For a moment I didn't believe my ears. Oh, I'd been threatened with torture before, by savages like Gul Shah and those beastly Malagassies—but this was a man of honour, a general, an aristocrat! I wouldn't believe it, not from someone who might have been Cardigan's own brother, dammit -
'You don't mean it!' I yelped. 'I don't believe you! It's a trick … a mean, cowardly trick! You wouldn't dare! But you're trying to frighten me, damn you … '
'Yes, I am.' His voice and eyes were dead level. 'But it is no empty threat. There is too much at stake. We are beyond diplomatic niceties, or the laws of war. Very soon now, hundreds—perhaps thousands—of men will be dying in agony beyond the Sutlej, Indian and British alike. I cannot afford to spare you, when the fate of the war may depend on what you can tell me.'
By God, he did mean it—and before that iron stare I broke down utterly, weeping and begging him to believe me.
'But I don't know a damned thing! For Christ's sake, it's the truth! Yes, yes, she's betraying you! She promised to warn us . and, yes! she's delayed, and made the astrologers bungle it —'
'You tell me what I know already!' cries he impatiently.
'But it's all I know, blast you! She never said a word of plans—oh, if she had I'd tell you! Please, sir, for pity's sake, don't let them torture me! I can't bear it—and it'd do no good, damn you, you cruel old bastard, because I've nothing to confess! Oh, God, if I had, I'd tell you, if I could —'
'I doubt it. Indeed, I am sure you would not,' says he, and before those words and tone, suddenly so flat, almost weary, I left off blubbering to stare. He was standing ramrod straight, but not in disgust or contempt at my ravings—if anything, he looked regretful, with a touch of ruptured nobility, even. I couldn't fathom it until, to my horrified amazement, he went on, in the same quiet voice:
'You overplay the coward's part too far, Mr Flashman. You would have me believe you an abject, broken thing, dead to honour, a cur who would confess everything, betray everything, at a mere threat—and on whom, there-fore, torture would be wasted.' He shook his head. 'Major Broadfoot does not employ such people—and your own reputation belies you. No, you will tell nothing … until pain robs' you of your reason. You know your duty, as I know mine. It drives us both to shameful extremes—me, to barbarism for my country's sake; you, to this pretence of cowardice—a legitimate ruse in a political agent, but not convincing from the man who held Piper's Fort! I am sorry.' His mouth worked for a moment, and I won't swear there wasn't a tear in his blasted eye. 'I can give you an hour … before they begin. For God's sake, use it to see reason! Take him down!'
He turned away, like a strong suffering man who's had the last word. He hadn't, though. 'Pretence!' I screamed, as they hauled me from the chair. 'You bloody old halfwit, it's true! I'm not shamming, damn you, I swear it! I can't tell you anything! Oh, Jesus! Please, please, let me be! Mercy, you foul old kite! Can't you see I'm telling the truth!'
By that time they were dragging me through the garden to the back of the house, thrusting me through a low iron-shod door and down an immensely long flight of stone steps into the depths of a great cellar, a dank tomb of rough stone walls with only a small window high up on the far side. A choking acrid smell rose to meet us, and as the naik set a burning torch in a bracket by the stair foot, the source of that stench became horribly apparent.
'Are you weary, Daghabazi Sahib?'*(* Daghabazi=treachery.) cries he. 'See, we have a fine bed for you to rest on!'
I looked, and almost swooned. In the centre of the earth floor lay a great rectangular tray in which charcoal glowed faintly under a coating of ash, and about three feet above it was a rusty iron grill like a bedstead—with manacles at head and foot. Watching my face, the naik cackled with laughter, and taking up a long poker, went forward and tapped open two little vents on either side of the tray. The charcoal near the vents glowed a little brighter.
'Gently blows the air,' gloats he, 'and slowly grows the heat.' He laid a hand on the grill. 'A little warm, only … but in an hour it will be warmer. Daghabazi Sahib will begin to feel it, then. He may even find his tongue.' He tossed the poker aside. 'Put him to bed!'
I can't describe the horror of it. I couldn't even scream as they ran me forward and flung me down on that diabolic gridiron, snapping the fetters on my wrists and ankles so that I was held supine, unable to do more than writhe on the rusty bars—and then the pock-marked fiend picked up a pair of bellows from the floor, grinning with savage delight.
'You will be in some discomfort when we return, Daghabazi Sahib! Then we shall open the vents a little more—your punkah-wallah cooked slowly, for many hours—did he not, Jan? Oh, he spoke long before he began to roast … that followed, though I think he had no more to tell.' He leaned down to laugh in my face. 'And if you find it tedious, we may hasten matters—thus!'
He thrust the bellows under the foot of the grill, pumping once, a sudden gust of heat struck my calves—and I found my tongue at last, in a shriek that tore my throat, again and again, as I struggled helplessly. They crowed with laughter, those devils, as I raved in terror and imagined agony, swearing I had nothing to tell, pleading for mercy, promising them anything—a fortune if they'd let me go, rupees and mohurs by the lakh, God knows what else. Then perhaps I swooned in earnest, for all I remember is the naik's jeering voice from far off: 'In an hour's time! Rest well, Daghabazi Sahib!' and the clang of the iron door.
There are, in case you didn't know it, five degrees of torture, as laid down by the Spanish Inquisition, and I was now suffering the fourth—the last before the bodily torment begins. How I kept my sanity is a mystery—I'm not sure but that I did go mad, for a spell, for I came out of my swoon babbling: 'No, no, Dawson, I swear I didn't peach! 'twasn't me—it was Speedicut! He blabbed on you to her father—not me! I swear it—oh, please, please, Dawson, don't roast me!', and I could see the fat brute's great whiskered moon face leering into mine as he held me before the schoolroom fire, vowing to bake me till I blistered. I know now that that roasting at Rugby was worse, for real corporal anguish, than my ordeal at Lahore—but at least I'd known that Dawson must leave off at the last, whereas in Bibi Kalil's cellar, with the growing heat only beginning to make my back and legs tingle and run rivers of sweat, I knew that it would continue, hotter and ever hotter, to the unspeakable end. That's the horror of the fourth degree, as the Inquisitors knew—but while their heretics and religious idiots could always get off by telling the bloody Dagoes what they wanted to hear, I couldn't. I didn't know.
The mind's a strange mechanism. Chained to that abominable grill, I began to burn, and strained to arch my body away from the bars, until I fainted again—and when I came to my senses, why, I was only uncomfortably warm for a moment—until I remembered where I was, and in an instant my clothes were catching fire, the flames were scorching my flesh, and I shrieked my way into oblivion once more. Yet it was only in my mind; my clothing was barely being singed—whereas Dawson burned my britches' arse out, the fat swine, and I couldn't sit for a week.
I can't tell how long it was before I realised that, while And merrily we'll whoop and holloa! 28
Silence, except for my gasps and groans, then a scrambling rush, a thud, and through the suffocating mist a figure was looming over me, and a horrified face was peering into mine.
'Holy Jesus!' cries Jassa—and as the bolt rasped back in the door he fairly flung himself away, burrowing among the rubble in the shadows along the wall. The door swung open, and the naik appeared on the threshold. For a long, awful moment he stood looking down at me as I struggled and panted on the grill—in a frenzy of fear that he'd seen Jassa, that the fatal hour was up . and then he sang out:
'Is the bed to your liking, Daghabazi Sahib? What, not warm enough yet? Oh, patience … only a moment now!'
He guffawed at his own priceless wit, and went out, leaving the door ajar—and here was Jassa, muttering hideous oaths as he worked at my fetters. They were simple bolts, and in a moment he had them loose and I had lurched off that hellish gridiron and was lying face down on the filthy cool earth, panting and retching. Jassa knelt beside me, urging haste, and I forced myself up; my back and legs were smarting, but didn't feel as though they were badly burned, and with the naik plainly about to return at any moment I was in a fever to be away.
'Can you climb?' whispers Jassa, and I saw there was a camel rope dangling from the window fifteen feet above our heads. 'I'll go first—if you can't make it, we'll haul you!' He seized the rope and walked up the wall like an acrobat, until he had his legs over the sill. 'Up—quick!' he hissed, and I leaned on the wall a second to fetch my breath and my senses, rubbed my hands on the dirt, and laid hold on the rope.
I may not be brave, but I'm strong, and exhausted as I was I climbed by my arms alone, hauling my dead weight hand over hand, bumping and scraping against the wall -no work for a weakling, but my mortal funk was
