I remember young Fred Roberts (who’s a Field-Marshal now, which shows you what pull these Addiscombe wallahs have got) once saying that everyone hated India for a month and then loved it forever. I wouldn’t altogether agree, but I’ll allow that it had its attractions in the old days; you lived like a lord without having to work, waited on hand and foot, made money if you set your mind to it, and hardly exerted yourself at all except to hunt the beasts, thrash the men, and bull the women. You had to look sharp to avoid active service, of course, of which there was a lot about; I never fell very lucky that way. But even so, it wasn’t a half-bad station, most of the time.
Personally, I put that down to the fact that in my young days India was a middle-class place for the British, where society people didn’t serve if they could help it. (Cardigan, for example, took one look and fled.) It’s different now, of course; since it became a safe place many of our best and most highly-connected people have let the light of their countenances shine on India, with the results you might expect – prices have gone up, service has gone down, and the women have got clap. So they tell me.
Mind you, I could see things were changing even in ’56, when I landed at Bombay. My first voyage to India, sixteen years before, had lasted four months on a creaking East Indiaman; this time, in natty little government steam sloops, it had taken just about half that time, even with a vile journey by camel across the Suez isthmus in between. And even from Bombay you could get the smell of civilisation; they’d started the telegraph, and were pushing ahead with the first railways, there were more white faces and businesses to be seen, and people weren’t talking, as they’d used to, of India as though it were a wild jungle with John Company strongholds here and there. In my early days, a journey from Calcutta to Peshawar had seemed half round the world, but no longer. It was as though the Company was at last seeing India as one vast country – and realising that now the wars with the Sikhs and Maharattas and Afghans were things of the past, it was an empire that had to be ruled and run, quite apart from fighting and showing a nice profit in Leadenhall Street.
It was far busier than I remembered it, and somehow the civilians seemed more to the fore nowadays than the military. Once the gossip on the verandahs had all been about war in the north, or the Thugs, or the bandit chiefs of the Ghats who’d have to be looked up some day; now it was as often as not about new mills or factories, and even schools, and how there would be a railroad clear over to Madras in the next five years, and you’d be able to journey from Mrs Blackwell’s in Bombay to the Auckland in Calcutta without once putting on your boots.
“All sounds very peaceful and prosperous,” says I, over a peg and a whore at Mother Sousa’s – like a good little political, you see, I was conducting my first researches in the best gossip-mart I could find (fine mixed clientele, Mother Sousa’s, with nothing blacker than quarter-caste and exhibition dances that would have made a Paris gendarme blench – well, if it’s scuttle-butt you want, you don’t go to a cathedral, do you?). The chap who’d bought me the peg laughed and said:
“Prosperous? I should just think so – my firm’s divvy is up forty per cent., and we’ll have new factories at Lahore and Allahabad working before Easter. Building churches – and when the universities come there’ll be contracts to last out my service, I can tell you.”
“Universities?” says I. “Not for the niggers, surely?”
“The native peoples,” says he primly – and the little snirp hadn’t been out long enough to get his nose peeled – “will soon be advanced beyond those of any country on earth. Heathen countries, that is. Lie still, you black bitch, can’t you see I’m fagged out? Yes, Lord Canning is very strong on education, I believe, and spreading the gospel, too. Well, that’s bricks and mortar, ain’t it? – that’s where to put your money, my boy.”
“Dear me,” says I, “at this rate I’ll be out of a job, I can see.”
“Military, are you? Well, don’t fret, old fellow; you can always apply to be sent to the frontiers.”
“Quiet as that, is it? Even round Jhansi?”
“Wherever’s that, my dear chap?”
He was just a pipsqueak, of course, and knew nothing; the little yellow piece I was exercising hadn’t heard of Jhansi either, and when I asked her at a venture what chapattis were good for except eating, she didn’t bat an eye, but giggled and said I was a verree fonnee maan, and must buy her meringues, not chapattis, yaas? You may think I was wasting my time, sniffing about in Bombay, but it’s my experience that if there’s anything untoward in a country – even one as big as India – you can sometimes get a scent in the most unexpected places, just from the way the natives look and answer. But it was the same whoever I talked to, merchant or military, whore or missionary; no ripples at all. After a couple of days, when I’d got the old Urdu bat rolling familiarly off my palate again, I even browned up and put on a puggareea and coat and pyjamys, and loafed about the Bund bazaar, letting on I was a Mekran coast trader, and listening to the clack. I came out rotten with fleas, stinking of nautch-oil and cheap perfume and cooking ghee, with my ears full of beggars’ whines and hawkers’ jabbering and the clang of the booths – but that was all. Still, it helped to get India back under my hide again, and that’s important, if you intend to do anything as a political.
Hullo, says you, what’s this? – not Flashy taking his duty seriously for once, surely. Well, I was, and for a good reason. I didn’t take Pam’s forebodings seriously, but I knew I was bound to go to Jhansi and make some sort of showing in the task he’d given me – the thing was to do it quickly. If I could have a couple of official chats with this Rani woman, look into the business of the sepoys’ cakes, and conclude that Skene, the Jhansi political, was a nervous old woman, I could fire off a report to Calcutta and withdraw gracefully. What I must not do was linger – because if there was any bottom to Pam’s anxieties, Jhansi might be full of Ignatieff and his jackals before long, and I wanted to be well away before that happened.
So I didn’t linger in Bombay. On the third day I took the road north-east towards Jhansi, travelling in good style by bullock-hackery, which is just a great wooden room on wheels, in which you have your bed and eat your meals, and your groom and cook and bearer squat on the roof. They’ve gone out now, of course, with the railway, but they were a nice leisurely way of travelling, and I stopped off at messes along the road, and kept my ears open. None of the talk chimed with what I’d heard at Balmoral, and the general feeling was that the country had never been so quiet. Which was heartening, even if it was what you’d expect, down-country.
I purposely kept clear of any politicals, because I wanted to form my own judgements without getting any uncomfortable news that I didn’t want to hear. However, up towards Mhow, who should I run into but Johnny Nicholson, whom I hadn’t seen since Afghanistan, fifteen years before, trotting along on a Persian pony and dressed like a Baluchi robber with a beard down to his belly, and a couple of Sikh lancers in tow. We fell on each other like old chums – he didn’t know me well, you see, but mostly by my fearsome reputation; he was one of your play-up-and-fear-God paladins, full of zeal and athirst for glory, was John, and said his prayers and didn’t drink and thought women were either nuns or mothers. He was very big by now, I discovered, and just coming down for leave before he took up as resident at Peshawar.
By rights I shouldn’t have mentioned my mission to anyone, but this was too good a chance to miss. There wasn’t a downier bird in all India than Nicholson, or one who knew the country better, and you could have trusted him with anything, money even. So I told him I was bound for Jhansi, and why – the chapattis, the Rani, and the Russians. He listened, fingering his beard and squinting into the distance, while we squatted by the road drinking coffee.
“Jhansi, eh?” says he. “Pindari robber country – Thugs, too. Trust you to pick the toughest nut south of the Khyber. Maharatta chieftains – wouldn’t turn my back on any of ’em, and if you tell me there have been Russian agitators at work, I’m not surprised. Any number of ugly-looking copers and traders have been sliding south with the caravans up our way this year past, but not many guns, you see – that’s what we keep our accounts by. But I don’t like this news about chapattis passing among the sepoys.”
“You don’t think it amounts to anything, surely?” I found all his cheerful references to Thugs and Pindaris damned disconcerting; he was making Jhansi sound as bad as Afghanistan.
“I don’t know,” says he, very thoughtful. “But I do know that this whole country’s getting warm. Don’t ask me how I know – Irish instinct if you like. Oh, I know it looks fine from Bombay or Calcutta, but sometimes I look around and ask myself what we’re sitting on, out here. Look at it – we’re holding a northern frontier against the toughest villains on earth: Pathans, Sikhs, Baluchis, and Afghanistan thrown in, with Russia sitting on the touchline waiting their chance. In addition, down-country, we’re nominal masters of a collection of native states, half of them wild as Barbary, ruled by princes who’d cut our throats for three-pence. Why? Because we’ve tried to civilise ’em – we’ve clipped the tyrants’ wings, abolished abominations like suttee and thugee, cancelled their worst laws and instituted fair ones. We’ve reformed ’em until they’re sick – and started the telegraph, the railroad, schools, hospitals, all the rest of it.”
This sounded to me like a man riding his pet hobby; I couldn’t see why any of this should do anything but please the people.
“The people don’t count! They never do. It’s the rulers that matter, the rajas and the nabobs – like this rani of yours in Jhansi. They’ve squeezed this country for centuries, and Dalhousie put a stop to it. Of course it’s for the benefit of the poor folk, but they don’t know that – they believe what their princes tell ’em. And what they tell ’em is that the British Sirkar is their enemy, because it stops them burning their widows, and murdering each other in the name of Kali, and will abolish their religion and force Christianity on them if it can.”
“Oh, come, John,” says I, “they’ve been saying that for years.”
“Well, there’s something in it.” He looked troubled, in a stuffy religious way. “I’m a Christian, I hope, or try to be, and I pray I shall see the day when the Gospel is the daily bread of every poor benighted soul on this continent, and His praise is sung in a thousand churches. But I could wish our people went more carefully about it. These are a devout people, Flashman, and their beliefs, misguided though they are, must not be taken lightly. What do they think, when they hear Christianity taught in the schools – in the jails, even – and when colonels preach to their regiments?5 Let the prince, or the agitator, whisper in their ears ‘See how the British will trample on thy holy things, which they respect not. See how they will make Christians of you.’ They will believe him. And they are such simple folk, and their eyes are closed. D’you know,” he went on, “there’s a sect in Kashmir that even worships me?”
“Good for you,” says I. “D’ye take up a collection?”
“I try to reason with them – but it does no good. I tell you, India won’t be converted in a day, or in years. It must come slowly, if surely. But our missionaries – good, worthy men – press on apace, and cannot see the harm they may do.” He sighed. “Yet can one find it in one’s heart to blame them, old fellow, when one considers the blessings that God’s grace would bring to this darkened continent? It is very hard.” And he looked stern and nobly anguished; Arnold would have loved him. Then he frowned and growled, and suddenly burst out:
“It wouldn’t be so bad, if we weren’t so confounded soft! If we would only carry things with a high hand – the reforms, and the missionary work, even. Either let well alone, or do the thing properly. But we don’t, you see; we take half-measures, and are too gentle by a mile. If we are going to pull down their false gods, and reform their old and corrupt states and amend their laws, and make ’em worthy men and women – then let us do it with strength! Dalhousie was strong, but I don’t know about Canning. I know if I were he, I’d bring these oily, smirking, treacherous princes under my heel –” his eyes flashed as he ground his boot in the dust. “I’d give ’em government, firm and fair. I’d be less soft with the sepoys, too – and with some of our own people. That’s half the trouble – you haven’t been back long enough, but depend upon it, we send some poor specimens out to the army nowadays, and to the Company offices. ‘Broken-down tapsters and serving men’s sons’, eh? Well, you’ll see ’em – ignorant, slothful fellows of poor class, and we put ’em to officer high-caste Hindoos of ten years’ service. They don’t know their men, and treat ’em like children or animals, and think of nothing but drinking and hunting, and – and …” he reddened to the roots of his enormous beard and looked aside. “Some of them consort with … with the worst type of native women.” He cleared his throat and patted my arm. “There, I’m sorry, old fellow; I know it’s distasteful to talk of such things, but it’s true, alas.”
I shook my head and said it was heart-breaking.
“Now you see why your news concerns me so? These omens at Jhansi – they may be the spark to the tinder, and I’ve shown you, I hope, that the tinder exists in India, because of our own blindness and softness. If we were stronger, and dealt firmly with the princes, and accompanied our enlightenment of the people with proper discipline – why, the spark would be stamped out easily enough. As it is –” he shook his head again. “I don’t like it. Thank God they had the wit to send someone like you to Jhansi – I only wish I could come with you, to share whatever perils may lie ahead. It’s a strange, wild place, from all I’ve heard,” says this confounded croaker with pious satisfaction, as he shook my hand. “Come, old fellow, shall we pray together – for your safety and guidance in whatever dangers you may find yourself?”
And he plumped down there and then on his knees, with me alongside, and gave God his marching orders in no uncertain fashion, telling him to keep a sharp eye on his servant. I don’t know what it was about me, but holy fellows like Nicholson were forever addressing heaven on my behalf – even those who didn’t know me well seemed to sense that there was a lot of hard graft to be done if Flashy was ever to smell salvation. I can see him yet – his great dark head and long nose against the sunset, his beard quivering with exhortation, and even the freckles on the back of his clasped hands. Poor wild John – he should have canvassed the Lord on his own behalf, perhaps, for while I’m still here after half a century, he was stiff inside the year, shot in the midriff by a pandy sniper in the attack on Delhi, and left to die by inches at the roadside. That’s what his duty earned for him; if he’d taken proper precautions he’d have made viceroy. And Delhi would have fallen just the same.6
Whatever his prayers accomplished for my solid flesh, his talk about Jhansi had done nothing for my spirits. “A strange wild place,” he’d said, and talked of the Pindari bandits and Thugs and Maharatta scoundrels – well, I knew it had been hell’s punch-bowl in the old days, but I’d thought since we’d annexed it that it must be quieter now. Mangles, at the Board of Control in London, had described it as “tranquil beneath the Company’s benevolent rule”, but he was a pompous ass with a talent for talking complete bosh about subjects on which he was an authority.
As I pushed on into Bandelkand it began to look as though he was wrong and Nicholson was right – it was broken, hilly country, with jungle on the slopes and in the valleys, never a white face to be seen, and the black ones getting uglier by the mile. The roads were so atrocious, and the hackery jolted and rolled so sickeningly, that I was forced to take to my Pegu pony; there was devil a sign of civilisation, but only walled villages and every so often a sinister Maharatta fort squatting on a hilltop to remind you who really held the power in this land. “The toughest nut south of the Khyber” – I was ready to believe it, as I surveyed those unfriendly jungly hills, seeing nothing cheerier than a distant tiger skulking among the waitabit thorn. And this was the country that we were “ruling” – with one battalion of suspect sepoy infantry and a handful of British civilians to collect the taxes.
My first sight of Jhansi city wasn’t uplifting either. We rounded a bend on the hill road, and there it was under a dull evening sky – a massive fort, embattled and towered, on a great steep rock, and the walled city clustered at its foot. It was far bigger than I’d imagined; the walls must have been four miles round at least, and the air over the city was thick with the smoke of a thousand cooking fires. On this side of the city lay the orderly white lines of the British camp and cantonment – God, it looked tiny and feeble, beneath that looming vastness of Jhansi fort. My mind went back to Kabul, and how our camp had seemed dwarfed by the Bala Hissar – and even at Kabul, with an army of ten thousand, only a handful of us had escaped. I told myself that here it was different – that less than a hundred miles ahead of me there were our great garrisons along the Grand Trunk, and that however forbidding Jhansi might look, it was a British state nowadays, and under the Sirkar’s protection. Only there wasn’t much sign of that protection – just our pathetic little village like a flea on the lion’s lip, and somewhere in that great citadel, where our troops never went, that brooding old bitch of a Rani scheming against us, with her thousands of savage subjects waiting for her word. Thus my imagination – as if it hadn’t been full enough already, what with Ignatieff and Thugs and wild Pindaris and dissident sepoys and Nicholson’s forebodings.
My first task was to look up Skene, the political whose reports had started the whole business, so I headed down to the cantonment, which was a neat little compound of perhaps forty bungalows, with decent gardens, and the usual groups already meeting on the verandahs for sundown pegs and cordials; there were a few carriages waiting with their grooms and drivers to take people out for dinner, and one or two officers riding home, but I drove straight through, and got a chowkidar’s direction to the little Star Fort, where Skene had his office – he’d still be there, the chowkidar said, which argued a very conscientious political indeed.
Frankly, I hoped to find him scared or stupid; he wasn’t either. He was one of these fair, intent young fellows who fall over themselves to help, and will work all the hours God sends. He hopped from one leg to another when I presented myself, and seemed fairly overwhelmed to meet the great Flashy, but the steady grey eye told you at once that here was a boy who didn’t take alarm at trifles. He had clerks and bearers running in all directions to take my gear to quarters, saw to it that I was given a bath, and then bore me off for dinner at his own bungalow, where he lost no time in getting down to business.
“No one knows why you’re here, sir, except me,” says he. “I believe Carshore, the Collector, suspects, but he’s a sound man, and will say nothing. Of course, Erskine, the Commissioner at Saugor, knows all about it, but no one else.” He hesitated. “I’m not quite clear myself, sir, why they sent you out, and not someone from Calcutta.”
“Well, they wanted an assassin, you see,” says I, easily, just for bounce. “It so happens I’m acquainted with the Russian gentleman who’s been active in these parts – and dealing with him ain’t a job for an ordinary political, what?” It was true, after all; Pam himself had said it. “Also, it seems Calcutta and yourself and Commissioner Erskine – with all respect – haven’t been too successful with this titled lady up in the city palace. Then there are these cakes; all told, it seemed better to Lord Palmerston to send me.”
“Lord Palmerston?” says he, his eyes wide open. “I didn’t know it had gone that far.”
I assured him he’d been the cause of the Prime Minister’s losing a night’s sleep, and he whistled and reached for the decanter.
“That’s neither here nor there, anyway,” says I. “You cost me a night’s sleep, too, for that matter. The first thing is: have any of these Russian fellows been back this way?”
To my surprise, he looked confused. “Truth is, sir – I never knew they’d been near. That came to me from Calcutta – our frontier people traced them down this way, three times, I believe, and I was kept informed. But if they hadn’t told me, I’d never have known.”
That rattled me, if you like. “You mean, if they do come back – or if they’re loose in your bailiwick now – you won’t know of it until Calcutta sees fit to tell you?”
“Oh, our frontier politicals will send me word as soon as any suspected person crosses over,” says he. “And I have my own native agents on the look-out now – some pretty sharp men, sir.”
“They know especially to look out for a one-eyed man?”
“Yes, sir – he has a curious deformity which he hides with a patch, you know – one of his eyes is half-blue, half-brown.”
“You don’t say,” says I. By George, I hadn’t realised our political arrangements were as ramshackle as this. “That, Captain Skene, is the man I’m here to kill – so if any of your … sharp men have the chance to save me the trouble, they may do it with my blessing.”
“Oh, of course, sir. Oh, they will, you know. Some of them,” says he, impressively, “are Pindari bandits – or used to be, that is. But we’ll know in good time, sir, before any of these Ruski fellows get within distance.”
I wished I could share his confidence. “Calcutta has no notion what the Russian spies were up to down here?” I asked him, but he shook his head.
“Nothing definite at all – only that they’d been here. We were sure it must be connected with the chapattis going round, but those have dried up lately. None have passed since October, and the sepoys of the 12th N.I. – that’s the regiment here, you know – seem perfectly quiet. Their colonel swears they’re loyal – has done from the first, and was quite offended that I reported the cakes to Calcutta. Perhaps he’s right; I’ve had some of my men scouting the sepoy lines, and they haven’t heard so much as a murmur. And Calcutta was to inform me if cakes passed at any other place, but none have, apparently.”
Come, thinks I, this is decidedly better; Pam’s been up a gum-tree for nothing. All I had to do was make a show of brief activity here, and then loaf over to Calcutta after a few weeks and report nothing doing. Give ’em a piece of my mind, too, for causing me so much inconvenience.
“Well, Skene,” says I, “this is how I see it. There’s nothing to be done about what the Prime Minister calls ‘those blasted buns’ – unless they make a reappearance, what? As to the Russians – well, when we get word of them, I’ll probably drop out of sight, d’you see?” I would, too – to some convenient haven which the Lord would provide, and emerge when the coast was clear. But I doubted it would even come to that. “Yes, you won’t see me – but I’ll be about, never fear, and if our one-eyed friend, or any of his creatures, shows face … well …”
He looked suitably impressed, with a hint of that awe which my fearsome reputation inspires. “I understand, sir. You’ll wish to … er, work in your own way, of course.” He blinked at me, and then exclaimed reverently: “By jove, I don’t envy those Ruski fellows above half – if you don’t mind my saying so, sir.”
“Skene, old chap,” says I, and winked at him. “Neither do I.” And believe me, he was my slave for life, from that moment.
“There’s the other thing,” I went on. “The Rani. I have to try to talk some sense into her. Now, I daresay there isn’t much I can do, since I gather she’s shown you and Erskine that she’s not disposed to be friendly, but I’m bound to try, you see. So I’ll be obliged to you if you’ll arrange an audience for me the day after tomorrow – I’d like to rest and perhaps look around the city first. For the present, you can tell me your own opinion of her.”
He frowned, and filled my glass. “You’ll think it’s odd, sir, I daresay, but in all the time I’ve been here, I’ve never even seen her. I’ve met her, frequently, at the palace, but she speaks from behind a purdah, you know – and as often as not her chamberlain does the talking for her. She’s a stickler for form, and since government granted her diplomatic immunity after her husband died – as a sop, really, when we assumed suzerainty – well, it makes it difficult to deal with her satisfactorily. She was friendly enough with Erskine at one time – but I’ve had no change out of her at all. She’s damned bitter, you see – when her husband died, old Raja Gangadar, he left no children of his own – well, he was an odd bird, really,” and Skene blushed furiously and avoided my eye. “Used to go about in female dress most of the time, and wore bangles and … and perfume, you see –”
“No wonder she was bitter,” says I.
“No, no, what I mean is, since he left no legitimate heir, but only a boy whom he’d adopted, Dalhousie wouldn’t recognise the infant. The new succession law, you know. So the state was annexed – and the Rani was furious, and petitioned the Queen, and sent agents to London, but it was no go. The adopted son, Damodar, was dispossessed, and the Rani, who’d hoped to be regent, was deprived of her power – officially. Between ourselves, we let her rule pretty well as she pleases – well, we can’t do otherwise, can we? We’ve one battalion of sepoys, and thirty British civilians to run the state administration – but she’s the law, where her people are concerned, absolute as Caesar.”
“Doesn’t that satisfy her, then?”
“Not a bit of it. She detests the fact that officially she only holds power by the Sirkar’s leave, you see. And she’s still wild about the late Raja’s will – you’d think that with a quarter of a million in her treasury she’d be content, but there was some jewellery or other that Calcutta confiscated, and she’s never forgiven us.”
“Interesting lady,” says I. “Dangerous, d’you think?”
He frowned. “Politically, yes. Given the chance, she’d pay our score off, double quick – that’s why the chapatti business upset me. She’s got no army, as such – but with every man in Jhansi a born fighter, and robber, she don’t need one, do she? And they’ll jump if she whistles, for they worship the ground she treads on. She’s proud as Lucifer’s sister, and devilish hard, not to say cruel, in her own courts, but she’s uncommon kind to the poor folk, and highly thought of for her piety – spends five hours a day meditating, although she was a wild piece, they say, when she was a girl. They brought her up like a Maharatta prince at the old Peshwa’s court – taught her to ride and shoot and fence with the best of them. They say she still has the fiend’s own temper,” he added, grinning, “but she’s always been civil enough to me – at a distance. But make no mistake, she’s dangerous; if you can sweeten her, sir, we’ll all sleep a deal easier at nights.”
There was that, of course. However withered an old trot she might be, she’d be an odd female if she was altogether impervious to Flashy’s manly bearing and cavalry whiskers – which was probably what Pam had in mind in the first place. Cunning old devil. Still, as I turned in that night I wasn’t absolutely looking forward to poodle-faking her in two days’ time, and as I glanced from my bungalow window and saw Jhansi citadel beetling in the starlight, I thought, we’ll take a nice little escort of lancers with us when we go to take tea with the lady, so we will.
But that was denied me. I had intended to pass. the next day looking about the city, perhaps having a discreet word with Carshore the Collector and the colonel of the sepoys, but as the syceb was bringing round my pony to the dak-bungalow, up comes. Skene in a flurry. When he’d sent word to the palace that Colonel Flashman, a distinguished soldier of the Sirkar, was seeking an audience for the following day, he’d been told that distinguished visitors were expected to present themselves immediately as a token of proper respect to her highness, and Colonel Flashman could shift his distinguished rump up to the palace forthwith.
“I … I thought in the circumstances of your visit,” says Skene, apologetically, “that you might think it best to comply.”
“You did, did you?” says I. “Does every Briton in Jhansi leap to attention when this beldam snaps her fingers, then?”
“Shall we say, we find it convenient to humour her highness,” says he – he was more of a political than he looked, this lad, so I blustered a bit, to be in character, and then said he might find me an escort of lancers to convoy me in.
“I’m sorry, sir,” says he. “We haven’t any lancers – and if we had, we’ve agreed not to send troop formations inside the city walls. Also, since I was excluded from the, er … invitation, I fear you must go alone.”
“What?” says I. “Damnation, who governs here – the Sirkar or this harridan?” I didn’t fancy above half risking my hide unguarded in that unhealthy-looking fortress, but I had to cover it with dignity. “You’ve made a rod for your own backs by being too soft with this … this woman. She’s not Queen Bess, you know!”
“She thinks she is,” says he cheerfully, so in the end of course I had to lump it. But I changed into my lancer fig first, sabre, revolver and all – for I could guess why she was ensuring that I visited her alone: up-country, on the frontier, they judge a man on his own looks, but down here they go on the amount and richness of your retinue. One mounted officer wasn’t going to impress the natives with the Sirkar’s power – well, then, he’d look his best, and be damned to her. So I figged up, and when I regarded myself in Skene’s cracked mirror – blue tunic and breeches, gold belt and epaulettes, white gauntlets and helmet, well-bristled whiskers, and Flashy’s stalwart fourteen stone inside it all, it wasn’t half bad. I took a couple of packages from my trunk, stowed them in my saddle-bag, waved to Skene, and trotted off to meet royalty, with only the syce to show me the way.
Jhansi city lies about a couple of miles from the cantonment, and I had plenty of time to take in the scenery. The road, which was well-lined with temples and smaller buildings, was crowded into the city, with bullock-carts churning up the dust, camels, palankeens, and hordes of travellers both mounted and on foot. Most of them were country folk, on their way to the bazaars, but every now and then would come an elephant with red and gold fringed howdah swaying along, carrying some minor nabob or rich lady, or a portly merchant on his mule with a string of porters behind, and once the syce pointed out a group who he said were members of the Rani’s own bodyguard – a dozen stalwart Khyberie Pathans, of all things, trotting along very military in double file, with mail coats and red silk scarves wound round their spiked helmets. The Rani might not have a army, but she wasn’t short of force, with those fellows about: there was a hundred years’ Company service among them if there was a day.
And her city defences were a sight to see – massive walls twenty feet high, and beyond them a warren of streets stretching for near a mile to the castle rock, with its series of curtain walls and round towers – it would be the deuce of a place to storm, after you’d fought through the city itself; there were guns in the embrasures, and mail-clad spearmen on the walls, all looking like business.
We had to force our horses through a crowded inferno of heat and smells and noise and jostling niggers to get to the palace, which stood apart from the fort near a small lake, with a shady park about it; it was a fine, four-square building, its outer walls beautifully decorated with huge paintings of battles and hunting scenes. I presented myself to another Pathan, very splendid in steel back-and-breast and long-tail puggaree, who commanded the gate guard, and sat sweating in the scorching sun while he sent off a messenger for the chamberlain. And as I chafed impatiently, the Pathan walked slowly round me, eyeing me up and down, and presently stopped, stuck his thumbs in his belt, and spat carefully on my shadow.
Now, close by the gate there happened to be a number of booths and side-shows set up – the usual things, lemonade-sellers, a fakir with a plant growing through his palm, sundry beggars, and a kind of punch-and-judy show, which was being watched by a group of ladies in a palankeen. As a matter of fact, they’d already taken my eye, for they were obviously Maharatta females of quality, and four finer little trotters you never saw. There was a very slim, languid-looking beauty in a gold sari reclining in the palankeen, another plump piece in scarlet trousers and jacket beside her, and a third, very black, but fine-boned as a Swede, with a pearl headdress that must have cost my year’s pay, sitting in a kind of camp-chair alongside – even the ladies’ maid standing beside the palankeen was a looker, with great almond eyes and a figure inside her plain white sari like a Hindoo temple goddess. I was in the act of touching my hat to them when the Pathan started expectorating. At this the maid giggled, the ladies looked, and the Pathan sniffed contemptuously and spat again.
Well, as a rule anyone can insult me and see how much it pays him, especially if he’s large and ugly and carrying a tulwar.c But for the credit of the Sirkar, and my own face in front of the women, I had to do something, so I looked the Pathan up and down, glanced away, and said quietly in Pushtu:
“You would spit more carefully if you were still in the Guides, hubshi.”d
He opened his eyes at that, and swore. “Who calls me hubshi? Who says I was in the Guides? And what is it to thee, feringheee pig?”
“You wear the old coat under your breastplate,” says I. “But belike you stole it from a dead Guide. For no man who had a right to that uniform would spit on Bloody Lance’s shadow.”
That set him back on his heels. “Bloody Lance?” says he. “Thou?” He came closer and stared up at me. “Art thou that same Iflass-man who slew the four Gilzais?”
“At Mogala,” says I mildly. It had caused a great stir at the time, in the Gilzai country, and won me considerable fame (and my extravagant nickname) along the Kabul road – in fact, old Mohammed Iqbal had killed the four horsemen, while I lit out for the undergrowth, but nobody living knew that.f And obviously the legend endured, for the Pathan gaped and swore again, and then came hastily to attention and threw me a barra salaamg that would have passed at Horse Guards.
“Sher Khan, havildarh lately of Ismeet Sahib’s company of the Guides,7 as your honour says,” croaks he. “Now, shame on me and mine that I put dishonour on Bloody Lance, and knew him not! Think not ill of me, husoori, for –”
“Let the ill think ill,” says I easily. “The spittle of a durwanj will not drown a soldier.” I was watching out of the corner of my eye to see how the ladies were taking this, and noted with satisfaction that they were giggling at the Pathan’s discomfiture. “Boast to your children, O Ghazik-that-was-a-Guide-and-is-now-a-Rani’s-porter, that you spat on Bloody Lance Iflass-man’s shadow – and lived.” And I walked my horse past him into the courtyard, well pleased; it would be all round Jhansi inside the hour.
It was a trifling enough incident, and I forgot it with my first glance at the interior of the Rani’s palace. Outside it had been all dust and heat and din, but here was the finest garden courtyard you ever saw – a cool, pleasant enclosure where little antelopes and peacocks strutted on the lawns, parrots and monkeys chattered softly in the surrounding trees, and a dazzling white fountain played; there were shaded archways in the carved walls, where well-dressed folk whom I took to be her courtiers sat and talked, waited on by bearers. One of the richest thrones in India, Pam had said, and I could believe it – there were enough silks and jewellery on view there to stuff an army with loot, the statuary was of the finest, in marble and coloured stones that I took to be jade, and even the pigeons that pecked at the spotless pavements had silver rings on their claws. Until you’ve seen it, of course, you can’t imagine the luxury in which these Indian princes keep themselves – and there are folk at home who’ll tell you that John Company were the robbers!
I was kept waiting there a good hour before a major-domo came, salaaming, to lead me through the inner gate and up a narrow winding stair to the durbar room on the first storey; here again all was richness – splendid silk curtains on the walls, great chandeliers of purple crystal hanging from the carved and gilded ceiling, magnificent carpets on the floor (with good old Axminster there among the Persian, I noticed) and every kind of priceless ornament, gold and ivory, ebony and silverwork, scattered about. It would have been in damned bad taste if it hadn’t all been so bloody expensive, and the dozen or so men and women who lounged about on the couches and cushions were dressed to match; the ones down in the courtyard must have been their poor relations. Handsome as Hebe the women were, too – I was just running my eye over one alabaster beauty in tight scarlet trousers who was reclining on a shawl, playing with a parakeet, when a gong boomed somewhere, everyone stood up, and a fat little chap in a huge turban waddled in and announced that the durbar had begun. At which music began to play, and they all turned and bowed to the wall, which I suddenly realised wasn’t a wall at all, but a colossal ivory screen, fine as lace, that cut the room in two. Through it you could just make out movement in the space beyond, like shadows behind thick gauze; this was the Rani’s purdah screen, to keep out prying heathen eyes like mine.
I seemed to be first man in, for the chamberlain led me to a little gilt stool a few feet from the screen, and there I sat while he stood at one end of the screen and cried out my name, rank, decorations, and (it’s a fact) my London clubs; there was a murmur of voices beyond, and then he asked me what I wanted, or words to that effect. I replied, in Urdu, that I brought greetings from Queen Victoria, and a gift for the Rani from her majesty, if she would graciously accept it. (It was a perfectly hellish photograph of Victoria and Albert looking in apparent stupefaction at a book which the Prince of Wales was holding in an attitude of sullen defiance; all in a silver frame, too, and wrapped up in muslin.) I handed it over, the chamberlain passed it through, listened attentively, and then asked me who the fat child in the picture was. I told him, he relayed the glad news, and then announced that her highness was pleased to accept her sister-ruler’s gift – the effect was spoiled a trifle by a clatter from behind the screen which suggested the picture had fallen on the floor (or been thrown), but I just stroked my whiskers while the courtiers tittered behind me. It’s hell in the diplomatic, you know.
There was a further exchange of civilities, through the chamberlain, and then I asked for a private audience with the Rani; he replied that she never gave them. I explained that what I had to say was of mutual but private interest to Jhansi and the British government; he looked behind the screen for instructions, and then said hopefully:
“Does that mean you have proposals for the restoration of her highness’s throne, the recognition of her adopted son, and the restitution of her property – all of which have been stolen from her by the Sirkar?”
Well, it didn’t, of course. “What I have to say is for her highness alone,” says I, solemnly, and he stuck his head round the screen and conferred, before popping back.
“There are such proposals?” says he, and I said I could not talk in open durbar, at which there were sounds of rapid female muttering from behind the screen. The chamberlain asked what I could have to say that could not be said by Captain Skene, and I said politely that I could tell that to the Rani, and no other. He conferred again, and I tried to picture the other side of the screen, with the Rani, sharp-faced and thin in her silk shawl, muttering her instructions to him, and puzzled to myself what the odd persistent noise was that I could hear above the soft pipes of the hidden orchestra – a gentle, rhythmic swishing from beyond the screen, as though a huge fan were being used. And yet the room was cool and airy enough not to need one.
The chamberlain popped out again, looking stem, and said that her highness could see no reason for prolonging the interview; if I had nothing new from the Sirkar to impart to her, I was permitted to withdraw. So I got to my feet, clicked my heels, saluted the screen, picked up the second package which I had brought, thanked him and his mistress for their courtesy, and did a smart about-turn. But I hadn’t gone a yard before he stopped me.
“The packet you carry,” says he. “What is that?”
I’d been counting on this; I told him it was my own.
“But it is wrapped as the gift to her highness was wrapped,” says he. “Surely it also is a present.”
“Yes,” says I, slowly. “It was.” He stared, was summoned behind the screen, and came out looking anxious.
“Then you may leave it behind,” says he.
I hesitated, weighing the packet in my hand, and shook my head. “No, sir,” says I. “It was my own personal present, to her highness – but in my country we deliver such gifts face to face, as honouring both giver and receiver. By your leave,” and I bowed again to the screen and walked away.
“Wait, wait!” cries he, so I did; the rhythmic sound from behind the screen had stopped now, and the female voice was talking quietly again. The chamberlain came out, red-faced, and to my astonishment he bustled everyone else from the room, shooing the silken ladies and gentlemen like geese. Then he turned to me, bowed, indicated the screen, and effaced himself through one of the archways, leaving me alone with my present in my hand. I listened a moment; the swishing sound had started again.
I paused to give my whiskers a twirl, stepped up to the end of the screen, and rapped on it with my knuckles. No reply. So I said: “Your highness?”, but there was nothing except that damned swishing. Well, here goes, I thought; this is what you came to India for, and you must be civil and adoring, for old Pam’s sake. I stepped round the screen, and halted as though I’d walked into a wall.
It wasn’t the gorgeously-carved golden throne, or the splendour of the furniture which outshone even what I’d left, or the unexpected sensation of walking on the shimmering Chinese quilt on the floor. Nor was it the bewildering effect of the mirrored ceiling and walls, with their brilliantly-coloured panels. The astonishing thing was that from the ceiling there hung, by silk ropes, a great cushioned swing, and sitting in it, wafting gently to and fro, was a girl – the only soul in the room. And such a girl – my first impression was of great, dark, almond eyes in a skin the colour of milky coffee, with a long straight nose above a firm red mouth and chin, and hair as black as night that hung in a jewelled tail down her back. She was dressed in a white silk bodice and sari which showed off the dusky satin of her bare arms and midriff, and on her head was a little white jewelled cap from which a single pearl swung on her forehead above the caste-mark.
I stood and gaped while she swung to and fro at least three times, and then she put a foot on the carpet and let the swing drag to a halt. She considered me, one smooth dusky arm up on the swing rope – and then I recognised her: she was the ladies’ maid who had been standing by the palankeen at the palace gate. The Rani’s maid? – then the lady of the palankeen must be …
“Your mistress?” says I. “Where is she?”
“Mistress? I have no mistress,” says she, tilting up her chin and looking down her nose at me. “I am Lakshmibai, Maharani of Jhansi.”
a Turban.
b Groom.
c A Sword.
d Literally, “woolly-haired” – a negro.
e Christian, a white man.
f See Flashman.
g Great Salute.
h Sergeant.
i Sir, Lord.
j Door-keeper.
k Hero.