Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 2: Flashman and the Mountain of Light, Flash For Freedom!, Flashman and the Redskins
overplay the coward’s part too far, Mr Flashman. You would have me believe you an abject, broken thing, dead to honour, a cur who would confess everything, betray everything, at a mere threat – and on whom, therefore, torture would be wasted.” He shook his head. “Major Broadfoot does not employ such people – and your own reputation belies you. No, you will tell nothing … until pain robs you of your reason. You know your duty, as I know mine. It drives us both to shameful extremes – me, to barbarism for my country’s sake; you, to this pretence of cowardice – a legitimate ruse in a political agent, but not convincing from the man who held Piper’s Fort! I am sorry.” His mouth worked for a moment, and I won’t swear there wasn’t a tear in his blasted eye. “I can give you an hour … before they begin. For God’s sake, use it to see reason! Take him down!”
He turned away, like a strong suffering man who’s had the last word. He hadn’t, though. “Pretence!” I screamed, as they hauled me from the chair. “You bloody old halfwit, it’s true! I’m not shamming, damn you, I swear it! I can’t tell you anything! Oh, Jesus! Please, please, let me be! Mercy, you foul old kite! Can’t you see I’m telling the truth!”
By that time they were dragging me through the garden to the back of the house, thrusting me through a low iron-shod door and down an immensely long flight of stone steps into the depths of a great cellar, a dank tomb of rough stone walls with only a small window high up on the far side. A choking acrid smell rose to meet us, and as the naik set a burning torch in a bracket by the stair foot, the source of that stench became horribly apparent.
“Are you weary, Daghabazi Sahib?”a cries he. “See, we have a fine bed for you to rest on!”
I looked, and almost swooned. In the centre of the earth floor lay a great rectangular tray in which charcoal glowed faintly under a coating of ash, and about three feet above it was a rusty iron grill like a bedstead – with manacles at head and foot. Watching my face, the naik cackled with laughter, and taking up a long poker, went forward and tapped open two little vents on either side of the tray. The charcoal near the vents glowed a little brighter.
“Gently blows the air,” gloats he, “and slowly grows the heat.” He laid a hand on the grill. “A little warm, only … but in an hour it will be warmer. Daghabazi Sahib will begin to feel it, then. He may even find his tongue.” He tossed the poker aside. “Put him to bed!”
I can’t describe the horror of it. I couldn’t even scream as they ran me forward and flung me down on that diabolic gridiron, snapping the fetters on my wrists and ankles so that I was held supine, unable to do more than writhe on the rusty bars – and then the pock-marked fiend picked up a pair of bellows from the floor, grinning with savage delight.
“You will be in some discomfort when we return, Daghabazi Sahib! Then we shall open the vents a little more – your punkah-wallah cooked slowly, for many hours – did he not, Jan? Oh, he spoke long before he began to roast … that followed, though I think he had no more to tell.” He leaned down to laugh in my face. “And if you find it tedious, we may hasten matters – thus!”
He thrust the bellows under the foot of the grill, pumping once, a sudden gust of heat struck my calves – and I found my tongue at last, in a shriek that tore my throat, again and again, as I struggled helplessly. They crowed with laughter, those devils, as I raved in terror and imagined agony, swearing I had nothing to tell, pleading for mercy, promising them anything – a fortune if they’d let me go, rupees and mohurs by the lakh, God knows what else. Then perhaps I swooned in earnest, for all I remember is the naik’s jeering voice from far off: “In an hour’s time! Rest well, Daghabazi Sahib!” and the clang of the iron door.
There are, in case you didn’t know it, five degrees of torture, as laid down by the Spanish Inquisition, and I was now suffering the fourth – the last before the bodily torment begins. How I kept my sanity is a mystery – I’m not sure but that I did go mad, for a spell, for I came out of my swoon babbling: “No, no, Dawson, I, swear I didn’t peach! ’twasn’t me – it was Speedicut! He blabbed on you to her father – not me! I swear it – oh, please, please, Dawson, don’t roast me!”, and I could see the fat brute’s great whiskered moon face leering into mine as he held me before the schoolroom fire, vowing to bake me till I blistered. I know now that that roasting at Rugby was worse, for real corporal anguish, than my ordeal at Lahore – but at least I’d known that Dawson must leave off at the last, whereas in Bibi Kalil’s cellar, with the growing heat only beginning to make my back and legs tingle and run rivers of sweat, I knew that it would continue, hotter and ever hotter, to the unspeakable end. That’s the horror of the fourth degree, as the Inquisitors knew – but while their heretics and religious idiots could always get off by telling the bloody Dagoes what they wanted to hear, I couldn’t. I didn’t know.
The mind’s a strange mechanism. Chained to that abominable grill, I began to burn, and strained to arch my body away from the bars, until I fainted again – and when I came to my senses, why, I was only uncomfortably warm for a moment – until I remembered where I was, and in an instant my clothes were catching fire, the flames were scorching my flesh, and I shrieked my way into oblivion once more. Yet it was only in my mind; my clothing was barely being singed – whereas Dawson burned my britches’ arse out, the fat swine, and I couldn’t sit for a week.
I can’t tell how long it was before I realised that, while undoubtedly getting hotter and being half-suffocated by fumes, I had not yet burst into flames. The discovery steadied me enough to leave off my incoherent squealing and weeping, and rave to some purpose, bellowing my name, rank, and diplomatic status at the very top of my voice, in the faint hope that it might carry through that high window to the distant alleys around the house and attract the attention of a friendly passer-by – you know, some reckless adventurer or knight errant who’d think nothing of invading a house full of Khalsa thugs to rescue a perfect stranger who was browning nicely in the cellar.
Aye, laugh, but it saved me – and taught me the folly of stoic silence. If I’d been Dick Champion, biting the bullet and disdaining to cry out, I’d have been broiled to cinders; roaring my coward head off did the trick – but only just in time. For my hollering was starting to fade to a hoarse whimper, and the growing heat beating up from below was forcing me to toss and turn continuously, when I heard the noise. I couldn’t place it at first … a distant scraping, too heavy for a rat, coming from overhead. I forced myself to lie still, labouring for breath … there it was again! Then it stopped, to be followed by a different sound, and for a dreadful moment I knew I had gone mad in that hellish dungeon … it wasn’t possible, it could only be a tortured delusion, that in the darkness above me someone, very softly, was whistling “Drink, puppy, drink”.
Suddenly I knew it was real. I was in my senses, writhing on that grill, gasping for air – but there it was again, faint but clear from outside the window, the little hunting song that I’ve whistled all my life – “Harry’s Pibroch”, Elspeth calls it. Someone was using it to signal – I tried to moisten my parched lips with a tongue like leather, found I couldn’t, and in desperation began to croak:
For he’ll grow into a hound,
So we’ll pass the bottle round,
And merrily we’ll whoop and holloa!28
Silence, except for my gasps and groans, then a scrambling rush, a thud, and through the suffocating mist a figure was looming over me, and a horrified face was peering into mine.
“Holy Jesus!” cries Jassa – and as the bolt rasped back in the door he fairly flung himself away, burrowing among the rubble in the shadows along the wall. The door swung open, and the naik appeared on the threshold. For a long, awful moment he stood looking down at me as I struggled and panted on the grill – in a frenzy of fear that he’d seen Jassa, that the fatal hour was up … and then he sang out:
“Is the bed to your liking, Daghabazi Sahib? What, not warm enough yet? Oh, patience … only a moment now!”
He guffawed at his own priceless wit, and went out, leaving the door ajar –