However, after that small discussion the weeks had slipped by without any other important Russians visiting the place, and then came my diversion with Valla, and East’s ridiculous day-dream went clean out of my mind. And then, about ten days after I had started galloping her, a couple of Ruski staff captains jingled into the courtyard one morning, to be followed by a large horse-sled, and shortly afterwards comes the Count’s major-domo to East and me, presenting his apologies, and chivvying us off to our rooms.
We took the precaution of muffling the hidden speaking-tube, and kept a good watch from East’s window that day. We saw more sleds arrive, and from the distant hum of voices in the house and the sound of tramping on the stairs we realized there must be a fair-sized party in the place. East was all excited, but what really stirred him was when a sled arrived late in the afternoon, and Pencherjevsky himself was in the yard to meet it – attired as we’d never seen him before, in full dress uniform.
“This is important,” says East, his eyes alight. “Depend upon it, that’s some really big wig. Gad! I’d give a year’s pay to hear what passes below tonight.” He was white with excitement. “Flashman, I’m going to have a shot at it!”
“You’re crazy,” says I. “With a Cossack mooching about the passage all night? You say he sleeps – he can wake up, too, can’t he?”
“I’ll chance that,” says he, and for all I could try – appeals to his common sense, to his position as a guest, to his honour as an officer (I think I even invoked Arnold and religion) he remained set.
“Well, don’t count on me,” I told him. “It ain’t worth it – they won’t be saying anything worth a damn – it ain’t safe, and by thunder, it’s downright ungentlemanly. So now!”
To my surprise, he patted my arm. “I respect what you say, old fellow,” says he. “But – I can’t help it. I may be wrong, but I see my duty differently, don’t you understand? I know it’s St Paul’s to a pub it’ll be a fool’s errand, but – well, you never know. And I’m not like you – I haven’t done much for Queen and country. I’d like to try.”
Well, there was nothing for it but to get my head under the bed-clothes that night and snore like hell, to let the world know that Flashy wasn’t up to mischief. Neither, it transpired, was the bold East: he reported next day that the Cossack had stayed awake all night, so his expedition had to be called off. But the sleds stayed there all day, and the next, and they kept us cooped up all the time, and the Cossack remained vigilant, to East’s mounting frenzy.
“Three days!” says he. “Who can it be, down there? I tell you, it must be some important meeting! I know it! And we have to sit here, like mice in a cage, when if we could only get out for an hour, we might find out something that would – oh, I don’t know, but it might be vital to the war! It’s enough to drive a chap out of his wits!”
“It already has,” says I. “You haven’t been shut up like this before, have you? Well, I’ve been a prisoner more times than I care to think of, and I can tell you, after a while you don’t reason straight any longer. That’s what’s wrong with you. Also, you’re tired out; get to sleep tonight, and forget this nonsense.”
He fretted away, though, and I was almost out of patience with him by dinner-time, when who should come up with the servants bearing dinner, but Valla. She had just dropped in to see us, she said, and was very bright, and played a three-handed card game with us, which was a trying one for East, I could see. He was jumpy as a cat with her at the best of times, blushing and falling over his feet, and now in addition he was fighting to keep from asking her what was afoot downstairs, and who the visitors were. She prattled on, till about nine, and then took her leave, and as I held the door for her she gave me a glance and a turn of her pretty blonde head that said, as plain as words: “It’s been three nights now. Well?” I went back to my room next door, full of wicked notions, and leaving East yawning and brooding.
If I hadn’t been such a lustful brute, no doubt prudence would have kept me abed that night. But at midnight I was peeping out, and there was the Cossack, slumped on his stool, head back and mouth open, reeking like Davis’s cellar. Valla’s work, thinks I, the charming little wretch. I slipped past him, and he never even stirred, and I padded out of the pool of lamplight round him and reached the big landing.
All was still up here, but there was a dim light down in the hall, and through the banisters I could see two white-tunicked and helmeted sentries on the big double doors of the library, with their sabres drawn, and an orderly officer pacing idly about smoking a cigarette. It struck me that it wasn’t safe to be gallivanting about this house in the dark – they might think I was on the East tack, spying – so I flitted on, and two minutes later was stallioning away like billy-o with my modest flower of the steppes – by jingo, she was in a fine state of passion, I remember. We had one violent bout, and then some warm wine from her little spirit lamp, and talked softly and dozed and played, and then went to it again, very slowly and wonderfully, and I can see that lovely white shape in the flickering light even now, and smell the perfume of that silver hair, and – dear me, how we old soldiers do run on.
“You must not linger too long, sweetheart,” says she, at last. “Even drunk Cossacks don’t sleep forever,” and giggled, nibbling at my chin. So I kissed her a long good-night, with endearments, resumed my night-shirt, squeezed her bouncers again for luck, and toddled out into the cold, along her corridor, down the little stairs to the landing – and froze in icy shock against the wall on the second step, my heart going like a hammer.
There was someone on the landing. I could hear him, and then see him by the dim light from the far corridor where my room lay. He was crouched by the archway, listening, a man in a night-shirt, like myself. With a wrenching inward sigh, I realized that it could only be East.
The fool had stayed awake, seen the Cossack asleep, and was now bent on his crack-brained patriotic mischief. I hissed very gently, had the satisfaction of seeing him try to leap through the wall, and then was at his side, shushing him for all I was worth. He seized me, gurgling.
“You! Flashman!” He let out a shuddering breath. “What –? You’ve been … why didn’t you. tell me?” I wondered what the blazes he meant, until he whispered fiercely: “Good man! Have you heard anything? Are they still there?”
The madman seemed to think I’d been on his eavesdropping lay. Well, at least I’d be spared recriminations for fornicating with his adored object. I shook my head, he bit his lip, and then the maniac breathed in my ear: “Come, then, quickly! Into the gallery – they’re still down there!” And while I was peeping, terrified, into the dimness through the banisters, where the white sentries were still on guard, he suddenly flitted from my side across the landing. I daren’t even try a loud whisper to call him back; he was fumbling with the catch of the little door in the far shadows, and I was just hesitating before bolting for bed and safety, when from our corridor sounded a cavernous yawn. Panicking, I shot across like a whippet, clutching vainly at East as he slipped through the low aperture into the gallery. Come back, come back, you mad bastard, my lips were saying, but no sound emerged, which was just as well, for with the opening of the little gallery door the clear tones of someone in the library echoed up to us. And light was filtering up through the fine screen which concealed the gallery from the floor below. If our Cossack guard was waking, and took a turn to the landing, he’d see the dim glow from the open gallery door. Gibbering silently to myself, half-way inside the little opening, I crept forward, edging the door delicately shut behind me.
East was flat on the dusty gallery floor, his feet towards me; it stank like a church in the confined space between the carved wooden screen on the one hand and the wall on the other. My head was no more than a foot from the screen; thank God it was a nearly solid affair, with only occasional carved apertures. I lay panting and terrified, hearing the voice down in the library saying in Russian:
“… so there would be no need to vary the orders at pre
sent. The establishment is large enough, and would not be affected.”
I remember those words because they were the first I heard, but for the next few moments I was too occupied with scrabbling at East’s feet, and indicating to him in dumb show that the sooner we were out of this the better, to pay any heed to what they were talking about. But damn him, he wouldn’t budge, but kept gesturing me to lie still and listen. So I did, and some first-rate military intelligence we overheard, too – about the appointment of a commissary-general for the Omsk region, and whether the fellow who commanded Orianburg oughtn’t to be retired. Horse Guards would give their buttocks to know this, thinks I furiously, and I had just determined to slide out and leave East alone to his dangerous and useless foolery, when I became conscious of a rather tired, hoarse, but well-bred voice speaking in the library, and one word that he used froze me where I lay, ears straining:
“So that is the conclusion of our agenda? Good. We are grateful to you, gentlemen. You have laboured well, and we are well pleased with the reports you have laid before us. There is Item Seven, of course,” and the voice paused. “Late as it is, perhaps Count Ignatieff would favour us with a résumé of the essential points again.”
Ignatieff. My icy bully of the registrar’s office. For no reason I felt my pulse begin to run even harder. Cautiously I turned my head, and put an eye to the nearest aperture.
Down beneath us, Pencherjevsky’s fine long table was agleam with candles and littered with papers. There were five men round it. At the far end, facing us, Ignatieff was standing, very spruce and masterful in his white uniform; behind him there was the huge easel, covered with maps. On the side to his left was a stout, white-whiskered fellow in a blue uniform coat frosted with decorations – a marshal if ever I saw one. Opposite him, on Ignatieff’s right, was a tall, bald, beak-nosed civilian, with his chin resting on his folded hands. At the end nearest us was a high-backed chair whose wings concealed the occupant, but I guessed he was the last speaker, for an aide seated at his side was saying:
“Is it necessary, majesty? It is approved, after all, and I fear your majesty is over-tired already. Perhaps tomorrow …”
“Let it be tonight,” says the hidden chap, and his voice was dog-weary. “I am not as certain of my tomorrows as I once was. And the matter is of the first urgency. Pray proceed, Count.”
As the aide bowed I was aware of East craning to squint back at me. His face was a study and his lips silently framed the words: “Tsar? The Tsar?”
Well, who else would they call majesty?28 I didn’t know, but I was all ears and eyes now as Ignatieff bowed, and half-turned to the map behind him. That soft, metallic voice rang upwards from the library panelling.
“Item Seven, the plan known as the expedition of the Indus. By your majesty’s leave.”
I thought I must have misheard. Indus – that was in Northern India! What the devil did they have to do with that?
“Clause the first,” says Ignatieff. “That with the attention of the allied Powers, notably Great Britain, occupied in their invasion of your majesty’s Crimean province, the opportunity arises to further the policy of eastward pacification and civilization in those unsettled countries beyond our eastern and southern borders. Clause the second, that the surest way of fulfilling this policy, and at the same time striking a vital blow at the enemy, is to destroy, by native rebellion aided by armed force, the British position on the Indian continent. Clause the third, that the time for armed invasion by your majesty’s imperial forces is now ripe, and will be undertaken forthwith. Hence, the Indus expedition.”
I think I had stopped breathing; I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Clause the fourth,” says Ignatieff. “The invasion is to be made by an imperial force of thirty thousand men, of whom ten thousand will be Cossack cavalry. General Duhamel,” and he bowed towards the bald chap, “your majesty’s agent in Teheran, believes that it would be assisted if Persia could be provoked into war against Britain’s ally, Turkey. Clause the fifth –”
“Never mind the clauses,” says Duhamel. “That advice has been withdrawn. Persia will remain neutral, but hostile to British interest – as she always has been.”
Ignatieff bowed again. “With your majesty’s leave. It is so agreed, and likewise approved that the Afghan and Sikh powers should be enlisted against the British, in our invasion. They will understand – as will the natives of India – that our expedition is not one of conquest, but to overthrow the English and liberate India.” He paused. “We shall thus be liberating the people who are the source of Britain’s wealth.”
He picked up a pointer and tapped the map, which was of Central Asia and Northern India. “We have considered five possible routes which the invasion might take. First, the three desert routes – Ust-Yurt-Khiva-Herat, or Raim-Bokhara, or Raim-Syr Daria-Tashkent. These, although preferred by General Khruleff” – at this the stout, whiskered fellow stirred in his seat – “have been abandoned because they run through the unsettled areas where we are still engaged in pacifying the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Khokandians, under the brigand leaders Yakub Beg and Izzat Kutebar. Although stinging reverses have been administered to these lawless bandits, and their stronghold of Ak Mechet occupied, they may still be strong enough to hinder the expedition’s advance. The less fighting there is to do before we cross the Indian frontier the better.”
Ignatieff lowered his pointer on the map. “So the southern routes, beneath the Caspian, are preferred – either through Tabriz and Teheran, or by Herat. An immediate choice is not necessary. The point is that infantry and artillery may be moved with ease across the South Caspian to Herat, while the cavalry move through Persia. Once we are in Persia, the British will have warning of our attempt, but by then it will be too late – far too late. We shall proceed through Kandahar and Kabul, assisted by the hatred which the Afghans owe the British, and so – to India.
“There are, by reliable report, twenty-five thousand British troops in India, and three hundred thousand native soldiers. These latter present no problem – once a successful invasion is launched, the majority of them will desert, or join in the rebellion which our presence will inspire. It is doubtful if, six months after we cross the Khyber, a single British soldier, civilian, or settlement will remain on the continent. It will have been liberated, and restored to its people. They will require our assistance, and armed presence, for an indefinite period, to guard against counter-invasion.”
At this I heard East mutter, “I’ll bet they will.” I could feel him quivering with excitement; myself, I was trying to digest the immensity of the thing. Of course, it had been a fear in India since I could remember – the Great Bear coming over the passes, but no one truly believed they’d ever have the nerve or the ability to try it. But now, here it was – simple, direct, and certain. Not the least of the coincidences of our remarkable eavesdrop was that I, who knew as much about Afghan affairs from first hand, and our weakness on the north Indian frontier, as any man living, should be one of the listeners. As I took it in, I could see it happening; yes, they could do it all right.
“That, your majesty,” Ignatieff was saying, “is an essential sketch of our purpose. We have all studied the plans in detail, as has your highness, and unless some new points have arisen from my résumé, your majesty will no doubt wish to confirm the royal assent already given.” He said it with deference, trying to hide his eagerness – your promoter anxious to get the official seal.
“Thank you, Count.” It was the weak voice again. “We have it clear. Gentlemen?” There was a pause. “It is a weighty matter. No such attempt has ever been made before. But we are confident – are we not?”
Khruleff nodded slowly. “It has always been possible. Now it is a certainty. In a stroke, we clear the British from India, and extend your majesty’s imperial … influence from the North Cape to the isle of Ceylon. No Tsar in history has achieved such an advance for our country. The troops are ample, the planning exact, the conditions ideal.
The pick of Britain’s army, and of her navy, are diverted in the Crimea, and it is certain that no assistance could be rendered in India within a year. By then – we shall have supplanted England in southern Asia.”29
“And it can begin without delay?” says the Tsar’s voice.
“Immediately, majesty. By the southern route, we can be at the Khyber, with every man, gun, and item of equipment, seven months from this night.” Ignatieff was almost striking an attitude, his tawny head thrown back, one hand on the table. They waited, silently, and I heard the Tsar sigh.
“So be it, then. Forgive us, gentlemen, for desiring to hear it in summary again, but it is a matter for second, and third thoughts, even after the resolve has been given.” He coughed, wearily. “All is approved, then – and the other items, with the exception of – yes, Item Ten. It can be referred to Omsk for further study. You have our leave, gentlemen.”
At this there was a scrape of chairs, and East was kicking at me, and jabbing a fìnger at the door behind us. I’d been so spellbound by our enormous discovery, I’d almost forgotten where we were – but, by gad, it was time we were no longer here. I edged back to the door, East crowding behind me, and then we heard Ignatieff’s voice again.
“Majesty, with permission. In connection with Item Seven – the Indian expedition – mention was made of possible diversionary schemes, to prevent by all means any premature discovery of our intentions. I mentioned, but did not elaborate, a plan for possibly deluding the enemy with a false scent.”
At this we stopped, crouched by the door. He went on:
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