Flashman and the Mountain of Light. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ in a mail jacket, with a bandolier of ivory-hilted knives round his hips, jumps on the dais, and they fell silent.

      ‘It was foully done!’ croaks he. ‘Peshora Singh knew it was his time, for they had him in irons, and bore him before the jackal, Chuttur Singh. Peshora looked him in the eye, and called for a sword. “Let me die like a soldier,” says he, but Chuttur would not look on him, but wagged his head and made soft excuses. Again the young hawk cried for a sword. “You are thousands, I am alone – there can be but one end, so let it be straight!” Chuttur sighed, and whined, and turned away, waving his hands. “Straight, coward!” cries Peshora, but they bore him away. All this I saw. They took him to the Kolboorj dungeon, and choked him like a thief with his chains, and cast him in the river. This I did not see. I was told. God wither my tongue if I lie.’

      Peshora Singh had been the form horse in the throne stakes, according to Nicolson. Well, that’s politics for you. I wondered if this would mean a change of government, for Peshora had been the Khalsa’s idol, and while his death seemed to be old news, the manner of it seemed to put them in a great taking. They were all yelling at once, and the tall Sikh had to bellow again.

      ‘We have sent the parwana^fn20 to the palace. You all approved it! What is there to do but wait?’

      ‘Wait – while the snake Jawaheer butchers other true men?’ bawls a voice. ‘He’s Peshora’s murderer, for all he skulks in the Kwabagh^fn21 yonder! Let us visit him now, and give him a sleep indeed!’

      This got a rousing hand, but others shouted that Jawaheer was the hope of the side, and innocent of Peshora’s death.

      ‘Who bribed thee to say that?’ roars the rissaldar-major, all fire and whiskers. ‘Did Jawaheer buy thee with a gold chain, boroowa?^fn22 Or perchance Mai Jeendan danced for thee, fornicating strumpet that she is!’ Cries of ‘Shame!’, ‘Shabash!’^fn23 and the Punjabi equivalent of ‘Mr Chairman!’, some pointing out that the Maharani had promised them fifteen rupees a month to march against the bastardised British pigs (the spectator in the jampan drew his curtain tactfully at this point) and Jawaheer was just the chap to lead them. Another suggested that Jawaheer wanted war only to draw the Khalsa’s fury from his own head, and that the Maharani was an abominable whore of questionable parentage who had lately had a Brahmin’s nose sliced off when he rebuked her depravities, so there. A beardless youth, frothing with loyalty, offered to eat the innards of anyone who impugned the honour of that saintly woman, and the meeting seemed likely to dissolve in riot when a gorgeously robed old general, hawk-faced and commanding, mounted the dais and let them have it straight from the shoulder.

      ‘Silence! Are ye soldiers or fish-wives? Ye have heard Pirthee Singh – the parwana has been sent, summoning Jawaheer to come out to us on the sixth of Assin, to answer for Peshora’s death or show himself guiltless. There is no more to be said, but this …’ He paused, and you could have heard a pin drop as his cold eye ranged over them. ‘We are the Khalsa, the Pure, and our allegiance is to none but our Maharaja, Dalip Singh, may God protect his innocence! Our swords and lives are his alone!’ Thunderous cheers, the old rissaldar-major spouting tears of loyalty. ‘As to marching against the British … that is for the panchayats to decide another day. But if we do, then I, General Maka Khan’ – he slapped his breast – ‘shall march because the Khalsa wills it, and not for the wiles of a naked cunchunee^fn24 or the whim of a drunken dancing boy!’

      With that summary of the regents’ characters the day’s business concluded, and I was relieved, as Sardul led us past the dispersing soldiery, to note that any glances in my direction were curious rather than hostile; indeed, one or two saluted, and you may be sure I responded civilly. This heartened me, for it suggested that Broadfoot was right, and whatever upheavals in government took place – dramatic ones, by the sound of it – the stranger Flashy would be respected within their gates, their opinion of his country notwithstanding.

      We approached Lahore roundabout, skirting the main town, which is a filthy maze of crooked streets and alleys, to the northern side, where the Fort and palace building dominate the city. Lahore’s an impressive place, or was then, more than a mile across and girdled by towering thirty-foot walls which overlooked a deep moat and massive earthworks – since gone, I believe. In those days you were struck by the number and grandeur of its gates, and by the extent of the Fort and palace on their eminence, with the great half-octagon tower, the Summum Boorj, thrusting up like a giant finger close to the northern ramparts.

      It loomed above us as we entered by the Rushnai, or Bright Gate, past the swarms of dust-covered workmen labouring on old Runjeet’s mausoleum, and into the Court Garden. To the right a tremendous flight of steps led up to Badshai Musjit, the great triple mosque said to be the biggest on earth – mind you, the Samarkandians say the same of their mosque – and to the left was the inner gate up to the Fort, a bewildering place full of contradictions, for it contains not only the Sleeping Palace but a foundry and arsenal close by, the splendid Pearl Mosque which is used as a treasury, and over one of the gates a figure of the Virgin Mary, which they say Shah Jehan put up to keep the Portugee traders happy. But there was something stranger still: I’d just bidden farewell to Sardul’s escort and my jampan, and was being conducted on foot by a yellow-clad officer of the Palace Guard, when I noticed an extraordinary figure lounging in an embrasure above the gate, swigging from an enormous tankard and barking orders at a party of Guardsmen drilling with the light guns on the wall. He was a real Pathan mercenary, with iron moustaches and a nose like a hatchet – but he was dressed from top to toe, puggaree,^fn25 robe, and pyjamys, in the red tartan of the 79th Highlanders! Well, I’ve seen a Madagascar nigger in a Black Watch kilt, but this beat all. Stranger still, he carried a great metal collar in one hand, and each time before he drank he would clamp it round his throat, almost as though he expected the liquor to leak out through his Adam’s apple.

      I turned to remark on this to Jassa – and dammit, he’d vanished. Nowhere to be seen. I stared about, and demanded of the officer where he had got to, but he hadn’t seen him at all, so in the end I found myself being led onward alone, with all my former alarms rushing back at the gallop.

      You may wonder why, just because my orderly had gone astray. Aye, but he’d done it at the very moment of entering the lion’s den, so to speak, and the whole mission was mysterious and chancy enough to begin with, and I’m God’s own original funk, so there. And I smelled mischief here, in this maze of courts and passages, with high walls looming about me. I didn’t even care for the splendid apartments to which I was conducted. They were on an upper storey of the Sleeping Palace, two lofty, spacious rooms joined by a broad Moorish arch, with mosaic tiles and Persian murals, a little marble balcony overlooking a secluded fountain court, silks on the bed, silent bearers to stow my kit, two pretty little maids who shimmied in and out, bringing water and towels and tea (I didn’t even think of slapping a rump, which tells you how jumpy I was), and a cooling breeze provided by an ancient punkah-wallah in the passage, when the old bugger was awake, which was seldom. For some reason, the very luxury of the place struck me as sinister, as though designed to lull my fears. At least there were two doors, one from either chamber – I do like to know there’s a line of retreat.

      I washed and changed, still fretting about Jassa’s absence, and was about to lie down to calm my nerves when my eye lit on a book on the bedside table – and I sat up with a start. For it was a Bible, placed by an unknown hand – in case I’d forgotten my own, of course.

      Broadfoot, thinks I, you’re an uneasy man to work for, but by God you know your business. It reminded me that I wasn’t quite cut off; I found I was muttering ‘Wisconsin’, then humming it shakily to the tune of ‘My bonnie is over the ocean’, and on the spur of the moment I dug out my cypher key – Crotchet Castle, the edition of 1831, if you’re interested – and began to write Broadfoot a note of all that I’d heard СКАЧАТЬ