irregular cavalry, said the viler deaths the rebels died, the better; they'd be less ready to mutiny again. I can see him yet, sitting forward glaring into the fire, pushing back his fair hair with that nervous gesture he had, and steady Sam Browne squinting at him quizzically, drawing on his cigar, saying nothing. I know we talked too of light cavalry, and Russell was teasing Hodson with the prowess of the Black Sea Cossacks, winking at me, when Destiny in the unlikely shape of General Mansfield tapped me on the shoulder and said: 'Sir Colin wants you, directly.'
I didn't think twice about it, but pitched my cheroot into the fire and sauntered through the lines to the Chief's tent, computing my loot in my mind and drinking in the warm night air with sleepy content. Even when Campbell's greeting to me was: 'How well d'ye know the Rani of Jhansi?' I wasn't uncomfortably surprised — there'd been a dispatch in about the Jhansi campaign that very day, and Campbell already knew about my mission for Palmerston; it all seemed a long way away now.
I said I had known her very well; we had talked a great deal together.
'And her city — her fortress?' says Campbell.
'Passably, sir. I was never in her fort proper — our meetings were at the palace, and I'm not over-familiar with the city itself -
'More familiar than Sir Hugh Rose, though, I'll be bound,' says he, tapping a paper in front of him. 'And that's his own opeenion — he mentions ye by name in his latest dispatch.' I didn't care for that; it don't do to have generals talking about you. I didn't care for the way Campbell was looking at me, either, tapping a nail against those beautifully-kept teeth that shone so odd in his ancient (face.
'This Rani,' says he at length. 'What's she like?'
I began to say that she was a capable ruler and nobody's fool, but he interrupted with one of his barbarous Scotch noises.
'Taghaway-wi-ye! Is she pretty, man? Eh? How pretty?' I admitted that she was strikingly beautiful, and he grinned and shook his grizzly head.
'Aye, aye,' says he, and squinted at me. 'Ye're a strange man, Flashman. I'll confess to ye, I've even-on had my doots aboot ye — don't ask me what, for I don't know. I'm frank wi' ye, d'ye see?' I'll say that for him, he always was. 'This much I'm certain of,' he went on, 'ye always win. God kens how — and I'm glad I don't ken mysel', for I wish to think well of ye. But there — Sir Hugh needs ye at Jhansi, and I'm sending ye south.'
I didn't know what to think of this — or of his curious opinion of me. I just stood and waited anxiously.
'This mutiny mischief is just aboot done — it's a question of scattering the last armies — here, in Oudh and Rohilkand, and there, in Bandelkand — and hanging Nana and Tantia and Azeemoolah higher than Haman. Jhansi is one of the last nuts tae be cracked — and it'll be a hard one, like enough. This bizzum of a Rani has ten thousand men and stout city walls. Sir Hugh will have her under siege by the time ye get there, and nae doot he'll have to take the place by storm. But that's not enough — which is why you, wi' your particular deeplomatic knowledge of the Rani and her state, are essential to Sir Hugh. Ye see, Flashman, Lord Canning and Sir Hugh and mysel' are agreed on one thing — and your experience of this wumman may be the key to it.' He looked me carefully in the eye. 'Whatever else befalls, we must contrive tae capture the Rani of Jhansi alive.'
If she'd been ugly as sin, or twenty years older and scrawny, it would never have happened. Jhansi would have been taken, and if a plain, elderly Rani had been bayoneted or shot in the process, no one would have given a damn. But Canning, our enlightened Governor-General, was a sentimental fool, intent on suppressing the Mutiny with the least possible bloodshed, and already alarmed at the toll of vengeance that people like Neill and Havelock had taken. He guessed that sooner or later the righteous wrath of Britons at home would die down, and that if we slaughtered too many pandies a revulsion would set in — which, of course, it did. My guess is that he also feared the death of a young and beautiful rebel princess (for her fame and likeness had spread across India by now) might just tip the balance of public conscience — he didn't want the liberal press depicting her as some Indian Joan of Arc. So, however many other niggers died, male and female, she was to be taken alive.
Mind you, I could see Canning's point, and personally I was all for it. There wasn't a life anywhere — except Elspeth's and little Havvy's — that was as precious to me then as Lakshmibai's, and I don't mind admitting it. But fair's fair; I wanted her saved without any dangerous intervention on my part, and the farther I could have kept away from Jhansi the better I'd have liked it. It wasn't a lucky place for me.
So I took as long as I decently could getting there, in the hope that it might be all over by the time I arrived. I had the excuse that the two hundred miles between Lucknow and Jhansi was damned dangerous country, with pandies and the armies of rebel chiefs all over the place; I had a strong escort of Pathan Horse, but even so we went warily, and didn't sight that fort of ill-omen on its frowning rock until the last week in March. Rose was just getting himself settled in by then, battering away at the city defences with his guns, his army circling the walls in a gigantic ring, with observation posts and cavalry pickets all prettily sited to bottle it up.
He was a good soldier, Rose, careful as Campbell but twice as quick, and one glance at the rebel defences told you that he needed to be. Jhansi lay massive and impregnable under the brazen sun, with its walls and outworks and the red rebel banner floating lazily above the fort. Outside the walls the dusty plain had been swept clear of every scrap of cover, and the rebel batteries thundered out in reply to our gunners, as though warning the besiegers what would happen if they ventured too close. And inside there were ten thousand rebels ready to fight to the finish. A tough nut, as Campbell had said.
'We'll have them out in a week, though, no fears about that,' was Rose's verdict. He was another Scotsman (India was crawling with them, of course, as always), brisk and bright-eyed and spry; I knew him well from the Crimea, where he'd been liaison at the Frog headquarters, and less objectionable than most diplomat-soldiers. He was new to India, but you'd never have guessed it from his easy confidence and dandy air — to tell the truth, I have difficulty in memory separating his appearance from George Custer's, for they both had the same gimlet assurance, as well as the carefully wind-blown blond hair and artless moustaches. There the resemblance ended — if we'd had Rose at Little Big Horn, Crazy Horse and Gall could have whistled for their dinners.
'Yes, a week at most,' says he, and pointed out how he had sited his left and right attacks opposite the strongest points in the rebel defences, which our gunners were pounding with red-hot shot, keeping the pandy fire- parties busy quelling the flames which you could see here and there behind the walls, flickering crazily through the heat-haze. 'Frontal night assault as soon as the breaches are big enough, and then …' He snapped his telescope shut. 'Bloody work, since the pandies are sure to fight to the last — but we'll do the business. The question is: in all that carnage, how do we preserve her ladyship? You must be our oracle on that subject, what? Would she personally surrender, d'you suppose?'
I looked about me from the knoll on which we stood, with his staff officers. Just before us were the lines of siege-guns in their earthworks, shaking the ground with their explosions, the smoke wraithing back towards us as the gunners, crawling like ants round their pieces, reloaded and fired again. Either side the pickets of the flying cavalry I amps were strung out as far as the eye could see — the red jackets of the Light Dragoons, and the grey khakee of the Hyderabad troopers' coats, dusty with the new curry-powder dye. Two miles behind us, near the ruins of the old cantonment, were the endless tent-lines of the infantry brigades, waiting patiently till the guns had done their work on the massive walls of Jhansi city, behind which the jumble of distant houses stretched in the smoky haze up to the mighty crag of the fortress. She'd be up there, somewhere, perhaps in that cool durbar room, or on the terrace, playing with her pet monkeys; perhaps she was with her chiefs and soldiers, looking out at the great army that was going to swallow her up and reduce her city and fairy palace to rubble. Mera Jhansi denge nay, thinks I.
'Surrender?' says I. 'No, I doubt if she will.'
'Well, you know her.' He gave me that odd, leery look that I'd got used to even in the few hours I'd been at his headquarters, whenever her name was mentioned. The popular view was that she was some gorgeous human tigress who prowled half-naked through sumptuous apartments, supervising the torture of discarded legions of lovers — oh, my pious generation had splendid imaginations, I may tell you.43
'We've tried proclamation, of course,' says Rose, 'but since we can't guarantee immunity to her followers, we might as well save our breath. On the other hand, she may not be eager to see her civilians exposed to continuous bombardment followed by the horrors of assault, what? I mean, being a woman … what is she like, by the way?'
'She's a lady,' says I, 'extremely lovely, uses French scent, is kind to animals, fences like a Hungarian hussar, prays for several hours each day, recreates herself on a white silk swing in a room full of mirrors, gives afternoon tea-parties for society ladies, and hangs criminals up in the sun by their thumbs. Useful horse-woman, too.'
