Flashman Papers - Flashman Part 20

These were the essentials for the journey, but I had an eye to the luxuries as well. Confined to the cantonment? as we were, I had not had a woman for an age, and I was getting peckish. To make it worse, in that Christmas week a messenger had come through from India with mails; among them was a letter from Elspeth. I recognised the handwriting, and my heart gave a skip; when I opened it I got a turn, for it began, "To my most beloved Hector," and I thought, by G.o.d, she's cheating on me, and has sent me the wrong letter by mistake. But in the second line was a reference to Achilles, and another to Ajax, so I under-stood she was just addressing me in terms which she accounted fitting for a martial paladin; she knew no better. It was a common custom at that time, .in the more roman-tic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the wh.o.r.emongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark.

It was a commonplace enough letter, I suppose, with news that she and my father were well, and that she was Desolate without her True Love, and Counted the Hours till my Triumphant Return from the Cannon's Mouth, and so on. G.o.d knows what young women think a soldier does for a living. But there was a good deal about how she longed to clasp me in her arms, and pillow my head on her breast, and so on (Elspeth was always rather forthright, more so than an English girl would have been), and thinking about that same breast and the spirited gallops we had taken together, I began to get feverish. Closing my eyes, I could imagine her soft, white body, and Fetnab's, and Josette's, and what with dreaming to this tune I rapidly reached the point where even Lady Sale would have had to cut and run for it if she had happened to come within reach.

However, I had my eye on younger game, in the excellent shape of Mrs Parker, the merry little wife of a captain in the 5th Light Cavalry. He was a serious, doting fellow, about twenty years older than she, and as fondly in love as only a middle-aged man with a young bride can be.

Betty Parker was pretty enough, in a plump way, but she had buck teeth, and if there had been Afghan women to hand I would hardly have looked at her. With Kabul City out of all bounds there was no hope of that, so I went quickly to work in that week after Christmas.

I could see she fancied me, which was not surprising in a woman married to Parker, and I took the opportunity at one of Lady Sale's evenings - for the old dragon kept open house in those days, to show that whoever was dismayed, she was full of spirit - to play loo with Betty and some others, and press knees with her beneath the table. She didn't seem to mind by half, so I tested the ground further later on; I waited till I could find her alone, and gave her t.i.ts a squeeze when she least expected it. She jumped, and gasped, but since she didn't swoon I guessed that all was well and would be better.

The trouble was Parker. There was no hope of doing anything while we remained in Kabul, and he was sure to stick close as a mother hen on the march. But chance helped me, as she always does if you keep your wits about you, although she ran it pretty fine and it was not until a couple of days before we were due to depart that I succeeded in removing the inconvenient husband.

It was at one of those endless discussions in Elphy's office, where everything under the sun was talked about and nothing done. In between deciding that our men must not be allowed to wear rags round their legs against the snow as the Afghans did to keep off frost-bite, and giving instructions what fodder should be carried along for his fox-hounds, Elphy Bey suddenly remembered that he must send the latest instructions about our departure to Nott at Kandahar. It would be best, he said, that General Nott should have the fullest intelligence of our movements, and Mackenzie, coming as near to showing impatience as I ever knew him, agreed that it was proper that one half of the British force in Afghanistan should know what the other half was doing.

"Excellent," says Elphy, looking pleased, but not for long. "Who shall we send to Kandahar with the despatches?" he wondered, worrying again.

"Any good galloper will do," says Mac.

"No, no," says Elphy, "he must be a man in whom we can repose the most perfect trust. An officer of experience is required," and he went rambling on about maturity and judgement while Mac drummed his fingernails on his belt.

I saw a chance here; ordinarily I never intruded an opinion, being junior and not caring a d.a.m.n anyway, but now I asked if I might say a word.

"Captain Parker is a steady officer," says I, "if it ain't out of place for me to say so. And he's as sure in the saddle as I am, sir."

"Didn't know that," says Mac. "But if you say he's a horseman, he must be. Let it be Parker, then," says he to Elphy.

Elphy hummed a bit. "He is married, you know, Mackenzie. His wife would be deprived of his sustaining presence on our journey to India, which I fear may be an arduous one." The old fool was always too considerate by half. "She will be a prey to anxiety for his safety ..."

"He'll be as safe on the road to Kandahar as anywhere," says Mac. "And he'll ride all the harder there and back. The fewer loving couples we have on this march the better."

Mac was a bachelor, of course, one of these iron men who are married to the service and have their honeymoon with a manual of infantry drill and a wet towel round their heads; if he thought sending off Parker would cut down the number of loving couples he was going to be mistaken; I reckoned it would increase it.

So Elphy agreed, shaking his head and chuntering, and I rounded off the morning's work later by saying to Mac when we were outside that I was sorry for naming Parker, and that I'd forgotten he was a married man.

"You too?" says Mac. "Has Elphy infected you with his disease of worrying over everything that don't matter and forgetting those that do? Let me tell you, Flash, we shall spend so much time wagging our heads over nonsense's like Parker and Elphy's dogs and Lady McNaghten's chest-of-drawers that we'll be lucky if we ever see Jallalabad." He stepped closer and looked at me with those uncomfortable cold eyes of his. "You know how far it is? Ninety miles. Have you any notion how long it will take, with an army fourteen thousand strong, barely a quarter of 'em fighting troops, and the rest a great rabble of Hindoo porters and servants, to say nothing of women and children? And we'll be marching through a foot of snow on the worst ground on earth, with the temperature at freezing. Why, man, with an army of Highland ghillies I doubt if it could be done in under a week. If we're lucky we might do it in two - if the Afghans let us alone, and the food and firing hold out, and Elphy doesn't shoot himself in the other b.u.t.tock."

I'd never seen Mackenzie in such a taking before. Usually he was as cool as a trout, but I suppose being a serious professional and having to work with Elphy had worn him thin.

"I wouldn't say this to anybody but you, or George Broadfoot if he were here," says he, "but if we come through it'll be by pure luck, and the efforts of one or two of us, like you and me. Aye, and Shelton. He's a surly devil, but he's a fighting soldier, and if Elphy will let him alone he might get us to Jallalabad. There, now, I've told you what I think, and it's as near to croaking as I hope I'll ever get." He gave me one of his wintry smiles. "And you're worried about Parker!"

Having heard this, I was worried only about me. I knew Mackenzie; he wasn't a croaker, and if he thought our chances were slim, then slim they were. Of course, I knew from working in Elphy's office that things weren't shaping well; the Afghans were hampering us at every turn in getting supplies together, and there were signs that the Ghazis were moving out of Kabul along the pa.s.ses - Pottinger was sure they were going to lie in wait for us, and try to cut us up in the really bad defiles, like Khoord-Kabul and Jugdulluk. But I had reasoned that an army fourteen thousand strong ought to be safe, even if a few fell by the wayside; Mac had put it in a different light, and I began to feel again that looseness low down in my guts and the sick sensation in my throat. I tried to tell myself that soldiers like Shelton and Mackenzie, yes, and Sergeant Hudson, weren't going to be stopped by a few swarms of Afghans, but it was no good. Burnes and Iqbal had been good soldiers, too, and that hadn't saved them; I could still hear the hideous chunk of those knives into Burnes's body, and think of McNaghten swinging dead on a hook, and Trevor screaming when the Ghazis got him. I came near to vomiting. And half an hour back I had been scheming so that I could tumble Mrs Parker in a tent on the way back to Jallalabad; that reminded me of what Afghan women do to prisoners, and it didn't bear thinking about.

I was hard put to it to keep a good face on things at Lady Sale's last gathering, two nights before we left. Betty was there, and the look she gave me cheered me up a little; her lord and master would be half way to Kandahar by now, and I toyed with the notion of dropping in at her bungalow that night, but with so many servants about the cantonment it would be too risky. Better to wait till we're on the road, thinks I, and n.o.body knows one tent from another in the dark.

Lady Sale spent the evening as usual, railing about Elphy and the general incompetence of the staff. "There never was such a set of yea-and-nays. The only certain thing is that our chiefs have no mind for two minutes on end. They seem to think of nothing but contradicting each other, when harmony and order are most needed."

She said it with satisfaction, sitting in her last chair while they fed her furniture into the stove to keep the room tolerably warm. Everything had gone except her chest-of-drawers, which was to provide fuel to cook her meals before our departure; we sat round on the luggage which was piled about the walls, or squatted on the floor, while the old harpy sat looking down her beaky nose, her mittened hands folded in front. The strange thing was that no one thought of her as a croaker, although she complained unendingly; she was so obviously confident that she would get to Jallalabad in spite of Elphy's bungling that it cheered people up.

"Captain Johnson informs me," says she, sniffing, "that there is food and fodder for ten days at the most, and that the Afghans have no intention of providing us with an escort through the pa.s.ses."

"Better without 'em," says Shelton. "The fewer we see the better I'll like it."

"Indeed? And who, then, is to guard us from the badmashes and brigands lurking in the hills?"

"Good G.o.d, ma'am," cries Shelton, "aren't we an army? We can protect ourselves, I hope."

"You may hope so, indeed. I am not so sure that some of your native troops will not take the first opportunity to make themselves scarce. We shall be quite without friends, and food, and firewood."

She then went on to tell us cheerfully that the Afghans certainly meant to try to destroy our whole force, in her opinion, that they meant to get all our women into their possession, and that they would leave only one man alive, "who is to have his legs and hands cut off and is to be placed at the entrance of the Khyber pa.s.s, to deter all feringhees from entering the country again."

"My best wishes to the Afghan who gets her," growled Shelton as we were leaving. "If he's got any sense he'll stick her up in the Khyber - that'll keep the feringhees out with a vengeance."

The next day I spent making sure that my picked lancers were all in order, that our saddle-bags were full, and that every man had sufficient rounds and powder for his carbine. And then came the last night, and the chaos of last-minute preparations in the dark, for Shelton was determined to be off before first light so that we might pa.s.s Khoord-Kabul in the first day's march, which meant covering fifteen miles.

Possibly there has been a greater shambles in the history of warfare than our withdrawal from Kabul; probably there has not. Even now, after a lifetime of consideration, I am at a loss for words to describe the superhuman stupidity, the truly monumental incompetence, and the bland blindness to reason of Elphy Bey and his advisers. If you had taken the greatest military geniuses of the ages, placed them in command of our army, and asked them to ruin it utterly as speedily as possible, they could not - I mean it seriously - have done it as surely and swiftly as he did. And he believed he was doing his duty. The meanest sweeper in our train would have been a fitter commander.

Shelton was not told that we would march on the morning of the 6th January, until evening on the 5th. He laboured like a madman through the night, loading up the huge baggage train, a.s.sembling the troops within the cantonment in their order of march, and issuing orders for the conduct and disposal of the entire force. It is a few words on paper: as I remember it, there was a black night of drifting snow, with storm lanterns flickering, troops tramping unseen in the dark, a constant babble of voices, the neighing and whining of the great herd of baggage animals, the rumble of wagons, messengers das.h.i.+ng to and fro, great heaps of luggage piled high outside the houses, hara.s.sed officers demanding to know where such-and-such a regiment was stationed, and where so-and-so had gone, bugle calls ringing in the night wind, feet stamping, children crying, and on the lighted verandah of his office, Shelton, red-faced and dragging at his collar, with his staff scurrying about him while he tried to bring some order out of the inferno.

And as the sun came up from the Seeah Sung hills, it seemed that he had done it. The army of Afghanistan was standing ready to march - everyone was dead tired, of course - strung out through the length of the cantonment, with everything loaded (except sufficient food), and all the troops fallen in and armed (with hardly any powder and ball among them), and Shelton shouting his last orders in a voice gone hoa.r.s.e, while Elphy Bey finished an unhurried breakfast of devilled ham, omelette, and a little pheasant. (I know because he invited me to join him with the other staff officers.)

And while he was making his final toilet, with his staff and servants fussing round him, and the army waiting in the cold, I rode out to the cantonment gate to see what was happening over towards Kabul. The city was alive, with crowds on the roof-tops and scattered over the snowy ground from Bala Hissar to the river; they were there to watch the feringhees go, but they seemed quiet enough just now. The snow was falling gently; it was d.a.m.ned cold.

In the cantonments the bugles shrilled together, and "Forward!" was the command, and with a great creaking and groaning and shuffling and bellowing the march began.

First out came Mackenzie with his jezzailchis, the wild hill marksmen who were devoted to him; like me, he was wearing poshteen cloak and turban, with his pistols stuck in his belt, and he looked the genuine Afridi chief with his long moustache and his ugly rascals behind him. Then Brigadier Anquetil with the 44th, the only British infantry regiment in the army, very dapper in their shakos and red coats with white crossbelts; they looked fit to sweep away all the hordes of Afghanistan, and my spirits rose at the sight of them. They had a few fifes playing "Yankee Doodle", of all things, and stepped out smartly.

A squadron of Sikh cavalry, escorting the guns and sappers and miners, came next, and then in a little group the English women and families, all on camels or ponies, the children and older ladies travelling in camel howdahs, the younger women riding. And of course Lady Sale was to the fore, wearing an enormous turban and riding a tiny Afghan pony side-saddle. "I was saying to Lady McNaghten that I believe we wives would make the best troopers of all," she cries out. "What do you think, Mr Flashman?"

"I'd take your ladys.h.i.+p into my troop any time," says I, at which she simpered horribly - "but the other horses might be jealous," I says to myself quietly, at which the lancers set up a great laugh.

There were about thirty white women and children, from tiny babies to grandmothers, and Betty Parker gave me a knowing smile and a wave as she trotted past. Thinks I, wait till tonight, there'll be one snug blanket-roll on the Jallalabad road anyway.

Then came Shelton, blown and weary but cursing as loud as ever, on his charger, and the three Indian regiments of foot, black faces, red coats and white trousers, their naked feet churning up the slush. And behind them the herd - for that was what it was - of baggage animals, lowing and roaring with their tottering bundles and creaking carts. There were hundreds of camels, and the stench was furious; they and the mules and ponies churned the cantonment road into a sea of liquid chocolate, through which the hordes of camp followers and their families waded up to the knee, babbling and shouting. There were thousands of them, men, women, and children, with no order whatever, their few belongings carried on their backs, and all in great consternation at the thought of the march back to India; no proper provision had been made for feeding them on the way, or quartering them at night. They were apparently just to forage what they could and sleep in the drifts.

This great brown mob surged by, and then came the rearguard of Indian infantry and a few cavalry troops. The great procession was all strung out across the plain to the river, a sprawling, humming ma.s.s that stumbled slowly through the snow; steam rose from it like smoke. And then last of all Elphy Bey's entourage came out to canter up the line and take its place with the main body beside Shelton, but Elphy was already beset by doubts, and I heard him debating loudly with Grant whether it might not be better to delay setting off.

Indeed, he actually sent a messenger to stop the vanguard at the river, but Mackenzie deliberately disobeyed and pushed on; Elphy wrung his hands and cried: "He mustn't do it! Tell Mackenzie to stop, I say!" but by that time Mac was over the bridge, so Elphy had to give up and come along with the rest.

We were no sooner out of the compound than the Afghans were in. The crowds that had been watching had moved round slowly, keeping a safe distance from us, but now they rushed into the cantonments, yelling and burning, looting what was left in the houses and even opening fire on the rearguard. There was some rough work at the gates, and a few Indian troopers were knocked from their saddles and butchered before the rest got clear.

One effect of this was to cause a panic among the porters and camp-followers, many of whom flung away their loads and ran for dear life. The snow on either side of the road was soon dotted with bundles and sacks, and it has been reckoned that a good quarter of our stores were lost this way before we had even reached the river.

With the mob hanging on the heels of the column we got across, marched past the Bala Hissar, and turned on to the Jallalabad road. We were travelling at a snail's pace, but already some of the Indian servants were beginning to fall out, plumping down and wailing in the snow, while the bolder spirits among the Afghan spectators came close to jeer and pelt us with stones. There was some scuffling and a shot or two, but in the main the Kabulis just seemed glad to let us go - and so far we were glad enough to be going. If we had even dreamed what lay ahead we would have turned back as one, even if all Afghanistan had been pursuing, but we did not know.

On Elphy's instructions Mackenzie and I and our troops kept up a constant patrol along the flanks of the column, to discourage the Afghans from coming too close and prevent straggling. Some bodies of Afghans were moving along with us, but well out on either side of the road, and we kept a sharp eye on them. One of these groups, drawn up on a little knoll, took my eye; I decided to keep well clear of them, until I heard my name called, and who should be sitting at their head, large as life, but Akbar Khan.

My first instinct was to turn tail for the column, but he rode a little forward from his companions, calling to me, and presently I edged my pony up to within a short pistol shot of him. He was all in his steel back-and-breast, with his spiked helmet and green turban, and smiling all over his face.

"What the devil do you want?" says I, beckoning Sergeant Hudson up beside me.