There are some parts of my life that I’d be glad to relive any time – and some that I don’t care to remember at all. But there aren’t many that I look back on and have to pinch myself to believe that they really happened. The business of the Khokandian Horde of the Red Sands is one of these, and yet it’s one of the few episodes in my career that I can verify from the history books if I want to. There are obscure works on Central Asia by anonymous surveyors and military writers,40 and I can look in them and find the names and places – Yakub Beg, Izzat Kutebar and Katti Torah; Buzurg Khan and the Seven Khojas, the Great and Middle Hordes of the Black Sands and the Golden Road, the Sky-blue Wolves of the Hungry Steppe, Sahib Khan, and the remarkable girl they called the Silk One. You can trace them all, if you are curious, and learn how in those days they fought the Russians inch by inch from the Jaxartes to the Oxus, and if it reads to you like a mixture of Robin Hood and the Arabian Nights – well, I was there for part of it, and even I look back on it as some kind of frightening fairy-tale come true.
And when I’ve thumbed through the books and maps, and mumbled the names aloud as an old man does, looking out of my window at the cabs clopping past by the Park in twentieth-century London, and the governesses stepping demurely with their little charges (deuced smart, some of these governesses), I’ll go and rummage until I’ve found that old clumsy German revolver that I took from the Russian sergeant under Fort Raim, and for a threadbare scarf of black silk with the star-flowers embroidered on it – and I can hear again Yakub’s laughter ringing behind me, and Kutebar’s boastful growling, and the thunder of a thousand hooves and the shouting of the turbaned Tajik riders that makes me shiver still. But most of all I smell the wraith of her perfume, and see those slanting black eyes – “Lick up the honey, stranger, and ask no questions.” That was the best part.
On the night of the rescue from Fort Raim, of course, I knew next to nothing about them – except that they were obviously of the warlike tribes constantly warring with the Russians who were trying to invade their country and push the Tsar’s dominions south to Afghanistan and east to the China border. It was a bloody, brutal business that, and the wild people – the Tajiks, the Kirgiz-Kazaks, the Khokandians, the Uzbeks and the rest – were being forced back up the Syr Daria into the Hungry Steppe and the Red Sands, harrying all the way, raiding the new Russian outposts and cutting up their caravans.
But they weren’t just savages by any means. Behind them, far up the Syr Daria and the Amu Daria, were their great cities of Tashkent and Khokand and Samarkand and Bokhara, places that had been civilized when the Russians were running round bare-arsed – these were the spots that Moscow was really after, and which Ignatieff had boasted would be swept up in the victorious march to India. And leaders like Yakub and Kutebar were waging a desperate last-ditch fight to stop them in the no-man’s-land east of the Aral Sea along the Syr Daria.
It was to the brink of that no-man’s-land that they carried us on the night of our deliverance from Fort Raim – a punishing ride, hour after hour, through the dark and the silvery morning, over miles of desert and gully and parched steppe-land. They had managed to sever my ankle chain, so that I could back a horse, but I rode in an exhausted dream, only half-conscious of the robed figures flanking me, and the smell of camel-hair robes, and sinking on to a blessed softness to sleep forever.
It was a good place, that – an oasis deep in the Red Sands of the Kizil Kum, where the Russians still knew better than to venture. I remember waking there, to the sound of rippling water, and crawling out of the tent in bright sunlight, and blinking at a long valley, crowded with tents, and a little village of beautiful white houses on the valley side, with trees and grass, and women and children chattering, and Tajik riders everywhere, with their horses and camels – lean, ugly, bearded fellows, bandoliered and booted, and not the kind of company I care to keep, normally. But one of them sings out: “Salaam, angliski!” as he clattered by, and one of the women gave me bread and coffee, and all seemed very friendly.
Somewhere – I believe it’s in my celebrated work, Dawns and Departures of a Soldier’s Life – I’ve written a good deal about that valley, and the customs and manners of the tribesfolk, and what a little Paradise it seemed after what I’d been through. So it was, and some fellows would no doubt have been content to lie back, wallowing in their freedom, thanking Providence, and having a rest before thinking too hard about the future. That’s not Flashy’s way; given a moment’s respite I have to be looking ahead to the next leap, and that very first morning, while the local smith was filing off my fetters in the presence of a grinning, admiring crowd, I was busy thinking, aye, so far so good, but where next? That Russian army at Fort Raim was still a long sight too close for comfort, and I wouldn’t rest easy until I’d reached real safety – Berkeley Square, say, or a little ale-house that I know in Leicestershire.
Afghanistan looked the best bet – not that it’s a place I’d ever venture into gladly, but there was no other way to India and my own people, and I figured that Yakub Beg would see me safe along that road, as a return for services rendered to him in our cell at Fort Raim. We jail-birds stick together, and he was obviously a man of power and influence – why, he was probably on dining-out terms with half the badmashesa and cattle-thieves between here and Jallalabad, and if necessary he’d give me an escort; we could travel as horse-copers, or something, for with my Persian and Pushtu I’d have no difficulty passing as an Afghan. I’d done it before. And there would be no lousy Russians along the road just yet, thank God – and as my thoughts went bounding ahead it suddenly struck me, the magnificent realization – I was free, within reach of India, and I had Ignatieff’s great secret plan of invasion! Oh, East might have taken it to Raglan, but that was nothing in the gorgeous dream that suddenly opened up before me – the renowned Flashy, last seen vanishing into the Russian army at Balaclava with boundless energy, now emerging in romantic disguise at Peshawar with the dreadful news for the British garrison.
“You might let the Governor-General know,” I would tell my goggling audience, “that there’s a Russian army of thirty thousand coming down through the Khyber shortly, with half Afghanistan in tow, and if he wants to save India he’d better get the army up here fairly smart. Yes, there’s no doubt of it – got it from the Tsar’s secret cabinet. They probably know in London by now – fellow called East got out through the Crimea, I believe – I’d been wounded, you see, and told him to clear out and get the news through at any price. So he left me – well, you take your choice, don’t you? Friendship or duty? – anyway, it don’t signify. I’m here, with the news, and it’s here we’ll have to stop ’em. How did I get here? Ha-ha, my dear chap, if I told you, it wouldn’t make you any wiser. Half-way across Russia, through Astrakhan, over the Aral Sea (Caspian, too, as a matter of fact) and across the Hindu Kush – old country to me, of course. Rough trip? No-o, not what I’d call rough, really – be glad when these fetter-marks have healed up, though – Russian jailers, I don’t mind telling you, have a lot to learn from English chambermaids, what? Yes, I assure you, I am Flashman – yes, the Flashman, if you like. Now, do be a good fellow and get it on the telegraph to Calcutta, won’t you? Oh, and you might ask them to forward my apologies to Lord Raglan that I wasn’t able to rejoin him at Balaclava, owing to being unavoidably detained. Now, I’d give anything for a bath, and a pair of silk socks and a hairbrush, if you don’t mind …”
Gad, the Press would be full of it. Hero of Afghanistan, and now Saviour of India – assuming the damned place was saved. Still, I’d have done my bit, and East’s scuttle through the snow would look puny by comparison. I’d give him a careful pat on the back, of course, pointing out that he’d only done his duty, even if it did mean sacrificing his old chum. “Really, I think that in spite of everything, I had the easier part,” I would say gravely. “I didn’t have that kind of choice to make, you see.” Modest, off-hand, self-deprecatory – if I played it properly, I’d get a knighthood out of it.
And all I had to do to realize that splendid prospect was have a chat with Yakub Beg, as soon as he had recovered from his ordeal, point out that the Russians were our mutual enemies and I was duty bound to get to India at once, thank him for his hospitality, and be off with his blessing and assistance. Not to waste time, I broached the thing that afternoon to Izzat Kutebar, when he invited me to share a dish of kefir with him in the neighbouring tent where he was recovering, noisily, from his captivity and escape.
“Eat, and thank Providence for such delights as this, which you infidels call ambrosia,” says he, while one of his women put the dish of honey-coloured curds before me. “The secret of its preparation was specially given by God to Abraham himself. Personally, I prefer it even to a Tashkent melon – and you know the proverb runs that the Caliph of the Faithful would give ten pearl-breasted beauties from his hareem for a single melon of Tashkent. Myself, I would give five, perhaps, or six, if the melon were a big one.” He wiped his beard. “And you would go to Afghanistan, then, and to your folk in India? It can be arranged – we owe you a debt, Flashman bahadur, Yakub and I and all our people. As you owe one to us, for your own deliverance,” he added gently.
I protested my undying gratitude at once, and he nodded gravely.
“Between warriors let a word of thanks be like a heartbeat – a small thing, hardly heard, but it suffices,” says he, and then grinned sheepishly. “What do I say? The truth is, we all owe our chief debt to that wild witch, Ko Dali’s daughter. She whom they call the Silk One.” He shook his head. “God protect me from a wayward child, and a wanton that goes bare-faced. There will be no holding her in after this – or curbing Yakub Beg’s infatuation with her, either. And yet, my friend, would you and I be sitting here, eating this fine kefir, but for her?”
“Who is she?” I asked, for I’d seen – and felt – just enough of that remarkable female last night to be thoroughly intrigued. She’d have been a phenomenon anywhere, but in a Muslim country, where women are kept firmly in their place, and never dream of intruding in men’s work, her apparent authority had astounded me. “Do you know, Izzat, last night until she … er, kissed me – I was sure she was a man.”
“So Ko Dali must have thought, when the fierce little bitch came yelping into the world,” says he. “Who is Ko Dali? – a Chinese war lord, who had the good taste to take a Khokandian wife, and the ill luck to father the Silk One. He governs in Kashgar, a Chinese city of East Turkestan a thousand miles east of here, below the Issik Kul and the Seven Rivers Country. Would to God he could govern his daughter as well – so should we be spared much shame, for is it not deplorable to have a woman who struts like a khan among us, and leads such enterprises as that which freed you and me last night? Am I, Kutebar, to hold up my head and say: ‘A woman brought me forth of Fort Raim jail’? Aye, laugh, you old cow,” he bellowed at the ancient serving-woman, who had been listening and cackling. “You daughter of shame, is this respect? You take her side, all you wicked sluts, and rejoice to see us men put down. The trouble with the Silk One,” he went on to me, “is that she is always right. A scandal, but there it is. Who can fathom the ways of Allah, who lets such things happen?”
“Well,” says I, “it happened among the Ruskis, you know, Kutebar. They had an empress – why, in my own country, we are ruled by a queen.”
“So I have heard,” says he, “but you are infidels. Besides, does your Sultana, Vik Taria, go unveiled? Does she plan raid and ambush? No, by the black tomb of Timur, I’ll wager she does not.”
“Not that I’ve heard, lately,” I admitted. “But this Silk One – where does she come from? What’s her name, anyway?”
“Who knows? She is Ko Dali’s daughter. And she came, on a day – it would be two years ago, after the Ruskis had built that devil’s house, Fort Raim, and were sending their soldiers east of the Aral, in breach of all treaty and promise, to take our country and enslave our people. We were fighting them, as we are fighting still, Yakub and I and the other chiefs – and then she was among us, with her shameless bare face and bold talk and a dozen Chinese devil-fighters attending on her. It was a troubled time, with the world upside down, and we scratching with our fingernails to hold the Ruskis back by foray and ambuscade; in such disorders, anything is possible, even a woman fighting-chief. And Yakub saw her, and …” He spread his hands. “She is beautiful, as the lily at morning – and clever, it is not to be denied. Doubtless they will marry, some day, if Yakub’s wife will let him – she lives at Julek, on the river. But he is no fool, my Yakub – perhaps he loves this female hawk, perhaps not, but he is ambitious, and he seeks such a kingdom for himself as Kashgar. Who knows, when Ko Dali dies, if Yakub finds the throne of Khokand beyond his reach, he may look to Ko Dali’s daughter to help him wrest Kashgar province from the Chinese. He has spoken of it, and she sits, devouring him with those black Mongolian eyes of hers. It is said,” he went on confidentially, “that she devours other men also, and that it was for her scandalous habits that the governor of Fort Raim, Engmann the Ruski – may wild hogs mate above his grave! – had her head shaved when she was taken last year, after the fall of Ak Mechet. They say –”
“They lie!” screeched the old woman, who had been listening. “In their jealousy they throw dirt on her, the pretty Silk One!”
“Will you raise your head, mother of discord and miner of good food?” says Izzat. “They shaved her scalp, I say, which is why she goes with a turban about her always – for she has kept it shaved, and vowed to do so until she has Engmann’s own head on a plate at her feet. God, the perversity of women! But what can one do about her? She is worth ten heads in the council, she can ride like a Kazak, and is as brave as … as … as I am, by God! If Yakub and Buzurg Khan of Khokand – and I, of course – hold these Russian swine back from our country, it will be because she has the gift of seeing their weaknesses, and showing us how they may be confounded. She is touched by God, I believe – which is why our men admit her, and heed her – and turn their heads aside lest they meet her eye. All save Yakub Beg, who has ever championed her, and fears nothing.”
“And you say she’ll make him a king one day, and be his queen? An extraordinary girl, indeed. Meanwhile she helps you fight the Ruskis.”
“She helps not me, by God! She may help Yakub, who fights as chief of the Tajiks and military governor under Buzurg Khan, who rules in Khokand. They fight for their state, for all the Kirgiz-Kazak people, against an invader. But I, Izzat Kutebar, fight for myself and my own band. I am no statesman, I am no governor or princeling. I need no throne but my saddle. I,” says this old ruffian, with immense pride, “am a bandit, as my fathers were. For upwards of thirty years – since I first ambushed the Bokhara caravan, in fact – I have robbed the Russians. Let me wear the robe of pride over the breastplate of distinction, for I have taken more loot and cut more throats of theirs since they put their thieving noses east of the Blue Lakeb than any –”
“And a chit of a girl had to lift you from Fort Raim prison,” cries the crone, busy among her pots. “Was it an earthquake they had in Samarkand last year – nay, it was Timur turning in his grave for the credit of the men of Syr Daria! Heh-heh!”
“… and it is as a bandit that I fight the Ruskis,” says he, ignoring the interruption. “Shall I not be free to rob, in my own country? Is that not as just a cause as Yakub’s, who fights for his people’s freedom, or Buzurg’s, who fights for his throne and his fine palace and revenue and dancing-women? Or Sahib Khan, who fights to avenge the slaughter of his family at Ak Mechet? Each to his own cause, I say. But you shall see for yourself, when we go to greet Yakub tonight – aye, and you shall see the Silk One, too, and judge what manner of thing she is. God keep me from the marriage-bed of such a demon, and when I find Paradise, may my houris not come from China.”
So that evening, when I had bathed, trimmed my beard, and had the filthy rags of my captivity replaced by shirt, pyjamy trousers, and soft Persian boots, Kutebar took me through the crowded camp, with everyone saluting him as he strutted by, with his beard oiled and his silver-crusted belt and broad gold medal worn over his fine green coat, and the children crowding about him for the sweets which he carried for them. A robber he might be, but I never saw a man better liked – mind you, I liked him myself, and the thought struck me that he and Pencherjevsky and old Scarlett would have got on like a house on fire. I could see them all three hunting in Rutland together, chasing poachers, damning the government, and knocking the necks off bottles at four in the morning.
We climbed up to the white houses of the village, and Izzat led me through a low archway into a little garden where there was a fountain and an open pillared pavilion such as you might find in Aladdin’s pantomime. It was a lovely little place, shaded by trees in the warm evening, with birds murmuring in the branches, the first stars beginning to peep in the dark blue sky overhead, and some flute-like instrument playing softly beyond the wall. It’s strange, but the reality of the East is always far beyond anything the romantic poets and artists can create in imitation.
Yakub Beg was lying on a pile of cushions beneath the pavilion, bare-headed and clad only in his pyjamys, so that his shoulders could be massaged by a stout woman who was working at them with warmed oil. He was tired and hollow-eyed still, but his lean face lit up at the sight of us – I suppose he was a bit of a demon king, with his forked beard and skull-lock, and that rare thing in Central Asia, which they say is a legacy of Alexander’s Greek mercenaries – the bright blue eyes of the European. And he had the happiest smile, I think, that ever I saw on a human face. You only had to see it to understand why the Syr Daria tribes carried on their hopeless struggle against the Russians; fools will always follow the Yakub Begs of this world.
He greeted me eagerly, and presented me to Sahib Khan, his lieutenant, of whom I remember nothing except that he was unusually tall, with moustaches that fell below his chin; I was trying not to look too pointedly at the third member of the group, who was lounging on cushions near Yakub, playing with a tiny Persian kitten on her lap. Now that I saw her in full light, I had a little difficulty in recognizing the excitable, passionate creature I had taken for a boy only the night before; Ko Dali’s daughter this evening was a very self-possessed, consciously feminine young woman indeed – of course, girls are like that, squealing one minute, all assured dignity the next. She was dressed in the tight-wrapped white trousers the Tajik women wear, with curled Persian slippers on her dainty feet, and any illusion of boyishness was dispelled by the roundness of the cloth-of-silver blouse beneath her short embroidered jacket. Round her head she wore a pale pink turban, very tight, framing a striking young face as pale as alabaster – you’ll think me susceptible, but I found her incredibly fetching, with her slanting almond eyes (the only Chinese thing about her), the slightly-protruding milk-white teeth which showed as she teased and laughed at the kitten, the determined little chin, and the fine straight nose that looked as though it had been chiselled out of marble. Not as perfectly beautiful as Montez, perhaps, but with the lithe, graceful gift of movement, that hint of action in the dark, unfathomable eyes which – aye, well, well. As Yakub Beg was saying:
“Izzat tells me you are eager to rejoin your own people in India, Flashman bahadur. Before we discuss that, I wish to make a small token sign of my gratitude to you … well, for my life, no less. There are perhaps half a dozen people in the world who have saved Yakub Beg at one time or another – three of them you see here …”
“More fool us,” growls Kutebar. “A thankless task, friends.”
“… but you are the first feringhi to render me that service. So” – he gave that frank impulsive grin, and ducked his shaven head –” if you are willing, and will do me the great honour to accept …”
I wondered what was coming, and caught my breath when, at a signal from Sahib Khan, a servant brought in a tray on which were four articles – a little bowl containing salt, another in which an ember of wood burned smokily, a small square of earth with a shred of rank grass attaching to it, and a plain, wave-bladed Persian dagger with the snake-and-hare design on its blade. I knew what this meant, and it took me aback, for it’s the ultimate honour a hillman can do to you: Yakub Beg wanted to make me his blood brother. And while you could say I had saved his life – still, it was big medicine, on such short acquaintance.
However, I knew the formula, for I’d been blood brother to young Ilderim of Mogala years before, so I followed him in tasting the salt, and passing my hand over the fire and the earth, and then laying it beside his on the knife while he said, and I repeated:
“By earth, and salt, and fire; by hilt and blade; and in the name of God in whatever tongue men call Him, I am thy brother in blood henceforth. May He curse me and consign me to the pit forever, if I fail thee, my friend.”
Funny thing – I don’t hold with oaths, much, and I’m not by nature a truthful man, but on the three occasions that I’ve sworn blood brotherhood it has seemed a more solemn thing than swearing on the Bible. Arnold was right; I’m damned beyond a doubt.
Yakub Beg had some difficulty, his shoulders were still crippled, and Sahib Khan had to lift his hand to the tray for him. And then he had to carry both his hands round my neck as I stooped for the formal embrace, after which Kutebar and Ko Dali’s daughter and Sahib Khan murmured their applause, and we drank hot black coffee with lemon essence and opium, sweetened with sherbet.
And then the serious business began. I had to recite, at Yakub Beg’s request, my own recent history, and how I had come into the hands of the Russians. So I told them, in brief, much of what I’ve written here, from my capture at Balaclava to my arrival in Fort Raim – leaving out the discreditable bits, of course, but telling them what they wanted to hear most, which was why there was a great Russian army assembling at Fort Raim, for the march to India. They listened intently, the men only occasionally exploding in a “Bismillah!” or “Eyah!”, with a hand-clap by way of emphasis, and the woman silent, fondling the kitten and watching me with those thoughtful, almond eyes. And when I had done, Yakub Beg began to laugh – so loud and hearty that he hurt his torn muscles.
“So much for pride, then! Oh, Khokand, what a little thing you are, and how insignificant your people in the sight of the great world! We had thought, in our folly, that this great army was for us, that the White Tsar was sending his best to trample us flat – and we are just to be licked up in the bygoing, like a mosquito brushed from the hunter’s eye when he sights his quarry. And the Great Bear marches on India, does he?” He shook his head. “Can your people stop him at the Khyber gate?”
“Perhaps,” says I, “if I get word to them in time.”
“In three weeks you might be in Peshawar,” says he, thoughtfully. “Not that it will profit us here. The word is that the Ruskis will begin their advance up Syr Daria within two weeks, which means we have a month of life left to us. And then –” he made a weary little gesture. “Tashkent and Khokand will go; Perovski will drink his tea in the serai by Samarkand bazaar, and his horses will water in the See-ah stream. The Cossacks will ride over the Black Sands and the Red.” He smiled wryly. “You British may save India, but who shall save us? The wise men were right: ‘We are lost when Russia drinks the waters of Jaxartes’. They have been tasting them this four years, but now they will sup them dry.”
There was silence, the men sitting glum, while the Silk One toyed with her cat, and from time to time gave me a slow, disturbing glance.
“Well,” says I, helpfully, “perhaps you can make some sort of … accommodation with them. Terms, don’t you know.”
“Terms?” says Yakub. “Have you made terms with a wolf lately, Englishman? Shall I tell you the kind of terms they make? When this scum Perovski brought his soldiers and big guns to my city of Ak Mechet two years ago, invading our soil for no better reason than that he wished to steal it, what did he tell Mahomed Wali, who ruled in my absence?” His voice was still steady, but his eyes were shining. “He said: ‘Russia comes not for a day, not for a year, but forever’. Those were his terms. And when Wali’s people fought for the town, even the women and children throwing their kissiaksc against the guns, and held until there was no food left, the swords were all broken, and the little powder gone, and the walls blown in, and only the citadel remained, Wali said: ‘It is enough. We will surrender’. And Perovski tore up the offer of surrender and said: ‘We will take the citadel with our bayonets’. And they did. Two hundred of our folk they mowed down with grape, even the old and young. That is the honour of a Russian soldier; that is the peace of the White Tsar.”41
“My wife and children died in Ak Mechet, beneath the White Mosque,” says Sahib Khan. “They did not even know who the Russians were. My little son clapped his hands before the battle, to see so many pretty uniforms, and the guns all in a row.”
They were silent again, and I sat uncomfortably, until Yakub Beg says:
“So you see, there will be no terms. Those of us whom they do not kill, they will enslave: they have said as much. They will sweep us clean, from Persia to Balkash and the Roof of the World. How can we prevent them? I took seven thousand men against Ak Mechet two winters since, and saw them routed; I went again with twice as many, and saw my thousands slain. The Russians lost eighteen killed. Oh, if it were sabre to sabre, horse to horse, man to man, I would not shirk the odds – but against their artillery, their rifles, what can our riders do?”
“Fight,” growls Kutebar. “So it is the last fight, let it be one they will remember. A month, you say? In that time we can run the horse-tail banner to Kashgar and back; we can raise every Muslim fighting-man from Turgai to the Killer-of-Hindus,d from Khorassan to the Tarm Desert.” His voice rose steadily from a growl to a shout. “When the Chinese slew the Kalmucks in the old time, what was the answer given to the faint hearts: ‘Turn east, west, north, south, there you shall find the Kirgiz’. Why should we lie down to a handful of strangers? They have arms, they have horses – so have we. If they come in their thousands, these infidels, have we not the Great Horde of the far steppes, the people of the Blue Wolf,42 to join our jihad?e We may not win, but by God, we can make them understand that the ghosts of Timur and Chinghiz Khan still ride these plains; we can mark every yard of the Syr Daria with a Russian corpse; we can make them buy this country at a price that will cause the Tsar to count his change in the Kremlin palace!”
Sahib Khan chimed in again: “So runs the proverb: ‘While the gun-barrel lies in its stock, and the blade is unbroken’. It will be all that is left to us, Yakub.”
Yakub Beg sighed, and then smiled at me. He was one of your spirited rascals who can never be glum for more than a moment. “It may be. If they overrun us, I shall not live to see it; I’ll make young bones somewhere up by Ak Mechet. You understand, Flashman bahadur, we may buy you a little time here, in Syr Daria – no more. Your red soldiers may avenge us, but only God can help us.”
“And He has a habit of choosing the winning side, which will not be ours,” says Kutebar. “Well, I’m overdue for Paradise; may I find it by a short cut and a bloody one.”
Ko Dali’s daughter spoke for the first time, and I was surprised how high and yet husky her voice was – the kind that makes you think of French satin sofas, with the blinds down and purple wall-paper. She was lying prone now, tickling the kitten’s belly and murmuring to it.
“Do you hear them, little tiger, these great strong men? How they enjoy their despair! They reckon the odds, and find them heavy, and since fighting is so much easier than thinking they put the scowl of resignation on the face of stupidity, and swear most horribly.” Her voice whined in grotesque mimicry. “‘By the bowels of Rustum, we shall give them a battle to remember – hand me my scimitar, Gamal, it is in the woodshed. Aye, we shall make such-and-such a slaughter, and if we are all blown to the ends of Eblis – may God protect the valorous! – we shall at least be blown like men. Eyewallah, brothers, it is God’s will; we shall have done our best.’ This is how the wise warriors talk, furry little sister – which is why we women weep and children go hungry. But never fear – when the Russians have killed them all, I shall find myself a great, strong Cossack, and you shall have a lusty Russian torn, and we shall live on oranges and honey and cream forever.”
Yakub Beg just laughed, and silenced Kutebar’s angry growl. “She never said a word that was not worth listening to. Well, Silk One, what must we do to be saved?”
Ko Dali’s daughter rolled the kitten over. “Fight them now, before they have moved, while they have their backs to the sea. Take all your horsemen, suddenly, and scatter them on the beach.”
“Oh, cage the wind, girl!” cries Kutebar. “They have thirty thousand muskets, one-third of them Cossack cavalry. Where can we raise half that number?”
“Send to Buzurg Khan to help you. At need, ask aid from Bokhara.”
“Bokhara is lukewarm,” says Yakub Beg. “They are the last to whom we can turn for help.”
The girl shrugged. “When the Jew grows poor, he looks to his old accounts. Well, then, you must do it alone.”
“How, woman? I have not the gift of human multiplication; they outnumber us.”
“But their ammunition has not yet come – this much we know from your spies at Fort Raim. So the odds are none so great – three to one at most. With such valiant sabres as Kutebar here, the thing should be easy.”
“Devil take your impudence!” cries Kutebar. “I could not assemble ten thousand swords within a week, and by then their powder and cartridge ships will have arrived.”
“Then you should have assembled them before this,” was the tart rejoinder.
“Heaven lighten your understanding, you perverse Chinese bitch! How could I, when I was rotting in jail?”
“That was clever,” says she, “that was sound preparation, indeed. Hey, puss-puss-puss, are they not shrewd, these big strong fellows?”
“If there were a hope of a surprise attack on their camp succeeding, I should have ordered it,” says Yakub Beg. “To stop them here, before their advance has begun …” He looked at me. “That would solve your need as well as ours, Englishman. But I see no way. Their powder ships will arrive in a week, and three days, perhaps four thereafter, they will be moving up Syr Daria. If something is to be done, it must be done soon.”
“Ask her, then,” says Kutebar sarcastically. “Is she not waiting to be asked? To her, it will be easy.”
“If it were easy, even you would have thought of it by now,” says the girl. “Let me think of it instead.” She rose, picking up her cat, stroking it and smiling as she nuzzled it. “Shall we think, little cruelty? And when we have thought, we shall tell them, and they will slap their knees and cry: ‘Mashallah, but how simple! It leaps to the eye! A child could have conceived it.’ And they will smile on us, and perhaps throw us a little jumagi,f or a sweetmeat, for which we shall be humbly thankful. Come, butcher of little mice.”
And without so much as a glance at us, she sauntered off, with those tight white pants stirring provocatively, and Izzat cursing under his breath.
“Ko Dali should have whipped the demons out of that baggage before she grew teeth! But then, what do the Chinese know of education? If she were mine, by death, would I not discipline her?”
“You would not dare, father of wind and grey whiskers,” says Yakub genially. “So let her think – and if nothing comes of it, you may have the laugh of her.”
“A bitter laugh it will be, then,” says Kutebar. “By Shaitan, it will be the last laugh we have.”
Now their discussion had been all very well, no doubt, but it was of no great interest to me whether they got themselves cut up by the Russians now or a month hence. The main thing was to get Flashy on his way to India, and I made bold to raise the subject again. But Yakub Beg disappointed me.
“You shall go, surely, but a few days will make no difference. By then we shall have made a resolve here, and it were best your chiefs in India knew what it was. So they may be the better prepared. In the meantime, Flashman bahadur, blood brother, take your ease among us.”
I couldn’t object to that, and for three days I loafed about, wandering through the camp, observing the great coming and going of couriers, and the arrival each day of fresh bands of horsemen. They were coming in from all parts of the Red Sands, and beyond, from as far as the Black Sands below Khiva, and Zarafshan and the Bokhara border – Uzbeks with their flat yellow faces and scalp-locks, lean, swarthy Tajiks and slit-eyed Mongols, terrible-looking folk with their long swords and bandy legs – until there must have been close on five thousand riders in that valley alone. But when you thought of these wild hordes pitted against artillery and disciplined riflemen, you saw how hopeless the business was; it would take more than the Silk One to think them out of this.
An extraordinary young woman that – weeping passionately over Yakub’s wounds on the night of the rescue, but in council with the men as composed (and bossy) as a Mayfair mama. A walking temptation, too, to a warm-blooded chap like me, so I kept well clear of her in those three days. She might be just the ticket for a wet weekend, but she was also Yakub Beg’s intended – and that apart, I’m bound to confess that there was something about the cut of her shapely little jib that made me just a mite uneasy. I’m wary of strong, clever women, however beddable they may be, and Ko Dali’s daughter was strong and too clever for comfort. As I was to find out to my cost – God, when I think what that Chinese-minded mort got me into!
I spent my time, as I say, loafing, and getting more impatient and edgy by the hour. I wanted to get away for India, and every day that passed brought nearer the moment when those Russian brutes (with Ignatieff well to the fore, no doubt) came pouring up the Syr Daria valley from Fort Raim, guns, Cossacks, foot and all, and spread like a tide over the Khokand country. I wanted to be well away before that happened, bearing the glad tidings to India and reaping the credit; Yakub Beg and his hairy fellows could fight the Russians how they liked, for although I’ll own I’d conceived an affection for him and his Tajiks and Uzbeks, and wished them no harm, it was all one to me how they fared, so long as I was safely out of it. But Yakub still seemed uncertain how to prepare for the fight that was coming; he’d tried his overlord, Buzurg Khan, for help, and got little out of him, and egged on by Kutebar, he was coming round to the Silk One’s notion of one mad slash at the enemy before they had got under way from Fort Raim with their magazines full. It was a doomed enterprise, of course, but he figured he’d do them more damage on the beach than when they were upcountry on the march; good luck, thinks I, just give me a horse and an escort first, and I’ll bless your enterprise as I wave farewell.
And. it would have fallen out like that, too, but for the infernal ingenuity of that kitten-tickling besom – Kutebar was right: Ko Dali should have whaled the wickedness out of her years ago.
It was the fourth day, and I was lounging in the camp’s little market, improving my Persian by learning the ninety-nine names of God (only the Bactrian camels know the hundredth, which is why they look so deuced superior) from an Astrabad caravan-guard-turned-murderer, when Kutebar came in a great bustle to take me to Yakub Beg at once. I went, thinking no evil, and found him in the pavilion with Sahib Khan and one or two others, squatting round their coffee table. Ko Dali’s daughter was lounging apart, listening and saying nothing, feeding her kitten with sweet jelly. Yakub, whose limbs had mended to the point where he could move with only a little stiffness, was wound up like a fiddle-string with excitement; he was smiling gleefully as he touched my hand in greeting and motioned me to sit.
“News, Flashman bahadur! The Ruski powder boats come tomorrow. They have loaded at Tokmak, the Obrucheff steamer and the Mikhail, and by evening they will be at anchor off Syr Daria’s mouth, with every grain of powder, every cartridge, every pack for the artillery in their holds! The next day their cargoes will be dispersed through the Ruski host, who at the moment have a bare twenty rounds to each musket.” He rubbed his hands joyfully. “You see what it means, angliski? God has put them in our hands – may his name be ever blessed!”
I didn’t see what he was driving at, until Sahib Khan enlightened me.
“If those two powder boats can be destroyed,” says he, “there will be no Ruski army on the Syr Daria this year. They will be a bear without claws.”
“And there will be no advance on India this year, either!” cries Yakub. “What do you say to that, Flashman!”
It was big news, certainly, and their logic was flawless – so far as it went: without their main munitions, the Russians couldn’t march. From my detached point of view, there was only one small question to ask.
“Can you do it?”
He looked at me, grinning, and something in that happy bandit face started the alarms rumbling in my lower innards.
“That you shall tell us,” says he. “Indeed, God has sent you here. Listen, now. What I have told you is sure information; every slave who labours on that beach at Fort Raim, unloading and piling baggage for those Ruski filth, is a man or a woman of our people – so that not a word is spoken in that camp, not a deed done, not a sentry relieves himself, but we know of it. We know to the last peck of rice, to the last horse-shoe, what supplies already lie on that beach, and we know, too, that when the powder-ships anchor off Fort Raim, they will be ringed about with guard-boats, so that not even a fish can swim through. So we cannot hope to mine or burn them by storm or surprise.”
Well, that dished him, it seemed to me, but on he went, happily disposing of another possibility.
“Nor could we hope to drag the lightest of the few poor cannon we have to some place within shot of the ships. What then remains?” He smiled triumphantly and produced from his breast a roll of papers, written in Russian; it looked like a list.
“Did I not say we were well served for spies? This is a manifest of stores and equipment already landed, and lying beneath the awnings and in the sheds. My careful Silk One” – he bowed in her direction – “has had them interpreted, and has found an item of vast interest. It says – now listen, and bless the name of your own people, from whom this gift comes – it says: ‘Twenty stands of British rocket artillery; two hundred boxes of cases.’”
He stopped, staring eagerly at me, and I was aware that they were all waiting expectantly.
“Congreves?” says I. “Well, what –”
“What is the range of such rockets?” asked Yakub Beg.
“Why – about two miles,” I knew a bit about Congreves from my time at Woolwich. “Not accurate at that distance, of course; if you want to make good practice, then half a mile, three-quarters, but –”
“The ships will not be above half a mile from the shore,” says he, softly. “And these rockets, from what I have heard, are fiercely combustible – like Greek fire! If one of them were to strike the upperworks of the steamer, or the wooden hull of the Mikhail –”
“We would have the finest explosion this side of Shaitan’s lowest pit!” exulted Kutebar, thumping the table.
“And then – a Russian army without powder, with cannon that would be so much useless lumber, with soldiers armed for nothing better than a day’s hunting!” cries Yakub. “They will be an army bahla dar!”g
For the life of me, I couldn’t understand all this excitement.
“Forgive me,” says I. “But the Ruskis have these rockets – you don’t. And if you’re thinking of stealing some of ’em, I’m sorry, Yakub, but you’re eating green corn. D’ye know how much a single Congreve rocket-head weighs, without its stick? Thirty-two pounds. And the stick is fifteen feet long – and before you can fire one you have to have the firing-frame, which is solid steel weighing God knows what, with iron half-pipes. Oh, I daresay friend Kutebar here has some pretty thieves in his fighting-tail, but they couldn’t hope to lug this kind of gear out from under the Russians’ noses – not unseen. Dammit, you’d need a mule-train. And if, by some miracle, you did get hold of a frame and rockets, where would you find a firing-point close enough? For that matter, at two miles – maximum range, trained at fifty-five degrees – why, you could blaze away all night and never score a hit!”
I suddenly stopped talking. I’d been expecting to see their faces fall, but Yakub was grinning broader by the second, Kutebar was nodding grimly, even Sahib Khan was smiling.
“What’s the joke, then?” says I. “You can’t do it, you see.”
“We do not need to do it,” says Yakub, looking like a happy crocodile. “Tell me: these things are like great sky-rockets, are they not? How long would it take unskilled men – handless creatures like the ancient Kutebar, for example – to prepare and fire one?”
“To erect the frame? – oh, two minutes, for artillerymen. Ten times as long, probably, for your lot. Adjust the aim, light the fuse, and off she goes – but dammit, what’s the use of this to you?”
“Yallah!” cries he, clapping his hands delightedly. “I should call you saped-pa – white foot, the bringer of good luck and good news, for what you have just told us is the sweetest tidings I have heard this summer.” He reached over and slapped my knee. “Have no fear – we do not intend to steal a rocket, although it was my first thought. But, as you have pointed out, it would be impossible; this much we had realised. But my Silk One, whose mind is like the puzzles of her father’s people, intricately simple, has found a way. Tell him, Kutebar.”
“We cannot beat the Ruskis, even if we launch our whole power, five or six thousand riders, upon their beach camp and Fort Raim,” says the old bandit. “They must drive us back with slaughter in the end. But” – he wagged a finger like an eagle’s talon under my nose – “we can storm their camp by night, in one place, where these feringhi ra-kets are lying – and that is hard by the pier, in a little go-down.h This our people have already told us. It will be a strange thing if, descending out of the night past Fort Raim like a thunderbolt, we cannot hold fifty yards of beach for an hour, facing both ways. And in our midst, we shall set up this ra-ket device, and while our riders hold the enemy at bay, our gunners can launch this fire of Eblis against the Ruski powder ships. They will be in fair range, not half a mile – and in such weather, with timbers as dry as sand, will not one ra-ket striking home be sufficient to burn them to Jehannum?”
“Why – yes, I suppose so – those Congreves burn like hell. But, man,” I protested, “you’ll never get off that beach alive – any of you! They’ll ring your storming party in, and cut it down by inches – there are thirty thousand of them, remember? Even if you do succeed in blowing their ship to kingdom come, you’ll lose – I don’t know, a thousand, two thousand swords doing it.”
“We shall have saved our country, too,” says Yakub Beg, quietly. “And your India, Flashman bahadur. Like enough many will die on that beach – but better to save Khokand for a year, or perhaps even for a generation, and die like men, than see our country trampled by these beasts before the autumn comes.” He paused. “We have counted the odds and the cost, and I ask your advice, as a soldier of experience, not on the matter of holding the beach and fighting off the Ruskis, for that is an affair we know better than you, but only as to these rockets. From what you have told us, I see that it can be done. Silk One” – he turned towards her, smiling and touching his brow – “I salute your woman’s wit – again.”
I looked at her with my skin crawling. She’d schemed up this desperate, doomed nonsense, in which thousands of men were going to be cut up, and there she sat, dusting her kitten’s whiskers. Mind you, I didn’t doubt, when I thought of the thing, that they could bring it off, given decent luck. Five thousand sabres, with the likes of Kutebar roaring about in the dark, could create havoc in that Russian camp, and probably secure a beachhead just long enough for them to turn the Russians’ own rockets on the powder ships. And I knew any fool could lay and fire a Congreve. But afterwards? I thought of the shambles of that beach in the dark – and those rows of gallows outside Fort Raim.
And yet, there they sat, those madmen, looking as pleased as if they were going to a birthday party, Yakub Beg calling for coffee and sherbet, Kutebar’s evil old face wreathed in happy smiles. Well, it was no concern of mine, if they wanted to throw their lives away – and if they did succeed in crippling the Russian invasion before it had even started, so much the better. It would be glad news to bring into Peshawar – by jove, I might even hint that I’d engineered the whole thing: if I didn’t, the Press probably would. “British Officer’s Extraordinary Adventure. Russian Plot Foiled by His Ingenuity. Tribal Life in the Khokand. Colonel Flashman’s Remarkable Narrative.” Yes, a few helpings of that would go down well … Elspeth would be in raptures … I’d be the lion of the day yet again …
And then Yakub Beg’s voice broke in on my daydreams.
“Who shall say there is such a thing as chance?” he was exulting. “All is as God directs. He sends the Ruski powder ships. He sends the means of their destruction. And” – he reached out to pass me my coffee cup – “best of all, he sends you, blood brother, without whom all would be naught.”
You may think that until now I’d been slow on the uptake – that I should have seen the danger signal as soon as this lunatic mentioned Congreve rockets. But I’d been so taken aback by the scheme, and had it so fixed in my mind that I had no part in it, anyway, that the fearful implication behind his last words came like a douche of cold water. I nearly dropped my coffee cup.
“Naught?” I echoed. “What d’you mean?”
“Who among us would have the skill or knowledge to make use of these rockets of yours?” says he. “I said you were sent by God. A British officer, who knows how these things are employed, who can ensure success where our bungling fingers would …”
“You mean you expect me to fire these bloody things for you?” I was so appalled that I said it in English, and he looked at me in bewilderment. Stammering, and no doubt going red in the face, I blundered back into Persian.
“Look, Yakub Beg – I’m sorry, but it cannot be. You know I must go to India, to carry the news of this Russian invasion … this army … I can’t risk such news going astray … it’s my bounden duty, you see …”
“But there will be no invasion,” says he, contentedly. “We will see to that.”
“But if we – you – I mean, if it doesn’t work?” I cried. “I can’t take the risk! I mean – it’s not that I don’t wish to help you – I would if I could, of course. But if I were killed, and the Russians marched in spite of your idiotic – I mean, your daring scheme, they would catch my people unprepared!”
“Rest assured,” says he, “the news will go to Peshawar. I pledge my honour, just as I pledge my people to fight these Ruskis tooth and nail from here to the Killer-of-Hindus. But we will stop them here –” and he struck the ground beside him. “I know it! And your soldiers in India will be prepared, for a blow that never comes. For we will not fail. The Silk One’s plan is sound. Is she not the najud?”
And the grinning ape bowed again in her direction, pleased as Punch.
By George, this was desperate. I didn’t know what to say. He was bent on dragging me into certain destruction, and I had to weasel out somehow – but at the same time I daren’t let them see the truth, which was that the whole mad scheme terrified me out of my wits. That might well be fatal – you’ve no idea what those folk are like, and if Yakub Beg thought I was letting him down … well, one thing I could be sure of: there’d be no excursion train ordered up to take me to the coral strand in a hurry.
“Yakub, my friend,” says I. “Think but a moment. I would ask nothing better than to ride with you and Kutebar on this affair. I have my own score to settle with these Ruski pigs, believe me. And if I could add one asper in the scale of success, I would be with you heart and soul. But I am no artilleryman. I know something of these rockets, but nothing to the purpose. Any fool can aim them, and fire them – Kutebar can do it as easily as he breaks wind –” that got them laughing, as I intended it should. “And I have my duty, which is to my country. I, and I alone, must take that news – who else would be believed? Don’t you see – you may do this thing without me?”
“Not as surely,” says he. “How could we? An artilleryman you may not be, but you are a soldier, with those little skills that mean the difference between success and failure. You know this – and think, blood brother, whether we stand or fall, when those ships flame like the rising sun and sink into destruction, we will have shattered the threat to your folk and mine! We will have lit a fire that will singe the Kremlin wall! By God, what a dawn that will be!”
Just the glitter in those eyes, the joyful madness on that hawk face, sent my spirits into my boots. Normally I’ll talk myself hoarse in my skin’s interest, and grovel all the way to Caesar’s throne, but in that moment I knew it would be no use. You see, even with the saliva pumping into my mouth, I knew that his reasoning was right – ask Raglan or the Duke or Napoleon: they’d have weighed it and said that I should stay. And it’s no use trying to defeat an Oriental’s logic – let alone one who has the fire in his guts. I tried a little more, as far as I dared, and then let it lie, while the coffee went round again, and Kutebar speculated gloatingly on how many Russians he would kill, and Yakub sat with his hand on my shoulder, praising God and giving thanks for the opportunity to confound the politics of the Tsar. And the cause of it all, that slant-eyed witch in the tight trousers, said nothing at all, but sauntered across to a bird cage hanging on the pavilion trellis, murmuring and pursing her lips to the nightingale to coax it to sing.
I sat pretty quiet myself, feverishly trying to plot a way out of this, and getting nowhere. The others got down to the details of the business, and I had to take part and try to look happy about it. I must say, looking back, they had it well schemed out: they would take five thousand riders, under Yakub and Kutebar and Sahib Khan, each commanding a division, and just go hell for leather past Fort Raim at four in the morning, driving down to the beach and cutting off the pier. Sahib Khan’s lot would secure the northern flank beyond the pier, facing the Syr Daria mouth; Yakub would take the south side, fronting the main beach, and their forces would join up at the landward end of the pier, presenting a ring of fire and steel against the Russian counter-attacks. Kutebar’s detachment would be inside the ring, in reserve, and shielding the firing party – here they looked at me with reverent eyes, and I managed an offhand grin that any dentist would have recognized first go.
The rockets and stands were in a go-down, Kutebar had said; they would have their spies – the impressed labourers who slept on the beach – on hand to guide us to them. And then, while all hell was breaking loose around us, the intrepid Flashy and his assistants would set the infernal things up and blaze away at the powder ships. And when the great Guy Fawkes explosion occurred – supposing that it did – we would take to the sea; it was half a mile across Syr Daria mouth, and Katti Torah – a horrible little person with yellow teeth and a squint, who was one of the council that night – would be waiting on the other side to cover all who could escape that way. Well, it was at least a glimmer of hope; I’d swum the Mississippi in my time.i
But the more I considered the thing, the more appalling it looked. Indeed, my mind was already running on a different tack entirely: if I could get a horse tonight, and ride for it – anywhere, but south towards Persia for preference, where they wouldn’t expect me to go – could I make a clean getaway? Anywhere else, I’d have chanced it, but south was pure desert – for that matter, it was all bloody wilderness, on every side – and if I didn’t lose myself and perish horribly, I’d be run down for certain. And blood brother or not, I couldn’t see Yakub Beg condoning desertion. Even the beach and the rockets offered a little hope – it couldn’t be worse than Balaclava, surely? (God, what a fearful thought that was.) So I looked as steady as I could, while those grinning wolves chuckled over their plan, and when the Silk One broke silence to announce that she personally would go with Kutebar’s detachment, and assist with the rockets, I even managed to join in the hum of approval, and say how jolly it would be to have her along. One thing tribulation teaches you, and that is to wear the mask when there’s nothing else for it. She gave me a thoughtful glance, and then went back to her nightingale.
As you can guess, I slept fitfully that night. Here I was again, with my essentials trapped in the mangle, and devil a thing to do but grin and bear it – but it was such madness, I kept swearing to myself as I thumped the pillow. Once on a day I’d have wept, or even prayed, but not now; I’d never had any good from either in the past. I could only sweat and hope – I’d come through so much, so often, perhaps my luck would hold again. One thing I was sure of – the first man into the water tomorrow night was going to be H. Flashman, and no bones about it.
I loafed about my tent, worrying, next morning, while the camp hummed around me – you never saw so many happy faces at the prospect of impending dissolution. How many of them would be alive next day? Not that I cared – I’d have seen ’em all dead and damned if only I could come off safe. My guts were beginning to churn in earnest as the hours went by, and finally I was in such a sweat I couldn’t stand it any longer. I decided to go up to the pavilion and have a last shot at talking some sense into Yakub Beg – I didn’t know what I could say, but if the worst came to the worst I might even chance a flat refusal to have anything to do with his mad venture, and see what he would do about it. In this desperate frame of mind I made my way up through the village, which was quiet with everyone being down in the camp below, went through the little archway and past the screen to the garden – and there was Ko Dali’s daughter, alone, sitting by the fountain, trailing her fingers in the water, with that damned kitten watching the ripples.
In spite of my fearful preoccupations – which were entirely her fault, in the first place – I felt the old Adam stir at the sight of her. She was wearing a close-fitting white robe with a gold-embroidered border, and her shapely little bare feet peeping out beneath it; round her head was the inevitable turban, also of white. She looked like Sheherazade in the caliph’s garden, and didn’t she know it, just?
“Yakub is not here,” says she, before I’d even had time to state my business. “He has ridden out with the others to talk with Buzurg Khan; perhaps by evening he will have returned.” She stroked the kitten. “Will you wait?”
It was an invitation if ever I heard one – and I’m used to them. But it was unexpected, and as I’ve said, I was something wary of this young woman. So I hesitated, while she watched me, smiling with her lips closed, and I was just on the point of making my apology and withdrawing, when she leaned down to the kitten and said:
“Why do you suppose such a tall fellow is so afraid, little sister? Can you tell? No? He would be wise not to let Yakub Beg know it – for it would be a great shame to the Atalik Ghazi to find fear in his blood brother.”
I don’t know when I’ve been taken more aback. I stood astonished as she went on, with her face close to the kitten’s:
“We knew it the first night, at Fort Raim – you remember I told you? We felt it even in his mouth. And we both saw it, last night, when Yakub Beg pressed him into our venture – the others did not, for he dissembles well, this angliski. But we knew, you and I, little terror of the larder. We saw the fear in his eyes when he tried to persuade them. We see it now.” She picked the kitten up and nuzzled it against her cheek. “What are we to make of him, then?”
“Well, I’m damned!” I was beginning, and took a stride forward, red in the face, and stopped.
“Now he is angry, as well as frightened,” says she, pretending to whisper in the brute’s ear. “Is that not fine? We have stirred him to rage, which is one of the seven forbidden sins he feels against us. Yes, pretty tiger, he feels another one as well. Which one? Come, little foolish, that is easy – no, not envy, why should he envy us? Ah, you have guessed it, you wanton of the night walls, you trifler in jimai najaiz.j Is it not scandalous? But be at ease – we are safe from him. For does he not fear?”
Kutebar was undoubtedly right – this one should have had the mischief tanned out of her when she was knee-high. I stood there, wattling, no doubt, and trying to think of a cutting retort – but interrupting a conversation between a woman and a cat ain’t as easy as it might seem. One tends to look a fool.
“You think it a pity, scourge of the milk bowls? Well … there it is. If lechery cannot cast out fear, what then? What does he fear, you ask? Oh, so many things – death, as all men do. That is no matter, so that they do not cross the line from ‘will’ to ‘will not’. But he fears also Yakub Beg, which is wisdom – although Yakub Beg is far away, and we are quite alone here. So … still he wavers, although desire struggles with fear in him. Which will triumph, do you suppose? Is it not exciting, little trollop of the willow-trees? Are your male cats so timorous? Do they fear even to sit beside you?”
I wasn’t standing for that, anyway – besides, I was becoming decidedly interested. I came round the fountain and sat down on the grass. And, damme, the kitten popped its face round her head and miaowed at me.
“There, brave little sister!” She cuddled it, turned to look at me out of those slanting black eyes, and returned to her conversation. “Would you protect your mistress, then? Eyah, it is not necessary – for what will he do? He will gnaw his lip, while his mouth grows dry with fear and desire – he will think. Oh, such thoughts – there is no protection against them. Do you not feel them touching us, embracing us, enfolding us, burning us with their passion? Alas, it is only an illusion – and like to remain one, so great is his fear.”
I’ve seduced – and been seduced – in some odd ways, but never before with a kitten pressed into service as pimp. She was right, of course – I was scared, not only of Yakub Beg, but of her: she knew too much, this one, for any man’s comfort, and if I knew anything at all it wasn’t just for love of my brawny frame and bonny black whiskers that she was taunting me into attempting her. There was something else – but with that slim white shape tantalizing me within arm’s length, and that murmuring voice, and the drift of her perfume, subtle and sweet as a garden flower, I didn’t care. I reached out – and hesitated, sweating lustfully. My God, I wanted her, but –
“And now he pants, and trembles, and fears to touch, my furry sweet. Like the little boys at the confectioner’s stall, or a beardless youth biting his nails outside a brothel, and he such a fine, strong – nothing of a man. He –”
“Damn you!” roars I, “and damn your Yakub Beg! Come here!”
And I grabbed her round the body, one hand on her breast, the other on her belly, and pulled her roughly to me. She came without resistance, her head back, and those almond eyes looking up at me, her lips parted; I was shaking as I brought my mouth down on them, and pulled the robe from her shoulders, gripping her sharp-pointed breasts in my hands. She lay quivering against me for a moment, and then pulled free, pushing the kitten gently aside with her foot.
“Go find a mouse, little idleness. Will you occupy your mistress all day with silly chatter?”
And then she turned towards me, pushing me back and down with her hands on my chest, and sliding astride of me while her tongue flickered out against my lips and then my eyelids and cheeks and into my ear. I grappled her, yammering lustfully, as she shrugged off the robe and began working nimbly at my girdle – and no sooner had we set to partners and commenced heaving passionately away, than up comes that damned kitten beside my head, and Ko Dali’s daughter had to pause and lift her face to blow at it.
“Does no one pay heed to you, then? Fie, selfish little inquisitive! Can your mistress not have a moment to pleasure herself with an angliski – a thing she has never done before?” And they purred at each other while I was going mad – I’ve never been more mortified in my life.
“I shall tell you all about it later,” said she, which is an astonishing thing to hear, when you’re at grips.
“Never mind telling the blasted cat!” I roared, straining at her. “Dammit, if you’re going to tell anyone, tell me!”
“Ah,” says she, sitting back. “You are like the Chinese – you wish to talk as well? Then here is a topic of conversation.” And she reached up and suddenly plucked off her turban, and there she was, shaved like a Buddhist monk, staring mischievously down at me.
“Good God!” I croaked. “You’re bald!”
“Did you not know? It is my vow. Does it make me –” she stirred her rump deliciously “– less desirable?”
“My God, no!” I cried, and fell to again with a will, but every time I became properly engrossed, she would stop to chide the cat, which kept loafing around miaowing, until I was near crazy, with that naked alabaster beauty squirming athwart my hawse, as the sailors say, and nothing to be done satisfactorily until she had left off talking and come back to work. And once she nearly unmanned me completely by stopping short, glancing up, and crying “Yakub!” and I let out a frantic yelp and near as anything heaved her into the fountain as I strained my head round to look at the archway and see – nothing. But before I could remonstrate, or swipe her head off, she was writhing and plunging away again, moaning with her eyes half-closed, and this time, for a wonder, the thing went on uninterrupted until we were lying gasping and exhausted, in each other’s arms – and the kitten was there again, purring censoriously in my ear.
By then I was too blissfully sated to care. A teasing, wicked-minded sprite she might be, but Ko Dali’s daughter had nothing to learn about killing a chap with kindness, and one of my fondest recollections is of lying there ruined in the warmth of that little garden, with the leaves rustling overhead, watching her slip into her robe and turban again, sleek and satisfied as the kitten which she picked up and cuddled against her cheek. (If only the English dowagers of my acquaintance could know what I’m remembering when I see them pick up their gross fat tabbies in the drawing-room. “Ah, General Flashman has gone to sleep again, poor dear old thing. How contented he looks. Ssh-hh.”)
Presently she got up and went off, returning with a little tray on which there were cups of sherbet, and two big bowls of kefir – just the thing after a hot encounter, when you’re feeling well and contented, and wondering vaguely whether you ought not to slide out before the man of the house comes back, and deciding the devil with him. It was good kefir, too – strangely sweet, with a musky flavour that I couldn’t place, and as I spooned it down gratefully she sat watching me, with those mysterious dark eyes, and murmuring to her kitten as it played with her fingers.
“Did cruel mistress neglect her darling?” says she. “Ah, do not scold – do I reproach you when you come home with your ears scratched and your fur bedraggled? Do I pester you with impertinent questions? Mmm? Oh, shameless – it is not proper to ask, in his presence. Besides, some little evil bird might hear, and talk … and what then? What of me – and Yakub Beg – and fine dreams of a throne in Kashgar some day? Ah, indeed. And what of our fine angliski? It would go hard with all of us, if certain things were known, but hardest of all with him …”
“Capital kefir, this,” says I, cleaning round the bowl. “Any more?”
She gave me another helping, and went on whispering to the cat – taking care that I could hear.
“Why did we permit him to make love, then? Oh, such a question! Because of his fine shape and handsome head, you think, and the promise of a great baz-bazk oh, whiskered little harlot, have you no blushes? What – because he was fearful, and we women know that nothing so drives out a man’s fear as passion and delight with a beautiful darling? That is an old wisdom, true – is it the poet Firdausi who says ‘The making of life in the shadow of death is the blissful oblivion …’?”
“Stuff and nonsense, beautiful darling,” says I, wolfing away. “The poet Flashman says that a good gallop needs no philosophic excuse. You’re a lusty little baggage, young Silk One, and that’s all about it. Here, leave that animal a moment, and give us a kiss.”
“You enjoy your kefir?” says she.
“The blazes with the kefir,” says I, putting down my spoon. “Here a minute, and I’ll show you.”
She nuzzled the kitten, watching me thoughtfully. “And if Yakub should return?”
“Blazes with him, too. Come here, can’t you?”
But she slipped quickly out of harm’s way, and stood slim and white and graceful, cradling the kitten and smiling at it.
“You were right, curious tiny leopard – you and Firdausi both. He is much braver now – and he is so very strong, with his great powerful arms and thighs, like the black djinn in the story of es-Sinbad of the sea – he is no longer safe with delicate ladies such as we. He might harm us.” And with that mocking smile she went quickly round the fountain, before I could stop her. “Tell me, angliski,” she said, looking back, but not stopping. “You who speak Persian and know so much of our country – have you ever heard of the Old Man of the Mountains?”
“No, by jove, I don’t think I have,” says I. “Come back and tell me about him.”
“After tonight – when the work has been done,” says she, teasing. “Perhaps then I shall tell you.”
“But I want to know now.”
“Be content,” says she. “You are a different man from the fearful fellow who came here seeking Yakub an hour ago. Remember the Persian saying: ‘Lick up the honey, stranger, and ask no questions’.”
And then she was gone, leaving me grinning foolishly after her, and cursing her perversity in a good-humoured way. But, do you know, she was right? I couldn’t account for it, but for some reason I felt full of buck and appetite and great good humour, and I couldn’t even remember feeling doubts or fears or anything much – of course, I knew there was nothing like a good lively female for putting a chap in trim, as her man Firdausi had apparently pointed out. Clever lads, these Persian poets. But I couldn’t recall ever feeling so much the better for it – a new man, in fact, as she’d said.
a Ruffians.
b The Aral Sea.
c Hard dung balls used as missiles.
d Hindu Kush range.
e Holy war.
f Pocket-money.
g Literally, “wearing hunting gloves in one’s belt”, i.e. unarmed.
h Warehouse.
i See Flash for Freedom!
j Illicit love.
k An indelicate synonym for virility.