And now here it was, my worst fears realised. Flashy was being sent into the deep field—clean-shaven, too, and never a bolt-hole or friend-in-need to bless himself with. Come, you may say, what's the row—it's only a rendezvous in disguise, surely? Aye … and then? Who the blazes was this Bibi Kalil—the name might mean anything from a princess to a bawd—and what horror would she steer me to at Broadfoot's bidding? Well, I'd find out soon enough.
The disguise was the least of it. I had a poshteen in my valise, and had gathered a few odds and ends since coming to Lahore—Persian boots, pyjamys and sash for lounging on the hotter days, and the like. My own shirt would do, once I'd trampled it underfoot, and I improvised a puggaree from a couple of towels. Ordinarily I'd have borrowed Jassa's gear, but he was to be kept in the dark—that was something about the cypher that struck me as middling odd: the last sentence was unnecessary, since the word "alone" at the beginning meant that the whole thing was secret to me. Presumably George was just "makin' siccar", as he would say.
Leaving the Fort was less simple. I'd strolled out once or twice of an evening, but never beyond the market at the Hazooree Gate on the inner wall, which was the better-class bazaar serving the quality homes which lay south of the Fort, before you came to the town proper. I daren't assume my disguise inside the palace, so I stuffed it into a handbag, all but the boots, which I put on under my unutterables.*(*Civilian trousers.) Then it was a case of making sure that Jassa wasn't on hand, and slipping out to the gardens after dark. There were few folk about, and in no time I was behind a bush, staggering about with my foot tangled in my pants, damning Broadfoot and the mosquitoes. I wrapped the puggaree well forward over my head, dirtied my face, put the bag with my civilised duds into a cleft in the garden wall, prayed that I might return to claim them, and sallied forth.
Now, I've "gone native" more times than I can count, and it's all a matter of confidence. Your amateur gives himself away because he's sure everyone can see through his disguise, and behaves according. They can't, of course; for one thing, they ain't interested, and if you amble along doing no harm, you'll pass. I'll never forget sneaking out of Lucknow with T. H. Kavanaugh during the siege;*(*See Flashman in the Great Game.) he was a great Irish murphy without sense or a word of Hindi, figged out like the worst kind of pantomime pasha with the lamp-black fairly running off his fat red cheeks, and cursing in Tipperary the whole way -and not a mutineer gave him a second look, hardly. Now, my beardless chops were my chief anxiety, but I'm dark enough, and an ugly scowl goes a long way.
I had my pepperbox, but I bought a belt and a Kashmiri short sword in the market for added security, and to test my appearance and elocution. I'm at my easiest as a Pathan ruffler speaking Pushtu or; in this case, bad Punjabi, so I spat a good deal, growled from the back of my throat, and beat the booth-wallah down to half-price; he didn't even blink, so when I reached the alleys of the native town I stopped at a stall for a chapatti and a gossip, to get the feel of things and pick up any shave*(*Rumour.) that might be going. The lads of the village were full of the impending war, and how the gorracharra had crossed the river unopposed at the Harree ghat, and the British were abandoning Ludhiana—which wasn't true, as it happened.
"They have lost the spirit," says one know-all. "Afghanistan was the death of them."
"Afghanistan is everyone's death," says another. "Didn't my own uncle die at Jallalabad, peace be on him?"
"In the British war?"
"Nay, he was cook to a horse caravan, and a bazaar woman gave him a loathsome disease. He had ointments, from a hakim,*(*Chemist.) to no avail, for his nose fell off and he died, raving. My aunt blamed the ointments. Who knows, with an Afghan hakim?"
"That is how we should slay the British!" cackles an ancient. "Send the Maharani to infect them! Hee-hee, she must be rotten by now!"
I didn't care for that, and neither did a burly cove in a cavalry coat. "Be decent, pig! She is the mother of thy king, who will sit on the throne in London Fort when we of the Khalsa have eaten the Sirkar's army!"
"Hear him!" scoffs the old comedian. "The Khalsa will march on the ocean then, to reach London?"
"What ocean, fool? London lies only a few cos*(*Cos = one and a half miles.) beyond Meerut."
"Is it so far?" says I, playing the yokel. "Have you been there?"
"Myself, no," admitted the Khalsa bird. "But my havildar was there as a camel-driver. It is a poor place, by all accounts, not so great as Lahore."
"Nay, now," cries the one with the poxy uncle. "The houses in London are faced with gold, and even the public privies have doors of silver. This I was told."
"That was before the war with the Afghans," says the Khalsa's prize liar, whose style I was beginning to admire. "It beggared the British, and now they are in debt to the Jews; even Wellesley sahib, who broke Tipoo and the Maharattas aforetime, can get no credit, and the young queen and her waiting-women sell themselves on the streets. So my havildar tells; he had one of them."
"Does he have his nose still?" cries another, and there was great merriment.
"Aye, laugh!" cries the ancient. "But if London is grown poor, where is all this loot on which we are to grow fat when you heroes of the Pure have brought it home?"
"Now God give him wit! Where else but in Calcutta, in the Hebrews' strong-boxes. We shall march on thither when we have taken London and Glash-ka where they grow tobacco and make the iron boats."
About as well-informed, you see, as our own public were about India. I lingered a little longer, until I was thinking in Punjabi, and then, with that well-known hollow feeling in my innards, set off on my reluctant way.
The Shah Boorj is at the south-western corner of Lahore city, less than a mile away as the crow flies, but nearer two when you must pick your way through the winding ways of the old town. Foul ways they were, too, running with filth past hovels tenanted by ugly beggar folk who glared from doorways or scavenged among the refuse with the rats and pi-dogs; the air was so poisonous that I had to wrap my puggaree over my mouth, as though to strain the pestilential vapours as I picked my way past pools of rotting filth. A few fires among the dung-heaps provided the only light, and everywhere there were bright, wicked eyes, human and animal, that shrank away as I approached, lengthening my stride to get through that hellish place, but always I could imagine horrid shapes pressing behind me, and blundered on like the chap in the poem who daren't look back because he knows there's a hideous goblin on his heels.
Presently the going was better, between high tenements and warehouses, and only a few night-lurkers hurrying by. Near the south wall the streets were wider, with decent houses set back behind high walls; a couple of palkis went by, swaying between their bearers, and there was even a chowkidar*(*Constable.) patrolling with his lantern and staff. But I still felt damnably alone, with the squalid, hostile warren between me and home—that was how I now thought of the Fort which I'd approached with such alarm a couple of months ago. Very adaptable, we funks are.
The French Soldiers' cabaret was close to the Buttee Gate, and if the Frog mercenaries whose crude portraits adorned its walls could have seen it, they'd have sought redress at law. They squinted out of their frames on a great, noisy, reek-filled chamber—Ventura, Allard, Court, and even my old chum Avitabile, looking like the Italian bandit he was with his tasselled cap and spiky moustachioes. I'd settle for you alongside this minute, thinks I, as I surveyed the company: villainous two-rupee bravos, painted harpies who should have been perched in trees, a seedy flute-and-tom-tom band accompanying a couple of gyrating nautches whom you wouldn't have touched with a long pole, and Sikh brandy fit to corrode a bucket. I'll never say a word against Boodle's again, says I to myself; at least there you don't have to sit with your back to the wall.
I found a stool between two beauties who'd evidently been sleeping in a camel stable, bought a glass of arrack that I took care not to drink, growled curtly when addressed, and sat like a good little political, using the signals—thumb between the fi
rst two fingers and scratching my right armpit from time to time. Half the clientele were clawing themselves in the same way, with good reason, which was disconcerting, but I sat grimly on, wishing I'd gone into Holy Orders and ignoring the blandishments of sundry viragos of the sort you can have for fourpence with a mutton pie and a pint of beer thrown in, but better not, for the pie meat's sure to be off. They sulked or snarled at me, according to taste, but the last one, a henna'd banshee with bad teeth, said I was choosy, wasn't I, and what had I expected in a place like this—Bibi Kalil?
There was so much noise that I doubted if anyone else had heard her, but I waited till she'd flounced off, and another ten minutes for luck. Then I rose and shouldered my way to the door, taking my time; sure enough, she was waiting in the shadow of the porch. Without a word she led on up the alley, and I followed close, my heart thumping and my hand on the pepperbox under my poshteen as I scanned the shadows ahead. We went by twisting ways until she stopped by a high wall with an open wicket. "Through the garden and round the house. Your friend is waiting," she whispered, and vanished into the dark.
I glanced about to mark lines of flight, and went cautiously in. A small bushy enclosure surrounded a tall well-kept house, and directly before me a steep outside stair led up to a little arched porch on the upper floor, with a dimly-lit doorway beyond. Round the angle of the house to my left light was spilling from a ground-floor room that I couldn't see—that was my way, then, but even as I set forward the light in the arch overhead shone brighter as the door beyond was fully opened, and a woman came out silently on to the little porch. She stood looking down into the garden, this way and that, but by then I was in the bushes, taking stock.
Peering up through the leaves I could see her clearly, and if this was Bibi Kalil I didn't mind a bit. She was tall, fine-featured as an Afghan, heavy of hip and bosom in her fringed trousers and jacket, a matronly welterweight and just my style. Then she moved back inside, and since my immediate business was round the corner on the ground floor (alas!), I heaved a sigh and turned that way … and stopped dead as I recalled a word that my guide had used.
"Friend"? That wasn't political talk. "Brother" or "sister" was usual … and whoever had instructed her would have told her the exact words to say. Back to my mind came that other queer phrase in Broadfoot's mess-age: "Say nothing to your orderly …" That hadn't been quite pukka, either. They were just two tiny things, but all of a sudden the dark seemed deeper and the night quieter. Coward's instinct, if you like, but if I'm still here and in good health, bar my creaky kidneys and a tendency to wind, it's because I shy at motes, never mind beams—and I don't walk straight in where I can scout first. So instead of going openly round the house as directed, I skulked round, behind the bushes, until I was past the angle and could squint through the foliage into that well-lit ground floor room with its open screens … and have a quiet apoplectic fit to myself, holding on to a branch for support.
There were half a dozen men in the room, armed and waiting, and they included, inter alia, General Maka Khan, his knife-toting sidekick Imam Shah, and that crazy Akali who'd denounced Jeendan at the durbar. Leading men of the Khalsa, sworn enemies of the Sirkar, waiting for old Flash to roll in … "friends", bigod! And I was meant to believe that Broadfoot had directed me to them?
Well, I didn't, not for an instant—which was the time it took me to realise that something was hellishly, horribly wrong … that this was a trap, and my head was all but in its jaws, and nothing for it but instant flight. You don't stop to reason how or why at times like that—you grit your teeth to keep 'em from chattering, and back away slowly through the bushes with your innards dissolving, taking care not to rustle the leaves, until you're close by the gate, when you think you hear furtive movement out in the alley, and start violently, treading on a stick that snaps with a report like a bloody howitzer, and you squeal and leap three feet—and if you're lucky an angel of mercy in fringed trousers reappears on the porch overhead, hissing: "Flashman sahib! This way, quickly!"
I was up that stair like a fox with an arseful of buckshot, tripping on the top step and falling headlong past the woman and slap into the arms of a burly old ruffian who was hobbling nimbly out of the inner doorway. I had a glimpse of huge white whiskers and glaring eyes under a black turban, but before I could exclaim I was in a bear's grip with a hand like a ham over my mouth.
"Chub'rao! Khabadar!"*(*"Be quiet! Careful!".) growls he. "A thousand hells—get your great infidel foot off my toe! Don't you English know what it is to have the gout, then?" And to the woman: "Have they heard?"
She stood a moment on the porch, listening, and then slid in, closing the door softly. "There are men in the alley, and sounds from the garden room!" Her voice was deep and husky, and in the dim light I could see her poonts bouncing with agitation.
"Shaitan take them!" snarls he. "It's now or not at all, then! Down, chabeli,*(*Sweetheart.) by the secret stair—look for Donkal and the horses!" He was bundling me into the room. "Haste, woman!".
"He won't be there yet!" whispers the woman. "With their look-outs in the streets he must even wait!" She shot me a swift look, moistening her full lips. "Besides, I fear the dark. Do you go, while I wait here with him."
"God, she would flirt on the edge of the Pit!" fumes the old buck. "Have ye no sense of fitness, with the house crawling with foes and my foot like to burst? Away and look out from the street window, I say! You can ravish him another time!"
She glared but went, flitting across the shadowy chamber to a low door in the far wall, while he stood gripping my arm, the great white-whiskered head raised to listen, but the only sounds were my heart hammering and his own gusty breathing. He glanced at me, and spoke hoarse and low.
"Flashman the Afghan killer—aye, ye have the beastly look! They are down there—rats of the Khalsa, lying in wait for you —"
"I know—I saw them! How —"
"You were lured, with a false message. Subtle fellows, these."
I stared, horror-stricken. "But that's impossible! It … it can't be false! No one could —"
"Oho, so you're not here, and neither are they!" says he, grinning savagely. "Wait till their flayers set about you, fool, and you'll change your mind! Are you armed?"
I showed him, and would you believe it, he fell into whispered admiration of my pepperbox? "It turns so? Six shots, you say? A marvel! With one of these, who needs rent collectors? By God, at need we can cut our way out, you with shot and I with steel! Fiend take the woman, where is she? Ogling some prowler, like as not! Ah, my poor foot—they say drink inflames it, but I believe it comes of kneeling at prayer! Alas, why did I rise from my bed this day?"
All this in muttered whispers in the gloom, and me beside myself with fear, not knowing what the devil was up, except that the hosts of Midian were after me, but that I seemed to have found two eccentric friends, thank God—and whoever they might be, they weren't common folk. You don't take careful note at such times, but even in the grip of funk I was aware that while the lady might have a wanton eye, she talked like a sultana; the tiny room was opulent as a palace, with dim lamps shining on silk and silver; and my gouty old sportsman could only be some tremendous swell. Command was in every line of the stout, powerful figure, bold curved nose, and bristling beard, and he was dressed like a fighting raja—a great ruby in his turban, silver studs on the quilted leather jack, black silk pyjamys tucked into high boots, and a jewel-hilted broadsword on his hip. Who on earth was he? Keeping my voice down, I asked him, and he chuckled and answered in his growling whisper, his eye on the door.
"You cannot guess? So much for fame! Ah, but you know me well, Flashman sahib—and that sweet hussy whose tardiness perils our safety. Aye, ye've been busy about our affairs these two months!" He grinned at my bewilderment. "Bibi Kalil is only her pet name—she is the widow of my brother, Soochet Singh, peace be on him. And I am Goolab Singh."
If I stared, it wasn't in disbelief. He fitted the description in Broadfoot's pac
kets, even to the gout. But Goolab Singh, once pretender to the throne, the rebel who'd made himself king in Kashmir in defiance of the durbar, should have been "behind a rock up Jumoo way, with fifty thousand hillmen", as George had put it. He must be the most wanted man in Lahore this minute, for while there had been some in the Khalsa who'd nominated him for Wazir, Jeendan had since exposed him as a British ally—which was fine by me just then, but didn't explain his presence here.
"Let that explain it," says he, as Bibi Kalil emerged from the low door. "This is her house, and the pretty widow has admirers —" he pointed downwards—"men high in the Khalsa panches. She makes them welcome, they talk freely, and I, lying close to Lahore in these days of trouble, hear it all from her. So when they hatch a plot to take you—why, here am I, gout and all, to prove my loyalty to the Sirkar by rescuing its servant —"
"What the hell do they want with me?"
"To talk with you—over a slow fire, I believe … well, little jujube, what of Donkal?"
"No sign of him—Goolab, there are men in the streets, and others in the garden!" Her voice shook, and her eyes were wide in alarm, but she wasn't one of your vapouring pieces. "I heard Imam Shah call for the wench who brought you," she adds to me.
"Aye, well, there's an end to waiting," says Goolab cheerfully. "She'll tell them you entered, they'll beat the bushes—then they'll bethink them of upstairs …" He cocked an ear as distant voices came from the garden below. "Maka Khan grows impatient. Have your revolving gun ready, Englishman!"
Bibi Kalil gave a little gasp, and pressed close to me, trembling, but I was in no case to enjoy it; she put an arm round me, and I clasped her instinctively—for reassurance, not lust, I can tell you. The questions that had been racing pell-mell through my mind—how I'd come to be trapped in this gilded hell-hole, how those Khalsa swine had known I was coming, why Goolab and this palpitating armful were on hand to aid me—mattered nothing beside those terrible words "slow fire", uttered almost idly by this crazy old bandit who, with fifty thousand hillmen at his call, had apparently brought only one who was farting about in the dark … and then my blood froze and I clutched the widow for support, as footsteps sounded on the outside stair.
The Flashman Papers 09 - Flashman and the Mountain of Light fp-9 Page 16