For answer the sowar nodded, took out his Khyber knife, and stepped back under the trees to where his companions were guarding the prisoner, or what was left of him. I heard him address the brute – even at that time and place it was an extraordinary enough exchange to fix itself in my mind; one of the most astonishing things I ever heard, even in India.
“It is over, deceiver,” says he. “Here is the knife – in the throat or the heart? Choose.”
The Thug’s reply was hoarse with agony. “In the heart, then – quickly!”
“You’re sure? As you wish.”
“No – wait!” gasps the Thug. “Put the point … behind … my ear – so. Thrust hard – thus I will bleed less, and go undisfigured. Now!”
There was a pause, and then the sowar’s voice says: “He was right – he bleeds hardly at all. Trust a deceiver to know.”
A few moments later and Rafik Tamwar appeared, grumbling, in a rag of loin-cloth, with his clothes over his arm, and leading a neat little pony. I told Ilderim that Skene sahib must see his kit replaced, and he could have my own Pegu pony, at which the good Tamwar grinned through his beard, and said he would willingly make such an exchange every day. I slipped into his shirt and cavalry breeches, drew on the soft boots, donned his hairy poshteen,a stuck the Khyber cleaver in my sash, and was winding the puggaree round my head and wishing I had a revolver as well, when Ilderim says thoughtfully:
“Where wilt thou go, Flashman – have ye an eyrie to wait in where no enemy can find thee?”
I confessed I hadn’t, and asked if he had any suggestions, at which he frowned thoughtfully, and then smiled, and then roared with laughter, and rolled on his back, and then stood up, peering and grinning at me.
“Some juice for thy skin,” says he. “Aye, and when thy beard has grown, thou’lt be a rare Peshawar ruffler – so ye swagger enough, and curl thy hair round thy finger, and spit from the back of thy throat –”
“I know all about that,” says I, impatiently. “Where d’you suggest I do all these things?”
“In the last place any ill-willer would ever look for a British colonel sahib,” says he, chortling. “Look now – wouldst thou live easy for a spell, and eat full, and grow fat, what time thou art preparing to play the game against these enemies of the Raj? Aye, and get well paid for it – 24 rupees a month, and battab also?” He slapped his hands together at my astonishment. “Why not – join the Sirkar’s army! What a recruit for the native cavalry – why, given a month they’ll make thee a daffadar!”c He stuck his tongue in his cheek. “Maybe a rissaldar in time – who knows?”
“Are you mad?” says I. “Me – enlist as a sowar? And how the devil d’you expect me to get away with that?”
“What hinders? Thou hast passed in Kabul bazaar before today, and along the Kandahar road. Stain thy face, as I said, and grow thy beard, and thou’lt be the properest Sirkar’s bargain in India! Does it not meet thy need – and will it not place thee close to affairs – within reach of thine own folk, and ready to move at a finger-snap?”
It was ridiculous – and yet the more I thought of it, the more obvious it was. How long did I want to hide – a month? Two or three perhaps? I would have to live, and for the life of me I couldn’t think of a more discreet and comfortable hiding-place than the ranks of a native cavalry regiment – I had all the qualifications and experience … if I was careful. But I’d have to be that, whatever I did. I stood considering while Ilderim urged me, full of enthusiasm.
“See now – there is my mother’s cousin, Gulam Beg, who was malikd in one of my father’s villages, and is now woordy-majore in the 3rd Cavalry at Meerut garrison. If thou goest to him, and say Ilderim sent thee, will he not be glad of such a fine sturdy trooper – ye may touch the hilt, and eat the salt, and belike he’ll forget the assamif for my sake. Let me see, now,” says this mad rascal, chuckling as he warmed to his work, “thou art a Yusufzai Pathan of the Peshawar Valley – no, no, better still, we’ll have thee a Hasanzai of the Black Mountain – they are a strange folk, touched, and given to wild fits, so much may be excused thee. Oh, it is rare! Thou art – Makarram Khan, late of the Peshawar police, and so familiar with the ways of the sahibs; thou hast skirmished along the line, too. Never fear, there was a Makarram Khan,13 until I shot him on my last furlough; he will give thee a shabashg from hell, for he was a stout rider in his time. Careless, though – or he’d have watched the rocks as he rode. Well, Makarram –” says he, grinning like a wolf in the gloom “– wilt thou carry a lance for the Sirkar?”
I’d been determining even as he talked; I was in the greatest fix, and there was no other choice. If I’d known what it would lead to, I’d have damned Ilderim’s notion to his teeth, but it seemed inspired at the time.
“Bind thy puggaree round thy jaw at night, lest thou babble in English in thy sleep,” says he at parting. “Be sullen, and speak little – and be a good soldier, blood-brother, for the credit of Ilderim Khan.” He laughed and slapped my saddle as we shook hands in the dark under the trees. “When thou comest this way again, go to Bull Temple, beyond the Jokan Bagh – I will have a man waiting for an hour at sunrise and sunset. Salaam, sowar!” cries he, and saluted, and I dug my heels into my pony and cantered off in the dawn, still like a man in a wild dream.
* * *
a Sheepskin coat.
b Field allowance.
c Cavalry commander of ten.
d Headman.
e Native adjutant of Indian irregular cavalry. (Since the 3rd were not irregulars, Flashman seems to have misused the term here.)
f In this sense, a deposit paid by a recruit on enlistment.
g Hurrah, bravo.
Chapter 6
You might think it impossible for a white man to pass himself off as a native soldier in John Company’s army, and indeed I doubt if anyone else has ever done it. But when you’ve been called on to play as many parts as I have, it’s a bagatelle. Why, I’ve been a Danish prince, a Texas slave-dealer, an Arab sheik, a Cheyenne Dog Soldier, and a Yankee navy lieutenant in my time, among other things, and none of ’em was as hard to sustain as my lifetime’s impersonation of a British officer and gentleman. The truth is we all live under false pretences much of the time; you just have to put on a bold front and brazen it through.
I’ll admit my gift of languages has been my greatest asset, and I suppose I’m a pretty fair actor; anyway, I’d carried off the role of an Asian-Afghan nigger often enough, and before I was more than a day’s ride on the way to Meerut I was thoroughly back in the part, singing Kabuli bazaar songs through my nose, sneering sideways at anyone I passed, and answering greetings with a grunt or a snarl. I had to keep my chin and mouth covered for the first three days, until my beard had sprouted to a disreputable stubble; apart from that, I needed no disguise, for I was dark and dirty-looking enough to start with. By the time I struck the Grand Trunk my own mother wouldn’t have recognised the big, hairy Border ruffian jogging along so raffishly with his boots out of his stirrups, and his love-lock curling out under his puggaree; on the seventh day, when I cursed and shoved my pony through the crowded streets of Meerut City, spurning the rabble aside as a good Hasanzai should, I was even thinking in Pushtu, and if you’d offered me a seven-course dinner at the Café Royal I’d have turned it down for mutton-and-rice stew with boiled dates to follow.
My only anxiety was Ilderim’s cousin, Gulam Beg, whom I had to seek out in the native cavalry lines beyond the city; he would be sure to run a sharp eye over a new recruit, and if he spotted anything queer about me I’d have a hard job keeping up the imposture. Indeed, at the last minute my nerve slackened a little, and I rode about for a couple of hours before I plucked up the courage to go and see him – I rode on past the native infantry lines, and over the Nullah Bridge up to the Mall in the British town; it was while I was sitting my pony, brooding under the trees, that a dog-cart with two English children and their mother went by, and one of the brats squealed with excitement and said I looked just like Ali Baba and
the Forty Thieves. That cheered me up, for some reason – anyway, I had to have a place to eat and sleep while I shirked my duty, so I finally presented myself at the headquarters of the 3rd Native Light Cavalry, and demanded to see the woordy-major.
I needn’t have worried. Gulam Beg was a stout, white-whiskered old cove with silver-rimmed spectacles on the end of his nose, and when I announced that Ilderim Khan of Mogala was my sponsor he was all over me. Hasanzai, was I, and late of the polis? That was good – I had the look of an able man, yes – doubtless the Colonel Sahib would look favourably on such a fine upstanding recruit. I had seen no military service, though? – hm … he looked at me quizzically, and I tried to slouch a bit more.
“Not in the Guides, perhaps?” says he, with his head on one side. “Or the cutch-cavalry? No? Then doubtless it is by chance that you stand the regulation three paces from my table, and clench your hand with the thumb forward – and that the pony I see out yonder is girthed and bridled like one of ours.” He chuckled playfully. “A man’s past in his own affair, Makarram Khan – what should it profit us to pry and discover that a new ‘recruit’ had once quit the Sirkar’s service over some small matter of feud or blood-letting, eh? You come from Ilderim – it is enough. Be ready to see the Colonel Sahib at noon.”
He’d spotted me for an old soldier, you see, which was all to the good; having detected me in a small deception, it never occurred to him to look for a large one. And he must have passed on his conclusion to the Colonel, for when I made my salaam to that worthy officer on the orderly-room verandah, he looked me up and down and says to the woordy-major in English:
“Shouldn’t wonder if you weren’t right, Gulam Beg – he’s heard Boots and Saddles before, that’s plain. Probably got bored with garrison work and slipped off one night with half-a-dozen rifles on his back. And now, having cut the wrong throat or lifted the wrong herd, he’s come well south to avoid retribution.” He sat back, fingering the big white moustache which covered most of his crimson face. “Ugly-looking devil, ain’t he though? Hasanzai of the Black Mountain, eh? – yes, that’s what I’d have thought. Very good …” He frowned at me and then said, very carefully:
“Company cavalry apka mangta?”
which abomination of bad Urdu I took to mean: did I want to join the Company cavalry? So I showed my teeth and says: “Han, sahib,” and thought I might as well act out my part by betraying some more military knowledge – I ducked my head and leaned over and offered him the hilt of my sheathed Khyber knife, at which he burst out laughing and touched it,14 saying that Gulam Beg was undoubtedly right, and I wasn’t half knowledgeable for a chap who pretended never to have been in the Army before. He gave instructions for me to be sworn in, and I took the oath on the sabre-blade, ate a pinch of salt, and was informed that I was now a skirmisher of the 3rd Native Light Cavalry, that my daffadar was Kudrat Ali, that I would be paid one rupee per day, with a quarter-anna dyeing allowance, and that since I had brought my own horse I would be excused the customary recruit deposit. Also that if I was half as much a soldier as the Colonel suspected, and kept my hands off other people’s throats and property, I might expect promotion in due course.
Thereafter I was issued with a new puggaree, half-boots and pyjamy breeches, a new and very smart silver-grey uniform coat, a regulation sabre, a belt and bandolier, and a tangle of saddlery which was old and stiff enough to have been used at Waterloo (and probably had), and informed by a betel-chewing havildar that if I didn’t have it reduced to gleaming suppleness by next morning, I had best look out. Finally, he took me to the armoury, and I was shown (mark this well) a new rifled Enfield musket, serial number 4413 – some things a soldier never forgets – which I was informed was mine henceforth, and more precious than my own mangy carcase.
Without thinking, I picked it up and tested the action, as I’d done a score of times at Woolwich – and the Goanese store-wallah gaped.
“Who taught you that?” says he. “And who bade you handle it, jangli pig? It is for you to see – you touch it only when it is issued on parade.” And he snatched it back from me. I thought another touch of character would do no harm, so I waited till he had waddled away to replace it in the rack, and then whipped out my Khyber knife and let it fly, intending to plant it in the wall a foot or so away from him. My aim was off though – the knife imbedded itself in the wall all right, but it nicked his arm in passing, and he squealed and rolled on the floor, clutching at his blood-smeared sleeve.
“Bring the knife back,” I snarled, baring my fangs at him, and when he had scrambled up, grey-faced and terrified, and returned it, I touched the point on his chest and says: “Call Makarram Khan a pig just once more, ulla kabaja,a and I will carry thine eyes and genitals on this point as kebabs.” Then I made him lick the blood off the blade, spat in his face, and respectfully asked the havildar what I should do next. He, being a Mussulman, was all for me, and said, grinning, that I should make a fair recruit; he told my daffadar, Kudrat Ali, about the incident, and presently the word went round the big, airy barrack-room that Makarram Khan was a genuine saddle-and-lance man, from up yonder, who would strike first and inquire after – doubtless a Border lifter, and a feud-carrier, but a man who knew how to treat Hindoo insolence, and therefore to be properly respected.
So there I was – Colonel Harry Paget Flashman, late of the 11th Hussars, 17th Lancers and the Staff, former aide to the Commander-in-Chief, and now acting-sowar and rear file in the skirmishing squadron, 3rd Cavalry, Bengal Army, and if you think it was a mad-brained train of circumstance that had taken me there – well, so did I. But once I had got over the unreality of it all, and stopped imagining that everyone was going to see through my disguise, I settled in comfortably enough.
It was an eery feeling, though, at first, to squat on my charpaib against the wall, with my puggaree off, combing my hair or oiling my light harness, and look round that room at the brown, half-naked figures, laughing and chattering – of all the things that soldiers talk about, women, and officers, and barrack gossip, and women, and rations, and women – but in a foreign tongue which, although I spoke it perfectly and even with a genuine frontier accent, was still not my own. While I’d been by myself, as I say, I’d even been thinking in Pushtu, but here I had to hold on tight and remember what I was meant to be – for one thing, I wasn’t used to being addressed in familiar terms by native soldiers, much less ordered about by an officious naikc who’d normally have leaped to attention if I’d so much as looked in his direction. When the man who bunked next to me, Pir Ali, a jolly rascal of a Baluch, tapped my shoulder in suggesting that we might visit the bazaar that first evening, I absolutely stared at him and just managed to bite back that “Damn your impudence” that sprang to my tongue.
It wasn’t easy, for a while; quite apart from remembering obeisances at the prescribed times, and making a show at cooking my own dinner at the choola,d there were a thousand tiny details to beware of – I must remember not to cross my legs when sitting, or blow my nose like a European, or say “Mmh?” if someone said something I couldn’t catch, or use the wrong hand, or clear my throat in the discreet British fashion, or do any of the things that would have looked damned odd in an Afghan frontiersman.15
Of course I made mistakes – once or twice I was just plain ignorant of things that I ought to have known, like how to chew a majoone when Pir Ali offered me one (you have to spit into your hand from time to time, or you’ll end up poisoned), or how to cut a sheep-tail for curry, or even how to sharpen my knife in the approved fashion. When I blundered, and anyone noticed, I found the best way was to stare them down and growl sullenly.
But more often than not my danger lay in betraying knowledge which Makarram Khan simply wouldn’t have had. For example, when Kudrat Ali was giving us sword exercise I found myself once falling into the “rest” position of a German schlager-fencer (not that anyone in India was likely to recognise that), and again, day-dreaming about fagging days at Rugby while cleaning my boots
one evening, I found myself humming “Widdicombe Fair” – fortunately under my breath. My worst blunder, though, was when I was walking near a spot where the British officers were playing cricket, and the ball came skipping towards me – without so much as thinking I snapped it up, and was looking to throw down the wicket when I remembered, and threw it back as clumsily as I could. Once or two of them stared, though, and I heard someone say that big nigger was a deuced smart field. That rattled me, and I trod even more carefully than before.
My best plan, I soon discovered, was to do and say as little as possible, and act the surly, reserved hillman who walked by himself, and whom it was safest not to disturb. The fact that I was by way of being a protégé of the woordy-major’s, and a Hasanzai (and therefore supposedly eccentric), led to my being treated with a certain deference; my imposing size and formidable looks did the rest, and I was left pretty much alone. Once or twice I walked out with Pir Ali, to lounge in the Old Market and ogle the bints, or dally with them in the boutique doorways, but he found my grunts a poor return for his own cheery prattle, and abandoned me to my own devices.
It wasn’t, as you can guess, the liveliest life for me at first – but I only had to think of the alternative to resign myself to it for the present. It was easy enough soldiering, and I quickly won golden opinions from my naik and jemadarf for the speed and intelligence with which I appeared to learn my duties. At first it was a novelty, drilling, working, eating, and sleeping with thirty Indian troopers – rather like being on the other side of the bars of a monkey zoo – but when you’re closed into a world whose four corners are the barrack-room, the choola, the stables, and the maidan, it can become maddening to have to endure the society of an inferior and foreign race with whom you’ve no more in common than if they were Russian moujiks or Irish bog-trotters. What makes it ten times worse is the outcast feeling that comes of knowing that within a mile or two your own kind are enjoying all the home comforts, damn ’em – drinking barra pegs, smoking decent cigars, flirting and ramming with white women, and eating ices for dessert. (I was no longer so enamoured of mutton pilau in ghee,g you gather.) Within a fortnight I’d have given anything to join an English conversation again, instead of listening to Pir Ali giggling about how he’d bullocked the headman’s wife on his last leave, or the endless details of Sita Gopal’s uncle’s law-suit, or Ram Mangal’s reviling of the havildar, or Gobinda Dal’s whining about how he and his brothers, being soldiers, had lost much of the petty local influence they’d formerly enjoyed in their Oudh village, now that the Sirkar had taken over.
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