The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  Nothing was said, though, about my “bonnyfydes” as we returned to the Golden Ship, Kralta on my arm murmuring thanks that I hadn’t been molested, and Willem snapping impatiently at Beefy who brought up the rear with his head in a sling. I gathered from their half-heard conversation that Beefy was lamenting the loss of a lock of hair belonging to some bint called Leni which he’d carried in the back of his watch, and getting scant sympathy; Prussians, you know, care not two dams about their inferiors. Neither do I, but I know it’s good business to pretend that I do, and looked in on Beefy before retiring to lay a consoling hand on his thick skull; he just gaped like a ruptured bullock.

  Being in the throes of fearful depression, I galloped Kralta in a fine frenzy that night, and afterwards fell into a brief nightmare in which Hutton dragged me through the bracken-filled corridors of a great gloomy lodge which turned first into Whampoa’s house in Singapore, and then into the Jotunberg dungeons, where Ignatieff was lurking unseen with a shotgun, and Rudi was pursuing me with a blood-stained sabre, and somewhere Charity Spring was roaring: “Stolen your girl’s hair, has he? Nothing’s safe from the son-of-a-bitch! Aha, but we’ll have him presently, rari nantes in gurgite vasto,b and be damned to him!” for now I was drowning in the Jotunsee with Narreeman the nautch-dancer strangling me, and then her sneering mask of a face turned into Kralta’s, and I woke to find her clinging to me, fast asleep, and my body lathered in sweat.

  That was the end of sleep for me. I lay shuddering at the thought of what was to do next day, and even another tupping of the half-drowsing Kralta didn’t settle me. To be forced into Bismarck’s madness by my own people was the crowning unfairness, and I found myself hating Hutton and all his works with a white-hot ferocity. All very well for him, running Gladstone’s errands and skulking in safety while poor inoffensive poltroons like me had to contend with murderous maniacs in defence of some useless Hapsburg idiot who knew no better than to give his women social diseases. What galled me more than anything was the knowledge that Hutton and his gang absolutely enjoyed their nefarious work – they found two more of his victims plundered insensible in alleys next morning, would you believe it? Pity the traps hadn’t caught him red-handed; ten years of skilly and fetters would have done him a power of good.

  * * *

  a See Flashman in the Great Game

  b Swimming dispersedly in the vasty deep. – Virgil

  Chapter 7

  One of the lessons that I’d impress on young chaps is this: if you want to pull a bluff, do it with your might, no half-measures. However unlikely the ploy, if your neck is brazen enough, it’s odds on you’ll get away with it. Take the time I was caught in flagrante in a Calcutta hotel by an outraged husband, and sold him on the idea that I was a doctor sounding her chest, or the occasion when they found me climbing through Jefferson Davis’s skylight and I pretended I was a workman come to fix his lightning-rod. A moment’s guilty hesitation, and I’d have been done for; indignant astonishment at being interfered with saw me through. But I’ve never done better than Willem von Starnberg in Franz-Josef’s woods above Ischl; that was a bravura performance, and would have been a pleasure to witness if I hadn’t been writhing in pain after he’d dam’ near broken my leg. His father would have been proud of him.

  We’d risen well before dawn and made a hurried breakfast – schnapps, mostly, for me, in a futile attempt to steady my nerves – and Kralta was on hand to bid the warriors farewell. Her cheek was like ice when she kissed me, but her lips were hungry enough, and there was moisture in the cold blue eyes and strain showing on the long proud face. She was anxious for me, you see, the besotted little aristo – it’s remarkable how even the most worldly of women can be rendered maudlin by Adam’s arsenal. Willem was impatient to be off, and it was more to annoy him than to comfort her that I folded her in a lingering embrace, squeezing her bottom as I assured her that we’d be back in fine trim in a day or two, and then Vienna, ha-ha!

  The sun was not yet up, and autumn mist was wreathing over the waters of the Ischl as we crossed the bridges, deserted at that hour, and mounted the slope towards the woods, skirting well to the right of the royal lodge, which lay silent among its surrounding trees; a cock was crowing somewhere, the dew was thick on the short grass, and there was that tang in the nostrils that comes only at daybreak. We were attired as tourist walkers, in tweeds, boots and gaiters, Willem carrying a rucksack and I a flask and sandwich-case, and it was only when we had reached the higher woods and paused to look back at the lodge, and beyond and beneath it the distant roofs of Ischl town, gilded now by the first rays of the rising sun, that it struck me I was without one necessary item of equipment. When, I asked, was I to be armed for the fray?

  “Not yet awhile,” smiles Willem. “Remember that presently you’re going to be a limping invalid, who’s sure to be examined by a doctor, and we don’t want him blundering through your clobber and finding the likes of these, do we?” He opened the rucksack to display two revolvers, a Webley and a LeVaux. “I like an English piece myself, but the LeVaux’s neat enough for your pocket and fires a .45 slug, guaranteed to give any marauder the deuce of a bellyache. Take your choice.”

  Without thinking, I indicated the LeVaux … and so saved my life, and Franz-Josef’s, and heaven knows how many million other lives as well. If I’d chosen the Webley, Europe would probably have gone to war in ’83. Think I’m stretching? Wait and see.

  “We’ll have twenty rounds apiece,” says Willem, stowing away the guns. “If we need more … then we shall also need the Austrian army.” His impatience had gone now that we were under way, and he was in that insufferably jocular mood that his father had affected whenever dirty work was imminent. “Now, ’twill be curtain up in a little while, so let’s rehearse our cues, shall we?”

  We found a dry fallen tree trunk in the margin of the woods, and he repeated in detail the mad procedure which he’d described on the train, and again at the Golden Ship. It still sounded devilish chancy – suppose Franz-Josef hadn’t got up this morning, or didn’t invite us to stay, what then? I asked. He shook his head as at a mistrustful child, and was just assuring me patiently that it would all fall out precisely as the genius Otto had forecast, when from somewhere in the woods above us there came the distant sound of a gunshot.

  “There, you see!” cries he, springing afoot. “Our royal host is doin’ the local chamois a piece of no good!”

  “How d’ye know it’s him? It might be anyone!”

  “It might be the Aston Villa brake-club picnic, but I doubt it! In the Emperor’s personal woods?” He swung up his rucksack and plunged into the trees. “Come on!”

  We pushed rapidly uphill into the woods, down into a little hollow, and up again over a steep stony place, and now there came two shots in quick succession, much closer and off to our left.

  “Wait here!” says Willem, and was off into the undergrowth at a run. I breathed myself against a tree, debating whether to rush blindly downhill away from this fatal nonsense, remembered Hutton and the Queen, and stood there sweating and gnashing my teeth – and here he was again, face alight with unholy joy, slithering towards me over the fallen leaves and needles.

  “Eureka! He’s there, large as life, havin’ a smoke while his loader measures the horns of some dead beast which I suppose he’s shot! Couldn’t be better!” He caught me by the shoulder. “Now’s the hour, Harry my boy! This is where you rick your ankle, and I holler for help! Ready?”

  “You’re raving mad!” says I, through chattering teeth. “You and Bismarck both – oh, Christ!”

  For the swine had fetched me a sudden shattering kick above the ankle, and I went down in agony, fairly writhing on the leaves as I clutched my injured limb and damned him to Hell and beyond. It was as though I’d been shot – and he stepped over me, measured his distance, and kicked me savagely again, in almost the same place.

  “If you’ve hurt yourself, the medico’s got to have somethin’ to look at, you know!” grins
he. “Not so loud, you ass, or they’ll think you’re dyin’! Groan, and try to look gallantly long-sufferin’!”

  I was too dizzy with pain to do anything but curse and weep, and now he was away again, yelling “Helfen, mein Herr!” while I tried to pull myself up by a tree, wrenching at my gaiter-buttons and sock to reveal an ankle that was grazed bloody and already turning blue. God, had he broken it? I nursed the injury with both hands, feeling it beginning to puff and swell, and now footsteps were approaching, Willem’s voiced raised in concern.

  “… caught his leg between two stones, I think. I don’t believe it’s broken, but too badly wrenched to walk, I fear. On the first day of our expedition, too!”

  “You say your friend is an Englishman?” It was a deep voice, curiously flat and deliberate.

  “Why, yes, an Army acquaintance. Neither of us has been to the Saltzkammergut before, you see, and we planned … ah, here he is! How is it, Harry? I say, it looks bad!” He turned to his companion. “By the way, I am Count Willem von Starnberg … Herr …?” He finished on a question, the cunning young bastard, letting on that he didn’t know whom he was addressing, and I gritted my teeth and tried to act up, noting as I did so that it was a good job there were no Highland regiments in the Austrian service, for the Emperor Franz-Josef would have looked abominable in a kilt, with those knobbly knock-knees looking like knuckle-ends between his woollen stockings and his little black lederhosen. He wore a shooting jacket and a ridiculous hat with a feather, but there was nothing clownish about the austere frowning face with its heavy whiskers as he stooped to survey my damage. Nothing sympathetic, either, just bovine serious.

  “It needs attention,” was the royal diagnosis. “Can you walk, sir?”

  There must be an actor buried in me, for as Willem bent to help me, and I met Franz-Josef’s heavy stare, I fairly gaped wide-eyed and made as though to scramble up.

  “My God!” I croaked. “Your majesty! I … I …” Babble, babble, babble, while Willem looked suitably startled and clicked his heels, and Franz-Josef made another of his lightning deductions.

  “You know me?”

  Didn’t I just, though, begging his pardon, introducing myself with profuse apologies for coming adrift in his coverts, doffing my tile while Willem did likewise, bowing like a clockwork doll while Franz-Josef registered amazement by blinking thoughtfully.

  “The officer of Mexico!” says he. “You are he who attempted to save my unhappy brother. I invested you with the Order of Maria Theresa, at Corfu, was it not?”

  After that, it was old home week with a vengeance, with Franz-Josef nodding gravely, Willem protesting that we were a hellish nuisance, All-Highest, and wouldn’t have dreamed of intruding if we’d only known, Flashy clinging gamely to his tree, and presently even more gamely to the stalwart back of the loader, who was summoned to tote me downhill. I lay there, breathing in his aroma of rifle-oil and cow-dung, wondering what the harvest might be, and Willem walked ahead with Franz-Josef, making deferential noises of gratitude and apology, and to my astonishment making his majesty laugh – say that for the Starnbergs, they could charm birds from the trees when they wanted to, and by the time we reached the lodge the Emperor of Austria was positively jocose, issuing orders to flying minions, and not going off to change his ghastly breeks until he had seen me installed on a couch in a gun-room, with servitors rallying round with hot water and cold compresses, and Willem chivvying them aside while he attended to my bandages himself.

  “We’re there,” he murmured softly. “He knows my family, by name, anyway.” I could have said that if he’d known any more of the Starnbergs than that, we’d have been on our way to gaol this minute, but held my peace. “Play up when the doctor comes, mind.”

  Which I did, with Willem and Franz-Josef, now respectable in a suit, standing by. The sawbones was a plump little cove with gooseberry eyes and trailing whiskers who prodded my injury and pronounced it ugly, but seemed to think I ought to be able to hobble. Capital, thinks I, there’ll be no reason to offer us houseroom, and we can scuttle back to Ischl and let the Holnup have a free run, but Willem had the answer to that, rot him.

  “Your thigh wound, remember,” says he, very sober. “A serious injury from my friend’s Afghan days,” he assured the doctor, “which reacts to any distemper in the limb. Why, Harry, you were laid up for a week in Scotland, I recall, when you’d done no more than stub your toe!”

  Observe the guile of it: he knew that if anything appealed to Franz-Josef it was an honourable scar; he was soldier-daft and had himself risked life and limb with extraordinary stupidity during his various campaigns – all of which he’d lost, by the way. So now you find Flashy lying trowserless while the doctor goggled at the impressive scar on my thigh, and the knee wound I’d taken at Harper’s Ferry, and even the hole in my buttock where the slave catchers shot me while crossing the frozen Ohio, with Willem murmuring to an impressed Franz-Josef that this wasn’t the half of it, you ought to see the rest of the bugger’s carcase, not an inch of it whole, I assure your majesty, hell of a life the boy’s led, honestly. Or words to that effect.

  The Emperor shook his head in respectful wonder, and the linseed lancer, taking his cue, muttered about secondary reaction and delayed muscular lesions; it might well be, he opined, that even a minor contusion might render a limb temporarily incapable. At which Willem played his master-stroke.

  “Well, old feller, I can see we’ll just have to carry you down to Ischl! Is the thigh very painful? Ne’er mind, I’ll whistle up a chair or something, and a few handy chaps … if your majesty,” says he, with another bow and heel-click, “will be gracious enough to allow my friend to rest here while I make arrangements … no more than an hour … profound apologies … great imposition … there, there, old chap, just bite on something …”

  It would have had Scrooge piping his eye. Franz-Josef glowered at the doctor and said it would be unwise to move me, surely, and the poultice-walloper agreed that it would be nothing short of bloody reckless. Richtig, announced Franz-Josef, then the gentleman stays here, at least until he can walk without difficulty, so fall in the loyal attendants.

  Willem’s protests were pretty to hear, but Franz-Josef wouldn’t even listen. Unthinkable that I should be moved in my present state. It would be a privilege to entertain so gallant an officer, to whom his majesty was already indebted for services to the royal family. Count Starnberg must remain also. If my injury permitted, we would give the Emperor the pleasure of our company at dinner. In the meantime, affairs required his attendance elsewhere.

  By this time I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever walk again, and it was with some relief that I discovered, after I’d been borne upstairs between two servants and left in a comfortable chamber overlooking the garden, that I could move without the least difficulty, and was none the worse except for an uncomfortable bruise. Willem suggested that I should recover sufficiently to hobble by dinner-time. “We’re goin’ to be afoot tonight,” says he, “and it wouldn’t do for you to be encountered walkin’ if you were meant to be bed-bound, you poor old cripple, you.” He was in bouncy fettle, inviting me to admire the way everything had gone exactly according to plan, pacing up and down with his cigarette-holder at a jaunty angle. “A heavy limp, I think, with the aid of a stick. Too late for F-J to turn us out of doors now, what?”

  I asked how on earth he’d known so much about my wounds, and received his superior grin. “You can’t get it into your head, can you? Bismarck has a genius for detail – why, I know as much about your battle scars as you do!” He reached suddenly to tousle my hair, curse him. “Got yourself scalped by Indians in the wild and woolly west, even! Oh, yes,” says the insolent pup, “I’ve seen a dossier on you that I’ll bet contains things you’ve forgotten – perhaps never knew. You’ve been about, though – my stars, I hope I’ll see half as much by the end of the day.” He shook his handsome head, and the admiring look of our first meeting was back again.

  “The guv’n
or was right – you’re the complete hand and no mistake. On that train, there you were, wonderin’ what the dooce you’d fallen into, ensnared by a sinister adventuress, menaced by a bravo with a pistol – but did you cry havoc, or bluster, or vow to have the law on us? Well, once – and then mum as an oyster, figurin’ chances, listenin’ and bidin’ your time. I didn’t trust you an inch, then; Kralta did, though, and she’s no fool, even if she is spoony about you. But it took that business of Gunther gettin’ scragged at the casino to convince me – then I knew you must be with us!” He grinned, tongue in cheek. “And it ain’t for Franz-Josef or the good o’ the peace, is it? It’s just for devilment!” He slapped his knee, merry as a maggot. “I like you, Harry, shot if I don’t! And we’ll have some fun together, just you wait and see!”

  He sprang up and tossed his cigarette into the fireplace. “Now then, I’m goin’ to take a scout about, get the lie of the land and find out who does what and goes where and when and why. Rub an acquaintance with the aides, if I can, and take a professional interest in this sergeant and his file of sentinels.” This with a knowing wink. “You lie and rest your mangled pin, and when I come back we can discuss ways and means, eh?” He chewed his lip and tapped another gasper on his thumbnail, looking keen. “D’ye know, I’ve a notion tonight is goin’ to be the night! Can’t tell why – just an instinct. You ever feel that sort of thing?”