George Fraser - Flashman and the Mountain of Light

The old bastard’s caulked out again, thinks I, and hollered, without result, so I rolled up, seized my crop, and strode forth to give him an enjoyable leathering. But his mat was empty, and so was the passage, stretching away to the far stairs, with only a couple of lamps shining faint in the gloom. I called for Jassa; nothing but a hollow echo. I stood a moment; it was damned quiet, not a sound anywhere, and for the first time my silk robe felt chill against my skin.

I went inside again, and listened, but apart from the faint pitter of the moths at the screen, no sound at all. To be sure, the Kwabagh was a big place, and I’d no notion where I was within it, but you’d have expected some noise … distant voices, or music. I went through the screen on to the little balcony, and looked over the marble balustrade; it was a long drop, four storeys at least, to the enclosed court, high enough to make my crotch contract; I would just hear the faint tinkle of the fountain, and make out the white pavement in the gloom, but the walls enclosing the court were black; not a light anywhere.

I found I was shivering, and it wasn’t the night air. My skin was crawling with a sudden dread in that lonely, sinister darkness, and I was just about to turn hurriedly back into my room when I saw something that brought the hair bristling up on my neck.

Far down in the court, on the pale marble by the fountain, there was a shadow where none had been before. I stared, thrilling with horror as I realised it was a man, in black robes, his upturned face hidden in a dark hood. He was looking up at my balcony, and then he stepped back into the shadows, and the court was empty.

I was inside and streaking across the room in an instant – and if you say I start at shadows, I’ll agree with you, pointing out only that behind every shadow there’s substance, and in this case it wasn’t out for an evening stroll. I yanked open the door, preparing to speed down the passage in search of cheer and comfort – and my foot wasn’t over the threshold before I froze in my tracks. At the far end of the passage, beyond the last light, dark figures were advancing, and I caught the gleam of steel among them.

I skipped back, slamming the door, looking wildly about for a bolthole which I knew didn’t exist. There wasn’t time to get my pepperbox; they’d be at the door in a second – there was nothing for it but to slip through the screen to the balcony, shuddering back against the balustrade even as I heard the door flung open and men bursting in. In unthinking panic I swung over the side of the balustrade, close to the wall, clutching its pillars from the outside, cowering low with my toes scrabbling for a hold and that appalling drop beneath me, while heavy footsteps and harsh voices rang out from my room.

It was futile, of course. They’d be ravening out on the balcony in a moment, see me through the pillars – I could hear the yell of triumph, feel the agony of steel slicing through my fingers, sending me hurtling to hideous death. I crouched lower, gibbering like an ape, trying to peer under the balcony – God, there was a massive stone bracket supporting it, only inches away! I thrust a foot through it, slipped, and for a ghastly instant was hanging at full stretch before I got one leg crooked over the bracket, made a frantic grab, and found myself clinging to it like a bloody sloth, upside down beneath the balcony, with my fine silk robe billowing beneath me.

I’ve no head for heights, did I tell you? That yawning black void was dragging my mind down, willing me to let go, even as I clung for dear life with locked ankles and sweating fingers – I must drag myself up and over the bracket somehow, but even as I braced myself a voice sang out just overhead, and the toe of a boot appeared between the pillars only a yard above my upturned face. Thank God the balcony rail was a broad projecting slab which hid me from view as he shouted down – and only then did I remember blasted Romeo below, who must have been watching my frantic acrobatics …

‘Ai, Nurla Bey – what of the feringhee ?’ cries the voice above – a rasping croak in Pushtu, and I could hear my muscles creaking with the awful strain as I waited to be announced.

‘He came out a moment since, Gurdana Khan,’ came the answer – Jesus, it sounded a mile down. ‘Then he went back within.’

He hadn’t seen me? Pondering it later – which you ain’t inclined to do while hanging supine under a balcony of murderers – I concluded that he must have been looking elsewhere or relieving himself when I made my leap for glory, and my robe being dark green, he couldn’t make me out in the deep shadow beneath the balcony. I embraced the bracket, blubbering silently, while Gurdana Khan swore by the Seven Lakes of Hell that I wasn’t in the room, so where the devil was I?

‘Perchance he has the gift of invisibility,’ calls up the wag in the court. ‘The English are great chemists.’ Gurdana damned his eyes, and for no sane reason I found myself thinking that this was the kind of crisis in which, Broadfoot had said, I might drop the magic word ‘Wisconsin’ into the conversation. I didn’t care to interrupt, though, just then, while Gurdana stamped in fury and addressed his followers.

‘Find him! Search every nook, every corner in the palace! Stay, though – he may have gone to the durbar room!’

‘What – into the very presence of Jawaheer?’ scoffs another.

‘His best refuge, fool! Even thou wouldst not cut his throat in open durbar. Away, and search! Nurla, thou dirt – back to the gate!’

For a split second, as he shouted down, his sleeve came into view – and even in the poor light there was no mistaking that pattern. It was the tartan of the 79th, and Gurdana Khan was the Pathan officer I’d seen that afternoon – dear God, the Palace Guard were after me!

How I held on for those last muscle-cracking moments, with fiery cramps searing my arms, I can’t fathom, much less how I managed to struggle up astride of the bracket. But I did, and sat gasping and shaking in the freezing dark. They were gone, and I must steel myself to reach out and up for a hold on the balcony pillars, and somehow find the strength to drag myself to safety. I knew it was death to try, but equally certain death to remain, so I drew myself into a crouch, feet on the bracket like some damned cathedral gargoyle, leaned out, and reached slowly up with one trembling hand, too terrified to make the snatch which had to be made …

A hideous face shot over the balustrade, glaring down at me, I squealed in terror, my foot slipped, I clawed wildly at thin air as I began to fall – and a hand like a vice clamped on my wrist, almost wrenching my arm from its socket. For two bowel-chilling seconds I swung free, wailing, then another hand seized my forearm, and I was dragged up and over the balustrade, collapsing in a quaking heap on the balcony, with Jassa’s ugly face peering into mine.

I’m not certain what line our conversation took, once I’d heaved up my supper, because I was in that state of blind funk and shock where talk don’t matter, and I made it worse – once I’d recovered the strength to crawl indoors – by emptying my pint flask of brandy in about three great gulps, while Jassa asked damfool questions.

That brandy was a mistake. Sober, I’d have begun to reason straight, and let him talk some sense into me, but I sank the lot, and the short result was that, in the immortal words of Thomas Hughes, Flashy became beastly drunk. And when I’m foxed, and shuddering scared into the bargain … well, I ain’t responsible. The odd thing is, I keep all my faculties except common sense; I see and hear clearly, and remember, too – and I know I had only one thought in mind, seared there by that tartan villain who was bent on murdering me: ‘The durbar room – his best refuge!’ If there’s one thing I respect, drunk or sober, it’s a professional opinion, and if my hunters thought I’d be safe there then by God not Jassa or fifty like him were going to keep me from it. He must have tried to calm me, for I fancy I took him by the throat, to make my intentions clear, but all I’m sure of is that I went blundering off along the passage, and then along another, and down a long spiral staircase that grew lighter as I descended, with the sound of music coming closer, and then I was in a broad carpeted gallery, where various interesting Orientals glanced at me curiously, and I was looking out at a huge chandelier gleaming with a thousand candles, and below it a broad circular floor on which two men and a woman were dancing, three brilliant figures whirling to and fro. There were spectators down there, too, in curtained booths round the walls, all in extravagant costumes – aha, thinks I, this is the spot, and a fancy dress party in progress, too; capital, I’ll go as a chap in a green silk robe with bare feet. It’s a terrible thing, drink.