The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald

Sujah” – here he curled his lip in amusement – “sits doing nothing among his women in the Bala Hissar, and calls to the British to help him against his unruly people. The mobs rule Kabul itself, each mob under its leader imagining that it alone has frightened the British off. They do a little looting, and a little raping, and a little killing – their own people, mark you – and are content for the moment. There you have the situation, which is most satisfactory. Oh, yes, and the hill tribes, hearing of the death of Sekundar Burnes, and of the rumoured presence in Kabul of one Akbar Khan, son of the true king Dost Mohammed, are converging on the capital. They smell war and plunder. Now, Flashman huzoor, you are answered.”

      Well, of course, in answering half a dozen questions he had posed a hundred others. But one above all I had to be satisfied about.

      “You say the British keep to their cantonment,” I cried. “But what about Burnes’s murder? D’you mean they’ve done nothing?”

      “In effect, nothing,” says he. “They are unwise, for their inaction is taken as cowardice. You and I know they are not cowards, but the Kabuli mobs don’t, and I fear this may encourage them to greater excesses than they have committed already. But we shall see. However, all this leads me to my purpose in visiting you today – apart from my desire to inquire into your welfare.” And he grinned again, that infectious smile which seemed to mock but which I couldn’t dislike. “You understand that if I satisfy your curiosity here and there, I also have questions which I would wish answered.”

      “Ask away,” says I, rather cautious.

      “You said, at our first meeting – or at least you implied – that Elfistan Sahib and McLoten Sahib were … how shall I put it? … sometimes less than intelligent. Was that a considered judgement?”

      “Elphinstone Sahib and McNaghten Sahib,” says I, “are a pair of born bloody fools, as anyone in the bazaar will tell you.”

      “The people in the bazaar have not the advantage of serving on Elfistan Sahib’s staff,” says he drily. “That is why I attach importance to your opinion. Now, are they trustworthy?”

      This was a deuced odd question, from an Afghan, I thought, and for a moment I nearly replied that they were English officers, blast his eyes. But you would have been wasting your time talking that way to Akbar Khan.

      “Yes, they’re trustworthy,” I said.

      “One more than the other? Which would you trust with your horse, or your wife – I take it you have no children?”

      I didn’t think long about this. “I’d trust Elphy Bey to do his best like a gentleman,” I said. “But it probably wouldn’t be much of a best.”

      “Thank you, Flashman,” says he, “that is all I need to know. Now, I regret that I must cut short our most interesting little discussion, but I have many affairs to attend to. I shall come again, and we shall speak further.”

      “Now, hold on,” I began, for I wanted to know how long he intended to keep me locked up, and a good deal more, but he turned me aside most politely, and left. And there I was, for another two weeks, damn him, with no one but the silent Barukzis for company.

      I didn’t doubt what he had told me about the situation in Kabul was true, but I couldn’t understand it. It made no sense – a prominent British official murdered, and nothing done to avenge him. As it proved, this was exactly what had happened. When the mob looted the Residency and Sekundar was hacked to bits, old Elphy and McNaghten had gone into the vapours, but they’d done virtually nothing. They had written notes to each other, wondering whether to march into the city, or move into the Bala Hissar fort, or bring Sale – who was still bogged down by the Gilzais at Gandamack – back to Kabul. In the end they did nothing, and the Kabuli mobs roamed the city, as Akbar said, doing what they pleased, and virtually besieging our people in the cantonment.

      Elphy could, of course, have crushed the mobs by firm action, but he didn’t; he just wrung his hands and took to his bed, and McNaghten wrote him stiff little suggestions about the provisioning of the cantonment for the winter. Meanwhile the Kabulis, who at first had been scared stiff when they realised what they had done in murdering Burnes, got damned uppish, and started attacking the outposts near the cantonment, and shooting up our quarters at night.

      One attempt, and only one, was made to squash them, and that foul-tempered idiot, Brigadier Shelton, bungled it handsomely. He took a strong force out to Beymaroo, and the Kabulis – just a damned drove of shopkeepers and stablehands, mark you, not real Afghan warriors – chased him and his troops back to the cantonment. After that, there was nothing to be done; morale in the cantonment went to rock-bottom, and the countryside Afghans, who had been watching to see what would happen, decided they were on a good thing, and came rampaging into the city. The signs were that if the mobs and the tribesmen really settled down to business, they could swarm over the cantonment whenever they felt like it.

      All this I learned later, of course. Colin Mackenzie, who was through it all, said it was pathetic to see how old Elphy shilly-shallied and changed his mind, and McNaghten still refused to believe that disaster was approaching. What had begun as mob violence was rapidly developing into a general uprising, and all that was wanting on the Afghan side was a leader who would take charge of events. And, of course, unknown to Elphy and McNaghten and the rest of them, there was such a leader, watching events from a house in Kabul, biding his time and every now and then asking me questions. For after a fortnight’s lapse Akbar Khan came to me again, polite and bland as ever, and talked about it and about, speculating on such various matters as British policy in India and the rate of march of British troops in cold weather. He came ostensibly to gossip, but he pumped me for all he was worth, and I let him pump. There was nothing else I could do.

      He began visiting me daily, and I got tired of demanding my release and having my questions deftly ignored. But there was no help for it; I could only be patient and see what this jovial, clever gentleman had in mind for me. Of what he had in mind for himself I was getting a pretty fair idea, and events proved me right.

      Finally, more than a month after Burnes’s murder, Akbar came and told me I was to be released. I could have kissed him, almost, for I was fed up with being jailed, and not even an Afghan bint to keep me amused. He looked mighty serious, however, and asked me to be seated while he spoke to me “on behalf of the leaders of the Faithful”. He had three of his pals with him, and I wondered if he meant them.

      One of them, his cousin, Sultan Jan, he had brought before, a leery-looking cove with a fork beard. The others were called Muhammed Din, a fine-looking old lad with a silver beard, and Khan Hamet, a one-eyed thug with the face of a horse-thief. They sat and looked at me, and Akbar talked.

      “First, my dear friend Flashman,” says he, all charm, “I must tell you that you have been kept here not only for your own good but for your people’s. Their situation is now bad. Why, I do not know, but Elfistan Sahib has behaved like a weak old woman. He has allowed the mobs to rage where they will, he has left the deaths of his servants unavenged, he has exposed his soldiers to the worst fate of all – humiliation – by keeping them shut up in cantonments while the Afghan rabble mock at them. Now his own troops are sick at heart; they have no fight in them.”

      He paused, picking his words.

      “The British cannot stay here now,” he went on. “They have lost their power, and we Afghans wish to be rid of them. There are those who say we should slaughter them all – needless to say, I do not agree.” And he smiled. “For one thing, it might not be so easy—”

      “It is never easy,” said old Muhammed Din. “These same feringhees took Ghuznee Fort; I saw them, by God.”

      “—and for another, what would the harvest be?” went on Akbar. “The White Queen avenges her children. No, there must be a peaceful withdrawal to India; this is what I would prefer myself. I am no enemy of the British, but they have been guests in my country too long.”

      “One of ’em a month too long,” says I, and he laughed.

      “You are one feringhee, Flashman, who is welcome to