“It ain’t a reprieve, you know!” cries he.
“What d’ye mean?” says I.
“I mean that it’s still the Union Jack for you, Flashman!” retorts he – the only time, I think, he’d ever used my surname formal-like, and with a sneer he added words he could only have heard from Rudi. “The game ain’t finished yet, play-actor!” Then he snapped something I didn’t catch about how if he had let me fall down the cleft I’d likely have found a way out at the bottom. “So you’ll go the way I choose, d’ye see? When you’re done pukin’ and snivellin’ you’ll get up and take that sabre and stand your ground for a change, my Rugby hero, ’cos if you don’t, I’ll … Wer ist das?”
My wail of protest was drowned by his shouted challenge, and I saw he was staring towards the tunnel mouth, suddenly on his guard, crouched like a great cat – and my heart leaped as I saw why.
Someone was standing just within the tunnel mouth, motionless and silent, a dark figure clad in close-fitting shirt and britches and peaked cap, but too much in shadow for the features to be made out. Seconds passed without reply, and Willem started forward a couple of paces and stopped, shouting again: “Who are you? What d’ye want?”
Still there came no reply, but as the echoes resounded from the cavern walls and died away in whispers, the figure stepped swiftly forward, stooped to retrieve my fallen sabre, and straightened again in a stance that left no doubt of his intentions, for he stood like an epee fighter at rest between bouts, left hand on hip, point inclined downwards above the advanced right foot. Willem swore in astonishment and shot a glance at me, lying bemused and bleeding, but I was as baffled as he – and my hopes were shooting skywards, for this mysterious apparition was Salvation, surely, issuing an unspoken challenge to my oppressor, and I was mustering breath to bawl for help when:
“Speak up, damn you!” cries Willem. “Who are you?” The newcomer said not a word, but tilted up his point in invitation.
“Well enough, then!” cries Willem, and laughed. “Whoever you are, we’ll have two for the price o’ one, what?” And he went in at a run, cutting left and right at the head, but the newcomer side-stepped nimbly, parrying and riposting like an Angelo, so help me, tossing aside the peaked cap to clear his vision – and as the light from above fell full on his features I absolutely cried out in amazement. Either this was all a dream, or the horrors I’d endured had turned my brain, for I was staring at a stark impossibility, a hallucination. The face of the swordsman, fresh and youthful under its mop of auburn curls, was one that I’d last seen smiling wantonly up at me from a lace pillow five years ago: the face of my little charmer of Berlin: Caprice.
It was mad, ridiculous, couldn’t be true, and I was seeing things – until Willem’s startled oath told me I wasn’t. The graceful lines of the figure in its male costume, the dainty shift of the small feet, as much as the pretty little face so unexpectedly revealed, fairly shouted her sex, and he checked in mid-cut and sprang back exclaiming as she came gliding in at speed, boot stamping and point darting at his throat. It was sheer disbelief, not gallantry, that took him aback, for there’s no more chivalry in a Starnberg than there is in me; he recovered in an instant and went on the defensive, for that first lightning exchange when she’d turned his cuts with ease and came after him like a fury, told him that suddenly he was fighting for his life, woman or no.
I couldn’t believe it, but I didn’t care; it was my life in the balance too, and even my wound was forgotten as I watched the shuffling figures and flickering blades, clash-clash and pause, clash-scrape-clash and pause again, but the pauses were of a split second’s duration, for she was fighting full tilt with a speed and energy I’d not have believed was in that slight body, and with a skill to take your breath away. I’m no great judge, and am only as good a cut-and-thruster as the troop-sergeant could make me, but I know an expert when I see one; there’s an assurance of bearing and movement that’s beyond technique, and Caprice had it. When Willem attacked suddenly, hewing to beat her guard down by main force, she stood her ground, feet still and warding his cuts with quick turns of her wrist; when he feinted and bore in at her flank she pivoted like a ballet-dancer, facing me with her back to the lake, and I saw that the girlish face was untroubled; I remembered fencing against Lakshmibai at Jhansi, the lovely fierce mask contorted and teeth gritted as she fought like a striking cobra, but Caprice was almost serene; even when she attacked it was without a change of expression, lips closed, chin up, eyes unwavering on Willem’s, as though all her emotions were concentrated in point and edge.
Once I thought he had her, when her foot slipped, her blade faltered, and he leaped in, smashing at her hilt to force the sabre from her hand, the bully-swordsman’s trick that I favour myself, but he hadn’t the wit or experience to combine it with a left fist to the face and a stamp on the toes, and she escaped by yielding to the blow, dropping to one knee, and rolling away like a gymnast, cutting swiftly as she regained her feet. At that moment a sudden spasm of excruciating pain in my side reminded me of more immediate troubles; my head was swimming with that dizzying weakness that is the prelude to unconsciousness, and in panic I clutched at the oozing gash in my side – dear God, I was lying in a pool of gore, if I fainted now I’d bleed to death. I pressed with all my might, trying to stem the flow, dragging myself up on an elbow with some idiot notion that if I could bend my trunk it would close the wound, and sparing a stricken glance at the combatants.
Joy was followed instantly by dismay. Willem’s left sleeve was bloody where she’d caught him in rolling away, but she was falling back now, and he was after her relentlessly, cutting high and low as she retreated; her speed was deserting her, her strength, so much less than his to begin with, was failing under those hammering strokes. He had a six-inch advantage in height, and as much in reach, and he was making it tell. He was laughing again, harsh and triumphant, and as she circled, all on the defensive now, he spoke for the first time, the words coming out in a breathless snarl: “Drop it, you bitch! Give over … you’re done … damn you!”
My heart sank, for her mouth was open now, panting with sheer weariness, and she fairly ran back several steps to avoid his pursuit, halting flat-footed to parry a cut at her head before breaking away again towards the lake. Another wave of giddiness shook me, I could feel myself going, but as he wheeled and drove in and she was forced to halt, guarding and parrying desperately, I summoned the last of my strength to yell:
“Look out, Starnberg – behind you!”
He never even flinched, let alone looked round, the iron-nerved swine, and as she took a faltering side-step that brought them side-on to me, her blade swept dangerously wide in a hurried parry, exposing her head, and he gave an exultant yell as he cut backhanded at her neck, a finishing stroke that must decapitate her – and she ducked, the blade whistled an inch above her curls, and she was dropping full stretch on her left hand like an Italian, driving her point up at his unprotected front. He recovered like lightning, his sabre sweeping across to save his body, but only at the expense of his sword-arm; her point transfixed it just below the elbow, he shrieked and his sword fell, he tottered back a step … and Caprice came erect like an acrobat, poised on her toes, her point flickered up to his breast, for a moment they were still as statues, and then her knee bent and her arm straightened with academic precision as she deliberately ran him through the heart.
I saw the point come out six inches through his back, vanishing as she withdrew in graceful recovery. Willem took a step, his mouth opening soundlessly, and then he fell sideways down the incline to the lake, rolling into the shallows with barely a ripple, sliding slowly out from the shore, his body so buoyed by the salt water that his limbs floated on the surface while the crimson cloud of blood wreathed down like smoke into the transparent depths beneath him. Half-conscious as I was, I could see his face ever so clear, and I remember ’twasn’t glaring or hanging slack or grinning as corpses often do, but tranquil as a babe’s, eyes closed, like some
sleeping prince in Norse legend.
The cold stone beneath me seemed to be heaving, and my vision was dimming and clearing and dimming in a most alarming way, but I recall that Caprice tossed her sabre into the lake as she turned and ran towards me, calling something in French that I couldn’t make out, and her running shape blurred to a shadow with the light failing behind it, and as the shadow stooped above me the light went out altogether and in the darkness an arm was round my shoulders and fingers were brushing my brow and my face was buried between her bosoms, and my last conscious thought was not of going to find the Great Perhaps, but rather what infernally bad luck to be pegging out at such a moment.
* * *
a “Tomorrow … the day after tomorrow!”
b See Flashman and the Dragon
Chapter 9
I don’t remember asking the question, but it must have been the first thing I uttered as I came to, for Hutton echoed it, and when I’d blinked my eyes clear I saw that he was sitting by me, trying to look soothing, which ain’t easy with a figurehead like his.
“‘Where did she come from?’” says he. “Still in that salt mine, are we? Let it wait, colonel. Best lie quiet a spell.”
“Quiet be damned.” I took in the pleasant little room with the carved wooden eaves beyond the window, the pale sunlight flickering through the curtains, and the cuckoo clock ticking on the whitewashed wall. “Where the devil am I?”
“In bed, for the last four days. In Ischl. Easy, now. You’ve stitches front and rear, and you left more blood in that cave than you’ve got in your veins this minute. The less you talk, the better.”
“I can listen, curse you.” But I sounded feeble, at that, and when I stirred my side pained sharply. “Caprice … how did she come there? Come on, man, tell me.”
“Well, if you must,” says he doubtfully. “Remember, in the casino garden? I said we’d put a cover on you? Well, that was Mamselle. She was behind you every foot o’ the way. Didn’t care for it, myself. I’d ha’ used a man, but our French friend Delzons swore she was the best. Said you and she had worked together before.” He paused. “In Berlin, was it?”
“Unofficial. She was … French secret department.” It was weary work, talking. “I … didn’t know her … capabilities, then.”
“Capable’s the word. Starnberg ain’t the first she’s taken off, Delzons says. Good biznai, that. Saved the hangman a job – and Bismarck a red face. What, his star man a Holnup agent! He’ll be happy to keep that under the rose. And small comfort to him that that same star man had his gas turned off by a dainty little piece from the beauty chorus. Sabres, bigad!” He began to chuckle, but checked himself. “Here, are you up to this, colonel? I can leave it, you know.”
“I ain’t complaining,” says I, but I closed my eyes and lay quiet. My question had been answered, and I was content to be left alone with my thoughts as Hutton closed the door softly after him.
So la petite Caprice, formerly of the Folies, had been my cover. Damned odd – until you reflected, and saw that it wasn’t odd at all. Why, even five years ago, according to Blowitz, she’d been Al in the French secret service, a trained and expert Amazon. I’d known that, in Berlin … but of course I’d never given it a thought during those golden hours in that snug boudoir on the Jager Strasse, when I’d been in thrall to the lovely little laughing face beneath the schoolgirl fringe, the eyes sparkling with mischief … “I must understand your humour, n’est-ce pas? So, le poissonier is a thief – that amuses, does it?” The perfect body in the lace negligée silhouetted in the afternoon sun … languidly astride my hips, trickling smoke down her nostrils … the saucy shrug: “To captivate, to seduce, is nothing – he is only a man” … moist red lips and skilfully caressing fingers in a perfumed bed …
… and the clash of steel echoing in a great stone cavern, the stamp and shuffle of the deadly dance, the reckless gamble of her disarming thrust … and the pretty face set and unsmiling as she killed with cold deliberation.
Aye, a far cry between the two, and middling tough to reconcile them. I’ve known hard women show soft, and soft women turn harpy, but blowed if I remember another who was at such extremes, a giggling feather-brained romp and a practised professional slayer. Thank God for both of ’em, but as I drifted into sleep it was a comforting thought that she wouldn’t be the one fetching my slippers in the long winter evenings.
Remember I said there were two kinds of awakening? My drowsy revival with Hutton had been one of the good ones, but next morning’s was even better, for while I was still weak as a Hebrew’s toddy I was chipper in mind with all perils past, and eager for news. Hutton brought a brisk sawbones who peered and prodded at my stitches, dosed me with jalup, refused my demand for brandy to take away the taste, but agreed that I might have a rump steak instead of the beef tea which they’d been spooning into me in my unconscious state. I told Hutton to make it two, with a pint of beer, and when I’d attended to them and was propped up among my pillows, pale and interesting, he elaborated on what he’d already told me.
“She was on your tail, at a safe distance, from the moment you and Starnberg set off for the lodge, and talked yourselves in – neat scheme of Bismarck’s, that. Then when night came, Delzons and I and our four lads joined her in the woods – a skeleton crew, you may say, but ain’t we always, damn the Treasury? We picketed the place as best we could, and near midnight Delzons and his Frogs, who were on the side away from the town, heard fellows skulking down from the hill, and guessed they were Holnups come to call. He and his two men sat tight, while Mamselle trailed ’em close to the house –”
“Good God, he let her go alone?”
“She’s a stalker – Delzons’ fellows call her Le Chaton, French for kitten, I’m told. Some kitten. Anyway, there were three Holnups, gone to ground under a bush, whispering away, and she slid close enough to gather that they were an advance guard, so to speak, and there were others up the hill. Then comes a whistle from near the house, and who should it be but friend Starnberg, summoning the three Holnups, if you please. Here’s a go, thinks Mamselle, and follows ’em in, to eavesdrop. She must,” says Hutton in wonder, “be a bloody Mohawk, that girl. From what she heard, Starnberg was plainly a wrong ’un, but before she could slip back to Delzons to report, you came in view and went for him. The row brought the Emperor’s sentries, and all at once there was a battle royal, with more Holnups arriving – we heard it all, but in the dark there was nothing to be done. Mamselle kept her head, though, and when Starnberg’s gang brushed off, carrying you along, she stuck to her task, which was to cover you, whatever happened.” He paused to ask: “How had you discovered that Starnberg was a bent penny?”
“Tampered cartridges. Ne’er mind that now. What then?”
“She dogged ’em into the hills a few miles, first to a steiger’sa hut at the foot o’ the mountain, where they rested a spell. Then they put you on a stretcher and went up the mountain to the mouth of the salt-mine. She judged it best not to follow ’em in, but lay up in the rocks nearby, and about dawn the whole crew, as near as she could judge, came out with their dunnage and scattered – but no sign of you and Starnberg, which she couldn’t figure … neither can I. What was he about?”
“Settling a score. With me. In his own peculiar way.”
He frowned. “I don’t follow.”
“You don’t have to. It don’t matter.” It was none of his business to know about Rudi long ago, or Willem’s rum behaviour, killing me one moment, saving me the next. “Nothing to do with this affair, Hutton. A personal grudge, you could call it. Go on.”
He gave me a hard look, but continued. “Well, she waited a while. Then she went in. Nick o’ time, by the sound of it … but you know more than I do about that. She settled Starnberg, plugged the leak in you as best she could, and then ran hell-for-leather down the hill, seven or eight miles, to the rendezvous we’d fixed on beforehand. Delzons and I and a couple of our lads went back with her to the mine. I thought you were a
goner, but Mamselle put a few stitches in you from the first-aid kit, and after dark we brought you down here to our bolt-hole. She’s nursed you these past few days, too. Regular little Nightingale.” He shook his head in admiration. “She’s a trump and a half, colonel. Blessed if I ever saw a female like her. Smiling sweet and pretty as a peach … and she bowled out Starnberg! How the dooce did she do it?”
“Nerve,” says I. “And by being a better fencer than he was. Where is she?”
“At the moment, Ischl police station. With Delzons, helping the Austrians trace the Holnup fugitives. Doubt if they’ll catch any. No general alarm, you see. Oh, there was a fine hue and cry after you and Starnberg at first. But Delzons and I had our cyphers away to London and Paris soon after, the whole tale, Starnberg and all. That set the wires sparking to Berlin and Vienna.” His lean face twisted in a sour grin. “Never knew our Foreign Office could shift so spry, but once they’d telegraphed our Vienna embassy, and the Frogs’, and our ambassadors had requested an urgent audience with the Emperor in person … well, silence fell. No more hue and cry for you. London directed me to call on the governor of Upper Austria, no less, and assure him of our entire discretion. God knows what Franz-Josef thought of our presumption – and Bismarck’s – in saving his life behind his back. But not a word’s being said publicly. The Austrian peelers have been advised to treat us and Delzons’ people as tourists. So presently we can all go home. Job well done.”
He clapped his hands on his knees with finality and stood up, taking a turn to the window. “No question of you making a report. Not officially on service. But I’d be glad of your views on a couple o’ things …” He cleared his throat. “This Princess Kralta – what about her?”
The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection Page 424