You may wonder why, just because my orderly had gone astray. Aye, but he’d done it at the very moment of entering the lion’s den, so to speak, and the whole mission was mysterious and chancy enough to begin with, and I’m God’s own original funk, so there. And I smelled mischief here, in this maze of courts and passages, with high walls looming about me. I didn’t even care for the splendid apartments to which I was conducted. They were on an upper storey of the Sleeping Palace, two lofty, spacious rooms joined by a broad Moorish arch, with mosaic tiles and Persian murals, a little marble balcony overlooking a secluded fountain court, silks on the bed, silent bearers to stow my kit, two pretty little maids who shimmied in and out, bringing water and towels and tea (I didn’t even think of slapping a rump, which tells you how jumpy I was), and a cooling breeze provided by an ancient punkah-wallah in the passage, when the old bugger was awake, which was seldom. For some reason, the very luxury of the place struck me as sinister, as though designed to lull my fears. At least there were two doors, one from either chamber – I do like to know there’s a line of retreat.
I washed and changed, still fretting about Jassa’s absence, and was about to lie down to calm my nerves when my eye lit on a book on the bedside table – and I sat up with a start. For it was a Bible, placed by an unknown hand – in case I’d forgotten my own, of course.
Broadfoot, thinks I, you’re an uneasy man to work for, but by God you know your business. It reminded me that I wasn’t quite cut off; I found I was muttering ‘Wisconsin’, then humming it shakily to the tune of ‘My bonnie is over the ocean’, and on the spur of the moment I dug out my cypher key – Crotchet Castle, the edition of 1831, if you’re interested – and began to write Broadfoot a note of all that I’d heard on Maian Mir. And I had just completed it, and inserted it carefully at Second Thessalonians, and was glumly pondering a verse that read ‘Pray without ceasing’, and thinking a fat lot of good that’ll do, when the door slammed open, there was a blood-curdling shriek, a mad dwarf flourishing a gleaming sabre leaped into the archway, and I rolled off the bed with a yell of terror, scrabbling for the pepperbox in my open valise, floundering round to cover the arch, my finger snatching at the trigger ring …
In the archway stood a tiny boy, not above seven years old, one hand clutching his little sabre, the other pressed to his teeth, eyes shining with delight. My wavering pistol fell away, and the little monster fairly crowed with glee, clapping his hands.
‘Mangla! Mangla, come and see! Come on, woman – it is he, the Afghan killer! He has a great gun, Mangla! He was going to shoot me! Oh, shabash, shabash!’
‘I’ll give you shabash, you little son-of-a-bitch!’ I roared, and was going for him when a woman came flying into the archway, scooping him up in her arms, and I stopped dead. For one thing, she was a regular plum – and for another the imp was glaring at me in indignation and piping:
‘No! No! You may shoot me – but don’t dare strike me! I am a maharaja!’
I’ve met royalty unexpected a number of times – face to face with my twin, Carl Gustaf, in the Jotunberg dungeon, quaking in my rags before the black basilisk Ranavalona, speechless as Lakshmibai regarded me gravely from her swing, stark naked and trussed in the presence of the future Empress of China – and had eyes only for the principal, but in the case of Dalip Singh, Lord of the Punjab, my attention was all for his protectress. She was a little spanker, this Mangla – your true Kashmiri beauty, cream-skinned and perfect of feature, tall and shapely as Hebe, eyes wide at me as she clasped him to her bosom, the lucky lad. He didn’t know when he was well off, though, for he slapped her face and yelled:
‘Set me down, woman! Who bade thee interfere? Let me go!’
I’d have walloped the tyke, but after another searching glance at me she set him down and stepped back, adjusting her veil with a little coquettish toss of her head – even with my panic still subsiding I thought, aha! here’s another who fancies Flash at short notice. The ungrateful infant gave her a push for luck, straightened his shoulders, and made me a jerky bow, hand over heart, royal as bedamned in his little aigretted turban and gold coat.
‘I am Dalip Singh. You are Flashman bahadur, the famous soldier. Let me see your gun!’
I resisted an impulse to tan his backside, and bowed in turn. ‘Forgive me, maharaj’. I would not have drawn it in your presence, but you took me unawares.’
‘No, I didn’t!’ cries he, grinning. ‘You move as the cobra strikes, too quickly to see! Oh, it was fine, and you must be the bravest soldier in the world – now, your gun!’
‘Maharaj’, you forget yourself!’ Mangla’s voice was sharp, and not at all humble. ‘You have not given proper welcome to the English lord sahib – and it is unmannerly to burst in on him, instead of receiving him in durbar.fn1 What will he think of us?’ Meaning, what does he think of me, to judge from another glance of those fine gazelle eyes. I gave her my gallant leer, and hastened to toady her overlord.
‘His majesty honours me. But will you not sit, maharaj’, and your lady also?’
‘Lady?’ He stared and laughed. ‘Why, she’s a slave! Aren’t you, Mangla?’
‘Your mother’s slave, maharaj’,’ says she coldly. ‘Not yours.’
‘Then go and wait on my mother!’ cries the pup, not meeting her eye. ‘I wish to speak with Flashman bahadur.’
You could see her itching to upend him, but after a moment she gave him a deep salaam and me a last appraisal, up and down, which I returned, admiring her graceful carriage as she swayed out, while the little pest tried to disarm me. I told him firmly that a soldier never gives his weapon to anyone, but that I’d hold it for him to see, if he showed me his sword in the same way. So he did, and then stared at my pepperbox,19 mouth open.
‘When I am a man,’ says he, ‘I shall be a soldier of the Sirkar, and have such a gun.’
I asked, why the British Army and not the Khalsa, and he shook his head. ‘The Khalsa are mutinous dogs. Besides, the British are the best soldiers in the world, Zeenan Khan says.’
‘Who’s Zeenan Khan?’
‘One of my grooms. He was flank-man-first-squadron-fifth-Bengal-Cavalry-General-Sale-Sahib-in-Afghanistan.’ Rattled out as Zeenan must have taught him. He pointed at me. ‘He saw you at Jallalabad Fort, and told me how you slew the Muslims. He has only one arm, and no pinshun.’
Now that’s a pension we’ll see paid, with arrears, thinks I: an ex-sowar of Bengal Cavalry who has a king’s ear is worth a few chips a month. I asked if I could meet Zeenan Khan.
‘If you like, but he talks a lot, and always the same story of the Ghazi he killed at Teizin. Did you kill many Ghazis? Tell me about them!’
So I lied for a few minutes, and the bloodthirsty little brute revelled in every decapitation, eyes fixed on me, his small face cupped in his hands. Then he sighed and said his Uncle Jawaheer must be mad.
‘He wants to fight the British. Bhai Ram says he’s a fool – that an ant can’t fight an elephant. But my uncle says we must, or you will steal my country from me.’
‘Your uncle is mistaken,’ says diplomatic Flashy. ‘If that were true, would I be here in peace? No – I’d have a sword!’
‘You have a gun,’ he pointed out gravely.
‘That’s a gift,’ says I, inspired, ‘which I’ll present to a friend of mine, when I leave Lahore.’
‘You have friends in Lahore?’ says he, frowning.
‘I have now,’ says I, winking at him, and after a moment his jaw dropped, and he squealed with glee. Gad, wasn’t I doing my country’s work, though?
‘I shall have it! That gun? Oh! Oh!’