A week or two later – it was now well into October – he sent me off again with a letter to Sale. Little progress was being made in clearing the passes, the Gilzais were as active as ever and out-shooting our troops all the time, and there were growing rumours of trouble brewing in Kabul itself. Burnes had sense enough to show a little concern, although McNaghten was still as placidly blind as ever, while Elphy Bey simply looked from one to the other, nodding agreement to whatever was said. But even Burnes showed no real urgency about it all; he just wanted to nag at Sale for not keeping the Gilzais quiet.
This time I went with a good escort of my Gilzais, under young Ilderim, on the theory that while they were technically sworn to fight their own kinsfolk, they would be unlikely in practice to get into any shooting scrapes with them. However, I never put this to the test, for it became evident as we rode eastward through the passes that the situation was worse than anyone in Kabul had realised, and I decided that I, at any rate, would not try to get through to Sale. The whole country beyond Jugdulluk was up, and the hills were swarming with hostile Afghans, all either on their way to help beat up Sale’s force, or else preparing for something bigger – there was talk among the villagers of a great jehad or holy war, in which the feringhees would be wiped out; it was on the eve of breaking out, they said. Sale was now hopelessly cut off; there was no chance of relief from Jallalabad, or even from Kabul – oh, Kabul was going to be busy enough looking after itself.
I heard this shivering round a camp-fire on the Soorkab road, and Ilderim shook his head in the shadows and said:
“It is not safe for you to go on, Flashman huzoor. You must return to Kabul. Give me the letter for Sale; although I have eaten the Queen’s salt my own people will let me through.”
This was such obvious common sense that I gave him the letter without argument and started back for Kabul that same night, with four of the Gilzai hostages for company. At that hour I wanted to get as many miles as possible between me and the gathering Afghan tribes, but if I had known what was waiting for me in Kabul I would have gone on to Sale and thought myself lucky.
Riding hard through the next day, we came to Kabul at nightfall, and I never saw the place so quiet. Bala Hissar loomed over the deserted streets; the few folk who were about were grouped in little knots in doorways and at street corners; there was an air of doom over the whole place. No British soldiers were to be seen in the city itself, and I was glad to get to the Residency, where Burnes lived in the heart of the town, and hear the courtyard gates grind to behind me. The armed men of Burnes’s personal guard were standing to in the yard, while others were posted on the Residency walls; the torches shone on belt-plates and bayonets, and the place looked as though it was getting ready to withstand a siege.
But Burnes himself was sitting reading in his study as cool as a minnow, until he saw me. At the sight of my evident haste and disorder – I was in Afghan dress, and pretty filthy after days in the saddle – he started up.
“What the deuce are you doing here?” says he.
I told him, and added that there would probably be an Afghan army coming to support my story.
“My message to Sale,” he snapped. “Where is it? Have you not delivered it?”
I told him about Ilderim, and for once the dapper little dandy forgot his carefully cultivated calm.
“Good God!” says he. “You’ve given it to a Gilzai to deliver?”
“A friendly Gilzai,” I assured him. “A hostage, you remember.”
“Are you mad?” says he, his little moustache all a-quiver. “Don’t you know that you can’t trust an Afghan, hostage or not?”
“Ilderim is a khan’s son and a gentleman in his own way,” I told him. “In any event, it was that or nothing. I couldn’t have got through.”
“And why not? You speak Pushtu; you’re in native dress – God knows you’re dirty enough to pass. It was your duty to see that message into Sale’s own hand – and bring an answer. My God, Flashman, this is a pretty business, when a British officer cannot be trusted …”
“Now, look you here, Sekundar,” says I, but he came up straight like a little bantam and cut me off.
“Sir Alexander, if you please,” says he icily, as though I’d never seen him with his breeches down, chasing after some big Afghan bint. He stared at me and took a pace or two round the table.
“I think I understand,” says he. “I have wondered about you lately, Flashman – whether you were to be fully relied on, or … Well, it shall be for a court-martial to decide—”
“Court-martial? What the devil!”
“For wilful disobedience of orders,” says he. “There may be other charges. In any event, you may consider yourself under arrest, and confined to this house. We are all confined anyway – the Afghans are allowing no one to pass between here and the cantonment.”
“Well, in God’s name, doesn’t that bear out what I’ve been telling you?” I said. “The country’s all up to the eastward, man, and now here in Kabul …”
“There is no rising in Kabul,” says he. “Merely a little unrest which I propose to deal with in the morning.” He stood there, cock-sure little ass, in his carefully pressed linen suit, with a flower in his button-hole, talking as though he was a schoolmaster promising to reprimand some unruly fags. “It may interest you to know – you who turn tail at rumours – that I have twice this evening received direct threats to my life. I shall not be alive by morning, it is said. Well, well, we shall see about that.”
“Aye, maybe you will,” says I. “And as to your fine talk that I turn tail at rumours, you may see about that, too. Maybe Akbar Khan will come to show you himself.”
He smiled at me, not pleasantly. “He is in Kabul; I have even had a message from him. And I am confident that he intends no harm to us. A few dissidents there are, of course, and it may be necessary to read them a lesson. However, I trust myself for that.”
There was no arguing with his complacency, but I pitched into him hard on his threat of a court-martial for me. You might have thought that any sensible man would have understood my case, but he simply waved my protests aside, and finished by ordering me to my room. So I went, in a rare rage at the self-sufficient folly of the man, and heartily hoping that he would trip over his own conceit. Always so clever, always so sure – that was Burnes. I would have given a pension to see him at a loss for once.
But I was to see it for nothing.
It came suddenly, just before breakfast-time, when I was rubbing my eyes after a pretty sleepless night which had dragged itself away very slowly, and very silently for Kabul. It was a grey morning, and the cocks were crowing; suddenly I became aware of a distant murmur, growing to a rumble, and hurried to the window. The town lay still, with a little haze over the houses; the guards were still on the wall of the Residency compound, and in the distance, coming closer, the noise was identifiable as the tramping of feet and the growing clamour of a mob.
There was a shouted order in the courtyard, a clatter of feet on the stairs, and Burnes’s voice calling for his brother, young Charlie, who lived in the Residency with him. I snatched my robe from its peg and hurried down, winding my puggaree on to my head as I went. As I reached the courtyard there was the crack of a musket shot, and a wild yell from beyond the wall; a volley of blows hammered on the gate, and across the top of the wall I saw the vanguard of a charging horde streaming out from between the nearest houses. Bearded faces, flashing knives, they surged up to the wall and fell back, yelling and cursing, while the guards thrust at them with their musket butts. For a moment I thought they would charge again and sweep irresistibly over the wall, but they hung back, a jostling, shrieking crowd, shaking their fists and weapons, while the guardsmen lining the wall looked anxiously back for orders and kept their thumbs poised on their musket-locks.
Burnes strolled out of the front door and stood in full view at the top of the steps. He was as fresh and calm as a squire taking his first sniff of the morning, but at the
sight of him the mob redoubled its clamour and rolled up to the wall, yelling threats and insults while he looked right and left at them, smiling and shaking his head.
“No shooting, havildar,” says he to the guard commander. “It will all quieten down in a moment.”
“Death to Sekundar!” yelled the mob. “Death to the feringhee pig!”
Jim Broadfoot, who was George’s younger brother, and little Charlie Burnes, were at Sekundar’s elbow, both looking mighty anxious, but Burnes himself never lost his poise. Suddenly he raised his hand, and the mob beyond the wall fell quiet; he grinned at that, and touched his moustache in that little, confident gesture he had, and then he began to talk to them in Pushtu. His voice was quiet, and must have carried only faintly to them, but they listened for a little as he coolly told them to go home, and stop this folly, and reminded them that he had always been their friend and had done them no harm.
It might have succeeded, for he had the gift of the gab, but show-off that he was, he carried it just too far, and patronised them, and first there were murmurs, and then the clamour swelled up again, more savage than before. Suddenly one Afghan started forward and hurled himself on to the wall, knocking down a sentry; the nearest guard drove at the Afghan with his bayonet, someone in the crowd fired his jezzail, and with one hellish roar the whole mob swept forward, scrambling up the wall.
The havildar yelled an order, there was the ragged crash of a volley, and the courtyard was full of struggling men, crazy Afghans with their knives hacking and the guard falling back, stabbing with their bayonets and going down beneath the rush. There was no holding them; I saw Broadfoot grab Burnes and hustle him inside the house, and a moment later I was inside myself, slamming the side door in the face of a yelling Ghazi with a dozen of his fellows bounding at his heels.
It was a stout door, thank God, like the others in the Residency; otherwise we should all have been butchered within five minutes. Blows shattered on the far side of it as I slipped the bar home, and as I hurried along the passage to the main hallway I could hear, above the shrieking and shooting outside, the crash and thud of countless fists and hilts on panels and shutters – it was like being inside a box with demented demons pounding on the lid. Suddenly above the din there was the crash of an ordered volley from the courtyard, and then another, and as the yelling subsided momentarily the havildar’s voice could be heard urging the remnant of the guard into the house. Little bloody odds it would make, I thought; they had us cornered, and it was a case of having our throats cut now or later.
Burnes and the others were in the hallway, and Sekundar as usual was showing off, affecting carelessness in a tight spot.
“Wake Duncan with thy knocking,” he quoted, cocking his head on one side at the pounding of the mob. “How many of the guard are inside, Jim?”
Broadfoot said about a dozen, and Burnes said: “That’s splendid. That makes, let’s see, twelve, and the servants, and us three – hullo, here’s Flashman! Mornin’ Flash; sleep well? Apologise for this rude awakening – about twenty-five, I’d say; twenty fighting men, anyway.”
“Few enough,” says Broadfoot, examining his pistols. “The niggers’ll be inside before long – we can’t cover every door and window, Sekundar.”
A musket ball crashed through a shutter and knocked a cloud of plaster off the opposite wall. Everyone ducked, except Burnes.
“Nonsense!” says he. “Can’t cover ’em from down here, I grant you, but we don’t have to. Now Jim, take the guard, all of ’em, upstairs, and have ’em shoot down from the balconies. That’ll clear these mad fellows away from the sides of the house. There ain’t many guns among them, I fancy, so you can get a good sight of them without fear of being hit – much. Up you go, laddie, look sharp!”
Broadfoot clattered away, and a moment later the red-coated jawans were mounting the stairs, with Burnes shouting “Shabash!” to encourage them while he belted his sword over his suit and stuck a pistol in his belt. He seemed positively to be enjoying himself, the bloody ass. He clapped me on the shoulder and asked didn’t I just wish I’d galloped on to Sale after all – but never a word of acknowledgement that my warning had proved correct. I reminded him of it, and pointed out that if he had listened then, we shouldn’t be going to get our throats cut now, but he just laughed and straightened his button-hole.
“Don’t croak so, Flashy,” says he. “I could hold this house with two men and a whore’s protector.” There was a sound of ragged firing over our heads. “You see? Jim’s setting about ’em already. Come on, Charlie, let’s see the fun!” And he and his brother hurried upstairs, leaving me alone in the hall.
“What about my bloody court-martial?” I shouted after him, but he never heard.
Well, his plan worked, at first. Broadfoot’s men did clear away the rascals from round the walls, shooting down from the upper windows and balcony, and when I joined them on the upper floor there were about twenty Ghazi corpses in the courtyard. A few shots came the other way, and one of the jawans was wounded in the thigh, but the main mob had now retreated to the street, and contented themselves with howling curses from the cover of the wall.
“Excellent! Bahut achha!” said Burnes, puffing a cheroot and peering out of the window. “You see, Charlie, they’ve drawn off, and presently Elphy will be wondering down in the cantonment what all the row’s about, and send someone to see.”
“Won’t he send troops, then?” says little Charlie.
“Of course. A battalion, probably – that’s what I’d send. Since it’s Elphy, though, he’s as likely to send a brigade, eh, Jim?”
Broadfoot, squatting at the other window, peered along his pistol barrel, fired, swore, and said: “So long as he sends someone.”
“Don’t you fret,” says Burnes. “Here, Flashy, have a cheroot. Then you can try your hand at potting off some of these chaps beyond the wall. I’d say Elphy’ll be on the move inside two hours, and we’ll be out of here in three. Good shot, Jim! That’s the style!”
Burnes was wrong, of course. Elphy didn’t send troops; indeed, so far as I’ve been able to learn, he did nothing at all. If even a platoon had arrived in that first hour, I believe the mob would have melted before them; as it was, they began to pluck up courage, and started clambering the wall again, and sneaking round to the rear, where the stables gave them cover. We kept up a good fire from the windows – I shot three myself, including an enormously fat man, at which Burnes said: “Choose the thin ones, Flashy; that chap couldn’t have got in the front door anyway.” But as two hours passed he joked rather less, and actually made another attempt to talk to our attackers from the balcony, but they drove him inside with a shot or two and a volley of missiles.
Meanwhile, some of the Ghazis had set fire to the stables, and the smoke began to drift into the house. Burnes swore, and we all strained our eyes peering across the rooftops towards the cantonment, but still no sign of help appeared, and I felt the pumping of fear again in my throat. The howling of the mob had risen again, louder than ever, some of the jawans were looking scared, and even Burnes was frowning.
“Blast Elphy Bey,” says he. “He’s cutting it dooced fine. And I believe these brutes have got muskets from somewhere at last – listen.” He was right; there were as many shots coming from outside as from inside the house. They were smacking into the walls and knocking splinters from the shutters, and presently another jawan gave a yelp and staggered back into the room with his shoulder smashed and blood pouring down his shirt.
“Hm,” says Burnes, “this is gettin’ warm. Like Montrose at the Fair, eh, Charlie?” Charlie gave him the ghost of a smile; he was scared stiff and trying not to show it.
“How many rounds have you got, Flashy?” says Burnes. I had only six left, and Charlie had none; the ten jawans had barely forty among them.
“How about you, Jim?” shouts Burnes to Broadfoot, who was at the far window. Broadfoot shouted something back, but in the din I didn’t catch it, and then Broadfoot stood sl
owly up, and turned towards us, looking down at his shirt-front. I saw a red spot there, and suddenly it grew to a great red stain, and Broadfoot took two steps back and went head first over the window sill. There was a sickening crash as he hit the courtyard, and a tremendous shriek from the mob; the firing seemed to redouble, and from the rear, where the smoke of the burning stables was pouring in on us, came the measured smashing of a ram at the back door.
Burnes fired from his window, and ducked away. He squatted down near me, spun his pistol by the guard, whistled for a second or two through his teeth, and then said: “Charlie, Flashy, I think it’s time to go.”
“Where the hell to?” says I.
“Out of here,” says he. “Charlie, cut along to my room; you’ll find native robes in the wardrobe. Bring ’em along. Lively, now.” When Charlie had gone, he said to me “It’s not much of a chance, but it’s all we have, I think. We’ll try it at the back door; the smoke looks pretty thick, don’t you know, and with all the confusion we might get clear away. Ah, good boy, Charlie. Now send the havildar across to me.”
While Burnes and Charlie struggled into their gowns and puggarees, Burnes talked to the havildar, who agreed that the mob probably wouldn’t hurt him and his men, not being feringhees, but would concentrate on looting the place.
“But you, sahib, they will surely kill,” he said. “Go while ye can, and God go with you.”
“And remain with you and yours,” says Burnes, shaking his hand. “Shabash and salaam, havildar. All ready, Flash? Come on, Charlie.”
And with Burnes in the lead and myself last, we cut out down the staircase, across the hall, and through the passage towards the kitchen. From the back door, out of sight to our right, there came a crackling of breaking timber; I took a quick glance through a loophole, and saw the garden almost alive with Ghazis.
“Just about in time,” says Burnes, as we reached the kitchen door. I knew it led into a little fenced-off pen, where the swill-tubs were kept; once we got into that, and provided we weren’t actually seen leaving the house, we stood a fair chance of getting away.
Flashman Papers Omnibus Page 12