Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 1: Flashman, Royal Flash, Flashman’s Lady. George Fraser MacDonald
beyond Jugdulluk was up, and the hills were swarming with hostile Afghans, all either on their way to help beat up Sale’s force, or else preparing for something bigger – there was talk among the villagers of a great jehad or holy war, in which the feringhees would be wiped out; it was on the eve of breaking out, they said. Sale was now hopelessly cut off; there was no chance of relief from Jallalabad, or even from Kabul – oh, Kabul was going to be busy enough looking after itself.
I heard this shivering round a camp-fire on the Soorkab road, and Ilderim shook his head in the shadows and said:
“It is not safe for you to go on, Flashman huzoor. You must return to Kabul. Give me the letter for Sale; although I have eaten the Queen’s salt my own people will let me through.”
This was such obvious common sense that I gave him the letter without argument and started back for Kabul that same night, with four of the Gilzai hostages for company. At that hour I wanted to get as many miles as possible between me and the gathering Afghan tribes, but if I had known what was waiting for me in Kabul I would have gone on to Sale and thought myself lucky.
Riding hard through the next day, we came to Kabul at nightfall, and I never saw the place so quiet. Bala Hissar loomed over the deserted streets; the few folk who were about were grouped in little knots in doorways and at street corners; there was an air of doom over the whole place. No British soldiers were to be seen in the city itself, and I was glad to get to the Residency, where Burnes lived in the heart of the town, and hear the courtyard gates grind to behind me. The armed men of Burnes’s personal guard were standing to in the yard, while others were posted on the Residency walls; the torches shone on belt-plates and bayonets, and the place looked as though it was getting ready to withstand a siege.
But Burnes himself was sitting reading in his study as cool as a minnow, until he saw me. At the sight of my evident haste and disorder – I was in Afghan dress, and pretty filthy after days in the saddle – he started up.
“What the deuce are you doing here?” says he.
I told him, and added that there would probably be an Afghan army coming to support my story.
“My message to Sale,” he snapped. “Where is it? Have you not delivered it?”
I told him about Ilderim, and for once the dapper little dandy forgot his carefully cultivated calm.
“Good God!” says he. “You’ve given it to a Gilzai to deliver?”
“A friendly Gilzai,” I assured him. “A hostage, you remember.”
“Are you mad?” says he, his little moustache all a-quiver. “Don’t you know that you can’t trust an Afghan, hostage or not?”
“Ilderim is a khan’s son and a gentleman in his own way,” I told him. “In any event, it was that or nothing. I couldn’t have got through.”
“And why not? You speak Pushtu; you’re in native dress – God knows you’re dirty enough to pass. It was your duty to see that message into Sale’s own hand – and bring an answer. My God, Flashman, this is a pretty business, when a British officer cannot be trusted …”
“Now, look you here, Sekundar,” says I, but he came up straight like a little bantam and cut me off.
“Sir Alexander, if you please,” says he icily, as though I’d never seen him with his breeches down, chasing after some big Afghan bint. He stared at me and took a pace or two round the table.
“I think I understand,” says he. “I have wondered about you lately, Flashman – whether you were to be fully relied on, or … Well, it shall be for a court-martial to decide—”
“Court-martial? What the devil!”
“For wilful disobedience of orders,” says he. “There may be other charges. In any event, you may consider yourself under arrest, and confined to this house. We are all confined anyway – the Afghans are allowing no one to pass between here and the cantonment.”
“Well, in God’s name, doesn’t that bear out what I’ve been telling you?” I said. “The country’s all up to the eastward, man, and now here in Kabul …”
“There is no rising in Kabul,” says he. “Merely a little unrest which I propose to deal with in the morning.” He stood there, cock-sure little ass, in his carefully pressed linen suit, with a flower in his button-hole, talking as though he was a schoolmaster promising to reprimand some unruly fags. “It may interest you to know – you who turn tail at rumours – that I have twice this evening received direct threats to my life. I shall not be alive by morning, it is said. Well, well, we shall see about that.”
“Aye, maybe you will,” says I. “And as to your fine talk that I turn tail at rumours, you may see about that, too. Maybe Akbar Khan will come to show you himself.”
He smiled at me, not pleasantly. “He is in Kabul; I have even had a message from him. And I am confident that he intends no harm to us. A few dissidents there are, of course, and it may be necessary to read them a lesson. However, I trust myself for that.”
There was no arguing with his complacency, but I pitched into him hard on his threat of a court-martial for me. You might have thought that any sensible man would have understood my case, but he simply waved my protests aside, and finished by ordering me to my room. So I went, in a rare rage at the self-sufficient folly of the man, and heartily hoping that he would trip over his own conceit. Always so clever, always so sure – that was Burnes. I would have given a pension to see him at a loss for once.
But I was to see it for nothing.
It came suddenly, just before breakfast-time, when I was rubbing my eyes after a pretty sleepless night which had dragged itself away very slowly, and very silently for Kabul. It was a grey morning, and the cocks were crowing; suddenly I became aware of a distant murmur, growing to a rumble, and hurried to the window. The town lay still, with a little haze over the houses; the guards were still on the wall of the Residency compound, and in the distance, coming closer, the noise was identifiable as the tramping of feet and the growing clamour of a mob.
There was a shouted order in the courtyard, a clatter of feet on the stairs, and Burnes’s voice calling for his brother, young Charlie, who lived in the Residency with him. I snatched my robe from its peg and hurried down, winding my puggaree on to my head as I went. As I reached the courtyard there was the crack of a musket shot, and a wild yell from beyond the wall; a volley of blows hammered on the gate, and across the top of the wall I saw the vanguard of a charging horde streaming out from between the nearest houses. Bearded faces, flashing knives, they surged up to the wall and fell back, yelling and cursing, while the guards thrust at them with their musket butts. For a moment I thought they would charge again and sweep irresistibly over the wall, but they hung back, a jostling, shrieking crowd, shaking their fists and weapons, while the guardsmen lining the wall looked anxiously back for orders and kept their thumbs poised on their musket-locks.
Burnes strolled out of the front door and stood in full view at the top of the steps. He was as fresh and calm as a squire taking his first sniff of the morning, but at the sight of him the mob redoubled its clamour and rolled up to the wall, yelling threats and insults while he looked right and left at them, smiling and shaking his head.
“No shooting, havildar,” says he to the guard commander. “It will all quieten down in a moment.”
“Death to Sekundar!” yelled the mob. “Death to the feringhee pig!”
Jim Broadfoot, who was George’s younger brother, and little Charlie Burnes, were at Sekundar’s elbow, both looking mighty anxious, but Burnes himself never lost his poise. Suddenly he raised his hand, and the mob beyond the wall fell quiet; he grinned at that, and touched his moustache in that little, confident gesture he had, and then he began to talk to them in Pushtu. His voice was quiet, and must have carried only faintly to them, but they listened for a little as he coolly told them to go home, and stop this folly,