We had backed into the corner, my heart and my mind were racing. I had some coins I could throw them and we could try to dart past but something told me that these were not common muggers. Scarface stopped again just six yards off and watched us as though weighing up how to attack. As Jasmine took in another big breath to scream the big accomplice pulled out a cosh and with a swift blow…laid scarface out cold on the ground.
“Evenin Guvnor, you looked like you needed some ‘elp” said a grinning Achmed taking off a broad brimmed hat that had kept his face in shadow.
I could have wept with relief. It turned out that knowing how rowdy the gardens could get Mustapha had sent Achmed to keep an eye on Jasmine. He did not want any former clients seeing her and thinking they could take liberties when she was out with the quality, as he put it.
Achmed escorted us out of the gardens and into a carriage. What with the relief that danger was passed and the fact that I had been with Jasmine all evening without anything more than a quick fondle, I was feeling monstrously horny. I decided we would return to my rooms together. It would be nice to enjoy each other and some privacy in my own new home, a bit like we were a proper couple. I asked Achmed to tell Mustafa to expect Jasmine back in the morning and then we set off for a night of passion that had Mrs Partridge repeatedly banging her broom on the floorboards below us and telling us to keep the noise down.
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Chapter 7
I suppose that we have all woken up at some point in our lives in an unpleasant manner. With a massive hangover in a provost’s cell or remembering you have goosed the General’s daughter and your career is ruined or even in a strange bed with a hideous old trot and desperately hoping that you haven’t mounted her, or at least that you will never remember it if you had. I’ve done ‘em all and plenty more besides but for shear horror none compare with the way I was awoken next morning. Those memories have stayed fresh and raw in my memory all my life for reasons that will be clear later in my tale. Aye and when I have woken up to all those other ghastly situations, well at least I have been able to roll over and think ‘it could be worse.’
It was the suddenness of it that hit me the hardest. Normally consciousness comes on you in waves, one memory after another and you have time to adjust, but back then I am still not sure what hit me first. One moment I was blissfully unconscious, sleeping with a beautiful naked girl in my arms and a second later I was gibbering in terror. Thinking back it must have been the twitching of Jasmine that started to wake me, I have a vague recollection of her clutching at me and her leg drumming against the bed but I might have imagined that. Then before my eyes were open I became aware of something warm and wet on my chest and shoulder and only then did I feel the prick of a sharp blade at my throat.
My eyes opened then all right, to find that evil scared face from the night before leaning over me.
“You just keep quiet boy or you will get the same treatment” he said. It was dawn and the curtains were thin and so the room was filled with a dull grey light that made him look even more sinister, but I still did not understand. Then with the knife still against my neck I twisted my head slightly to look at my beautiful Jasmine. Her eyes were closed as if still asleep but her body was still twitching and then as I looked down further I saw it. Beneath her sweet red lips and proud chin on her slender throat was a hideous red gaping gash. Her throat had been cut and between us we were covered in blood that was still pulsing from her body. From my neck down all I could see was blood on our bodies and soaked through the sheet which covered us.
“Ooh” was all I could say as I looked on that sight. I was struggling to comprehend in the second or so I had been conscious what was happening. Scarface then spoke again although I only remembered the words later when thinking back.
“Now you are going to give me the paper Wickham…”
The reason that I did not listen at the time and why the sentence was never completed was because Jasmine suddenly opened her eyes and looked at me. In this charnel house of horror she was still alive.
That hideous moment brought me to my senses or perhaps took me further away from them as I ignored the knife at my own throat and just erupted from the bed shouting. One moment I was in the bed, the next there was a flurry of blood soaked sheet and I was on the floor on the opposite side of the bed from Scarface, scrabbling under the pillow. It was instinct I don’t remember consciously thinking about the horse pistol until the great big thing was in my hands and both my thumbs were hauling back on the hammer. By then Scarface had disentangled himself from the blood soaked sheet that had covered him as I leapt up. He had started to spring across the bed, knife in hand. When he caught sight of the pistol his face was only inches away from the big muzzle as I fired. The flash in the pan and the noise from the big gun was deafening in such a confined space and Scarface was just snatched away as though someone had yanked him back by his collar to the other side of the bed.
I stood there, frozen in shock. For a second or two I was deaf from the discharge of the pistol and with the room half full of acrid smoke from its firing, it seemed surreal. Maybe ten seconds ago I had been fast asleep in paradise and now my lover watched me through the haze with the fixed glassy stare of the dead and that awful second mouth under her chin. Scarface had taken a face full of scrap metal at point blank range. Judging from the new blood spatter on the opposite wall I thought he must be dead but as my hearing recovered I heard a sickening gurgling from the other side of the room.
Then I heard a noise in my sitting room and the door into the bedroom moved slightly to give the person a better view. He could see Scarface’s side of the room but was hidden from me. I heard a low whistle as he saw the body of his accomplice.
“I have another pistol if you want more of the same” I squeaked as I swung the pistol to cover the door, noticing how ridiculously high my voice had got. I instantly realised as I looked down it that I could not fool them with this gun as a tendril of smoke was still coming from the barrel indicating that it had just been fired. Frantically I looked around for something else to use as a weapon but the newcomer showed no sign of wanting to call my bluff. Unlike Scareface’s cockney rasp this voice was more educated with a foreign accent I could not place.
“You are a dead man Mr Flashman” was all he said and then I heard him move across the other room and leave my apartment.
The second he had gone I started for the saddlebag in the corner to reload the pistol but my hands had now started to shake so violently it was impossible. I moved across to look at what had been Scarface. It could more accurately be called bubbling raw meat face now and as I watched his chest heaved a final sigh and then simply stopped, leaving the room in heavy silence. I looked across at the beautiful Jasmine and shuddered again at that dreadful gash across her throat. I could not bear to look at it and picked up one of her petticoats from the floor and draped it across her chest and neck so that only her face was visible.
I whirled round as I heard more movement in my sitting room and snatched up the poker from the fire grate as the only weapon I could see. After a second the head of my landlady Mrs Partridge appeared around the door. Now at this moment of deep personal crisis there were many things I would have welcomed from Mrs P: an offer to get help, a comforting embrace or even a strong cup of tea. What I did not need was her jaw sagging as she looked at my naked blood spattered body clutching a poker over two grisly corpses and then her taking a deep breath and screaming “murder, oh terrible murder somebody get the town watch” as she ran out of the door, doubtless waking up the entire street.
It brought me to my senses and no error. I had no witnesses for self defence and no wish to risk the mercy of the court when a rope and the gallows were a possible outcome. That’s if I got to court, it would be easy for my unknown enemy to arrange my murder in jail. I would be surrounded by villains with little to lose who would probably do it for a bottle of gin. I quickly threw on some clothes and packed my valuables into my saddlebag
with the pistol, the rest I would have to leave behind for now. I could hear a commotion on the stairs as people entered the front of the house to the still strident appeals of Mrs P but luckily my rooms faced the back. I pulled up the sash window and squeezed out. With my saddlebag over my shoulder I jumped down onto the outhouse roof and then down to the ground. I was away into the grey dawn before anyone entered my rooms.
I ran a few hundred yards down the alley and then stopped in a doorway while I worked out where to go. They knew who I was so would probably be watching my brother’s house. I could not go to Castlereagh or Stewart at this time of the morning and I needed to tell Mustafa what had happened. I did not want anyone else telling him it was me and I instinctively knew that he would believe that I had not killed Jasmine. There was after all the body of the murderer still on my floor – although probably little chance he would be identified without a face. Yes bizarre as it might seem, a Turkish themed whore house was the safest place for Flashy that night.
Ten minutes later after a run across town I was hammering on the door of Mustapha’s, which was eventually opened by a bleary eyed Achmed. I was out of breath, my face was still blood spattered and some of the blood on my chest had now soaked through my shirt, I must have looked a proper state. After looking up the street and seeing I was alone he rushed me into Mustapha’s office. The old man was got out of bed while I sat weeping in a chair as recent events caught up with me. When Mustapha came in I started to tell him what had happened. I knew Jasmine was one of his favourites. With Achmed adding in the detail from the night before he was convinced of my innocence and soon all three of us were weeping and drinking brandy to get over the shock.
After a while Achmed was sent to get an undertaker to recover Jasmine’s body and a message was sent to summon Wickham, telling him it was urgent as someone had tried to kill me. I was not going to go to Wickham myself with those killers looking for me. Wickham arrived an hour later, looking slightly surprised at the oriental surroundings of the room we met in. “Well Flashman I was not expecting this, a meeting in a Turkish brothel, what on earth is going on?”
Well I told him and he sat down on one of the couches in amazement.
“Good God” he said when I had finished. “So you killed one of the villains but the other, the one you did not see, is still at large. And the poor girl dead too. I am so sorry Flashman I had no idea that you would be in this much danger. And you say that they knew about that paper I gave you too?”
He sat back to think for a moment and then said “well it is clear that you will have to leave London for a while and not be seen in any of your usual haunts.” Here he glanced curiously around the Turkish themed boudoir that we were currently sitting in. “They know a mission is being planned but they don’t know where or what it is or they would not be trying to find that paper. They certainly want to stop you reaching Spain. The sooner that we get you away the better.”
“What, you still want me to go to Spain? After all this has happened?”
“Of course, it is the safest place for you now. You will be killed for certain if you stay in London and I have just arranged you passage on a ship to India. Only the captain and I know that it will be dropping you off at Gibraltar on the way. They may watch the ships bound for the Mediterranean but they will not watch the Indiamen.” He put a bundle of documents on the table with a cloth sack that clinked. “Here are the letters I told you about. There is an extra letter to the Governor of Gibraltar to let him know what is happening. In the sack are some silver Spanish dollars, some gold escudos and some large gold coins called onzas. Now I am sure that I was not followed here but they will be looking for you. They may track the girl’s body back to here and watch this place and so we should get you away as quickly as possible. The Indiaman sails tonight.”
“Tonight! But I can't possibly get to Portsmouth by tonight.”
“No it sails from the docks here in London. Gather your things here and I suggest that you take my carriage, the driver can take you straight to where she is moored as we have just come from there. I will walk back. If you need any extra clothes then ask the captain to send a crewman for them and on no account go on deck before she sails. You should be in Gibraltar before any agent here can send a message to Spain. We are fortunate the ship is sailing so quickly.”
“But will it be safe to come back?” My mind was whirling at the speed of events and for a moment I thought I would be trapped abroad and murdered if I ever showed myself in England again.
“Of course, once your mission has been completed you will be of no interest to the agents here as you will already have done what they are trying to stop you doing. I would not rush back though, you have plenty of gold to live on, stay low in Gibraltar or some other friendly port until the outcome of your mission is known.”
“But you haven’t told me what the outcome of my mission is.”
“Haven’t I, goodness no I haven’t have I? With all the rush I completely forgot. Your mission is to get these documents to the priest in a small coastal town called Estepona. The priest’s brother works at the Admiralty in Cadiz. The Spanish Admiral in Cadiz, called Moreno, is a very proud man and a capable sailor and he knows that the English fleet blockading Cadiz would destroy much of the Spanish fleet if it put to sea. He is therefore wisely staying in port which ties up a whole squadron of our ships in the blockade.” Wickham patted the packet of papers between us. “These papers include copies of British Admiralty orders to Admiral Saumarez who commands to Cadiz blockade to send half of his fleet back to Gibraltar to guard a convoy in the Mediterranean. There are also copies of orders from the Spanish government to another Spanish admiral ordering him to Cadiz to take command of the Spanish fleet and show more vigour against the enemy. Both copies are of course fake. The hope is that Moreno will be stung in to sailing against what he thinks is a weakened English fleet before he is relieved of command. Once the Spanish fleet has sailed, and hopefully been destroyed, then you will know it is safe to return home.”
A few minutes later and I was bundled into Wickham’s carriage. At my feet was the saddlebag with my few possessions in it and in my coat pockets were the letters and the heavy bag of coin. In one day I had changed from being a simple diplomatic courier to a man on the run with the destruction of a whole enemy fleet at stake.
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Chapter 8
I will spare you the details of my journey to Gibraltar aboard the Indiaman. The weather was awful, particularly across the Bay of Biscay and I spent most of it flat on my cot or heaving into a wooden pail. Eventually as the ship turned east to sail along the bottom of the Spanish peninsular the weather calmed a bit. At the end of the third week we sighted Gibraltar. The ship anchored in the harbour and a boat was launched to put me ashore and pick up some provisions before it continued on its journey.
This was my first time abroad and I sat in a borrowed boat cloak at the stern while the launch was rowed to a jetty. I had lost a fair bit of weight on the journey as I had eaten little and while the sun was noticeably warmer, I still shivered a bit under the cloak. The harbour was dominated by the great rock of Gibraltar and was full of shipping of all shapes, types and sizes. It had been a British possession for less than a hundred years and as we drew close I saw the buildings were unlike those of home, with more white walls and balconies than a British port. I was left on the quayside with my luggage in a canvass sack beside me. I explained to the harbour master that I had dispatches for the Governor and he organised a cart to take me to the residency, which turned out to be an old convent.
It only took a few moments as the convent was at the southern end of the main street. There were a couple of sentries outside but I could not find anyone inside. I wandered through the hall and a couple of reception rooms and then I heard a strident woman’s voice calling “Charles, Charles, where are you?”
I moved to the door nearest to where the voice was coming from but as I got close it opened and a grey haired old man backe
d out of it and bumped into me. He whirled round and whispered “Who the devil are you sir?”
Flashman and the Seawolf Page 6