Flashman and the Mountain of Light. George Fraser MacDonald
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cellar where one of his Pathan Sappers (he’d had a gang of them in Afghanistan, fearsome villains who’d cut your throat or mend your watch with equal skill) was squatting under a lamp, glowering at three huge jars, all of five feet high, which took up most of the tiny cell. Two of them were secured with silk cords and great red seals.
Broadfoot leaned on the wall to ease his leg, and signed to the Pathan, who removed the lid from the unsealed jar, holding the lamp to shine on its contents. I looked, and was sufficiently impressed.
‘What’s up, George?’ says I. ‘Don’t you trust the banks?’
The jar was packed to the brim with gold, a mass of coin glinting under the light. Broadfoot gestured, and I picked up a handful, cold and heavy, clinking as it trickled back into the jar.
‘I am the bank,’ says Broadfoot. ‘There’s £140,000 here, in mohurs, ingots, and fashioned gold. Its disposal … may well depend on you. Tik hai,fn4 Mahmud.’ He limped aloft again, while I followed in silence, wondering what the devil I was in for this time – not that it looked perilous, thank heaven. Broadfoot settled gratefully in his chair.
‘That treasure,’ says he, ‘is the legacy of Raja Soochet Singh, a Punjabi prince who died two years ago, leading sixty followers against an army of twenty thousand.’ He wagged his red head. ‘Aye, they’re game lads up yonder. Well, now, like most Punjabi nobles in these troubled times, he had put his wealth in the only safe place – in the care of the hated British. Infidels we may be, but we keep honest books, and they know it. There’s a cool twenty million sterling of Punjab money south of the Sutlej this minute.
‘For two years past the Court of Lahore – which means the regents, Jawaheer Singh and his slut of a sister – have been demanding the return of Soochet’s legacy, on the ground that he was a forfeited rebel. Our line, more or less, has been that “rebel” is an unsatisfactory term, since naebody kens who the Punjab government is from one day to the next, and that the money should go to Soochet’s heirs – his widow, or his brother, Raja Goolab Singh. We’ve taken counsel’s opinion,’ says he, straight-faced, ‘but the position is complicated by the fact that the widow was last heard of fleeing for her life from a beleaguered fort, while Goolab, who had designs on the Punjab throne at one time, has lately proclaimed himself King of Kashmir, and is sitting behind a rock up Jumoo way, with fifty thousand hillmen at his back. However, we have sure information that both he and the widow are of opinion that the money is fine where it is, for the time being.’
He paused, and ‘Isn’t it?’ was on the tip of my tongue, for I didn’t care for this above half; talk of besieged forts and hillmen unsettles me, and I had horrid visions of Flashy sneaking through the passes with a portmanteau, bearing statements of compound interest to these two eccentric legatees, both of whom were probably dam’ dangerous to know.
‘A further complication,’ says Broadfoot, ‘is that Jawaheer Singh is threatening to make this legacy a cause of war. As you know, peace is in the balance; those three jars down there might tip the scale. Naturally, Sir Henry Hardinge wishes negotiations about the legacy to be reopened at Lahore – not with a view to settlement, of course, but to temporise.’ He looked at me over his spectacles. ‘We’re not ready yet.’
To settle – or to go to war? Having eavesdropped on Broadfoot’s opinions, I could guess which. Just as I could see, with sudden horrible clarity, who the negotiator was going to be, in that Court of bhangfn5-sodden savages where they murdered each other regular, after supper. But that apart, the thing made no sense at all.
‘You want me to go to Lahore – but I ain’t a lawyer, dammit! Why, I’ve only been in a court twice in my life!’ Drunk and resisting arrest, and being apprehended on premises known to be a disorderly house, five quid each time, not that it mattered.
‘They don’t ken that,’ says Broadfoot.
‘Don’t they, though? George, I ain’t puffing myself, but I’m not unknown over there! Man alive, when we had a garrison in Lahore, in ’42, I was being trumpeted all over the shop! Why, you said yourself the fewer who knew Iflassman was back, the better! They know I’m a soldier, don’t they – Bloody Lance, and all that rot?’
‘So they may,’ says he blandly. ‘But who’s to say ye haven’t been eating your dinner in Middle Temple Hall these three years past? If Hardinge sends ye, accredited and under seal, they’re not going to doubt ye. Ye can pick up the jargon, and as much law as ye’ll need, from those.’ He indicated the books.
‘But where’s the point? A real lawyer can spin the thing out ten times better than I can! Calcutta’s full of ’em –’
‘But they can’t speak Punjabi. They can’t be my eyes and ears in Lahore Fort. They can’t take the pulse in that viper’s nest of intrigue. They’re not politicals trained by Sekundar Burnes. And if the grip comes’ – He tapped his desk triumphantly – ‘they can’t turn themselves into a Khye-Keen or Barukzai jezzailchi and slip back over the Sutlej.’
So I was to be a spy – in that den of devilment! I sat appalled, stammering out the first objection that came to mind.
‘And a fat chance I’ll have of doing that, with my face shaved!’ He waved it aside.
‘Ye cannot go to Lahore with soldier written all over ye. Forbye, it’ll never come to disguise, or anything desperate. You’ll be a British diplomat, the Governor-General’s envoy, and immune.’
So was McNaghten, I wanted to holler, so was Burnes, so were Connolly and Stoddart and Uncle Tom Cobleigh, it’s on their bloody tombstones. And then he unveiled the full horror of the thing.
‘That immunity will enable you to remain in Lahore after the war has begun … supposing it does. And that is when your real work will begin.’
And I’d exchanged a staff billet for this. The prospect was fit to make me puke – but I daren’t say so, not to Broadfoot. Somehow I contained my emotion, assumed a ruptured frown, and said surely a diplomat would be expelled, or confined at least.
‘Not for a moment.’ Oh, he had it all pat, blast him. ‘From the day you arrive in Lahore – and thereafter, whatever befalls – ye’ll be the most courted man in the Punjab. It’s this way: there’s a war party, and a peace party, and the Khalsa, and the panch committees that control it, and a faction that wants us to take the Punjab, and a faction that wants us driven from India altogether, and some that hop from one side to t’other, and cabals and cliques that don’t ken what they want because they’re too drunk and debauched to think.’ He leaned forward, all eager red whiskers, his eyes huge behind the bottle lenses. ‘But they all want to be on the right side at the finish, and most have wit enough to see that that will be our side. Oh, they’ll shift and swither and plot, and ye’ll be approached (discreetly) with more hints and ploys and assurances of good will than ye can count. From enemies who’ll be friends tomorrow – and vice versa. All of which ye’ll transmit secretly to me.’ He sat back, well pleased with himself, while I kept a straight face with my bowels in my boots. ‘That’s the marrow of the business. Now, for your more particular information …’
He brought out a sheaf of those slim buff packets that I remembered from Burnes’s office at Kabul. I knew what they held: maps, names, places, reports and summaries, laws and customs, biographies and artists’ sketches, heights and distances, history, geography, even weights and measures – all that years of intelligence and espionage had gathered about the Punjab, to be digested and returned. ‘When ye’ve studied these, and the law books, we’ll talk at more length,’ says he, and asked if I had any observations.
I could have made a few, but what was the use? I was sunk – through my own folly, as usual. If I hadn’t thumped that randy baggage Madison, I’d never have overheard Gough and rushed rejoicing into this hellish political stew … it didn’t bear thinking of. All I could do was show willing, for my precious credit’s sake, so I asked him who the friends and enemies in Lahore were likely to be.
‘If I knew that,