Tuscan empires today, but an extensive British one," says the Prince quietly. And then he leaned forward and murmured some-thing to the Queen, and she nodded wisely, and stood up -she was very small - and signed to me to come forward in front of her. I went, wondering, and the Duke came to my elbow, and the Prince watched me with his head on one side. The lady who had been behind the couch came for-ward, and handed something to the Queen, and she looked up at me, from not a foot away.

"Our brave soldiers in Afghanistan are to have four medals from the Governor-General," she said. "You will wear them in course of time, but there is also a medal from their Queen, and it is fitting that you should wear it first of all."

She pinned it on my coat, and she had to reach up to do it, she was so small. Then she smiled at me, and I felt so overcome I didn't know what to say. Seeing this, she went all soulful about the eyes.

"You are a very gallant gentleman," says she. "God bless you."

Oh, lor', I thought, if only you knew, you romantic little woman, thinking I'm a modern Horatius. (I made a point of studying Macaulay's "Lays" later, and she wasn't too far off, really; only the chap I resembled was False Sextus, a man after my own heart.) However, I had to say something, so I mumbled about her majesty's service.

"England's service," said she, looking intense.

"The same thing, ma'am," says I, flown with inspiration, and she cast her eyes down wistfully. The Duke gave what sounded like a little groan.

There was a pause, and then she asked if I was married. I told her I was, but that I and my wife had been parted for the past two years.

"What a cruel separation", says she, as one might say "What delicious strawberry jam". But she was sure, she said, that our reunion must be all the sweeter for that parting.

"I know what it means to be a devoted wife, with the dearest of husbands," she went on, glancing at Albert, and he looked fond and noble. God, I thought, what a honey-moon that must have been.

Then the Duke chimed in, making his farewells, and I realised that this was my cue. We both bowed, and backed away, and she sat looking dumpy on the couch, and then we were in the corridor again, and the Duke was striding off through the hovering attendants.

"Well," says he, "you've got a medal no one else will ever have.

Only a few of 'em struck, you see, and then Ellenborough announced that he was giving four of his own, which did not please her majesty at all. So her medal is to be stopped.(29) He was right as it turned out; no one else ever received the medal, with its pink and green ribbon (I suspect Albert chose the colours), and I wear it on ceremonial days along with my Victoria Cross, my American Medal of Honour (for which the republic graciously pays me ten dollars a month), my San Serafino Order of Purity and Truth (richly deserved), and all the other assorted tinware which serves to disguise a cowardly scoundrel as a heroic veteran. We passed through the covey of saluting Guardsmen, bowing officials, and rigid flunkeys to our coach, but there was no getting through the gates at first for the crowd which had collected and was cheering its head off.

"Good old Flashy! Hurrah for Flash Harry! Hip! hip! hooray!"

They clamoured at the railings, waving and throwing up their hats, jostling the sentries, surging in a great press round the gateway, until at last the gates were pushed open and the brougham moved slowly through the struggling mass, all the faces grinning and shouting and the handkerchiefs waving.

"Take off your hat, man," snaps the Duke, so I did, and they roared again, pressing forward against the sides of the coach, reaching in to clasp my hand, beating on the panels, and making a tremendous racket.

"He's got a medal!" roars someone. "God save the Queen!"

At that they woke the echoes, and I thought the coach must overturn. I was laughing and waving to them, but what do you suppose I was thinking? This was real glory! Here was I, the hero of the Afghan war, with the Queen's medal on my coat, the world's greatest soldier at my side, and the people of the world's greatest city cheering me to the echo - me! while the Duke sat poker-faced snapping: "Johnson, can't you get us out of this damned mess?"

What was I thinking? About the chance that had sent me to India? About Elphy Bey? About the horror of the passes on the retreat, or the escape at Mogala when Iqbal died? Of the nightmare of Piper's Fort or that dreadful dwarf in the snake-pit? About Sekundar Burnes?

Or Bernier? Or the women - Josette, Narreeman, Fetnab and the rest?

About Elspeth? About the Queen?

None of these things. Strange, but as the coach won clear and we rattled off down the Mall with the cheers dying behind us, I could hear Arnold's voice saying, "There is good in you, Flashman," and I could imagine how he would have supposed himself vindicated at this moment, and preach on "Courage" in chapel, and pretend to rejoice in the redeemed prodigal - but all the time he would know in his hypocrite heart that I was a rotter still.(30) But neither he nor anyone else would have dared to say so. This myth called bravery, which is half-panic, half-lunacy (in my case, all panic), pays for all; in England you can't be a hero and bad. There's practically a law against it.

Wellington was muttering sharply about the growing insolence of the mob, but he left off to tell me he would set me down at the Horse Guards. When we arrived and I was getting out and thanking him for his kindness, he looks sharply at me, and says:

"I wish you every good fortune, Flashman. You should go far. I don't imagine you're a second Marlborough, mind, but you appear to be brave and you're certainly damned lucky. With the first quality you may easily gain command of an army or two, and lead 'em both to ruin, but with your luck you'll probably lead 'em back again. You have made a good beginning, at all events, and received today the highest honour you can hope for, which is your monarch's mark of favour. Goodbye to you."

We shook hands, and he drove off. I never spoke to him again.

Years later, though, I told the American general, Robert Lee, of the incident, and he said Wellington was right - I had received the highest honour any soldier could hope for. But it wasn't the medal; for Lee's money it was Wellington's hand.

Neither, I may point out, had any intrinsic value.

I was the object of general admiration at the Horse Guards, of course, and at the club, and finally I took myself home in excellent fettle. It had been raining cats and dogs, but had stopped, and the sun was shining as I ran up the steps. Oswald informed me that Elspeth was above stairs; oho! thinks I, wait till she hears where I've been and who I've seen. She'll be rather more attentive to her lord and master now, perhaps, and less to sprigs of Guardees; I was smiling as I went upstairs, for the events of the after-noon had made my earlier jealousy seem silly, and simply the work of the little bitch Judy.

I walked into the bedroom keeping my left hand over the medal, to surprise her. She was sitting before her glass, as usual, with her maid dressing her hair.

"Harry!" she cries out, "where have you been? Have you forgot we are to take tea with Lady Chalmers at four-thirty?"

"The devil with Lady Chalmers, and all Chalmerses," says I. "Let

'em wait."

"Oh, how can you say so?" she laughed at me in the mirror. "But where have you been, looking so splendid?"

"Oh, visiting friends, you know. Young couple, Bert and Vicky.

You wouldn't know "em."

"Bert and Vicky!" If Elspeth had developed a fault in my long absence, it was that she had become a complete snob -not uncommon among people of her class. "Whoever are they?"

I stood behind her, looking at her reflection, and exposed the medal. I saw her eyes light on it, and widen, and then she swung round.

"Harry! What . . . ?"

"I've been to the palace. With the Duke of Wellington. I had this from the Queen - after we had chatted a little, you know, about poetry and ..."

"The Queen!" she squeals. "The Duke! The palace!"

And she leaped up, clapping her hands, throwing her arms round my neck, while her maid clucked and fussed and I, laughing, swung her round and kissed her. There was no shutting her up, of course; she rained questions on me, her eyes shining, demanding to know who was there, and what they said, and what the Queen wore, and how the Queen spoke to me, and what I replied, and every mortal thing. Finally I pushed her into a chair, sent the maid packing, and sat down on the bed, reciting the whole thing from start to finish.

Elspeth sat, round-eyed and lovely, listening breathlessly, and squealing with excitement every now and then. When I told her the Queen had asked about her she gasped and turned to look at herself in the mirror, I imagine to see if there was a smut on her nose. Then she demanded that I go through it all again, and I did, but not before I had stripped off her gown and pulled her on top of me on the bed, so that between gasps and sighs the breathtaking tale was re-told. I lost track of it several times, I admit.

Even then she was still marvelling at it all, until I pointed out that it was after four o'clock, and what would Lady Chalmers say? She giggled, and said we had better go, and chattered incessantly while she dressed and I lazily put myself in order.

"Oh, it is the most wonderful thing!" she kept saying. "The Queen! The Duke! Oh, Harry!"

"Aye," says I, "and where were you, eh? Sparking in the Row all afternoon with one of your admirers."

"Oh, he is the greatest bore," says she laughing. "Nothing to talk of but his horses. We spent the entire afternoon riding in the Park, and he spoke of nothing else for two hours on end!"

"Did he, begad," says I. "Why, you must have been soaked."

She was in a cupboard by now, among her dresses, and didn't hear, and idly I reached out, not thinking, and touched the bottle-green riding coat that lay across the end of the bed. I felt it, and my heart suddenly turned to stone. The coat was bone-dry. I twisted round to look at the boots standing by a chair; they shone glossy, with not a mark or a splash on them.

I sat, feeling sick, listening to my heart thumping, while she chattered away. It had rained steadily from the time I had left Wellington at the Horse Guards until I had left the club more than an hour later and come home. She could not have been riding in the Park in that downpour. Well, where the devil had she and Watney been, then, and what . . . ?

I felt rage mounting inside me, rage and spite, but I held myself in, telling myself I might be wrong. She was pat-ting her face with a rabbit's foot before the glass, never minding me, so I said, very easy like: "Whereabouts did you go for your ride?" "Oh, in the Park, as I said. Nowhere at all in particular." Now that's a lie for certain, thinks I, and yet I couldn't believe it. She looked so damned innocent and open, so feather-headed and full of nonsense as she went on and on about my wonderful, wonderful hour at the palace; why, only ten minutes ago she had been coupling with me on the bed, letting me . . .

aye, letting me. Suddenly the ugly thought of the first night home came rushing back to me -how I had fancied she was less ardent than I remembered her. Perhaps I had been right; perhaps she had been less passionate. Well she might be, if in my absence she had found some jockey who was more to her fancy over the jumps than I was. By God, if that were true I would . . .

I sat there shaking, my head turned away so that she would not see me in the mirror. Had that slut Judy been hinting at the truth, then? Was Watney cuckolding me -and heaven knew who else besides him? I was fairly boiling with shame and anger at the thought. But it couldn't be true! No, not Elspeth. And yet there was Judy's sneer, and those boots winking their wickedness at me - they hadn't been near the Park this afternoon, by God!

While the maid came back and attended to Elspeth's hair again, and I tried to close my ears to the shrill feminine trilling of her talk, I tried to take hold of myself. Maybe I was wrong - oh, God, I hoped so. It wasn't just that strange yearning that I had about Elspeth, it was my

... well, my honour, if you like. Oh, I didn't give a damn about what the world calls honour, but the thought of another man, or men, frollicking in the hay with my wife, who should have been unable to imagine a more masterful or heroic lover than the great Flashman - the hero whose name was on everyone's lips, God help us - the thought of that! .

. .

Pride is a hellish thing; without it there isn't any jealousy or ambition. And I was proud of the figure I cut - in bed and in barracks.

And here was I, the lion of the hour, medal and all, the Duke's handshake and the Queen's regard still fresh - and I was gnawing my innards out about a gold-headed filly without a brain to her name. And I must bite my lip and not say a word, for fear of the row there would be if I let slip a breath of my suspicions - right or wrong, the fat would be in the fire, and I couldn't afford that.

"Well, how do I look?" says she, coming to stand in front of me in her gown and bonnet. "Why, Harry, you have gone quite pale! I know, it is the excitement of this day! My poor dear!" And she tilted up my head and kissed me. No, I couldn't believe it, looking into those baby-blue eyes. Aye, and what about those baby-black boots?

"We shall go out to Lady Chalmers's," said she, "and she will be quite over the moon when she hears about this. I expect there will be quite a company there, too. I shall be so proud, Harry - so proud! Now, let me straighten your cravat; bring a brush, Susan - what an excellent coat it is. You must always go to that tailor - which is he again? There now; oh, Harry, how handsome you look! See yourself in the glass!"

I looked, and seeing myself so damned dashing, and her radiant and fair beside me, I fought down the wretchedness and rage. No, it couldn't be true ...

"Susan, you have not put away my coat, silly girl. Take it at once, before it creases."

By God, though, I knew it was. Or I thought I knew. To the devil with the consequences, no little ninny in petticoats was going to do this to me.

"Elspeth," says I, turning.

"Hang it carefully, now, when you've brushed it. There. Yes, my love?"

"Elspeth ..."

"Oh, Harry, you look so strong and fierce, on my word. I don't think I shall feel easy in my mind when I see all these fancy London ladies making eyes at you." And she pouted very pretty and touched her finger on my lips.

"Elspeth, I-"

"Oh, I had nearly forgot - you had better take some money with you. Susan, bring me my purse. In case of any need that may arise, you know. Twenty guineas, my love."

"Much obliged," says I.

What the devil, you have to make do as best you can; if the tide's there, swim with it and catch on to whatever offers. You only go by once.

"Will twenty be sufficient, do you think?"

"Better make it forty."

(At this point the first packet of The Flashman Papers ends abruptly).

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Notes

1. Lord Brougham's speech in May, 1839, "lashed the Queen . . .

with unsparing severity" (Greville) and caused great controversy.

2. Lady Flora Hastings, Maid of Honour to the Duchess of Kent, was believed to be pregnant, until medical examination proved that she was not. She won great popular sympathy, but the young Queen, who had been bitterly hostile towards her, suffered dramatically in public esteem.

3. Captain John Reynolds, a particular butt of Cardigan's, was the centre of the notorious Black Bottle affair, in which his resignation was demanded because he was believed to have ordered a bottle of porter in the mess on guest night. Back

4. Cardigan had, in fact, served in India, when he went out to take command of the 11th at Cawnpore in 1837, but had spent only a few weeks with the regiment.

5. Cardigan was a favourite target of the newspapers, and especially of the Morning Chronicle (not the Post, as Flashman says).

The quarrel referred to here is probably the one in which Cardigan, in response to a press attack, threatened to assault the editor. For details of this and other incidents, and of Lord Cardigan's military career, sec Cecil Woodham-Smith's The Reason Why.

6. Choice of weapons. In fact this did not necessarily rest with the injured party, but was normally settled by mutual agreement.

7. Mr Attwood, M.P. presented the Chartists' first petition for political reform to the Commons in July 1839. In that year there were outbreaks of Chartist violence; on November 24 people were killed at Newport.

8. Mr Abercrombie's use of the word "chief is inexplicable, since Sir Colin Campbell's command of the 93rd came much later. Of course, Abercrombie may have served with him in Spain.

9. Military service with the East India Company's regiments was considered socially inferior to service in the army proper, and Flashman must have been conscious of this, which possibly accounts for his casual reference to it. The Company at this time drew its artillery, engineer, and infantry officers from the Addiscombe training establishment; cavalry officers, however, could be appointed direct by the Company's Directors. Cardigan, who seems to have had a liking for Flashman (his judgement of men, when he condescended to use it, was deplorable) may well have had influence with the Board.

10. The Company did not believe in maintaining houses for transients and visitors; they were expected to find hospitality with British residents or pay their own lodgings.

11. Avitabile. Flashman's description of this extraordinary soldier of fortune is accurate; the Italian was noted as a stern, just administrator and intrepid soldier.

12. Cotton was the ringleader of the great Rugby School mutiny of 1797, in which the door of the headmaster, Dr Ingles, was blown in with gunpowder.

13. Poor army swords. The sabres issued to British cavalry at this time were notorious for their greasy brass hilts, which turned in the hand.

14. Flashman's account of Burnes's murder clears up a point which has troubled historians. Previous versions suggest that the Burnes brothers left the Residency in disguise, accompanied by a mysterious third party who has been described as a Kashmiri Musselman. It has been alleged that this third man actually denounced them to the Ghazis. But Flashman could hardly have betrayed them without considerable risk to himself, so his account is probably the true one.

15. The actual names of these two Afghans remain a mystery.

Other accounts call them Muhammed Sadeq and Surwar Khan, but Lady Sale seems to suggest that one of them was Sultan Jan.

16. Lieutenant-General Colin Mackenzie has left one of the most vivid accounts of the First Afghan War in Storms and Sunshine of a Soldier's Life (1884).

17. Flashman, like many other European writers, uses the word

"Ghazi" as though it referred to a tribe, although he certainly knew better. In Arabic "ghazi" is literally a conqueror, but may be accurately translated as hero or champion. Europeans usually render it as

"fanatic", in which connection it is interesting to note the parallel between the Moslem Ghazis and the Christian medieval ideal of knighthood. The Ghazi sect were dedicated to the militant expansion of Islam.

18. Flashman's account of the retreat tallies substantially with those of such contemporaries as Mackenzie, Lady Sale, and Lieutenant Eyre. This is also true of his version of affairs in Afghanistan generally. His description of McNaghten's murder, for example, is the fullest and most personal to survive. There are omissions and discrepancies here and there - he does not mention "Gentleman Jim"

Skinner's part in the liaison work with Akbar Khan, for instance - but on the whole he can be regarded as highly reliable within his self-centred limits. Readers seeking wider and more authoritative accounts are recommended to the standard works, which include Kaye's History of the War in Afghanistan, vol. ii, Fortuscue's History of the British Army, vol, xii, and Patrick Macrory's admirably clear account, Signal Catastrophe.

19. The "united front" of officers took place at Jugdulluk on January 11, 1842.

20. In fact some prisoners were taken by the Afghans at Gandamack, including Captain Souter of the 44th Regiment, one of two men who wrapped the battalion colours round their bodies (the other man was killed). The picture to which Flashman refers is by W.

B. Wollen, R.A., hung at the Royal Academy in 1898.

21. Flashman may be excused an overstatement here. Possibly Sergeant Hudson was a fine swordsman, but this was not usual in the British cavalry; Fortescue in his passage on the Charge of the Heavy Brigade at Balaclava refers to the troopers' habit of using their sabres as bludgeons. It was not uncommon for a man to use his sabre-hilt as a knuckle-duster instead of cutting or thrusting.

22. Major Henry Havelock. Later famous as the hero of Lucknow, the "stern Cromwellian soldier" became one of the great figures of the Indian Empire.

23. Sale was indeed hailed as a celebrity, but returned to India and was killed at Mudki in 1845, fighting the Sikhs. Shelton's adventurous career ended when he fell from his horse on parade at Dublin and was killed. Lawrence and Mackenzie both achieved general rank.

24. Flashman saw Ellenborough at his worst. Arrogant, theatrical, and given to flights of rhetoric, the Governor-General went to extravagant lengths to honour the "heroes of Afghanistan", and was widely ridiculed. But in the main he was an able and energetic administrator.

25. Punch began publication in 1841; the "Pencillings" were its first full-page cartoons.

26. The "Opium War" in China had ended with a treaty whereby Hong Kong was ceded to Britain.

27. The Duke's reference to the Queen's impending visit to Walmer Castle fixes the date of Flashman's appearance at Buckingham Palace very closely. Wellington wrote to Sir Robert Peel on October 26, 1842, assuring him that Walmer was at the Queen's disposal, and she visited it in the following month.

28. Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome was first published on October 28, 1842.

29. The Queen's Medal. That Her Majesty was piqued at Lord Ellenborough's decision to issue medals is evident from her letter to Peel on November 29, 1842.

30. Dr Thomas Arnold, father of Matthew Arnold and headmaster of Rugby School, had died on June 12, 1842, aged 47.

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Glossary

Badmash: a scoundrel.

Feringhee: European, possibly a corruption of "Frankish" or

"English".

Ghazi: a fanatic havildar sergeant.

hubshi: negro (literally "woolly-head").

Huzoor: lord, master, in the sense of "sir" (Pushtu equivalent of

"sahib").

Idderao: come here (imp.).

Jao: go, get away (imp.).

Jawan: soldier jezzail long rifle of the Afghans.

Juldi: quickly, hurry up.

Khabadar: be careful (imp.).

Maidan: plain, exercise ground.

Munshi: teacher, usually of language.

Puggaree: turban cloth.

Rissaldar: native officer commanding cavalry troop.

Sangar: small stone breastwork like grouse butt.

Shabash: bravo.

Sowar: trooper.