Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 2: Flashman and the Mountain of Light, Flash For Freedom!, Flashman and the Redskins
the row – it’s only a rendezvous in disguise, surely? Aye … and then? Who the blazes was this Bibi Kalil – the name might mean anything from a princess to a bawd – and what horror would she steer me to at Broadfoot’s bidding? Well, I’d find out soon enough.
The disguise was the least of it. I had a poshteen in my valise, and had gathered a few odds and ends since coming to Lahore – Persian boots, pyjamys and sash for lounging on the hotter days, and the like. My own shirt would do, once I’d trampled it underfoot, and I improvised a puggaree from a couple of towels. Ordinarily I’d have borrowed Jassa’s gear, but he was to be kept in the dark – that was something about the cypher that struck me as middling odd: the last sentence was unnecessary, since the word “alone” at the beginning meant that the whole thing was secret to me. Presumably George was just “makin’ siccar”, as he would say.
Leaving the Fort was less simple. I’d strolled out once or twice of an evening, but never beyond the market at the Hazooree Gate on the inner wall, which was the better-class bazaar serving the quality homes which lay south of the Fort, before you came to the town proper. I daren’t assume my disguise inside the palace, so I stuffed it into a handbag, all but the boots, which I put on under my unutterables.c Then it was a case of making sure that Jassa wasn’t on hand, and slipping out to the gardens after dark. There were few folk about, and in no time I was behind a bush, staggering about with my foot tangled in my pants, damning Broadfoot and the mosquitoes. I wrapped the puggaree well forward over my head, dirtied my face, put the bag with my civilised duds into a cleft in the garden wall, prayed that I might return to claim them, and sallied forth.
Now, I’ve “gone native” more times than I can count, and it’s all a matter of confidence. Your amateur gives himself away because he’s sure everyone can see through his disguise, and behaves according. They can’t, of course; for one thing, they ain’t interested, and if you amble along doing no harm, you’ll pass. I’ll never forget sneaking out of Lucknow with T. H. Kavanaugh during the siege;d he was a great Irish murphy without sense or a word of Hindi, figged out like the worst kind of pantomime pasha with the lamp-black fairly running off his fat red cheeks, and cursing in Tipperary the whole way – and not a mutineer gave him a second look, hardly. Now, my beardless chops were my chief anxiety, but I’m dark enough, and an ugly scowl goes a long way.
I had my pepperbox, but I bought a belt and a Kashmiri short sword in the market for added security, and to test my appearance and elocution. I’m at my easiest as a Pathan ruffler speaking Pushtu or, in this case, bad Punjabi, so I spat a good deal, growled from the back of my throat, and beat the booth-wallah down to half-price; he didn’t even blink, so when I reached the alleys of the native town I stopped at a stall for a chapatti and a gossip, to get the feel of things and pick up any shavee that might be going. The lads of the village were full of the impending war, and how the gorracharra had crossed the river unopposed at the Harree ghat, and the British were abandoning Ludhiana – which wasn’t true, as it happened.
“They have lost the spirit,” says one know-all. “Afghanistan was the death of them.”
“Afghanistan is everyone’s death,” says another. “Didn’t my own uncle die at Jallalabad, peace be on him?”
“In the British war?”
“Nay, he was cook to a horse caravan, and a bazaar woman gave him a loathsome disease. He had ointments, from a hakim,f to no avail, for his nose fell off and he died, raving. My aunt blamed the ointments. Who knows, with an Afghan hakim?”
“That is how we should slay the British!” cackles an ancient. “Send the Maharani to infect them! Hee-hee, she must be rotten by now!”
I didn’t care for that, and neither did a burly cove in a cavalry coat. “Be decent, pig! She is the mother of thy king, who will sit on the throne in London Fort when we of the Khalsa have eaten the Sirkar’s army!”
“Hear him!” scoffs the old comedian. “The Khalsa will march on the ocean then, to reach London?”
“What ocean, fool? London lies only a few cosg beyond Meerut.”
“Is it so far?” says I, playing the yokel. “Have you been there?”
“Myself, no,” admitted the Khalsa bird. “But my havildar was there as a camel-driver. It is a poor place, by all accounts, not so great as Lahore.”
“Nay, now,” cries the one with the poxy uncle. “The houses in London are faced with gold, and even the public privies have doors of silver. This I was told.”
“That was before the war with the Afghans,” says the Khalsa’s prize liar, whose style I was beginning to admire. “It beggared the British, and now they are in debt to the Jews; even Wellesley sahib, who broke Tipoo and the Maharattas aforetime, can get no credit, and the young queen and her waiting-women sell themselves on the streets. So my havildar tells; he had one of them.”
“Does he have his nose still?” cries another, and there was great merriment.
“Aye, laugh!” cries the ancient. “But if London is grown poor, where is all this loot on which we are to grow fat when you heroes of the Pure have brought it home?”
“Now God give him wit! Where else but in Calcutta, in the Hebrews’ strong-boxes. We shall march on thither when we have taken London and Glash-ka where they grow tobacco and make the iron boats.”
About as well-informed, you see, as our own public were about India. I lingered a little longer, until I was thinking in Punjabi, and then, with that well-known hollow feeling in my innards, set off on my reluctant way.
The Shah Boorj is at the south-western corner of Lahore city, less than a mile away as the crow flies, but nearer two when you must pick your way through the winding ways of the old town. Foul ways they were, too, running with filth past hovels tenanted by ugly beggar folk who glared from doorways or scavenged among the refuse with the rats and pi-dogs; the air was so poisonous that I had to wrap my puggaree over my mouth, as though to strain the pestilential vapours as I picked my way past pools of rotting filth. A few fires among the dung-heaps provided the only light, and everywhere there were bright, wicked eyes, human and animal, that shrank away as I approached, lengthening my stride to get through that hellish place, but always I could imagine horrid shapes pressing behind me, and blundered on like the chap in the poem who daren’t look back because he knows there’s a hideous goblin on his heels.
Presently the going was better, between high tenements and warehouses, and only a few night-lurkers hurrying by. Near the south wall the streets were wider, with decent houses set back behind high walls; a couple of palkis went by, swaying between their bearers, and there was even a chowkidarh patrolling with his lantern and staff. But I still felt damnably alone, with the squalid, hostile warren between me and home – that was how I now thought of the Fort which I’d approached with such alarm a couple of months ago. Very adaptable, we funks are.
The French Soldiers’ cabaret was close to the Buttee Gate, and if the Frog mercenaries whose crude portraits adorned its walls could have seen it, they’d have sought redress at law. They squinted out of their frames on a great, noisy, reek-filled chamber – Ventura, Allard, Court, and even my old chum Avitabile, looking like the Italian bandit he was with his tasselled cap and spiky moustachioes. I’d settle for you alongside this minute, thinks I, as I surveyed the company: villainous two-rupee bravos, painted harpies who should have been perched in trees, a seedy flute-and-tom-tom band accompanying a couple of gyrating nautches whom you wouldn’t have touched with a long pole, and Sikh brandy fit to corrode a bucket. I’ll never say a word against Boodle’s again, says I to myself; at least there you don’t have to sit with your back to the wall.
I found a stool between two beauties who’d evidently been sleeping in a camel stable, bought a glass of arrack that I took care not