Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 2: Flashman and the Mountain of Light, Flash For Freedom!, Flashman and the Redskins
said, an interesting little war.” He tossed another billet on the fire, and rose. “When it’s over, and you’re back in Lahore with the British peace mission – you can tell me all about it.”
My first thought, as I sat by the fire with my head in my hands, was: this is Broadfoot’s doing. He’s planned the whole hideous thing, start to finish, and kept me in the dark till the last moment, the treacherous, crooked, conniving, Scotch … political! Well, I was doing him an injustice; for once, George was innocent. He might welcome the war, as Gardner had said, and have a shrewd notion that Jeendan was launching the Khalsa in the hope of seeing it wrecked, but neither he nor anyone else in Simla knew that the Sikhs’ two leading commanders were under her orders to give the whole game away. Nor could he guess the base use that was being made of his prize agent, Lieutenant Flashman, late 11th Hussars, in this hour of crisis.
The notion that I should be the messenger of betrayal had been another inspiration of Jeendan’s, according to Gardner. How long she’d had me in mind for the role of go-between, he didn’t know; she’d confided it to him only the previous day, and he and Mangla would have brought me my marching orders that same night – if I hadn’t been away gallivanting with the Khalsa and Goolab and the merry widow. Most inconsiderate of me, but all’s ill that ends ill – here I was still, ankle crocked and guts fermenting with fright, meet to be hurled into the soup in furtherance of that degenerate royal doxy’s intrigues, and no way to cry off that I could see.
I tried, you may be sure, pleading my ankle, and the impossibility of taking orders from any but my own chiefs, and the folly of venturing again among enemies who’d already toasted me to a turn – Gardner answered every objection with the blunt fact that someone had to take Lal’s plans to Gough, and no one else had my qualifications. It was my duty, says he, and if you wonder that I bowed to his authority – well, take a squint at the portrait in his Memoirs; that should convince you.
I’m still not sure, by the way, exactly where his loyalties lay. To Dalip and Jeendan, certainly: what she ordered, he performed. But he played a staunch game on our behalf, too, and on Goolab Singh’s. When I ventured to ask him where he stood, he looked down that beak of a nose and snapped: “On my own two feet!” So there.
He had Jeendan’s infernal scheme all pat, and after I’d had a couple of hours’ sleep and Jassa had rebound my swollen ankle, he lined it out to me; horrid risky it sounded.
“You ride straight hence to Lal’s camp beyond the Sutlej, with four of my men as escort, all of you disguised as gorracharra. Ganpat there will act as leader and spokesman; he’s a safe man.” This was his jemadar, a lean Punjabi with an Abanazar moustache; he and the half-dozen other riders had come out from the city by now, and were loafing round the fire, chewing betel and spitting, while Gardner bullied me privately.
“You’ll arrive by night, presenting yourselves as messengers from the durbar; that’ll see you into Lal’s presence. He’ll be expecting you; word of mouth goes to him today from Jeendan.”
“Suppose Maka Khan or that bloody Akali turn up – they’ll recognise me straight off –”
“They’ll be nowhere near! They’re infantrymen – Lal commands only cavalry and horse guns. Besides, no one’s going to know you in gorracharra gear – and you won’t be in their camp long enough to signify. A few hours at most – just long enough to learn what Lal and Tej mean to do.”
“They’ll take Ferozepore,” says I. “That’s plain. They’re bound to put Littler out of the game before Gough can relieve him.”
He gave an impatient snarl. “That’s what they’d do if they wanted to win the goddam war! They don’t! But their brigadiers and colonels do, so Lal and Tej are going to have to look as though they’re trying like hell! Lal’s going to have to think of some damned good reason for not storming Ferozepore, and since he’s a duffer of a soldier as well as a yellow-belly, he’s liable to go cross-eyed if his subordinates present him with a sound plan … Now what?”
“It won’t do!” I bleated. “Maka Khan told me the Khalsa already suspect them of disloyalty. Well, heavens above, the moment Lal makes a move, or gives an order, even, that looks fishy … why, they’ll see he’s pissing on his own wicket!”
“Will they? Who’s to say what’s a fishy move, or why it’s being made? You were in Afghanistan – how many times did Elphinstone do the sensible thing, tell me that? He was always wrong, godammit!”
“Yes, but that was fat-headedness – not treachery!”
“Who knows the difference, confound it? You did what you were told, and so will the Khalsa colonels! What do they know, if they’re told to march from A to B, or retire from C, or open a candy store at D? They can’t see the whole canvas, only their own corner of it. Sure, they know Lal and Tej are cowardly rascals who’d turn tail sooner than eat, but they’re still bound to obey.” He gnawed his whiskers, growling. “I said it’ll take managing, by Lal and Tej – and by Gough, once he’s learned from you what they’re about.” He stabbed me with a bony finger. “From you – that’s the point! If Lal sent a native agent, promising betrayal, Gough wouldn’t give him the time of day. But he knows you, and can trust what you tell him!”
And much good it would do him, I thought, for however Lal and Tej mismanaged the Khalsa, they couldn’t alter its numbers, or the zeal of its colonels, or the quality of its soldiers, or the calibre of its guns. They might supply Gough with full intelligence, but he was still going to have to engage and break a disciplined army of a hundred thousand men, with a Company force one-third the size and under-gunned. I’d not have wagered two pice on his chances.
But then, you see, I didn’t know him. For that matter, I didn’t know much about war: Afghanistan had been a rout, not a campaign, and Borneo an apprenticeship in piracy. I’d never seen a pukka battle, or the way a seasoned commander (even one as daft as Paddy Gough) can manage an army, or the effect of centuries of training and discipline, or that phenomenon which I still don’t understand but which I’ve watched too often to doubt: the British peasant looking death in the face, and hitching his belt, and waiting.
My chief concern, of course, was the prospect of venturing into the heart of the Khalsa and conspiring with a viper like Lal Singh – with a game leg to prevent me lighting out at speed if things went amiss, as they were bound to do. Even sitting a mount hurt like sin, and to make matters worse, Gardner said Jassa must stay behind. I couldn’t demur: half the Punjab knew that crafty phiz, and that he was my orderly. But he’d pulled me clear twice now, and I’d feel naked without him.
“Broadfoot needs a foot on the ground here, anyway,” says Gardner. “Never fear, dear Josiah will be safe under my wing – and under my eye. While the war lasts I’m to be governor of Lahore – which between ourselves is liable to consist of protecting Mai Jeendan when her disappointed soldiery come pouring back over the river. Yes, sir – we surely earn our wages.” He surveyed me in my gorracharra outfit, of which the most important part was a steel cap, like a Roundhead’s, with long cheek-pieces that helped conceal my face. “You’ll do. Let your beard grow, and leave the talking to Ganpat. You’ll make Kussoor this afternoon; lie up there and go down to the river ghat after dark and you should fetch up with Lal Singh around dawn tomorrow. I’ll ride along with you a little ways.”
We set off, the six of us, at about ten o’clock, riding parallel with the south road. It was heavy with traffic for the Khalsa – baggage and ration carts, ammunition wagons, even teams of guns, for we were riding with the rearguard of the army, a vast host spread across the dusty plain, moving slowly south and east. Ahead of us the doabb would be alive with the main body as far as the Sutlej, beyond which Lal Singh was already investing Ferozepore and Tej Singh’s infantry would be advancing … whither? We rode at a fast trot, which troubled my ankle, but Gardner insisted we must keep up the pace if I was to reach Lal in time.
“He’s been over the Sutlej two days now. Gough must