It took me a few hours to settle down after what I had been through, but when I came to cast up the score it looked none so bad. Bar my aching joints and skinned limbs, I was well enough, and damned thankful for it. As to the future – well, I’d thought Rose’s plan was just moonshine, but then I’d never dreamed that Lakshmibai was infatuated with me. Attracted, well enough – it’s an odd woman that ain’t, but the force of her passion had been bewildering. And yet, why not? I’d known it happen before, after all, and often as not with the same kind of women – the high-born, pampered kind who go through their young lives surrounded by men who are forever deferring and toadying, so that when a real plunger like myself comes along, and treats ’em easy, like women and not as queens, they’re taken all aback. It’s something new to them to have a big likely chap who ain’t abashed by their grandeur, but looks ’em over with a warm eye, perfectly respectful but daring them just the same. They resent it, and like it, too, and if you can just tempt them into bed and show them what they’ve been missing – why, the next thing you know they’re head over heels in love with you.
That’s how it had been with Duchess Irma, and that wild black bitch Ranavalona in Madagascar (though she was so stark crazy it was difficult to be sure), so why not the Rani of Jhansi? After all, her only husband had been as fishy as Dick’s hatband, by all accounts, and however many young stalwarts she’d whistled up since then, they wouldn’t have my style. Well, it was a damned handy stroke of luck – as well as being most flattering.
As to the surrender – well, she wasn’t a fool. Here was a way out for her, with more credit and safety than she could have expected, under the wing of the adored Flashy, who she imagined would protect and cherish her happy ever after. I was all for that – for a few months, anyway, which was more than most females could expect from me. Mark you, I was famously taken with her (I still am, somehow) but I guessed I’d cool after a spell. Couldn’t take her home, anyway – she’d just have to reconcile herself to waving me good-bye when the time came, like all the others.
In the meantime, I could only wait, in some excitement, for Rose to mount his assault. When a tremendous cannonading in the city broke out on the following day, with native pipes and drums squealing and thundering, I thought the attack had begun, but it was a false alarm, as Sher Khan informed me later. It seemed that Tantia Tope had suddenly hove in sight with a rebel army twenty thousand strong, to try to relieve Jhansi; Rose, cool as a trout as usual, had left his heavy artillery and cavalry to continue the siege, and had turned with the rest of his force and thrashed Tantia handsomely on the Betwa river, a few miles away. At the same time he’d ordered a diversionary attack on Jhansi to keep the defenders from sallying out to help Tantia; that had been the noise I’d heard.45
“So much for our stout-hearted mutineers in Jhansi,” sneers Sher Khan. “If they had sallied out, your army might have been caught like a nut between two stones, but they contented themselves with howling and burning powder.” He spat. “Let the Sirkar eat them, and welcome.”
I reminded him he was on the rebel side, and that it would be short shrift for mutineers when Jhansi fell.
“I am no mutineer,” says he, “but a paid soldier of the Rani. I have eaten her salt and fight for her like the Yusufzai I am – even as I fought for the Sirkar in the Guides. The sahibs know the difference between a rebel and a soldier who keeps faith; they will treat me with honour – if I live,” he added carelessly. He was another Ilderim, in his way – shorter and uglier, with a smashed nose and pocked face, but a slap-up Pathan Khyberie, every inch.
“With any luck they will have hanged thy Ruski friend by now,” he went on, grinning. “He rode out to join Tantia in the night, and has not returned. Is that good news, Iflass-man husoor?”
Wasn’t it just, though? Of course, Ignatieff would have been daft to stay in Jhansi – we’d have hanged him high enough for the foreign spy he was. He’d be off to assist the leading rebels in the field; I felt all the better for knowing he was out of distance, but I doubted if he’d allow himself to be killed or taken – he was too downy a bird for that.
With Tantia whipped, it seemed to me Rose would lose no further time assaulting Jhansi, but another day and night passed in which I waited and fretted, and still there was nothing but the distant thump of cannon-fire to disturb my cell. It wasn’t till the third night that the deuce of a bombardment broke out, in the small hours, and lasted until almost dawn, and then I heard what I’d been waiting for – the crash of volley-firing that signified British infantry, and the sound of explosions within the town itself, and even distant bugle calls.
“They are in the city,” says Sher Khan, when he brought my breakfast. “The mutineers are fighting better than I thought, and it is hot work in the streets, they say.” He grinned cheerfully and tapped the hilt of his Khyber knife. “Will her highness order me to cut thy throat when the last attack goes home, think ye? Eat well, husoor,” and the brute swaggered out, chuckling
Plainly she hadn’t confided her intentions to him. I guessed she’d wait for nightfall and then make her run; by that time our fellows would be thumping at the gates of the fort itself. So I contained myself, listened to the crackle of firing and explosion, drawing always nearer, until by nightfall it seemed to be only a few hundred yards off – I was chewing my nails by then, I may tell you. But the dark came, and still the sound of battle went on, and I could even hear what I thought were English voices shouting in the distance, among the yells and shrieks. Through the one high window of my cell the night-sky was glaring red – Jhansi was dying hard, by the look of it.
I don’t know what time it was when I heard the sudden rattle of the bolt in my cell-door, and Sher Khan and two of his guardsmen came in, carrying torches. They didn’t stand on ceremony, but hustled me out, and down narrow stone stairs and passages to a little courtyard. The moon wasn’t up yet, but it was light enough, with the red glare above the walls, and the air was heavy with powder-smoke and the drift of burning; the crashing of musketry was close outside the fort now.
The yard seemed to be full of red-coated troopers of the Rani’s guard, and over by a narrow gateway I saw a slim figure mounted on a white horse which I recognised at once as Lakshmibai. There were mounted guardsmen with her, and a couple of her ladies, also mounted, and heavily veiled; one of the mounted men had a child perched on his saddle-bow: Damodar, her stepson. I was about to call out, but to my astonishment Sher Kahn suddenly stooped beside me, there was a metallic snap, and he had a fetter clasped round my left leg. Before I could even protest, he was thrusting me towards a horse, snarling: “Up, husoor!” and I was no sooner in the saddle than he had passed a short chain from my fetter under the beast’s belly, and secured my other ankle, so that I was effectively shackled to the pony.
“What the hell’s this?” I cried, and he chuckled as he swung aboard a horse beside me.
“Heavy spurs, husoor!” says he. “Peace! – it is by her order, and doubtless for your own safety. Follow!” And he shook my bridle, urging me across the square; the little party by the gate were already passing out of sight, and a moment later we were riding single file down a steep alleyway, with towering walls either side, Sher Khan just ahead of me and another Pathan immediately behind.
I couldn’t think what to make of this, until it dawned on me that she wouldn’t have let her entourage into the whole secret – they would know she was escaping, but not that she intended to give herself up to the British. So for form’s sake I must appear to be a prisoner still. I wished she’d given me the chance of a secret word beforehand, though, and let me ride with her; I didn’t want us blundering into the besieging cavalry in the dark, and perhaps being mistaken.
However, there was nothing for it now but to carry on. Our little cavalcade clattered down the alleyways, twisting and turning, and then into a broader street, where a house was burning, but there wasn’t a soul to be seen, and the sound of firing was receding behind us. Once we’d passed th
e fire it was damned dark among the rickety buildings, until there were torches and a high gateway, and more of her guardsmen in the entry-way; I saw her white horse stop as she leaned from the saddle to consult with the guard-commander, and waited with my heart in my mouth until he stepped back, saluting, and barked an order. Two of his men threw open a wicket in the main gate, and a moment later we were filing through, and I knew we were coming out on to the Orcha road.
It was blacker than hell in November under the lee of the great gateway, but half a mile ahead there was the twinkling line of our picket-fires, and flashes of gunfire as the artillery pieces joined in the bombardment of the city. Sher Khan had my bridle in his fist as we moved forward at a walk, and then at a slow trot; it was easy going on the broad road surface at first, but then the dim figures of the riders ahead seemed to be veering away to the right, and as we followed my horse stumbled on rough ground – we were leaving the road for the flat maidan, and I felt the first prickle of doubt in my mind. Why were we turning aside? The path to safety lay straight along the road, where Rose’s pickets would be waiting – she knew that, even if her riders didn’t. Didn’t she realise we were going astray – that on this tack we would probably blunder into pickets that weren’t expecting us? The time for pretence was past, anyhow – it was high time I was up with her, taking a hand, or God knew where we would land. But even as I stiffened in my saddle to shove my heels in and forge ahead, Sher Khan’s hand leaped from my wrist to my bridle, there was a zeep of steel, and the Khyber knife was pricking my ribs with his voice hissing out of the dark:
“One word, Bloody Lance – one word, and you’ll say the next one to Shaitan!”
The shock of it knocked my wits endways – but only for a moment. There’s nothing like eighteen inches of razor-edged steel for turning a growing doubt into a stone-ginger certainty, and before we’d gone another five paces I had sprung to the most terrifying conclusion – she was escaping, right enough, but not the way Rose and I had planned it – she was using the information I’d given her, but in her own way! It rushed in on me in a mad whirl of thoughts – all her protestations, her slobbering over me, those tear-filled eyes, the lips on mine, the passionate endearments – all false? They couldn’t be, in God’s name! Why, she’d been all over me, like a crazy schoolgirl … but now we were pacing still faster in the wrong direction, the knife was scoring my side, and suddenly there was a shouted challenge ahead, and a cry, the riders were spurring forward, a musket cracked, and Sher Khan roared in my ear:
“Ride, feringhee – and ride straight, or I’ll split your backbone!”
He slashed his reins at my pony, it bounded forward, and in a second I was flying along in the dark, willy-nilly, with him at my elbow and the thundering shadows surging ahead. There was a fusillade of shots, off to the left, and a ball whined overhead; as I loosed the reins, trusting to my pony’s feet, I saw the picket-fires only a few hundred yards off. We were racing towards a gap between one fire and the next, perhaps two furlongs across; all I could do was career ahead, with Sher Khan and a Pathan either side of me – I couldn’t roll from the saddle, even if I’d dared, with that infernal chain beneath my horse’s belly; I daren’t swerve, or his knife would be in my back; I could only gallop, cursing in sick bewilderment, praying to God I wouldn’t stop a blade or a bullet. Where the hell were we going – was it some ghastly error after all? No, it was treachery, and I knew it – and now the picket-fires were on our flanks, there were more shots, a horse screamed ahead of us, and my pony swerved past the dim struggling mass on the ground, with Sher Khan still knee to knee with me as we sped on. A trumpet was sounding behind, and faint voices yelling; ahead was the drumming of hooves and the dim shapes of the Rani’s riders, scattered now as they galloped for their lives. We were clear through, and every stride was taking us farther from Jhansi and Rose’s army, and safety.
How long we kept up that breakneck pace I don’t know, or what direction we took – I’d been through too much, my mind was just a welter of fear and bewilderment and rage and stark disbelief. I didn’t know what to think – she couldn’t have sold me so cruelly, surely – not after what she’d said, and the way she’d held my face and looked at me? But I knew she had – my disbelief was just sheer hurt vanity. God, did I think I was the only sincere liar in the world? And here I was, humbugged to hell and beyond, being kidnapped in the train of this deceitful rebel bitch – or was I wrong, was there some explanation after all? That’s what I still wanted to believe, of course – there’s nothing like infatuation for stoking false hope.
However, there’s no point in recounting all the idiot arguments I had with myself on that wild ride through the night, with the miles flying by unseen, until the gloom began to lighten, the scrub-dotted plain came into misty view, and Sher Khan still clung like a bearded ghost at my elbow, his teeth bared as he crouched over his pony’s mane. The riders ahead were still driving their tired beasts on at full stretch; about a hundred yards in front I could see Lakshmibai’s slim figure on her white mare, with the Pathans flanking her. It was like a drunken nightmare – on and on, exhausting, over that endless plain.
There was a yell from the flank, and one of the Pathans up in his stirrups, pointing. A shot cracked, I saw a sudden flash of scarlet to our left, and there was a little cloud of horsemen bursting out of a nullah – only half our numbers, but Company cavalry, by God! They were careering in to take our leaders in the flank, pukka light cavalry style, and I tried to yell, but Sher Khan had my bridle again, wrenching me away to the right, while the Pathan guardsmen drew their sabres and wheeled to face the attackers head on. I watched them meet with a chorus of yells and a clash of steel; the dust swirled up round them as Sher Khan and his mate herded me away, but half-slewed round in my saddle I saw the sabres swinging and the beasts serving and plunging as the Company men tried to ride through. A Pathan broke from the press, shepherding away a second rider, and I saw it was one of the Rani’s ladies – and then more figures were wheeling out of the dust, and one of them was Lakshmibai, with a mounted man bearing down on her, his sabre swung aloft. I heard Sher Kahn’s anguished yell as her white mare seemed to stumble, but she reined it up somehow, whirling in her tracks, there was the glitter of steel in her hand, and as the Company man swept down on her she lunged over her beast’s head – the sabres clashed and rang, and he was past her, wheeling away, clutching at his arm as he half-slipped from his saddle.46
That was all I saw before Sher Khan and the other herded me down a little nullah, where we halted and waited while the noise of the skirmish gradually died away. I knew what was happening as well as if I was seeing it – the Company riders, out-sabred, would be drawing off, and sure enough presently the Pathans came down the nullah in good order, clustered round Damodar and the Rani’s women; among the last to come was Lakshmibai.
It was the first clear look at her that I’d had in all that fearful escape. She was wearing a mail jacket under her long cloak, with a mail cap over her turban, and her sabre was still in her hand, blood on its blade. She stopped a moment by the rider who carried Damodar, and spoke to the child; then she laughed and said something to one of the Pathans and handed him her sabre, while she wiped her face with a handkerchief. Then she looked towards me, and the others looked with her, in silence.
As you know, I’m a fairly useful hand on social occasions, ready with the polite phrase or gesture, but I’ll confess that in that moment I couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say. When you’ve just been betrayed by an Indian queen who has previously professed undying love for you, and she confronts you – having just sabred one of your countrymen, possibly to death – and you are in the grip of her minions, with your feet chained under your horse … well, the etiquette probably takes some thinking about. I suppose I’d have come out with something in a minute or two – an oath, or a squeal for mercy, or a polite inquiry, perhaps, but before I had the chance she was addressing Sher Khan.
“You will take him to G
walior.” Her voice was quiet and perfectly composed. “Hold him there until I send for you. At the last, he will be my bargain.”
Chapter 14
You may say it served me right, and I can’t disagree. If I weren’t such a susceptible, trusting chap where pretty women are concerned, I daresay I’d have smelled a rat on the night when Lakshmibai rescued me from Ignatieff’s rack and then flung herself all over me in her perfumed lair. A less warm-blooded fellow might have thought the lady was protesting rather too much, and been on his guard when she slobbered fondly over him, vowing undying love and accepting his proposal for her escape. He might – or again, he mightn’t.
For myself, I can only say I had no earthly reason to suppose her false. After all, our last previous meeting had been that monumental roll in her pavilion, which had left me with the impression that she wasn’t entirely indifferent to me. Secondly, her acceptance of Rose’s proposal seemed natural and sensible. Thirdly, I’ll admit to being enthralled by her, and fourthly, having just finished a spell on the rack I was perhaps thinking less clearly than usual. Finally, m’lud, if you’d been confronted by Lakshmibai, with that beautiful dusky face looking pleadingly up at you, and those tits quivering under your nose, I submit that you might have been taken in yourself, and glad of it.
In any event, it didn’t make a ha’porth of difference. Even if I’d suspected her then, I was in her power, and she could have wrung all the details of Rose’s scheme out of me and made her escape anyway. I’d have been dragged along at her tail, and finished up in the Gwalior dungeons just the same. And mind you, I’m still not certain how far she was humbugging me; all I know is that if she was play-acting, she seemed to be enjoying her work.
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