Luck, as I’ve often observed, is an agile sprite who jumps both ways in double quick time. You could say it had been evil chance that took me to Meerut and the birth of the Mutiny – but I’d escaped, only to land in the hell of Cawnpore, from which I was one of only five to get clear away after the ghat massacre. It had been the foulest luck to run into those wild men in the jungle, and the infernal muggers – but if they hadn’t chased us, we mightn’t have fetched up on a mudbank under the walls of one of those petty Indian rulers who stayed loyal to the Sirkar. For that was what had happened – the new niggers whom Delafosse saw waving and hallooing from the shore turned out to be the followers of one Diribijah Singh, a tough old maharaj who ruled from a fort in the jungle, and was a steadfast friend of the British. So you see, all that matters about luck is that it should run good on the last throw.
Not that the game was over, you understand; when I think back on the Mutiny, even on Cawnpore, I can say that the worst was still to come. And yet, I feel that the tide turned on that mudbank; at least, after a long nightmare, I can say that there followed a period of comparative calm, for me, in which I was able to recruit my tattered nerves, and take stock, and start planning how to get the devil out of this Indian pickle and back to England and safety.
For the moment, there was nothing to do but thank God and the loyal savages who picked us up from that shoal, with the muggers snuffling discontentedly in the wings. The natives took us ashore, to the maharaj’s castle, and he was a brick – a fine old sport with white whiskers and a belly like a barrel, who swore damnation to all mutineers and promised to return us to our own folk as soon as we had recovered and it seemed safe to pass through the country round. But that wasn’t for several weeks, and in the meantime the five of us could only lie and recuperate and contain our impatience as best we might – Delafosse and Thomson were itching to get back into the thick of things; Murphy and Sullivan, the two privates, kept their counsel and ate like horses; while I, making an even greater show of impatience than my brother-officers, was secretly well content to rest at ease, blinking in the sun and eating mangoes, to which I’m partial.
In the meantime, we later discovered, great things were happening in the world beyond. When news of Cawnpore’s fall got out, it gave the Mutiny a tremendous fillip; revolt spread all along the Ganges valley and in Central India, the garrisons at Mhow and Agra and a dozen other places rebelled, and most notable of all, Henry Lawrence got beat fighting a dam’ silly battle at Chinhat, and had to hole up in Lucknow, which went under siege. On the credit side, my old friend the First Gravedigger (General Havelock to you) finally got up off his Puritan rump and struck through Allahabad at Cawnpore; he fought his way in after a nine-day march, and recaptured the place a bare three weeks after we’d been driven out – and I suppose all the world knows what he found when he got there.
You remember that when we escaped the massacre at the Suttee Ghat, the barges with the women and children were caught by the pandies. Well, Nana took them ashore, all 200 of them, and locked them up in a place called the Bibigarh, in such filth and heat that thirty of them died within a week. He made our women grind corn; then, when word came that Havelock was fighting his way in, and slaughtering all opposition, Nana had all the women and children butchered. They say even the pandies wouldn’t do it, so he sent in hooligans with cleavers from the Cawnpore bazaar; they chopped them all up, even the babies, and threw them, dead and still living, down a well. Havelock’s people found the Bibigarh ankle-deep in blood, with children’s toys and hats and bits of hair still floating in it; they had got there two days too late.
I don’t suppose any event in my lifetime – not Balaclava nor Shiloh nor Rorke’s Drift nor anywhere else I can think of – has had such a stunning effect on people’s minds as that Cawnpore massacre of the innocents. I didn’t see the full horror of it, of course, as Havelock’s folk did, but I was there a few weeks after, and walked in the Bibigarh, and saw the bloody floor and walls, and near the well I found the skeleton bones of a baby’s hand, like a little white crab in the dust. I’m a pretty cool hand, as you know, but it made me gag, and if you ask me what I think of the vengeance that old General Neill wreaked, making captured mutineers clean up the Bibigarh, flogging ’em and forcing ’em to lick up the blood with their tongues before they were hanged – well, I was all for it then, and I still am. Perhaps it’s because I knew the corpses that went into that well – I’d seen them playing on the Cawnpore rampart, and being heard their lessons in that awful barrack, and laughing at the elephant dunging. Perhaps that baby hand I found belonged to the infant I’d seen in the arms of the woman in the torn gown. Anyway, I’d have snuffed out every life in India, and thought naught of it, in that moment when I looked at Bibigarh – and if you think that shocking, well, maybe I’m just more like Nana Sahib than you are.
Anyway, what I think don’t signify. What mattered was the effect that Cawnpore had on our people. I know it turned our army crazy; they were ready to slaughter anything that even sniffed of mutiny, from that moment on. Not that they’d been dealing exactly kindly before; Havelock and Neill had been hanging right, left and centre from Allahabad north, and I daresay had disposed of quite a number of innocents – just as the pandies at Meerut and Delhi had done.35
What beats me is the way people take it to heart – what do they expect in war? It ain’t conducted by missionaries, or chaps in Liberal clubs, snug and secure. But what amuses me most is the way fashionable views change – why, for years after Cawnpore, any vengeance wreaked on an Indian, mutineer or not, was regarded as just vengeance; nothing was too bad for ’em. Now it’s t’other way round, with eminent writers crying shame, and saying nothing justified such terrible retribution as Neill took, and we were far guiltier than the niggers had been. Why? Because we were Christians, and supposed to know better? – and because England contains this great crowd of noisy know-alls that are forever defending our enemies’ behaviour and crying out in pious horror against our own. Why our sins are always so much blacker, I can’t fathom – as to Cawnpore, it don’t seem to me one whit worse to slay in revenge, like Neill, than out of sheer spite and cruelty, like Nana; at least it’s more understandable.
The truth is, of course, that both sides were afraid – the pandy who’d mutinied, and feared punishment, decided he might as well be hanged for a sheep, and let his natural bloodlust go – they’re cruel bastards at bottom. And our folk – they’d had an almighty scare, and Cawnpore brought their natural bloodlust to the top in turn; just give ’em a few well-chosen texts about vengeance and wrath of God and they could fall to with a will – as I’ve already observed about Rowbotham’s Mosstroopers, there’s nothing crueller than a justified Christian. Except maybe a nigger running loose.
So you can see it was a jolly summer in the Ganges valley, all right, as I and my four companions discovered, when Diribijah Singh finally convoyed us out from his fort and back to Cawnpore after Havelock had retaken it. I hadn’t seen old Blood-and-Bones since he’d stood grumping beside my bed at Jallalabad fifteen years before, and time hadn’t improved him; he still looked like Abe Lincoln dying of diarrhoea, with his mournful whiskers and bloodhound eyes. When I told him my recent history he just listened in silence, and then grabbed me by the wrist with his great bony hand, dragged me down on to my knees beside him, and began congratulating God on lugging Flashy out of the stew again, through His infinite mercy.
“The shield of His truth has been before thee, Flashman,” cries he. “Has not the Hand which plucked thee from the paw of the bear at Kabul, and the jaws of the lion at Balaclava, delivered thee also from the Philistine at Cawnpore?”
“Absolutely, amen,” says I, but when I took him into my confidence – about Palmerston, and why I came to India in the first place, and suggested there was no good reason why I shouldn’t head for home at once – he shook his great coffin head.
“It cannot be,” says he. “That mission is over, and we need every hand at the plough. The fate of this country is in the balance, and I can ill spare such a seasoned soldier as yourself. There is a work of cleansing and purging before us,” he went on, and you could see by the holy fire in his eyes that he was just sweating to get to grips with it. “I shall take you on to my staff, Flashman – nay, sir, never thank me; it is I shall be the gainer, rather than you.”
I was ready to agree with him there, but I knew there was no point in arguing with the likes of Havelock – anyway, before I could think of anything to say he was scribbling orders for hanging a few more pandies, and dictating a crusty note to Neill, and roaring for his adjutant; he was a busy old Baptist in those days, right enough.
So there I was, and it might have been worse. I’d had no real hope of being sent home – no high command in their right mind would have dispensed with the famous Flash when there was a campaign on hand, and since I had to be here I’d rather be under Havelock’s wing than anyone’s. He was a good soldier, you see, and as canny as Campbell in his own way; there’d be no massacres or Last Stands round the Union Jack with the Gravedigger in charge.
So I settled in as Havelock’s intelligence aide – a nice safe billet in the circumstances, but if you would learn the details of how I fared with him you must consult my official history, Dawns and Departures of a Soldier’s Life (in three handsomely-bound morocco volumes, price two gns. each or five gns. the set, though you may have difficulty laying hands on Volume III, since it had to be called in and burned by the bailiffs after that odious little Whitechapel sharper D’Israeli egged on one of his toadies to sue me for criminal information. Suez Canal shares, eh? I’ll blacken the bastard’s memory yet, though, just see if I don’t. Truth will out).
However, the point is that my present tale isn’t truly concerned with the main course of the Mutiny henceforth – although I bore my full reluctant part in that – but still with that mad mission on which Pam had sent me out in the first place, to Jhansi and the bewitching Lakshmibai. For I wasn’t done with her, whatever Havelock might think, and however little I guessed it myself; the rest of the Mutiny was just the road that led me back to her, and to that final terrible adventure of the Jhansi flight and the guns of Gwalior when – but I’ll come to that presently.
In the meantime I’ll tell you as briskly as I can what happened in the few months after I joined Havelock at Cawnpore. At first it was damned bad news all round: the Mutiny kept spreading, Nana had sheered off after losing Cawnpore and was raising cain farther up-country, Delhi was still held by the pandies with our people banging away at it, and Havelock at Cawnpore didn’t have the men or means to relieve Lucknow, only forty miles away, where Lawrence’s garrison was hemmed in. He tried hard enough, but found that the pandy forces, while they didn’t make best use of their overwhelming numbers, fought better defensive actions than anyone had expected, and Havelock got a couple of black eyes before he’d gone ten miles, and had to fall back. To make matters worse, Lloyd’s advance guard got cut up at Arah, and no one down in Calcutta seemed to have any notion of overall strategy – that clown Canning was sitting like a fart in a trance, they tell me, and no proper order was taken.
I wasn’t too upset, though. For one thing I was snug at the Cawnpore headquarters, making a great bandobasta over collecting information from our spies and passing the gist on to Havelock (intelligence work is nuts to me, so long as I can stay close to bed, bottle and breakfast and don’t have to venture out). And for another, I could sense that things were turning our way; once the first flood of pandy successes had spent itself, there could only be one end, and old Campbell, who was the best general in the business, was coming out to take command-in-chief.
In September we moved on Lucknow in style, with fresh troops under Outram, a dirty-looking little chap on a waler horse, more like a Sheeny tailor than a general. They tell me it was a hell of a march; certainly it rained buckets all the way, and there was some stern fighting at Mangalwarh and at the Alum Bagh near Lucknow town – I know, because I got reports of it in my intelligence ghari at the rear of the column, where I was properly ensconced writing reports, examining prisoners, and getting news from friendly natives – at least, they were friendly by the time my Rajput orderlies had basted ’em a bit. From time to time I poked my head out into the rain, and called cheery encouragement to the reinforcements, or sent messages to Havelock – I remember one of them was that Delhi had fallen at last, and that old Johnny Nicholson had bought a bullet, poor devil. I drank a quiet brandy to him, listening to the downpour and the guns booming, and thought God help poor soldiers on a night like this.
However, having got Lucknow, Havelock and Outram didn’t know what the devil to do with it, for the pandies were still thick around as fleas, and it soon became evident that far from raising the siege, our forces were nothing but a reinforcement to the garrison. So we were all besieged, for another seven weeks, and the deuce of a business it must have been, with bad rations and the pandies forever trying to tunnel in under our defences, and our chaps fighting ’em in the mines which were like a warren underground. I say “must have been”, for I knew nothing about it; the night we entered Lucknow my bowels began to explode in all directions, and before morning I was flat on my back with cholera, for the second time in my life.
For once, it was a blessing, for it meant I was spared knowledge of a siege that was Cawnpore all over again, if not quite as bad. I gather I raved a good deal of the time, and I know I spent weeks lying on a cot in a beastly little cellar, as weak as a rat and not quite in my right mind. It was only in the last fortnight of the siege that I began to get about again, and by that time the garrison was cheery with the news that Campbell was on his way. I limped about gamely at first, looking gaunt and noble, and asking “Is the flag flying still?” and “Is there anything I can do, sir? – I’m much better than I look, I assure you.” I was, too, but I took care to lean on my stick a good deal, and sit down, breathing hard. In fact, there wasn’t much to do, except wait, and listen to the pandies sniping away – they didn’t hit much.
In the last week, when we knew for certain that Campbell was only a few days away, with his Highlanders and naval guns and all, I was careless enough to look like a whole man again – it seemed safe enough now, for you must know that at Lucknow, unlike Cawnpore, we were defending a large area, and if one kept away from the outer works, which unemployed convalescents like me were entitled to do, one could promenade about the Residency gardens without peril. There were any number of large houses, half-ruined now, but still habitable, and we occupied them or camped out in the grounds – when I came out of my cellar I was sent to the bungalow, where Havelock was quartered with his staff people, but he packed me off to Outram’s headquarters, in case I should be of some use there. Havelock himself was pretty done by this time, and not taking much part in the command; he spent most of his time in Gubbins’s garden, reading some bilge by Macaulay – and was greatly intrigued to know that I’d met Lord Know-all and discussed his “Lays” with the Queen; I had to tell Havelock all about that.
For the rest, I yarned a good deal with Vincent Eyre, who’d been in the Kabul retreat with me, and was now one of the many wounded in the garrison, or chaffed with the ladies in the old Residency garden, twitting them about their fashions – for after a six-month siege everyone was dressed any old how, with scraps and curtains and even towels run up into clothes. I was hailed everywhere, of course – jovial Flash, the hero on the mend – and quizzed about my adventures from Meerut to Cawnpore. I never mind telling a modest tale, if the audience is pretty enough, so I did, and entertained them by imitating Makarram Khan, too, which attracted much notice and laughter. It was an idiot thing to do, as you’ll see – it earned another man the V.C., and nearly won me a cut throat.
What happened was this. One morning, it must have been about November 9th or 10th, there was a tremendous commotion over on the southern perimeter, where someone in Anderson’s Post claimed he had heard Campbell’s pipers in the distance; there was huge excitement, with fellows and ladies and niggers and even children hastening through the ruined buildings, laughing and cheering – and then everything went deadly still as we stood to listen, and sure enough, above the occasional crack of firing, far, far away there was the faintest whisper on the breeze of a pig in torment, and someone sings out, “The Campbells are coming, hurrah, hurrah!” and people were embracing and shaking hands and leaping in the air, laughing and crying all together, and a few dropping to their knees to pray, for now the siege was as good as over. So there was continued jubilation throughout the garrison, and Outram sniffed and grunted and chewed his cheroot and called a staff conference.
He had been smuggling out messages by native spies all through the siege, and now that the relief force was so close he wanted to send explicit directions to Campbell on the best route to take in fighting his way through the streets and gardens of Lucknow to, the Residency. It was a great maze of a place, and our folk had had the deuce of a struggle getting in two months earlier, being cut up badly in the alleys. Outram wanted to be sure Campbell didn’t have the same trouble, for he had a bare 5,000 men against 60,000 pandies, and if they strayed or were ambushed it might be the end of them – and consequently of us.
I didn’t have much part in their deliberations, beyond helping Outram draft his message in the secret Greek code he employed, and making a desperate hash of it. One of the Sappers had the best route all plotted out, and while they talked about that I went into the big verandah room adjoining to rest from the noon heat, convalescent-like. I sprawled on the cot, with my boots off, and must have dozed off, for when I came to it was late afternoon, the murmur of many voices from beyond the chick screen had gone, and there were only two people talking. Outram was saying:
“… it is a hare-brained risk, surely – a white man proposing to make his way disguised as a native through a city packed with hostiles! And if he’s caught – and the message falls into their hands? What then, Napier?”
“True enough,” says Napier, “but to get a guide out to Campbell – a guide who can point his way for him – is better than a thousand messages of direction. And Kavanaugh knows the streets like a bazaar-wallah.”
“No doubt he does,” mutters Outram, “but he’ll no more pass for a native than my aunt’s parrot. What – he’s more than six feet tall, flaming red hair, blue eyes, and talks poor Hindi with a Donegal accent! Kananji may not be able to guide Campbell, but at least we can be sure he’ll get a message to him.”
“Kananji swears he won’t go if Kavanaugh does. He’s ready to go alone, but he says Kavanaugh’s bound to be spotted.”
“There you are, then!” I could hear Outram muttering and puffing on a fresh cheroot. “Confound it, Napier – he’s a brave man … and I’ll own that if he could reach Campbell his knowledge of the byways of Lucknow would be beyond price – but he’s harder to disguise than … damme, than any man in this garrison.”
I listened with some interest to this. I knew Kavanaugh, a great freckled Irish bumpkin of a civilian who’d spent the siege playing tig with pandy besiegers in the tunnels beneath our defences – mad as a hatter. And now madder still, by the sound of it, if he proposed to try to get through the enemy lines to Campbell. I saw Outram’s problem – Kavanaugh was the one man who’d be a reliable guide to Campbell, if only he could get to him. But it was Tattersall’s to a tin can that the pandies would spot him, torture his message out of him, and be ready and waiting for Campbell when he advanced. Well, thank God I wasn’t called on to decide …
“… if he can disguise himself well enough to pass muster with me, he can go,” says Outram at last. “But I wish to heaven Kananji would accompany him – I don’t blame him for refusing, mind … but if only there were someone else who could go along – some cool hand who can pass as a native without question, to do the talking if they’re challenged by the pandies – for if they are, and if Kavanaugh has to open that great Paddy mouth of his … stop, though! Of course, Napier – the very man! Why didn’t it occur …”
I was off the cot and moving before Outram was half-way through his speech; I knew before he did himself whose name was going to pop into his mind as the ideal candidate for this latest lunacy. I paused only to scoop up my boots and was tip-toeing at speed for the verandah rail; a quick vault into the garden, and then let them try to find me before sunset if they could … but blast it, I hadn’t gone five steps when the door was flung open, and there was Outram, pointing his cheroot, looking like Sam Grant after the first couple of drinks, crying:
“Flashman! That’s our man, Napier! Can you think of a better?”
Of course, Napier couldn’t – who could, with the famous Flashy on hand, ripe to be plucked and hurled into the bloody soup? It’s damnable, the way they pick on a fellow – and all because of my swollen reputation for derring-do and breakneck gallantry. As usual, there was nothing I could do, except stand blinking innocently in my stocking-soles while Outram repeated all that I’d heard already, and pointed out that I was the very man to go along on this hideous escapade to hold the great Fenian idiot’s hand for him. I heard him in mounting terror, concealed behind a stern and thoughtful aspect, and replied that, of course, I was at his disposal, but really, gentlemen, was it wise? Not that I cared about the risk (Jesus, the things I’ve had to say), but I earnestly doubted whether Kavanaugh could pass … my convalescent condition, of course, was a trifling matter … even so, one wouldn’t want to fail through lack of strength … not when a native could be certain of getting through …
“There isn’t a loyal sepoy in this garrison who can come near you for skill and shrewdness,” says Outram briskly, “or who’d stand half the chance of seeing Kavanaugh safe. Weren’t you playing your old Pathan role the other day for the ladies? As to the toll of your illness – I’ve a notion your strength will always match your spirit, whatever happens. This thing’s your meat and drink, Flashman, and you know it – and you’ve been fairly itching to get into harness again. Eh?”
“I’ll hazard a guess,” says Napier, smiling, “that he’s more concerned for Kavanaugh than for himself – isn’t that so, Flashman?”
“Well, sir, since you’ve said it –”
“I know,” says Outram, frowning at his damned cheroot. “Kavanaugh has a wife and family – but he has volunteered, you see, and he’s the man for Campbell, not a doubt of it. It only remains to get him there.” And the brute simply gave me a sturdy look and shook my hand as though that were the thing settled.
Which of course it was. What could I do, without ruining my reputation? – although such was my fame by this time that if I’d thrown myself on the floor weeping with fright, they’d probably not have taken me seriously, but thought it was just one of my jokes in doubtful taste. Give a dog a bad name – by God, it doesn’t stick half as hard as a good one.
So I spent the evening dyeing myself with soot and ghee, shuddering with apprehension and cursing my folly and ill luck. This, at the eleventh hour! I thought of having another shot at Napier, pleading my illness, but I didn’t dare; he had a hard eye, and Outram’s would be even worse if they suspected I was shirking. I near as a toucher cried off, though, when I saw Kavanaugh; he was got up like Sinbad the Sailor, with nigger minstrel eyes, hareem slippers, and a great sword and shield. I stopped dead in the doorway, whispering to Napier:
“My God, man, he won’t fool a child! We’ll have the bloody pandies running after us shouting, ‘Penny for Guy Fawkes!’”
But he said reassuringly that it would be pretty dark, and Outram and the other officers agreed that Kavanaugh might just do. They were full of admiration for my get-up – which was my usual one of bazaar-ruffler – and Kavanaugh came up to me with absolute tears in his eyes and said I was the stoutest chap alive to stand by him in this. I nearly spat in his eye. The others were full of sallies about our appearance, and then Outram handed Kavanaugh the message for Campbell, biting on his cheroot and looking hard at us.
“I need not tell you,” says he, “that it must never fall into enemy hands. That would be disaster for us all.”
Just to rub the point in, he asked if we were fully armed (so that we could blow our brains out if necessary), and then gave us our directions. We were to swim the river beyond the northern rampart, recross it by the bridge west of the Residency, and cut straight south through Lucknow city and hope to run into Campbell’s advance picquets on the other side. Kavanaugh, who knew the streets, would choose our path, but I would lead and do the talking.
Then Outram looked us both in the eye, and blessed us, and everyone shook hands, looking noble, while I wondered if I’d time to go to the privy Kavanaugh, shaking with excitement, cleared his throat and says:
“We know what is to be done, sorr – an’ we’ll give our lives gladly in the attempt. We know the risks, ould fellow, do we not?” he added, turning to me.
“Oh, aye,” says I, “that bazaar’ll be full of fleas – we’ll be lousy for weeks.” Since there was no escape, I might as well give ’em another Flashy bon mot to remember.
It moved them, as only jocular heroism can; Outram’s aide, Hardinge, was absolutely piping his eye, and said England would never forget us, everyone patted us on the back with restrained emotion, and shoved us off in the direction of the rampart. I could hear Kavanaugh breathing heavily – the brute positively panted in Irish – and whispered to him again to remember to leave any talking to me. “Oi will, Flashy, Oi will,” says he, lumbering along and stumbling over his ridiculous sword.
The thing was a farce from the start. By the time we had slipped over the rampart and made our way through the pitch dark down to the bank of the Goomtee,’ I had realised that I was in company with an irresponsible lunatic, who had no real notion of what he was doing. Even while we were stripping for our swim, he suddenly jerked his head up, at the sound of a faint plop out on the water.
“That’s trout afther minnow,” says he, and then there was another louder plop. “An’ that’s otter afther trout,” says he, with satisfaction. “Are ye a fisherman, are ye?” Before I could hush his babbling, he had suddenly seized my hand – and him standing there bollock-naked with his togs piled on his head – and said fervently:
“D’ye know what – we’re goin’ to do wan o’ the deeds that saved the Impoire, so we are! An’ Oi don’t moind tellin’ ye somethin’ else – for the first toime in me loife, Oi’m scared!”
“The first time!” squeaks I, but already he was plunging in with a splash like the launching of the Great Eastern, puffing and striking out in the dark, leaving me with the appalling realisation that for once I was in the company of someone as terrified as myself. It was desperate – I mean, on previous enterprises of this kind I’d been used to relying on some gallant idiot who could keep his head, but here I was with this buffoon who was not only mad Irish, but was plainly drunk with the idea of playing Dick Champion, the Saviour of the Side, and was trembling in his boots at the same time. Furthermore, he was given to daydreaming about trouts and otters at inappropriate moments, and had no more idea of moving silently than a bear with a ball and chain. But there was nothing for it now; I slid into the freezing water and swam the half-furlong to the far bank, where he was standing on one leg in the mud, hauling his clothes on, and making the deuce of a row about it.
“Are ye there, Flash?” says he, in a hoarse whisper you could have heard in Delhi. “We’ll have to be hellish quiet, ye know. Oi think there’s pandies up the bank!”
Since we could see their picquets round the camp-fires not fifty yards away, it was a reasonable conclusion, and we hadn’t stolen twenty yards along the riverside when someone hailed us. I shouted back, and our challenger remarked that it was cold, at which the oaf Kavanaugh petrified me by suddenly bawling out: “Han, bhai, bahut tunder!”b like some greenhorn reciting from a Hindi primer. I hustled him quickly away, took him by the neck, and hissed:
“Will you keep your damned gob shut, you great murphy?”
He apologised in a nervous whisper, and muttered something about Queen and Country; his eye was glittering feverishly. “Oi’ll be more discreet, Flash,” says he, and so we went on, with me answering another couple of challenges before we reached the bridge, and crossed safely over into Lucknow town.
This was the testing part, for here there was lighting in the streets, and passers-by, and Kavanaugh might easily be recognised as counterfeit. The swim hadn’t done his dyed skin any good, and apart from that his outlandish rig, the European walk, the whole cut of the man, was an invitation to disaster. Well, thinks I, if he’s spotted, it’s into the dark for Flashy, and old O’Hooligan can take care of himself.
The worst of it was, he seemed incapable of keeping quiet, but was forever halting to mutter: “The mosque, ah, that’s right, now – and then de little stone bridge – where the divil is it? D’ye see it, Flashy – it ought to be right by hereabouts?” I told him if he must chunter, to do it in Hindi, and he said absent-mindedly “Oi will, Oi will, niver fear. Oi wish to God we had a compass.” He seemed to think he was in Phoenix Park.
It wasn’t too bad at first, because we were moving through gardens, with few folk about, but then we came to the great Chauk Bazaar. Thank God it was ill-lit, but there were groups of pandies everywhere, folk at the stalls, idlers at every corner, and even a few palkis swaying through the narrow ways. I put on a bold front, keeping Kavanaugh between me and the wall, and just swaggered along, spitting. No one gave me a second glance, but by hellish luck we passed close by a group of pandies with some whores in tow, and one of the tarts plucked at Kavanaugh’s sleeve and made an improper suggestion; her sepoy stared and growled resentfully, and my heart was in my mouth as I hustled Kavanaugh along, shouting over my shoulder that he’d just been married the previous day and was exhausted, at which they laughed and let us be. At least that kept him shut up for a spell, but no sooner were we clear of the bazaar than he was chattering with relief, and stopped to pick carrots in a vegetable patch, remarking at the top of his voice that they were “the swaitest little things” he’d tasted in months.
Then he lost our way. “That looks devilish like the Kaiser Bagh,” says he, and fell into a monsoon ditch. I hauled him out, and he went striding off into the dark, and to my horror stopped a little old fellow and asked where we were. The man said “Jangli Ganj”, and hurried off, glancing suspiciously at us. Kavanaugh stood and scratched himself and said it wasn’t possible. “If this is Jangli Ganj,” says he, “then where the hell is Mirza Kera, will ye tell me that? Ye know what, Flashman, that ould clown doesn’t know where he’s at, at all, at all.” After that we blundered about in the dark, two daring and desperate men on our vital secret mission, and then Kavanaugh gave a great laugh and said it was all right, he knew where we were, after all, and that must be Moulvie Jenab’s garden, so we should go left.
We did, and finished up striking matches along Haidar’s Canal – at least, that’s what Kavanaugh said it was, and he should have known, for he was in it twice, thrashing about in the water and cursing. When he had climbed out he was in a thundering rage, swearing the Engineers had got the map of Lucknow all wrong, but we must cross the canal anyway, and bear left until we hit the Cawnpore road. “The bloody thing’s over dere somewhere!” cries he, and since he seemed sure of that, at least, I stifled my growing alarm and off we went, with Kavanaugh tripping over things and stopping every now and then to peer into the gloom wondering: “D’ye think that garden could have been the Char Bagh, now? No, no, niver – and yet agin, it moight be – what d’ye think, Flashy?”
What I thought you may guess; we must have been wandering for hours, and for all we knew we might be heading back towards the Residency. Kavanaugh’s slippers had given out, and when he lost one of them we had to grope about in a melon patch until he found it; his feet were in a deplorable condition, and he’d lost his shield, but he was still convinced our plight was all the fault of the ancient he had asked the way from. He thought we might try a cast to our right, so we did, and found ourselves wandering in Dilkoosha Park, which was full of pandy artillery; even I knew we were quite out the way, and Kavanaugh said, yes, he had made a mistake, but such mishaps were of frequent occurrence. We must bear away south, so we tried that, and I asked a peasant sitting out with his crops if he would guide us to the Alam Bagh. He said he was too old and lame, and Kavanaugh lost his temper and roared at him, at which the fellow ran off shrieking, and the dogs began to bark and we had to run for it and Kavanaugh went headlong into a thorn bush. (And this, as he’d remarked, was one of the Deeds that Saved the Empire; it’s in all the books.)
There was no end to the fellow’s capacity for disaster, apparently. Given a choice of paths, he headed along one which brought us full tilt into a pandy patrol, and I had to talk our way out of it by saying we were poor men going to Umroula to tell a friend the British had shot his brother. Arriving in a village, he wandered into a hut when I wasn’t looking, and blundered about in the dark, seized a woman by the thigh – fortunately she was too terrified to cry out, and we got away. After that he took to crying out “That’s Jafirabad, Oi’m certain sure. And that’s Salehnagar, over there, yes.” Pause. “Oi think.” The upshot of that was that we landed in a swamp, and spent over an hour ploshing about in the mud, and Kavanaugh’s language was shocking to hear. We went under half a dozen times before we managed to find dry land, and I spotted a house not far off, with a light in an upper window, and insisted that Kavanaugh must rest while I found out where we were. He agreed, blaspheming because the last of his dye had rubbed off with repeated immersions.
I went to the house, and who should be at the window but the charmingest little brown girl, who said we were not far from Alam Bagh, but the British had arrived there, and people were running away. I thanked her, inwardly rejoicing, and she peeped at me over the sill and says:
“You are very wet, big man. Why not come in and rest, while you dry your clothes? Only five rupees.”
By George, thinks I, why not? I was tired, and sick, and it had been the deuce of a long time, what with sieges and cholera and daft Irishmen falling in bogs; this was just the tonic I needed, so I scrambled up, and there she was, all chubby and brown and shiny, giggling on her charpoy and shaking her bouncers at me. I seized hold, nearly crying at this unexpected windfall, and in a twinkling was marching her round the room, horse artillery fashion, while she squeaked and protested that for five rupees I shouldn’t be so impatient. I was, though, and it was just as well, for I’d no sooner finished the business than Kavanaugh was under the window, airing his Urdu plaintively in search of me, and wanting to know what was the delay?
I leaned out and cadged five rupees off him, explaining it was a bribe for an old sick man who knew the way; he passed it up, I struggled into my wet fugs, kissed my giggling Delilah goodnight, and scrambled down, feeling fit for anything.
It took us another two hours, though, for Kavanaugh was about done, and we had to keep dodging behind trees to avoid parties of peasants who were making for Lucknow. I was getting a mite alarmed, because the moon was up, and I knew that dawn couldn’t be far off; if we were caught by daylight, with Kavanaugh looking as pale as Marley’s ghost, we were done for. I cursed myself for a fool, whoring and wasting time when we should have been pushing on – what had I been thinking of? D’you know, I suddenly realised that in my exasperation with Kavanaugh, and all that aimless wandering in wrong directions, and watching him fall in tanks and canals, I’d forgotten the seriousness of the whole thing – perhaps I was still a trifle light-headed from my illness, but I’d even forgotten my fears. They came back now, though, in full force, as we staggered along; I was about as tuckered as he was, my head was swimming, and I must have covered the last mile in a walking dream, because the next thing I remember is bearded faces barring our way, and blue-tunicked troopers with white puggarees, and thinking, “These are 9th Lancers.”
Then there was an officer holding me by the shoulders, and to my astonishment it was Gough, to whom I’d served brandy and smokes on the verandah at Meerut. He didn’t know me, but he poured spirits into us, and had us borne down into the camp, where the bugles were blowing, and the cavalry pickets were falling in, and the flag was going up, and it all looked so brisk and orderly and safe you would have wept for relief – but the cheeriest sight of all, to me, was that crumpled, bony figure outside the headquarter tent, and the dour, wrinkled old face under the battered helmet. I hadn’t seen Campbell close to, not since Balaclava; he was an ugly old devil, with a damned caustic tongue and a graveyard sense of humour, but I never saw a man yet who made me feel more secure.
He must have been a rare disappointment to Kavanaugh, though, for at the sight of him my blundering Paddy threw off his tiredness, and made a tremendous parade of announcing who he was, fishing out the message, and presenting it like the last gallant survivor stumbling in with the News; you never saw suffering nobility like it as he explained how we’d come out of Lucknow, but Campbell, listening and tugging at his dreary moustache, just said “Aye”, and sniffed, and added after a moment: “That’s surprising.” Kavanaugh, who had probably expected stricken admiration, looked quite deflated, and when Campbell told him to “Away you and lie down”, he obeyed pretty huffily.
I knew Campbell, of course, so I wasn’t a bit astonished at the way he greeted me, when he realised who I was.
“It’s no’ you again?” says he, like a Free Kirk elder to the town drunk. “Dearie me – ye’re not looking a whit better than when I saw ye last. I doot ye’ve nae discretion, Flashman.” He sighed and shook his head, but just as he was turning away to his tent he looked back and says: “I’m glad tae see ye, mind.”
I suppose there are those who’d say that there’s no higher honour than that, coming from Old Slowcoach; if that’s so, I must make the most of it, for it’s all the thanks I ever got for convoying Kavanaugh out of Lucknow. Not that I’m complaining, mind, for God knows I’ve had my share of undeserved credit, but it’s a fact that Kavanaugh stole all the limelight when the story came out; I’m certain it was sheer lust for glory that had made him undertake the job in the first place, for when I joined him in the rest-tent after we’d left Campbell, he broke off the kneeling-and-praying which he was engaged in, looked up at me with his great freckled yokel face, and says anxiously:
“D’yez think they’ll give us the Victoria Cross?”
Well, in the end they did give him the V.C. for that night’s work, while all I got was a shocking case of dysentery. He was a civilian, of course, so they were bound to make a fuss of him, and there was so much V.C.-hunting going on just then that I suppose they thought recognised heroes like me could be passed over – ironic, ain’t it? Anyway, I wasn’t recommended at the time for any decoration at all, and he was, which seemed fairly raw, although I don’t deny he was brave, you understand. Anyone who’s as big a bloody fool as that, and goes gallivanting about seeking sorrow, must be called courageous. Still … if it hadn’t been for me, finding his blasted slipper for him, and fishing him out of canals – and most important of all, getting the right direction from that little brown banger – friend Kavanaugh might still have been traipsing along Haidar’s Canal asking the way. But thinking back, perhaps I got the better of the bargain – she was a lissome little wriggler, and it was Kavanaugh’s five rupees, after all.36
a Organisation, administration.
b “Yes, brother, very cold!”