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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ bandits will come to plunder us, will they? Brigands, wilayati,^d vermin!” He glared from me to Dinanath. “Ai-ee, the British will come – they will have cause to come!” shrieks he, pointing at me, and then they’d hustled him off, still yelling and laughing, Mangla clapped her hands, the music began again, and folk turned away, whispering behind their hands, just as they do at home when Uncle Percy’s had one of his bad turns during evensong.

      I dare say I should have been embarrassed, but with a couple of quarts of mixed brandy and puggle inside me, I didn’t mind one little bit. Jawaheer was plainly all that rumour said of him, but I had deeper concerns: I was suddenly thirsty again, and beginning to feel so monstrous randy that if Lady Sale had happened by she’d have had to look damned lively, rheumatics and all. Doubtless the curious liquor Mangla had plied me with was responsible for both conditions; very well, she could take the consequences … there she was, the luscious little teaser, by the booth where Azizudeen and Dinanath had been a moment since. I lurched towards her, gloating, but even as I hove to beside her a woman spoke from beyond the open curtains.

      “Is this your Englishman? Let me look at him.”

I turned in surprise – not only at the words, but at the slurred, appraising arrogance of the tone. Mangla stepped back, and with a little gesture of presentation, said: “Flashman sahib, kunwari,”^e and that title told me I was in the presence of the notorious Maharani Jeendan, Indian Venus, modern Messalina, and uncrowned queen of the Punjab.

      Here and there in my memoirs I’ve remarked on the attraction of the female sex, and how it’s seldom a matter of beauty alone. There are breathtakers like Elspeth and Lola and Yehonala whom you can’t wait to chivvy into the shrubbery; equally classic creatures (Angie Burdett-Coutts, for example, or the Empress of Austria) who are as exciting as cold soup but appeal to the baser aesthetic senses; and plain Janes who could start a riot in a monastery. In each case, Aphrodite or the governess, the magic is different, you see; there is always some unique charm or singular attraction, and it can be hard to define. In Mai Jeendan, though, it stood out a mile: she was simply the lewdest-looking strumpet I ever saw in my life.

      Mind you, when a young woman with the proportions of an erotic Indian statue is found reclining half-naked and three parts drunk, while a stalwart wrestler rubs her down with oil, it’s easy to leap to conclusions. But you could have covered this one with sackcloth in the front row of the church choir, and they’d still have ridden her out of town on a rail. You’ve heard of voluptuaries whose vices are stamped on their faces – mine, for example, but I’m over eighty. She was in her twenties, and lust was in every line of her face: the once perfect beauty turned fleshy, the lovely curves of lip and nostril thickened by booze and pleasure into the painted mask of a depraved angel – gad, she was attractive. She looked like those sensual pictures of Jezebel and Delilah which religious artists paint with such loving enthusiasm; Arnold could have got enough sermons out of her to last the half. Her eyes were large and wanton and slightly protruding, with a vacant, sated expression which may have been due to drink or the recent attentions of the wrestler – a bit shaky, he looked to me – but as I made my bow they widened in what was either drunken interest or yearning lechery – the same thing, really, with her.

      Considering the size of her endowments, she was quite small, light coffee in colour, and fine-boned under her smooth fat – a tung bibi, as they say; a “tight lady”. Like Mangla, she was decked out as a dancer, with a crimson silk loin-cloth and flimsy bodice, but instead of bangles her legs and arms were sheathed in gauze sewn with tiny gems, and her dark red hair was contained in a jewelled net.

      To see her then, you’d never have guessed that when she wasn’t guzzling drink and men, Mai Jeendan was another woman altogether; Broadfoot was wrong in thinking debauchery had dulled her wits. She was shrewd and resolute and ruthless when the need arose; she was also an accomplished actress and mimic, talents developed when she’d been the leading jester in old Runjeet’s obscene private entertainments.

      Just now, though, she was too languid with drink to do more than struggle up on one elbow, pushing her masseur away to view me better, slowly up and down – it reminded me of being on the slave-block in Madagascar, when no one bought me, rot them. This time, so far as one could judge from the lady’s tipsy muttering as she lolled back on her cushions, fluttering a plump hand at me, the market was more buoyant.

      “You were right, Mangla … he’s big!” She gave a drunken chuckle, adding an indelicate remark which I won’t translate. “Well, must make him comfortable … have him take off his robe … come sit down here, beside me. You, get out …” This to the wrestler, who salaamed himself off in haste. “You too, Mangla … draw the curtains … want to talk with big Englishman.”

      And not about the Soochet legacy, from the way she patted the cushions and smiled at me over the rim of her glass. Well, I’d heard she was game, but this was informality with a vengeance. I was all for it, mind you, even if she was as drunk as Taffy’s sow and spilling most of the drink down her front – if any ass tells you that there’s nothing so disgusting as a beauty in her cups, I can only say she looks a sight more interesting than a sober schoolmarm. I was wondering if I should offer to help her out of her wet things when Mangla got in before me, calling for a cloth, so I hung back, polite-like, and found myself being addressed most affably by a tall young grandee with a flashing smile who made me a pretty little speech, welcoming me to the Court of Lahore, and trusting that I would have a pleasant stay.

      His name was Lal Singh, and I still give him top marks for style. After all, he was Jeendan’s principal lover, and here was his mistress cussing like Sowerberry Hagan and having her déshabillé mopped in the presence of a stranger whom she’d been about to drag into the woodshed; it didn’t unsettle him a bit as he congratulated me on my Afghan exploits and drew me into conversation with Tej Singh, my fat little warrior of the afternoon, who bobbed up grinning at his elbow to tell me how well I suited the robe he’d given me. By this time I was beginning to feel a trifle confused myself, having in short order survived an assassination plot – what a long time ago it seemed – been filled with strong waters and (I suspected) aphrodisiac, trotted up and down by a half-naked slave girl, verbally assailed in public by the Wazir of the Punjab, and indecently ogled by his drunken flesh-trap of a sister. Now I was discussing, more or less coherently, the merits of the latest Congreve rockets with two knowledgeable military men, while a yard away the Queen Regent was being dried off by her attendants and protesting tipsily, and at my back a vigorous ballet was being danced by a score of young chaps in turbans and baggy trousers, with the orchestra going full steam.

      I was new to Lahore, of course, and not au fait with their easygoing ways. I didn’t know, for example, that recently, when Lal Singh and Jawaheer had quarrelled publicly, the Maharani had composed things by presenting each of them with a naked houri and telling them to restore their tempers by doing honour to her gifts then and there. Which, by all accounts, they had done. I mention that in case you think my own account is at all exaggerated.

      “We must have a longer talk presently,” says Lal Singh, taking me by the arm. “You see the deplorable condition of affairs here. It cannot continue – as I am sure Hardinge sahib is aware. He and I have had some correspondence – through your esteemed chief, Major Broadfoot.” He flashed me another of his smiles, all beard and teeth. “They are both very practical and expert men. Tell me, you have their confidence – what price do you suppose they would consider fair … for the Punjab?”

      Well, I was drunk, and he knew it, which was why he asked the impossible, treasonable question, in the hope that my reaction would tell him something. Even fuddled, I knew that Lal Singh was a clever, probably desperate man, and that the best answer to the unanswerable is to put a question of your own. So I said, “Why, does someone want to sell it?” At which he gave me a long smile, while little Tej held his breath; then Lal Singh clapped me on the shoulder.

СКАЧАТЬ