So I looked out Sergeant Hudson, who had been with me at Mogala, and was as reliable as he was stupid. I told him I wanted twelve picked lancers formed into a special detail under my command -
not my Gilzais, for in the pre-sent state of the country I doubted whether they would be prepared to get their throats cut on my behalf.
The twelve would make as good an escort as I could hope for, and when the time came for the army to founder, we could cut loose and make Jallalabad on our own. I didn't tell Hudson this, of course, but explained that this troop and I would be employed on the march as a special messenger corps, since orders would be forever passing up and down the column. I told Elphy the same thing, and added that we could also act as mounted scouts and general busybodies. He looked at me like a tired cow.
"This will be dangerous work, Flashman," says he. "I fear it will be a perilous journey, and this will expose you to the brunt of it."
"Never say die, sir," says I, very manful. "We'll come through, and anyway, there ain't an Afghan of the lot of them that's a match for me."
"Oh, my boy," says he, and the silly old bastard began piping his eye. "My boy! So young, so valiant! Oh, England," says he, looking out of the window, "what dost thou not owe to thy freshest plants! So be it, Flashman. God bless you."
I wanted rather more insurance than that, so I made certain that Hudson packed our saddlebags with twice as much hardtack as we would need; supplies were obviously going to be short, and I believed in getting our blow in first. In addition to the lovely little white mare I had taken from Akbar, I picked out another Afghan pony for my own use; if one mount sank I should have the other.
These were the essentials for the journey, but I had an eye to the luxuries as well. Confined to the cantonment? as we were, I had not had a woman for an age, and I was getting peckish. To make it worse, in that Christmas week a messenger had come through from India with mails; among them was a letter from Elspeth. I recognised the handwriting, and my heart gave a skip; when I opened it I got a turn, for it began, "To my most beloved Hector," and I thought, by God, she's cheating on me, and has sent me the wrong letter by mistake. But in the second line was a reference to Achilles, and another to Ajax, so I under-stood she was just addressing me in terms which she accounted fitting for a martial paladin; she knew no better. It was a common custom at that time, .in the more roman-tic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark.
It was a commonplace enough letter, I suppose, with news that she and my father were well, and that she was Desolate without her True Love, and Counted the Hours till my Triumphant Return from the Cannon's Mouth, and so on. God knows what young women think a soldier does for a living. But there was a good deal about how she longed to clasp me in her arms, and pillow my head on her breast, and so on (Elspeth was always rather forthright, more so than an English girl would have been), and thinking about that same breast and the spirited gallops we had taken together, I began to get feverish. Closing my eyes, I could imagine her soft, white body, and Fetnab's, and Josette's, and what with dreaming to this tune I rapidly reached the point where even Lady Sale would have had to cut and run for it if she had happened to come within reach.
However, I had my eye on younger game, in the excellent shape of Mrs Parker, the merry little wife of a captain in the 5th Light Cavalry. He was a serious, doting fellow, about twenty years older than she, and as fondly in love as only a middle-aged man with a young bride can be.
Betty Parker was pretty enough, in a plump way, but she had buck teeth, and if there had been Afghan women to hand I would hardly have looked at her. With Kabul City out of all bounds there was no hope of that, so I went quickly to work in that week after Christmas.
I could see she fancied me, which was not surprising in a woman married to Parker, and I took the opportunity at one of Lady Sale's evenings - for the old dragon kept open house in those days, to show that whoever was dismayed, she was full of spirit - to play loo with Betty and some others, and press knees with her beneath the table.
She didn't seem to mind by half, so I tested the ground further later on; I waited till I could find her alone, and gave her tits a squeeze when she least expected it. She jumped, and gasped, but since she didn't swoon I guessed that all was well and would be better.
The trouble was Parker. There was no hope of doing anything while we remained in Kabul, and he was sure to stick close as a mother hen on the march. But chance helped me, as she always does if you keep your wits about you, although she ran it pretty fine and it was not until a couple of days before we were due to depart that I succeeded in removing the inconvenient husband.
It was at one of those endless discussions in Elphy's office, where everything under the sun was talked about and nothing done. In between deciding that our men must not be allowed to wear rags round their legs against the snow as the Afghans did to keep off frost-bite, and giving instructions what fodder should be carried along for his fox-hounds, Elphy Bey suddenly remembered that he must send the latest instructions about our departure to Nott at Kandahar. It would be best, he said, that General Nott should have the fullest intelligence of our movements, and Mackenzie, coming as near to showing impatience as I ever knew him, agreed that it was proper that one half of the British force in Afghanistan should know what the other half was doing.
"Excellent," says Elphy, looking pleased, but not for long. "Who shall we send to Kandahar with the despatches?" he wondered, worrying again.
"Any good galloper will do," says Mac.
"No, no," says Elphy, "he must be a man in whom we can repose the most perfect trust. An officer of experience is required," and he went rambling on about maturity and judgement while Mac drummed his fingernails on his belt.
I saw a chance here; ordinarily I never intruded an opinion, being junior and not caring a damn anyway, but now I asked if I might say a word.
"Captain Parker is a steady officer," says I, "if it ain't out of place for me to say so. And he's as sure in the saddle as I am, sir."
"Didn't know that," says Mac. "But if you say he's a horseman, he must be. Let it be Parker, then," says he to Elphy.
Elphy hummed a bit. "He is married, you know, Mackenzie. His wife would be deprived of his sustaining presence on our journey to India, which I fear may be an arduous one." The old fool was always too considerate by half. "She will be a prey to anxiety for his safety ..."
"He'll be as safe on the road to Kandahar as anywhere," says Mac. "And he'll ride all the harder there and back. The fewer loving couples we have on this march the better."
Mac was a bachelor, of course, one of these iron men who are married to the service and have their honeymoon with a manual of infantry drill and a wet towel round their heads; if he thought sending off Parker would cut down the number of loving couples he was going to be mistaken; I reckoned it would increase it.