There was a pause. "Fellows often do, when they've had a bad time," says Nicolson anxiously. "God knows what he's been through. I say, d'you think the swine … tortured him? I mean, he didn't say so, but —"
"He's not the kind who would, from all I've heard," says Van Cortlandt. "Sale told me that after the Piper's Fort business they couldn't get a word out of him … about himself, I mean. Only about … his men. Heavens … he's just a boy!"
"Broadfoot says he's the bravest man he's ever met," says Nicolson reverently.
"There you are, then. Come on, let's find Littler."
You see what I mean? It would be all over camp within the hour, and the Army soon after. Good old Flashy's done it again—and this time, if I says it myself, didn't I deserve their golden opinions, even if I had been passing wind the whole way? I felt quite virtuous, and put on a game show, trying to struggle to my feet and having to be restrained, when they returned presently with Littler, a wiry old piece of teak who looked as though he'd swallowed the poker. He was very trim in spotless overalls, chin thrust out and hands behind his back as he ran a brisk eye over me. More compliments, thinks I—until he spoke, in a cold, level voice.
"Let me understand this. You say that twenty thousand Sikh cavalry are moving to attack the Commander-in-Chief … and this is at your prompting? I see." He took a deliberate breath through his thin nose, and I've seen kinder eyes on a cobra. "You, a junior political officer, took it upon yourself to direct the course of the war. You did not think fit, although you knew these two traitors were bent on courting defeat, to send or bring word to the nearest general officer—myself? So that their actions might be directed by someone of less limited military experience?" He paused, his mouth like a rat-trap. "Well, sir?"
I don't know what I thought, only what I said, once I'd recovered from the shock of the icy son-of-a-bitch's sarcasm. It was so unexpected that I could only blurt out: "There wasn't time, sir! Lal Singh was desperate—if I hadn't told him something, God knows what he'd have done!" Nicolson was standing mum; Van Cortlandt was frowning. "I … I acted as I thought best, sir!" I could have burst into tears.
"Quite so." It sounded like a left and right with a sabre. "And from your vast political experience, you are confident that the Wazir's . . desperation … was genuine—and that he has indeed acted on your ingenious instructions? He could not have been deceiving you, of course … and perhaps making quite other dispositions of his army?"
"With respect, sir," put in Van Cortlandt, "I'm quite sure —"
"Thank you, Colonel Van Cortlandt. I recognise your concern for a fellow political officer. Your certainty, however, is by the way. I am concerned with Mr Flashman's."
"Christ! Yes, I'm sure —"
"You will not blaspheme in my presence, sir." The steely voice didn't rise even a fraction. Deliberately he went on: "Well. We must hope that you are right. Must we not? We must resign ourselves to the fact that the fate of the Army rests on the strategic acumen of one self-sufficient subaltern. Distinguished in his way, no doubt." He gave me one last withering glance. "Unfortunately, that distinction has not been gained in command of any formation larger than a troop of cavalry."
I lost my head, and my temper with it. I can't explain it, for I'm the last man to defy authority—it may have been the sneering voice and supercilious eye, or the contrast with the decency of Van Cortlandt and Nicolson, or all the fear and pain and weariness of weeks boiling up, or the sheer injustice, when for once I'd done my best and my duty (not that I'd had any choice, I grant you) and this was the thanks I got! Well, it was the wrong side of enough, and I heaved half off the bed, almost weeping with rage and indignation.
"Damnation!" I bawled. "Very well—sir! What should I have done, then? It ain't too late, you know! Tell me what you'd have done, and I'll ride back to Lal Singh this very minute! He's still cowering in bed, I'll be bound, not two bloody miles away! He'll be glad to change his orders, if he knows they come from you—sir!"
I knew, even in my childish fury, that there wasn't a chance he'd take me at my word, or I'd have confined myself to cussing, you may be sure. Nicolson had me by the arm, begging me to be calm, and Van Cortlandt was muttering excuses on my behalf.
Littler didn't turn a hair. He waited until Nicolson had settled me. Then:
"I doubt if that would be prudent," says he quietly. "No. We can only wait upon events. Whether our messengers find Sir Hugh or not, he will still face the battle which you, Mr Flashman, have made inevitable." He moved forward to look at me, and his face was like flint. "If all goes well, he and his army will, very properly, receive the credit. If, on the other hand, he is defeated, then you, sir"—he inclined his head towards me—"will bear the blame alone. You will certainly be broken, probably imprisoned, possibly even shot." He paused. "Do not misunderstand me, Mr Flashman. The questions I have asked you are only those that will be put to you by the prosecution at your court-martial—a proceeding at which, let me assure you, I shall be the first witness on your behalf, to testify that, in my judgment, you have done your duty with exemplary courage and resource, and in the highest traditions of the service."
Unusual chap, Littler, and not only because he came from Cheshire, which not many people do, in my experience. I can't recall a man who so scared the innards out of me, and yet was so reassuring, all in one go. For he was right, you know. I had done the proper thing, and done it well—and much good it'd do me, whatever befell. If Gough was wiped up, they'd need a scapegoat, and who so handy as one of those cocky politicals whom the rest of the Army detested? Contrariwise, if the Khalsa was beat, the last thing John Bull would want to hear was that it had been managed by a dirty deal with two treacherous Sikh generals—where's the glory to Britannia's arms in that? So it would be kept quiet … as it has been, to this very day.
You may wonder, then, how I found any reassurance in Littler's tirade. Well, the thought of having that acid little iceberg in my corner, if it came to a court-martial, was decidedly comforting; I've prosecuted myself, and God be thanked I never ran into a defence witness like him. And Broadfoot would stand by me, and Van Cortlandt—and my Afghan reputation must tell in my favour. I got a whiff of that later in the day, when I was nursing my leg and chewing my nails on the verandah after tiffen, and heard Littler's three brigadiers talking behind the chick; Nicol-son must have been spreading the tale of my exploits, and they were full of it.
"Sikhs are doin' what Flashman told 'em? Off his own bat? I'll be damned! No end to the cheek o' these politicals."
"Not to Flashman's, anyway. Ask any woman in Simla."
"Oh? In the skirt line, is he? Odd, that … wife's a regular stunner. Seen her. Blonde gel, blue eyes." "She does sound a stunner, is she?"
"Tip-top, altogether."
"I say … lady's name. Not in the mess."
"Haven't mentioned her name. Just that she's a stunner. Money, too, I'm told."
"Scamps like Flashman always seem to get both. Noticed that."
"Popular chap, of course."
"Not with Cardigan. Kicked him out o' the Cherrypickers."
"Somethin' in the lad's favour. What for?"
"Don't recall. Feller like that, might be anythin'." "True. Well, God help him if Gough gets bowled out." "God will, you'll see. They can't break the man who saved Jallalabad."
"When did Cardigan do that?"
"Didn't. Flashman did. In '42. You were in Tenasserim."
"Was I? Ah, yes, I recollect now. He held some fort or other. Oh, they can't touch him, then."
"Dam' well think not. Public wouldn't stand for it." "Not if his wife's a stunner."
All of which was heartening, though I didn't care to hear Elspeth bandied about quite so freely. But it was still a long day, waiting in the baking heat of the Ferozepore lines, with the 62nd sweating in their red coats in the entrenchments, and the blue-jacketed sepoy gunners lying in the shade of their pieces, while only two miles away the sun twinkled on the arms of Tej Singh's mighty host.
Littler and his staff spent all day in the saddle, riding out south-east to scan the hazy distance: Gough was somewhere out yonder, marching to meet the gorracharra that Lal Singh had dispatched against him—if he had dispatched them. Suppose he hadn't—suppose he'd ignored my plan, or bungled it? Suppose Littler's fear was well-founded, and Lal had been humbugging me—but, no, that couldn't be, the fellow had been almost out of his wits. He must be advancing to meet Gough … but would he mind what I'd said about detaching regiments along the way, so as to even the odds? Suppose … oh, suppose any number of things! All I could do was wait, keeping out of Littler's way, limping gamely around the mess, aware of the eyes that glanced and looked away.
It was about four, and the sun was starting to dip, when we heard the first rumble to eastward, and Huthwaite, the gunner colonel, stood stock-still on the verandah, mouth open, listening, and then cries: "Those are big fellows! 48s! Sikh, for certain!"
"How far?" asks someone.
"Can't tell—twenty miles at least, might be thirty …" "That's Moodkee, then!"
"Quiet, can't you?" Huthwaite had his eyes closed. "'Those are howitzers!31 That's Gough!"
And it was, white fighting coat and all, with an exhausted army at his heels, ill-fed, ill-watered, and in no kind of order, out-gunned but not, thank God, outnumbered, and going for his enemy in the only style he knew, bull-at-a-gate and damn the consequences. We knew nothing of that, at the time; we could only stand on the verandah, with the moths clustering round the lamps, listening to the distant cannonade which went on hour after hour, long after sunset, when we could even see the flashes reflected on the distant night sky. Not until one of Harriott's light cavalry scouts came back, choked with dust and excitement, did we have any notion of what was happening in that astonishing action, the first in the great Sikh War: Midnight Moodkee.
When I sport my tin on dress occasions, I have clasps lor a score of engagements, from "Cabul 42" to "Khedive Sudan 96"—but not for that one, the battle I started. I don't mind that; I wasn't there, praise the Lord, and it wasn't a famous victory for anyone, but I like to think I prevented it from being a catastrophe. Gough's army, which a well-managed Khalsa should have smothered by sheer weight, lived to fight another day because I'd squared the odds for them—and because there are no better horse soldiers in the world than the Light Brigade.
Between them, Hardinge and Gough came damned near to making a hash of it, one by his old-wife caution, t'other by his Donnybrook recklessness. Thanks to Hardinge, we were ill-prepared for war, with regiments held back from the front, no proper supply stations on their line of march (so that Broadfoot and his politicals had to plunder the countryside to improvise them), not even a field hospital ready to move, and Paddy having to drive ahead with his fighting force, forced-marching thirty miles a day, and devil take the transport and auxiliaries straggling behind him all the way to Umballa. Meanwhile Hardinge had decided to stop being Governor-General and become a soldier again—he went careering off to Ludhiana and brought the garrison down to join the march, so that when they reached Moodkee they had about twelve thousand men, pretty fagged out after a day's march—and there were Lal's gorracharra waiting for them, ten thousand strong and a couple of thousand infantry.
Now it was Paddy's turn. The Sikhs had stationed their foot and guns in jungle, and Gough, instead of waiting for them to come on, must fly at their throats in case they escaped him—that was all he knew. The artillery duelled away, kicking up a deuce of a dust—Hardinge's son told me later that it was like fighting in London fog, and the fact is that no two accounts of the battle agree, because no one could see a damned thing for most of the time. Certainly the gorracharra were in such numbers that they threatened to envelop us, but our own cavalry took 'em in flank, both sides, and broke them. The 3rd Lights were riding in among the Sikh guns and infantry, but when Paddy launched a frontal infantry assault they ran into a great storm of grape, and it was touch and go for a while, for when they reached the jungle the Sikh guns were still doing great execution, and there was horrid scrimmaging among the trees. It was dark by now, and fellows were firing on their comrades, some of our sepoy regiments were absolutely blazing into the air, everything was con-fusion on both sides—and then the Sikhs withdrew, leaving seventeen guns behind them. We lost over 200 dead and three times as many wounded; the Sikhs' losses, I'm told, were greater, but nobody knows.
You might call it a draw in our favour,32 but it settled a few things. We'd taken the ground and the guns, so the Khalsa could be beaten—at a cost, for they'd fought like tigers among the trees, and took no prisoners. Our sepoys had lost some of their fear of the Sikhs, and our cavalry, British and Indian, had seen the backs of the gorracharra. If Gough could follow up quickly enough, and dispose of the rest of Lal's force which was concentrated on Ferozeshah, twelve miles away, before Tej's host came to reinforce it, we'd be in a fair way to settling the whole business. But if the Khalsa reunited … well, that would be another story.
Some of this was clear as early as next morning, but by then I had other concerns. One of the gallopers whom Littler had sent with news of my arrangement with Lal and Tej, had reached Gough at the height of the battle; it had been an astonishing sight, with twenty thousand horse, foot and guns tearing at each other in the starlight, and the old madman himself raging because he couldn't take part personally in the 3rd Lights' charge on the Sikh flank: "It's damnable, so it is! Here's me, an' there's them, an' I might as well be in me bed! Away ye go, Mickey, an' give 'em one for me—hurroo, boys!"
The galloper had wisely decided that there'd be no talking sense to him for a while, and it wasn't until near midnight, when the fighting was done, that the news had been broken, to Gough and Hardinge, with Broadfoot in tow, as they left the field. The galloper said it was like a strange dream: a huge golden moon shining on the scrubby plain and jungle; the Sikh guns, with their dead crews heaped around them; the mutilated corpses of our Light Dragoons and Indian lancers marking the path of their charge through the heart of the Khalsa position; the great confused masses of men and horses and camels scattered, dead and dying, on the plain; the wailing chorus of the wounded, and the shouts of our people as they sought their fellows among the fallen; the mound of bodies piled up like a cairn where Harry Smith had ridden ahead on his Arab, Jim Crow, planted the Queen's Own's colour at the head of a Khalsa column, and roared to our fellows to come and get it—which they had; Gough and Hardinge standing a little apart, talking quietly in the moonlight, and Paddy finally giving the galloper his reply, and adding the words which brought my heart into my mouth.
"My respects to Sir John Littler, an' tell him he'll be hearin' from me presently—an' he'll oblige me by sendin' that young Flashman to me as soon as he likes! I want a word with that one!"
*
It wasn't a hard word, though; indeed, the first thing he said, when I limped into his presence in the big mess-tent at Moodkee, was: "What's amiss with your leg, boy? Sit ye down, an' Baxu'll get ye a glass of beer. Thirsty ridin', these days!"
First, though, I must be presented to Hardinge, who was with him at dinner, a plain-faced, tight-mouthed sobersides with the empty cuff of his missing left hand tucked into his coat. I disliked him on sight, and it was mutual: he gave me a frosty nod, but Broadfoot was there, with a great grin and a hearty handclasp. That was welcome, I can tell you: the thirty-mile ride from Ferozepore, skirting south in case of gorracharra scouts, and with only six N.C. sowars for escort, had given me the blue devils and done my game ankle no good at all, and on reaching Moodkee I'd had a most horrid shock. We'd come in at sunset from the south, and so saw nothing of the battlefield, but they were burying the dead in scores, and I'd chanced to glance aside through an open tent-fly, and there, wrapped in a cloak, was the body of old Bob Sale.
It quite undid me. He'd been such a hearty, kind old soul—I could see him mopping the noble tears from his red cheeks at my bedside in Jallalabad, or grinning from his table-head at Florentia's wilder flig
hts, or thumping his knee: "There'll be no retreat from Lahore, what?" Now they were blowing retreat over him, old Fighting Bob; the grapeshot had got him when they stormed the jungle—the Quartermaster-General charging with the infantry! Well, thank God I wouldn't have to break the news to her.
But poor old Bob was soon forgotten in the presence of the G.G. and the army chief, for now I must tell my tale again, to that distinguished audience—Thackwell, the cavalry boss, was there, and Hardinge's son Charlie, and young Gough, Paddy's nephew, but only three faces counted: Hardinge, cold and grave, his finger laid along his cheek; Gough leaning forward, the brown, handsome old face alight with interest, tugging his white moustache; and Broadfoot, all red whiskers and bottle glasses, watching them to see how they took it, like a master while his prize boy construes. It sounded well, and I told it straight, with no false-modest tricks which I knew would be wasted here—bogus message, Goolab Singh, Maka Khan, gridiron, escape, Gardner's intervention (I daren't omit him, with George there), my meeting with Lal and Tej. When I'd done there was a silence, into which George stepped, laying down the law.
"May I say at once, excellency, that I support all Mr Flashman's actions unreservedly. They are precisely such as I should have wished him to take."
"Hear, hear," says Gough, and tapped the table. "Good lad."
Hardinge didn't care for it. I guessed that, like Littler, he thought I'd taken a heap too much on myself, but unlike Littler he wasn't prepared to admit that I'd been right.
"Fortunately, no harm appears to have been done," says he coldly. "However, the less said of this the better, I think. You will agree, Major Broadfoot, that any publication of the Sikhs' treachery might have the gravest consequences." Without waiting for George's reply, he went on, to me: "And I would not wish your ordeal at the hands of the enemy to be noised abroad. It was a dreadful thing"—he might have been discussing the weather—"and I congratulate you on your deliverance, but if it were to become known it must have an inflammatory effect, and that could serve no good end." Never mind the inflammatory effect it had had on my end; even in the middle of a war he was fretting about our harmonious relations with the Punjab when it was all over, and Flashy's scorched arse mustn't be allowed to mar the prospect. I hadn't liked Henry Hardinge before, but now I loathed him. So I agreed at once, like a good little toady, and Gough, who'd been fidgeting impatiently, got a word in:
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