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 friend – but it’s Dalip’s salt he eats – and Mai Jeendan’s. Don’t forget that. If it comes to war, he can’t be on our side.”

      I wasn’t sure about that, but there was nothing to do but wait – for news of the Khalsa’s intentions, and word from Broadfoot. Three days went by, and then a week, in which Lahore buzzed with rumours: the Khalsa were marching, the British were invading, Goolab Singh had declared first for one side then for the other, the Raja of Nabla had announced that he was the eleventh incarnation of Vishnu and was raising a holy war to sweep the foreigners out of India – all the usual twaddle, contradicted as soon as it was uttered, and I could do nothing but endure the Soochet legacy by day, and pace my balcony impatiently in the evening, watching the red dusk die into purple, star-filled night over the fountain court, and listen to the distant murmur of the great city, waiting, like me, for peace or war.

      It was nervous work, and lonely, and then on the seventh night, when I had just climbed into bed, who should slip in, all unannounced, but Mangla. News at last, thinks I, and was demanding it as I turned up the lamp, but all the reply she made was to pout reproachfully, cast aside her robe, and hop into bed beside me.

      “After six weeks I have not come to talk politics,” says she, rubbing her bumpers across my face. “Ah, taste, bahadur – and then eat to your heart’s content! Have you missed me?”

      “Eh? Oh, damnably!” says I, taking a polite munch. “But hold on … what’s the news? Have you a message from your mistress? What’s she doing?”

      “This – and this – and this,” says she, teasing busily. “With Lal Singh. Rousing his manhood – but whether for an assault on herself or on the frontier, who knows? Are you jealous of him, then? Am I so poor a substitute?”

      “No, dammit! Hold still, can’t you? Look, woman, what’s happening, for heaven’s sake? One moment I hear the Khalsa’s marching, the next that it’s been recalled – is it peace or war? She swore she’d give warning – here, don’t take ’em away! But I must know, don’t you see, so that I can send word –”

      “Does it matter?” murmurs the randy little vixen. “At this moment … does it truly matter?”

      She was right, of course; there’s a time for everything. So for the next hour or so she relieved the tedium of affairs and reminded me that life isn’t all policy, as old Runjeet said before expiring blissfully. I was ready for it, too, for since my protracted bout with Jeendan I hadn’t seen a skirt except my little maids, and they weren’t worth turning to for.

      Afterwards, though, when we lay beneath the punkah, drowsing and drinking, there wasn’t a scrap of news to be got out of her. To all my questions she shrugged her pretty shoulders and said she didn’t know – the Khalsa were still on the leash, but what was in Jeendan’s mind no one could tell. I didn’t believe it; she must have some word for me.

      “Then she has not told me. Do you know,” says Mangla, gnawing at my ear, “I think we talk too much of Jeendan – and you have ceased to care for her, I know. All men do. She is too greedy of her pleasure. So she has no lovers – only bed-men. Even Lal Singh takes her only out of fear and ambition. Now I,” says the saucy piece, teasing my lips with hers, “have true lovers, because I delight to give pleasure as well as to take it – especially with my English bahadur. Is it not so?”

      D’you know, she was right again. I’d had enough of Punjabi royalty to last a lifetime, and she’d put her dainty finger on the reason: with Jeendan, it had been like making love to a steam road roller. But I still had to know what was in her devious Indian mind, and when Mangla continued to protest ignorance I got in a bate and swore that if she didn’t talk sense I’d thrash it out of her – at which she clapped her hands and offered to get my belt.

      So the night wore out, and a jolly time we had of it, with only one interruption, when Mangla complained of the cold draft from the fan. I bawled to the punkah-wallah to go easy, but with the door closed he didn’t hear, so I turned out, cursing. It wasn’t the usual ancient, but another idiot – they’re all alike, fast asleep when you want a cool waft, and freezing you with a nor’easter in the small hours. I leathered the brute, and scampered back for some more Kashmiri culture; it was taxing work, and when I awoke it was full morning, Mangla had gone … and there was a cypher from Broadfoot waiting in Second Thessalonians.

      So Jassa had been right – she was the secret courier after all. Well, the little puss … mixing business with pleasure, if you like. I’d wondered if it was she, you remember, on that first day, when she and others had had the opportunity to be at my bedside table. She was the perfect go-between, when you thought about it, able to come and go about the palace as she pleased … the slave-girl who was the richest woman in Lahore – easy for her to bribe and command other couriers, one of whom must have deputised while she was away in Amritsar. How the deuce had Broadfoot recruited her? My respect for my chief had always been high, but it doubled now, I can tell you.

      Which was just as well, for if anything could have shaken my faith it was the contents of that cypher. When I’d decoded it I sat staring at the paper for several minutes, and then construed it again, to be sure I had it right. No mistake, it was pukka, and the sweat prickled on my skin as I read it for the tenth time:

       Most urgent to Number One alone. On the first night after receipt, you will go in native dress to the French Soldiers’ cabaret between the Shah Boorj and the Buttee Gate. Use the signals and wait for word from Bibi Kalil. Say nothing to your orderly.

      Not even an “I remain” or “Believe me &c”. That was all.

      The trouble with the political service, you know, is that they can’t tell truth from falsehood. Even members of Parliament know when they’re lying, which is most of the time, but folk like Broadfoot simply ain’t aware of their own prevarications. It’s all for the good of the service, you see, so it must be true – and that makes it uncommon hard for straightforward rascals like me to know when we’re being done browner than an ape’s behind. Mind you, I’d feared the worst when he’d assured me: “It’ll never come to disguise, or anything desperate.” Oh, no, George, never that! Honestly, you’d be safer dealing with lawyers.

      And now here it was, my worst fears realised. Flashy was being sent into the deep field – clean-shaven, too, and never a bolt-hole or friend-in-need to bless himself with. Come, you may say, what’s the row – it’s only a rendezvous in disguise, surely? Aye … and then? Who the blazes was this Bibi Kalil – the name might mean anything from a princess to a bawd – and what horror would she steer me to at Broadfoot’s bidding? Well, I’d find out soon enough.

      The disguise was the least of it. I had a poshteen in my valise, and had gathered a few odds and ends since coming to Lahore – Persian boots, pyjamys and sash for lounging on the hotter days, and the like. My own shirt would do, once I’d trampled it underfoot, and I improvised a puggaree from a couple of towels. Ordinarily I’d have borrowed Jassa’s gear, but he was to be kept in the dark – that was something about the cypher that struck me as middling odd: the last sentence was unnecessary, since the word “alone” at the beginning meant that the whole thing was secret to me. Presumably George was just “makin’ siccar”, as he would say.

Leaving the Fort was less simple. I’d strolled out once or twice of an evening, but never beyond the market at the Hazooree Gate on the inner wall, which was the better-class bazaar serving the quality homes which lay south of the Fort, before you came to the town proper. I daren’t assume my disguise inside the palace, so I stuffed it into a handbag, all but the boots, which I put on under my unutterables.^c Then it was a case of making sure that Jassa wasn’t on hand, and slipping out to the gardens after dark. СКАЧАТЬ