Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 2: Flashman and the Mountain of Light, Flash For Freedom!, Flashman and the Redskins. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ guns – and that did rattle the Khalsa, for the beaten commander, Runjoor Singh, was a first-class man, and Smith had licked him with a smaller force, and no excuse of treachery this time.

      I was in Gough’s camp at Sobraon when the news came through, for Hardinge was in the habit of riding the twenty miles from Ferozepore every other day with his new staff of toadies, to have a sniff and a carp at Gough’s dispositions,⁴² and Lawrence always went along, with your correspondent bringing up the rear. A great roar of cheering ran through the lines, and Paddy fairly danced with joy, and then scudded off to his tent for a pray. Lawrence and other Holy Joes took their cue, and I was about to sidle off to the staff mess when I heard a great groan close by, and there was old Gravedigger Havelock, clasping his bony paws in supplication and looking like Thomas Carlyle with rheumatics – I never seemed to see that man but he was calling on God for something or other: possibly it was the sight of me that did it. He’d prayed over me like a mad monk at Jallalabad, but the last I’d seen of him had been his boots, viewed from under the pool table while I rogered Mrs Madison.

      “Amen!” booms he, and left off addressing heaven to wring my hand, glaring joyfully. “It is Flashman! My boy, how long since last I saw you?”

      “Sale’s billiard-room at Simla,” says I, not thinking, and he frowned and said I hadn’t been there that evening, surely?

      “Neither I was!” says I hastily. “Must have been some other chap. Let’s see, when did we last meet? Church somewhere, was it?”

      “I have thought of you often since Afghanistan!” cries he, still mangling my fin. “Ah, we smelled the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting!”

      “Didn’t we just, though? Ah, yes. Well, now …”

      “But come – will you not join your voice with that of our Chief, in gratitude to Him who hath vouchsafed us this victory?”

      “Oh, rather! But, I say, you’ll have to give me a lead, Graved – skipper, I mean. You always put it so dashed well … praying, don’t you know?” Which tickled him no end, and in two shakes we were on our hams outside Gough’s tent, and it struck me as I looked at them – old Paddy, Havelock, Lawrence, Edwardes, Bagot, and I fancy Hope Grant was there, too – that I’d never seen such a pack of born blood-spillers at their devotions in my life. It’s an odd thing about deadly men – they’re all addicted either to God or the Devil, and I ain’t sure but what the holy ones aren’t the more fatal breed of the two.

      But mainly I recall that impromptu prayer meeting because it set me thinking of Elspeth again, when Havelock invoked a blessing not only on our fallen comrades, “but on those yet to fall in the coming strife, and on those dear, distant homes which will be darkened with mourning under the wings of Death’s angel”. Amen, thinks I, but steer him clear of 13a Brook Street, oh Lord, if you don’t mind. Listening to Gravedigger, I could absolutely picture the melancholy scene, with the wreath on our knocker, and the blinds drawn, and my father-in-law whining about the cost of crepe … and my lovely, golden-haired Elspeth, her blue eyes dim with tears, in her black veil and black gloves and dainty black satin slippers, and long clocked stockings with purple rosettes on her garters and that shiny French corset with the patent laces that you just had to twitch and she came bursting out …

      “Flashman was much moved, I thought,” Havelock said afterwards, and so I was, at the thought of all that voluptuous goodness so far away, and going to waste – at least, I hoped it was, but I had my doubts; heaven knew how many my melting little innocent had thrashed the mattress with in my absence. Brooding on that over supper, and finding no consolation in port and fond musings on my own indiscretions with Jeendan and Mangla and Mrs Madison, I found myself getting quite jealous – and hungry for that blonde beauty on t’other side of the world …

      Time for a brisk stroll in the cold night air, I decided. We were stopping in Gough’s camp by Sobraon, so that he and Hardinge could bicker over the next move, and I sauntered along the lines in the frosty dark, listening to our artillery firing a royal salute in celebration of Smith’s victory at Aliwal; barely a mile away I could see the watch-fires of the Khalsa entrenchments in the Sutlej bend, and as the crash of our guns died away, hanged if the enemy didn’t reply with a royal salute of their own, and their bands playing … you’ll never guess what. In some ways it was the eeriest thing in that queer campaign – the silence in our own lines as the gunsmoke drifted overhead, the golden moon low in the purple sky, shining on the rows of tents and the distant twinkling fires, and over the dark ground between, the solemn strains of “God Save the Queen”! I never heard it played so well as by the Khalsa, and for the life of me I don’t know to this day whether it was in derision or salute; with Sikhs, you can never tell.

      I was thinking about that, and the impossibility of ever knowing what goes on behind Indian eyes, and how I’d misread them all (especially Jeendan’s), and reflecting that with any luck I’d soon have seen the last of them, thank heaven – and in that very moment an orderly came running to say, please, sir, Major Lawrence’s compliments, and would I wait on the Governor-General at once?

      It never occurred to me that my thoughts had been tempting fate, and as I waited in the empty annexe which served as an ante-room to Hardinge’s pavilion I felt only mild curiosity as to why he wanted me. Voices sounded in the inner sanctum, but I gave no heed to them at first: Hardinge saying that something was a serious matter, and Lawrence replying that no time must be lost. Then Gough’s voice:

      “Well, then, a flyin’ column! Under cover o’ dark, an’ goin’ like billy-be-damned! Send Hope Grant wi’ two squadrons of the 9th, an’ he can be in and out before anyone’s the wiser.”

      “No, no, Sir Hugh!” cries Hardinge. “If it is to be done at all, it must be secret. That is insisted upon – if, indeed, we are to believe that fellow. Suppose it is some infernal plot … oh, bring him in again, Charles! And find whatever has happened to Flashman! I tell you, it troubles me that he is named in this …”

      I was listening now, all ears, as young Charlie Hardinge emerged, crying there I was, and bustling me in. Hardinge was saying that it was all most precarious, and no work for a junior man who had proved himself so headstrong … He had the grace to break off at sight of me, and sat looking peevish, with Lawrence and Van Cortlandt, whom I hadn’t seen since Moodkee, standing behind. Old Paddy, shivering in his cloak in a camp chair, gave me good evening, but no one else spoke, and you could feel the anxiety in the air. Then Charlie was back again, ushering in a figure whose un-expected appearance set my innards cartwheeling in nameless alarm. He sauntered in, no whit abashed by the exalted company, wearing his Afghan rags as though they were ermine, and his ugly face split into a grin as his eye lit on me.

      “Why, hollo there, lieutenant!” says Jassa. “How’s tricks?”

      “Stand there, under the lamp, if you please!” snaps Hardinge. “Flashman, do you know this man?”

      Jassa grinned even wider, and just from the glance between Lawrence and Van Cortlandt I guessed they’d already identified him ten times over, but Hardinge, as usual, was proceeding by laborious rote. I said yes, he was Dr Harlan, an agent of Broadfoot’s, lately posing as my orderly, and formerly of H.M.’s service in Burma. Jassa looked pleased.

      “Say, you remembered that! Thank’ee, sir, that’s proud!”

      “That will do,” says Hardinge. “You may go.”

      “How’s that, sir?” says Jassa. “But hadn’t I ought to stay? I mean, if the lieutenant is going to –”

      “That will be all!” says Hardinge, down his nose, so Jassa shrugged, muttered СКАЧАТЬ