sir, fear of Avitabile' - and he jerked a huge thumb at his chest - 'fear's what stops 'em. But if I stopped hangin' 'em now and then, they'd stop bein'
afraid. See?'
He had me to dinner that night, and we ate an excellent stew of chicken and fruit on a terrace looking over the dirty rooftops of Peshawar, with the sounds and smells of the bazaar floating up to us.
Avitabile was a good host, and talked all night of Naples and women and drink; he seemed to take a fancy to me, and we got very drunk together. He was one of your noisy, bellowing drunkards, and we sang uproariously, I remember, but at dawn, as we were staggering to our beds, he stopped outside my room, with his great dirty hand on my shoulder, and looked at me with his bright grey eyes, and said in a very sober, quiet voice: 'Boy, I think you are another like me, at heart: a condottieri, a rascal. Maybe with a little honour, a little courage. I don't know. But, see now, you are going beyond the Khyber, and some day soon the Gilzais and others will be afraid no longer. Against that day, get a swift horse and some Afghans you can trust - there are some, like the Kuzzilbashis - and if the day comes, don't wait to die on the field of honour.' He said it without a sneer. 'Heroes draw no higher wages than the others, boy. Sleep well.'
And he nodded and stumped off down the passage, with his gold cap still firmly on his head. In my drunken state I took little heed of what he had said, but it came back to me later.
In the morning we rode north into one of the world's awful places
- the great pass of the Khyber, where the track twists among the sun-scorched cliffs and the peaks seem to crouch in ambush for the traveller. There was some traffic on the road, and we passed a commissary train on its way to Kabul, but most of those we saw were Afghan hillmen, rangy warriors in skull caps or turbans and long coats, with immensely long rifles, called jezzails, at their shoulders, and the Khyber knife (which is like a pointed cleaver) in their belts.
Muhammed Iqbal was gay at returning to his own place, and had me airing my halting Pushtu on those we spoke to; they seemed taken aback to find an English officer who had their own tongue, however crudely, and were friendly enough. But I didn't like the look of them; you could see treachery in their dark eyes - besides, there is something odd about men who look like Satan and yet wear ringlets and love-locks hanging out beneath their turbans.
We were three nights on the road beyond the Khyber, and the country got more hellish all the way - it beat me how a British army, with all its thousands of followers and carts and wagons and guns had ever got over those flinty paths. But at last we came to Kabul, and I saw the great fortress of Bala Hissar lowering over the city, and beyond it to the right the neat lines of the cantonment beside the water's edge, where the red tunics showed like tiny dolls in the distance and the sound of a bugle came faintly over the river. It was very pretty in the summer's evening, with the orchards and gardens before us, and the squalor of Kabul Town hidden behind the Bala Hissar. Aye, it was pretty then.
We crossed the Kabul River bridge and when I had reported myself and bathed and changed into my regimentals I was directed to the general commanding, to whom I was to deliver despatches from Elphy Bey. His name was Sir Willoughby Cotton, and he looked it, for he was round and fat and red-faced. When I found him he was being hectored by a tall, fine-looking officer in faded uniform, and I at once learned two things - in the Kabul garrison there was no sense of privacy or restraint, and the most senior officers never thought twice about discussing their affairs before their juniors.
'. . . the biggest damned fool this side of the Indus,' the tall officer was saying when I presented myself. 'I tell you, Cotton, this army is like a bear in a trap. If there's a rising, where are you? Stuck helpless in the middle of a people who hate your innards, a week from the nearest friendly garrison, with a bloody fool like McNaghten writing letters to that even bloodier fool Auckland in Calcutta that everything's all right. God help us! And they're relieving you -'
'God be thanked,' said Cotton.
'- and sending us Elphy Bey, who'll be under McNaghten's thumb and isn't fit to command an escort anyway. The worst of it is, McNaghten and the other political asses think we are safe as on Salisbury Plain! Burnes is as bad as the rest - not that he thinks of anything but Afghan women - but they're all so sure they're right!
That's what upsets me. And who the devil are you?'
This was to me. I bowed and presented my letters to Cotton, who seemed glad of the interruption.
'Glad to see you, sir,' says he, dropping the letters on the desk.
'Elphy's herald, eh? Well, well. Flashman, did you say? Now that's odd.
There was a Flashman with me at Rugby, oh, forty years ago. Any relation?'
'My father, sir.'
'Ye don't say? Well, I'm damned. Flashy's boy.' And he beamed all over his red face. 'Why, it must be forty years . . . He's well, I trust?
Excellent, excellent. What'll you have, sir? Glass of wine? Here, bearer.
Of course, your father will have spoke of me, eh? I was quite a card at school. Got expelled, d'ye know.'
This was too good a chance to miss, so I said: 'I was expelled from Rugby, too, sir.'
'Good God! You don't say! What for, sir?'
'Drunkenness, sir.'
'No! Well, damme! Who'd have believed they would kick you out for that? They'll be expellin' for rape next. Wouldn't have done in my time. I was expelled for mutiny, sir - yes, mutiny! Led the whole school in revolt!(12) Splendid! Well, here's your health, sir!'
The officer in the faded coat, who had been looking pretty sour, remarked that expulsion from school was all very well but what concerned him was expulsion from Afghanistan.
'Pardon me,' said Cotton, wiping his lips. 'Forgot my manners.
Mr Flashman, General Nott. General Nott is up from Kandahar, where he commands. We were discussing the state of the army in Afghanistan. No, no, Flashman, sit down. This ain't Calcutta. On active service the more you know the better. Pray proceed, Nott.'
So I sat, a little bewildered and flattered, for generals don't usually talk before subalterns, while Nott resumed his tirade. It seemed that he had been offended by some communication from McNaghten - Sir William McNaghten, Envoy to Kabul, and head British civilian in the country. Nott was appealing to Cotton to support him in protest, but Cotton didn't seem to care for the idea.
'It is a simple question of policy,' said Nott. 'The country, whatever McNaghten may think, is hostile, and we have to treat it as such. We do this in three ways -through the influence which Sujah exerts on his unwilling subjects, which is little enough; through the force of our army here, which with respect is not as all-powerful as McNaghten imagines, since you're outnumbered fifty to one by one of the fiercest warrior nations in the world; and thirdly, by buying the good will of important chiefs with money. Am I right?'
'Talking like a book,' said Cotton. 'Fill your glass, Mr Flashman.'
