Flashman in the Great Game

Part one of a new adventure satire

Here I was in the summer of '56, safely content on half pay as a staff colonel, with not so much as a sniff of war in sight, except the Persian farce, and that didn't matter. I was comfortably settled with Elspeth and little Havvy (the first fruit of our union, a guzzling lout of seven) in a fine house off Berkeley Square which Elspeth's inheritance maintained in lavish style, dropping by occasionally at the Horse Guards, leading the social life, clubbing and turfing, whoring here and there as an occasional change from my lawful brainless beauty and being lionized by all London--well, I'd stood at Armageddon (Balaclava, that is) and battled for the Lord (ostensibly), hadn't I, and enough had leaked out about my subsequent secret exploits in Central Asia (though government was damned cagey about them, on account of our delicate peace negotiations with Russia) to suggest that Flashy had surpassed all his former heroics. So with the country in a patriotic fever about its returning braves, I was ace-high in popular esteem--there was even talk that I'd get one of the new Victoria Crosses (for what that was worth), but it's my belief that Airey and Cardigan scotched it between them. Jealous bastards.

I was going happily about my business, helping my dear wife spend her cash--which she did like a clipper hand in port, I'm bound to say--and you would have said we were a blissful young couple, turning a blind eye to each other's infidelities and galloping in harness when we felt like it, which was frequent, for if anything, she got more beddable with the passing years.

And then came the royal invitation to Balmoral Castle, which reduced Elspeth to a state of nervous exultation close to hysterics and took me clean aback. I've puzzled over it sometimes and can only conclude that the reason we were bidden to Balmoral that September was that Russia was still very much the topic of the day, what with the new Tsar's coronation and the recent peace, and I was one of the most senior men to have been a prisoner in Russia's hands.

I didn't have leisure to speculate at the time, though, for Elspeth's frenzy at the thought of being "in attendance," as she chose to call it, claimed everyone's attention within a mile of Berkeley Square. Being a Scotch tradesman's daughter, my darling was one degree more snobbish than a penniless Spanish duke, and in the days before we went north, her condescension to her middle-class friends would have turned your stomach. Between gloating and babbling about how she and the Queen would discuss dressmaking while Albert and I boozed in the gun room (she had a marvellous notion of court life, you see), she went into declines at the thought that she would come out in spots or have her drawers fall down when being presented. You must have endured that sort of thing yourself.

"Oh, Harry, Jane Speedicut will be green! You and I--guests of Her Majesty! It will be the finest thing--and I have my new French dresses--the ivory, the beige silk, the lilac satin and the lovely, lovely green, which old Admiral Lawson so admired--if you think it is not a leetle low for the Queen? And my barège for Sunday--will there be members of the nobility staying also?--will there be ladies whose husbands are of lower rank than you? Ellen Parkin--Lady Parkin, indeed!--was consumed with spite when I told her--oh. and I must have another maid who can manage my hair. for Sarah is too maladroit for words, although she is very passable with dresses--what shall I wear to picnics?"

I was glad, I can tell you, when we finally reached Abergeldie, the castle where guests were put up--for Balmoral was very new then and Albert was still putting the finishing touches to it. Elspeth was almost too nervous to talk by this time, but her first glimpse of our royal hosts reduced her awe a trifle. We took a stroll in the direction of Balmoral the first afternoon and on the road met what seemed to be a family of tinkers led by a small washer woman and an usher who had evidently pinched his headmaster's clothes. Fortunately, I recognised them as Victoria and Albert and knew enough simply to raise my hat, for they loathed to be treated as royalty when they were playing at being commoners.

When they were past and I told Elspeth who they were, she nearly swooned and I had to revive her by threatening to carry her into the bushes and molest her. She observed that Her Majesty had looked quite royal, though in a common sort of way.

The next day, when we were waiting to be presented at Balmoral, she was high in the scale again and the fact that we shared the waiting room with some lord and his beak-nosed lady--who looked at us as though we were riffraff--reduced my poor little scatterbrain to quaking terror. I'd met the royals before, of course, and tried to reassure her, whispering that she looked a stunner (which was true) and not to be put out by Lord and Lady Puffbuttock, who were now ignoring us with that icy incivility which is the stamp of our lower-class aristocracy. (I know; I'm one myself nowadays.)

It was quite handy that our companions kept their noses in the air, though, for it gave me the chance to loop a ribbon from the lady's enormous crinoline onto an occasional table without her knowing, and when the doors to the royal drawing room were opened, she set off and brought the whole thing crashing down, crockery and all, in full view of the little court circle. I kept Elspeth in an iron grip, and steered her round the wreckage, and so Colonel and Mrs. Flashman made their bows while the doors were hurriedly closed behind us, and the muffled sounds of the Puffbuttocks being extricated by flunkeys was music to my ears, even if it did make the Queen look more popeyed than usual. The moral is: Don't put on airs with Flashy, and if you do, keep your crinolines out of harm's way.

And, as it turned out, to Elspeth's lifelong delight and my immense satisfaction, she and the Queen got on like port and nuts from the first. Elspeth, you see, was one of those females who are so beautiful that even other women can't help liking 'em, and in her idiot way she was a lively and engaging soul. The fact that she was Scotch helped, too, for the Queen was in one of her Jacobite moods just then, and by the grace of God, someone had read Waverley to Elspeth when she was a child and had taught her to recite The Lady of the Lake.

I had been dreading meeting Albert again, in case he mentioned his whore-mongering nephew Willy, now deceased, but all he did was say:

"Ah, Colonel Flash-mann--haff you read Tocqueville's Ancien Régime?"

I said I hadn't, yet, but I'd be at the railway library first thing in the morning, and he looked doleful and went on: "It warns us that bureaucratic central government, far from curing the ills of revolution, can actually arouse them."

I said I'd often thought that, now that he mentioned it, and he nodded and said: "Italy is very unsatisfactory," which brought our conversation to a close. Fortunately, old Ellenborough, who'd been chief in India at the time of my Kabul heroics, was among those present, and he buttonholed me, which was a profound relief. And then the Queen addressed me, in that high singsong of hers:

"Your dear wife, Colonel Flashman, tells me that you are quite recovered from the rigours of your Russian adventures, which you shall tell us of presently. They seem to be a quite extraordinary people; Lord Granville writes from Petersburg that Lady Wodehouse's Russian maid was found eating the contents of one of her ladyship's dressing-table pots--it was castor-oil pomatum for the hair What a remarkable extravagance, was it not?"

That was my cue, of course, to regale them with a few domestic anecdotes of Russia and its primitive ways, which went down well, with the Queen nodding approval and saying: "How barbarous! How strange!" while Elspeth glowed to see her hero holding the floor. Albert joined in in his rib-tickling way to observe that no European state offered such fertile soil for the seeds of socialism as Russia did and that he feared that the new Tsar had little intellect or character.

"So Lord Granville says," was the Queen's prim rejoinder, "but I do not think it is quite his place to make such observations on a royal personage. Do you not agree, Mrs. Flashman?"

Old Ellenborough, who was a cheery, boozy buffer, said to me that he hoped I had tried to civilise the Russians a little by teaching them cricket, and Albert, who had no more humour than the parish trough, looks stuffy and says:

"I am sure Colonel Flash-mann would do no such thing. I cannot unner-stend this passion for cricket; it seems to me a great waste of time. What is the proff-it to a younk boy in crouching motionless in a field for hourss on end? Em I nott right, Colonel?"

"Well, sir," says I, "I've looked out in the deep field myself long enough to sympathise with you; it's a great fag, to be sure. But perhaps, when the boy's a man, his life may depend on crouching motionless, behind a Khyber rock or a Burmese bush--so a bit of practice may not come amiss, when he's young."

Which was sauce, if you like, but I could never resist the temptation, in grovelling to Albert, to put a pinch of pepper down his shirt. It was in my character of bluff, no-nonsense Harry, too, and a nice reminder of the daring deeds I'd done. Ellenborough said, "Hear, hear," and even Albert looked only half sulky and said all disscipline was admirable, but there must be better ways of instilling it; the Prince of Wales, he said, should nott play cricket but some more constructiff game.

After that we had tea, very informal, and Elspeth distinguished herself by actually prevailing on Albert to eat a cucumber sandwich; she'll have him in the bushes in a minute, thinks I, and on that happy note our first visit concluded, with Elspeth going home on a cloud to Abergeldie.

But if it was socially useful, it wasn't much of a holiday, although Elspeth revelled in it. She went for walks with the Queen, twice (calling themselves Mrs. Fitzjames and Mrs. Marmion, if you please), and even made Albert laugh when charades were played in the evening, by impersonating Helen of Troy with a Scotch accent. I couldn't even get a grin out of him; we went shooting with the other gentlemen, and it was purgatory having to stalk at his pace. He was keen as mustard, though, and slaughtered stags like a ghazi on hashish--you'll hardly credit it, but his notion of sport was that a huge long trench should be dug so that we could sneak up on the deer unobserved; he'd have done it, too, but the local gillies showed so much disgust at the idea that he dropped it. He couldn't understand their objections, though; to him, all that mattered was killing the beasts.

Elspeth and I spent an evening at a birthday party at one of the big houses in the neighbourhood; it was a cheery affair, and we didn't leave till close on midnight to drive back to Abergeldie. It was a close, thundery night, with big raindrops starting to fall, but we didn't mind; I had taken enough drink on board to be monstrously horny, and if the drive had been longer and Elspeth's crinoline less of a hindrance, I'd have had at her on the carriage seat. She got out at the lodge giggling and squeaking, and I chased her through the front door--and there was the messenger of doom, waiting in the hall. He was a tall chap, almost a swell, but with a jaw too long and an eye too sharp; very respectable, with a hard hat under his arm and a billy in his hip pocket, I'll wager. I know a genteel strong man from a government office when I see one.

He asked could he speak to me, so I took my arm from Elspeth's waist, patted her towards the stairs with a whispered promise that I'd be up directly to sound the charge and told him to state his business. He did that smart enough.

"I am from the Treasury, Colonel Flashman," says he. "My name is Hutton. Lord Palmerston wishes to speak with you."

It took me flat aback, slightly foxed that I was. My first thought was that he must want me to go back to London, but then he said: "His lordship is at Balmoral, sir. If you will be good enough to come with me--I have a coach."

"But--but ... you said Lord Palmerston? The Prime. ... What the deuce? Palmerston wants me?"

"At once, sir, if you please. The matter is urgent."

Well, I couldn't make anything of it. I never doubted it was genuine--as I've said, the man in front of me had authority written all over him. But it's a fair start when you come rolling innocently home and are told that the first statesman of Europe is round the corner and wants you at the double--and now the fellow was positively ushering me towards the door.

"Hold on," says I. "Give me a moment to change my shoes." What I wanted was a moment to put my head in the (continued on page 122)Flashman(continued from page 84) washbowl and think, and despite his insistence, I snapped at him to wait and hurried upstairs.

I went to my dressing room, fretting, donned my hat and topcoat against the worsening weather and remembered that Elspeth, poor child, must even now be waiting for her cross-buttocking lesson. Well, it was hard lines on her, but duty called, so I just popped my head round her door to call a chaste farewell--and there she was, damn it, reclining languorously on the coverlet like one of those randy classical goddesses, wearing nothing but the big ostrich-plume fan I'd brought her from Egypt, and her sniggering maid turning the lamp down low. Elspeth clothed could stop a monk in his tracks; naked and pouting expectantly over a handful of red feathers, she'd have made the Grand Inquisitor burn his books. I hesitated between love and duty for a full second, and then, "The hell with Palmerston; let him wait!" cries I, and was plunging for the bed before the abigail was fairly out of the room. Never miss the chance, as the Duke used to say.

"Lord Palmerston? Oooo-ah! Harry--what do you mean?"

"Ne'er mind!" cries I, taking hold and bouncing away.

"But Harry--such impatience, my love! And, dearest--you're wearing your hat!"

"The next one's going to be another boy, damn it!" And for a few glorious stolen moments I forgot Palmerston and minions in the hall and marvelled at the way that superb idiot woman of mine could keep up a stream of questions while performing like a harem houri--we were locked in an astonishing embrace on her dressing-table stool, I recall, when there was a knock on the door and the maid's giggling voice piped through to say the gentleman downstairs was getting impatient, and would I be long?

"Tell him I'm just packing my baggage," says I. "I'll be down directly," and presently, keeping my mouth on hers to stem her babble of questions, I carried my darling tenderly back to the bed. Always leave things as you would wish to find them.

"I cannot stay longer, my love," I told her. "The Prime Minister is waiting." And with bewildered entreaties pursuing me I skipped out, trousers in hand, made a hasty toilet on the landing, panted briefly against the wall and then stepped briskly down. It's a great satisfaction, looking back, that I kept the government waiting in such a good cause, and I set it down here as a deserved tribute to the woman who was the only real love of my life--and as the last pleasant memory I was to have for a long time ahead.

As we bowled along through the driving rain to Balmoral, I told myself that it was far more likely to be fair news than foul. It wasn't at all like being bidden to the presence of one of your true ogres. Pam might be an impatient old tyrant when it came to bullying foreigners and sending warships to deal with the dagos, but everyone knew he was a decent, kindly old sport at bottom, who put folk at their ease and told a good story. Why, it was notorious that the reason he wouldn't live at Downing Street, but on Piccadilly, was that he liked to ogle the good-lookers from his window and wave to the cads and crossing sweepers, who loved him because he talked plain English and would stump up a handsome subscription for a prize pug like Tom Sayers. That was Pam--and if anyone ever tells you that he was a politically unprincipled old scoundrel, who carried things with a high and reckless hand, I can only say that it didn't seem to work a whit worse than the policies of more high-minded statesmen. The only difference I ever saw between them and Pam was that he did his dirty work barefaced (when he wasn't being deeper than damnation) and grinned about it.

So I was feeling pretty easy as we covered the two miles to Balmoral--and even pleasantly excited--which shows you how damned soft and optimistic I must have grown; I should have known that it's never safe to get within range of princes or prime ministers. When we got to the castle, I followed Hutton smartly through a side door, up some back stairs and along to heavy double doors where a burly civilian was standing guard; I gave my whiskers a martial twitch as he opened the door and stepped briskly in.

You know how it can be when you enter a strange room--everything can look as safe and merry as ninepence, and yet there's something in the air that touches you like an electric shock. It was here now, a sort of bristling excitement that put my nerves on edge in an instant. And yet there was nothing out of the ordinary to see--just a big, cheerful panelled room with a huge fire roaring under the mantel, a great table littered with papers and two sober chaps bustling about it under the direction of a slim young fellow--Barrington, Palmerston's secretary. And over by the fire were three other men--Ellenborough, with his great flushed face and his belly stuck out; a slim, keen-looking old file whom I recognised as Wood, of the Admiralty; and with his back to the blaze and his coattails up, the man himself, peering at Ellenborough with his bright, shortsighted eyes and looking as though his dyed hair and whiskers had just been rubbed with a towel--old Squire Pam as ever was. As I went in, his brisk, sharp voice was ringing out (he never gave a damn who heard him):

"So if he's to be Prince Consort, it don't make a hap'orth of difference, you see. Not to the country--or me. However, as long as Her Majesty thinks it does--that's what matters, what? Haven't you found that telegraph of Quilter's yet, Barrington? Well, look in the Persian packet, then."

And then he caught sight of me and frowned, sticking out his long lip. "Ha, that's the man!" cries he. "Come in, sir, come in!"

What with the drink I'd taken, and my sudden nervousness, I tripped over the mat--which was an omen, if you like--and came as near as a toucher to oversetting a chair.

"By George," says Pam, "is he drunk? All these young fellows are, nowadays. Here, Barrington, see him to a chair, before he breaks a window." Barrington pulled out a chair for me and the three at the fireplace seemed to be staring ominously at me while I apologised. Pam, with those bright steady eyes, took in every inch of me as he nursed his port glass and stuck a thumb into his fob--for all the world like the marshal of a Kansas trail town surveying the street. (Which is what he was, of course, on a rather grand scale.)

He was very old at this time, with the gout and his false teeth forever slipping out, but he was evidently full of ginger tonight and not in one of his easygoing moods.

"Young Flashman," growls he. "Very good. Staff colonel, on half pay at present, what? Well, from this moment, you're back on the full list, an' what you hear in this room tonight is to go no farther, understand? Not to anyone--not even in this castle. You follow?"

I followed, sure enough--what he meant was that the Queen wasn't to know: It was notorious that he never told her anything. But that was nothing; it was his tone, and the solemn urgency of his warning, that put the hairs up on my neck.

"Very good," says he again. "Now, then, before I talk to you, Lord Ellen-borough has somethin' to show you--want your opinion of it. All right, Barrington, I'll take that Persian stuff now, while Colonel Flashman looks at the damned buns."

I thought I'd misheard him, as he limped past me and took his seat at the table head, pawing impatiently among his papers. But sure enough, Barrington passed over to me a little lead biscuit box and Ellenborough, seating himself beside me, indicated that I should open it. I pushed back the lid, mystified, and there, in a rice-paper wrapping, were three or four greyish, stale-looking little scones, no bigger than captain's biscuits.

"There," says Pam, not looking up from his papers. "Don't eat 'em. Tell his (continued on page 128)Flashman(continued from page 122) lordship what you make of those."

I knew, right off; that faint Eastern smell was unmistakable, but I touched one of them to make sure.

"They're Indian chapatties, my lord," says I, astonished.

Ellenborough nodded. "Ordinary cakes of native food. You attach no signal significance to them, though?"

"Why ... no, sir."

Obviously, Ministers of the Crown don't ask damfool questions for nothing, but I could only stare at him. Pam, apparently deep in his papers at the table head, wheezing and sucking his teeth and muttering to Barrington, paused to grunt: "Serve the damn things at dinner an' they'd alarm me," and Ellenborough tapped the biscuit box.

"These chapatties came last week from India, by fast steam sloop. Sent by our political agent at a place called Jhansi. Know it? It's down below the Jumna, in Mahratta country. For weeks now, scores of such cakes have been turning up among the sepoys of our native Indian garrison at Jhansi--not as food, though. It seems the sepoys pass them from hand to hand as tokens--"

I just shook my head and looked attentive, wondering what the devil this was all about, while Ellenborough went on: "Our political knows where they come from, all right. The native village constables--you know, the chowkidars--bake them in batches of ten and send one apiece to ten different sepoys; and each sepoy is bound to make ten more and pass them on, to his comrades, and so on, ad infinitum. It's not new, of course; ritual cake passing is very old in India. But there are three remarkable things about it: First, it happens only rarely; second, even the natives themselves don't know why it happens, only that the cakes must be baked and passed; and third"--he tapped the box again--"they believe that the appearance of the cakes foreshadows terrible catastrophe."

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

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

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

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

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

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

They heard me out, in a silence that lasted a full minute after I'd finished, and then Wood says quietly: "It fits, my lord."

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

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

Ellenborough cleared his throat and fixed his boozy spaniel eyes on me. "Count Ignatieff," says he, "has made two clandestine visits to India in the past year. Our politicals first had word of him last autumn at Ghuznee; he came over the Khyber disguised as an Afridi horse coper, to Peshawar. There we lost him--as you might expect, one disguised man among so many natives--"

"But, my lord, that can't be!" I couldn't (continued on page 160)Flashman(continued from page 128) help interrupting. "You can't lose Ignatieff, if you know what to look for. However he's disguised, there's one thing he can't hide--his eyes! One of 'em's half brown, half blue!"

"He can if he puts a patch over it," says Ellenborough. "India's full of one-eyed men. In any event, we picked up his trail again--and on both occasions it led to the same place--Jhansi. He spent two months there, all told, usually out of sight, and our people were never able to lay a hand on him. What he was doing, they couldn't discover--except that it was mischief. Now we see what the mischief was"--and he pointed to the chapatties. "Brewing insurrection, beyond a doubt. And having done his infernal work--back over the hills to Afghanistan. This summer he was in St. Petersburg--but from what our politicals did learn, he's expected back in Jhansi again. We don't know when."

No doubt it was the subject under discussion, but there didn't seem to be a bit of heat coming from the blazing fire behind me; the room felt suddenly cold and I was aware of the rain slashing at the panes and the wind moaning in the dark outside. I was looking at Ellen-borough, but in his face I could see Ignatieff's hideous parti-coloured eye and hear that soft icy voice hissing past the long cigarette clenched between his teeth.

"Plain enough, what?" says Pam. "The mine's laid, in Jhansi--an' if it explodes...God knows what might follow. India looks tranquil enough--but how many other Jhansis. how many other Ignatieffs are there?" He shrugged. "We don't know, but we can be certain there's no more sensitive spot than this one. The Russians have picked Jhansi with care--we annexed it only two years ago, on the old Raja's death, an' we've still barely more than a foothold there. Thug country, it used to be, an' still pretty wild, for all it's one of the richest thrones in India. Worst of all, it's ruled by a woman--the Rani, the Raja's widow. She was old when she married him, I gather, an' there was no legitimate heir, so we took it under our wing--an' she didn't like it. She rules under our tutelage these days--but she remains as implacable an enemy as we have in India. Fertile soil for Master Ignatieff to sow his plots."

He paused and then looked straight at me. "Aye--the mine's laid in Jhansi. But precisely when an' where they'll try to fire it, an' whether it'll go off or not...this we must know--an' prevent at all costs."

The way he said it went through me like an icicle. I'd been sure all along that I wasn't being lectured for fun, but now, looking at their heavy faces. I knew that unless my poltroon instinct was sadly at fault, some truly hellish proposal was about to emerge. I waited quaking for the axe to fall, while Pam stirred his false teeth with his tongue--which was a damned unnerving sight, I may tell you--and then delivered sentence.

"Last week, the Board of Control decided to send an extraordinary agent to Jhansi. His task will be to discover what the Russians have been doing there, how serious is the unrest in the sepoy garrison, and to deal with this hostile beldame of a Rani by persuadin' her, if possible, that loyalty to the British raj is in her best interest." He struck his finger on the table. "An' if an' when this man Ignatieff returns to Jhansi again--to deal with him, too. Not a task for an ordinary political, you'll agree."

No, but I was realising, with mounting horror, who they did think it was a task for. But I could only sit, with my spine dissolving and my face set in an expression of attentive idiocy, while he went inexorably on.

"The Board of Control chose you without hesitation, Flashman. I approved the choice myself. You don't know it, but I've been watchin' you since my time as Foreign Secretary. You've been a political--an' a deuced successful one. I dare say you think that the work you did in Middle Asia last year has gone unrecognised, but that's not so." He rumbled at me impressively, wagging his great fat head. "You've the highest name as an active officer, you've proved your resource--you know India--fluent in languages, includin' Russian, which could be of the first importance, what? You know this man Ignatieff, by sight, an' you've bested him before. You see, I know all about you, Flashman," (you old fool, I wanted to shout, you don't know anything of the bloody sort; you don't fit to be Prime Minister, if that's what you think) "an' I know of no one else so fitted to this work. How old are you? Thirty-four--young enough to go a long way yet, for your country and yourself." And the old buffoon tried to look sternly inspiring, with his teeth gurgling.

It was appalling. God knows I've had my crosses to bear, but this beat all. As so often in the past, I was the victim of my own glorious and entirely unearned reputation--Flashy, the hero of Jalalabad, the last man out of the Kabul retreat and the first man into the Balaclava battery, the beau sabreur of the Light Cavalry, Queen's Medal, thanks of Parliament, darling of the mob, with a liver as yellow as yesterday's custard, if they'd only known it. And there was nothing, with Pam's eye on me, and Ellenborough and Wood looking solemnly on, that I could do about it. Oh, if I'd followed my best instincts, I could have fled wailing from the room, or fallen blubbering at some convenient foot--but of course I didn't. With sick fear mounting in my throat, I knew that I'd have to go, and that was that--back to India, with its heat and filth and flies and dangers and poxy niggers. But there wasn't the slightest chance to wriggle: all I could do was put on my muscular Christian expression, look Palmerston fearlessly in the eye, like Dick Champion when the headmaster gives him the job of teaching the fags not to swear, and say I'd do my best.

•

I had three days still left at Balmoral, and the first of them was spent closeted with Ellenborough and a sharp little creature from the Board of Control, who lectured me in maddening detail about my mission to Jhansi and conditions in India--and then, on the Wednesday morning, something happened which drove everything else clean out of my mind. It was such a shock, such an unbelievable coincidence in view of what had gone before (or so it seemed at the time) that I can still think back to it with disbelief--aye, and start sweating at the thought.

I'd had a thoroughly drunken night at Abergeldie, to take my mind off the future, and when I woke cloth-headed and surly on the Wednesday morning, Elspeth suggested that instead of breakfast, I'd be better going for a canter. I damned her advice and sent for a horse, left her weeping sulkily into her boiled egg and ten minutes later was galloping the fumes away along the Balmoral road. I reached the castle and trotted up as far as the carriage entrance: beyond it, on the far side of the gravel sweep, one of the big castle coaches that brought quality visitors from Aberdeen station was drawn up and flunkeys were handing down the arrivals and bowing them towards the steps leading to the side door.

Some more poor fools of consequence about to savour the royal hospitality, thinks I. and was just about to turn my horse away when I happened to glance again at the group of gentlemen in travelling capes who were mounting the steps. One of them turned to say something to the flunkeys--and I nearly fell from the saddle, and only saved myself by clutching the mane with both hands. I believe I nearly fainted--for it was something infinitely worse than a ghost; it was real, even if it was utterly impossible. The man on the steps, spruce in the rig of an English country gentleman, and now turning away into the castle, was the man I'd last seen beside the line of carrion gallows at Fort Raim--the man Palmerston was sending me to India to defeat and kill: Count Nicholas Pavlovitch Ignatieff.

•

Ellenborough plumped down on a chair, mopping at the shaving soap on his cheeks--I'd practically had to manhandle his valet to be admitted, and I'd left a trail of startled minions on the back stairs in my haste to get to his room. I was still panting from exertion, to say nothing of shock.

"I want an explanation of this, my lord," says I, "for I'll not believe it's chance."

"What d'ye mean?" says he, goggling.

"Two nights ago, we talked of precious little else but this Count Ignatieff, this Russian monster--how he'd been spying the length and breadth of India, in the very place to which I'm being sent. And now he turns up--the very man! Is that coincidence?" I was in such a taking I didn't stand on ceremony. "How comes he in the country, even? Will you tell me Lord Palmerston didn't know?"

"My God. Flashman!" His big mottled face looked shocked. "What d'ye mean by that?"

"I mean, my lord," says I, trying to hold myself in, "that there's precious little that happens anywhere, let alone in England, that Lord Palmerston doesn't know about--is it possible that he's unaware that the most dangerous agent in Russia--and one of their leading nobles, to boot--is promenading about as large as life? And never a word the other night, when--"

"Stay here," says he, and bustled out, and for ten minutes I chewed my nails until he came back, shutting the door behind him carefully. He had got his normal beetroot colour back, but he looked damned rattled.

"It's true," says he. "Count Ignatieff is here with Lord Aberdeen's party--as a guest of the Queen. It seems--you know we have Granville in Petersburg just now, for the new Tsar's coronation? Well, a party of Russian noblemen--the first since the war--have just arrived in Leith yesterday, bringing messages of good will, or God knows what, from the new monarch to the Queen. Someone had written to Aberdeen--I don't know it all yet--and he brought them with him on his way north, with this fellow among 'em. It's extraordinary! The damnedest chance!"

"Chance, my lord?" says I. "I'll need some convincing of that!"

"Good God. what else? I'll allow it's long odds, but I'm certain if Lord Palmerston had had the least inkling...." He trailed off, and you could see the sudden doubt of his own precious Prime Minister written on his jowly face.

And then, the wildest thought--was it possible, I asked, that Ignatieff knew about my mission?

"Never!" trumpets Ellenborough. "No, that couldn't be! The decision to send you out was taken a bare two weeks since--it would be to credit the Russian intelligence system with superhuman powers--and if he did, what could he accomplish here?--damn it, in the Queen's own home! This isn't Middle Asia--it's a civilised country--"

"My lord, that's not a civilised man," says I. "But what's to be done? I can't meet him!"

"Let me think," says he, and strode about, heaving his stomach round. Then he stopped, heavy with decision.

"I think you must." says he. "If he has seen you--or finds out that you were here and left before your time....Wait, though, it might be put down to tact on your part....Still, no!" He snapped his fingers at me. "No, you must stay. Better to behave as though there was nothing untoward--leave no room to excite suspicion--after all, former enemies meet in time of peace, don't they? And we'll watch him--by George, we will! Perhaps we'll learn something ourselves! Ha-ha!."

And this was the port-sodden clown who had once governed India. I'd never heard such an idiot suggestion--but could I shift him? I pleaded, in the name of common sense, that I should leave at once, but he wouldn't have it.

Strangely enough, by the time I went back to the castle with Elspeth that afternoon, my qualms about coming face to face again with that Russian wolf had somewhat subsided; I'd reminded myself that we weren't meeting on his ground anymore, but on mine, and that the kind of power he'd once had over me was a thing quite past. Still, I won't pretend I was feeling at case, and I'd drummed it into Elspeth's head that not a hint must be let slip about my ensuing departure for India or Pam's visit. She took it in wide-eyed and assured me she would not dream of saying a word, but I realised with exasperation that you couldn't trust any warning to take root in that beautiful empty head: As we approached the drawing-room doors, she was prattling away about what wedding present she should suggest to the Queen for Mary Seymour, and I, preoccupied, said offhand, why not a lusty young coachman, and immediately regretted it--you couldn't be sure she wouldn't pass it on--and then the doors opened, we were announced, and the heads in the room were all turning towards us.

There was the Queen, in the middle of the sofa, with a lady and gentleman behind; Albert, propping up the mantelpiece and lecturing to old Aberdeen, who appeared to be asleep on his feet; half a dozen assorted courtiers--and Ellenborough staring across the room. As we made our bows, and the Queen says, "Ah, Mrs. Flashman, you are come just in time to help with the service of tea." I was following Ellenborough's glance, and there was Ignatieff, with another Russian-looking grandee and a couple of our own gentry. He was staring at me, and by God, he never so much as blinked or twitched a muscle; I made my little bow towards Albert, and as I turned to face Ignatieff again, I felt, God knows why, a sudden rush of to-hell-with-it take hold of me.

"My--dear--Count!" says I, astonished, and everyone stopped talking; the Queen looked popeyed, and even Albert left off prosing to the noble corpse beside him.

"Surely it's Count Ignatieff?" cries I, and then broke off in apology. "Your pardon, ma'am," says I to Vicky. "I was quite startled--I had no notion Count Ignatieff was here! Forgive me," but of course by this time she was all curiosity, and I had to explain that Count Ignatieff was an old comrade-in-arms, so to speak, what? And beam in his direction, while she smiled uncertainly, but not displeased, and Ellenborough played up well and told Albert that he'd heard me speak of being Ignatieff's prisoner during the late war but had had no idea this was the same gentleman, and Albert looked disconcerted and said that was most remarkable.

"Indeed, Highness, I had that honour," says Ignatieff, clicking his heels, and the sound of that chilly voice made my spine tingle. But there was nothing he could do but take the hand I stretched out to him.

"This is splendid, old fellow!" says I, gripping him as though he were my long-lost brother. "Wherever have you been keeping yourself?" One or two of them smiled, to see bluff Flash Harry so delighted at meeting an old enemy--just what they'd have expected, of course. And when the Queen had been made quite au fait with the situation, she said it was exactly like Fitz-James and Roderick Dhu.

So after that it was quite jolly, and Albert made a group with Ignatieff and Ellenborough and me, and questioned me about our acquaintance, and I made light of my captivity and escape, and said what a charming jailer Ignatieff had been, and the brute just stood impassive, with his tawny head bowed over his cup, and looking me over with that amazing half-blue, half-brown eye. He was still the same handsome, broken-nosed young iceberg I remembered--if I'd closed my eyes, I could have heard the lash whistling and cracking in Arabat courtyard, with the Cossacks' grip on my arms.

Albert, of course, was much struck by the coincidence of our meeting again, and preached a short sermon about the brotherhood of men-at-arms, to which Ignatieff smiled politely and I cried "Hear, hear!" It was difficult to guess, but I judged my Muscovite monster wasn't enjoying this too much; he must have been wondering why I pretended to be so glad to see him. But I was all affability: I even presented him to Elspeth, and he bowed and kissed her hand; she was very demure and cool, so I knew she fancied him, the little trollop.

The truth is, my natural insolence was just asserting itself, as it always does when I feel it's safe; when a moment came when Ignatieff and I were left alone together, I thought I'd stick a pin in him, just for sport, so I asked, quietly:

"Brought your knout with you, Count?"

He looked at me a moment before replying. "It is in Russia," says he. "Waiting. So, I have no doubt, is Count Pencherjevsky's daughter."

"Oh, yes," says I. "Little Valla. Is she well, d'you know?"

"I have no idea. But if she is, it is no fault of yours." He glanced away, towards Elspeth and the others. "Is it?"

"She never complained to me," says I, grinning at him. "On that tack--if I'm well, it's no fault of yours, either."

"That is true," says he, and the eye was like a sword point. "However, may I suggest that the less we say about our previous acquaintance, the better? I gather from your...charade, a little while ago--designed, no doubt, to impress your Queen--that you are understandably reluctant that the truth of your behaviour there should be made public."

"Oh, come now," says I, "'t wasn't a patch on yours, old boy. What would the Court of Balmoral think if they knew that the charming Russian nobleman with the funny eye was a murderous animal who flogs innocent men to death and tortures prisoners of war? Thought about that?"

"If you think you were tortured, Colonel Flashman," says he. poker-faced, "then I congratulate you on your ignorance." He put down his cup. "I find this conversation tedious. If you will excuse me," and he turned away.

"Oh, sorry, if you're bored," says I. "I was forgetting--you probably haven't cut a throat or burned a peasant in a week."

It was downright stupid of me, no doubt--two hours earlier I'd been quaking at the thought of meeting him again, and here I was, sassing him to my heart's content. But I can never resist a jibe and a gloat when the enemy's hands are tied, as Thomas Hughes would tell you. Ignatieff didn't seem nearly as fearsome here, among the teacups, with chaps toadying the royals, and cress sandwiches being handed round, and Ellenborough flirting ponderously with Elspeth while the Queen complained to old Aberdeen that it was the press which had killed Lord Hardinge, in her Uncle Leopold's opinion. No, not fearsome at all--without his chains and gallows and dungeons and power of life and death, and never so much as a Cossack Thug to bless himself with. I should have remembered that men like Nicholas Ignatieff are dangerous anywhere--usually when you least expect it.

•

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, 16 years before, had lasted four months on the 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 white 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 Mahrattas 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 someday; 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 scuttlebutt 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 percent, 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 pip-squeak, 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 chapatties 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 chapatties, 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 whomever I talked to, merchant or military, whore or missionary; no ripples at all.

So I didn't linger in Bombay. On the third day, I took the road northeast 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. Such wagons have 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.

When I reached Bundelkhand, the looks of things began to change. It was broken, hilly country with jungle in the valleys and on the slopes, 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 Mahratta 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 wait-a-bit 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 10,000, only a handful of us had escaped. I told myself that here it was different--that less than 100 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 the great citadel 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 dissident sepoys.

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 40 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 syces1 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 had hoped to find him scared or stupid; he wasn't either. He was one of those 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, Major 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 lookout 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 chapatties going round, but those have dried up lately. None have passed since October, and the sepoys of the Twelfth 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.

"There's the other thing," I went on. "The Rani. I have to try to talk some sense into her, even though I gather she's not disposed to be friendly. I'll be obliged if you'll arrange an audience day after tomorrow. For the present, you can tell me your own opinion of her."

He frowned and filled my glass. "You'll think it odd, sir, but I've never even seen her. At the palace, she speaks from behind a purdah, you know, and her chamberlain usually does the talking. She's a stickler for form and since the government granted her diplomatic immunity when her husband died and we assumed suzerainty--well, it makes her difficult to deal with. She's damned bitter, you see. Her husband, old Raja Gangadhar, left no children of his own--odd bird, really." Skene blushed furiously and avoided my eye. "Used to go about in female dress and wore bangles and...perfume, you see."

"No wonder she was bitter," says I.

"What I mean is, the Raja had adopted a boy named Damodar--but Dalhousie wouldn't recognise him as the heir. So the Rani, who'd hoped to be regent, was deprived of her power officially. Between ourselves, we let her run things pretty much as she pleases--with one battalion of sepoys and thirty British civilians to manage the administration, we can't do otherwise, can we?"

"Doesn't that satisfy her, then?"

"Not a bit of it. She detests the fact that she holds power only by our leave and, though she has a quarter of a million in her treasury, she's never forgiven us over some jewellery Calcutta confiscated."

"Interesting lady," says I. "Dangerous, do you think?"

He frowned. "Given the chance, she'd pay off our score double-quick. She's got no army as such, but every man in Jhansi is a born fighter who'd jump when she whistled, for they worship the ground she treads on. She's proud as Lucifer's sister, not to say cruel in her own courts, but she's uncommon kind to the poor folk and highly thought of for her piety. She was brought up like a Mahratta prince--taught to ride and shoot and fence with the best of them. Yes, she's dangerous; if you can sweeten her, sir, we'll all sleep a deal easier."

However withered an old trot she might be, she'd be an odd female if she were impervious to Flashy's manly bearing and cavalry whiskers. Still, as I turned in that night, I wasn't absolutely looking forward to poodle-faking her 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. The next day, as I was preparing to have a leisurely look about the city, up comes Skene in a hurry to announce that he'd had a reply from the palace about my audience. He'd been told that distinguished visitors were expected to present themselves immediately, as a token of respect. Colonel Flashman could shift his distinguished rump to the palace forthwith. "I ... I thought, in the circumstances, it would be well to comply," says Skene apologetically. "We do find it convenient to humour Her Highness."

I blustered a bit, to be in character, and then said he might find me an escort of lancers.

"I'm sorry, sir," says he, "but we haven't any lancers and we've agreed not to send troop formations inside the city walls. I fear you must go alone."

"Damnation!" says I. "Who governs here, the Sirkar or this harridan?" I didn't fancy risking my hide unguarded in that unhealthy-looking fortress. In the end, of course, I had to lump it. I could guess the reason for her order--here you are judged on the size and richness of your retinue and one mounted officer wasn't going to impress the natives with the Sirkar's power. Well, then, I'd look my best and be damned to her, so I changed into lancer full fig--blue tunic and breeches, gold belt and epaulettes, white gauntlets and helmet, revolver and well-bristled whiskers, with Flashy's stalwart 14 stone inside it all. I took a couple of packages from my trunk to stow in my saddlebag, waved goodbye to Skene and, with only the syce to show me the way, trotted off to meet royalty.

Jhansi city lay a couple of miles from the cantonment and I had plenty of time to view the scenery. The road was crowded with bullock carts churning up the dust, camels, palankeens and hordes of travellers on foot. Most of them were country folk going to the bazaars, but now and then would come an elephant swaying along with a red-and-gold fringed howdah, carrying some minor nabob. Once the syce pointed out a detachment of the Rani's own bodyguard--a dozen stout Khyberi Pathans trotting along very military in double file, wearing mail coats and red-silk scarves wound round their spiked helmets.

Her city defences were a sight to see--massive walls 20 feet high and beyond them a warren of streets stretching for near a mile to the curtain walls and round towers on castle rock. There were guns in the embrasures and mail-clad spearmen on the walls, all looking like business. It would be the deuce of a place to storm.

When we'd crowded our way through the inferno of smells and noise in the streets, we came to the palace. It was set apart from the fort with a park about it and a small lake. It was a fine, foursquare building with its outer walls decorated by paintings of battles and hunting scenes.

I presented myself to the Pathan commander of the gate guard, a fellow very splendid in steel back-and-breast and long-tail puggaree.2 He sent off a messenger and, as I sat sweating and impatient, the Pathan walked slowly round me, eyeing me up and down. Presently, he stopped, stuck his thumbs in his belt and spat carefully on my shadow.

Now, close by the gate were a number of booths and side shows--lemonade sellers, a fakir with a plant growing through his palm--the usual things. Some ladies in a palankeen were watching a kind of Punch-and-Judy show. They were obviously Mahratta ladies of quality and four finer little trotters you never saw--one, a slim, languid beauty reclining; another, a plump piece in scarlet trousers and jacket beside her; and a third, very black but fine-boned as a Swede and wearing a pearl headdress that would have cost a year of my pay. Even the maid who stood beside the palankeen was a looker, with great almond eyes and the figure of a Hindoo goddess underneath her plain white sari. I was just touching my hat to them when the Pathan started expectorating. The maid giggled; the ladies looked; and the Pathan spat contemptuously again.

Well, as a rule, anyone who's large and ugly and carrying a tulwar3 can insult me and see how much it pays him. But, for the honour of the Sirkar and for my own face in front of the women, I had to do something. So I said in Pushtu, "You would be more careful where you spit were you still in the Guides,4 hubshi."5

He opened his eyes at that. "Who calls me hubshi? And who says I was in the Guides, feringhee?"6

"You wear the old coat under your breastplate. But belike you stole it from a dead trooper, for no real Guide would spit on Bloody Lance's shadow."

That set him back on his heels. "Thou?" says he. "The same who slew the four Ghilzais at Mogala?"

I nodded. That past episode had won me considerable fame and the extravagant nickname along the Kabul road (though no one living knew that, in fact, old Muhammed Iqbal had killed the horsemen while I lit out for the undergrowth). Obvious the legend had endured, for the Pathan gaped, came hastily to attention and threw me a barra salaam7 that would have passed at the Horse Guards.

"Sher Khan, havildar,8 lately of Ismeet Sahib's company of the Guides, as your honour says," croaks he. "Now, shame on me, husoor,9 that I put dishonour on Bloody Lance."

I looked out of the corner of my eye to see how the ladies were taking this and was pleased to see that they were giggling at the Pathan's discomfiture. "Boast to your children, O Ghazi10-who-was-a-Guide-and-is-now-a-Rani's-porter that you spat on Bloody Lance Iflass-man's shadow--and lived."

I forgot the incident once inside the Rani's palace. Here was the finest garden courtyard I'd ever seen--a cool, pleasant enclosure where peacocks strutted on the lawns, parrots and monkeys chattered in the trees and a dazzling white fountain played. In the walls were shaded archways where well-dressed courtiers sat and talked. There were enough silks and jewellery on display to stuff an army with loot--even the pigeons on the pavement had silver rings on their claws. Until you've seen it, you can't imagine the luxury of an Indian prince--and still there are folks at home who will tell you that John Company were the robbers!

And, when a major-domo appeared to lead me to the durbar room, all was richness again--silk wall hangings, purple crystal chandeliers hanging from carved ceilings and Persian carpets. Lounging about were some people in clothes splendid enough to make the ones in the courtyard look like poor relations. Suddenly a gong boomed, a fat chap in a turban waddled in and announced that the durbar had begun. Music began to play. Everyone stood up and bowed stout Khyberi Pathans trotting along was not a wall but a colossal ivory screen, fine as lace. It was the Rani's purdah screen, meant to keep out prying heathen eyes like mine.

The chamberlain led me to a little gilt stool close to it and there I sat while he called out my name, rank, decorations and (it's a fact) my London clubs. Then he asked me, in effect, what I wanted.

I replied in Urdu that I brought greetings from Queen Victoria and a gift for the Rani from Her Majesty--which I then handed to the chamberlain. It was a perfectly hellish photograph of Victoria and Albert looking, in apparent stupefaction, at a book held by the Prince of Wales in an attitude of sullen defiance--all in a silver frame and wrapped in muslin.

The chamberlain passed it behind the screen, listened and then relayed a question--who was the fat child in the picture? I told him and he relayed the glad news. His announcement that Her Highness was pleased to accept her sister ruler's gift was spoiled a little by a clatter from behind the screen, as if the picture had been dropped or thrown to the floor.

After further civilities, I asked for a private audience with the Rani, explaining that I had matters of mutual private interest between Jhansi and Britain.

"Does that mean you have proposals for the restoration of Her Highness' throne, the recognition of her adopted son and the restitution of the property stolen by the Sirkar?"

It didn't, of course. "What I have to say is for Her Highness alone."

He conferred again. I pictured the Rani, sharp-faced and thin in her silk shawl, muttering her instructions. What puzzled me, though, was a gentle, rhythmic swishing from behind the screen.

The answer came back--there was no reason to prolong the interview. Her Highness now permitted me to withdraw. At that, I arose, clicked my heels, saluted, thanked the chamberlain and his mistress for their courtesy, picked up my second package and did a smart about-turn.

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 answered that it was my own.

"But it is wrapped as the gift to Her Highness was wrapped. Surely it is also a present?"

"Yes," says I slowly. "It was."

"Then you may leave it behind."

I weighed the packet in my hand and shook my head. "It was my personal present to Her Highness, but in my country, we deliver such gifts face to face, honouring both giver and receiver. By your leave." I bowed and started to walk away again.

"Wait! Wait!" he cried and put his head behind the screen for another conference. The rhythmic sound from behind the screen had stopped and there was the low murmur of a female voice.

When he came out, red-faced, he bustled everyone else from the room, bowed, indicated the screen to me and effaced himself quickly. I paused to give my whiskers a twirl, reminded myself to be civil and adoring for old Pam's sake, stepped around the screen and halted as if I'd run into a wall.

It wasn't the gorgeously carved golden throne nor the splendour of the furniture nor the sensation of walking on a shimmering Chinese quilt nor the bewildering effect of the mirrored walls. The astonishing thing was that, from the ceiling by silk ropes, there hung a great, cushioned swing. Sitting in it, wafting to and fro, was a girl--the only soul in the room. And such a girl--my first impression was of large, dark, almond eyes in a face the colour of milky coffee, with a long, straight nose above a red mouth and firm chin, of 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. On her head was a little, white, jewelled cap from which a single pearl swung on her forehead above the caste mark.

I gaped as she swung to and fro three times and finally let the swing drag to a halt, considering me. Then I recognised her--she was the ladies' maid who had stood by the palankeen at the palace gate.

"Your mistress," says I, "where is she?"

"Mistress?" she asks, tilting up her chin. "I have none. I am Lakshmibai, Maharani of Jhansi."

For a moment, I didn't believe it; I had been so used to picturing her as a dried-up old shrew that I stared speechless. Yet the richness of her clothes shouted royalty; the carriage of her head and the imperious black eyes told you here was a woman who'd never asked permission in her life. And, by George, I couldn't remember when I'd ever seen bouncers like hers, thrusting like pumpkins against the silk, which was open down to the jewelled clasp at her breastbone. If it hadn't been for a couple of embroidered flowers on either side, nothing would have been hidden. I wondered what it would be like to tear the silk aside, thrust your whiskers between those beauties and go brrr!

"Why do you stare at me so?" she asked in a quick, soft voice.

"Forgive me, Highness. I did not expect to find a queen who looks so"--I'd been about to say "young and lovely." but I changed it hurriedly for something less personal--"so like a queen."

"Like that queen?" She indicated the picture of Vicky and Albert that was now lying on a cushion.

"Each of Your Majesties looks like a queen in her own way," says I with mountainous diplomacy.

"Perhaps you will open the gift," she said. I pulled the wrapping off. You may smile, but it was a bottle of perfume. It may be coals to Newcastle to take perfume to India, but in my considerable experience, there's not a woman breathing who isn't touched by a gift of scent. It was just the gift a blunt, simple soldier would choose--furthermore, it was from Paris and it had cost the dirty, old goat who'd presented it to Elspeth a cool five sovs. (She'd never miss it.)

"French," says she, "and very costly," touching the stopper daintily to her wrist. "And now what is there that can only be said face to face?" She stood up in one lithe movement--by Jove, they jumped like blancmanges in a gale--and swept off to the terrace at the end of the room. She jingled as she walked; like all rich Indian females, she affected as much jewellery as she could carry, with bangles at wrist and ankle, a diamond collar beneath her chin and even a tiny pearl cluster at one nostril. I followed, still wondering what I would say to her now that the moment had come. Pam, you see, had given me no power to make any concessions; I was supposed to wheedle her into being a proper little British subject.

So, when she'd settled herself on a day bed and I'd forced myself to ignore that silky naked midriff and the shapely brown ankle peeping from under her sari, I set my helmet on the ground and stood up foursquare.

"Your Highness." says I, "I'm a soldier, not a diplomat like Captain Skene, so I won't mince words." Thereafter, I minced them for all I was worth, telling her how distressed London was about the coolness between Jhansi on the one hand and the Sirkar and the Company on the other; how the Queen felt a sisterly concern for her; how I had been sent directly by Lord Palmerston. I ended on a fine flourish, with an appeal that she open her heart to Flashy, plenipotentiary extraordinary. It was the greatest gammon, but I gave it my best, noble compassion in my eyes and a touch of ardour in the curl shaken down over my brow.

Not a muscle moved in that lovely face. "There is nothing to talk about," says she. "They have been told my just demands for two years now and they have denied me."

"A disappointed client may find a new advocate," says I with my most disarming smile. "I can ask. Highness, what actions, short of removing from Jhansi and recognising your adopted son, would help to satisfy your grievances." I was hinting--without the least authority, mind you--at concessions, and devil a smell of those she'd ever had.

She gave me a long stare and then got up and walked over to the balustrade, looking out over the city. God, she was a black beauty, sure enough, and if I'd been the Sirkar, she could have had Jhansi and a pound of tea for just half an hour on the day bed.

"If Lord Palmerston," says she at last--and old Pam would have been tempted to restore her throne just to hear the pretty way she pronounced "Lud Pammer-stan"--"wishes my friendship for whatever purpose of his own, he must give earnest of good will by restoring the revenues confiscated since my husband's death." She stopped there, chin up, challenging.

"Well," I said, "when I make my report, I'll help Your Highness as I can...."

She laughed with a flash of white teeth, her head back, shaking her body most delightfully. "Oh, the subtlety of the British, like an elephant in a swamp! When Lord Palmerston, for his mysterious reasons of policy, wishes to placate the Rani of Jhansi after long denial, does he send a lawyer or an official of the Company? No--he sends a simple soldier." She folded her hands and came slowly forward, sauntering round me. "But how many lawyers are tall and broad-shouldered and, aye, quite handsome as Flashman bahadur?11He is the one to convince a silly female not to stand on her rights."

"Highness, you misunderstand entirely...I assure you--"

"Do I? I am not sixteen, Colonel; I am an old lady of twenty-nine. I may not understand Lord Palmerston's purposes, but I understand his methods. It may not have occurred to him that even a poor Indian lady may be persuasive in her turn." She eyed me with amusement, confident of her own beauty, the damned minx.

What could I do but grin back at her? "To do him justice, he'd never seen you--nor have many, since you are in purdah-nishin."12

"And did he instruct you to captivate this foolish woman? Who could resist the champion who killed the four Ghilzais at--where was it?"

"Mogala in Afghanistan. Did you have the Pathan test me by spitting on my shadow?"

"His insolence needed no instruction," says she. "He is now being flogged for it." She turned and sauntered back into the durbar room. "You may have his insulting tongue torn out by the roots, if you wish."

That brought me up sharp, I can tell you. While we'd been rallying so famously, I'd all but forgotten the capricious cruelty of an Indian prince under that lovely hide.

"Not necessary, Highness," says I.

She nodded and struck a little silver gong with her bangle. "It is time for my noon meal. You may return tomorrow and we shall discuss the representations you are to make to the subtle Lord Palmerston." She smiled in dismissal. "And I thank you for your gift." And, as I backed out round the screen, I noticed that she was inviting her maids to come and have a sniff of the perfume bottle.

I came away from that audience thinking no small diplomatic beer of myself. Of course, if I trotted a list of her grievances back to London, the Board would turn 'em down flat again--but, in the meantime, I could jolly her along for a week or two, hinting at concessions, and then be snug back in England when her hopes were dashed.

The delightful surprise was to find that the old beldame of Jhansi was really as prime a goer as ever wiggled a hip. And her warnings about my whiskery blandishments were pure flirtations. I know these beauties, you see, whether they're queens or commoners. The cool, mocking gaze is just a sure sign that they're wondering what kind of a mount you'll make--and these highborn Indian wenches are randy as ferrets, the lot of them. I cantered back to the cantonment full of cheery imaginings of how that tawny body would look when I peeled the sari off--and speculating on the novel uses to which we could put that swing of hers. In the interests of diplomatic relations, of course. She could always say to herself, "Dulce et decorum est pro patria rogeri."

•

In the meantime, I had Pam's other business to attend to, so I spent the afternoon in the Native Infantry lines, looking at the Company sepoys to gauge for myself what their temper was. I did it idly enough, for they seemed a properly smart and docile lot, and yet it was a momentous visit. For it led to an encounter that was to save my life and set me on one of the queerest and most terrifying adventures of my career, and perhaps shaped the destiny of British India, too.

I had just finished chatting to a group of the jawans,13and telling 'em that in my view they'd never be called on to serve overseas, in spite of the new act,14 when the officer with me--fellow called Turnbull--asked me if I'd like to look at the irregular horse troop who had their stables close by. Being a cavalryman, I said yes, and a fine mixed bunch they were, too, Punjabis and frontiersmen mostly, big, strapping ruffians with oiled whiskers and their shirts inside their breeches, laughing and joking as they worked on their leather, and as different from the smooth-faced infantry as Cheyennes are from Hottentots. I was having a good crack with them, for these were the kind of scoundrels with whom I had ridden (albeit reluctantly) in my Afghan days, when their rissaldar 15 came up--and at the sight of me. he stopped dead in the stable door, gaping as though he couldn't believe his eyes. He was a huge, bearded ghazi of a fellow, Afghan for certain, by the devil's face of him--I'd have said Ghilzai or Dourani--with a skullcap on the back of his head and the old yellow coat of Skinner's riders over his shoulders.16

"Jehannum!" says he, and stared again, and then stuck his hands on his hips and roared with laughter.

"Salaam, rissaldar," says I, "what do you want with me?"

"A sight of thy left wrist, Bloody Lance, "says he, grinning like a death's-head. "Is there not a scar there to match this?"--and he pulled up his sleeve, while I stared in disbelief at the little puckered mark, for the man who bore it should have been dead, 15 years ago--and he'd been a mere slip of a Ghilzai boy when it had been made, with his bleeding forearm against mine and his mad father, Sher Afzul, doing the honours and howling to heaven that his son's life was pledged eternally to the service of the white Queen.

"Ilderim?" says I, flabbergasted. "Ilderim Khan, of Mogala?" And then he flung his arms round me, roaring, and danced me about while the sowars17 grinned and nudged each other.

"Flashman!" He pounded my back. "How many years since ye took me for the Sirkar? Stand still, old friend, and let me see thee! Bismillah, thou hast grown high and heavy in the service--such a barra sahib,18and a colonel, too! Now praise God for the sight of thee!"

So now it was Speech Day with a vengeance, while we relived old memories and slapped each other on the shoulder for half an hour or so. And then he asked me what I was doing here and I answered vaguely that I was on a mission to the Rani but soon to go home again; and at this he looked at me shrewdly, but said nothing more until I was leaving.

"It will be palitikal, beyond doubt," says he. "Do not tell me. Listen, instead, to a friend's word. If ye speak with the Rani, be wary of her; she is a Hindoo woman and knows too much for a woman's good."

"What d'you know about her?" says I.

"Little enough, except that she is like the silver krait in that she is beautiful, cunning and loves to bite the sahibs. She has fangs--so beware of her and go with God, old friend. But, remember, Ilderim is thy shadow--I and these lootiewallahs and jangli-admis19of mine," and he jerked a thumb towards his troopers.

•

I found his simile coming to mind when I attended her durbar next day and watched her sitting enthroned to hear petitions, dressed in a cloth-of-silver sari and, when she moved, looking for all the world like a gleaming snake stirring.

When the gong ended the durbar and the mob bowed itself out backwards, we were left alone with her two chief councillors. With a little cry of relief, she slipped from the throne, hissed at one of her pet monkeys and chased it with mock anger.

Then she returned to her swing and said, "You may refresh yourself, Colonel"--indicating a little table with a flask and cups--"while my vakeel20 reads my petition. I am wearing French perfume today; do you care for it? My lady Vashki thinks I am no better than an infidel."

The vakeel began to drone out her petition in formal Persian--a list of her own grievances, along with many of the usual objections Indian princes had towards British rule: demand for compensation for the slaughter of sacred cows, restitution of confiscated temple funds, reappointment of court hangers on dismissed by the Sirkar and the like. All a waste of time but splendid stuff to talk about while I pursued the really important business of charming her into a recumbent position.

In those early talks, I was often tempted; I found her enchanting. But I could hardly have taken her belly in one hand and her bum in the other and fondled her flat on her back as one would in more ordinary circumstances. No, with royalty, you have to wait a little. And usually, when she had dismissed her councillors and we were alone, I discovered that she was dead serious when it came to Jhansi and her own ambitions.

"Five years ago," she rounded on me once, "there was one beggar on the streets for every ten there today--and all because one white sahib comes to do the work that employed a dozen of our people. And who guards the state? Why, the Company soldiers, and so Jhansi's army must be disbanded and our men must steal or go hungry. And what of the traders whose commerce has decayed under the benevolent rule of the raj?"

"It ain't all bad," says I quietly. "Banditry has ceased and the poor folk are safe from dacoits and Thugs--why, your own throne is safe from greedy neighbours like Kathe Khan and the Dewan of Orcha--"

"My throne is safe?" asks she, stopping the swing and lifting her brows. "Oh, safe for the Sirkar to enjoy its revenues. As for Kathe Khan and the jackal of Orcha, if I had my soldiers"--she picked up a fruit from the tray and nibbled it daintily--"and those vipers should come against me, they would crawl home again without their hands and feet.

"Then, you speak of the Thugs and how the Company suppressed them--was it because they slew travellers or because they served a Hindoo goddess? If they had been Jesus worshippers, would they not be roaming yet?"

You can't argue with gross prejudice, and so I just looked amiable and said, "And in our Christian ignorance we forbade that fine old Hindoo custom of suttee, whereby widows were either tortured to death or had to live a life of slavery with their heads shaved." And, without thinking. I added, "I'd have thought Your Highness, as a widow, would thank the Sirkar for that, at least."

She suddenly flung her fruit across the room and stood up, blazing at me. "I thank the Sirkar? Do you think I would have submitted to suttee? The Maharani makes the law!" says she, all Good Queen Bess damning the dagos. I hurriedly cried thank heaven for that and gave her my steadiest smile, with a touch of ardent admiration thrown in. After a long moment, her stare softened; she even smiled as she sat down, saying, "Shall we return to the matter of the confiscated temple funds?" Altogether, it was a rum game those first days, with her natural tyranny at last being smoothed over by that warm, mysterious smile.

•

In the meantime, I occasionally paid attention to the other side of Pam's business, talking with Skene, and Carshore the Collector, and reassuring myself that all continued to go well among the sepoys. There wasn't a hint of agitation now, my earlier fears about Ignatieff and his scoundrels were beginning to seem like a distant nightmare, and now that I was so well established in the Rani's good graces, the last cloud over my mission appeared to have been dispelled. Laughable, you may think, when you recollect that this was 1856 drawing to a close--you will ask how I, and the others, could have been so blind to the fact that we were living on the very edge of hell, but if you'd been there, what would you have seen? A peaceful native state, ruled by a charming young woman whose grievances were petty enough and who gave most of her time to seducing the affections of a dashing British colonel; a contented native soldiery; and a tranquil, happy, British cantonment.

I remember a dinner at Carshore's bungalow, with his family, and Skene and his pretty little wife so nervous and pleased in her new pink gown, and jolly old Dr. McEgan with his fund of Irish stories, and the garrison men with their red jackets, slung on the backs of their chairs, matching their smiling red faces, and their gossipy wives, and myself raising a laugh by coaxing one of the Wilton girls to eat a "country captain"21 with the promise that it would make her hair curl when she grew older.

It was all so easy, it might have been a dinner party at home, except for the black faces and gleaming eyes of the bearers standing silent against the chick screens, and the big moths fluttering round the lamps; afterwards, there was a silly card game, and truth or consequences, and local scandal, and talk of leave and game shooting with our cheroots and port on the verandah. Trivial enough memories, when you think what happened to all of them--I can still feel the younger Wilton chit pulling at my arm and crying, "Oh, Colonel Flash man, Papa says if I ask you ever so nicely, you will sing us The Galloping Major--will you, please, oh, please do!" And I can still see those shining eyes and pretty ringlets as she dragged me to where her sister was sitting at the piano. Luckily, we couldn't see ahead.

•

Lakshmibai was a fine horsewoman and she loved nothing better than to put on her jodhpurs and turban, with two little silver pistols in her sash, and gallop on the maidan or go hawking along a wooded river not far from the city. There was a charming little pavilion there, of about a dozen rooms on two storeys, among the trees, and once or twice we visited it on picnics with a few of her courtiers and attendants.

And so the days went by--inspecting her guards at field exercise, going to a race meeting (where she wore a purdah veil and enveloping robe), holding a children's party in her garden, almsgiving, with her treasurer tossing coins among the clamouring and stinking beggars at her gate. She was a queer mixture of schoolgirl and sophisticated woman, all scatter one moment, all languor and dignity the next. Sometimes I even found myself regarding her with an interest that wasn't more than four fifths lustful--and that ain't like me.

Once, as we were riding to her pavilion, just after an almsgiving, I remarked that what India needed was a Poor Law and a few workhouses.

She suddenly turned in her saddle and burst out, "Can you not see that your ways are not ours? Those customs you think so strange and foolish are our own. With your cold eyes and pale faces, you come marching out of your northern ice to conquer and civilise us whether we will or no!"

She wasn't angry, just very intense, and her great, dark eyes were almost appealing for my understanding--which was most unusual. I said I'd simply meant that there might be some system of relief for all those going hungry and ragged about her city; come cheaper on her, too, if they put the beggars to picking yarn or mending roads.

"We do not care for systems!" says she, striking her riding crop on the saddle. "Where lies the virtue of your progress, your telegraphs, your railway trains, when we are quite content with our sandals and oxcarts?"

I could have pointed out that the price of her sandals would have kept 100 coolie families all their lives and that she'd most likely never been within ten yards of an oxcart, but I was tactful. "We have to do the best we can," says I. "You'll find the telegraphs and trains useful enough in time. Why, I'm told, there are to be universities and hospitals--"

"To teach philosophies we do not want, sciences we do not need and a law our people cannot understand."

"But it's a fair law and, with respect, that's more than you can say for most of your Indian courts. When there was a brawl outside your palace two days since, what happened? Your guards didn't catch the brawlers, so they laid hands on the first poor soul they met and haled him into your divan22--and you had him hanging by his thumbs and sun-drying for two solid days. Fellow near died of it. I ask you, ma'am, is that justice?"

"He was well known to be a badmash,"23 says she, wide-eyed. "Would you have let him go?"

"For that offence, yes, since he was innocent."

"With no example made? There will be little brawling near the palace, I think, henceforth." And, seeing my look, she went on, "I know that it seems unfair, even barbarous, to you, but it is what we understand."

"Highness," says I, "there has to be peace and order, surely, and you can't have 'em without a law that's fair for ... well, most people." I caught myself just in time before I'd suggested that the law was as much for her as for her subjects. "And when we make mistakes, we try to put 'em right, you see, which is why I'm here--to see justice done for you."

"Do you think that's all that matters?" says she. We had stopped in the pavilion garden while the horses were cropping.

"Do you think it is the revenues, the jewels, even my son's rights that I care for most? No, it is this land and its life that you will change from bright to grey, from something free to something tame, orderly and bleak." Her voice was shaking, but the pretty mouth was set. "You may tell Lord Palmerston that, whatever happens, Mera Jhansi denge nay, I shall not give up my Jhansi!"

D'you know, for a moment I almost felt moved, she seemed such a damned spunky little woman. I felt like saying "There, there" or stroking her hand or squeezing her tits or something. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, what's come over old Flash? He ain't going soft on this female, surely?

•

The next morning--two weeks to the day since I'd arrived in Jhansi--things began to happen in earnest. I sensed there was something up as soon as I presented myself in the durbar room. She was perfectly pleasant as she told me about some new hunting cheetah she'd been given, but her vakeel and the chief minister weren't meeting her eye and her foot was tap-tapping under the edge of her gold sari. Ah, thinks I, someone has been getting the sharp edge of missy's tongue. Soon she cut the discussion short, saying enough for today and that we'd watch the guardsmen fencing in the courtyard.

Even there, I noticed her finger tapping on the balcony rail as we gazed at the Pathans sabring away--damned active, dangerous lads they looked, too. But in a little while, she began to take notice, talking about the swordplay and applauding the hits, and then she glanced sidelong at me, and says:

"Do you fence as well as you ride, Colonel?"

I said, pretty fair, and she gave me her lazy smile and says:

"Then we shall try a bout," and blow me if she didn't order a couple of foils up to the durbar room and go off to change into her jodhpurs and blouse. I waited, wondering--of course, Skene had said she'd been brought up with boys and could handle arms with the best of them, but it seemed deuced odd--and then she was back, ordering her attendants away, tying up her hair in a silk scarf and ordering me on guard very businesslike. They'll never believe this at home, thinks I, but I obeyed, indulgently enough, and she touched me three times in the first minute. So I settled down, in earnest, and in the next minute she hit me only once, laughing, and told me to try harder.

That nettled me, I confess; I wasn't having this, royalty or not, so I went to work--I'm a strong swordsman, but not too academic--and I pushed her for all I was worth. She was better muscled than she looked, though, and fast as a cat, and I had to labour to make her break ground, gasping with laughter, until her back was against one of the glass walls. She took to the point, holding me off, and then unaccountably her guard seemed to falter, I jumped in with the old heavy-cavalry trick, punching my hilt against the forte of her blade, her foil spun out of her hand--and for a moment we were breast to breast, with me panting within inches of that dusky face and open, laughing mouth; the great dark eyes were wide and waiting--and then my foil was clattering on the floor and I had her in my arms, crushing my lips on hers and tasting the sweetness of her tongue, with that soft body pressed against me, revelling in the feel and fragrance of her. I felt her hands slip up my back to my head, holding my face against hers for a long, delicious moment, and then she drew her lips away, sighing, opened her eyes and said, "How well do you shoot, Colonel?"

And then she had slipped from my arms and was walking quickly towards the door to her private room, with me grunting endearments in pursuit, but as I came after her, she just raised a hand, without turning or breaking stride, and said firmly:

"The durbar is finished...for the moment." The door closed behind her and I was left with the fallen foils, panting like a bull before business, but thinking, my boy, we're home--the damned little teaser. I hesitated, wondering whether to invade her boudoir, when the little chamberlain came pottering in, eyeing the foils in astonishment, so I took my leave and presently was riding back to the cantonment, full of buck and anticipation--I'd known she'd call "Play!" in the end, and now there was nothing to do but enjoy the game.

That was why she'd been jumpy earlier, of course, wondering how to bring me to the boil--the cunning minx. "How well do you shoot, Colonel?" She'd find out soon enough.

By way of celebration, I drank a lot of bubbly at dinner and even took a magnum back to the bungalow with me. It was well I did, for about ten o'clock Ilderim dropped by for a prose--and there's nobody thirstier than a dry Ghilzai, Moslem or no. So we popped a cork and gassed about the old days until, in a while, the bearer appeared to inform me that there was a bibi24 at the back door of the bungalow and she insisted on seeing me.

Ilderim wagged his ugly head knowingly and I staggered out. Sure enough, at the foot of the steps was a veiled woman in a sari and I asked her what she wanted. She came up the steps, salaamed and held out a little leather pouch. I took it, wondering, and found inside a handkerchief which, even through the fumes of the champagne, smelled heavily of the French perfume of my gift.

"From my mistress," the woman says. "She bids you to come to the river pavilion in an hour." And with another salaam, she hurried down the steps and was lost in the darkness.

Well, I'm damned, thinks I, she couldn't wait! I strode unsteadily back inside, roaring for a clean shirt and for the syce to bring two ponies round.

"Where away?" asks Ilderim. "After some trollop of the bazaar?"

"No, brother," says I, "something much better. If you could see her, you'd forswear small boys and melons for good." I was feeling prime as I rinsed my face and went out onto the verandah to meet the syce.

"You're mad," growls Ilderim. "Where do you go alone?"

"A secret," says I. But I would take the syce, for I wasn't too sure of the way in the pitch-blackness. As it was, he turned out to be a handy lad who kept me from tumbling out of the saddle, woozy as I was. After what seemed ages, we were among the trees by the river and there was the pavilion, half-hidden by the foliage.

I slid down, told the syce to wait there for me and pushed on, navigating from tree trunk to tree trunk. There were dim lights on the ground floor of the pavilion and in one room upstairs and even the sound of music on the slight breeze. All the Oriental refinements of romping. I hurried to the outside staircase, staggering quietly, so as not to disturb the musicians, who were fluting away sweetly behind the screens.

On the second floor, I found a small passageway with a slatted door at the end through which light filtered. I paused to struggle out of my loose trousers--I'd been just sober enough to leave my boots at home--and padded forward through the door.

Some dim, pink lamps gave just enough light to show a broad couch, shrouded in mosquito netting, against the far wall. And there she was. silhouetted against the glow, sitting back among the cushions, one leg stretched out, the other with knee raised. There was a soft tinkling of bangles. I leaned against a pillar and croaked, "Lakshmibai, chabeli--darling--I'm here!"

In one movement, she raised the net and slipped out, then stood motionless by the couch like a bronze statue. She was wearing bangles, all right, and a little gold girdle about her hips and some kind of metal headdress from which a flimsy veil descended from just beneath her eyes to her chin--not another stitch. I let out an astonishing noise and was trying to steady myself for a plunge, but she checked me with a lifted hand, slid one foot forward, crooked her arms like a nautch dancer and came gliding slowly towards me, swaying that splendid golden nakedness in time to the throbbing of the music beneath our feet.

I could only gape; whether it was the drink or admiration or what, I don't know, but I seemed paralysed in every limb but one. She came writhing up to me, bangles tinkling and dark eyes gleaming enormously in the soft light; I couldn't see her face for the veil, but I wasn't trying to; she retreated, turning and swaying her rump, and then approached again, reaching forward to brush me teasingly with her finger tips; I grabbed, gasping, but she slid away, faster now as the tempo of the music increased, and then back again, hissing at me through the veil, lifting those splendid breasts in her hands, and this time I had the wit to seize a tit and a buttock, fairly hooting with lust as she writhed against me and lifted the veil just enough to bring her mouth up to mine. Her right foot was slipping up the outside of my left leg, past the knee, up to the hip and round so that her heel was in the small of my back--God knows how they do it, double joints or something--and then she was thrusting up and down like a demented monkey on a stick, raking me with her nails and giving little shrieks into my mouth, until the torchlight procession which was marching through my loins suddenly exploded, she went limp in my arms and I thought, oh, Lord, now lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace, as I slid gently to the floor in ecstatic exhaustion with that delightful burden clinging and quivering on top of me.

The instructors who taught dancing to young Indian royalty in those days must have been uncommon sturdy; she had just about done for me, but somehow I must have managed to crawl to the couch, for the next I knew, I was there with my face cradled against those wonderful perfumed boobs--I tried feebly to go brrr! but she turned my head and lifted a cup to my lips. As if I hadn't enough on board already, but I drank greedily and sank back, gasping, and was just deciding I might live, after all, when she set about me again, lips and hands questing over my body, fondling and plaguing, writhing her hips across my groaning carcase until she was astride my thighs with her back to me, and the torchlight procession staggered into marching order once more, eventually erupting yet again with shattering effect. After which she left me in peace for a good half hour, as near as I could judge in my intoxicated state--one thing I'm certain of, that if I'd been sober and in my right mind, she could never have teased me into action a third time, as she did, by doing incredible things which I still only half believe as I recall them. But I remember those great eyes, over the veil, and the pearl on her brow, and her perfume, and the tawny velvet skin in the half-light....

I came awake in an icy sweat, my limbs shivering, trying to remember where I was. There was a cold wind from somewhere out in the dark and I turned my aching head; the pink lamps were burning, casting their shadows, but she was no longer there. Someone was, though, surely, over by the door; there was a dark figure, but it wasn't naked, for I could see a white loincloth, and instead of the gold headdress, there was a tight white turban. A man? And he was holding something--a stick? No, it had a strange curved head on it--and there was another man, just behind him, and even as I watched, they were gliding stealthily into the room, and I saw that the second one had a cloth in his right hand.

For perhaps ten seconds I lay motionless, gazing--and then it rushed in on me that this wasn't a dream, that they were moving towards the couch and that this was horrible, inexplicable danger. The net was gone from the couch and I could see them clearly, the white eyes in the black faces--I braced for an instant and then hurled myself off the couch away from them, slipped, recovered and rushed at the shutters in the screen wall. There was a snarl from behind me, something swished in the air and thudded, and I had a glimpse of a small pickaxe quivering in the shutter as I flung myself headlong at the screen, yelling in terror. Thank God I'm 14 stone--it came down with a splintering crash and I was sprawling on the little verandah, thrashing my way out of the splintered tangle and heaving myself onto the verandah rail.

From the tail of my eye I saw a dark shape springing for me over the couch; there was a tree spreading its thick foliage within five feet of the verandah and I dived straight into it, crashing and scraping through the branches, clutching vainly and taking a tremendous thump across the hips as I struck a limb. For a second I seemed suspended, and then I shot down and landed flat on my back with a shock that sickened me. I rolled over, trying to heave myself up, as two black figures dropped from the tree almost on top of me: I blundered into one of them, smashed a fist into its face, and then something flicked in front of my eyes, and I only just got a hand up in time to catch the garrotte as it jerked back onto my throat.

I shrieked, hauling at it; my wrist was clamped under my chin by the strangler's scarf, but my right arm was free, and as I staggered back into him, I scrabbled behind me, was fortunate enough to grab a handful of essentials and wrenched for all I was worth. He screamed in agony, the scarf slackened and he went down, but before I could flee for the safety of the wood, the other one was on my back, and he made no mistake; the scarf whipped round my windpipe, his knee was into my spine and I was flailing helplessly, with his breath hissing in my ear. Five seconds, it flashed across my mind, is all it takes for an expert garrotter to kill a man--oh, Jesus, my sight was going, my head was coming off, with a horrible pain tearing in my throat, I was dying even as I fell, floating down to the turf--and then I was on my back, taking in huge gulps of air, and the glaring faces in my eyes were merging into one.

Ilderim Khan was gripping my shoulder with one hand and massaging my throat with the other as he grinned down at me. "Inshallah. Flashman! You see what comes of lusting after loose women. Another moment and we would have been sounding the bugle over thy body. And so give thanks that I have a suspicious mind and followed with my badmashes."

"What happened?" I mumbled, trying to rise.

"As we waited, we saw the light and heard music, but presently all was still and then many came out to a palankeen, and so away. Again, there was silence until we heard thee burst out with these hounds of hell behind thee."

Two of Ilderim's ruffians were squatting in the grass over two dark shapes--one of them gasping and wheezing and the other deadly still. Ilderim snatched a lantern from one of his men and went over to the body of the dead strangler. He beckoned to me. "Look," says he, pulling down the man's eyelid with his finger. Even in the flickering light, I could see the crude tattoo on the skin. "A Thug,"25 says Ilderim. "Now, what does this mean?"

"This one shall tell us," says he, and seized the man by the throat. "Look, now, shall it be a swift death or shall I trim off the foul appurtenances of thy body and make thee eat them?" He stropped his knife on the sole of his shoe. "Bide here, husoor, while we take this one into the trees."

I could not have moved if I'd wanted to, and so I lay there while dreadful grunts and an occasional choked-off scream came from the darkness. It made no sense to me that Lakshmibai had lured me off for assassination but had pleasured me like a crazy spinster first. I could have sworn that she was falling in love with me these two weeks past--there was no earthly reason why she should want me dead.

At last, Ilderim came striding back and squatted beside me. "Stubborn." says he, rubbing his beard, "but not too stubborn. It is ill news. Six nights ago, these deceivers met with a strange fakir at Firozabad. He offered them gold and, in due time, an end to the raj and a rebirth of thuggee. Thou wert to be the first sacrifice to Kali. And now." he continued grimly, "thou art warned in time and this land is death to thee. It must be a fast horse to the coast and ship; across the kala pani."26

I sat limp and trembling with this horror. I had to know, though, and so I finally asked. "This fakir, who is he?"

"A one-eyed man. fair of skin, from beyond the northern passes. He has money and he preaches in secret against the sahib-log."27

Ignatieff--I almost threw up. The bastard was back and the devil a doubt that he knew all about my mission. Now I couldn't go running to Bombay, bawling for a first-class ticket home--I'd he seen obviously running away. I took my head in my hands--and then, slowly, inspiration began to dawn.

I'd told Skene that I might well vanish from sight, to go after Ignatieff in my own way. Well, now I would vanish, right enough. I scheme fast when I'm up against it. And so I said to Ilderim, "Look, brother, this is, indeed, a great palitikal affair and I cannot leave India until it is finished. Now I must he low as a Khykeen pony pedlar or an Abizai who has done his time in the Guides--damn it, I speak Pushtu as well as you do and Urdu better. When the time is ripe"--I started lying recklessly for effect--"I shall steal out again and break this one-eyed fakir and his stranglers."

"Inshallah!" cries he, grinning all over his evil face. "And I shall share in the sport. Thou'll send word to thy brother Ilderim when the knives are out?"

You'll wait a long time for it. my lad, thinks I. Give me a disguise and a pony and you'll not see me again until things have safely blown over and some other idiot has disposed of Ignatieff and his bravoes. "When there are throats to be cut, thou wilt be the first to know," says I.

"Tell Skene sahib of the one-eyed fakir and the Thugs and say that the axles are getting hot--he'll understand."

Ilderim nodded and called to one of his rascals. "Tell Rafik Tamar that I want all his clothes, his knife and his horse." In a few minutes, Tamar appeared, grumbling, in a rag of a loincloth, with his clothes over his arm. But he grinned through his beard when I told him that he could have my Pegu pony and that Skene sahib must see his kit replaced. I slipped into his shirt and cavalry breeches, drew on his soft boots, donned his hairy posteen, 28stuck the Khyber cleaver in my sash and began to wind the puggaree round my head.

"Have ye an eyry where no enemy can find thee?" asks Ilderim thoughtfully.

I confessed I hadn't and asked if he had any suggestions. He smiled slowly and then began to roar with laughter. "Some juice to darken thy skin. When thy beard has grown, thou must swagger enough, curl thy hair round thy finger and spit from the back of thy throat like a true Peshawar ruffler."

"Where do you suggest I do all these things?" asks I impatiently.

"In the last place any ill-willer would look for a British colonel sahib. Wouldst thou live easy and grow fat and draw twenty-four rupees a month? Why not join the Sirkar's army, the native cavalry? Why, in a month, they'll make thee a daffadar!29would it not place thee close to affairs and ready to move at a finger snap?"

It was ridiculous--and yet, the more I thought of it, the more obvious it was. There was hardly a more comfortable hiding place if I were careful. I stood considering this while Ilderim urged me on.

"Go to my mother's cousin, Gulam Beg, who is now a woordy-major30in the Third Light Cavalry at Meerut garrison, and say Ilderim sent thee. Let me see, now," says this mad rascal, chuckling as he warmed to his work, "we'll have thee a Hasanzai of the Black Mountains. They are a strange folk, touched and given to wild fits, so much may be excused thee. Thy name shall be Makarram Khan, 31late of the Peshawar police, and so thou art familiar with the ways of the sahibs. Never fear, there was a Makarram Khan until I shot him on my last furlough. He was too careless to watch the rocks, but he was a stout rider in his time and he'll give thee a shabash 32 from hell. Well, Makarram," says he, grinning like a wolf in the gloom, "wilt thou carry a lance for the Sirkar?"

I'd decided even as he talked. There was no better choice and it seemed inspired at the time--but if I'd known what it would lead to, I'd have damned Ilderim's notion to his teeth.

He laughed and slapped my saddle and we shook hands in the dark under the trees. "When thou comest this way again, go to the Bull Temple beyond the Jokan Bagh. I will have a man waiting to meet thee for an hour at sunrise and an hour at sunset. Salaam, sowar!" cries he. I dug my heels into my pony and cantered off into the dawn, still like a man in a wild dream.

1grooms

2turban

3sword

4Perhaps the most famous frontier unit in British India. It is curious that Flashman recognised the coat, since the regiment usually wore nondescript khaki.

5literally,"woolly-haired"--a Negro

6a European

7great salute

8sergeant

9sir, lord

10hero

11title of honour: a champion

12literally, "one who sits behind a curtain"

13soldiers

14The General Service Enlistment Act (1856) required recruits to serve overseas if necessary. This was one of the most important grievances of the sepoys, who held that crossing the sea would break their caste.

15native officer commanding a cavalry troop

16Irregular cavalry units of the British Indian armies occasionally dressed in a highly informal style, so the Afghan rissaldar might conceivably have been wearing an old uniform coat of Skinner's Horse ("The Yellow Boys"). But it is unlikely that he had ever served in that unit--the Guides would have been more his mark.

17troopers

18is great lord, important man

19thieves and jungle men

20legal representative

21a type of curry

22court

23scoundrel

24lady

25The society of Thugs (literally, "deceivers") worshipped the goddess Kali and practised murder as a religious rite. They preyed on travellers and often strangled their victims with a scarf. Sir William Sleeman destroyed the cult in the 1830s, but many Thugs remained at large. A Thug could often be identified by a tattoo on his eyelid or a brand on his back.

26black water; i.e., the ocean

27lord-people; i.e., the British

28sheepskin coat

29cavalry commander of ten

30native adjutant of irregular cavalry--though the term seems misused by Flashman, since the Third were not irregulars

31There was a real Makarram Khan who served in the Peshawar police and later became a notable leader of frontier raiders.

32a cheer, a hurrah

This is the first of three installments of a condensed version of "Flashman in the Great Game." The second installment will appear in the October issue.