Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 2: Flashman and the Mountain of Light, Flash For Freedom!, Flashman and the Redskins
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.a 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 hard-earned 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 mail-sloop arrived next day, and I was bowled up to Bombay in no time. And there, by the most hellish ill-luck, 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,b 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 last-ditch 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 Bey,4 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