Flashman and the Cobra Read online

  Compared with what was about to follow, the start of the journey seemed idyllic. I was absurdly pleased to be able to ride an elephant as it was something I had wanted to do since I decided to come to India. The household was lined up to see the master off and I noticed that there were now a dozen of them, including at least two I would have sworn I had not seen before. The mahout had a bamboo pole with some rungs drilled into it to help me mount the beast and into the howdah that rested on her back. This consisted of some more bamboo poles lashed into a square to stop me sliding off, and some cushions.

  If you ever get the chance to ride an elephant, I can strongly recommend it. The view is excellent, the platform is steady and if the animal could only go a bit faster, it would be perfect. We lumbered off up the street with the mahout and his family walking alongside and the little girl darting ahead to snatch favoured shoots from nearby bushes that she fed to the elephant. Despite the fact the child was only five, she was easily able to keep up with the elephant, which gives you some idea of the speed we were going.

  Still the elephant was doing what I wanted her to do, make my departure memorable to those who saw it. When killers came looking for Thomas Flashman Esquire they would soon learn that he was seen heading out of town on the road to Hyderabad. My new neighbours grinned and waved as they saw me riding like a raja out of town and they doubtless joked it would take me months to get to my destination.

  Once we were out in open country the mahout started looking for a path to our left, and when he found it he gave a shout to the two horsemen and swung himself up to sit on Tara’s neck. We turned into the jungle. The path had not been used for some time but the elephant easily pushed her way through, trampling or snapping off the strands of jungle that had tried to reclaim the track. The mahout’s family now followed the elephant. The horsemen, having cut bushes and bent branches to obscure the path entrance, brought up the rear.

  Various whoops and calls came from jungle creatures as they warned of our approach and I could see monkeys jumping around in trees and shrieking. You feel very safe on the back of an elephant, but when we reached a clearing one of the horsemen came alongside and passed up a musket. “For tigers, sahib,” he said. That brought me up short, but I recalled the naturalist chap on the boat had insisted that no animal would attack an adult elephant. I did feel slightly uncomfortable looking at the little girl still foraging for the elephant and just the right size to make an ideal kill for a tiger. But dammit, I had paid for the elephant and I had not asked her to come and so we pressed with just me in the howdah.

  Mid-afternoon we reached a lake and it looked like the mahout was planning for the elephant to wade across. His woman passed up the baby to him and then the girl climbed up piggyback style on her mother. It was a big lake and I had no idea how deep it was but I had heard that huge water snakes and crocodiles lived in Indian rivers. I looked to the horsemen to get a hint of what was expected, but they were pointedly looking away. The only thing giving me a clue was the elephant, which kept looking around at the woman and child and flicking her trunk up her side to point at me.

  Well, I could not enjoy the journey with a child drowning or being eaten nearby, and so I called for the wife and child to join the father and baby with me on the elephant. The mother sat demurely in the corner of the howdah but the five-year-old chattered at me in her language and was soon pointing out animals that I would not have seen. There were deer and oxen drinking from the shore of the lake and shoals of small fish, and then she pointed up above our heads. Just twenty feet above us and staying exactly over the elephant was a massive sea eagle, black with a white head and yellow talons. I had seen them before but never so close and so still as it glided above us, staring at the water around us. Through mime the little girl explained that it was watching for the movement of fish that were disturbed by the elephant’s feet. That was the thing about riding an elephant: other animals seemed to see the elephant but completely ignore any humans on its back. We made camp that evening in a clearing and the syce told me that we should rendezvous with Runjeet the next morning on the road to Seringapatam. But before I leave my elephant I must tell you one more incredible thing which had I not seen it myself I would not have believed. When we made camp the elephant was secured with a rope around her foot to a stake in the ground. The mahout cut a pile of favoured foliage for the creature’s tea and then set out to find more. The wife then went off with the little girl and left the infant on the ground next to the elephant. She said something to the beast as she left and patted her on the trunk. As I watched it seemed that the baby was left in the elephant’s care. I would guess that the child was near his first birthday and was capable of crawling. First he crawled into the elephant’s tea, whereupon the elephant’s trunk delicately wrapped around the intruder and deposited him nearby. Then the child crawled between the elephant’s legs but, moving her feet carefully to feel for the child, the elephant turned so that she could keep an eye on her charge. When the child looked like he would exceed the range of the elephant’s tether, she reached forward and picked up the child again and put him back in his starting place. Throughout, the child showed no alarm at being picked up by the huge, grey behemoth. It was astonishing to see the gentle intelligence of this massive creature, which truly was part of the mahout’s family, being also its source of income.

  The jungle is a noisy place at night and I did not sleep well. But the next morning we found the Seringapatam road and after a mile or so we found Runjeet. He had a caravan of men and animals ready for the next part of our journey. Here I exchanged Tara the elephant for three evil tempered camels that were burdened with tents, a collapsible bed and table, clothes, cooking equipment, wine and another half-dozen more of Runjeet’s cousins to manage the camp. The cousins were mounted on ponies and I reverted to my horse, which the syce had brought along.

  The day with the elephant had been dry, but it was now the height of the monsoon season and on most days there would be torrential showers. On the positive side it was so hot that your clothes would soon steam themselves dry afterwards. Well, perhaps not entirely dry, for it was a hot and humid season, with swarms of insects. In short, it was not entirely pleasant – I spent most of my time damp with sweat or rain and swatting flies that swarmed around humans and animals like black clouds.

  “The rains will stop soon, sahib,” Runjeet assured me. “Then you will see India at her best with lush, green forests, plump, well-fed animals and sweet fruits for you to eat.”

  The fruits in India had been a disappointment. Because oranges and other tropical fruit are rare in Britain, coming from hot houses, one of the things I had been looking forward to was an endless variety of new and sweet tropical fruits in abundance. The reality was that sweet, tasty mangos were a rarity and other native fruits were often revolting. They had a big, round thing called a jackfruit, which tasted like boiled socks. There was also something called a durian fruit, which smells appalling, but if you can get over the stench it does not taste too bad. I had hoped for oranges, but the only citrus fruits in the region were at a place called Saughur, one hundred and twenty miles from Madras, where they were grown by the Nabob of Arcot.

  We rode on for three days, moving considerably faster than we had with the elephant. We camped either on the roadside by the big water storage ponds called tanks that were filling fast in the rain or at purpose-built roadside shelters called choultries that the Company maintained along routes between its main garrisons. It was at one of this choultries that my fortunes changed again.

  We were just getting ready to start the day’s ride, in a light rain, when a half-company of red-jacketed Company cavalry pulled up outside. A few moments later more cavalry appeared and a knot of British officers was among them. It was my first glimpse of Arthur Wellesley, and in many ways it summed him up. He was riding alone, ahead of the group, not slumped but sitting straight in the saddle. He was wearing a Company redcoat with few marks of rank, but he exuded a sense of authority. On h
is head he had a tall, leather East Indian Company Army hat. Judging by the mud spattered on his breeches, he had ridden partway through the night, but he swung easily down from the saddle.

  Without waiting for his companions, he strode towards the shelter of the choultry, where I was standing on the balcony. We were the only other party there and I was the only other European. He looked at me coldly, taking in my damp, brown civilian coat and wide-brimmed straw hat, which had already seen better days. For a moment I thought he would walk straight past. But at the last moment he seemed to decide to introduce himself.

  “Wellesley, Major General,” he barked at me. “And you are?”

  I came within an ace of giving him my real name, but remembered in the nick of time. “Henry Davis of the Boulton and Watt Steam Engine Company,” I replied.

  If anything his look of disdain grew and he nodded a curt greeting and walked past me to where two Indians were serving hot tea from a boiling kettle.

  I was just congratulating myself on maintaining my disguise when a voice called out, “Good God, Thomas Flashman. What on earth are you doing here?”

  I looked round and some beaming cove was running up the stairs towards me and holding out his paw to be shaken. For a moment I could not place him at all and I was starting to say hesitantly “No, I think you are mistaken” when through the whiskers and suntan I saw the boy I had once known at Rugby school, Teddy Carstairs. The last I had heard he had joined the dragoons, but now here he was, nearly pulling my arm out of its socket and exclaiming, “Flashman, old fellow! Why, I haven’t seen you in years. What the deuce are you doing here on the Madras road, and are you still in touch with the old crowd? What is George Berkeley doing these days, and what about his charming sisters? You must give me all the news...”

  Before I could answer any of this avalanche of questions Wellesley’s harsh voice called out from behind me, “You told me your name was Davis.”

  Now another, older officer coming up behind Carstairs said to Wellesley, “Flashman... ain’t that the name of the courier your brother wrote about who lost his message?”

  Suddenly I was surrounded by three questioning faces, one friendly, the others looking decidedly curious.

  “I am Thomas Flashman, but I am trying to travel in disguise.” I turned to Wellesley. “Your brother, Lord Mornington, arranged it.”

  “You are a courier who lost his message?” asked Carstairs, grinning.

  I felt my face redden with embarrassment and then, like a fool, I added, “I am not just a courier but a government agent. I was in Spain last year and I was in Paris at the meeting with Benoit de Boigne this spring when he accused Dowlat Rao Scindia of murdering his great uncle.”

  I turned to face Wellesley. “Your brother believes that Scindia will want me dead, so he asked me to leave the country in disguise.”

  It was rank stupidity and I did it not to impress Wellesley but Carstairs. When you meet a fellow from your school you want to show that you are making something of your life, and I did not want him to think I was just a failed courier.

  “Damned right he will want you dead,” said the older officer. “Major Jock Malcolm,” he said, introducing himself. “I am one of the political wallahs. If his people started to believe that story, he would never be able to keep his throne. He will want to personally destroy the letter and anyone likely to talk about it.”

  “If an East India Company agent stole the letter, do you think the Company will pass it on to Scindia then?” asked Wellesley.

  “Definitely,” said Malcolm. “Those penny-pinching bastards in Leadenhall Street want to earn favour with him and are terrified of you starting another campaign that would make the Mysore affair look like an economy drive. They want peace, trade and profit. If the Mahrattas are united and strong, they do not believe you would attack them. If they fall apart then they know you and your brother will be on them like wolves, costing the Company a fortune to extend Britain’s interests.”

  “So we need to make sure that the message gets through to other Mahratta chieftains, such as this raja of Berar,” said Wellesley, smiling wolfishly. “We have not got time to wait; my brother wants them beaten before he is recalled.”

  I looked up sharply at that, for the word in the barracks back in Madras was that it was young Arthur, the major general yet to have a victory, who desperately needed war, not his brother, who was seen by everyone apart from Leadenhall Street as having done a good job.

  “Your brother has sent him a sworn witness statement and de Boigne’s ring,” said Malcolm.

  “Yes, but will that be enough?” mused Wellesley.

  I had a nasty feeling about the way this conversation was going and was just about to take my leave and get the hell out of there when that infernal blot Carstairs piped up, “Flashman could tell him about the meeting personally. He has been an agent before in Spain; I am sure he could get through.”

  Dammit, I could have punched him, and to make matters worse I think he genuinely thought he was doing me a favour: giving me another opportunity to earn laurels in my field. I had to stop this idea taking hold, but without losing what little credit I had.

  “Well, obviously I would like to try,” I lied. “But with so much at stake we need to be sure I can succeed. In Spain I could speak the language, but I have only been in India a few weeks and have not had time to learn the customs or any of the languages.”

  “He is right,” agreed Malcolm to Wellesley. Inwardly I sighed with relief for just a second before he added, “He would stand out like a sore thumb on his own. But if we sent a troop of native Rajput cavalry with him then I think he would stand a reasonable chance of getting through.”

  “Hold on,” says I. “Look, I am keen to do what I can, but I am the only witness to that meeting and your brother thinks that trained killers are already on the prowl. Surely if I go roaming around the countryside even with these ‘raj pot’ fellows, I am just making life easier for the other side? Perhaps it would be better for me to sit in Fort St George and write some more witness statements that you could distribute to all the Mahratta princes?”

  If I had to go back then I was going to make damn sure that I was in the hardest place for those killers to find me, but I was cursing the fates that had brought Carstairs across my path. There I was minding my own business, having got myself out of one tight spot, only to be landed in the soup again.

  “Unsupported statements would be seen as weak propaganda and discredit the governor general,” said Malcolm. “I think we need to concentrate on getting Flashman to the raja of Berar. He will have the ring to back up the claim and if we can convince the raja to investigate then we might make a difference. It is risky, though.”

  “Yes, but by risking one life we might save thousands,” said Wellesley.

  I stared in horror as the situation closed in around me. I wanted to scream at them that it was my bloody life they were talking about risking. But it would make no difference arguing now. I would have to find some other way to slip out. The monsoon on the south-east coast of India around Madras would soon be ending, which meant that the port would reopen. I could stow away and then claim the Company had shanghaied me.

  My face was set in grim determination. They were not to know that it was to escape their designs, for I was sure that certain death waited for me there. They assumed the expression was born of my resolve to do my duty, as I toadied up with, “I would be proud to be of service, sir.” Then I added, “I will turn my little caravan around and I should be able to join you in Madras in a few days.” Well, it was worth a try, but they were not falling for that.

  “No, you must come with us at once, sir,” said Wellesley. “Take any necessaries you need and leave your household to follow.”

  An hour later I was galloping down the road back to Madras a lot quicker than I had come up it. Wellesley was riding alone ahead, while I was now in the group of officers behind, with the idiot Carstairs alongside, gushing at what an exciting life I m
ust lead compared to his as a second lieutenant in the dragoons. He explained that Rajputs were a people from north-west India with a fearsome military reputation. “You can rest assured, Flashy, that if they are assigned to protect you, they won’t let you down. Why, every last man will fight to the death.” Well, that was some comfort, but I did not expect assassins to come in a pitched battle; they were more likely to slip in at night and cut your throat quietly before making their escape.

  Chapter 10

  If I had been jumpy before I got to Madras, the news there did not make me feel any better. For all the talk was of a murder, not just any killing but an abduction of a white man who had been taken a mile or so out of the city and there tortured to death. His corpse had been found on the morning of my arrival back in the city. Everyone was speculating on who he was and why he had been killed. His face had been horribly mutilated and various parts of his body cut off while he was still alive, and it was clear he had died in agony. But no person had been reported missing. I entertained the hope that the poor devil might have been mistaken for me somehow and that the killers were now heading home thinking that their mission was complete, but I did not really believe it. I am not that lucky.

  Some of the provosts and a doctor had been out to where the body was found to investigate the killing. I loitered in the adjutant’s office when we arrived. I did not want to go to my bungalow in case it was being watched, or be seen about town. It was better for most people to think I was still on my way to Hyderabad. I was reading some back copies of the Madras Courier when the medical officer came to report.