‘… so if he’s to be Prince Consort, it don’t make a ha’porth 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. There, at the table.’ Barrington pulled out a chair for me, and the three at the fireplace seemed to be staring ominously at me while I apologised and took it, especially Pam in the middle, with those bright steady eyes taking 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. He didn’t beat about, either.
‘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 further, 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 Ellenborough 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 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 chapattis, my lord,’ says I, astonished. ‘Indian chapattis.’
Ellenborough nodded. ‘Ordinary cakes of native food. You attach no signal significance to them, though?’
‘Why … no, sir.’
Wood took a seat opposite me. ‘And you can conjecture no situation, colonel,’ says he, in his dry, quiet voice, ‘in which the sight of such cakes might occasion you … alarm?’
Obviously Ministers of the Crown don’t ask damnfool 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 dam’ things at dinner an’ they’d alarm me,’ and Ellenborough tapped the biscuit box.
‘These chapattis 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 Maharatta 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—’
‘Have you ever heard of such a thing?’ Wood interrupted.
I hadn’t, so 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: firstly, 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,’ Ellenborough 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 ’06, 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