Flashman in the Great Game. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ political knows where they come from, all right. The native village constables – you know, the chowkidars – bake them in batches of ten, and send one apiece to ten different sepoys – and each sepoy is bound to make ten more, and pass them on, to his comrades, and so on, ad infinitum. It’s not new, of course; ritual cake-passing is very old in India. But there are three remarkable things about it: firstly, it happens only rarely; second, even the natives themselves don’t know why it happens, only that the cakes must be baked and passed; and third –’ he tapped the box again ‘– they believe that the appearance of the cakes foreshadows terrible catastrophe.’

      He paused, and I tried to look impressed. For there was nothing out of the way in all this – straight from Alice in Wonderland, if you like, but when you know India and the amazing tricks the niggers can get up to (usually in the name of religion) you cease to be surprised. It seemed an interesting superstition – but what was more interesting was that two Ministers of the Government, and a former Governor-General of India, were discussing it behind closed doors – and had decided to let Flashy into the secret.

      ‘But there’s something more,’ Ellenborough went on, ‘which is why Skene, our political man at Jhansi, is treating the matter as one of urgency. Cakes like these have circulated among native troops, quite apart from civilians, on only three occasions in the past fifty years – at Vellore in ’06, at Buxar, and at Barrackpore. You don’t recall the names? Well, at each place, when the cakes appeared, the same reaction followed among the sepoys.’ He put on his House of Lords face and said impressively, ‘Mutiny.’

      Looking back, I suppose I ought to have thrilled with horror at the mention of the dread word – but in fact all that occurred to me was the facetious thought that perhaps they ought to have varied the sepoys’ rations. I didn’t think much of the political man Skene’s judgement, either; I’d been a political myself, and it’s part of the job to scream at your own shadow, but if he – or Ellenborough, who knew India outside in – was smelling a sepoy revolt in a few mouldy biscuits – well, it was ludicrous. I knew John Sepoy (we all did, didn’t we?) for the most loyal ass who ever put on uniform – and so he should have been, the way the Company treated him. However, it wasn’t for me to venture an opinion in such august company, particularly with the Prime Minister listening: he’d pushed his papers aside and risen, and was pouring himself some more port.

      ‘Well, now,’ says he briskly, taking a hearty swig and rolling it round his teeth, ‘you’ve admired his lordship’s cakes, what? Damned unappetisin’ they look, too. All right, Barrington, your assistants can go – our special leaves at four, does it? Very well.’ He waited till the junior secretaries had gone, muttered something about ungodly hours and the Queen’s perversity in choosing a country retreat at the North Pole, and paced stiffly over to the fire, where he set his back to the mantel and glowered at me from beneath his gorse-bush brows, which was enough to set my dinner circulating in the old accustomed style.

      ‘Tokens of revolution in an Indian garrison,’ says he. ‘Very good. Been readin’ that report of yours again, Flashman – the one you made to Dalhousie last year, in which you described the discovery you made while you were a prisoner in Russia – about their scheme for invadin’ India, while we were busy in Crimea. Course, we say nothin’ about that these days – peace signed with Russia, all good fellowship an’ be damned, et cetera – don’t have to tell you. But somethin’ in your report came to mind when this cake business began.’ He pushed out his big lip at me. ‘You wrote that the Russian march across the Indus was to be accompanied by a native risin’ in India, fomented by Tsarist agents. Our politicals have been chasin’ that fox ever since – pickin’ up some interestin’ scents, of which these infernal buns are the latest. Now, then,’ he settled himself, eyes half-shut, but watching me, ‘tell me precisely what you heard in Russia, touchin’ on an Indian rebellion. Every word of it.’

      So I told him, exactly as I remembered it – how Scud East and I had lain quaking in our nightshirts in the gallery at Starotorsk, and overheard about ‘Item Seven’, which was the Russian plan for an invasion of India. They’d have done it, too, but Yakub Beg’s riders scuppered their army up on the Syr Daria, with Flashy running about roaring with a bellyful of bhang, performing unconscious prodigies of valour. I’d set it all out in my report to Dalhousie, leaving out the discreditable bits (you can find those in my earlier memoirs, along with the licentious details). It was a report of nicely judged modesty, that official one, calculated to convince Dalhousie that I was the nearest thing to Hereward the Wake he was ever likely to meet – and why not? I’d suffered for my credit.

      But the information about an Indian rebellion had been slight. All we’d discovered was that when the Russian army reached the Khyber, their agents in India would rouse the natives – and particularly John Company’s sepoys – to rise against the British. I didn’t doubt it was true, at the time; it seemed an obvious ploy. But that was more than a year ago, and Russia was no threat to India any longer, I supposed.

      They heard me out, in a silence that lasted a full minute after I’d finished, and then Wood says quietly:

      ‘It fits, my lord.’

      ‘Too dam’ well,’ says Pam, and came hobbling back to his chair again. ‘It’s all pat. You see, Flashman, Russia may be spent as an armed power, for the present – but that don’t mean she’ll leave us at peace in India, what? This scheme for a rebellion – by George, if I were a Russian political, invasion or no invasion, I fancy I could achieve somethin’ in India, given the right agents. Couldn’t I just, though!’ He growled in his throat, heaving restlessly and cursing his gouty foot. ‘Did you know, there’s an Indian superstition that the British Raj will come to an end exactly a hundred years after the Battle of Plassey?’ He picked up one of the chapattis and peered at it. ‘Dam’ thing isn’t even sugared. Well, the hundredth anniversary of Plassey falls next June the twenty-third. Interestin’. Now then, tell me – what d’you know about a Russian nobleman called Count Nicholas Ignatieff?’

      He shot it at me so abruptly that I must have started a good six inches. There’s a choice collection of ruffians whose names you can mention if you want to ruin my digestion for an hour or two – Charity Spring and Bismarck, Rudi Starnberg and Wesley Hardin, for example – but I’d put N. P. Ignatieff up with the leaders any time. He was the brute who’d nearly put paid to me in Russia – a gotch-eyed, freezing ghoul of a man who’d dragged me half way to China in chains, and threatened me with exposure in a cage and knouting to death, and like pleasantries. I hadn’t cared above half for the conversation thus far, with its bloody mutiny cakes and the sinister way they kept dragging in my report to Dalhousie – but at the introduction of Ignatieff’s name my bowels began to play the Hallelujah Chorus in earnest. It took me all my time to keep a straight face and tell Pam what I knew – that Ignatieff had been one of the late Tsar’s closest advisers, and that he was a political agent of immense skill and utter ruthlessness; I ended with a reminiscence of the last time I’d seen him, under that hideous row of gallows at Fort Raim. Ellenborough exclaimed in disgust, Wood shuddered delicately, and Pam sipped his port.

      ‘Interestin’ life you’ve led,’ says he. ‘Thought I remembered his name from your report – he was one of the prime movers behind the Russian plan for invasion an’ Indian rebellion, as I recall. Capable chap, what?’

      ‘My lord,’ says I, ‘he’s the devil, and that’s a fact.’

      ‘Just so,’ says Pam. ‘An’ the devil will find mischief.’ He nodded to Ellenborough. ‘Tell him, my lord. Pay close heed to this, Flashman.’

      Ellenborough cleared his throat and fixed his boozy spaniel eyes on me. ‘Count Ignatieff,’ says he, ‘has made two clandestine visits to India in the past year. Our politicals first had word of him last autumn at Ghuznee; he came over the Khyber disguised as an Afridi СКАЧАТЬ