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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      Not what I care to hear from my medical man in wartime; I’d been looking for a ticket to Meerut at least. But with politicals so scarce there was no hope of that, and when saintly Henry Lawrence turned up to take Broadfoot’s place, I was kept hard at it – among other duties, seeing to the provision of fur boots for our elephants against the winter cold. Capital, thinks I, this is the way to serve out the war in comfort.

      For one thing now seemed plain: the Khalsa couldn’t whip John Company. The bogy had been laid at Ferozeshah, India was safe, and while they were still in strength beyond the river, it remained only to bring them to one final action to break them for good and all. So for the present we sat and watched them, Gough awaiting his chance to strike, and Hardinge turning his mind to great affairs of state and political settlements, with Lawrence, who knew the Punjab better even than Broadfoot, at his elbow.

      He was shockingly Christian, Lawrence, but an Al political for all that. He turned me inside out about Lahore, and wanted me in at the high pow-wows, but Hardinge said I was far too junior, and “over-zealous”. The truth was he couldn’t abide me, and wanted to forget my existence. Here’s why.

      We’d had a bloody close call in India, and it was Hardinge’s fault. He’d failed to secure the frontier, through pussyfooting and hindering Gough, and the stark truth was that when the grip came, two men had saved the day – Gough and I. I ain’t bragging; you know I never do (well, maybe about women and horses, but never about small things). I’d instructed Lal and Tej’s treachery, and Paddy had held his ragbag army together, got it to the gate in time, and won his fights. Oh, they’d been costly, and he’d fought head on, and taken some hellish risks, but he’d done the business as few could have done it – Hardinge for one. But that wasn’t how Hardinge saw it: he believed he’d stopped Paddy from throwing the army away at Ferozeshah, and from that it was a short step to seeing himself as the Saviour of India. Well, he was Governor-General, after all, and India had been saved. Q.E.D.

      Indeed, he seemed to think he’d done it in spite of Gough – and inside a week of Ferozeshah he was writing to Peel in London urging that Paddy be given the sack. I saw the letter, accidental-like, when I was rummaging through his excellency’s effects in search of cheroots, and it was a beauty: Paddy wasn’t fit to be trusted with the war, the army was “unsatisfactory”, he’d no head for bandobast, he didn’t frame orders properly, etc. Well, dash my wig, thinks I, here’s gratitude – and the measure of Henry Hardinge. Framing orders, my foot – no doubt “On ye go, Mickey, give ’em one for me!” offended his staff college sensibilities, but he might have remembered another general of his acquaintance whose style wasn’t very different: “Stand up, Guards! Now, Maitland, now’s your time!” If I’d been a man I’d have scrawled it across his precious letter.

      It was plain why he was tattling to Peel, though: shift the blame for the butcher’s bill and the near squeak we’d had onto Gough, and who’d think back to the incompetence and fear of offending Lahore and Leaden-hall Street that had helped bring on the war in the first place, and damned near lost it? It was artfully done, too, with a tribute to Paddy’s energy and courage; you could imagine Peel shuddering at the name of Gough, and thanking God that Hardinge had been on hand.

      Don’t misunderstand. I ain’t championing the old Mick, who was a bloodthirsty savage, and a splendid chap to avoid – but I liked him, because he’d no side, and was jolly, and offended the Quality by commissioning rankers and damn the royal prerogative – aye, and by winning wars with his “Tipperary tactics”. Perhaps that was his greatest offence. Oh, I know Hardinge was an honourable man, who never stole a box-car in his life, and that most of what he said of Paddy was true. That ain’t the point. That letter would have been shabby if I’d written it, dammit; coming from a man of honour it was unpardonable. But it showed how the wind set, and I wasn’t surprised, on rooting farther through Hardinge’s satchels (most elusive, those cheroots were) to find a note in his day-book: “Politicals of no real use.” So there – plainly Flashy would get no credit, either; my work with Lal and Tej would be conveniently forgotten. Well, thank’ee, Sir Henry, and I hope your rabbit dies and you can’t sell the hutch.⁴⁰

      I pondered about informing Paddy anonymously that he was being nobbled, but decided to let it be; mischief’s all very well, but you never know where it may end. So I lay low, running errands for Lawrence. He was a gaunt, ill-tempered scarecrow, but he’d known me in Afghanistan and thought I was another heroic ruffian like himself, so we dealt pretty well. He’d seen from Broadfoot’s papers that George had been meaning to send me back to Lahore, “but I can’t think why, can you? Anyway, I doubt if the G.G. would approve; he thinks you’ve meddled enough in Punjabi politics. But you’d best let your beard grow, just in case.”

      So I did, and the weeks went by while we waited for the Khalsa to move, and our own army recovered and grew strong. We celebrated Christmas with the first decorated tree ever I saw,⁴¹ a great fir brought down from the hills and sprinkled with flour to represent snow, our Caledonians boozed in the New Year with raucous mirth and unspeakable song, the reinforcements arrived from Umballa, and we saw the scarlet and blue of British Lancer regiments, the green of the little Gurkha hillmen strutting by with their knives bouncing on their rickety arses, the Tenth Foot with band playing and Colours flying, and everyone pouring out of the tents to sing them in:

       For ’tis my delight

       Of a shining night,

       In the season of the year!

      Behind came Native Cavalry and marching sepoy battalions, with Sappers and artillery – Paddy had 15,000 men now, and the young Lancer bucks strutted and haw-hawed and asked when were these Sikh wallahs goin’ to show us some sport, hey? God, I love newcomers in at the death, don’t I just? There was one quiet Lancer, though, a black-whiskered Scotch nemesis who said never a word, and played the bull fiddle for his recreation. He caught my eye then, and again fifteen years later when he led the march to Peking, the most terrible killing gentleman you ever saw: Hope Grant.

      So there we were, cocked and ready to fire, and beyond the river, although we didn’t know it, little Dalip’s throne was shaking, for it was touch and go whether the Khalsa, raging in defeat and convinced they’d been betrayed, would fight us or march on Lahore to slake their fury on Jeendan and the durbar. They’d have hanged Lal Singh if they could have caught him, but he’d hidden in a hayrick after Ferozeshah, and then in a baker’s oven, before sneaking back to Lahore, where Jeendan mocked and abused him when she was sober, and galloped him when she was drunk. Between bouts she was sending messages of encouragement to her half-mutinous army, telling them not to give up, but to march on and conquer; at the same time she shut the city gates against the fugitives from Lal’s contingent, who’d deserted in thousands, and even ordered Gardner to recall a Muslim brigade from the front to protect her in case the Khalsa Sikhs came looking for her. Resourceful lass, she was, egging on her army while she turned her capital into an armed camp against them.

      Goolab Singh was playing the same game from Kashmir. The Khalsa pleaded with him to bring his hillmen to the war, and even offered to make him Maharaja, but the old fox saw we had the game won, and put them off with promises that he’d join once the campaign was fully launched, while making a great display of sending them supply convoys which he made sure were only quarter loaded and moved at a snail’s pace.

      Meanwhile Tej Singh was scheming how to lead the Khalsa to final destruction. He had the bulk of them in hand, outnumbering us three to one, and must do something before they lost patience with him. So he threw a bridge of boats over the Sutlej at Sobraon and built a strong position on the south bank in a bend of the river where Paddy daren’t attack him without heavy guns, which we still lacked. At the same time, another Sikh army struck over the river farther up, threatening Ludhiana and our lines of communication, so Gough moved north to contain Tej’s bridgehead and sent СКАЧАТЬ