Flashman in the Great Game. George Fraser MacDonald

hand in the dust, Colin Campbell scratching his grizzled head, the crimson stain spreading in the filthy water below Suttee Ghat, a huge glittering pile of silver and gold and jewels and ivory bigger than anything you’ve ever seen – and two great brown liquid eyes shadowed with kohl, a single pearl resting on the satin skin above them, open red lips trembling … and, blast him, here’s the station-master, beaming and knuckling his hat and starting me out of the only delightful part of that waking nightmare, with his cry of ‘Welcome back tae Deeside, Sir Harry! Here we are again, then!’

      And as he hands me down to the platform, you may be sure the local folk are all on hand, bringing their brats to stare and giggle at the big old buffer in his tweed cape and monstrous white whiskers (‘There he is! The V.C. man, Sir Harry Flashman – aye, auld Flashy, him that charged wi’ the Light Brigade and killed a’ the niggers at Kau-bool – Goad, but isnae he the auld yin? – hip, hooray!’). So I acknowledge the cheers with a wave, bluff and hearty, as I step into the dog-cart, stepping briskly to escape the inevitable bemedalled veteran who comes shuffling after me, hoping I’ll slip him sixpence for a dram when he assures me that we once stood together in the Highlanders’ line at Balaclava. Lying old bastard, he was probably skulking in bed.

      Not that I’d blame him if he was, mark you; given the chance I’d have skulked in mine – and not just at Balaclava, neither, but at every battle and skirmish I’ve sweated and scampered through during fifty inglorious years of unwilling soldiering. (Leastways, I know they were inglorious, but the country don’t, thank heaven, which is why they’ve rewarded me with general rank and the knighthood and a double row of medals on my left tit. Which shows you what cowardice and roguery can do, given a stalwart appearance, long legs, and a thumping slice of luck. Aye, well whip up, driver, we mustn’t keep royalty waiting.)

      But to return to the point, which is the Mutiny, and that terrible, incredible journey that began at Balmoral – well, it was as ghastly a road as any living man travelled in my time. I’ve seen a deal of war, and agree with Sherman that it’s hell, but the Mutiny was the Seventh Circle under the Pit. Of course, it had its compensations: for one, I came through it, pretty whole, which is more than Havelock and Harry East and Johnny Nicholson did, enterprising lads that they were. (What’s the use of a campaign if you don’t survive it?) I did, and it brought me my greatest honour (totally undeserved, I needn’t tell you), and a tidy enough slab of loot which bought and maintains my present place in Leicestershire – I reckon the plunder’s better employed keeping me and my tenants in drink, than it was decorating a nigger temple for the edification of a gang of blood-sucking priests. And along the Mutiny road I met and loved that gorgeous, wicked witch Lakshmibai – there were others, too, naturally, but she was the prime piece.

      One other thing about the Mutiny, before I get down to cases – I reckon it must be about the only one of my campaigns that I was pitched into through no fault of mine. On other occasions, I’ll own, I’ve been to blame; for a man with a white liver a yard wide I’ve had a most unhappy knack of landing myself neck-deep in the slaughter through my various follies – to wit, talking too much (that got me into the Afghan débâcle of ’41); playing the fool in pool-rooms (the Crimea); believing everything Abraham Lincoln told me (American Civil War); inviting a half-breed Hunkpapa whore to a regimental ball (the Sioux Rising of ’76), and so on; the list’s as long as my arm. But my involvement in the Mutiny was all Palmerston’s doing (what disaster of the ’fifties wasn’t?).

      It came out of as clear and untroubled a sky as you could wish, a few months after my return from the Crimea, where, as you may know, I’d won fresh laurels through my terrified inability to avoid the most gruelling actions. I had stood petrified in the Thin Red Streak, charged with the Heavies and Lights, been taken prisoner by the Russians, and after a most deplorable series of adventures (in which I was employed as chief stud to a nobleman’s daughter, was pursued by hordes of wolves and Cossacks, and finally was caught up in a private war between Asian bandits and a Ruski army bound for India – it’s all in my memoirs somewhere) had emerged breathless and lousy at Peshawar.^fn1

      There, as if I hadn’t had trouble enough, I was restoring my powers by squandering them on one of those stately, hungry Afghan Amazons, and she must have been a long sight better at coupling than cooking, for something on her menu gave me the cholera. I was on the broad of my back for months, and it took a slow, restful voyage home before I was my own man again, in prime fettle for the reunion with my loving Elspeth and to enjoy the role of a returned hero about town. And, I may add, a retired hero; oxen and wainropes weren’t going to drag Flashy back to the Front again. (I’ve made the same resolve a score of times, and by God I’ve meant it, but you can’t fight fate, especially when he’s called Palmerston.)

      However, there I was in the summer of ’56, safely content on half pay as a staff colonel, with not so much as a sniff of war in sight, except the Persian farce, and that didn’t matter. I was comfortably settled with Elspeth and little Havvy (the first fruit of our union, a guzzling lout of seven) in a fine house off Berkeley Square which Elspeth’s inheritance maintained in lavish style, dropping by occasionally at Horse Guards, leading the social life, clubbing and turfing, whoring here and there as an occasional change from my lawful brainless beauty, and being lionised by all London – well, I’d stood at Armageddon and battled for the Lord (ostensibly) hadn’t I, and enough had leaked out about my subsequent secret exploits in Central Asia (though government was damned cagey about them, on account of our delicate peace negotiations with Russia) to suggest that Flashy had surpassed all his former heroics. So with the country in a patriotic fever about its returning braves, I was ace-high in popular esteem – there was even talk that I’d get one of the new Victoria Crosses (for what that was worth) but it’s my belief that Airey and Cardigan scotched it between them. Jealous bastards.

      I suspect that Airey, who’d been chief of staff to Raglan in Crimea, hadn’t forgotten my minor dereliction of duty at the Alma, when the Queen’s randy little cousin Willy got his fool head blown off while under my care. And Cardigan loathed me, not least because I’d once emerged drunk, in the nick of time, from a wardrobe to prevent him cocking his lustful leg over my loving Elspeth. (She was no better than I was, you know.) And since coming home, I hadn’t given him cause to love me any better.

      You see, there was a deal of fine malicious tittle-tattle going about that summer, over Cardigan’s part in the Light Brigade fiasco – not so much about his responsibility for the disaster, which was debatable, if you ask me, but for his personal behaviour at the guns. He’d been at the head of the charge, right enough, with me alongside on a bolting horse, farting my fearful soul out, but after we’d reached the battery he’d barely paused to exchange a cut or two with the Ruski gunners before heading for home and safety again. Shocking bad form in a commander, says I, who was trying to hide under a gun limber at the time – not that I think for a moment that he was funking it; he hadn’t the brains to be frightened, our Lord Haw-Haw. But he had retreated without undue delay, and since he was never short of enemies eager to believe the worst, the gossips were having a field day now. There were angry letters in the press, and even a law-suit,¹ and since I’d been in the thick of the action, it was natural that I should be asked about it.

      In fact, it was George Paget, who’d commanded the 4th Lights in the charge, who put the thing to me point-blank in the card-room at White’s (can’t imagine what I was doing there; must have been somebody’s guest) in front of a number of people, civilians mostly, but I know Spottswood was there, and old Scarlett of the Heavies, I think.

      ‘You were neck and neck with Cardigan,’ says Paget, ‘and in the battery before anyone else. Now, God knows he’s not my soul-mate, but all this talk’s getting a shade raw. Did you see him in the battery or not?’

      Well, I had, but I wasn’t saying so – far be it from me to clear his lordship’s reputation when there was a chance of damaging it. So I said offhand:

      ‘Don’t ask me, George; I was too busy hunting for your cigars,’ which caused a guffaw.

      ‘No gammon, Flash,’ says he, looking grim, and asked again, in his tactful way: ‘Did Cardigan cut out, or not?’

      There were one or two shocked murmurs,