And yet, there they sat, those madmen, looking as pleased as if they were going to a birthday party, Yakub Beg calling for coffee and sherbet, Kutebar’s evil old face wreathed in happy smiles. Well, it was no concern of mine, if they wanted to throw their lives away – and if they did succeed in crippling the Russian invasion before it had even started, so much the better. It would be glad news to bring into Peshawar – by jove, I might even hint that I’d engineered the whole thing: if I didn’t, the Press probably would. “British Officer’s Extraordinary Adventure. Russian Plot Foiled by His Ingenuity. Tribal Life in the Khokand. Colonel Flashman’s Remarkable Narrative.” Yes, a few helpings of that would go down well … Elspeth would be in raptures … I’d be the lion of the day yet again …
And then Yakub Beg’s voice broke in on my daydreams.
“Who shall say there is such a thing as chance?” he was exulting. “All is as God directs. He sends the Ruski powder ships. He sends the means of their destruction. And” – he reached out to pass me my coffee cup – “best of all, he sends you, blood brother, without whom all would be naught.”
You may think that until now I’d been slow on the uptake – that I should have seen the danger signal as soon as this lunatic mentioned Congreve rockets. But I’d been so taken aback by the scheme, and had it so fixed in my mind that I had no part in it, anyway, that the fearful implication behind his last words came like a douche of cold water. I nearly dropped my coffee cup.
“Naught?” I echoed. “What d’you mean?”
“Who among us would have the skill or knowledge to make use of these rockets of yours?” says he. “I said you were sent by God. A British officer, who knows how these things are employed, who can ensure success where our bungling fingers would …”
“You mean you expect me to fire these bloody things for you?” I was so appalled that I said it in English, and he looked at me in bewilderment. Stammering, and no doubt going red in the face, I blundered back into Persian.
“Look, Yakub Beg – I’m sorry, but it cannot be. You know I must go to India, to carry the news of this Russian invasion … this army … I can’t risk such news going astray … it’s my bounden duty, you see …”
“But there will be no invasion,” says he, contentedly. “We will see to that.”
“But if we – you – I mean, if it doesn’t work?” I cried. “I can’t take the risk! I mean – it’s not that I don’t wish to help you – I would if I could, of course. But if I were killed, and the Russians marched in spite of your idiotic – I mean, your daring scheme, they would catch my people unprepared!”
“Rest assured,” says he, “the news will go to Peshawar. I pledge my honour, just as I pledge my people to fight these Ruskis tooth and nail from here to the Killer-of-Hindus. But we will stop them here –” and he struck the ground beside him. “I know it! And your soldiers in India will be prepared, for a blow that never comes. For we will not fail. The Silk One’s plan is sound. Is she not the najud?”
And the grinning ape bowed again in her direction, pleased as Punch.
By George, this was desperate. I didn’t know what to say. He was bent on dragging me into certain destruction, and I had to weasel out somehow – but at the same time I daren’t let them see the truth, which was that the whole mad scheme terrified me out of my wits. That might well be fatal – you’ve no idea what those folk are like, and if Yakub Beg thought I was letting him down … well, one thing I could be sure of: there’d be no excursion train ordered up to take me to the coral strand in a hurry.
“Yakub, my friend,” says I. “Think but a moment. I would ask nothing better than to ride with you and Kutebar on this affair. I have my own score to settle with these Ruski pigs, believe me. And if I could add one asper in the scale of success, I would be with you heart and soul. But I am no artilleryman. I know something of these rockets, but nothing to the purpose. Any fool can aim them, and fire them – Kutebar can do it as easily as he breaks wind –” that got them laughing, as I intended it should. “And I have my duty, which is to my country. I, and I alone, must take that news – who else would be believed? Don’t you see – you may do this thing without me?”
“Not as surely,” says he. “How could we? An artilleryman you may not be, but you are a soldier, with those little skills that mean the difference between success and failure. You know this – and think, blood brother, whether we stand or fall, when those ships flame like the rising sun and sink into destruction, we will have shattered the threat to your folk and mine! We will have lit a fire that will singe the Kremlin wall! By God, what a dawn that will be!”
Just the glitter in those eyes, the joyful madness on that hawk face, sent my spirits into my boots. Normally I’ll talk myself hoarse in my skin’s interest, and grovel all the way to Caesar’s throne, but in that moment I knew it would be no use. You see, even with the saliva pumping into my mouth, I knew that his reasoning was right – ask Raglan or the Duke or Napoleon: they’d have weighed it and said that I should stay. And it’s no use trying to defeat an Oriental’s logic – let alone one who has the fire in his guts. I tried a little more, as far as I dared, and then let it lie, while the coffee went round again, and Kutebar speculated gloatingly on how many Russians he would kill, and Yakub sat with his hand on my shoulder, praising God and giving thanks for the opportunity to confound the politics of the Tsar. And the cause of it all, that slant-eyed witch in the tight trousers, said nothing at all, but sauntered across to a bird cage hanging on the pavilion trellis, murmuring and pursing her lips to the nightingale to coax it to sing.
I sat pretty quiet myself, feverishly trying to plot a way out of this, and getting nowhere. The others got down to the details of the business, and I had to take part and try to look happy about it. I must say, looking back, they had it well schemed out: they would take five thousand riders, under Yakub and Kutebar and Sahib Khan, each commanding a division, and just go hell for leather past Fort Raim at four in the morning, driving down to the beach and cutting off the pier. Sahib Khan’s lot would secure the northern flank beyond the pier, facing the Syr Daria mouth; Yakub would take the south side, fronting the main beach, and their forces would join up at the landward end of the pier, presenting a ring of fire and steel against the Russian counter-attacks. Kutebar’s detachment would be inside the ring, in reserve, and shielding the firing party – here they looked at me with reverent eyes, and I managed an offhand grin that any dentist would have recognized first go.
The rockets and stands were in a go-down, Kutebar had said; they would have their spies – the impressed labourers who slept on the beach – on hand to guide us to them. And then, while all hell was breaking loose around us, the intrepid Flashy and his assistants would set the infernal things up and blaze away at the powder ships. And when the great Guy Fawkes explosion occurred – supposing that it did – we would take to the sea; it was half a mile across Syr Daria mouth, and Katti Torah – a horrible little person with yellow teeth and a squint, who was one of the council that night – would be waiting on the other side to cover all who could escape that way. Well, it was at least a glimmer of hope; I’d swum the Mississippi in my time.i
But the more I considered the thing, the more appalling it looked. Indeed, my mind was already running on a different tack entirely: if I could get a horse tonight, and ride for it – anywhere, but south towards Persia for preference, where they wouldn’t expect me to go – could I make a clean getaway? Anywhere else, I’d have chanced it, but south was pure desert – for that matter, it was all bloody wilderness, on every side – and if I didn’t lose myself and perish horribly, I’d be run down for certain. And blood brother or not, I couldn’t see Yakub Beg condoning desertion. Even the beach and the rockets offered a little hope – it couldn’t be worse than Balaclava, surely? (God, what a fearful thought that was.) So I looked as steady as I could, while those grinning wolves chuckled over their plan, and when the Silk One broke silence to announce that she personally would go wi
th Kutebar’s detachment, and assist with the rockets, I even managed to join in the hum of approval, and say how jolly it would be to have her along. One thing tribulation teaches you, and that is to wear the mask when there’s nothing else for it. She gave me a thoughtful glance, and then went back to her nightingale.
As you can guess, I slept fitfully that night. Here I was again, with my essentials trapped in the mangle, and devil a thing to do but grin and bear it – but it was such madness, I kept swearing to myself as I thumped the pillow. Once on a day I’d have wept, or even prayed, but not now; I’d never had any good from either in the past. I could only sweat and hope – I’d come through so much, so often, perhaps my luck would hold again. One thing I was sure of – the first man into the water tomorrow night was going to be H. Flashman, and no bones about it.
I loafed about my tent, worrying, next morning, while the camp hummed around me – you never saw so many happy faces at the prospect of impending dissolution. How many of them would be alive next day? Not that I cared – I’d have seen ’em all dead and damned if only I could come off safe. My guts were beginning to churn in earnest as the hours went by, and finally I was in such a sweat I couldn’t stand it any longer. I decided to go up to the pavilion and have a last shot at talking some sense into Yakub Beg – I didn’t know what I could say, but if the worst came to the worst I might even chance a flat refusal to have anything to do with his mad venture, and see what he would do about it. In this desperate frame of mind I made my way up through the village, which was quiet with everyone being down in the camp below, went through the little archway and past the screen to the garden – and there was Ko Dali’s daughter, alone, sitting by the fountain, trailing her fingers in the water, with that damned kitten watching the ripples.
In spite of my fearful preoccupations – which were entirely her fault, in the first place – I felt the old Adam stir at the sight of her. She was wearing a close-fitting white robe with a gold-embroidered border, and her shapely little bare feet peeping out beneath it; round her head was the inevitable turban, also of white. She looked like Sheherazade in the caliph’s garden, and didn’t she know it, just?
“Yakub is not here,” says she, before I’d even had time to state my business. “He has ridden out with the others to talk with Buzurg Khan; perhaps by evening he will have returned.” She stroked the kitten. “Will you wait?”
It was an invitation if ever I heard one – and I’m used to them. But it was unexpected, and as I’ve said, I was something wary of this young woman. So I hesitated, while she watched me, smiling with her lips closed, and I was just on the point of making my apology and withdrawing, when she leaned down to the kitten and said:
“Why do you suppose such a tall fellow is so afraid, little sister? Can you tell? No? He would be wise not to let Yakub Beg know it – for it would be a great shame to the Atalik Ghazi to find fear in his blood brother.”
I don’t know when I’ve been taken more aback. I stood astonished as she went on, with her face close to the kitten’s:
“We knew it the first night, at Fort Raim – you remember I told you? We felt it even in his mouth. And we both saw it, last night, when Yakub Beg pressed him into our venture – the others did not, for he dissembles well, this angliski. But we knew, you and I, little terror of the larder. We saw the fear in his eyes when he tried to persuade them. We see it now.” She picked the kitten up and nuzzled it against her cheek. “What are we to make of him, then?”
“Well, I’m damned!” I was beginning, and took a stride forward, red in the face, and stopped.
“Now he is angry, as well as frightened,” says she, pretending to whisper in the brute’s ear. “Is that not fine? We have stirred him to rage, which is one of the seven forbidden sins he feels against us. Yes, pretty tiger, he feels another one as well. Which one? Come, little foolish, that is easy – no, not envy, why should he envy us? Ah, you have guessed it, you wanton of the night walls, you trifler in jimai najaiz.j Is it not scandalous? But be at ease – we are safe from him. For does he not fear?”
Kutebar was undoubtedly right – this one should have had the mischief tanned out of her when she was knee-high. I stood there, wattling, no doubt, and trying to think of a cutting retort – but interrupting a conversation between a woman and a cat ain’t as easy as it might seem. One tends to look a fool.
“You think it a pity, scourge of the milk bowls? Well … there it is. If lechery cannot cast out fear, what then? What does he fear, you ask? Oh, so many things – death, as all men do. That is no matter, so that they do not cross the line from ‘will’ to ‘will not’. But he fears also Yakub Beg, which is wisdom – although Yakub Beg is far away, and we are quite alone here. So … still he wavers, although desire struggles with fear in him. Which will triumph, do you suppose? Is it not exciting, little trollop of the willow-trees? Are your male cats so timorous? Do they fear even to sit beside you?”
I wasn’t standing for that, anyway – besides, I was becoming decidedly interested. I came round the fountain and sat down on the grass. And, damme, the kitten popped its face round her head and miaowed at me.
“There, brave little sister!” She cuddled it, turned to look at me out of those slanting black eyes, and returned to her conversation. “Would you protect your mistress, then? Eyah, it is not necessary – for what will he do? He will gnaw his lip, while his mouth grows dry with fear and desire – he will think. Oh, such thoughts – there is no protection against them. Do you not feel them touching us, embracing us, enfolding us, burning us with their passion? Alas, it is only an illusion – and like to remain one, so great is his fear.”
I’ve seduced – and been seduced – in some odd ways, but never before with a kitten pressed into service as pimp. She was right, of course – I was scared, not only of Yakub Beg, but of her: she knew too much, this one, for any man’s comfort, and if I knew anything at all it wasn’t just for love of my brawny frame and bonny black whiskers that she was taunting me into attempting her. There was something else – but with that slim white shape tantalizing me within arm’s length, and that murmuring voice, and the drift of her perfume, subtle and sweet as a garden flower, I didn’t care. I reached out – and hesitated, sweating lustfully. My God, I wanted her, but –
“And now he pants, and trembles, and fears to touch, my furry sweet. Like the little boys at the confectioner’s stall, or a beardless youth biting his nails outside a brothel, and he such a fine, strong – nothing of a man. He –”
“Damn you!” roars I, “and damn your Yakub Beg! Come here!”
And I grabbed her round the body, one hand on her breast, the other on her belly, and pulled her roughly to me. She came without resistance, her head back, and those almond eyes looking up at me, her lips parted; I was shaking as I brought my mouth down on them, and pulled the robe from her shoulders, gripping her sharp-pointed breasts in my hands. She lay quivering against me for a moment, and then pulled free, pushing the kitten gently aside with her foot.
“Go find a mouse, little idleness. Will you occupy your mistress all day with silly chatter?”
And then she turned towards me, pushing me back and down with her hands on my chest, and sliding astride of me while her tongue flickered out against my lips and then my eyelids and cheeks and into my ear. I grappled her, yammering lustfully, as she shrugged off the robe and began working nimbly at my girdle – and no sooner had we set to partners and commenced heaving passionately away, than up comes that damned kitten beside my head, and Ko Dali’s daughter had to pause and lift her face to blow at it.
“Does no one pay heed to you, then? Fie, selfish little inquisitive! Can your mistress not have a moment to pleasure herself with an angliski – a thing she has never done before?” And they purred at each other while I was going mad – I’ve never been more mortified in my life.
“I shall tell you all about it later,” said she, which is an astonishing thing to hear, when you’re at grips.
“Never m
ind telling the blasted cat!” I roared, straining at her. “Dammit, if you’re going to tell anyone, tell me!”
“Ah,” says she, sitting back. “You are like the Chinese – you wish to talk as well? Then here is a topic of conversation.” And she reached up and suddenly plucked off her turban, and there she was, shaved like a Buddhist monk, staring mischievously down at me.
“Good God!” I croaked. “You’re bald!”
“Did you not know? It is my vow. Does it make me –” she stirred her rump deliciously “– less desirable?”
“My God, no!” I cried, and fell to again with a will, but every time I became properly engrossed, she would stop to chide the cat, which kept loafing around miaowing, until I was near crazy, with that naked alabaster beauty squirming athwart my hawse, as the sailors say, and nothing to be done satisfactorily until she had left off talking and come back to work. And once she nearly unmanned me completely by stopping short, glancing up, and crying “Yakub!” and I let out a frantic yelp and near as anything heaved her into the fountain as I strained my head round to look at the archway and see – nothing. But before I could remonstrate, or swipe her head off, she was writhing and plunging away again, moaning with her eyes half-closed, and this time, for a wonder, the thing went on uninterrupted until we were lying gasping and exhausted, in each other’s arms – and the kitten was there again, purring censoriously in my ear.
By then I was too blissfully sated to care. A teasing, wicked-minded sprite she might be, but Ko Dali’s daughter had nothing to learn about killing a chap with kindness, and one of my fondest recollections is of lying there ruined in the warmth of that little garden, with the leaves rustling overhead, watching her slip into her robe and turban again, sleek and satisfied as the kitten which she picked up and cuddled against her cheek. (If only the English dowagers of my acquaintance could know what I’m remembering when I see them pick up their gross fat tabbies in the drawing-room. “Ah, General Flashman has gone to sleep again, poor dear old thing. How contented he looks. Ssh-hh.”)
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