Flashman and the Mountain of Light

Explanatory Note

The life and conduct of Sir Harry Flashman, VC, were so irregular and eccentric that it is not surprising that he was also erratic in compiling his memoirs, that picturesque catalogue of misadventure, scandal, and military history which came to light, wrapped in oilskin packets, in a Midlands saleroom more than twenty years ago, and has since been published in a series of volumes, this being the ninth. Beginning, characteristically, with his expulsion from Rugby in 1839 for drunkenness (and thus identifying himself, to the astonishment of literary historians, with the cowardly bully of Tom Brown's Schooldays), the old Victorian hero continued his chronicle at random, moving back and forth in time as the humour took him, until the end of his eighth packet found him, again the worse for drink, being shanghaied from a Singapore billiard-room after the China War of 1860. Along the way he had ranged from the First Afghan War of 1842 to the Sioux campaign of 1876 (with a brief excursion, as yet unpublished, to a brawl in Baker Street as far ahead as 1894, when he was in his seventy-second year); it goes without saying that many gaps in his story remain to be filled, but with the publication of the present volume, which reverts to his early manhood, the first half of his life is almost complete; only an intriguing gap in the early 1850s remains, and a few odd months here and there.

Thus far, it is not an improving tale, and this latest chapter is consistent in its depiction of an immoral and unscrupulous rascal whose only commendable quality (terms like "virtue" and "saving grace" are not to be applied to one who gloried in having neither) was his gift of accurate observation; it was this, and the new and often unexpected light which it enabled him to cast on great events and famous figures of his time, that excited the interest of historians, and led to comparison of his memoirs with the Boswell Papers, Be that as it may, it was a talent fully if nervously employed in the almost forgotten imperial campaign described in this volume—"the shortest, bloodiest … and strangest, I think, of my whole life". Indeed it was strange, not least in its origins, and Flashman's account is a remarkable case-history of how a war can come about, and the freaks and perfidies and intrigues of its making and waging. It is also the story of a fabulous jewel, and of an extraordinary quartet—an Indian queen, a slave-girl, and two mercenary adventurers—who would be dismissed as too outlandish for fiction (although Kipling seems to have made use of one of them) if their careers were not easily verifiable from contemporary sources.

This, as with previous packets of Flashman's papers entrusted to me by their owner, Mr Paget Morrison, has been my chief concern—to satisfy myself that Flashman's narrative tallies with historic fact, so far as it can be tested. Beyond that I have only corrected occasional lapses in spelling, and supplied the usual footnotes, appendices and glossary.

G.M.F.

"Now, my dear Sir Harry, I must tell you," says her majesty, with that stubborn little duck of her head that always made Palmerston think she was going to butt him in the guts, "I am quite determined to learn Hindoostanee."

This at the age of sixty-seven, mark you. I almost asked her what the devil for, at her time of life, but fortunately my idiot wife got in first, clapping her hands and exclaiming that it was a most splendid idea, since nothing so Improved the Mind and Broadened the Outlook as acquaintance with a Foreign Tongue, is that not so, my love? (Elspeth, I may tell you, speaks only English—well, Scotch, if you like—and enough nursery French to get her through Customs and bullyrag waiters, but anything the Queen said, however wild, always sent her into transports of approval.) I seconded loyally, of course, saying it was a capital notion, ma'am, bound to come in handy, but I must have looked doubtful, for our sovereign lady refilled my teacup pretty offhand, leaving out the brandy, and said severely that Dr Johnson had learned Dutch at the age of seventy.

"And I have an excellent ear," says she. "Why, I still recollect precisely those Indian words you spoke, at my dearest one's request, so many long years ago." She sighed, and sipped, and then to my dismay trotted them out. Hamare ghali ana, achha din. Lord Wellington said it was a Hindoo greeting, I recall."

Well, it's what the Bengali whores used to cry to attract customers, so she wasn't far wrong. They'd been the only words I could think of, God help me, on that memorable day in '42 when the Old Duke had taken me to the Palace after my Afghan heroics; I'd stood trembling and half-witted before royalty, and when Albert asked me to say something in Hindi, out they popped. Luckily, Wellington had had the wit not to translate. The Queen had been a pretty slip of a girl then, smiling timidly up as she pinned on the medal I didn't deserve; now she was a stout little old body, faded and grey, fussing over the teacups at Windsor and punishing the meringues. Her smile was still there, though; aye, cavalry whiskers, even white ones, still fetched little Vicky.

"It is such a cheerful language," says she. "I am sure it must have many jokes, does it not, Sir Harry?"

I could think of a few, but thought it best to give her the old harmless one that begins: "Doh admi joh nashe men the, rail ghari men safar kar raha ta —"

"But what does it mean, Sir Harry?"

"Well, ma'am, it means that two fellows were travelling by train, you see, and they were, I regret to say, intoxicated —"

"Why, Harry!" cries Elspeth, acting shocked, but the Queen just took another tot of whisky in her tea and bade me continue. So I told her that one chap said, where are we, and t'other chap replied, Wednesday, and the first chap said, Heavens, this is where I get out. Needless to say, it convulsed them—and while they recovered and passed the gingerbread, I asked myself for the twentieth time why we were here, just Elspeth and me and the Great White Mother, taking tea together.

You see, while I was used enough, in those later years, to being bidden to Balmoral each autumn to squire her about on drives, and fetch her shawl, and endure her prattle and those damned pipers of an evening, a summons to Windsor in the spring was something new, and when it included "dear Lady Flashman, our fair Rowena"—the Queen and she both pretended—a passion for Scott—I couldn't think what was up. Elspeth, when she'd recovered from her ecstasy at being "commanded to court", as she put it, was sure I was to be offered a peerage in the Jubilee Honours (there's no limit to the woman's mad optimism); I damped her by observing that the Queen didn't keep coronets in the closet to hand out to visitors; it was done official, and anyway even Salisbury wasn't so far gone as to ennoble me; I wasn't worth bribing. Elspeth said I was a horrid cynic, and if the Queen herself required our attendance it must be something grand, and whatever was she going to wear?

Well, the grandeur turned out to be Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show¹ —I concluded that I'd been dragged in because I'd been out yonder myself, and was considered an authority on all that was wild and woolly—and we sat in vile discomfort at Earl's Court among a great gang of Court toadies, while Cody pranced on a white horse, waving his hat and sporting a suit of patent buckskins that would have laid 'em helpless with laughter along the Yellowstone. There was enough paint and feathers to outfit the whole Sioux Nation, the braves whooped and ki-yikked and brandished their hatchets, the roughriders curvetted, a stagecoach of terrified virgins was ambushed, the great man arrived in the nick of time blazing away until you couldn't see for smoke, and the Queen said it was most curious and interesting, and what did the strange designs of the war paint signify, my dear Sir Harry?

God knows what I told her; the fact is, while everyone else was cheering the spectacle, I was reflecting that only eleven years earlier I'd been running like hell from the real thing at Little Bighorn, and losing my top hair into the bargain—a point which I mentioned to Cody later, after he'd been presented. He cried, yes, by thunder, that was one war-party he'd missed, and didn't he envy me the trip, though? Lying old humbug. That's by the way; I realised, when the Queen bore Elspeth and me back to Windsor, and bade us to tea a trois next day, that our presence at the show had been incidental, and the real reason for our invitation was something else altogether. A trifling matter, as it turned out, but it inspired this memoir, so there you are.

She wanted our opinion, she said, on a matter of the first importance—and if you think it odd that she should confide in the likes of us, the retired imperial roughneck of heroic record but dubious repute, and the Glasgow merchant's daughter … well, you don't know our late lamented Queen Empress. Oh, she was a stickler and a tartar, no error, the highest, mightiest monarch that ever was, and didn't she know it, just—but if you were a friend, well, that was a different palaver. Elspeth and I were well out of Court, and barely halfway into Society, even, but we'd known her since long ago, you see—well, she'd always fancied me (what woman didn't?), and Elspeth, aside from being such an artless, happy beauty that even her own sex couldn't help liking her, had the priceless gift of being able to make the Queen laugh. They'd taken to each other as young women, and now, on the rare occasions they met tete-a-tete, they blethered like the grand-mothers they were—why, on that very day (when I was safely out of earshot) she told Elspeth that there were some who wanted her to mark her Golden Jubilee by abdicating in favour of her ghastly son, Bertie the Bounder, "but I shall do no such thing, my dear! I intend to outlive him, if I can, for the man is not fit to reign, as none knows better than your own dear husband, who had the thankless task of instructing him." True, I'd pimped for him occasional, but 'twas wasted effort; he'd have been just as great a cad and whoremaster without my tuition.

However, it was about the Jubilee she wanted our advice, "and yours especially, Sir Harry, for you alone have the necessary knowledge". I couldn't figure that; for one thing, she'd been getting advice and to spare for months on how best to celebrate her fiftieth year on the throne. The whole Empire was in a Jubilee frenzy, with loyal addresses and fetes and junketings and school holidays and watertrough inaugurations and every sort of extravagance on the rates; the shops were packed with Jubilee mugs and plates and trumpery blazoned with Union Jacks and pictures of her majesty looking damned glum; there were Jubilee songs on the halls, and Jubilee marches for parades, and even Jubilee musical bustles that played "God Save the Queen" when the wearer sat down—I tried to get Elspeth to buy one, but she said it was disrespectful, and besides people might think it was her.

The Queen, of course, had her nose into everything, to make sure the celebrations were dignified and useful—only she could approve the illuminations for Cape Town, the chocolate boxes for Eskimo children, the plans for Jubilee parks and gardens and halls and birdbaths from Dublin to Dunedin, the special Jubilee robes (it's God's truth) for Buddhist monks in Burma, and the extra helpings of duff for lepers in Singapore: if the world didn't remember 1887, and the imperial grandmother from whom all blessings flowed, it wouldn't be her fault. And after years in purdah, she had taken to gallivanting on the grand scale, to Jubilee dinners and assemblies and soirees and dedications—dammit, she'd even visited Liverpool. But what had tickled her most, it seemed, was being photographed in full fig as Empress of India; it had given her quite an Indian fever, and she was determined that the Jubilee should have a fine flavour of curry—hence the resolve to learn Hindi. "But what else, Sir Harry, would best mark our signal regard for our Indian subjects, do you think?"

Baksheesh, booze, and bints was the answer to that, but I chewed on a muffin, looking grave, and said, why not engage some Indian attendants, ma'am, that'd go down well. It would also infuriate the lordly placemen and toad-caters who surrounded her, if I knew anything. After some thought, she nodded and said that was a wise and fitting suggestion—in the event, it was anything but, for the Hindi-wallah she fixed on as her special pet turned out to be not the highcaste gent he pretended, but the son of a puggle-walloper in Agra jail; if that wasn't enough, he spread her secret Indian papers all over the bazaars, and drove the Viceroy out of his halfwits. Aye, old Flashy's got the touch.²

At the time, though, she was all for it—and then she got down to cases in earnest. "For now, Sir Harry, I have two questions for you. Most important questions, so please to attend." She adjusted her spectacles and rummaged in a flat case at her elbow, breathing heavy and finally unearthing a yellowish scrap of paper.

"There, I have it. Colonel Mackeson's letter …" She peered at it with gooseberry eyes. "… dated the ninth of February, 1852… now where is … ah, yes! The Colonel writes, in part: `On this head, it will be best to consult those officers in the Company service who have seen it, and especially Lieutenant Flashman …³ " She shot me a look, no doubt to make sure I recognised the name "… who is said to have been the first to see it, and can doubtless say precisely how it was then worn. She laid the letter down, nodding. "You see, I keep all letters most carefully arranged. One cannot tell when they may be essential."

I made nothing of this. Where the deuce had I been in '52, and what on earth was "it" on whose wearing I was apparently an authority? The Queen smiled at my mystification. "It may be somewhat changed," says she, "but I am sure you will remember it."

She took a small leather box from the case, set it down among the tea things, and with the air of a conjurer producing a rabbit, raised the lid. Elspeth gave a little gasp, I looked—and my heart gave a lurch.

It ain't to be described, you must see it close to … that glittering pyramid of light, broad as a crown piece, alive with an icy fire that seems to shine from its very heart. It's a matchless, evil thing, and shouldn't be a diamond at all, but a ruby, red as the blood of the thousands who've died for it. But it wasn't that, or its terrible beauty, that had shaken me … it was the memory, all unexpected. Aye, I'd seen it before.

"The Mountain of Light," says the Queen complacently. "That is what the nabobs called it, did they not, Sir Harry?"

"Indeed, ma'am," says I, a mite hoarse. Koh-i-Noor.

"A little smaller than you remember it, I fancy. It was recut under the directions of my dear Albert and the Duke of Wellington," she explained to Elspeth, "but it is still the largest, most precious gem in all the world. Taken in our wars against the Sikh people, you know, more than forty years ago. But was Colonel Mackeson correct, Sir Harry? Did you see it then in its native setting, and could you describe it?"

By God, I could … but not to you, old girl, and certainly not to the wife of my bosom, twittering breathlessly as the Queen lifted the gleaming stone to the light in her stumpy fingers. "Native setting" was right: I could see it now as I saw it first, blazing in its bed of tawny naked flesh—in the delectable navel of that gorgeous trollop Maharani Jeendan, its dazzling rays shaming the thousands of lesser gems that sleeved her from thigh to ankle and from wrist to shoulder . . that had been her entire costume, as she staggered drunkenly among the cushions, laughing wildly at the amorous pawings of her dancingboys, draining her gold cup and flinging it aside, giggling as she undulated voluptuously towards me, slapping her bare hips to the tom-toms, while I, heroically foxed but full of good intentions, tried to crawl to her across a floor that seemed to be littered with Kashmiri houris and their partners in jollity … "Come and take it, my Englishman! Ai-ee, if old Runjeet could see it now, eh? Would he leap from his funeral pyre, think you?"

Dropping to her knees, belly quivering, the great diamond flashing blindingly. "Will you not take it? Shall Lal have it, then? Or Jawaheer? Take it, gora sahib, my English bahadur! The loose red mouth and drugged, kohl-stained eyes mocking me through a swirling haze of booze and perfume …

"Why, Harry, you look quite upset! Whatever is the matter?" It was Elspeth, all concern, and the Queen clucked sympathetically and said I was distrée, and she was to blame, "for I am sure, my dear, that the sudden sight of the stone has recalled to him those dreadful battles with the Sikhs, and the loss of, oh, so many of our gallant fellows. Am I not right?" She patted my hand kindly, and I wiped my fevered brow and confessed it had given me a start, and stirred painful recollections . . , old comrades, you know, stern encounters, trying times, bad business all round. But yes, I remembered the diamond; among the Crown Jewels at the Court of Lahore, it had been . .

"Much prized, and worn with pride and reverence, I am sure."

"Oh, absolutely, ma'am! Passed about, too, from time to time."

The Queen looked shocked. "Not from hand to hand?"

From navel to navel, in fact, the game being to pass it round, male to female, without using your hands, and anyone caught waxing his belly-button was disqualified and reported to Tattersalls … I hastened to assure her that only the royal family and their, ah, closest intimates had ever touched it, and she said she was glad to hear it.

"You shall write me an exact description of how it was set and displayed," says she. "Of course, I have worn it myself in various settings, for while it is said to be unlucky, I am not superstitious, and besides, they say it brings ill fortune only to men. And while it was presented by Lord Dalhousie to me personally, I regard it as belonging to all the women of the Empire. Aye, thinks I absently, your majesty wears it on Monday and the scrub-woman has it on Tuesday.

"That brings me to my second question, and you, Sir Harry, knowing India so well, must advise me. Would it be proper, do you think, to have it set in the State Crown, for the great Jubilee service in the Abbey? Would it please our Indian subjects? Might it give the least offence to anyone—the princes, for example? Consider that, if you please, and give me your opinion presently." She regarded me as though I were the Delphic oracle, and I had to clear my mind of memories to pay heed to what she was saying.

So that, after all the preamble, was her question of "first importance"—of all the nonsense! As though one nigger in a million would recognise the stone, or knew it existed, even. And those who did would be fat crawling rajas ready to fawn and applaud if she proposed painting the Taj Mahal red white and blue with her damned diamond on top. Still, she was showing more delicacy of feeling that I'd have given her credit for; well, I could set her mind at rest … if I wanted to. On reflection, I wasn't sure about that. It was true, as she'd said, that Koh-i-Noor had been bad medicine only for men, from Aladdin to Shah Jehan, Nadir, old Runjeet, and that poor pimp Jawaheer—I could hear his death-screams yet, and shudder. But it hadn't done Jeendan much good, either, and she was as female as they come .., . "Take it, Englishman"—gad, talk about your Jubilee parties … No, I wouldn't want it to be unlucky for our Vicky.

Don't misunderstand; I ain't superstitious either. But I've learned to be leery of the savage gods, and I'll admit that the sight of that infernal gewgaw winking among the teacups had taken me flat aback … forty years and more … I could hear the tramp of the Khalsa again, rank on bearded rank pouring out through the Moochee Gate: "Wah Guru-ji! To Delhi! To London!" … the thunder of guns and the hiss of rockets as the Dragoons came slashing through the smoke … old Paddy Gough in his white "fighting coat", twisting his moustaches—"Oi nivver wuz bate, an' Oi nivver will be bate!" … a lean Pathan face under a tartan turban—"You know what they call this beauty? The Man Who Would Be King!" … an Arabian Nights princess flaunting herself before her army like a nautch-dancer, mocking them … and defying them, half-naked and raging, sword in hand … coals glowing hideously beneath a gridiron … lovers hand in hand in an enchanted garden under a Punjab moon … a great river choked with bodies from bank to bank … a little boy in cloth of gold, the great diamond held aloft, blood running through his tiny fingers … Koh-i-Noor! Koh-i-Noor! …"

The Queen and Elspeth were deep in talk over a great book of photographs of crowns and diadems and circlets, "for I know my weakness about jewellery, you see, and how it can lead me astray, but your taste, dear Rowena, is quite faultless … Now, if it were set so, among the fleurs-de-lys …"

I could see I wasn't going to get a word in edgeways for hours, so I slid out for a smoke. And to remember.

I'd vowed never to go near India again after the Afghan fiasco of '42, and might easily have kept my word but for Elspeth's loose conduct. In those salad days, you see, she had to be forever flirting with anything in britches—not that I blame her, for she was a rare beauty, and I was often away, or ploughing with other heifers. But she shook her bouncers once too often, and at the wrong man: that foul nigger pirate Solomon who kidnapped her the year I took five for 12 against All-England, and a hell of a chase I had to win her back.*(*See Flashman's Lady) I'll set it down some day, provided the recounting don't scare me into the grave; it's a ghastly tale, about Brooke and the headhunting Borneo rovers, and how I only saved my skin (and Elspeth's) by stallioning the mad black queen of Madagascar into a stupor. Quaint, isn't it? The end of it was that we were rescued by the Anglo-French expedition that bombarded Tamitave in '45, and we were all set for old England again, but the officious snirp who governed Mauritius takes one look at me and cries: "'Pon my soul, it's Flashy, the Bayard of Afghanistan! How fortunate, just when it's all hands to the pumps in the Punjab! You're the very man; off you go and settle the Sikhs, and we'll look after your missus." Or words to that effect.

I said I'd swim in blood first. I hadn't retired on half pay just to be pitched into another war. But he was one of your wrath-of-God tyrants who won't be gainsaid, and quoted Queen's Regulations, and bullied me about Duty and Honour—and I was young then, and fagged out with tupping Ranavalona, and easily cowed. (I still am, beneath the bluster, as you may know from my memoirs, as fine a catalogue of honours won through knavery, cowardice, taking cover, and squealing for mercy as you'll ever strike.) If I'd known what lay ahead I'd have seen him damned first—those words'll be on my tombstone, so help me—but I didn't, and it would have shot my hardearned Afghan laurels all to pieces if I'd shirked, so I bowed to his instruction to proceed to India with all speed and report to the C-in-C, rot him. I consoled myself that there might be advantages to stopping abroad a while longer: I'd no news from home, you see, and it was possible that Mrs Leo Lade's noble protector and that greasy bookie Tighe might still have their bruisers on the lookout for me—it's damnable, the pickle a little harmless wenching and welching can land you in.3

So I bade Elspeth an exhausting farewell, and she clung to me on the dockside at Port Louis, bedewing my linen and casting sidelong glances at the moustachioed Frogs who were waiting to carry her home on their warship—hollo, thinks I, we'll be calling the first one Marcel at this rate, and was about to speak to her sternly when she lifted those glorious blue eyes and gulped: "I was never so happy as in the forest, just you and me. Come safe back, my bonny jo, or my heart Will break." And I felt such a pang, as she kissed me, and wanted to keep her by me forever, and to hell with India—and I watched her ship out of sight, long after the golden-haired figure waving from the rail had grown too small to see. God knows what she got up to with the Frogs, mind you, I had hopes of a nice leisurely passage, to Calcutta for choice, so that whatever mischief there was with the Sikhs might be settled long before I got near the frontier, but the Cape mailsloop arrived next day, and I was bowled up to Bombay in no time. And there, by the most hellish illluck, before I'd got the ghee-smell in my nostrils or even thought about finding a woman; I ran slap into old General Sale, whom I hadn't seen since Afghanistan, and was the last man I wanted to meet just then.

In case you don't know my journal of the Afghan disaster,*(*See Flashman). I must tell you that I was one of that inglorious army which came out in '42 a dam' sight faster than it went in—what was left of it. I was one of the few survivors, and by glorious misunderstanding was hailed as the hero of the hour: it was mistakenly believed that I'd fought the bloodiest lastditch action since Hastings—when in fact I'd been blubbering under a blanket—and when I came to in dock at Jallalabad, who should be at my bedside, misty with admiration, but the garrison commander, Fighting Bob Sale. He it was who had first trumpeted my supposed heroism to the world—so you may picture his emotion when here I was tooling up three years later, apparently thirsting for another slap at the paynim.

"This is the finest thing!" cries he, beaming. "Why, we'd thought you lost to us—restin' on your laurels, what? I should ha' known better! Sit down, sit down, my dear boy! Kya-hai, matey! Couldn't keep away, you young dog! Wait till George Broadfoot sees you—oh, aye, he's on the leash up yonder, and all the old crowd! Why, 'twill be like old times—except you'll find Gough's no Elphy Bey⁴ , what?" He clapped me on the shoulder, fit to burst at the prospect of bloodshed, and added in a whisper they could have heard in Benares: "Kabul be damned—there'll be no retreat from Lahore! Your health, Flashman."

It was sickening, but I looked keen, and managed a groan of dismay when he admitted that the war hadn't started yet, and might not at all if Hardinge, the new Governor-General, had his way. Right, thinks I, count me as one of the Hardinge Ring, but of course I begged Bob to tell me how the land lay, feigning great eagerness—in planning a campaign, you see, you must know where the safe billets are likely to be. So he did, and in setting it down I shall add much information which I came by later, so that you may see exactly how things were in the summer of '45, and understand all that followed.

A word first, though. You'll have heard it said that the British Empire was acquired in a fit of absence of mind --one of those smart Oscarish squibs that sounds well but is thoroughly fatheaded. Presence of mind, if you like—and countless other things, such as greed and Christianity, decency and villainy, policy and lunacy, deep design and blind chance, pride and trade, blunder and curiosity, passion, ignorance, chivalry and expediency. honest pursuit of right, and determination to keep the bloody Frogs out. And often as not, such things came tumbling together, and when the dust had settled, there we were, and who else was going to set things straight and feed the folk and guard the gate and dig the drains—oh, aye, and take the profit, by all means.

That's what study and eyewitness have taught me, leastways, and perhaps I can prove it by describing what happened to me in '45, in the bloodiest, shortest war ever fought in India, and the strangest, I think, of my whole life. You'll find it contains all the Imperial ingredients I've listed—stay, though, for "Frogs" read "Muslims", and if you like, "Russians"—and a few others you may not believe. When I'm done, you may not be much clearer on how the map of the world came to be one-fifth pink, but at least you should realise that it ain't something to be summed up in an epigram. Absence of mind, my arse. We always knew what we were doing; we just didn't always know how it would pan out.

First of all, you must do as Sale bade me, and look at the map. In '45 John Company⁵ held Bengal and the Carnatic and the east coast, more or less, and was lord of the land up to the Sutlej, the frontier beyond which lay the Five Rivers country of the Sikhs, the Punjab.' But things weren't settled then as they are now; we were still shoring up our borders, and that north-west frontier was the weak point, as it still is. That way invasion had always come, from Afghanistan, the vanguard of a Mohammedan tide, countless millions strong, stretching back as far as the Mediterranean. And Russia. We'd tried to sit down in Afghanistan, as you know, and got a bloody nose, and while that had been avenged since, we weren't venturing that way again. So it remained a perpetual threat to India and ourselves—and all that lay between was the Punjab, and the Sikhs.

You know something of them: tall, splendid fellows with uncut hair and beards, proud and exclusive as Jews, and well disliked, as clannish, easily-recognised folk often are—the Muslims loathed them, the Hindoos distrusted I hem, and even today T. Atkins, while admiring them as stout fighters, would rather be brigaded with anyone else—excepting their cavalry, which you'd be glad of anywhere. For my money they were the most advanced people in India—well, they were only a sixth of the Punjab's population, but they ruled the place, so there you are.

We'd made a treaty with these strong, clever, treacherous, civilised savages, respecting their independence north of the Sutlej while we ruled south of it. It was good business for both parties: they remained free and friends with John Company, and we had a tough, stable buffer between us and the wild tribes beyond the Khyber—let the Sikhs guard the passes, while we went about our business in India without the expense and trouble of having to deal with the Afghans ourselves. That's worth bearing in mind when you hear talk of our "aggressive forward policy" in India: it simply wasn't common sense for us to take over the Punjab—not while it was strong and united.

Which it was, until '39, when the Sikh maharaja, old Runjeet Singh, died of drink and debauchery (they say he couldn't tell male from female at the end, but they're like that, you know). He'd been a great man, and a holy terror, who'd held the Punjab solid as a rock, but when he went, the struggle for power over the next six years made the Borgia intrigues look like a vicarage soirée. His only legitimate son, Kuruk, an opium-guzzling degenerate, was quickly poisoned by his son, who lasted long enough to attend Papa's funeral, where a building collapsed on him, to no one's surprise. Second wicket down was Shere Singh, Runjeet's bastard and a lecher of such enthusiasm that I've heard they had to pry him off a wench to seat him on the throne. He had a fine long reign of two years, surviving mutiny, civil war, and a plot by Chaund Cour, Kuruk's widow, before they finally did for him (and his entire harem, the wasteful swine). Chaund Cour later expired in her bath, under a great stone dropped by her own slave-girls, whose hands and tongues were then removed, to prevent idle gossip, and when various other friends and relations had been taken off sudden-like, and the whole Punjab was close to anarchy, the way was suddenly clear for a most unlikely maharaja, the infant Dalip Singh, who was still on the throne, and in good health, in the summer of '45.

It was claimed he was the child of old Runjeet and a dancing-girl named Jeendan whom he'd married shortly before his death. There were those who doubted the paternity, though, since this Jeendan was notorious for entertaining the lads of the village four at a time, and old Runjeet had been pretty far gone when he married her; on the other hand, it was pointed out that she was a practised professional whose charms would have roused a stone idol, so old Runjeet might have done the deed before rolling over and going to God.

So now she was Queen Mother and joint regent with her drunken brother Jawaheer Singh, whose great party trick was to dress as a female and dance with the nautch-girls—by all accounts it was one continuous orgy at the Court of Lahore, with Jeendan galloping every man in sight, her lords and ladies all piling in, no one sober for days on end, treasure being spent like the wave of the sea, and the whole polity sliding downhill to luxurious ruin. I must say, it sounded quite jolly to me, bar the normal murders and tortures, and the furious plotting which apparently occupied everyone's sober moments.

And looming like a genie over all this delightful corruption was the Khalsa—the Sikh army. Runjeet had built it, hiring first-class European mercenaries who had turned it into a truly formidable machine, drilled, disciplined, modern, 80,000 strong—the finest army in India, barring the Company's (we hoped). While Runjeet lived, all had been well, but since his death the Khalsa had realised its power, and wasn't prepared to be cat's paw to the succession of rascals, degenerates, and drunkards who'd tumbled on and off the throne; it had defied its officers, and governed itself by soldiers' committees, called panches, joining in the civil strife and bloodshed when it suited, slaughtering, looting, and raping in disciplined fashion, and supporting whichever maharaja took its fancy. One thing was constant about the Khalsa: it hated the British, and was forever demanding to be led against us south of the Sutlej.

Jeendan and Jawaheer controlled it as their predecessors had done, with huge bribes of pay and privileges, but with lakhs being squandered on their depravities, even the fabulous wealth of the Punjab was beginning to run dry—and what then? For years we'd been watching our northern buffer dissolve in a welter of blood and decay, in which we were treaty-bound not to intervene; now the crisis was come. How long could Jawaheer and Jeendan keep the Khalsa in hand? Could they prevent it (did they even want to?) taking a slap at us with the loot of all India as the prize? If the Khalsa did invade, would our own native troops stand true, and if they didn't … well, no one, except a few canny folk like Broadfoot, cared to think about that, or contemplate the kind of thing that half-happened twelve years later, in the Mutiny.

So that's how things stood in August '45,6 but my alarms, as usual, were entirely personal. Meeting Sale had scuppered my hopes of lying low for a spell: he would see to it that I had a place on Gough's staff, says he, beaming paternally while I frisked in feigned enthusiasm with my bowels dissolving, for I knew that being old Paddy's galloper would be a one-way trip to perdition if the bugles blew in earnest. He was Commander-in-Chief, was Gough, an ancient Irish squireen who'd fought in more battles than any man living and was forever looking for more; loved by the troops (as such lunatics always are), and much sympathised with just then, when he was sweating to secure the frontier against the coming storm, and calling down Celtic curses on the head of that sensible chap Hardinge in Calcutta, who was forever cautioning him not to provoke the Sikhs, and countermanding his troop movements.⁶

But I had no way out; Sale was off now post-haste to resume his duties as Quartermaster-General on the frontier, with poor Flashy in tow, wondering how I could catch measles or break a leg. Mind you, as we rode north I was much reassured by the assembly of men and material along the Grand Trunk Road: from Meerut up it was aswarm with British regiments, Native Infantry, dragoons, lancers, Company cavalry, and guns by the park—the Khalsa'll never tackle this crowd, thinks I; they'd be mad. Which of course they were. But I didn't know the Sikhs then, or the incredible shifts and intrigues that can make an army march to suicide.

Gough⁷ wasn't at headquarters in Umballa, which we reached early in September; he'd gone up to Simla for a breather, and since Sale's wife was living there we pushed straight on, to my delight. I'd heard of it as a great place for high jinks and good living, and, I foolishly supposed, safety.

It was a glorious spot then,⁸ before Kipling's vulgarians and yahoos had arrived, a little jewel of a hill station ringed in by snow-clad peaks and pine forests, with air that you could almost drink, and lovely green valleys like the Scotch border country—one of 'em. was absolutely called Annandale, where you could picnic and fete to heart's content. Emily Eden had made it the resort in the '30s, and already there were fine houses on the hillsides, and stone bungalows with log fires where you could draw the curtains and think you were back in England; they were building the church's foundations then, on the ridges above the Bazaar, and laying out the cricket ground; even the fruits and flowers were like home—we had strawberries and cream, I remember, that first afternoon at Lady Sale's house.

Dear dreadful Florentia. If you've read my Afghan story, you know her, a rawboned old heroine who'd ridden with the army all through that nightmare retreat over the passes from Kabul, when a force of 14,000 was whittled almost to nothing by the Dourani snipers and Khyber knives. She hadn't shut up the whole way, damning the administration and bullying her bearers: Colin Mackenzie said it was a near thing which was more fearsome—a Ghazi leaping from the rocks yelling murder, or Lady Sale's red nose emerging from a tent demanding to know why the water was not thoroughly boiling. She hadn't changed, bar the rheumatics from which she could get relief only by cocking a foot up on the table—damned unnerving it was, to have her boot beside your cup, and a great lean shank in red flannel among the muffins.⁹

"Flashman keeps staring at my ankle, Sale!" cries she. "They are all alike, these young men. Don't make owl eyes at me, sir—I remember your pursuit of Mrs Parker at Kabul! You thought I had not noticed? Ha! I and the whole cantonment! I shall watch you in Simla, let me tell you." This between a harangue about Hardinge's incompetence and a blistering rebuke to her khansamah*(*Butler.) for leaving the salt out of the coffee. You'll gather I was a favourite of hers, and after tea she had me reviving Afghan memories by rendering "Drink, puppy, drink" in my sturdy baritone while she thumped the ivories, my performance being marred by a sudden falsetto when I remembered that I'd last sung that jolly ditty in Queen Ranavalona's boudoir, with her black majesty beating time in a most unconventional way.

That reminded me that Simla was famous for its diversions, and since the Sales were giving dinner that night to Gough and some cabbage-eating princeling who was making the Indian tour, I was able to cry off, Florentia dropping a hint that I should be home before the milk. I tooled down the hill to the dirt road that has since become the famous Mall, taking the air among the fashionable strollers, admiring the sunset, the giant rhododendrons, and Simla's two prime attractions—hundreds of playful monkeys and scores of playful women. Unattached, the women were, their menfolk being hard at it down-country, and the pickings were choice: civilian misses, saucy infantry wives, cavalry mares, and bouncing grass widows. I ran my eye over 'em,' and fastened on a fortyish Juno with a merry eye and full nether lip who gave me a thoughtful smile before turning in to the hotel, where by the strangest chance I presently encountered her in a secluded corner of the tea verandah. We conversed politely, about the weather and the latest French novels (she found The Wandering Jew affecting, as I recall, while I stood up for the Musketeers),¹⁰ and she ate a dainty water-ice and started to claw at my thigh under the table.

I like a woman who knows her mind; the question was, where? and I couldn't think of anywhere cosier than the room I'd been allotted at the back of Sale's mansion—Indian servants have eyes in their buttocks, of course, but the walls were solid, not chick, and with dusk coming down we could slide in by the french windows unseen. Her good name had plainly died in the late '20s, for she said it was a capital lark, and presently we were slipping through the bushes of Sale's garden, keeping clear of the dinner guests' jampan*(*A kind of sedan chair.) bearers, who were squatting by the front verandah. We paused for a lustful grapple among the deodars before mounting the steps to the side verandah—and dammit, there was a light in my room, and the sound of a bearer hawking and shuffling within. I stood nonplussed while my charmer (a Mrs Madison, I think) munched on my ear and tore at my buttons, and at that moment some interesting Oriental came round the corner of the house, expectorating hugely, and without thinking I whisked her through the door next to mine, closing it softly.

It proved to be the billiard-room—dark, empty and smelling of clergymen, and since my little flirt now had my pants round my ankles and was trying to plumb my depths, I decided it would have to do. The diners would be beating their plates for hours yet, and Gough hadn't the look of a pool-shark, somehow, but caution and delicacy forbade our galloping on the open floor, and since there were little curtains between the legs of the table …

There ain't as much deck clearance under a billiard table as you might suppose, but after a cramped and feverish partial disrobing we settled down to play fifty up. And Mrs Madison proved to be a most expert tease, tittering mischievously and spinning things out, so that we must have been everywhere from beneath the baulk to the top cushion and back before I had her trapped by the middle pockets and was able to give of my best. And after she had subsided with tremulous whimpers, and I had got my breath back, it seemed quite cosy, don't you know, and we whispered and played in the stuffy dark, myself drowsy and she giggling at what a frolic it was, and I was beginning to consider a return fixture when Sale decided he'd like a game of billiards.

I thought I was sent for. The door crashed open, light shone through the curtains, bearers came scurrying in to remove the cover and light the table candles, heavy foot-steps sounded, men's voices laughing and talking, and old Bob crying: "This way, Sir Hugh … your highness. Now, what shall it be? A round game or sides, hey?"

Their legs were vague shadows beyond the curtains as I bundled Mrs Madison to the centre—and the abandoned trot was positively shaking with laughter! I hissed soundlessly in her ear, and we lay half-clad and quivering, she with mirth and I with fright, while the talk and laughter and clatter of cues sounded horrid close overhead. Of all the damned fixes! But there was nothing for it but to lie doggo, praying we didn't sneeze or have the conniptions.

I've had similar experiences since—under a sofa on which Lord Cardigan was paying court to his second wife, beneath a dago president's four-poster (that's how I won the San Serafino Order of Purity and Truth), and one shocking time in Russia when discovery meant certain death. But the odd thing is, quaking as you are, you find yourself eavesdropping for dear life; I lay with one ear between Mrs Madison's paps, and the other taking it all in—and it's worth recounting, for it was frontier gossip from our head men, and will help you understand what followed.

In no time I knew who was in the room: Gough, and Sale, and a pimpish affected lisp which could belong only to the German princeling, the pulpit growl of old Gravedigger Havelock (who'd ha' thought that he'd frequent pool-rooms?), and the high, arrogant Scotch burr that announced the presence of my old Afghan chum George Broadfoot, now exalted as Agent for the North-West Frontier.¹¹ He was in full complaint, as usual:

" .. and Calcutta rebukes me for taking a high hand with the Maharani and her drunken durbar! I must not provoke them, says Hardinge. Provoke, indeed—while they run raids on us, and ignore my letters, and seduce our sepoys! Half the brothel bints in Ludhiana are Sikh agents, offering our jawans*(*Native infantryman.) double pay to desert to the Khalsa."

"Double for infantry, six-fold for sowars, *(*Cavalry trooper) says Sale.

"Temptin', what?¹² Spot or plain, prince?"

"Spot, if you please. But do many of your native soldiers desert, then?"

"Och, a few." This was Gough, in his pigsty brogue.

"Mind you, if ever the Khalsa invaded, God knows how many might jump on what they thought was the winnin' nag. Or refuse to fight agin' fellow-Injuns."

The pills clicked, and the prince says: "But the British will always be the winning side. Why, all India holds your army invincible." There was a long pause, then Broadfoot says:

"Not since Afghanistan. We went in like lions and came out like sheep—and India took note. Who knows what might follow a Sikh invasion? Mutiny? It's possible. A general revolt —"

"Oh, come!" cries the prince. "A Sikh invasion would be promptly repelled, surely! Is that not so, Sir Hugh?" More pill-clicking, and then Gough says: "Put it this way, sorr. If John Sepoy turned tail—which I don't believe, mind—I'd be left wi' our British regiments alone agin' one hunnert t'ousand of the best fightin' fellows in India—European trained, mark'ee, wi' modern arms … How many do I get for a cannon, will ye tell me? Two? Mother o' God, is it worth it? Well, here goes." Click. "Damnation, me eyes is failin'. As I was sayin', your highness—I wouldn't have to make too many mistakes, now, would I?"

"But if there is such danger—why do you not march into the Punjab now, and nip it in the bud?"

Another long silence, then Broadfoot: "Breach of treaty if we did—and conquest isn't popular in England, since Sind.^l3 No doubt it'll come to that in the end—and Hardinge knows it, for all he says British India's big enough already. But the Sikhs must strike first, you see, and Sir Hugh's right -- that's our moment of peril, when they're south of the Sutlej in force, and our own sepoys may join 'em. If we struck first, treaty or not, and tackled the Khalsa in the Punjab, our stock would rise with the sepoys, they wouldn't waver, and we'd win hands down. We'd have to stay, in a territory London don't want—but India would be safe from Muslim invasion forever. A nice, circular problem, is it not?"

The Prince says thoughtfully: "Sir Henry Hardinge has a dilemma, it seems."

"That's why he waits," says Sale, "in the faint hope that the present Lahore government will restore stability."

"Meanwhile reproving me and hindering Sir Hugh, in case we `provoke' Lahore," says Broadfoot. " `Armed observation'—that's to be our ticket."

Mrs Madison gave a gentle snore, and I whipped my hand over her mouth, pinching her nostrils.

"What's that?" says a voice overhead. "Did you hear it?"

There was silence, while I trembled on the verge of heart failure, and then Sale says:

"Those dam' geckoes.*(*House lizards.) Your shot, Sir Hugh."

If that wasn't enough, Mrs Madison, now awake, put her lips to my ear: "When will they leave off? I am ever so cold." I made silent frantic motions, and she thrust her tongue in my ear, so that I missed the next exchange. But I'd heard enough to be sure of one thing—however pacific Hardinge's intentions, war was an odds-on certainty. I don't mean that Broadfoot was ready to, start it himself, but he'd jump at the chance if the Sikhs gave him one—and so no doubt would most of our Army folk; it's a soldier's business, after all. And by the sound of it the Khalsa were ready to oblige—and when they did, I'd be in the middle, galloper to a general who led not only from the front but from the middle of the enemy's blasted army, given the chance. But the prince was talking again, and I strained my ears, trying to ignore Mrs Madison, who was burrowing underneath me, for warmth, presumably.

"But may Sir Henry not be right? Surely there is some Sikh noble capable of restoring order and tranquillity—this Maharani, for example … Chunda? Jinda?"

"Jeendan," says Broadfoot. "She's a hoor." They had to translate for the prince, who perked up at once.

"Indeed? One hears astonishing stories. They say she is of incomparable beauty, and … ah … insatiable appetite …?"

"Ye've heard of Messalina?" says Broadfoot. "Well, this lady has been known to discard six lovers in a single night."

Mrs Madison whispered: "I don't believe it," and neither did the prince, evidently, for he cries:

"Oh, scandalous rumours always multiply facts! Six in one night, indeed! How can you be sure of that?"

"Eye-witnesses," says Broadfoot curtly, and you could almost hear the prince blinking as his imagination went to work.

Someone else's was also taking flight: Mrs Madison, possibly inspired by all this disgraceful gossip, was becoming attentive again, the reckless bitch, and try as I would to still her, she teased so insistently that I was sure they must hear, and Havelock's coffin face would pop under the curtain at any moment. So what could I do, except hold my breath and comply as quietly as possible—it's an eerie business, I can tell you, in dead silence and palpitating with fear of discovery, and yet it's quite soothing, in a way. I lost all track of their talk, and by the time we were done, and I was near choking with my shirt stuffed into my mouth, they were putting up their cues and retiring, thank God. And then:

"A moment, Broadfoot." It was Gough, his voice down. "D'ye think his highness might talk, at all?"

There could only be the two of them in the room. "As the geese muck," says Broadfoot. "Everywhere. It'll be news to nobody, though. Half the folk in this damned country are spies, and the other half are their agents, on commission. I know how many ears I've got, and Lahore has twice as many, ye can be sure."

"Like enough," says Gough. "Ah, well—'twill all be over by Christmas, devil a doubt. Now, then—what's this Sale tells me about young Flashman?"

How they didn't hear the sudden convulsion beneath the table, God knows, for I damned near put my head through the slates.

"I must have him, sir. I've lost Leech, and Cust will have to take his place. There isn't another political in sight—and I worked with Flashman in Afghanistan. He's young, but he did well among the Gilzais, he speaks Urdu, Pushtu, and Punjabi —"

"Hold yer horses." says Gough. "Sale's promised him the staff, an' the boy deserves it, none more. Forbye, he's a fightin' soldier, not a clerk. If he's to win his way, he'll do it as he did at Jallalabad, among hot shot an' cold steel —"

"With respect, Sir Hugh!" snaps Broadfoot, and I could imagine the red beard bristling. "A political is not a clerk. Gathering and sifting intelligence —"

"Don't tell me, Major Broadfoot! I was fightin', an' gatherin' intelligence, while your grandfather hadn't got the twinkle in his eye yet. It's a war we're talkin' about—an' a war needs warriors, so now!" God help the poor old soul, he was talking about me.

"I am thinking of the good of the service, sir —"

"An' I'm not, damn yer Scotch impiddence? Och, what the hell, ye're makin' me all hot for nothin'. Now, see here, George, I'm a fair man, I hope, an' this is what I'll do. Flashman is on the staff—an' you'll not say a word to him, mallum?*(*Understand?) But … the whole army knows ye've lost Leech, an' there's need for another political. If Flashman takes it into his head to apply for that vacancy—an' havin' been a political he may be mad enough for anythin'—then I'll not stand in his way. But under no compulsion, mind that. Is that fair, now?"

"No, sir," says George. "What young officer would exchange the staff for the political service?"

"Any number—loafers, an' Hyde Park hoosars—no disrespect to your own people, or to young Flashman. He'll do his duty as he sees it. Well, George, that's me last word to you. Now, let's pay our respects to Lady Sale …"

If I'd had the energy, I'd have given Mrs Madison another run, out of pure thanksgiving.

"I suppose ye know nothing at all," says Broadfoot, "about the law of inheritance and widows' rights?"

"Not a dam' thing, George," says I cheerily. "Mind you, I can quote you the guv'nor on poaching and trespass—and I know a husband can't get his hands on his wife's gelt if her father won't let him." Elspeth's parent, the loathly Morrison, had taught me that much. Rotten with rhino he was, too, the little reptile.

"Haud yer tongue," says Broadfoot. "There's for your education, then." And he pushed a couple of mouldering tomes across the table; on top was a pamphlet: Inheritance Act, 1833. That was my reintroduction to the political service.

You see, what I'd heard under Sale's pool-table had been the strains of salvation, and I'll tell you why. As a rule, I'd run a mile from political work—skulking about in nigger clobber, living on millet and sheep guts, lousy as the tinker's dog, scared stiff you'll start whistling "Waltzing Matilda" in a mosque, and finishing with your head on a pole, like Burnes and McNaghten. I'd been through all that—but now there was going to be a pukka war, you see, and in my ignorance I supposed that the politicals would retire to their offices while the staff gallopers ran errands in the cannon's mouth. Afghanistan had been one of those godless exceptions where no one's safe, but the Sikh campaign, I imagined, would be on sound lines. More fool me.¹⁴

So, having thanked the Fates that had guided me to roger Mrs Madison under the green baize, and taken soundings to satisfy myself that Leech and Cust had been peaceably employed, I'd lost no time in running into Broadfoot, accidental-like. Great hail-fellowings on both sides, although I was quite shocked at the change in him: the hearty Scotch giant, all red beard and thick spectacles, was quite fallen away—liver curling at the edges, he explained, which was why he'd moved his office to Simla, where the quacks could get a clear run at him. He'd taken a tumble riding, too, and went with a stick, gasping when he stirred.

I commiserated, and told him my own troubles, damning the luck that had landed me on Gough's staff ("poodle-faking, George, depend upon it, and finding the old goat's hat at parties"), and harking back to the brave days when he and I had dodged Afridis on the Gandamack Road, having endless fun. (Jesus, the things I've said.) He was a downy bird, George, and I could see him marvelling at this coincidence, but he probably concluded that Gough had dropped me a hint after all, for he offered me an Assistant's berth on the spot.

So now we were in the chummery of Crags, his bungalow on Mount Jacko, with me looking glum at the law books and reflecting that this was the price of safety, and Broadfoot telling me testily that I had better absorb their contents, and sharp about it. That was another change: he was a sight sterner than he'd been, and it wasn't just his illness. He'd been a wild, agin-the-government fellow in Afghanistan, but authority had put him on his dignity, and he rode a pretty high horse as Agent—once, for a lark, I called him "major", and he didn't even blink; ah, well, thinks I, there's none so prim as a Scotsman up in the world. In fairness, he didn't blink at "George", either, and was easy enough with me, in between the snaps and barks.

"Next item," says he. "Did many folk see ye in Umballa?"

"Shouldn't think so. What's it matter? I don't owe money -'

"The fewer natives who know that Iflassman the soldier is on hand, the better," says he. "Ye haven't worn uniform since ye landed? Good. Tomorrow, ye'll shave off your moustache and whiskers -- do it yourself, no nappy-wallah*(*Barber.)—and I'll cut your hair myself into something decently civilian—give ye a touch of pomade, perhaps —"

The sun had got him, not a doubt. "Hold on, George! I'll need a dam' good reason —"

"I'm telling ye, and that's reason enough!" snarls he; liver in rough order, I could see. Then he managed a sour grin. "This isn't the kind of political bandobast*(*Organisation, business) ye're used to; ye'll not be playing Badoo the Badmash this time." Well, that was something. "No, you're a proper wee civilian henceforth, in a tussore suit, high collar and tall hat, riding in a jampan with a chota-wallah*((Little fellow) to carry your green bag. As befits a man of the law, well versed in widows' titles." He studied me sardonically for a long moment, doubtless enjoying my bewilderment. "I think ye'd better have a look at your brief," says he, and rose stiffly, cursing his leg.

He led me into the little hall, through a small door, and down a short flight of steps into a cellar where one of his Pathan Sappers (he'd had a gang of them in Afghanistan, fearsome villains who'd cut your throat or mend your watch with equal skill) was squatting under a lamp, glowering at three huge jars, all of five feet high, which took up most of the tiny cell. Two of them were secured with silk cords and great red seals.

Broadfoot leaned on the wall to ease his leg, and signed to the Pathan, who removed the lid from the unsealed jar, holding the lamp to shine on its contents. I looked, and was sufficiently impressed.

"What's up, George?" says I. "Don't you trust the banks?"

The jar was packed to the brim with gold, a mass of coin glinting under the light. Broadfoot gestured, and I picked up a handful, cold and heavy, clinking as it trickled back into the jar.

"I am the bank," says Broadfoot. "There's Ł140,000 here, in mohurs, ingots, and fashioned gold. Its disposal … may well depend on you. Tik hai*(*All right.), Mahmud." He limped aloft again, while I followed in silence, wondering what the devil I was in for this time—not that it looked perilous, thank heaven. Broadfoot settled gratefully in his chair.

"That treasure," says he, " is the legacy of Raja Soochet Singh, a Punjabi prince who died two years ago, leading sixty followers against an army of twenty thousand." He wagged his red head. "Aye, they're game lads up yonder. Well, now, like most Punjabi nobles in these troubled times, he had put his wealth in the only safe place—in the care of the hated British. Infidels we may be, but we keep honest books, and they know it. There's a cool twenty million sterling of Punjab money south of the Sutlej this minute.

"For two years past the Court of Lahore—which means the regents, Jawaheer Singh and his slut of a sister—have been demanding the return of Soochet's legacy, on the ground that he was a forfeited rebel. Our line, more or less, has been that `rebel' is an unsatisfactory term, since naebody kens who the Punjab government is from one day to the next, and that the money should go to Soochet's heirs—his widow, or his brother, Raja Goolab Singh. We've taken counsel's opinion," says he, straightfaced, "but the position is complicated by the fact that the widow was last heard of fleeing for her life from a beleaguered fort, while Goolab, who had designs on the Punjab throne at one time, has lately proclaimed himself King of Kashmir, and is sitting behind a rock up Jumoo way, with fifty thousand hillmen at his back. However, we have sure information that both he and the widow are of opinion that the money is fine where it is, for the time being."

He paused, and "Isn't it?" was on the tip of my tongue, for I didn't care for this above half; talk of besieged forts and hillmen unsettles me, and I had horrid visions of Flashy sneaking through the passes with a portmanteau, bearing statements of compound interest to these two eccentric legatees, both of whom were probably dam' dangerous to know.

"A further complication," says Broadfoot, "is that Jawaheer Singh is threatening to make this legacy a cause of war. As you know, peace is in the balance; those three jars down there might tip the scale. Naturally, Sir Henry Hardinge wishes negotiations about the legacy to be reopened at Lahore—not with a view to settlement, of course, but to temporise." He looked at me over his spectacles. "We're not ready yet."

To settle—or to go to war? Having eavesdropped on Broadfoot's opinions, I could guess which. Just as I could see, with sudden horrible clarity, who the negotiator was going to be, in that Court of bhang*(*Indian hemp.)-sodden savages where they murdered each other regular, after supper. But that apart, the thing made no sense at all.

"You want me to go to Lahore—but I ain't a lawyer, dammit! Why, I've only been in a court twice in my life!" Drunk and resisting arrest, and being apprehended on premises known to be a disorderly house, five quid each time, not that it mattered.

"They don't ken that," says Broadfoot.

"Don't they, though? George, I ain't puffing myself, but I'm not unknown over there! Man alive, when we had a garrison in Lahore, in '42, I was being trumpeted all over the shop! Why, you said yourself the fewer who knew Iflassman was back, the better! They know I'm a soldier, don't they—Bloody Lance, and all that rot?"

"So they may," says he blandly. "But who's to say ye haven't been eating your dinner in Middle Temple Hall these three years past? If Hardinge sends ye, accredited and under seal, they're not going to doubt ye. Ye can pick up the jargon, and as much law as ye'll need, from those." He indicated the books.

"But where's the point? A real lawyer can spin the thing out ten times better than I can! Calcutta's full of 'em —"

"But they can't speak Punjabi. They can't be my eyes and ears in Lahore Fort. They can't take the pulse in that viper's nest of intrigue. They're not politicals trained by Sekundar Burnes. And if the grip comes"—He tapped his desk triumphantly—"they can't turn themselves into a Khye-Keen or Barukzai jezzailchi and slip back over the Sutlej."

So I was to be a spy—in that den of devilment! I sat appalled, stammering out the first objection that came to mind.

"And a fat chance I'll have of doing that, with my face shaved!" He waved it aside.

"Ye cannot go to Lahore with soldier written all over ye. Forbye, it'll never come to disguise, or anything desperate. You'll be a British diplomat, the Governor-General's envoy, and immune."

So was McNaghten, I wanted to holler, so was Burnes, so were Connolly and Stoddart and Uncle Tom Cobleigh, it's on their bloody tombstones. And then he unveiled the full horror of the thing.

"That immunity will enable you to remain in Lahore after the war has begun … supposing it does. And that is when your real work will begin."

And I'd exchanged a staff billet for this. The prospect was fit to make me puke—but I daren't say so, not to Broadfoot. Somehow I contained my emotion, assumed a ruptured frown, and said surely a diplomat would be expelled, or confined at least.

"Not for a moment." Oh, he had it all pat, blast him. "From the day you arrive in Lahore—and thereafter, whatever befalls—ye'll be the most courted man in the Punjab. It's this way: there's a war party, and a peace party, and the Khalsa, and the panch committees that control it, and a faction that wants us to take the Punjab, and a faction that wants us driven from India altogether, and some that hop from one side to t'other, and cabals and cliques that don't ken what they want because they're too drunk and debauched to think." He leaned forward, all eager red whiskers, his eyes huge behind the bottle lenses. "But they all want to be on the right side at the finish, and most have wit enough to see that that will be our side. Oh, they'll shift and swither and plot, and ye'll be approached (discreetly) with more hints and ploys and assurances of good will than ye can count. From enemies who'll be friends tomorrow—and vice versa. All of which ye'll transmit secretly to me." He sat back, well pleased with himself, while I kept a straight face with my bowels in my boots. "That's the marrow of the business. Now, for your more particular information …"

He brought out a sheaf of those slim buff packets that I remembered from Burnes's office at Kabul. I knew what they held: maps, names, places, reports and summaries, laws and customs, biographies and artists' sketches, heights and distances, history, geography, even weights and measures—all that years of intelligence and espionage had gathered about the Punjab, to be digested and returned. "When ye've studied these, and the law books, we'll talk at more length," says he, and asked if I had any observations.

I could have made a few, but what was the use? I was sunk -- through my own folly, as usual. If I hadn't thumped that randy baggage Madison, I'd never have overheard Gough and rushed rejoicing into this hellish political stew . , , it didn't bear thinking of. All I could do was show willing, for my precious credit's sake, so I asked him who the friends and enemies in Lahore were likely to be.

"If I knew that, ye wouldn't be going. Oh, I ken who our professed sympathisers and illwillers are at the moment—but where they'll stand next week …? Take Goolab Singh, Soochet's fugitive heir—he's sworn that if the Khalsa marches, he'll stand by us … well, perhaps he will, in the hope that we'll confirm him in Kashmir. But if the Khalsa were to give us a wee setback—where would Goolab and his hillmen be then, eh? Loyal … or thinking about the loot of Delhi?"

I could see where Flashy would be—stranded in Lahore among the raging heathen. I knew better than to ask him what other politicals and trusted agents would be on hand, so I went round about. "How shall I report to you—through the vakil? *(*An agent, in this case Broadfoot's official representative in Lahore, through whom everyday business was openly transacted, and diplomatic messages exchanged.)

"No such thing—he's a native, and not a sure one. He can take any letters ye may write about the Soochet legacy, but anything secret will be in cypher notes, which you'll leave in Second Thessalonians on the bedside table in your quarters —"

"Second where?"

He looked at me as though I'd farted. "In your Bible, man!" You could see him wondering if my bedside reading wasn't more likely to be Tom and Jerry. "The cypher, and coding instructions, are in the packets. Your messages will be … collected, never fear."

So there was a trusted messenger at the Court—and the fact that I wasn't to be told who was another thought to chill my blood: what you don't know you can't tell if inquisitive folk approach you with hot irons … "What if I need to get word to you quickly? I mean, if the Khalsa march, all of a sudden —"

"I'll ken that before you do. What you must discover then is why they've marched. Who set them on, and for what purpose? If it's war . . what's behind it, and how came it to begin? That's what I must know." He hunched forward again, intent. "Ye see, Flashy … to know precisely why your enemy is making war, what he hopes to gain and fears to lose … is to be halfway to winning. Mind that."

Looking back, I can say it made good sense, though I was in no state to appreciate it then. But I nodded dutifully, with that grim attentive mien which I've learned to wear while scheming frantically how to slide out from under.

"This Soochet legacy, then—it's all gammon?"

"By no means. It's your excuse for being in Lahore, to be sure—as their subtler folk will suspect—but it's still a genuine cause¹⁵ which ye'll argue with their officials. Perhaps even in full durbar with the regents, if they're sober. In which case, keep your wits about you. Jawaheer's a frightened degenerate weakling, and Maharani Jeendan seems set on destroying herself by vicious indulgence …" He paused, fingering his beard, while I perked up a trifle, like Prince Whatsisname. He went on, frowning:

"I'm not sure about her, though. She had rare spirit and ability once, or she'd never have climbed from the stews to the throne. Aye, courage, too—d'ye know how she once quelled a mob of her mutinous soldiery, and them bent on slaughter?"

I said I'd no notion, and waited breathless.

"She danced. Aye, put on veils and castanets and danced them daft, and they went home like sheep."

Broadfoot shook his head in admiration, no doubt wishing he'd been there. "Practising her trade—she danced in the Amritsar brothels as a child, before she caught Runjeet's fancy." He gave a grimace of distaste. "Aye, and what she learned there has obsessed her ever since, until her mind's unhinged with it, I think."

"Dancing?" says I, and he shot me a doubtful look—he was a proper Christian, you see, and knew nothing about me beyond my supposed heroics.

"Debauchery, with men." He gave a Presbyterian sniff, hesitating, no doubt, to sully my boyish mind. "She has an incurable lust—what the medicos call nymphomania. It's driven her to unspeakable excesses … not only with every man of rank in Lahore, but slaves and sweepers, too. Her present favourite is Lal Singh, a powerful general—although I hear she abandoned him briefly of late for a stable lad who robbed her of ten lakhs of jewels."

I was so shocked I couldn't think what to say, except easy come, easy go.

"I doubt if the stable lad thought so. He's in a cage over the Looharree Gate this minute, minus his nose, lips, ears . et cetera, they tell me. That," says Broadfoot, "is why I say I'm not sure about her. Debauched or not, the lady is still formidable."

And I'd been looking forward no end to meeting her, too; Flashy's ideal of womanhood, she'd sounded like—until this, the last grisly detail in the whole hideous business. That night, in my room at Crags, after I'd pored through Broadfoot's packets, flung the lawbooks in a corner, paced up and down racking my brains for a way out, and found none, I felt so low altogether that I decided to complete my misery by shaving my whiskers—that's how reduced I was. When I'd done, and stared at my naked chops in the glass, remembering how Elspeth had adored my face-furniture and sworn they were what had first won her girlish heart, I could have wept. "Beardie-beardie," she used to murmur fondly, and that sent me into a maudlin reverie about that first splendid tumble in the bushes by the Clyde, and equally glorious romps in the Madagascar forest … from which my mind naturally strayed to frenzied gallops with Queen Ranavalona, who hadn't cared for whiskers at all—leastways, she always used to try to wrench mine out by the roots in moments of ecstasy.

Well, some women don't like 'em. I reflected idly that the Maharani Jeendan, who evidently counted all time lost when she wasn't being bulled' by Sikhs, must be partial to beards … then again, she might welcome a change. By George, that would ease the diplomatic burden; no place like bed for state secrets … useful patroness, too, in troubled times. Mind you, if she wore out six strong men in a night, Lahore bazaar had better be well stocked with stout and oysters …

Mere musing, as I say—but something similar may have been troubling the mind of Major Broadfoot, G., for while I was still admiring my commanding profile in the glass, in he tooled, looking middling uneasy, I thought. He apologised for intruding, and then sat down, prodding the rug with his stick and pondering. Finally:

"Flashy … how old are ye?" I told him, twenty-three.

He grunted. "Ye're married, though?" Wondering, I said I'd been wed five years, and he frowned and shook his head.

"Even so … dear me, you're young for this Lahore business!" Hope sprang at once, then he went on: "What I mean is, it's the deuce of a responsibility I'm putting on you. The price of fame, I suppose—Kabul, Mogala, Piper's Fort … man, it's a brave tale, and you just a bit laddie, as my grandam would have said. But this thing," says he seriously, "… perhaps an older head … a man of the world … aye, if there was anyone else , .."

I know when not to snatch at a cue, I can tell you. I waited till I saw him about to continue, and then got in first, slow and thoughtful:

"George … I know I'm dead green, in some ways, and it's true enough, I'm more at home with a sabre than a cypher, what? I'd never forgive myself, if I … well, if I failed you of all people, old fellow. Through inexperience, I mean. So … if you want to send an older hand … well …" Manly, you see, putting service before self, hiding my disappointment. All it got me was a handclasp and a noble gleam of his glasses.

"Flashy, ye're a trump. But the fact is, there's no one in your parish for this work. Oh, it's not just the Punjabi, or that you've shown a stout front and a cool head—aye, and resource beyond your years. I think you'll succeed in this because ye have a gift with … with folk, that makes them take to you." He gave a little uneasy laugh, not meeting my eye. "It's what troubles me, in a way. Men respect you; women … admire you … and …"

He broke off, taking another prod at the carpet, and I'd have laid gold to groceries his thoughts were what mine had been before he came in. I've wondered since what he'd have done if I'd said: "Very good, George, we both suspect that this horny bitch will corrupt my youthful innocence, but if I pleasure her groggy enough, why, I may turn her mind inside out, which is what you're after. And how d'ye want me to steer her then, George, supposing I can? What would suit Calcutta?"

Being Broadfoot, he'd probably have knocked me down. He was honest that far; if he'd been the hypocrite that most folk are, he'd not have come up to see me at all. But he had the conscience of his time, you see, Bible-reared and shunning sin, and the thought that my success in Lahore might depend on fornication set him a fine ethical problem. He couldn't solve it—I doubt if Dr Arnold and Cardinal Newman could, either. ("I say, your eminence, what price Flashy's salvation if he breaks the seventh commandment for his country's sake?" "That depends, doctor, on whether the randy young pig enjoyed it.") Of course, if it had been slaughter, not adultery, that was necessary, none of my pious generation would even have blinked—soldier's duty, you see.

I may tell you that, in Broadfoot's shoes, with so much at stake, I'd have told my young emissary: "Roger's the answer", and wished him good hunting—but then, I'm a scoundrel.

But I mustn't carp at old George, for his tortured conscience saved my skin, in the end. I'm sure it made him feel that, for some twisted reason, he owed me something. So he bent his duty, just a little, by giving me a lifeline, in case things went amiss. It wasn't much, but it might have imperilled another of his people, so as an amend I reckon it pretty high.

After he'd finished havering, and not saying what couldn't be said, he turned to go, still looking uneasy. Then he stopped, hesitated, and came out with it.

`See here,' says he, `I should not be saying this, but if the grip does come—which I don't believe it will, mind—and ye find yourself in mortal danger, there's a thing you can do." He glowered at me, mauling his whiskers. "As a last resort only, mallum? Ye'll think it strange, but it's a word—a password, if ye like. Utter it anywhere within the bounds of Lahore Fort—dropped into conversation, or shouted from the housetops if need be—and the odds are there'll be those who'll pass it, and a friend will come to you, Ye follow? Well, the word is `Wisconsin'."

He was as deadly serious as I'd ever seen him. " `Wisconsin'," I repeated, and he nodded.

"Never breathe it unless ye have to. It's the name of a river in North America."

It might have been the name of a privy in Penzance for all the good it seemed likely to be. Well, I was wrong there.

I've set out on my country's service more times than I can count, always reluctantly, and often as not in a state of alarm; but at least I've usually known what I was meant to be doing, and why. The Punjab business was different. As I wended my sweltering, dust-driven way to Ferozepore on the frontier, the whole thing seemed more unlikely by the mile. I was going to a country in uproar, whose mutinous army might invade us at any moment. I was to present a legal case at a court of profligate, murderous intriguers on whom, war or no war, I was also to spy—both being tasks for which I was untrained, whatever Broadfoot might say. I had been assured that the work was entirely safe and told almost in the same breath that when all hell broke loose I had only to holler "Wisconsin!" and a genie or Broadfoot's grandmother or the Household Brigade would emerge from a bottle and see me right. Just so. Well, I didn't believe a word of it.

You see, tyro though I was, I knew the political service and the kind of larks it could get up to, like not telling a fellow until it was too late. Two fearsome possibilities had occurred to my distrustful mind: either I was a decoy to distract the enemy from other agents, or I was being placed in the deep field to receive secret instructions when war started. In either case I foresaw fatal consequences, and to make matters worse, I had dark misgivings about the native assistant Broadfoot had assigned to me—you remember, the "chota-wallah" who was to carry my green bag.

His name was Jassa, and he wasn't chota. I had envisaged the usual fat babu or skinny clerk, but Jassa was a pock-marked, barrel-chested villain, complete with hairy poshteen,*(*Coat.) skull-cap, and Khyber knife—just the man you'd choose, as a rule, to see you through rough country, but I was leery of this one from the start. For one thing, he pretended to be a Baloochi dervish, and wasn't—I put him down for Afghan chi-chi,*(*Half-caste) for he was grey-eyed, had no greater a gap between his first and second toes than I did, and possessed something rare among Europeans at that time, let alone natives—a vaccination mark. I spotted it at Ferozepore when he was washing at the tank, but didn't let on; he was from Broadfoot's stable, after all, and plainly knew his business, which was to act as orderly, guide, shield-on-shoulder, and general adviser on country matters. Still, I didn't trust him above half.

Ferozepore was the last outpost of British India then, a beastly hole not much better than a village, beyond which lay the broad brown flood of the Sutlej—and then the hot plain of the Punjab. We had just built a barracks for our three battalions, one British and two Native Infantry, who garrisoned the place, God help them, for it was hotter than hell's pavement; you boiled when it rained, and baked when it didn't. In my civilian role, I didn't call on Littler, who commanded, but put up with Peter Nicolson, Broadfoot's local Assistant. He was suffering for his country, that one, dried out and hollow-cheeked with the worst job in India—nursemaiding the frontier, finding shelter for the endless stream of refugees from the Punjab, sniffing out the trouble-makers sent to seduce our sepoys and disaffect the zamindars*(*Land-holders.) chasing raiding parties, disarming badmashes,*(*Ruffians),ś ruling a district, and keeping the Queen's peace—all this, mind you, without provoking a hostile power which was spoiling for trouble.

"It can't last," says he cheerfully—and I wondered how long he could, with that impossible task and the mercury at 107. "They're just waitin' for an excuse, an' if I don't give 'em one—why, they'll roll over the river as soon as the cold weather comes, horse, foot an' guns, you'll see. We ought to go in an' smash 'em now, while they're in two minds an' gettin' over the cholera—five thousand of the Khalsa have died in Lahore, but it's past its worst."

He was seeing me down to the ferry at daybreak; when I mentioned the great assembly of our troops I'd seen above Meerut he laughed and pointed back to the cantonment, where the 62nd were drilling, the red and buff figures like dolls in the heat haze.

"Never mind what's on the Grand Trunk," says he. "That's what's here, my boy—seven thousand men, one-third British, an' only light guns. Up there," he pointed north, "is the Khalsa—one hundred thousand of the finest native army in Asia, with heavy guns. They're two days' march away. Our nearest reinforcements are Gilbert's ten thousand at Umballa, a week's march away, and Wheeler's five thousand at Ludhiana—only five days' march. Strong on mathematics, are you?"

I'd heard vague talk in Simla, as you know, about our weakness on the frontier, but it's different when you're on the spot, and hear the figures. "But why --?" I was beginning, and Nicolson chuckled and shook his head.

"— doesn't Gough reinforce now?" he mimicked me. "Because it would provoke Lahore—my goodness, it provokes Lahore if one of our sepoys walks north to the latrines! I hear they're goin' to demand that we withdraw even the troops we have up here now—perhaps that'll start the war, even if your Soochet legacy doesn't." He knew about that, and had twitted me about how I'd be languishing at the feet of "the fair sultana" while honest soldiers like him were chasing infiltrators along the river.

I don't know why I remember those words, or the sight of him with that great mob of niggers chattering about him while his orderlies cuffed and pushed them up to the camp where they'd be fed and looked after; he was for all the world like a prepostor marshalling the fags, laughing and swearing by turns, with a chico perched on his shoulder—I'd not have touched the verminous imp for a pension. He was a kindly, cheery ass, working twenty hours a day, minding his frontier. Four months later he got his reward: a bullet. I wonder if anyone else remembers him?

The last time I'd crossed the Sutlej had been four years earlier, where there was a British army ahead, and we had posts all the way to Kabul. Now there were no friends before me, and no one to turn to except the Khyberie thug Jassa and our gaggle of bearers—they were there chiefly because Broadfoot had said I should enter Lahore in a jampan, to impress the Sikhs with my consequence. Thanks, George, but I felt damned unimportant as I surveyed my waiting escort (or captors?), and Jassa did nothing to raise my spirits.

Gorracharra, grunts he, and spat. "Irregular cavalry—it is an insult to thee, husoor.*(*Sir, lord) These should have been men of the palace, pukka cavalry. They seek to put shame on us, the Hindoo swine!"

I told him pretty sharp to mind his manners, but I saw what he meant. They were typical native irregulars, splendid cavalry undoubtedly, but dressed and armed any old how, with lances, bows, tulwars,*(*Sikh swords.) and ancient fire-arms, some in mail coats and helmets, others bare-legged, and all grinning most familiarly. Not what you'd call a guard of honour—yet that's what they were, as I learned when their officer, a handsome young Sikh in a splendid rigout of yellow silk, addressed me by name—and by fame.

"Sardul Singh, at your service, Flashman bahadur, *(*Champion.) cries he, teeth flashing through his beard. "I was by the Turksalee Gate when you came down from Jallalabad, and all men came to see the Afghan Kush." So much for Broadfoot's notion that shaving my whiskers would help me to pass unnoticed—mind you, it was famous to hear myself described as "the slayer of Afghans", if quite undeserved. "When we heard you were coming with the book and not the sword—may it be an omen of peace for our peoples—I sought command of your escort—and these are volunteers." He indicated his motley squadron. "Men of the Sirkart in their time. A fitter escort for Bloody Lance than Khalsa cavalry."

Well, this was altogether grand, so I thanked him, raised my civilian kepi to his grinning bandits, saying "Salaam, bha"*(*"Greetings, brothers.") which pleased them no end. I took the first chance to remind Jassa how wrong he'd been, but the curmudgeon only grunted: "The Sikh speaks, the cobra spits—who grows fat on the difference?" There's no pleasing some folk.

Between the Sutlej and Lahore lie fifty of the hottest, flattest, scrubbiest miles on earth, and I supposed we'd cover them in a long day's ride, but Sardul said we should lie overnight at a serai*(*Inn, rest-house.) a few miles from the city: there was something he wanted me to see. So we did, and after supper he took me through a copse to the loveliest place I ever saw in India—there, all unexpected after the heat and dust of the plain, was a great garden, with little palaces and pavilions among the trees, all hung with coloured lanterns in the warm dusk; streams meandered among the lawns and flower-beds, the air was fragrant with night-blooms, soft music sounded from some hidden place, and everywhere couples were strolling hand in hand or deep in lovers' talk under the boughs. The Chinese Summer Palace, where I walked years later, was altogether grander, I suppose, but there was a magic about that Indian garden that I can't describe—you could call it perfect peace, with its gentle airs rustling the leaves and the lights winking in the twilight; it was the kind of spot where Scheherazade might have told her unending stories; even its name sounds like a caress: Shalamar.¹⁶

But this wasn't the sight that Sardul wanted me to see—that was something unimaginably different, and we viewed it next morning. We left the serai at dawn, but instead of riding towards Lahore, which was in full view in the distance, we went a couple of miles out of our way towards the great plain of Maian Mir where, Sardul assured me mysteriously, the true wonder of the Punjab would be shown to me; knowing the Oriental mind, I could guess it was something designed to strike awe in the visiting foreigner—well, it did all of that. We heard it long before we saw it, the flat crash of artillery at first, and then a great confused rumble of sound which resolved itself into the squealing of elephants, the high bray of trumpets, the rhythm of drums and martial music, and the thunder of a thousand hooves making the ground tremble beneath us. I knew what it was before we rode out of the trees and halted on a bund*(*Embankment.) to view it in breathtaking panorama: the pride of the Punjab and the dread of peaceful India: the famous Khalsa.

Now, I've taken note of a few heathen armies in my time. The Heavenly Host of Tai'ping was bigger, the black tide of Cetewayo's legions sweeping into Little Hand was surely more terrifying, and there's a special place in my nightmares for that vast forest of tipis, five miles wide, that I looked down on from the bluffs over Little Bighorn—but for pure military might I've seen nothing outside Europe (and dam' little inside) to match that great disciplined array of men and beasts and metal on Maian Mir. As far as you could see, among the endless lines of tents and waving standards, the broad maidan*(*Plain.) was alive with foot battalions at drill, horse regiments at field exercise, and guns at practice—and they were all uniformed and in perfect order, that was the shocking thing. Black, brown, and yellow armies in those days, you see, might be as brave as any, but they didn't have centuries of drill and tactical movement drummed into 'em, not even the Zulus, or Ranavalona's Hova guardsmen. That was the thing about the Khalsa: it was Aldershot in turbans. It was an army.¹⁷

That's worth bearing in mind when you hear some smart alec holding forth about our imperial wars being one-sided massacres of poor club-waving heathen mown down by Gatlings. Oh, it happened, at Ulundi and Washita and Omdurman—but more often than not the Snider and Martini and Brown Bess were facing odds of ten to one against in country where shrapnel and rapid fire don't count for much; your savage with his blowpipe or bow or jezzail*(*Afghan musket) behind a rock has a deuce of an advantage: it's his rock, you see. Anyway, our detractors never mention armies like the Khalsa, every bit as well-armed and equipped as we were. So how did we hold India? You'll see presently.

That morning on Maian Mir the confidence I'd felt, viewing our forces on the Grand Trunk, vanished like Punjabi mist. I thought of Littler's puny seven thousand isolated at Ferozepore, our other troops scattered, waiting to be eaten piecemeal—by this juggernaut, a hundred thousand strong. A score of vivid images stay in my mind: a regiment of Sikh lancers wheeling at the charge in perfect dressing, the glittering points falling and rising as one; a battalion of Jat infantry with moustaches like buffalo horns, white figures with black crossbelts, moving like clockwork as they performed "at the halt on the left form companies"; Dogra light infantry advancing in skirmishing order, the blue turbans suddenly closing in immaculate line, the bayonet points ripping into the sand-bags to a savage yell of "Khalsa-ji!"; heavy guns being dragged through swirling dust by trumpeting elephant teams while the gunners trimmed their fuses, the cases being thrust home, the deafening roar of the salvo—and damme! if those shells didn't burst a mile away in perfect unison, all above ground. Even the sight of the light guns cutting their curtain targets to shreds with grape wasn't as sickening as the precision of the heavy batteries. They were as good as Royal Artillery—aye, and with bigger shot.

They made all their own material, too, from Brown Bess to howitzers, in the Lahore foundry, from our regulation patterns. Only one fault could I find with their gunners and infantry: their drill was perfect, but slow. Their cavalry … well, it was fit to ride over Napoleon.

Sardul took good care to let me see all this, pour encourager les feringhees. We tiffened with some of their senior men, all courteous to a fault, and not a word about the likelihood that our armies would be at each other's throats by Christmas—the Sikhs are damned good form, you know. There wasn't a European mercenary in sight, by the way; having built an army, they'd retired for the best of reasons: disgust at the state of the country, and reluctance to find themselves fighting John Company.

I saw another side to the Khalsa when we set out for Lahore after noon, Flashy now riding in state in his jampan, white topper and fly-whisk at the high port, with Jassa kicking the bearers' arses to give tone to our progress. We were swaying along in fine style past the head-quarters tents when we became aware of a crowd of soldiery gathered before the main pavilion, listening to some upper rojer*(Leading light.) on a dais. Sardul reined in to listen, and when I asked Jassa what this might be he growled and spat. "The panchayats! If old Runjeet had seen the day, he'd have cut his beard!"

So these were the Khalsa's notorious military commit-tees, of whom we'd heard so much. You see, while their field discipline was perfect, Khalsa policy was determined by the panches, where Jack Jawan was as good as his master, and all went by democratic vote—no way to run an army, I agreed with Jassa; small wonder they hadn't crossed the Sutlej yet. They were an astonishing mixture: bare-legged sepoys, officers in red silk, fierce-eyed Akalis¹⁸ in peaked blue turbans and gold beard-nets, a portly old rissaldar-major*(*tCavalry sergeant-major.) with white whiskers a foot wide, irregular sowars in lobster-tail helmets, Dogra musketeers in green, Pathans with long camel guns—there seemed to be every rank, caste, and race crowding round the speaker, a splendid Sikh, six and a half feet tall in cloth of silver, bellowing to make himself heard.

"All that we heard from Attack is true! Young Peshora is dead, and Kashmiri Singh with him, taken in sleep, after the hunting, by Chuttur Singh and Futteh Khan —"

"Tell us what we don't know!" bawls a heckler, and the big fellow raised his arms to still the yells of agreement.

"You don't know the manner of it—the shame and black treachery! Imam Shah was in Attock Fort—let him tell you."

A burly bargee in a mail jacket, with a bandolier of ivory-hilted knives round his hips, jumps on the dais, and they fell silent.

"It was foully done!" croaks he. "Peshora Singh knew it was his time, for they had him in irons, and bore him before the jackal, Chuttur Singh. Peshora looked him in the eye, and called for a sword. `Let me die like a soldier,' says he, but Chuttur would not look on him, but wagged his head and made soft excuses. Again the young hawk cried for a sword. 'You are thousands, I am alone—there can be but one end, so let it be straight!' Chuttur sighed, and whined, and turned away, waving his hands. `Straight, coward!' cries Peshora, but they bore him away. All this I saw. They took him to the Kolboorj dungeon, and choked him like a thief with his chains, and cast him in the river. This I did not see. I was told. God wither my tongue if I lie."

Peshora Singh had been the form horse in the throne stakes, according to Nicolson. Well, that's politics for you. I wondered if this would mean a change of government, for Peshora had been the Khalsa's idol, and while his death seemed to be old news, the manner of it seemed to put them in a great taking. They were all yelling at once, and the tall Sikh had to bellow again.

"We have sent the parwana*(*Summons.) to the palace. You all approved it! What is there to do but wait?"

"Wait—while the snake Jawaheer butchers other true men?" bawls a voice. "He's Peshora's murderer, for all he skulks in the Kwabagh*(*Sleeping Palace) yonder! Let us visit him now, and give him a sleep indeed!"

This got a rousing hand, but others shouted that Jawaheer was the hope of the side, and innocent of Peshora's death.

"Who bribed thee to say that?" roars the rissaldar-major, all fire and whiskers. "Did Jawaheer buy thee with a gold chain, boroowa?*(*Pimp) Or perchance Mai Jeendan danced for thee, fornicating strumpet that she is!" Cries of "Shame!", "Shabash!"*(*Bravo!) and the Punjabi equivalent of "Mr Chairman!", some pointing out that the Maharani had promised them fifteen rupees a month to march against the bastardised British pigs (the spectator in the jampan drew his curtain tactfully at this point) and Jawaheer was just the chap to lead them. Another suggested that Jawaheer wanted war only to draw the Khalsa's fury from his own head, and that the Maharani was an abominable whore of questionable parentage who had lately had a Brahmin's nose sliced off when he rebuked her depravities, so there. A beardless youth, frothing with loyalty, offered to eat the innards of anyone who impugned the honour of that saintly woman, and the meeting seemed likely to dissolve in riot when a gorgeously-robed old general, hawk-faced and commanding, mounted the dais and let them have it straight from the shoulder.

"Silence! Are ye soldiers or fish-wives? Ye have heard Pirthee Singh—the parwana has been sent, summoning Jawaheer to come out to us on the sixth of Assin, to answer for Peshora's death or show himself guiltless. There is no more to be said, but this …" He paused, and you could have heard a pin drop as his cold eye ranged over them. "We are the Khalsa, the Pure, and our allegiance is to none but our Maharaja, Dalip Singh, may God protect his innocence! Our swords and lives are his alone!" Thunderous cheers, the old rissaldar-major spouting tears of loyalty. "As to marching against the British … that is for the panchayats to decide another day. But if we do, then I, General Maka Khan"—he slapped his breast—"shall march because the Khalsa wills it, and not for the wiles of a naked cunchunee*(*Dancing-girl.) or the whim of a drunken dancing-boy!"

With that summary of the regents' characters the day's business concluded, and I was relieved, as Sardul led us past the dispersing soldiery, to note that any glances in my direction were curious rather than hostile; indeed, one or two saluted, and you may be sure I responded civilly. This heartened me, for it suggested that Broadfoot was right, and whatever upheavals in government took place—dramatic ones, by the sound of it—the stranger Flashy would be respected within their gates, their opinion of his country notwithstanding.

We approached Lahore roundabout, skirting the main town, which is a filthy maze of crooked streets and alleys, to the northern side, where the Fort and palace building dominate the city. Lahore's an impressive place, or was then, more than a mile across and girdled by towering thirty-foot walls which overlooked a deep moat and massive earthworks—since gone, I believe. In those days you were struck by the number and grandeur of its gates, and by the extent of the Fort and palace on their eminence, with the great half-octagon tower, the Summum Boorj, thrusting up like a giant finger close to the northern ramparts.

It loomed above us as we entered by the Rushnai, or Bright Gate, past the swarms of dust-covered workmen labouring on old Runjeet's mausoleum., and into the Court Garden. To the right a tremendous flight of steps led up to Badshai Musjit, the great triple mosque said to be the biggest on earth -- mind you, the Samarkandians say the same of their mosque—and to the left was the inner gate up to the Fort, a bewildering place full of contradictions, for it contains not only the Sleeping Palace but a foundry and arsenal close by, the splendid Pearl Mosque which is used as a treasury, and over one of the gates a figure of the Virgin Mary, which they say Shah Jehan put up to keep the Portugee traders happy. But there was something stranger still: I'd just bidden farewell to Sardul's escort and my jampan, and was being conducted on foot by a yellow-clad officer of the Palace Guard, when I noticed an extraordinary figure lounging in an embrasure above the gate, swigging from an enormous tankard and barking orders at a party of Guardsmen drilling with the light guns on the wall. He was a real Pathan mercenary, with iron moustaches and a nose like a hatchet—but he was dressed from top to toe, puggaree,*(*Turban.) robe, and pyjamys, in the red tartan of the 79th Highlanders! Well, I've seen a Madagascar nigger in a Black Watch kilt, but this beat all. Stranger still, he carried a great metal collar in one hand, and each time before he drank he would clamp it round his throat, almost as though he expected the liquor to leak out through his Adam's apple.

I turned to remark on this to Jassa—and dammit, he'd vanished. Nowhere to be seen. I stared about, and demanded of the officer where he had got to, but he hadn't seen him at all, so in the end I found myself being led onward alone, with all my former alarms rushing back at the gallop.

You may wonder why, just because my orderly had gone astray. Aye, but he'd done it at the very moment of entering the lion's den, so to speak, and the whole mission was mysterious and chancy enough to begin with, and I'm God's own original funk, so there. And I smelled mischief here, in this maze of courts and passages, with high walls looming about me. I didn't even care for the splendid apartments to which I was conducted. They were on an upper storey of the Sleeping Palace, two lofty, spacious rooms joined by a broad Moorish arch, with mosaic tiles and Persian murals, a little marble balcony overlooking a secluded fountain court, silks on the bed, silent bearers to stow my kit, two pretty little maids who shimmied in and out, bringing water and towels and tea (I didn't even think of slapping a rump, which tells you how jumpy I was), and a cooling breeze provided by an ancient punkah-wallah in the passage, when the old bugger was awake, which was seldom. For some reason, the very luxury of the place struck me as sinister, as though designed to lull my fears. At least there were two doors, one from either chamber—I do like to know there's a line of retreat.

I washed and changed, still fretting about Jassa's absence, and was about to lie down to calm my nerves when my eye lit on a book on the bedside table—and I sat up with a start. For it was a Bible, placed by an unknown hand—in case I'd forgotten my own, of course.

Broadfoot, thinks I, you're an uneasy man to work for, but by God you know your business. It reminded me that I wasn't quite cut off; I found I was muttering "Wisconsin", then humming it shakily to the tune of "My bonnie is over the ocean", and on the spur of the moment I dug out my cypher key—Crotchet Castle, the edition of 1831, if you're interested—and began to write Broadfoot a note of all that I'd heard on Maian Mir. And I had just completed it, and inserted it carefully at Second Thessalonians, and was glumly pondering a verse that read "Pray without ceasing", and thinking a fat lot of good that'll do, when the door slammed open, there was a blood-curdling shriek, a mad dwarf flourishing a gleaming sabre leaped into the archway, and I rolled off the bed with a yell of terror, scrabbling for the pepperbox in my open valise, floundering round to cover the arch, my finger snatching at the trigger ring …

In the archway stood a tiny boy, not above seven years old, one hand clutching his little sabre, the other pressed to his teeth, eyes shining with delight. My wavering pistol fell away, and the little monster fairly crowed with glee, clapping his hands.

"Mangla! Mangla, come and see! Come on, woman—it is he, the Afghan killer! He has a great gun, Mangla! He was going to shoot me! Oh, shabash, shabash!"

"I'll give you shabash, you little son-of-a-bitch!" I roared, and was going for him when a woman came flying into the archway, scooping him up in her arms, and I stopped dead. For one thing, she was a regular plum—and for another the imp was glaring at me in indignation and piping:

"No! No! You may shoot me—but don't dare strike me! I am a maharaja!"

I've met royalty unexpected a number of times—face to face with my twin, Carl Gustaf, in the Jotunberg dungeon, quaking in my rags before the black basilisk Ranavalona, speechless as Lakshmibai regarded me gravely from her swing, stark naked and trussed in the presence of the future Empress of China—and had eyes only for the principal, but in the case of Dalip Singh, Lord of the Punjab, my attention was all for his protectress. She was a little spanker, this Mangla—your true Kashmiri beauty, cream-skinned and perfect of feature, tall and shapely as Hebe, eyes wide at me as she clasped him to her bosom, the lucky lad. He didn't know when he was well off, though, for he slapped her face and yelled:

"Set me down, woman! Who bade thee interfere? Let me go!"

I'd have walloped the tyke, but after another searching glance at me she set him down and stepped back, adjusting her veil with a little coquettish toss of her head—even with my panic still subsiding I thought, aha! here's another who fancies Flash at short notice. The ungrateful infant gave her a push for luck, straightened his shoulders, and made me a jerky bow, hand over heart, royal as bedamned in his little aigretted turban and gold coat.

"I am Dalip Singh. You are Flashman bahadur. the famous soldier. Let me see your gun!"

I resisted an impulse to tan his backside, and bowed in turn. "Forgive me, maharaj'. I would not have drawn it in your presence, but you took me unawares."

"No, I didn't!" cries he, grinning. "You move as the cobra strikes, too quickly to see! Oh, it was fine, and you must be the bravest soldier in the world—now, your gun!"

"Maharaj', you forget yourself!" Mangla's voice was sharp, and not at all humble. "You have not given proper welcome to the English lord sahib—and it is unmannerly to burst in on him, instead of receiving him in durbar. *(*"Durbar", as Flashman employs it, means variously an audience of royalty, the durbar room in which audience is given, and the Punjab government (e.g. "Lahore durbar").) What will he think of us?" Meaning, what does he think of me, to judge from another glance of those fine gazelle eyes. I gave her my gallant leer, and hastened to toady her overlord.

"His majesty honours me. But will you not sit, maharaj', and your lady also?"

"Lady?" He stared and laughed. "Why, she's a slave! Aren't you, Mangla?"

"Your mother's slave, maharaj'," says she coldly. "Not yours."

"Then go and wait on my mother!" cries the pup, not meeting her eye. "I wish to speak with Flashman bahadur.

You could see her itching to upend him, but after a moment she gave him a deep salaam and me a last appraisal, up and down, which I returned, admiring her graceful carriage as she swayed out, while the little pest tried to disarm me. I told him firmly that a soldier never gives his weapon to anyone, but that I'd hold it for him to see, if he showed me his sword in the same way. So he did, and then stared at my pepperbox¹⁹ , mouth open.

"When I am a man," says he, "I shall be a soldier of the Sirkar, and have such a gun."

I asked, why the British Army and not the Khalsa, and he shook his head. "The Khalsa are mutinous dogs. Besides, the British are the best soldiers in the world, Zeenan Khan says."

"Who's Zeenan Khan?"

"One of my grooms. He was flank-man-first-squadron-fifth-Bengal-Cavalry-General-Sale-Sahib-in-Afghanistan" Rattled out as Zeenan must have taught him. He pointed at me. "He saw you at Jallalabad Fort, and told me how you slew the Muslims. He has only one arm, and no pinshun."

Now that's a pension we'll see paid, with arrears, thinks I: an ex-sowar of Bengal Cavalry who has a king's ear is worth a few chips a month. I asked if I could meet Zeenan Khan.

"If you like, but he talks a lot, and always the same story of the Ghazi he killed at Teizin. Did you kill many Ghazis? Tell me about them!"

So I lied for a few minutes, and the bloodthirsty little brute revelled in every decapitation, eyes fixed on me, his small face cupped in his hands. Then he sighed and said his Uncle Jawaheer must be mad.

"He wants to fight the British. Bhai Ram says he's a fool—that an ant can't fight an elephant. But my uncle says we must, or you will steal my country from me."

"Your uncle is mistaken," says diplomatic Flashy. "If that were true, would I be here in peace? No—I'd have a sword!"

"You have a gun," he pointed out gravely.

"That's a gift," says I, inspired, "which I'll present to a friend of mine, when I leave Lahore."

"You have friends in Lahore?" says he, frowning.

"I have now," says I, winking at him, and after a moment his jaw dropped, and he squealed with glee. Gad, wasn't I doing my country's work, though?

"I shall have it! That gun? Oh! Oh!" He hugged him-self, capering. "And will you teach me your war-cry? You know, the great shout you gave just now, when I ran in with my sword?" The small face puckered as he tried to say it: "Wee … ska … see …?"

I was baffled—and then it dawned: Wisconsin. Gad, my instinct for self-preservation must be working well, for me to squeal that without realising it. "Oh, that was nothing, maharaj'. Tell you what, though—I'll teach you to shoot."

"You will? With that gun?" He sighed ecstatically. "Then I shall be able to shoot Lal Singh!"

I remembered the name—a general, the Maharani's lover.

"Who's Lal Singh, maharaj'?"

He shrugged. "Oh, one of my mother's bed-men." Seven years old, mark you. "He hates me, I can't tell why. All her other bed-men like me, and give me sweets and toys." He shook his head in perplexity, hopping on one leg, no doubt to assist thought. "I wonder why she has so many bed-men? Ever so many —"

"Cold feet, I dare say … look, younker—maharaj', I mean—hadn't you better be running along? Mangla will be —"

"Mangla has bed-men, too," insists this fount of scandal. "But Uncle Jawaheer is her favourite. Do you know what Lady Eneela says they do?" He left off hop-ping, and took a deep breath. "Lady Eneela says they —"

Fortunately, before my delicacy could receive its death blow, Mangla suddenly reappeared, quite composed considering she'd plainly had her ear at the keyhole, and informed his garrulous majesty peremptorily that his mother commanded him to the durbar room. He pouted and kicked his heels, but finally submitted, exchanged salaams, and allowed her to shoo him into the passage. To my surprise, she didn't follow, but closed the door and faced me, mighty cool—she didn't look at all like a slave-girl, and she didn't talk like one.

"His majesty speaks as children do," says she. "You will not mind him. Especially what he says of his uncle, Wazir Jawaheer Singh."

No "sahib", or downcast eyes, or humble tone, you notice. I took her in, from the dainty Persian slippers and tight silk trousers to the well-filled bodice and the calm lovely face framed by the flimsy head veil, and moved up for a closer view.

"I care nothing about your Wazir, little Mangla," smiles I. "But if our small tyrant speaks true … I envy him."

"Jawaheer is not a man to be envied," says she, watching me with those insolent gazelle eyes, and a drift of her perfume reached me—heady stuff, these slave-girls use. I reached out and drew a glossy black tress from beneath the veil, and she didn't blink; I stroked her cheek with it, and she smiled, a provocative parting of the lips. "Besides, envy is the last deadly sin I'd expect from Flash-man bahadur.

"But you can guess the first, can't you?" says I, and gathered her smoothly in by tit and buttock, not omitting a chaste salute on the lips, to which the coy little creature responded by slipping her hand down between us, taking hold, and thrusting her tongue halfway down my throat—at which point that infernal brat Dalip began hacking at the door, clamouring for attention.

"To hell with him!" growls I, thoroughly engrossed, and for a moment she teased with hand and tongue before pulling her trembling softness away, panting bright-eyed.

"Yes, I know the first," she murmurs, taking a last fond stroke, "but this is not the time —"

"Ain't it, by God? Never mind the pup—he'll go away, he'll get tired —"

"It is not that." She pushed her hands against my chest, pouting and shaking her head. "My mistress would never forgive me."

"Your mistress? What the blazes ?"

"Oh, you will see." She disengaged my hands, with a pretty little grimace as that whining whelp kicked and yammered at the panels. "Be patient, Flashman bahadur—remember, the servant may sup last, but she sups longest." Her tongue flickered at my lips again. and then she had slipped out, closing the door to the accompaniment of shrill childish reproaches, leaving me most randily frustrated—but in better trim than I'd been for days. There's nothing like a brisk overhaul of a sporty female, with the certainty of a treat in store, for putting one in temper. And it goes to show—whiskers ain't everything.

I wasn't allowed to spend long in lustful contemplation, though, for who should loaf in now but the bold Jassa, looking fit for treason, and no whit put out when I damned his eyes and demanded where he'd been. "About the husoor's business," was all the answer I got, while he took a wary prowl through the two rooms, prodding a hanging here and tapping a panel there, and remarking that these Hindoo swine did themselves uncommon well. Then he motioned me out on to the little balcony, took a glance up and down, and says softly: "Thou has seen the little raja, then—and his mother's pimp?"

"What the devil d'ye mean?"

"Speak low, husoor. The woman Mangla -- Mai Jeendan's spy and partner in all mischief. A slave—that stands by her mistress's purdah in durbar, and speaks for her. Aye, and makes policy on her own account, and is grown the richest woman in Lahore. Think on that, husoor. She is Jawaheer's whore—and betrayer, like enough. Not a doubt but she was sent to scout thee … for whatever purposes." He grinned his evil, pock-marked grin, and cut me off before I could speak.

Husoor, we are together in this business, thou and I. If I am blunt, take it not amiss, but harken. They will come at thee all ways, these folk. If some have sleek limbs and plump breasts, why then … take thy pleasure, if thou'rt so minded," says this generous ruffian, "but remember always what they are. Now … I shall be here and there awhile. Others will come presently to woo thee—not so well favoured as Mangla, alas!"

Well, damn his impudence—and thank God for him. And he was right. For the next hour Flashy's apartments were like London Bridge Station in Canterbury week. First arrival was a tall, stately, ancient grandee, splendidly attired and straight from a Persian print. He came alone, coldly begging my pardon for his intrusion, and keeping an ear cocked; damned uneasy he seemed. His name was Dewan Dinanath, familiar to me from Broadfoot's packets, where he was listed as an influential Court adviser, inclined to the peace party, but a weathercock. His business was simple: did the Sirkar intend to return the Soochet fortune to the Court of Lahore? I said that would not be known until I'd reported to Calcutta, where the decision would be taken, and he eyed me with bleak disapproval.

"I have enjoyed Major Broadfoot's confidence in the past," sniffs he. "You may have equal confidence in me." Both of which were damned lies. "This treasure is vast, and. its return might be a precedent for other Punjab monies at present in the … ah, care of the British authorities. In the hands of our government, these funds would have a stabilising effect." They'd help Jawaheer and Jeendan to keep the Khalsa happy, he meant. "A word in season to me, of Hardinge sahib's intentions …"

"I'm sorry, sir," says I. "I'm only an advocate."

"A young advocate," snaps he, "should study conciliation as well as law. It is to go to Goolab, is it?"

"Or Soochet Singh's widow. Or the Maharaja's government. Unless it is retained by Calcutta, for the time being. That's all I can tell you, sir, I'm afraid."

He didn't like me, I could see, and might well have told me so, but a sound caught his ear, and he was through into my bedchamber like an elderly whippet. I heard the door close as my next unexpected guests arrived: two other grave seniors, Fakir Azizudeen,²⁰ a tough, shrewd-looking heavyweight, and Bhai Ram Singh, portly, jovial, and bespectacled—staunch men of the peace party, according to the packets. Bhai Ram was the one who thought Jawaheer a fool, according to little Dalip

He opened the ball, with genial compliments about my Afghan service. "But now you come to us in another capacity … as an advocate. Still of the Army, but in Major Broadfoot's service." He twinkled at me, stroking his white beard. Well, he probably knew the colour of George's drawers, too. I explained that I'd been studying law at home—.

"At the Inns of Court, perhaps?"

"No, sir—firm in Chancery Lane. I hope to read for the Bar some day."

"Excellent," purrs Bhai Ram, beaming. "I have a little law, myself." I'll lay you do, thinks I, bracing myself. Sure enough, out came the legal straight left. "I have been asking myself what difficulty might arise, if in this Soochet business, it should prove that the widow had a coparcener." He smiled at me inquiringly, and I looked baffled, and asked how that could possibly affect matters.

"I do not know," says he blandly. "That is why I ask you."

"Well, sir," says I, puzzled, "the answer is that it don't apply, you see. If the lady were Soochet's descendant, and had a sister—a female in the same degree, that is—then they'd take together. As coparceners. But she's his widow, so the question doesn't arise." So put that in your pipe and smoke it, old Cheeryble; I hadn't sat up in Simla with towel round my head for nothing.

He regarded me ruefully, and sighed, with a shrug to Fakir Azizudeen, who promptly exploded.

"So he is a lawyer, then! Did you expect Broadfoot to send a farmer? As if this legacy matters! We know it does not, and so does he!" This with a gesture at me. He leaned forward. "Why are you here, sahib? Is it to take up time, with this legal folly? To whet the hopes of that drunken fool Jawaheer —"

"Gently, gently," Bhai Ram reproved him.

"Gently—on the brink of war? When the Five Rivers are like to run red?" He swung angrily on me. "Let us regarded me benevolently over his specs. "A needless precaution, no doubt … but your safety is important, They would be discreet, of course."

You may judge that this put the wind up me like a full gale—if this wily old stick thought I was in danger, that was enough for me. I was sure he meant me no harm; Broadfoot had marked him A3. So, affecting nonchalance, I said I'd be most obliged, while assuring him I felt as safe in Lahore as I would in Calcutta or London or Wisconsin, even, ha-ha. He gave me a puzzled look, said he would see to it, and left me in a rare sweat of anxiety, which was interrupted by my final visitor.

He was a fat and unctuous villain with oily eyes, one Tej Singh, who waddled in with a couple of flunkeys, greeting me effusively as a fellow-soldier—he sported an enormous jewelled sabre over a military coat crusted with bullion, his insignia as a Khalsa general. He was full of my Afghan exploits, and insisted on presenting me with a superb silk robe—not quite a dress of honour, he explained fawning, but rather more practical in the sultry heat. He was such a toad, I wondered if the robe was poisoned, but after he'd Heeped his way out, assuring me of his undying friendship and homage, I decided he was just dropping dash where he thought it might do good. A fine garment it was, too; I peeled down and donned it, enjoying its silky coolness while I reflected on the affairs of the day.

Broadfoot and Jassa had been right: I was receiving attention from all kinds of people. What struck me was their impatience—I wasn't even here yet, officially, and wouldn't be until I'd been presented in durbar, but they'd come flocking like sparrows to crumbs. Most of their motives were plain enough; they saw through the legacy sham, and recognised me as Broadfoot's ear trumpet. But it was reassuring that they thought me worth cultivating—Tej Singh, a Khalsa big-wig, especially; if that damned old Bhai Ram hadn't shown such concern for my safety, I'd have been cheery altogether. Well, I had more news for Broadfoot, for what it was worth; at this rate, Second Thessalonians was going to take some traffic. I ambled through to the bedside table, picked up the Bible—and dropped it in surprise.

The note I'd placed in it a bare two hours earlier was gone. And since I'd never left the room, Broadfoot's mysterious messenger must be one of those who had called on me.

Jassa was my first thought, instantly dismissed—George would have told me, in his case. Dinanath and Fakir Azizudeen had each passed alone through my bedroom … but they seemed most unlikely. Tej Singh hadn't been out of sight, but I couldn't swear to his flunkeys—or the two little maids. Little Dalip was impossible, Bhai Ram hadn't been near my bedside, nor had Mangla, worse luck … could she have sneaked in unobserved while I was with Dalip, beyond the arch? I sifted the whole thing while I ate a solitary supper, hoping it was Mangla, and wondering if she'd be back presently … it was going to be a lonely night, and I cursed the Indian protocol that kept me in purdah, so to speak, until I was summoned to durbar, probably next day.

It was dark outside now, but the maids (working tandem to avoid molestation, no doubt) had lit the lamps, and the moths were fluttering at the mosquito curtain as I settled down with Crotchet Castle, enjoying for the hundredth time the passage where old Folliott becomes agitated in the presence of bare-arsed statues of Venus … which set me thinking of Mangla again, and I was idly wondering which of the ninety-seven positions taught me by Fetnab would suit her best, when I became aware that the punkah had stopped.

The old bastard's caulked out again, thinks I, and hollered, without result, so I rolled, up, seized my crop, and strode forth to give him an enjoyable leathering. But his mat was empty, and so was the passage, stretching away to the far stairs, with only a couple of lamps shining faint in the gloom. I called for Jassa; nothing but a hollow echo. I stood a moment; it was damned quiet, not a sound anywhere, and for the first time my silk robe felt chill against my skin.

I went inside again, and listened, but apart from the faint pitter of the moths at the screen, no sound at all. To be sure, the Kwabagh was a big place, and I'd no notion where I was within it, but you'd have expected some noise … distant voices, or music. I went through the screen on to the little balcony, and looked over the marble balustrade; it was a long drop, four storeys at least, to the enclosed court, high enough to make my crotch contract; I would just hear the faint tinkle of the fountain, and make out the white pavement in the gloom, but the walls enclosing the court were black; not a light anywhere.

I found I was shivering, and it wasn't the night air. My skin was crawling with a sudden dread in that lonely, sinister darkness, and I was just about to turn hurriedly back into my room when I saw something that brought the hair bristling up on my neck.

Far down in the court, on the pale marble by the fountain, there was a shadow where none had been before. I stared, thrilling with horror as I realised it was a man, in black robes, his upturned face hidden in a dark hood. He was looking up at my balcony, and then he stepped back into the shadows, and the court was empty.

I was inside and streaking across the room in an instant—and if you say I start at shadows, I'll agree with you, pointing out only that behind every shadow there's sub-stance, and in this case it wasn't out for an evening stroll. I yanked open the door, preparing to speed down the pass-age in search of cheer and comfort—and my foot wasn't over the threshold before I froze in my tracks. At the far end of the passage, beyond the last light, dark figures were advancing, and I caught the gleam of steel among them.

I skipped back, slamming the door, looking wildly about for a bolt-hole which I knew didn't exist. There wasn't time to get my pepperbox; they'd be at the door in a second—there was nothing for it but to slip through the screen to the balcony, shuddering back against the balustrade even as I heard the door flung open and men bursting in. In unthinking panic I swung over the side of the balustrade, close to the wall, clutching its pillars from the outside, cowering low with my toes scrabbling for a hold and that appalling drop beneath me, while heavy footsteps and harsh voices rang out from my room.

It was futile, of course. They'd be ravening out on the balcony in a moment, see me through the pillars—I could hear the yell of triumph, feel the agony of steel slicing through my fingers, sending me hurtling to hideous death. I crouched lower, gibbering like an ape, trying to peer under the balcony—God, there was a massive stone bracket supporting it, only inches away! I thrust a foot through it, slipped, and for a ghastly instant was hanging at full stretch before I got one leg crooked over the bracket, made a frantic grab, and found myself clinging to it like a bloody sloth, upside down beneath the balcony, with my fine silk robe billowing beneath me.

I've no head for heights, did I tell you? That yawning black void was dragging my mind down, willing me to let go, even as I clung for dear life with locked ankles and sweating fingers—I must drag myself up and over the bracket somehow, but even as I braced myself a voice sang out just overhead, and the toe of a boot appeared between the pillars only a yard above my upturned face. Thank God the balcony rail was a broad projecting slab which hid me from view as he shouted down—and only then did I remember blasted Romeo below, who must have been watching my frantic acrobatics …

"Ai, Nurla Bey—what of the feringhee?" cries the voice above—a rasping croak in Pushtu, and I could hear my muscles creaking with the awful strain as I waited to be announced.

"He came out a moment since, Gurdana Khan," came the answer—Jesus, it sounded a mile down. "Then he went back within."

He hadn't seen me? Pondering it later—which you ain't inclined to do while hanging supine under a balcony of murderers—I concluded that he must have been looking elsewhere or relieving himself when I made my leap for glory, and my robe being dark green, he couldn't make me out in the deep shadow beneath the balcony. I embraced the bracket, blubbering silently, while Gurdana Khan swore by the Seven Lakes of Hell that I wasn't in the room, so where the devil was I?

"Perchance he has the gift of invisibility," calls up the wag in the court. "The English are great chemists." Gurdana damned his eyes, and for no sane reason I found myself thinking that this was the kind of crisis in which, Broadfoot had said, I might drop the magic word "Wisconsin" into the conversation. I didn't care to interrupt, though, just then, while Gurdana stamped in fury and addressed his followers.

"Find him! Search every nook, every corner in the palace! Stay, though—he may have gone to the durbar room!"

"What—into the very presence of Jawaheer?" scoffs another.

"His best refuge, fool! Even thou wouldst not cut his throat in open durbar. Away, and search! Nurla, thou dirt—back to the gate!"

For a split second, as he shouted down, his sleeve came into view—and even in the poor light there was no mistaking that pattern. It was the tartan of the 79th, and Gurdana Khan was the Pathan officer I'd seen that after-noon—dear God, the Palace Guard were after me!

How I held on for those last muscle-cracking moments, with fiery cramps searing my arms, I can't fathom, much less how I managed to struggle up astride of the bracket. But I did, and sat gasping and shaking in the freezing dark. They were gone, and I must steel myself to reach out and up for a hold on the balcony pillars, and somehow find the strength to drag myself to safety. I knew it was death to try, but equally certain death to remain, so I drew myself into a crouch, feet on the bracket like some damned cathedral gargoyle, leaned out, and reached slowly up with one trembling hand, too terrified to make the snatch which had to be made .. ,

A hideous face shot over the balustrade, glaring down at me, I squealed in terror, my foot slipped, I clawed wildly at thin air as I began to fall—and a hand like a vice clamped on my wrist, almost wrenching my arm from its socket. For two bowel-chilling seconds I swung free, wailing, then another hand seized my forearm, and I was dragged up and over the balustrade, collapsing in a quaking heap on the balcony, with Jassa's ugly face peering into mine.

I'm not certain what line our conversation took, once I'd heaved up my supper, because I was in that state of blind funk and shock where talk don't matter, and I made it worse—once I'd recovered the strength to crawl indoors—by emptying my pint flask of brandy in about three great gulps, while Jassa asked damfool questions.

That brandy was a mistake. Sober, I'd have begun to reason straight, and let him talk some sense into me, but I sank the lot, and the short result was that, in the immortal words of Thomas Hughes, Flashy became beastly drunk. And when I'm foxed, and shuddering scared into the bargain … well, I ain't responsible. The odd thing is, I keep all my faculties except common sense; I see and hear clearly, and remember, too—and I know I had only one thought in mind, seared there by that tartan villain who was bent on murdering me: "The durbar room—his best refuge!" If there's one thing I respect, drunk or sober, it's a professional opinion, and if my hunters thought I'd be safe there then by God not Jassa or fifty like him were going to keep me from it. He must have tried to calm me, for I fancy I took him by the throat, to make my intentions clear, but all I'm sure of is that I went blundering off along the passage, and then along another, and down a long spiral staircase that grew lighter as I descended, with the sound of music coming closer, and then I was in a broad carpeted gallery, where various interesting Orientals glanced at me curiously, and I was looking out at a huge chandelier gleaming with a thousand candles, and below it a broad circular floor on which two men and a woman were dancing, three brilliant figures whirling to and fro. There were spectators down there, too, in curtained booths round the walls, all in extravagant costumes—aha, thinks I, this is the spot, and a fancy dress party in progress, too; capital, I'll go as a chap in a green silk robe with bare feet. It's a terrible thing, drink.

"Flashman bahadur! Why, have you received the parwana, then?"

I turned, and there was Mangla walking towards me along the gallery, wearing a smile of astonishment and 'very little besides. Plainly it was fancy dress, and she'd come as a dancer from some select brothel (which wasn't far out, in fact). She wore a long black sash low on her hips, knotted so that it hung to her ankles before and behind, leaving her legs bare; her fine upper works were displayed in a bodice of transparent gauze, her hair hung in a black tail to her waist, she tinkled with bangles, and there were silver castanets on her fingers. A cheering sight, I can tell you, at any time, but even more so when you've been hanging out of windows to avoid the broker's men.

"No parwana, I'm afraid," says I. "Here, I say, that's a fetching rig! Well, now … is that the durbar room down yonder?"

"Why, yes—you wish to meet their highnessses?" She came closer, eyeing me curiously. "Is all well with you, bahadur? Why, you are shaking! Are you ill?"

"Not a bit of it!" says I. "Took a turn in the night air … chilly, eh?" Some drunken instinct told me to keep mum about my balcony adventure, at least until I met higher authority. She said I needed something to warm me, and a lackey serving the folk in the gallery put a beaker in my hand. What with brandy and funk I was parched as a camel's oxter, so I drank it straight off, and another—dry red wine, with a curious effervescent tang to it. D'you know, it settled me wonderfully; a few more of these, thinks I, and they can bring the nigger in. I took another swig, and Mangla laid a hand on my arm, smiling roguishly.

"That is your third cup, bahadur. Have a care. It is , . . strangely potent, and the night has only begun. Rest a moment."

I didn't mind. With the liquor taking hold I felt safe among the lights and music, with this delectable houri to hand. I slipped an arm round her waist as we looked down on the dancers; the guests reclining in the booths around the floor were clapping to the music and throwing silver: others were drinking and eating and dallying—it looked a thoroughly jolly party, with most of the women as briefly attired as Mangla. One black charmer, naked to the waist, was supporting a shouting reveller as he weaved his way across the floor, there was excited laughter and shrill voices, and one or two of the booths had their curtains discreetly closed … and not a Pathan in sight.

"Their highnesses are merry," says Mangla. "One of them, at least." A man's voice was shouting angrily below, but the music and celebration continued uninterrupted. "Never fear, you will find a welcome—come and join our entertainment."

Capital, thinks I, we'll entertain each other in one of those curtained nooks, so I let her lead me down a curved stair giving on to an open space at one side of the floor, where there were buffets piled high with delicacies and drink. The angry man's voice greeted us as we descended, and then he was in view beside the tables: a tall, well-made fellow, handsome in the pretty Indian way, with a curly beard and moustache, a huge jewelled turban on his head and only baggy silk pantaloons on the rest of him. He was staggering tight, with a goblet in one hand and the other round the neck of the black beauty who'd been helping him across the floor. Before him stood Dinanath and Azizudeen, grim and furious as he railed at them, stuttering drunkenly.

"Tell 'em to go to the devil! Do they think the Wazir is some mujbee*(*Sweeper.) who'll run to their bidding! Let 'em come to me—aye, and humbly! Khalsa scum! Sons of pigs and owls! Do they think they rule here?"

"They know it," snaps Azizudeen. "Persist in this folly and they'll prove it."

"Treason!" bawls the other, and flung the goblet at him. It missed by yards, and he'd have tumbled over if the black wench hadn't caught him. He clung tipsily to her, flecks of spittle on his beard, crying that he was the Wazir, they wouldn't dare -

"And what's to stop them?" demands Azizudeen. "Your Palace Guard—whom the Khalsa have promised to blow from guns if you escape? Try it, my prince, and you'll find your Guards have become your jailers!"

"Liar!" yammers the other, and then from raging and cursing he burst into tears, bleating about how well he'd paid them, half a lakh to a single general, and they'd stand by him while the British ate the Khalsa alive. "Oh, aye—the British are marching on us even now!" cries he. "Don't the fools know that?"

"They know you say so—but that it is not true," puts in Dinanath sternly. "My prince, this is foolish. You know you must go out to the Khalsa tomorrow, to answer for Peshora's death . . if you speak them fair, all may be well …" He stepped closer, speaking low and earnest, while the fellow mowed and wept—and then, damme if he didn't lose interest and start nuzzling and fondling his black popsy. First things first seemed to be his motto, and he pawed with such ardour that they tumbled down and sprawled in a drunken embrace at the stair foot, while Dinanath and Azizudeen stood speechless. The drunkard raised his face from between her boobies once, blubbering at Dinanath that he daren't go out to the Khalsa, they'd do him a mischief, and then went back to the matter in hand, trying to climb on top of her with his great turban all awry.

Mangla and I were standing only a few steps above them, and I was thinking, well, you don't often see this at Windsor—the astonishing thing was that no one else in the durbar room was paying the least heed; while the drunkard alternately mauled his wench and whimpered and snarled at the two counsellors, the dance was reaching its climax, the band piping away in fine style, the spectators applauding. I glanced at Mangla, and she shrugged.

"Raja Jawaheer Singh, Wazir," says she, indicating the turbaned sportsman. "Do you wish to be presented?"

Now he was struggling to his feet again, calling for drink, and the black girl held the cup while he gulped and slobbered. Azizudeen turned on his heel in disgust, and Dinanath followed him towards one of the booths. Jawaheer pushed the cup away, staggered, and clutched at a table for support, calling for them to come back, and that was when his eye fell on us. He goggled stupidly, and started forward.

"Mangla!" cries he. "Mangla, you bitch! Who's that?" "It is the English envoy, Flashman sahib," says she coolly.

He gaped at me, blinking, and then a crafty look came into his eyes, and he loosed a great shout of laughter, yelling that he'd been right—the British had come, as he'd said they would.

"See, Dinanath! Look, Azizudeen! The British are here!" He swung round, stumbling, weaving towards them in a sort of crazy dance, crowing with high-pitched laughter. "A liar, am I? See—their spy is here!" Dinanath and Azizudeen had turned in the entrance of one of the booths, and as Jawaheer capered and fell down, and Mangla brought me to the foot of the staircase, I saw Dinanath white with fury—shame and loss of face before a foreigner, you see. The dancing and music had stopped, folk were craning to look, and flunkeys were running to help Jawaheer, but he lashed out at them, staggering round to point unsteadily at me.

"British spy! Filth! Your Company bandits will come to plunder us, will they? Brigands, wilayati,*(*Foreigner.) vermin!" He glared from me to Dinanath. "Ai-ee, the British will come—they will have cause to come!" shrieks he, pointing at me, and then they'd hustled him off, still yelling and laughing, Mangla clapped her hands, the music began again, and folk turned away, whispering behind their hands, just as they do at home when Uncle Percy's had one of his bad turns during evensong.

I dare say I should have been embarrassed, but with a couple of quarts of mixed brandy and puggle inside me, I didn't mind one little bit. Jawaheer was plainly all that rumour said of him, but I had deeper concerns: I was suddenly thirsty again, and beginning to feel so monstrous randy that if Lady Sale had happened by she'd have had to look damned lively, rheumatics and all. Doubtless the curious liquor Mangla had plied me with was responsible for both conditions; very well, she could take the consequences … there she was, the luscious little teaser, by the booth where Azizudeen and Dinanath had been a moment since. I lurched towards her, gloating, but even as I hove to beside her a woman spoke from beyond the open curtains.

"Is this your Englishman? Let me look at him."

I turned in surprise—not only at the words, but at the slurred, appraising arrogance of the tone. Mangla stepped back, and with a little gesture of presentation, said: "Flashman sahib, kunwari,"*(*Kunwar-=the son of a maharaja, and kunwari is presumably the female honorific.) and that title told me I was in the presence of the notorious Maharani Jeendan, Indian Venus, modern Messalina, and uncrowned queen of the Punjab.

Here and there in my memoirs I've remarked on the attraction of the female sex, and how it's seldom a matter of beauty alone. There are breathtakers like Elspeth and Lola and Yehonala whom you can't wait to chivvy into the shrubbery ; equally classic creatures (Angie Burdett-Coutts, for example, or the Empress of Austria) who are as exciting as cold soup but appeal to the baser aesthetic senses; and plain Janes who could start a riot in a monastery. In each case, Aphrodite or the governess, the magic is different, you see; there is always some unique charm or singular attraction, and it can be hard to define. In Mai Jeendan, though, it stood out a mile: she was simply the lewdest-looking strumpet I ever saw in my life.

Mind you, when a young woman with the proportions of an erotic Indian statue is found reclining half-naked and three parts drunk, while a stalwart wrestler rubs her down with oil, it's easy to leap to conclusions. But you could have covered this one with sackcloth in the front row of the church choir, and they'd still have ridden her out of town on a rail. You've heard of voluptuaries whose vices are stamped on their faces—mine, for example, but I'm over eighty. She was in her twenties, and lust was in every line of her face: the once perfect beauty turned fleshy, the lovely curves of lip and nostril thickened by booze and pleasure into the painted mask of a depraved angel—gad, she was attractive. She looked like those sensual pictures of Jezebel and Delilah which religious artists paint with such loving enthusiasm; Arnold could have got enough sermons out of her to last the half. Her eyes were large and wanton and slightly protruding, with a vacant, sated expression which may have been due to drink or the recent attentions of the wrestler—a bit shaky, he looked to me—but as I made my bow they widened in what was either drunken interest or yearning lechery—the same thing, really, with her.

Considering the size of her endowments, she was quite small, light coffee in colour, and fine-boned under her smooth fat—a tung bibi, as they say; a "tight lady". Like Mangla, she was decked out as a dancer, with a crimson silk loin-cloth and flimsy bodice, but instead of bangles her legs and arms were sheathed in gauze sewn with tiny gems, and her dark red hair was contained in a jewelled net.

To see her then, you'd never have guessed that when she wasn't guzzling drink and men, Mai Jeendan was another woman altogether; Broadfoot was wrong in thinking debauchery had dulled her wits. She was shrewd and resolute and ruthless when the need arose; she was also an accomplished actress and mimic, talents developed when she'd been the leading jester in old Runjeet's obscene private entertainments.

Just now, though, she was too languid with drink to do more than struggle up on one elbow, pushing her masseur away to view me better, slowly up and down—it reminded me of being on the slave-block in Madagascar, when no one bought me, rot them. This time, so far as one could judge from the lady's tipsy muttering as she lolled back on her cushions, fluttering a plump hand at me, the market was more buoyant.