Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 2: Flashman and the Mountain of Light, Flash For Freedom!, Flashman and the Redskins
and fall headlong in the dust with his life flooding out of him – and still those fiends hacked and stabbed at his corpse, while some even emptied their muskets and pistols into it, until the air was thick with the reek of black powder smoke.
It was Gardner who hustled us to one of the smaller tents while his black robes surrounded Jeendan, Dalip, and the screeching women, shepherding them to the main pavilion. He cast a quick glance at the mob struggling about Jawaheer’s corpse, and then twitched our tent curtain shut. He was breathing hard, but cool as you please.
“Well, how d’ye like that for a drumhead court-martial, Mr Flashman?” He laughed softly. “Khalsa justice – the damned fools!”
I was a-tremble at the shocking, sudden butchery of it. “You knew that was going to happen?”
“No, sir,” says he calmly, “but nothing in this country surprises me. By the holy, you’re a sight! Josiah, get some water and clean him up! You’re not wounded? Good—now, lie low and be quiet, both of you! It’s over and done, see? The damned fools – listen to ’em, celebrating their own funerals! Now, don’t you budge till I come back!”
He strode out, leaving us to collect our breath and our wits – and if you wonder what my thoughts were as Jassa sponged the blood from my face and hands, I’ll tell you. Relief, and some satisfaction that Jawaheer was receipted and filed, and that I’d come away with nothing worse than a ruined frock coat. Not that they’d been out to get me, but when you walk away from a scrimmage of that sort, you’re bound to put it down on Crusoe’s good side, in block capitals.
Jassa and I shared my flask, and for about half an hour we sat listening to the babble of shouting and laughter and feux de joie of the murderers’ celebration, and the lamentations from the neighbouring tent, while I digested this latest of Lahore’s horrors and wondered what might come of it.
I suppose I’d seen the signs the previous day, in the rage of the Khalsa panches, and Jawaheer’s own terrors last night – but this morning the talk had been that all was well … aye, designed, no doubt, to bring him out to the Khalsa in false hope, to a doom already fixed. Had his peacemakers, Azizudeen and Dinanath, known what would happen? Had his sister? Had Jawaheer himself known, even, but been powerless to avert it? And now that the Khalsa had shown its teeth … would it march over the Sutlej? Would Hardinge, hearing of yet another bloody coup, decide to intervene? Or would he still wait? After all, it was nothing new in this horrible country.
I didn’t know, then, that Jawaheer’s murder was a turning-point. To the Khalsa, it was just another demonstration of their own might, another death sentence on a leader who displeased them. They didn’t realise they’d handed power to the most ruthless ruler the Punjab had seen since Runjeet Singh … she was in the next tent, having hysterics so strident and prolonged that the noisy mob outside finally gave over celebrating and looting the gear from the royal procession; the shouting and laughter died away, and now there was the sound of her voice alone, sobbing and screaming by turns – and then it was no longer in her tent, but outside, and Gardner slipped back through our curtain, beckoning me to join him at the entrance. I went, and peered out.
It was full dark now, but the space before the tents was lit bright as day by torches in the hands of a vast semi-circle of Khalsa soldiery, thousands strong, staring in silence at the spot where Jawaheer’s body still lay on the blood-soaked earth. The elephants and the regiments had gone; all that remained was that great ring of bearded, silent faces (and one of ’em was wearing my tall hat, damn his impudence!), the huddled corpse, and kneeling over it, wailing and beating the earth in an ecstasy of grief, the small white-clad figure of the Maharani. Close by, their hands on their hilts and their eyes on the Khalsa, a group of Gardner’s black robes stood guard.
She flung herself across the body, embracing it, calling to it, and then knelt upright again, keening wildly, and began to rock to and fro, tearing at her clothing like a mad thing until she was bare to the waist, her unbound hair flying from side to side. Before that dreadful uncontrolled passion the watchers recoiled a step; some turned away or hid their faces in their hands, and one or two even started towards her but were pulled back by their mates. Then she was on her feet, facing them, shaking her little fists and screaming her hatred.
“Scum! Vermin! Lice! Butchers! Coward sons of dishonoured mothers! A hundred thousand of you against one – you gallant champions of the Punjab, you wondrous heroes of the Khalsa, you noseless bastard offspring of owls and swine who boast of your triumphs against the Afghans and the prowess you’ll show against the British! You, who would run in terror from one English camp sweeper and a Kabuli whore! Oh, you have the courage of a pack of pi-dogs, to set on a poor soul unarmed – aiee, my brother, my brother, my Jawaheer, my prince!” From raging she was sobbing again, rocking from side to side, trailing her long hair across the body, then stooping to cradle the horrid thing against her breast while she wailed on a tremulous high note that slowly died away. They watched her, some grim, some impassive, but most shocked and dismayed at the violence of her grief.
Then she laid down the body, picked up a fallen tulwar from beside it, rose to her feet, and began slowly to pace to and fro before them, her head turned to watch their faces. It was a sight to shiver your spine: that small, graceful figure, her white sari in rags about her hips, her bare arms and breasts painted with her brother’s blood, the naked sword in her hand. She looked like some avenging Fury from legend as she threw back her hair with a toss of her head and her glare travelled along that silent circle of faces. A stirring sight, if you know what I mean – there’s a picture I once saw that could have been drawn from her: Clytemnestra after Agamemnon’s death, cold steel and brazen boobies and bedamned to you. Suddenly she stopped by the body, facing them, and her voice was hard and clear and cold as ice as she passed her free hand slowly over her breasts and throat and face.
“For every drop of this blood, you will give a million. You, the Khalsa, the pure ones. Pure as pig dung, brave as mice, honoured as the panders of the bazaar, fit only for –” I shan’t tell you what they were fit for, but it sounded all the more obscene for being spoken without a trace of anger. And they shrank from it – oh, there were angry scowls and clenched fists here and there, but the mass of them could only stare like rabbits before a snake. I’ve seen women, royal mostly, who could cow strong men: Ranavalona with her basilisk stare, or Irma (my second wife, you know, the Grand Duchess) with her imperious blue eye; Lakshmibai of Jhansi could have frozen the Khalsa in its tracks with a lift of her pretty chin. Each in her own way – Jeendan did it by shocking ’em out of their senses, flaunting her body while she lashed them quietly with the language of the gutter. At last one of them could take no more of it – an old white-bearded Sikh flung down his torch and cries:
“No! No! It was no murder – it was the will of God!”
Some murmured in support of him, others cried him down, and she waited until they were silent again.
“The will of God. Is that your excuse … you will blaspheme, and hide behind God’s will? Then hear mine – the will of your Maharani, mother of your king!” She paused, looking from one side to the other of the silent crowd. “You will give me the murderers, so that they may pay. You will give them to me, or by that God with whose will you make so free, I shall throw the snake in your bosom!”
She struck the tulwar into the earth on the last word, turned her back on them and walked quickly towards the tents – Clytemnestra as ever was. With this difference, that where Mrs Agamemnon had committed one murder, she was contemplating a hundred thousand. As she passed into her tent the light from within fell full on her face, and there wasn’t a trace of grief or anger. She was smiling.24
a Coppers.
b Litter, usually curtained.
If there was one thing worse than Jawaheer’s