"A gift for a gift, bahadur! Bow your head!"
Wondering, I stooped towards him, and to my amazement he lifted the heavy silver locket from about his neck mid threw the chain over my head, and for a moment his little arms locked tight, holding me, and I felt' him tremble and his tears suddenly wet on my face. "I will be brave! I will be brave, bahadur! whispers he, sobbing. "But you must keep it for me, till you come again to Lahore!" Then 1 set him down, and he stood rubbing his eyes angrily, while Goolab came limping, to apologise for intruding on his majesty, but it was time we were all on our various roads.
Did asked where he would take the Maharaja, and he said no farther than Pettee, a few miles off, where his fighting men were assembling; he had brought forty thousand down from Jumoo "- in case the Jangi lat should need assistance against these rebel dogs of the Khalsa; haply we may cut them up as they flee from Sobraon! Then," and he bowed as far as his belly would let him, "we must see to it that your majesty has a new army, of true men!" Dalip took this with a good grace, whatever he may have been thinking.
It was time to go, and Jassa mounted alongside me -that was the moment when I knew for certain that he hadn't been party to Gardner's little plot. He'd seemed as stunned as I was to find Goolab Singh waiting at Jupindar, but that might have been acting—the fact that he was riding back to Hardinge with me was proof of his innocence. I gave a last salutation to Dalip, standing very small and steady apart from old Goolab, and then Jassa and I rode south from Jupindar rocks—with our tails between our legs, if you like … and two million pounds' worth of crystallised carbon round my neck.
He was a canny infant and wise beyond his years, young Dalip—wasn't he just? He knew Goolab wouldn't dare harm his person—but his property was another matter. If the old fox had guessed the Koh-i-Noor was within reach, then that wondrous treasure would surely have found its way to Kashmir. And in his infant innocence, Dalip had passed it to me, for safe-keeping …
I brooded on that as we trotted south over the doab in the misty afternoon, with Jupindar fading from sight behind us, and the distant green that marked the Sutlej coming into view ahead. By rights I should have been deciding where to cross, and calculating our bearing from Sobraon, where presently all hell would be let loose. But having the most precious object in the world bobbing against your belly concentrates the mind wonderfully; it ain't just the fearful responsibility, either. All kinds of mad fancies flit by not to be taken seriously, you under-stand, but food for wild imaginings—like bleaching your hair and striking out for Valparaiso under the name of Butterworth and never looking near England again … two million quid, Lord love us! Aye, but how d'you dispose of a diamond the size of a tangerine? Not in Amsterdam … probably to some swindling shark who'd set the traps after you … I could picture myself going mad in a garret, gibbering at a treasure I was too windy to sell … But if you could, and disappear … Gad, the life you could lead—estates, palaces, luxury by the bucket, gold cigar-boxes and silk drawers, squads of slaves and battalions of willing women, visions of Xanadu and Babylon and unlimited boozing and frolic …
No steak and kidney ever again, though—and no Elspeth. No sunny days at Lord's or strolls along the Haymarket, no hunt suppers or skittle pool or English rain or Horse Guards or quarts of home-brewed … oh, for Elspeth bare and bouncing and a jug of October and bread and cheese by the bed! All the jewels of Golconda can't buy you that, even supposing you had the nerve to bolt with them—which I knew I had not. No, pinching Koh-i-Noor is like putting t'other side in to bat—you won't do it, but there's no reason why you shouldn't think hard about it.
"Where you aim to cross, lieutenant?" says Jassa, and I realised he'd been gassing since we left Jupindar, full of bile against Gardner, and I'd hardly taken in a blessed word. I asked him, as one who knew the country, where we were.
"About five miles nor'east of Nuggur Ford," says he.
The Sobraon ghat's less than ten miles due east—see, that smoke'll be from the Sikh lines." He pointed to our left front, and on the horizon, above the distant green, you could see it hanging like a dark mist. "We can scout the Nuggur, an' if it ain't clear, we can cast downriver a piece." He paused. "Leastways, you can."
Something in his tone made me look round—into the six barrels of his pistol. He'd reined in about ten feet behind me, and there was a hard, fixed grin on his ugly face.
"What the hell are you about?" cries I. "Put that damned thing up!"
"No, sir," says he. "Now you sit right still, 'cos I don't wish to harm you. No, don't start to holler an' tear your hair, neither! Just slip off that locket an' chain, an' toss 'em over this way—lively, now!" For a moment I'd been all at sea—I'd forgotten, you see, that he'd been there when Jeendan had shown the stone to Dalip and put it round his neck, and again when Dalip had passed the locket to me. Then:
"You confounded fool!" I yelped, half-laughing. "You can't steal this!"
"Don't bet on it! Now, you do as -I say, d'ye hear?"
I was riding Ahmed Shah's screw, with two long horse pistols in the saddle holsters, but I'd no notion of reaching for them. For the thing was wild—hadn't I been turning it over, academic-like, for the past hour?
"Harlan, you're daft!" says I. "Look, man, put up that pepperbox and see reason! This is the Koh-i-Noor—and the Punjab! Why, you'ld not get twenty miles—you'ld be running your head into a noose —"
"Mr Flashman, you can shut up!" says he, and the harsh face with its ghastly orange whiskers looked like a scared ape's. "Now, sir, you pass that item across directly, or —"
"Hold on!", says I, and lifted the tarnished silver case in my hand. "Hear me a moment. I don't know how many carats this thing weighs, or how you think you can turn it into cash—even if you get clear of the Sikhs, let alone the British Army! Good God, man, the mere sight of it and you'll be clapped in irons—you can't hope to sell —"
"You're trying my patience, mister! An' you're forgetting I know this territory, for a thousand miles around, better'n any man alive! I know Jews in every town from Prome to Bokhara who can have that rock in twenty bits quicker'n you can spit!" He threw back his puggaree impatiently and raised the pistol, and for all his brag his hand was shaking. "I don't want to shoot you out of the saddle, but I will, by the holy!
"Will you?" says I. "Gardner said you wouldn't do murder—but he was right about your being a thief —"
"That he was!" cries he. "An' if you paid heed to him, you know my story!" He was grinning like a maniac. "I've followed fortune half a lifetime, an' taken every chance I found! I ain't about to miss the best one yet! An' you can set the British an' the Punjab in a roar after me—there's a war to finish, an' more empty trails between Kabul an' Katmandu an' Quetta than anybody's ever thought of—'cept me! I'll count to three!"
His knuckle was white on the ring, so I slipped the chain over my neck, weighed the locket a moment, and tossed it to him. He snapped it up by the chain, his feverish eyes never leaving me for a second, and dropped the locket into his boot. His chest was heaving, and he licked his lips highway robbery wasn't his style, I could see.
"Now you climb down, an' keep your hands clear o' those barkers!" I dismounted, and he side-stepped in and seized my reins.
"You're not leaving me afoot—and unarmed, for God's sake!" I cried, and he backed his horse away, covering me still, and drawing my mount with him.
"You're less'n two hours from the river," says he, grinning more easy now. "You'll make it safe enough. Well, lieutenant … we had our ups an' downs, but no hard feelings my side. Fact, I'm almost sorry to part—you're my sort, you know." He gave a high-pitched laugh. "'That's why I'm not offering you a partnership in Koh-i-Noor Unlimited!"
"Did wouldn't take it. How long have you been planning this?"
'Bout twenty minutes. Here—catch hold!" He unslung the Maggie from Ahmed's saddle, and threw it towards me. "Hot day—have a drink on me!"
He wheeled his horse and was off at the gallop, making north, with my sc
rew behind, leaving me alone on the doab. I waited until the scrub hid him, and then turned and ran at full speed in the direction of Nuggur Ford. There was a belt of jungle that way, and I wanted to be in cover. As I ran, I kept my hand cupped to my side, feeling the reassuring bulge of the Koh-i-Noor under my sash. I may day-dream occasional, but when I'm carrying price-less valuables in the company of the likes of Dr Josiah Harlan, I slip 'em out of sight in the first five minutes, you may be sure.
If he'd had the wit to open the locket—well, that would have been another story. But if he'd had that much wit, he'd not have been reduced to running errands for Broad-foot in the first place. The fact is, for all his experience of rascality, Jassa was a 'prentice hand. The Man Who Would Be King … but never was.
Only the other day my little great-niece Selina—the pretty one whose loose conduct almost led me to commit murder in Baker Street, but that's another story—remarked to me that she couldn't abide Dickens because his books were full of coincidences. I replied by telling her about the chap who lost a rifle in France and tripped over it in West Africa twenty years later,46 and added for good measure an account of my own strange experience after I parted from Harlan in the doab. That was coincidence, if you like, and damnably mixed luck, too, for while it may have saved my life it also landed me centre stage in the last act of the Punjab war.
Once I reached the jungle belt, chortling at the thought of Jassa stopping presently to gloat over his booty, I went to ground. Even when he found out he'd been diddled, he'd never dare come back to look for me, so I decided to stay put and cross the river when night fell. In my Kabuli attire I could pass for a gorrachar' well enough, but the less I was seen the better, so I planned to leave my jungly lair a couple of hours before dusk, slip down to the river, swim across—it wasn't above four hundred yards wide—and lie up on the far shore until daylight.
It began to rain heavily towards evening, so I was glad enough of my shelter, and only when the light began to fade did I venture out, onto a beaten track leading down to the Sutlej. It took me through a little wood, and I was striding boldly along, eager to catch a glimpse of the river, when I rounded a bend in the trees, and there, not twenty yards ahead, was a troop of regular Khalsa cavalry, with their beasts picketed and a fire going, It was too late to turn back, so I walked on, prepared to pass the time of day and pick up the shave, and only when I was almost on them did I notice six or seven bodies hanging from trees within the wood. I bore up in natural alarm—and that was fatal. They were already looking towards me, and now someone yelled an order, and before I knew it I had been seized by grinning sowars and hauled into the presence of a burly daffadar*(*Cavalry commander of ten.) standing by the fire, a mess-tin in his hand and his tunic unbuttoned. He eyed me malevolently, brushing crumbs from his beard.
"Another of them!" growls he. Gorracharra, are you? Aye, the faithless rabble! And what tale have you got to tell?"
"Tale, daffadar sahib?" says I, bewildered. "Why, none! I —"
"Here's a change! Most of you have sick mothers!" At which all his louts hooted with laughter. "Well, gorrachar', ,where's your horse? Your arms? Your regiment?" He suddenly threw the mess-tin aside and slapped me across the face, back and forth. "Your honour, you cowardly scum!"
It struck the sense out of me for a moment, and I was starting to babble some nonsense about being waylaid by bandits when he hit me again.
"Robbed, were you? And they left you this?" He snatched the silver-hilted Persian knife from my boot. "Liar! You're a deserter! Like those swine there!" He jerked a thumb at the swinging corpses, and I saw that most of them were wearing some remnants of uniform. "Well, you can muster with them again, carrion! Hang him up!"
It was so brutally sudden, so impossible—I wasn't to know that for weeks they'd been hunting down deserters from half the regiments of the Khalsa, stringing them up on sight without charge, let alone trial. They were dragging me towards the trees before I recovered my wits, and there was only one way to stop them.
"Daffadar!" I shouted, "you're under arrest! For assault on a superior officer and attempted murder! I am Katte Khan, captain and aide to the Sirdar Heera Sing Topi, of Court's Division —" it was a name from months ago, the only one I could think of. "You!" I snapped at the goggling sowar holding my left arm. "Take your polluting hand away or I'll have you shot! I'll teach you to lay hands on me, you damned Povinda brigands!"
It paralysed them—as the voice of authority always does. They loosed me in a twinkling, and the daffadar, open-mouthed, even began to button his tunic. "We are not of the Povinda division —"
"Silence! Where's your officer?"
"In the village," says he, sullenly, and only half-convinced. "If you are what you say —"
"If! Give me the lie, will you?" I dropped my voice from a bellow to a whisper, which always rattles them. "Daffadar, I do not explain myself to the sweepings of the gutter! Bring your officer—jao!"
Now he was convinced. "I'll take you to him, Captain sahib —"
"You'll bring him!" I roared, and he leaped back a yard and sent one of the sowars off at the gallop, while I turned on my heel and waited with my back to them, so that they shouldn't see that I was shaking like a leaf. It had all been so quick—carefree one minute, condemned the next—that there hadn't been time for fear, but now I was fit to faint. What could I say to the officer? I cudgelled my wits—and then there was the sound of hooves, and I turned to see the coincidence riding towards me.
He was a tall, fine-looking young Sikh, his yellow tunic stained with weeks of campaigning. He reined in, demanding of the daffadar what the devil was up, swinging out of the saddle and striding towards me—and to my consternation I knew him, and any hope of maintaining my disguise vanished. For it was long odds he'd recognise me, too, and if he did … A wild thought suddenly struck me, and before he could speak I had drawn myself up, bowed, and In my best verandah manner asked him to send his men out of earshot. My style must have impressed him, for he waved them away.
"Sardul Singh," says I quietly, and he started. "I'm Flashman. You escorted me from Ferozepore to Lahore six months ago. It's vital that these men should not know I'm a British officer."
He gasped, and stepped closer, peering at me in the gathering dark. "What the devil are you doing here?"
I took a deep breath,. and prayed. "I've come from Lahore—from the Maharani. This morning I was with Raja Goolab Singh, who is now at Pettee, with his army. I was on my way to the Malki lat, with messages of the highest importance, when by ill chance these fellows took me for a deserter—thank God it's you who —"
"Wait, wait!" says he. "You are from Lahore .. on an embassy? Then, why this disguise? Why —"
"Envoys don't travel in uniform these days," says I, and pitched my tale as. urgent as I knew how. "Look, I should not tell you, but I must—there are secret negotiations in hand! I can't explain, but the whole future of the state depends on them! I must get across the river without delay—matters are at a most delicate stage, and my mess-ages —"
"Where are they?"
"Where? Eh? Oh, Lord above, they're not written. They're here!" I tapped my head, which you'll agree was an appropriate gesture.
"But you have some passport, surely?"
"No, no … I can't carry anything that might betray me. This is the most confidential affair, you see. Believe me, Sardul Singh, every moment is precious. I must cross secretly to —"
"A moment," says he, and my heart sank, for while the fine young face wasn't suspicious, it was damned keen. "If you must pass unseen, why have you come so close to our army? Why not by Hurree-ke, or south by Ferozepore?"
"Because Hardinge sahib is with the British army across from Sobraon! I had to come this way!"
"Yet you might have crossed beyond our patrols, and lost little time." He considered me, frowning. "Forgive me, but you might be a spy. There have been many, scouting our lines."
"I give you my word of honour, I'm no spy. What I say is true …
and if you hold me here, you may be dooming your army to death—and mine—and your country to ruin."
By God, I was doing it purple, but my only hope was that, being a well-educated aristocrat, he must know the desperate intrigue and dealing that were woven into this war—and if he believed me, he'd be a damned bold subaltern to hamper a diplomatic courier on such a vital errand. Alas, though, subalterns' minds travel a fixed road, and his was no exception: faced with a momentous decision, my dashing escort of the Lahore road had turned into a Slave of Duty—and Safety.
"This is beyond me!" He shook his handsome head. "It may be as you say … but I cannot let you go! I have not the authority. My colonel will have to decide —"
I made a last desperate cast. "That would be fatal! If word of the negotiations gets out, they're bound to fail!"
"There is no fear of that—my colonel is a safe man. And he will know what to do." Relief was in his voice at the thought of passing the parcel to higher authority. "Yes, that will be best—I'll go to him myself, as soon as our watch is ended! You can stay here, so that if he decides to release you, it can be done without trouble, and you will have lost little time."
I tried again, urging the necessity for speed, imploring him to trust me, but it was no go. The colonel must pronounce, and so while he trotted back to his squadron post in the village, I must wait under guard of the glowering daffadar and his mates, resigned to capture. Of all the infernal luck, at the last fence! For it mattered not a bean whether his colonel believed my cock-and-bull story or not—he'd never speed me on my way without going higher still, and God alone knew where that might end. They'd hardly dare mistreat me, in view of the tale I'd told; even if they disbelieved it, they'd not be mad enough to shoot me as a spy, at this stage of the war, surely … mind you, some of those Akali fanatics were bloodthirsty enough for anything …
On such jolly reflections I settled down to wait in that dripping little camp—for it was raining heavily again—and either the colonel had gone absent without leave or Sardul spent an unconscionable time gnawing his nails in indecision, for it must have been well into the small hours before he returned. By that time, worn out with wet and despair, He had sunk into a doze, and when I came to, with Sardul shaking my shoulder, I didn't know where I was for a moment.
The Flashman Papers 09 - Flashman and the Mountain of Light fp-9 Page 30