The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  By God, though, the niggers had been easier to handle. I reckon I must have carried twenty females to the barges (and none of ’em worth even a quick fumble, just my luck), plucked one weeping child from the water’s edge, where she was crying for her mama, put my fist into the face of a pandy who was pestering Mrs Newnham and trying to snatch her parasol, quieted an old crone who refused to be embarked until she was positive the barge she was going to was Number 12 (“Mr Turner said I must go to Number 12; I will go to no other” – it might have been the Great Eastern for all I knew, or cared), and stood neck deep wrestling to replace a rotted rudder rope. Strange, when you’re working all out with things like that, sweating and wrestling to make sense out of chaos, you forget about death and danger and possible treachery – all that matters is getting that piece of hemp knotted through the rudder stem, or finding the carpetbag that Mrs Burtenshaw’s maid has left in the cart.

  I was about done when I stumbled up through the litter of the bank for the last time, and looked about me. Nearly all the command was loaded, the barges were floating comfortably high on the oily surface, and beyond them the last dawn mists were receding across the broad expanse of the river to the far bank half a mile distant, with the eastern sun turning the water to a great crimson mirror.

  There weren’t above fifty of our folk, Vibart’s rearguard mostly, left on the wreck-strewn, mud-churned slope; Wheeler and Moore and Vibart were all together, and as I came to them I heard Whiting’s voice, shaking with anger:

  “– and he was shot on his palki, I tell you – half a dozen times, at least! Those foresworn swine up yonder –” and he shook his fist towards the temple on the knoll, where Azeemoolah was sitting with Tantia Tope in a little group of the Nana’s officers. There was no sign of Nana himself, though.

  “There is nothing to be done, Captain Whiting!” Wheeler’s voice was hoarse, and his gaunt face was crimson and sweating. He looked on the edge of collapse. “I know, sir, I know – it is the basest treachery, but there is no remedy now! Let us thank God we have come this far – no, no, sir, we are in no case to protest, let alone punish – we must make haste down the river before worse befalls!”

  Whiting stamped and cursed, but Vibart eased him away. The pandies who had lined the slope were moving down now, through the abandoned wagons, converging on the landing-place.

  “Hollo, Flash,” says Moore, wearily. Like me, he was plastered with mud, and the sling was gone from his wounded arm. “They settled Massie, too – did you know? He and Ewart protested when the pandies dragged off four of our loyal sepoys – so they shot ’em all, out o’ hand –”

  “Like dogs, beside the road!” cries Whiting. “By God, if I’d a gun!” He dashed the sweat from his eyes, glaring at the pandies on the slope. Then he saw me. “Flashman – one of the sepoys was that Pathan orderly of yours – the big chap in the havildar’s coat – they shot him in the ditch!”

  For a moment I didn’t comprehend; I just stared at his flushed, raging face. “Like a dog in the ditch!” cries he again, and then it hit me like a blow: he was telling me that Ilderim was dead. I can’t describe what I felt – it wasn’t grief, or horror, so much as disbelief. Ilderim couldn’t die – he was indestructible, always had been, even as the boy I’d first met at Mogala years ago, one of those folk whose life is fairly bursting out of them; I had a vision of that grinning, bearded hawk-face of just a few hours ago – “No pi-dog of a mutineer will take me for anything but what I am!” And he’d been right, and it had been the death of him – but not the kind of death the great brave idiot had always looked for, just a mean, covert murder at the roadside. Oh, you stupid Gilzai bastard, I thought – why didn’t you go over the wall when you had the chance …

  “Come on!” Moore was pushing at my shoulder. “We’ll be last aboard. We’re in the – hollo, what’s that?”

  From the trees on the top of the slope a bugle sounded, the notes floating clearly down to us. I looked up the hill, and saw a strange thing happening – I suppose I was still shocked by the news of Ilderim’s death, but what I saw seemed odd rather than menacing. The pandies on the slope, and there must have been a couple of hundred of them, were dropping to the kneeling firing position, their muskets were at their shoulders, and they were pointing at us.

  “For Christ’s –” a voice shouted, and then the hillside seemed to explode in a hail of musketry, the balls were howling past, I heard someone scream beside me, and then Moore’s arm flailed me to the ground, and I was plunging through the ooze, into the water. I went under, and struck out for dear life, coming up with a shattering crash of my head against the middle barge. Overhead women were shrieking and muskets were cracking, and then there was the crash of distant cannon, and I saw the narrow strip of water between me and the shore ploughed up as the storm of grape hit it. I reached up, seizing the gunwale, and heaved myself up, and then the whole barge shook as though in a giant hand, and I was hurled back into the water again.

  I came up gasping. The pandies were tearing down the slope now, sabres and muskets and bayonets at the ready, charging into the last of our shore-party, who were struggling in the shallows. Up on the slope others were firing at the boats, and in the shade beneath the trees there was the triple flash of cannon, sending grape and round-shot smashing down into the helpless lumbering boats. Men were struggling in the water only a few yards from me – I saw a British soldier sabred down, another floundering back as a sepoy shot him point-blank through the body, and a third, thrust through with a bayonet, sinking down slowly on the muddy shore. Wheeler, white-faced and roaring “Treachery! Shove off – quickly! Treachery!”, was stumbling out into the shallows, his sabre drawn; he slashed at a pursuing sepoy, missed his footing and went under, but a hand reached out from the gunwale near me and pulled him up, coughing and spewing water. Moore was in the water close by, and Vibart was trying to swim towards us with his wounded arm trailing. As Moore plunged towards him I sank beneath the surface, dived, and struck out beneath the boat, and as I went I was thinking, clear enough, well, Flashy my lad, you were wrong again – Nana Sahib wasn’t to be trusted after all.

  I came up on the other side, and the first thing I saw was a body falling from the boat above me. Overhead its thatch was burning, and as a great chunk of the stuff fell hissing into the water I shoved away. I trod water, looking about me: in the next two barges the thatches were alight as well, and people were screaming and tumbling into the water – I saw one woman jumping with a baby in her arms: I believe it was the one who had cuffed the little boy for laughing at the elephant’s dung. The shore was hidden from me by the loom of the barge, but the crash of firing was redoubling, and the chorus of screams and yells was deafening. People were firing back from the barges, too, and in the one down-river from me two chaps were beating at the burning thatch, and another was heaving at its tiller; very slowly it seemed to be veering from the bank. That’s the boy for me, thinks I, and in the same moment the thatch of the barge immediately above me collapsed with a roar and a whoosh of sparks, with shrieks of the damned coming from beneath it.

  It was obvious, even in that nightmare few moments, what had happened. Nana had been meaning to play false all along; he had just waited until we were in the boats before opening up with musketry, grape, and every piece of artillery he had. From where I was I could see one barge already sinking, with people struggling in the water round it; at least four others were on fire; two were drifting helplessly into midstream. The pandies were in the water round the last three boats, where most of the women and children were, but then a great gust of smoke blotted the scene from my view, and at the same time I heard the crackle of firing from the far bank – the treacherous bastards had us trapped both sides. I put my head down and struck out for the next barge ahead, which at least had someone steering it, and as I came under its stern there was Moore in the water alongside, shoving for all he was worth to turn the rudder and help it from the shore. Beyond him I saw Wheeler and Vibart and a cou
ple of others being dragged inboard, while our people blazed back at the pandies on the bank.

  Moore shouted something incoherent at me, and as I seized on the rudder with him his face was within a foot of mine – and then it exploded in a shower of blood, and I literally had his brains blown all over me. I let go, shrieking, and when I had dashed the hideous mess from my eyes he was gone, the barge was surging out into the river as our people got the sweeps going, and I was just in time to grasp the gunwale and be dragged along, clinging like grim death, and bawling to be hauled aboard.

  We must have gone several hundred yards before I managed to scramble up and on to the deck and get my bearings. The first thing I saw was Wheeler, dead or dying; he had a gaping wound in the neck, and the blood was pumping oozily on to his shirt. All around there were wounded men sprawled on the planks, the smouldering thatch filled the boat with acrid clouds of smoke, and at both gunwales men were firing at the banks. I clung to the gunwale, looking back – we were half a mile below Suttee Ghat by now, where most of the barges were still swinging at their moorings, under a pall of smoke; the river round them was full of people, floundering for the bank. The firing seemed to have slackened, but you could still see the sparkle of the muskets along the slope above the ghat, and the occasional blink of a heavy gun, booming dully across the water. Behind us, two of the barges seemed to have got clear, and were drifting helplessly across the river, but we were the only one under way, with half a dozen chaps each side tugging at the sweeps.

  I took stock. We were clear; the shots weren’t reaching us. Wheeler was dead, flopped out on the deck, and beyond him Vibart was lying against the gunwale, eyes closed, both arms soaked in blood; someone was babbling in agony, and I saw it was Turner, with one leg doubled at a hideous angle and the other lying in a bloody pool. Whiting was holding on to one of the awning supports, a gory spectre, fumbling one-handed at the lock of a carbine – there hardly seemed to be a sound man in the barge. I saw Delafosse was at one of the sweeps, Thomson at another, and Sergeant Grady, with a bandage round his brow, was in the act of loosing off a shot at the shore. And then, with a little shock of astonishment, I saw that one of the wounded men on the deck was East – and he was finished.

  Why, I don’t know, but I dropped down beside him and felt his pulse. He opened his eyes at that, and looked up at me, and someone at my elbow – I don’t know who – says hoarsely:

  “Pandy got him on the bank … bayonet in the back, poor devil.”

  East recognised me, and tried to speak, but couldn’t; you could see the life ebbing out of his eyes. His lips quivered, and very faintly I heard him say:

  “Flashman … tell the doctor … I …”

  That was all, except that he gripped my hand hard, and the man beside me said something about there not being any doctor on board.

  “That ain’t what he meant,” says I. “It’s another doctor he means – a schoolmaster, but he’s dead.”

  East gave a little ghost of a smile, and his hand tightened, and then went loose in mine – and I found I was blubbering and gasping, and thinking about Rugby, and hot murphies at Sally’s shop, and a small fag limping along pathetically after the players at Big Side – because he couldn’t play himself, you see, being lame. I’d hated the little bastard, too, man and boy, for his smug manly piety – but you don’t see a child you’ve known all your life die every day. Maybe that was why I wept, maybe it was the shock and horror of what had been happening. I don’t know. Whatever it was, I’m sure I felt it all the more sincerely for knowing that I was still alive myself, and no bones broken so far.32

  Memory’s the queerest thing. When you’ve been through a hellish experience – and the Cawnpore siege and surrender ranks high in that line, along with Balaclava and Kabul and Greasy Grass and Isandlhwana – the aftermath tends to be vague, until some fresh horror strikes. That barge is mercifully dim in my mind now – I know it was the only one that got away from Cawnpore, and that of the rest, all were shot to pieces or burned with their passengers, except those which had the women and children aboard. The pandies captured those, and took the women and kids back ashore – all the world knows what happened after that. But only a few things are clear about our trip down-river – Thomson has left a pretty full account of it, if you’re interested. I remember Whiting dying – or rather I remember him being dead, looking very pale and small in the bows of the boat. I remember taking a turn at the rudder, and splashing and straining in the water when we grounded on a mudbank in the dark. I remember hearing drums beating on the bank, and Vibart biting on a leather strap as they set his broken arm, and the dull splashes as we put dead bodies over the side, and the musty taste of dry mealies which was all we had to eat – but the first time that memory becomes consecutive and coherent after East died was when a fire-arrow came winging out of the dark and thudded into the deck, and we were shooting away at dim figures on the nearest bank, and fire-arrows came down in a blazing rain as we hauled on the sweeps and forced the barge back into mid-stream out of range. We rowed like fury until the fiery pinpoints of light on the bank were far behind us, and the yelling and drumming of the niggers had died away, and then we flopped down exhausted and the current carried us and landed us high and dry on another mudbank just before dawn.

  This time there was no shoving off; we were wedged tight in the mud, along a deserted jungly shore, with nothing to be heard but monkeys chattering and birds screeching in the dense undergrowth. The far bank was the same, a thick mass of green, with the brown oily river sliding slowly past. At least it looked peaceful, which was a pleasant change.

  Vibart reckoned we must still be a hundred miles from Allahabad, and if the behaviour of the niggers who’d showered us with fire-arrows was anything to go by, we could count on hostile country most of the way. There were two dozen of us in the boat, perhaps half of whom were fit to stand; we were low on powder and ball, and desperately short of mealies, there were no medical supplies, and it was odds half the wounded would contract gangrene unless we reached safety quickly. Not a pleasant prospect, thinks I, as I looked round the squalid barge, with its dozen wounded groaning or listless on the planks, the stench of blood and death everywhere, and even the whole men looking emaciated and fit to croak. I was in better case than most – I hadn’t been through the whole siege – and it was crossing my mind that I might do worse than slip away on my own and trust to luck and judgement to get to Allahabad on foot; after all, I could always turn into a native again.

  So when we held our little council, I prepared the way for decamping, in my own subtle style. The others, naturally, were all debating how we might get refloated again and press on to Allahabad; I shook them up by suddenly growling that I was in no hurry to get there.

  “I agree we must get the barge refloated to take the wounded on,” says I. “For the rest of us – well, for me, leastways, I’d sooner head back for Cawnpore.”

  They gaped at me in disbelief. “You’re mad!” cries Delafosse.

  “So I’ve been told,” says I. “See here – while we had the women and children to think of, they were our first concern. That’s the only reason we surrendered, isn’t it? Well, now they’re … either gone, or captives of those fiends – I don’t much fancy running any longer.” I looked as belligerent as I knew how. “There hasn’t been much time to think things out these past hours – but now, well, I reckon I’ve a score to settle – and the only place I want to settle it is Cawnpore.”

  “But … but …” says Thomson, “we can’t go back, man! It’s certain death!”

  “Maybe,” says I, very business-like. “But I’ve seen my country’s flag hauled down once – something I never thought to see – I’ve seen us betrayed, our … our loved ones ravished from us …” I managed a manly glisten about the eye. “I don’t like it above half! So – I’m going back, and I’m going to get a bullet into that black bastard’s heart – I don’t care how! And – that’s that.”

  “By God!” says Delafo
sse, taking fire, “by God – I’ve half a mind to come with you!”

  “You’ll do no such thing!” This was Vibart; he was deathly pale, with both arms useless, but he was still in command. “Our duty is to reach Allahabad – Colonel Flashman, I forbid you! I will not have your life flung away in … in this rash folly! You will carry out General Wheeler’s orders –”

  “Look, old fellow,” says I. “I was never one of General Wheeler’s command, you recollect? I don’t ask anyone to come with me – but I left a friend dead back there – a comrade from the old Afghan days – a salt man from the hills. Well, maybe I’m more of a salt man than a parade soldier myself – anyway, I know what I must do.” I gave him a quizzical little grin, and patted his foot. “Anyway, Vibart, I’m senior to you, remember?”

  At this they cried out together, telling me not to be a fool, and Vibart said I couldn’t desert our wounded. He wanted to send a shore-party, to try to find friendly villagers who would tow us off; I was best fitted to lead it, he said, and my first duty was to carry out Wheeler’s dying wishes, and get down-river. I seemed to hesitate, and finally said I would lead the shore-party – “but you’ll be going to Allahabad without me in the end,” says I. “All I’ll need is a rifle and a knife – and a handshake from each one of you.”

  So we set off, a dozen of us, to try to find a friendly village. If we found one, and the prospects of getting off for Allahabad seemed good, I’d allow myself to be persuaded, and go along with them. If we didn’t – I’d slip away, and they could imagine I’d gone back to Cawnpore on my mission of vengeance. (That’s one thing about having a reckless reputation: they’ll believe anything of you, and shake their heads in admiration over your dare-devilry.)

  We hadn’t gone five minutes into the jungle before I was wishing to God I’d been able to stay in the boat. It wasn’t very thick stuff, once we got away from the river, but eery and curiously quiet, with huge tall trees shadowing a forest-floor of creeper and swampy plants, like a great cathedral, and only the occasional tree-creature chirruping in the silence. We struck a little path, and followed it, and presently came on a tiny temple in a clearing, a lath-and-plaster thing that looked as though it hadn’t been visited in years. Delafosse and Sergeant Grady scouted it, and reported it empty, and I was just ordering up the others when we heard it – very low and far-off in the forest: the slow boom-boom of drums.