""Where the wicked cease from troubling,' eh," says I, because it seemed appropriate.
"Is that an English saying?" he asked.
"I think it's a hymn." If I remember rightly, we used to sing it in chapel at Rugby before the miscreants of the day got flogged.
"All holy songs are made of dreams," says he. "And this is a great place for dreams, such as mine. You know where we are, Englishman?" He pointed along the dusty track, which wound in and out of the little sand-hills, and then ran like a yellow ribbon across the plain before it forked towards the great white barrier of the Afghan mountains. "This is the great Pathway of Expectation, as the hill people say, where you may realize your hopes just by hoping them. The Chinese call it the Baghdad Highway, and the Persians and Hindus know it as the Silk Trail, but we call it the Golden Road." And he quoted a verse which, with considerable trouble, I've turned into rhyming English:
To learn the age-old lesson day by day: It is not in the bright arrival planned,
But in the dreams men dream along the way, They find the Golden Road to Samarkand.
"Very pretty," says I. "Make it up yourself?"
He laughed. "No—it's an old song, perhaps Firdausi or Omar. Anyway, it will take me to Kashgar—if I live long enough. But here are the others, and here we say farewell. You were my guest, sent to me from heaven: touch upon my hand in parting."
So we shook, and then the others arrived, and Kutebar was gripping me by the shoulders in his great bear-hug and shouting: "God be with you, Flashman—and my compliments to the scientists and doctors in Anglistan." And Ko Dali's daughter approached demurely to give me the gift of her scarf and kiss me gently on the lips—and just for an instant the minx's tongue was half-way down my throat before she withdrew, looking like St Cecilia. Yakub Beg shook hands again and wheeled his horse.
"Goodbye, blood brother. Think of us in England. Come and visit us in Kashgar some day—or better still, find a Kashgar of your own!"
And then they were thundering away back on the Samarkand road, cloaks flying, and Kutebar turning in the saddle to give me a wave and a roar. And it's odd—but for a moment I felt lonely, and wondered if I should miss them. It was a deeply-felt sentimental mood which lasted for at least a quarter of a second, and has never returned, I'm happy to say. As to Kashgar, and Yakub's invitation—well, if I could get guaranteed passports from the Tsar, and the Empress of China, and every hill-chief between Astrakhan and Lake Baikal, and a private Pullman car the whole way with running buffet, bar, and waitresses in constant attendance—I might think quite hard about it before declining. I've too many vivid memories of Central Asia; at my time of life Scarborough is far enough east for me.
It was strange, though, to go back into Afghanistan again, with my escort—heaven knows where Yakub had got 'em from, but one look at their wolfish faces and well-stuffed cartridge belts reassured me that this was one party that no right-minded badmash would dream of attacking. It took us a week over the Hindu-Killer, and another couple of days through the hills to Kabul—and suddenly there was the old Bala Hissar again, and I sat in disbelief looking across to the overgrown orchards where Elphy Bey's cantonment had been, so many years ago, and the Kabul River, and the hillside where Akbar had spread his carpet and McNaghten had died—I could close my eyes and almost hear the drums of the 44th beating "Yankee Doodle" and old Lady Sale berating some unfortunate bearer for brewing tea before the water was thoroughly boiling.
I even took a turn up by the ruined Residency, and found my heart beating faster as I looked at the bullet-pocked walls, and marked the window where Broadfoot had tumbled to his death—and from there I turned and tried to find the spot where the Ghazis had set on me and the Burnes brothers, but I couldn't find it.
It was strange—everything the same and yet different. I stood looking round at the close-packed houses, and wondered in which one Gul Shah had tried to murder me with his infernal snakes—and at that I found myself shivering and hurrying back to the market where my escort were waiting: sometimes ghosts can hover in too close for comfort. I didn't want to linger in Kabul any longer, and to the astonishment of my escort I insisted that we journey on to Peshawar by the north bank of the Kabul River although, as the leader pointed out, there was a fine road by way of Boothak and Jallalabad to the south.
"There are serais, huzoor," says he, "and all comfort for us and our beasts—this way is broken country, where we must lie out by night in the cold. Truly, the south road is better."
"My son," says I, "when you were a chotah wallah*(*Little fellow.) gurgling your mother's milk, I travelled that south road, and I didn't like it one little bit. So we'll stick to the river, if you don't mind."
"Aye-ee!" says he, grinning with his jagged teeth. "Perchance you owe money to someone in Jallalabad?"
"No," says I, "not money. Lead on, friend of all travellers—to the river."
So that way we went, and cold it was by night, but I didn't have nightmares, waking or sleeping, all the way to the Khyber and the winding road down to Peshawar, where I said goodbye to my escort and rode under the arch where Avitabile used to hang the Gilzais, and so into the presence of a young whipper-snapper of a Company ensign.
"A very good day to you, old boy," says I. "I'm Flashman."
He was a fishy-looking, fresh young lad with a peeling nose, and he goggled at me, going red.
"Sergeant!" he squeaks. "What's this beastly-looking nigger doing on the office verandah?" For I was attired a la Kizil Kum still, in cloak and pyjamys and puggaree, with a bigger beard than Dr Grace.
"Not at all," says I, affably, "I'm English—a British officer, in fact. Name of Flashman—Colonel Flashman, 17th Lancers, but slightly detached for the moment. I've just come from—up yonder, at considerable personal expense, and I'd like to see someone in authority. Your commanding officer will do."
"It's a madman!" cries he. "Sergeant, stand by!"
And would you believe it, it took me half an hour before I could convince him not to throw me in the lock-up, and he summoned a peevish-looking captain, who listened, nodding irritably while I explained who and what I was. "Very good," says he. "You've come from Afghanistan?"
"By way of Afghanistan, yes. But -"
"Very good. This is a customs post, among other things. Have you anything to declare?"
[The end of the fourth packet of the Flashman Papers].
Appendix I
Balaclava
So much has been written about this battle, by its survivors, by journalists and historians, and even by propagandists and poets, that it is hardly necessary to say more than that Flashman's account, while it adds certain graphic details that have not been recorded hitherto, agrees substantially with other eyewitness descriptions. Much of what he says of the actual charge of the Light Brigade, for example, may be verified by comparison with the accounts of those who survived the action, such as Paget, Trooper Farquharson, Captain Morgan, Cardigan, and others.
But the great controversy of Balaclava, which will probably never be settled satisfactorily, is why the Light Brigade attacked the battery at all. Experts and amateurs of history alike, who have read Russell, Kinglake, Woodham-Smith, Fortescue and a host of others, and who are familiar with the points of view of Raglan, Lucan, and Cardigan, may decide for themselves whether Flashman casts valuable light on the subject or not. Many believe that Raglan and Airey were principally at fault for issuing an imprecise order, that Nolan's excitement in transmitting it to Lucan led to the final fatal confusion, and that neither Cardigan nor Lucan can be fairly blamed for what followed. These are conclusions with which Flashman himself would obviously not disagree. The whole question hinges dramatically on the moment when Nolan made his wild gesture (down the valley? towards the redoubts? how great was the angle of difference anyway? did he say "our guns" or "your guns" or what?) and if he was at fault, he paid the highest price for it. So too, perhaps, did Raglan; he died in the Crimea, like the six hundred sabres, and if there was a blunder, it was buried with them.