Flashman in the Great Game

The only thing that seemed to cheer up the Queen was that she was marrying off her oldest daughter, Princess Vicky – the best of the whole family, in my view, a really pretty, green-eyed little mischief. She was to wed Frederick William of Prussia, who was due at Balmoral in a few weeks, and the Queen was full of it, Elspeth told me.

However, enough of the court gossip; it will give you some notion of the trivial way in which I was being forced to pass my time – toadying Albert, and telling the Queen how many acute accents there were on ‘déterminés’. The trouble with this kind of thing is that it dulls your wits, and your proper instinct for self-preservation, so that if a blow falls you’re caught clean offside, as I was on the night of September 22, 1856: I recollect the date absolutely because it was the day after Florence Nightingale came to the castle.3

I’d never met her, but as the leading Crimean on the premises I was summoned to join in the tête-à-tête she had with the Queen in the afternoon. It was a frost, if you like; pious platitudes from the two of ’em, with Flashy passing the muffins and joining in when called on to agree that what our wars needed was more sanitation and texts on the wall of every dressing-station. There was one near-facer for me, and that was when Miss Nightingale (a cool piece, that) asked me calm as you like what regimental officers could do to prevent their men from contracting certain indelicate social infections from – hem-hem – female camp-followers of a certain sort; I near as dammit put my teacup in the Queen’s lap, but recovered to say that I’d never heard of any such thing, not in the Light Cavalry, anyway – French troops another matter, of course. Would you believe it, I actually made her blush, but I doubt if the Queen even knew what we were talking about. For the rest, I thought La Nightingale a waste of good womanhood; handsome face, well set up and titted out, but with that cold don’t-lay-a-lecherous-limb-on-me-my-lad look in her eye – the kind, in short, that can be all right if you’re prepared to spend time and trouble making ’em cry ‘Roger!’, but I seldom have the patience. Anywhere else I might have taken a squeeze at her, just by way of research, but a queen’s drawing-room cramps your style. (Perhaps it’s a pity I didn’t; being locked up for indecent assault on a national heroine couldn’t have been worse than the ordeal that was to begin a few hours later.)

Elspeth and I spent the following evening at a birthday party at one of the big houses in the neighbourhood; it was a cheery affair, and we didn’t leave till close on midnight to drive back to Abergeldie. It was a close, thundery night, with big rain-drops starting to fall, but we didn’t mind; I had taken enough drink on board to be monstrously horny, and if the drive had been longer and Elspeth’s crinoline less of a hindrance I’d have had at her on the carriage-seat. She got out at the lodge giggling and squeaking, and I chased her through the front door – and there was the messenger of doom, waiting in the hall. A tall chap, almost a swell, but with a jaw too long and an eye too sharp; very respectable, with a hard hat under his arm and a billy in his hip-pocket, I’ll wager. I know a genteel strong man from a government office when I see one.

He asked could he speak to me, so I took my arm from Elspeth’s waist, patted her towards the stairs with a whispered promise that I’d be up directly to sound the charge, and told him to state his business. He did that smart enough.

‘I am from the Treasury, Colonel Flashman,’ says he. ‘My name is Hutton. Lord Palmerston wishes to speak with you.’

It took me flat aback, slightly foxed that I was. My first thought was that he must want me to go back to London, but then he said: ‘His lordship is at Balmoral, sir. If you will be good enough to come with me – I have a coach.’

‘But, but … you said Lord Palmerston? The Prime … what the deuce? Palmerston wants me?’

‘At once, sir, if you please. The matter is urgent.’

Well, I couldn’t make anything of it. I never doubted it was genuine – as I’ve said, the man in front of me had authority written all over him. But it’s a fair start when you come rolling innocently home and are told that the first statesman of Europe is round the corner and wants you at the double – and now the fellow was positively ushering me towards the door.

‘Hold on,’ says I. ‘Give me a moment to change my shoes’ – what I wanted was a moment to put my head in the wash-bowl and think, and despite his insistence I snapped at him to wait, and hurried upstairs.

What the devil was Pam doing here – and what could he want with me? I’d only met him once, for a moment, before I went to the Crimea; I’d leered at him ingratiatingly at parties, too, but never spoken. And now he wanted me urgently – me, a mere colonel on half pay. I’d nothing on my conscience, either – leastways, not to interest him. I couldn’t see it, but there was nothing but to obey, so I went to my dressing-room, fretting, donned my hat and topcoat against the worsening weather, and remembered that Elspeth, poor child, must even now be waiting for her cross-buttocking lesson. Well, it was hard lines on her, but duty called, so I just popped my head round her door to call a chaste farewell – and there she was, dammit, reclining languorously on the coverlet like one of those randy classical goddesses, wearing nothing but the big ostrich-plume fan I’d brought her from Egypt, and her sniggering maid turning the lamp down low. Elspeth clothed could stop a monk in his tracks; naked and pouting expectantly over a handful of red feathers, she’d have made the Grand Inquisitor burn his books. I hesitated between love and duty for a full second, and then ‘The hell with Palmerston, let him wait!’ cries I, and was plunging for the bed before the abigail was fairly out of the room. Never miss the chance, as the Duke used to say.

‘Lord Palmerston? Oooo-ah! Harry – what do you mean?’

‘Ne’er mind!’ cries I, taking hold and bouncing away.

‘But Harry – such impatience, my love! And, dearest – you’re wearing your hat!’

‘The next one’s going to be a boy, dammit!’ And for a few glorious stolen moments I forgot Palmerston and minions in the hall, and marvelled at the way that superb idiot woman of mine could keep up a stream of questions while performing like a harem houri – we were locked in an astonishing embrace on her dressing-table stool, I recall, when there was a knock on the door, and the maid’s giggling voice piped through to say the gentleman downstairs was getting impatient, and would I be long.

‘Tell him I’m just packing my baggage,’ says I. ‘I’ll be down directly,’ and presently, keeping my mouth on hers to stem her babble of questions, I carried my darling tenderly back to the bed. Always leave things as you would wish to find them.

‘I cannot stay longer, my love,’ I told her. ‘The Prime Minister is waiting.’ And with bewildered entreaties pursuing me I skipped out, trousers in hand, made a hasty toilet on the landing, panted briefly against the wall, and then stepped briskly down. It’s a great satisfaction, looking back, that I kept the government waiting in such a good cause, and I set it down here as a deserved tribute to the woman who was the only real love of my life and as the last pleasant memory I was to have for a long time ahead.

It’s true enough, too, as Ko Dali’s daughter taught me, that there’s nothing like a good rattle for perking up an edgy chap like me. It had shaken me for a moment, and it still looked rum, that Palmerston should want to see me, but as we bowled through the driving rain to Balmoral I was telling myself that there was probably nothing in it after all; considering the good odour I stood in just then, hob-nobbing with royalty and being admired for my Russian heroics, it was far more likely to be fair news than foul. And it wasn’t like being bidden to the presence of one of your true ogres, like the old Duke or Bismarck or Dr Wrath-of-God Arnold (I’ve knocked tremulously on some fearsome doors in my time, I can tell you).

No, Pam might be an impatient old tyrant when it came to bullying foreigners and sending warships to deal with the dagoes, but everyone knew he was a decent, kindly old sport at bottom, who put folk at their ease and told a good story. Why, it was notorious that the reason he wouldn’t live at Downing Street, but on Piccadilly, was that he liked to ogle the good-lookers from his window, and wave to the cads and crossing-sweepers, who loved him because he talked plain English, and would stump up a handsome subscription for an old beaten prize-pug like Tom Sayers. That was Pam – and if anyone ever tells you that he was a politically unprincipled old scoundrel, who carried things with a high and reckless hand, I can only say that it didn’t seem to work a whit worse than the policies of more high-minded statesmen. The only difference I ever saw between them and Pam was that he did his dirty work bare-faced (when he wasn’t being deeper than damnation) and grinned about it.

So I was feeling pretty easy as we covered the three miles to Balmoral – and even pleasantly excited – which shows you how damned soft and optimistic I must have grown; I should have known that it’s never safe to get within range of princes or prime ministers. When we got to the castle I followed Hutton smartly through a side door, up some back-stairs, and along to heavy double doors where a burly civilian was standing guard; I gave my whiskers a martial twitch as he opened the door, and stepped briskly in.

You know how it can be when you enter a strange room – everything can look as safe and merry as ninepence, and yet there’s something in the air that touches you like an electric shock. It was here now, a sort of bristling excitement that put my nerves on edge in an instant. And yet there was nothing out of the ordinary to see – just a big, cheerful panelled room with a huge fire roaring under the mantel, a great table littered with papers, and two sober chaps bustling about it under the direction of a slim young fellow – Barrington, Palmerston’s secretary. And over by the fire were three other men – Ellenborough, with his great flushed face and his belly stuck out; a slim, keen-looking old file whom I recognised as Wood, of the Admiralty; and with his back to the blaze and his coat-tails up, the man himself, peering at Ellenborough with his bright, short-sighted eyes and looking as though his dyed hair and whiskers had just been rubbed with a towel – old Squire Pam as ever was. As I came in, his brisk, sharp voice was ringing out (he never gave a damn who heard him):

‘… so if he’s to be Prince Consort, it don’t make a ha’porth of difference, you see. Not to the country – or me. However, as long as Her Majesty thinks it does – that’s what matters, what? Haven’t you found that telegraph of Quilter’s yet, Barrington? – well, look in the Persian packet, then.’

And then he caught sight of me, and frowned, sticking out his long lip. ‘Ha, that’s the man!’ cries he. ‘Come in, sir, come in!’

What with the drink I’d taken, and my sudden nervousness, I tripped over the mat – which was an omen, if you like – and came as near as a toucher to oversetting a chair.

‘By George,’ says Pam, ‘is he drunk? All these young fellows are, nowadays. Here, Barrington, see him to a chair, before he breaks a window. There, at the table.’ Barrington pulled out a chair for me, and the three at the fireplace seemed to be staring ominously at me while I apologised and took it, especially Pam in the middle, with those bright steady eyes taking in every inch of me as he nursed his port glass and stuck a thumb into his fob – for all the world like the marshal of a Kansas trail-town surveying the street. (Which is what he was, of course, on a rather grand scale.)

He was very old at this time, with the gout and his false teeth forever slipping out, but he was evidently full of ginger tonight, and not in one of his easygoing moods. He didn’t beat about, either.

‘Young Flashman,’ growls he. ‘Very good. Staff colonel, on half pay at present, what? Well, from this moment you’re back on the full list, an’ what you hear in this room tonight is to go no further, understand? Not to anyone – not even in this castle. You follow?’

I followed, sure enough – what he meant was that the Queen wasn’t to know: it was notorious that he never told her anything. But that was nothing; it was his tone, and the solemn urgency of his warning, that put the hairs up on my neck.

‘Very good,’ says he again. ‘Now then, before I talk to you, Lord Ellenborough has somethin’ to show you – want your opinion of it. All right, Barrington, I’ll take that Persian stuff now, while Colonel Flashman looks at the damned buns.’

I thought I’d misheard him, as he limped past me and took his seat at the table-head, pawing impatiently among his papers. But sure enough, Barrington passed over to me a little lead biscuit-box, and Ellenborough, seating himself beside me, indicated that I should open it. I pushed back the lid, mystified, and there, in a rice-paper wrapping, were three or four greyish, stale-looking little scones, no bigger than captain’s biscuits.

‘There,’ says Pam, not looking up from his papers. ‘Don’t eat ’em. Tell his lordship what you make of those.’

I knew, right off; that faint eastern smell was unmistakable, but I touched one of them to make sure.

‘They’re chapattis, my lord,’ says I, astonished. ‘Indian chapattis.’

Ellenborough nodded. ‘Ordinary cakes of native food. You attach no signal significance to them, though?’

‘Why … no, sir.’

Wood took a seat opposite me. ‘And you can conjecture no situation, colonel,’ says he, in his dry, quiet voice, ‘in which the sight of such cakes might occasion you … alarm?’

Obviously Ministers of the Crown don’t ask damnfool questions for nothing, but I could only stare at him. Pam, apparently deep in his papers at the table-head, wheezing and sucking his teeth and muttering to Barrington, paused to grunt: ‘Serve the dam’ things at dinner an’ they’d alarm me,’ and Ellenborough tapped the biscuit box.

‘These chapattis came last week from India, by fast steam sloop. Sent by our political agent at a place called Jhansi. Know it? It’s down below the Jumna, in Maharatta country. For weeks now, scores of such cakes have been turning up among the sepoys of our native Indian garrison at Jhansi – not as food, though. It seems the sepoys pass them from hand to hand as tokens—’

‘Have you ever heard of such a thing?’ Wood interrupted.

I hadn’t, so I just shook my head and looked attentive, wondering what the devil this was all about, while Ellenborough went on:

‘Our political knows where they come from, all right. The native village constables – you know, the chowkidars – bake them in batches of ten, and send one apiece to ten different sepoys – and each sepoy is bound to make ten more, and pass them on, to his comrades, and so on, ad infinitum. It’s not new, of course; ritual cake-passing is very old in India. But there are three remarkable things about it: firstly, it happens only rarely; second, even the natives themselves don’t know why it happens, only that the cakes must be baked and passed; and third –’ he tapped the box again ‘– they believe that the appearance of the cakes foreshadows terrible catastrophe.’

He paused, and I tried to look impressed. For there was nothing out of the way in all this – straight from Alice in Wonderland, if you like, but when you know India and the amazing tricks the niggers can get up to (usually in the name of religion) you cease to be surprised. It seemed an interesting superstition – but what was more interesting was that two Ministers of the Government, and a former Governor-General of India, were discussing it behind closed doors – and had decided to let Flashy into the secret.

‘But there’s something more,’ Ellenborough went on, ‘which is why Skene, our political man at Jhansi, is treating the matter as one of urgency. Cakes like these have circulated among native troops, quite apart from civilians, on only three occasions in the past fifty years – at Vellore in ’06, at Buxar, and at Barrackpore. You don’t recall the names? Well, at each place, when the cakes appeared, the same reaction followed among the sepoys.’ He put on his House of Lords face and said impressively, ‘Mutiny.’

Looking back, I suppose I ought to have thrilled with horror at the mention of the dread word – but in fact all that occurred to me was the facetious thought that perhaps they ought to have varied the sepoys’ rations. I didn’t think much of the political man Skene’s judgement, either; I’d been a political myself, and it’s part of the job to scream at your own shadow, but if he – or Ellenborough, who knew India outside in – was smelling a sepoy revolt in a few mouldy biscuits – well, it was ludicrous. I knew John Sepoy (we all did, didn’t we?) for the most loyal ass who ever put on uniform – and so he should have been, the way the Company treated him. However, it wasn’t for me to venture an opinion in such august company, particularly with the Prime Minister listening: he’d pushed his papers aside and risen, and was pouring himself some more port.

‘Well, now,’ says he briskly, taking a hearty swig and rolling it round his teeth, ‘you’ve admired his lordship’s cakes, what? Damned unappetisin’ they look, too. All right, Barrington, your assistants can go – our special leaves at four, does it? Very well.’ He waited till the junior secretaries had gone, muttered something about ungodly hours and the Queen’s perversity in choosing a country retreat at the North Pole, and paced stiffly over to the fire, where he set his back to the mantel and glowered at me from beneath his gorse-bush brows, which was enough to set my dinner circulating in the old accustomed style.

‘Tokens of revolution in an Indian garrison,’ says he. ‘Very good. Been readin’ that report of yours again, Flashman – the one you made to Dalhousie last year, in which you described the discovery you made while you were a prisoner in Russia – about their scheme for invadin’ India, while we were busy in Crimea. Course, we say nothin’ about that these days – peace signed with Russia, all good fellowship an’ be damned, et cetera – don’t have to tell you. But somethin’ in your report came to mind when this cake business began.’ He pushed out his big lip at me. ‘You wrote that the Russian march across the Indus was to be accompanied by a native risin’ in India, fomented by Tsarist agents. Our politicals have been chasin’ that fox ever since – pickin’ up some interestin’ scents, of which these infernal buns are the latest. Now, then,’ he settled himself, eyes half-shut, but watching me, ‘tell me precisely what you heard in Russia, touchin’ on an Indian rebellion. Every word of it.’

So I told him, exactly as I remembered it – how Scud East and I had lain quaking in our nightshirts in the gallery at Starotorsk, and overheard about ‘Item Seven’, which was the Russian plan for an invasion of India. They’d have done it, too, but Yakub Beg’s riders scuppered their army up on the Syr Daria, with Flashy running about roaring with a bellyful of bhang, performing unconscious prodigies of valour. I’d set it all out in my report to Dalhousie, leaving out the discreditable bits (you can find those in my earlier memoirs, along with the licentious details). It was a report of nicely judged modesty, that official one, calculated to convince Dalhousie that I was the nearest thing to Hereward the Wake he was ever likely to meet – and why not? I’d suffered for my credit.

But the information about an Indian rebellion had been slight. All we’d discovered was that when the Russian army reached the Khyber, their agents in India would rouse the natives – and particularly John Company’s sepoys – to rise against the British. I didn’t doubt it was true, at the time; it seemed an obvious ploy. But that was more than a year ago, and Russia was no threat to India any longer, I supposed.

They heard me out, in a silence that lasted a full minute after I’d finished, and then Wood says quietly:

‘It fits, my lord.’

‘Too dam’ well,’ says Pam, and came hobbling back to his chair again. ‘It’s all pat. You see, Flashman, Russia may be spent as an armed power, for the present – but that don’t mean she’ll leave us at peace in India, what? This scheme for a rebellion – by George, if I were a Russian political, invasion or no invasion, I fancy I could achieve somethin’ in India, given the right agents. Couldn’t I just, though!’ He growled in his throat, heaving restlessly and cursing his gouty foot. ‘Did you know, there’s an Indian superstition that the British Raj will come to an end exactly a hundred years after the Battle of Plassey?’ He picked up one of the chapattis and peered at it. ‘Dam’ thing isn’t even sugared. Well, the hundredth anniversary of Plassey falls next June the twenty-third. Interestin’. Now then, tell me – what d’you know about a Russian nobleman called Count Nicholas Ignatieff?’

He shot it at me so abruptly that I must have started a good six inches. There’s a choice collection of ruffians whose names you can mention if you want to ruin my digestion for an hour or two – Charity Spring and Bismarck, Rudi Starnberg and Wesley Hardin, for example – but I’d put N. P. Ignatieff up with the leaders any time. He was the brute who’d nearly put paid to me in Russia – a gotch-eyed, freezing ghoul of a man who’d dragged me half way to China in chains, and threatened me with exposure in a cage and knouting to death, and like pleasantries. I hadn’t cared above half for the conversation thus far, with its bloody mutiny cakes and the sinister way they kept dragging in my report to Dalhousie – but at the introduction of Ignatieff’s name my bowels began to play the Hallelujah Chorus in earnest. It took me all my time to keep a straight face and tell Pam what I knew – that Ignatieff had been one of the late Tsar’s closest advisers, and that he was a political agent of immense skill and utter ruthlessness; I ended with a reminiscence of the last time I’d seen him, under that hideous row of gallows at Fort Raim. Ellenborough exclaimed in disgust, Wood shuddered delicately, and Pam sipped his port.

‘Interestin’ life you’ve led,’ says he. ‘Thought I remembered his name from your report – he was one of the prime movers behind the Russian plan for invasion an’ Indian rebellion, as I recall. Capable chap, what?’

‘My lord,’ says I, ‘he’s the devil, and that’s a fact.’

‘Just so,’ says Pam. ‘An’ the devil will find mischief.’ He nodded to Ellenborough. ‘Tell him, my lord. Pay close heed to this, Flashman.’

Ellenborough cleared his throat and fixed his boozy spaniel eyes on me. ‘Count Ignatieff,’ says he, ‘has made two clandestine visits to India in the past year. Our politicals first had word of him last autumn at Ghuznee; he came over the Khyber disguised as an Afridi horse-coper, to Peshawar. There we lost him – as you might expect, one disguised man among so many natives—’

‘But my lord, that can’t be!’ I couldn’t help interrupting. ‘You can’t lose Ignatieff, if you know what to look for. However he’s disguised, there’s one thing he can’t hide – his eyes! One of em’s half-brown, half-blue!’

‘He can if he puts a patch over it,’ says Ellenborough. ‘India’s full of one-eyed men. In any event, we picked up his trail again – and on both occasions it led to the same place – Jhansi. He spent two months there, all told, usually out of sight, and our people were never able to lay a hand on him. What he was doing, they couldn’t discover – except that it was mischief. Now, we see what the mischief was –’ and he pointed to the chapattis. ‘Brewing insurrection, beyond a doubt. And having done his infernal work – back over the hills to Afghanistan. This summer he was in St Petersburg – but from what our politicals did learn, he’s expected back in Jhansi again. We don’t know when.’

No doubt it was the subject under discussion, but there didn’t seem to be an ounce of heat coming from the blazing fire behind me; the room felt suddenly cold, and I was aware of the rain slashing at the panes and the wind moaning in the dark outside. I was looking at Ellenborough, but in his face I could see Ignatieff’s hideous parti-coloured eye, and hear that soft icy voice hissing past the long cigarette between his teeth.