George Fraser - Flashman in the Great Game

‘Oh, our frontier politicals will send me word as soon as any suspected person crosses over,’ says he. ‘And I have my own native agents on the look-out now – some pretty sharp men, sir.’

‘They know especially to look out for a one-eyed man?’

‘Yes, sir – he has a curious deformity which he hides with a patch, you know – one of his eyes is half-blue, half-brown.’

‘You don’t say,’ says I. By George, I hadn’t realised our political arrangements were as ramshackle as this. ‘That, Captain Skene, is the man I’m here to kill – so if any of your … sharp men have the chance to save me the trouble, they may do it with my blessing.’

‘Oh, of course, sir. Oh, they will, you know. Some of them,’ says he, impressively, ‘are Pindari bandits – or used to be, that is. But we’ll know in good time, sir, before any of these Ruski fellows get within distance.’

I wished I could share his confidence. ‘Calcutta has no notion what the Russian spies were up to down here?’ I asked him, but he shook his head.

‘Nothing definite at all – only that they’d been here. We were sure it must be connected with the chapattis going round, but those have dried up lately. None have passed since October, and the sepoys of the 12th N.I. – that’s the regiment here, you know – seem perfectly quiet. Their colonel swears they’re loyal – has done from the first, and was quite offended that I reported the cakes to Calcutta. Perhaps he’s right; I’ve had some of my men scouting the sepoy lines, and they haven’t heard so much as a murmur. And Calcutta was to inform me if cakes passed at any other place, but none have, apparently.’

Come, thinks I, this is decidedly better; Pam’s been up a gum-tree for nothing. All I had to do was make a show of brief activity here, and then loaf over to Calcutta after a few weeks and report nothing doing. Give ’em a piece of my mind, too, for causing me so much inconvenience.

‘Well, Skene,’ says I, ‘this is how I see it. There’s nothing to be done about what the Prime Minister calls “those blasted buns” – unless they make a reappearance, what? As to the Russians – well, when we get word of them, I’ll probably drop out of sight, d’you see?’ I would, too – to some convenient haven which the Lord would provide, and emerge when the coast was clear. But I doubted it would even come to that. ‘Yes, you won’t see me – but I’ll be about, never fear, and if our one-eyed friend, or any of his creatures, shows face … well …’

He looked suitably impressed, with a hint of that awe which my fearsome reputation inspires. ‘I understand, sir. You’ll wish to … er, work in your own way, of course.’ He blinked at me, and then exclaimed reverently: ‘By Jove, I don’t envy those Ruski fellows above half – if you don’t mind my saying so, sir.’

‘Skene, old chap,’ says I, and winked at him. ‘Neither do I.’ And believe me, he was my slave for life, from that moment.

‘There’s the other thing,’ I went on. ‘The Rani. I have to try to talk some sense into her. Now, I daresay there isn’t much I can do, since I gather she’s shown you and Erskine that she’s not disposed to be friendly, but I’m bound to try, you see. So I’ll be obliged to you if you’ll arrange an audience for me the day after tomorrow – I’d like to rest and perhaps look around the city first. For the present, you can tell me your own opinion of her.’

He frowned, and filled my glass. ‘You’ll think it’s odd, sir, I daresay, but in all the time I’ve been here, I’ve never even seen her. I’ve met her, frequently, at the palace, but she speaks from behind a purdah, you know – and as often as not her chamberlain does the talking for her. She’s a stickler for form, and since government granted her diplomatic immunity after her husband died – as a sop, really, when we assumed suzerainty – well, it makes it difficult to deal with her satisfactorily. She was friendly enough with Erskine at one time – but I’ve had no change out of her at all. She’s damned bitter, you see – when her husband died, old Raja Gangadar, he left no children of his own – well, he was an odd bird, really,’ and Skene blushed furiously and avoided my eye. ‘Used to go about in female dress most of the time, and wore bangles and … and perfume, you see—’

‘No wonder she was bitter,’ says I.

‘No, no, what I mean is, since he left no legitimate heir, but only a boy whom he’d adopted, Dalhousie wouldn’t recognise the infant. The new succession law, you know. So the state was annexed – and the Rani was furious, and petitioned the Queen, and sent agents to London, but it was no go. The adopted son, Damodar, was dispossessed, and the Rani, who’d hoped to be regent, was deprived of her power – officially. Between ourselves, we let her rule pretty well as she pleases – well, we can’t do otherwise, can we? We’ve one battalion of sepoys, and thirty British civilians to run the state administration – but she’s the law, where her people are concerned, absolute as Caesar.’

‘Doesn’t that satisfy her, then?’

‘Not a bit of it. She detests the fact that officially she only holds power by the Sirkar’s leave, you see. And she’s still wild about the late Raja’s will – you’d think that with a quarter of a million in her treasury she’d be content, but there was some jewellery or other that Calcutta confiscated, and she’s never forgiven us.’

‘Interesting lady,’ says I. ‘Dangerous, d’you think?’

He frowned. ‘Politically, yes. Given the chance, she’d pay our score off, double quick – that’s why the chapatti business upset me. She’s got no army, as such – but with every man in Jhansi a born fighter, and robber, she don’t need one, do she? And they’ll jump if she whistles, for they worship the ground she treads on. She’s proud as Lucifer’s sister, and devilish hard, not to say cruel, in her own courts, but she’s uncommon kind to the poor folk, and highly thought of for her piety – spends five hours a day meditating, although she was a wild piece, they say, when she was a girl. They brought her up like a Maharatta prince at the old Peshwa’s court – taught her to ride and shoot and fence with the best of them. They say she still has the fiend’s own temper,’ he added, grinning, ‘but she’s always been civil enough to me – at a distance. But make no mistake, she’s dangerous; if you can sweeten her, sir, we’ll all sleep a deal easier at nights.’

There was that, of course. However withered an old trot she might be, she’d be an odd female if she was altogether impervious to Flashy’s manly bearing and cavalry whiskers – which was probably what Pam had in mind in the first place. Cunning old devil. Still, as I turned in that night I wasn’t absolutely looking forward to poodle-faking her in two days’ time, and as I glanced from my bungalow window and saw Jhansi citadel beetling in the starlight, I thought, we’ll take a nice little escort of lancers with us when we go to take tea with the lady, so we will.

But that was denied me. I had intended to pass the next day looking about the city, perhaps having a discreet word with Carshore the Collector and the colonel of the sepoys, but as the syce fn2was bringing round my pony to the dak-bungalow, up comes Skene in a flurry. When he’d sent word to the palace that Colonel Flashman, a distinguished soldier of the Sirkar, was seeking an audience for the following day, he’d been told that distinguished visitors were expected to present themselves immediately as a token of proper respect to her highness, and Colonel Flashman could shift his distinguished rump up to the palace forthwith.

‘I … I thought in the circumstances of your visit,’ says Skene, apologetically, ‘that you might think it best to comply.’