"Flashman, Harry - Flashman in the Great Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flashman Harry)
He stared at me, stopping in the act of throwing a billet on the fire, and something in that look turned my blood to ice. They were all staring at me; I glanced from one grim bearded face to another, and in a voice suddenly hoarse I asked:
"What does it mean? Your officer - Henry sahib? Has anything -
Ilderim threw the billet on the fire, and squatted down beside me. "Henry sahib is dead, brother," says he quietly. "And Skene sahib. And the Collector sahib. And all their women, and their children also. They are all dead."
I can see it now as vividly as I saw it then - the dark hawk-face silhouetted against the temple wall that glowed ruddy in the firelight, and the bright stream of a tear on his cheek. You don't often see a Pathan cry, but Ilderim Khan cried as he told me what had happened at Jhansi.
"When the news came of Meerut, that black Hindoo bitch who calls herself Maharani summoned Skene sahib, and says she needs must enlarge her bodyguard, for the safety of her person and the treasure in her palace. These being unquiet times. She spoke very sweetly, and Skene, being young and foolish, gave her what she wished - aye, he even said that we of the free cavalry might serve her, and Kala Khan (may he rot in hell) took her salt and her money, and two others with him. But most of her new guard were the scum of the bazaar - badmashes and klifti-wallahs* and street-corner ten-to-one assassins and the sweepings of the jail.
"Then, two weeks ago, there was stirring among the sepoys of the 12th N.I., and chapattis and lotus flowers passed, and some among them burned a bungalow by night. But the colonel sahib spoke with them, and all seemed well, and a day and a night passed. Then Faiz Ali and the false swine Kala Khan, with a great rabble of sepoys and these new heroes of the Rani's guard, fell on the Star Fort, and made themselves masters of the guns and powder, and marched on the cantonment to put it to the fire, but Skene sahib had warning from a true sepoy, and while some dozen sahibs were caught and butchered by these vermin, the rest escaped into the little Town Fort, and the mem-sahibs and little ones with them, and made it good against the mutineers. And for five days they held it - do I not know? For I was there, with Rafik Tamwar and Shadman Khan and Muhammed Din, whom you see here. And I took this - " he touched his wounded arm " - the seventh time they tried to storm the wall."
"They came like locusts," growls one of the sowars round the fire. "And like locusts they were driven."
"Then the food was gone, and the water, and no powder remained for the bundooks,"*(*Firearms.) says Ilderim. "And Skene sahib - have ye seen a young man grow old in a week, brother? - said we could hold no longer, for the children were like to die. So he sent three men, under a white flag, to the Rani, to beg her help. And she - she told them she had no concern for the English swine."
"I don't believe it," says I.
"Listen, brother - and believe, for I was one of the three, and Muhammed Din here another, and we went with Murray sahib to her palace gate. Him only they admitted, and flung us two in a stinking pit, but they told us what passed afterwards - that she had spurned Murray sahib, and afterwards he was racked to pieces in her dungeon." He turned to stare at me with blazing eyes. "I do not know - it is what I was told; only hear what followed, and then - judge thou."
He stared into the fire, clenching and unclenching his fist, and then went on:
"When no word went back to Skene sahib, and seeing the townsfolk all comforting the mutineers, and jeering at his poor few, he offered to surrender. And Kala Khan agreed, and they opened the fort gates, and trusted to the mercy of the mutineers."
It was then I saw the tear run down into his beard; he didn't look at me, but just continued gazing at the flames and speaking very softly:
"They took them all - men, and women, and children - to the Jokan Bagh, and told them they must die. And the women wept, and threw themselves on their knees, and begged for the children's lives - mem-sahibs, brother, you understand, such ladies as you know of, grovelled at the boots of the filth of the bazaar. I saw it!" He suddenly shouted. "And the untouchable scum - these high-caste worms who call themselves men, and will shudder away if a real man's shadow falls across their chattis - these creatures laughed and mocked the mem-sahibs and kicked them aside.
"I saw it - I, and Muhammed Din here, for they brought us out to the jokan Bagh saying, `See thy mighty sahibs; see thy proud mem-sahibs who looked on us as dirt; see them crawl to us before they die.' "
"'There is a furnace thrice-heated waiting," says one of the sowars. "Remember that, rissaldar sahib."
"If they burn forever it will not be hot enough," says Ilderim. "They killed the sahibs first - the Collector sahib, Andrews sahib - Gordon, Burgess, Taylor, Turnbull - all of them. They held them in a row, and chopped them down with cleavers. Skene sahib they slew last of all; he asked to embrace his wife, but they laughed at him and struck him, and bade him kneel for the knife. `I will die on my feet,' says he, `with no regret save that I am polluted by the touch of dishonoured lice like you. Strike, coward - see, my hands are tied.' And Bakshish Ali, the jail daroga, cut him down. And through all this they made the women and children watch, crying `See, thy husband's blood! See, baby, it is thy father's head - ask him to kiss thee, baby!' And then they killed the mem-sahibs, in another row, while the townsfolk watched and cheered, and threw marigolds at the executioners. And Skene mem-sahib said to Faiz Ali, 'If it pleases you, you may burn me alive, or do what you will, if you will spare the children.' But they threw dirt in her face, and swore the children should die."
One of the sowars says: "There will be a red thread round her wrist, as for a Ghazi."
"And I," says Ilderim, "fought like a tiger and foamed and swore as they held me. And I cried out: `Shabash, mem-sahib!' and `Heep-heep-heep-hoora', as the sahibs do, to comfort her. And they cut her down." He was crying openly now, his mouth working. "And then they took the children - twenty of them - little children, that cried out and called for their dead mothers, and they cut them all in pieces, with axes and butchers' knives. And there they left them all, in the Jokan Bagh, without burial. "28
Hearing something, however horrible, can never be as ghastly as seeing it; the mind may take it in, but mercifully the imagination can't. Even while I shuddered and felt sickened, listening, I couldn't conjure up the hideous scene he was describing - all I could think of was McEgan's jolly red face as he told his awful jokes, and little Mrs Skene so anxious in case her dress was wrong for the Collector's dinner, and Andrews talking about Keats's poetry, and Skene saying it wasn't a patch on Burns, and that dainty little Wilton girl singing "bobbity-bobbity-bob" along with me and laughing till she was breathless. It didn't seem possible they were all dead - cut down like beasts in a slaughter-house. Yet what shocked me most, I think, was to see that great Gilzai warrior, whom you could have roasted alive and got nothing but taunts and curses, sobbing like a child. There was nothing to say; after a moment I asked him how he came to be still alive.
"They put Muhammed and me in the jail, with promises of death by torture, but these others of my troop broke us out at night, and we escaped. Until yesterday we hid in the woods, but then the mutineers departed, God knows whither, and we came here. Shadman and two others have gone for horses; we wait for them - and for thee, brother." He wiped his face and forced a grin, and gripped me by the shoulder.
"But the Rani, then?"
"God send that fair foulness a lover made of red-hot metal to bed her through eternity," says he, and spat. "She is in her citadel yonder, while Kala Khan marshals her guard on the maidan - perchance ye heard his bugles?
and sends out for levies to raise her an army. For why? - hear this and laugh. Some of the mutineers chose Sadasheo Rao of Parola as their leader - he has taken Karera Fort, and calls himself Raja of Jhansi in defiance of her." He laughed harshly. "They say she will crucify him with his own bayonets - God send she does. Then she will march against Kathe Khan and the Dewan of Orcha, to bring t them under her pretty heel. Oh, an enterprising lady, this Rani, who knows how to take advantage of a world upside down - and meanwhile they say she sends messages to the British protesting her loyalty to the Sirkar - rot her for a lying, faithless, female pi-dog!"
Ilderim glanced at me witheringly, and bit his nail in scorn.
"Bloody Lance," says he, "ye may be the bravest rider in the British Army, and God knows thou art no fool - but with women thou art a witless infant. Thou has coupled this Hindoo slut, hast thou not?"
"Damn your impudence - "
"I thought as much. Tell me, blood-brother, how many women hast thou covered, in thy time?" And he winked at his mates.
"What the devil d'you mean?" I demanded.
"How many? Come, as a favour to thy old friend."
"Eh? What's it to you, dammit? Oh, well, let's see ... there's the wife, and . . . er . . . and, ah - "
"Aye - ye have fornicated more times than I have passed water," says this elegant fellow. "And just because they let thee have thy way, didst thou trust them therefore? Because they were beautiful or lecherous - well thou fool enough to think it made them honest? Like enough. This Rani has beglamoured thee - well then, go thou up and knock on her palace gate tonight, and cry `Beloved, let me in.' I shall stand under the wall to catch the pieces."
When he put it that way, of course, it was ridiculous. Whether she was loyal or not - and I could hardly credit that she wasn't - it didn't seem quite the best time to test the matter, with her state running over at the edges with mutineers. Good God, was there nowhere safe in this bloody country? Delhi, Meerut, Jhansi - how many garrisons remained, I asked Ilderim, and told him the stories I'd heard, and the sights I'd seen, on my way south.
"No one knows," says he grimly. "But be sure the sepoys have not won, as they would have the world believe. They have made the land between Ganges and Jumna a ruin of fire and blood, and gone undefeated - as yet. They range the country in strength - but already there is word that the British are marching on Delhi, and bands of sahibs who escaped when their garrisons were overthrown are riding abroad in growing numbers. Not only men who have lost their regiments, but civilian sahibs also. The Sirkar still has teeth - and there are garrisons that hold out in strength. Cawnpore for one - a bare four days' ride from here. They say the old General Wheeler sahib is in great force there, and has shattered an army of sepoys and badmashes. When Shadman brings our horses, it is there we will ride."
"Cawnpore?" I almost squeaked the word in consternation, for it was back in the dirty country with a vengeance. Having come out of that once, I'd no wish to venture in again.
"Where else?" says he. "There is no safer road from Jhansi. Farther south ye dare not go, for there are few sahib places, and no great garrisons. Nor are there to the west. Over the Jumna the country may be hot with mutineers, but it is where thine own folk are - and they are mine, too, and my lads'."
I looked at the ugly villains round the fire, hard-bitten frontier rough-necks to a man in their dirty old poshteens and the big Khyber knives in their belts - by George, I'd be a sight safer going north again in their company than striking out anywhere else on my own. What Ilderim said was probably true, too; Cawnpore and the other river strongholds would be where our generals would concentrate - I could get back among my own kind, and shed this filthy beard and sepoy kit and feel civilised again. Wouldn't have to spin any nonsense about why I'd disappeared from Jhansi, either, in supposed pursuit of Ignatieff- my God, I'd forgotten him entirely, and the Thugs, and all the rest. My mission to Jhansi - Pam and his cakes and warnings - it was all chaff in the wind now, forgotten in this colossal storm that was weeping through India. No one was going to fret about where I'd sprung from, or what I'd been doing. I felt my spirits rising by the minute - when I thought of the escape I'd had, leaving Jhansi in the first place, I could say that even my horrible experience at Meerut had been worth while.
That's another thing about being a windy beggar - if you scare easily, you usually cheer up just as fast when the danger is past. Well, not past yet, perhaps - but at least I was with friends again, and by what Ilderim said the Mutiny wasn't by any means such a foregone thing as I'd imagined - why, once our people got their second wind, it would be the bloody rebels who'd be doing the running, no doubt, with Flashy roaring on the pursuit I tom a safe distance. And I might have been rotting out yonder with the others at Jokan Bagh - I shuddered at the ghastly memory of Ilderim's story - or burned alive with the Dawsons at Meerut. By Jove, things weren't so bad after all.
"Right," says I. "Cawnpore let it be." How was I to know I was almost speaking my own epitaph?
In the meantime, I had one good night's sleep, feeling safe for the first time in weeks with Ilderim's rascals around me, and next day we just lay up in the temple ruins while one sowar went to scout for Shadman Khan, who was meant to be out stealing horses for us. It was the rummest fix to be in, for all day we could hear the bugles tootling out on the plain where the Rani's army was mustering for her own private little wars with Jhansi's neighbours; Ilderim reported in the evening that she had assembled several hundred foot soldiers, and a few troops of Maharatta riders, as well as half a dozen guns - not a bad beginning, in a troubled time, but of course with a treasury like Jhansi's she could promise regular pay for her soldiers, as well as the prospect of Orcha's loot when she had dealt with the Dewan.
With the second dawn came Shadman himself, cackling at his own cleverness: he and his pals had laid hands on six horses already, they were snug in a thicket a couple of miles from the town, and he had devised a delightful plan for getting another half dozen mounts as well.
"The Hindoo bitch needs riders," says he. "So I marched into her camp on the maidan this afternoon and offered my services. 'I can find six old Company sowars who will ride round Jehannum and back for a rupee a day and whatever spoil the campaign promises,' says I to the noseless pig who is master of her cavalry, 'if ye have six good beasts to put under them. "We have horses and to spare,' says he, 'bring me your six sowars and they shall have five rupees a man down payment, and a carbine and embroidered saddle-cloth apiece.' I beat him up to ten rupees each - so tomorrow let six of us join her cavalry, and at nightfall we shall unjoin, and meet thee, rissaldar, and all ride off rejoicing. Is it not a brave scheme - and will cost this slut of a Rani sixty rupees as well as her steeds and furniture?"
There's nothing as gleeful as a Pathan when he's doing the dirty; they slapped their knees in approval and five of them went off with him that afternoon. Ilderim and I and the remaining three waited until nightfall, and then set off on foot to the thicket where we were to rendezvous; there were the first six horses and a sowar waiting, and round about midnight Shadman and his companions came clattering out of the dark to join us, crowing with laughter. Not only had they lifted the six horses, they had cut the lines of a score more, slit the throat of the cavalry-master as he lay asleep, and set fire to the fodder-store, just to keep the Rani's army happy.
"Well enough," growls Ilderim, when he had snarled them to silence. "It will do - till we ride to Jhansi again, some day. There is a debt to pay, at the Jokan Bagh. Is there not, blood-brother?" He gripped my shoulder for a moment as we sat our mounts under the trees, and the others fell in two by two behind us. In the distance, very black against the starlit purple of the night sky, was the outline of the Jhansi fortress with the glow of the city beneath it; Ilderim was staring towards it bright-eyed - I remember that moment so clearly, with the warm gloom and the smell of Indian earth and horse-flesh, the creak of leather and the soft stamping of the beasts. I was thinking of the horror that lay in the Jokan Bagh - and of that lovely girl; in her mirrored palace yonder with its swing and soft carpets and luxurious furniture, and trying to make myself believe that they belonged in the same world.
"It will take more than one dead rebel and a few horses to settle the score for Skene sahib and the others," says he. "Much more. So - to Cawnpore? Walk-march, trot!"
He had said it was a bare four days' ride, but it took us that long to reach the Jumna above Haminpur, for on my advice we steered clear of the roads, and kept to the countryside, where we sighted nothing bigger than villages and poor farms. Even there, though, there was ample sign of the turbulence that was sweeping the land; we passed hamlets that were just smoking, blackened ruins, with buzzing carcases, human and animal, lying where they had been shot down, or strung up to branches; and several times we saw parties of mutineers on the march, all heading north-east like ourselves. That was enough to set me wondering if I wasn't going in the wrong direction, but I consoled myself that there was safety in numbers - until the morning of the fourth day, when Ilderim aroused me in a swearing passion with the news that eight of our party had slipped off in the night, leaving only the two of us with Muhammed Din and Rafik Tamwar.
"That faithless thieving, reiving son of a Kabuli whore, Shadman Khan, has put them up to this!" He was livid with rage. "He and that other dung-beetle Asaf Yakub had the dawn watch - they have stolen off and left us, and taken the food and fodder with them!"
"You mean they've gone to join the mutineers?" I cried.
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