Flashman Papers Omnibus

by Fraser George MacDonald

  As the black chap said in Shakespeare’s play, ’tis better as it is.

  * * *

  a a docile horse

  APPENDIX

  It hardly seemed worthwhile to give footnotes to Flashman’s account of the Tranby Croft affair, since almost all of them would have led the reader to the same authority, W. Teignmouth Shore’s The Baccarat Case: Gordon-Cumming v. Wilson and Others, 1932, in the Notable British Trials Series. It contains a full transcript of the trial, with notes and comments, and is the best and fullest work on the subject. Other books which touch on the case and related matters include Margaret Blunden, The Countess of Warwick, 1967; Piers Compton, Victorian Vortex, 1977; Philippe Julian, Edward and the Edwardians; and an anonymous work, The Private Life of the King, 1901.

  Teignmouth Shore published his book “to win justice for the memory of a man much wronged”, and nailed his colours to the mast with his opening quotation from Truth, which asserted after the trial that a dog would not have been hanged on the evidence that convicted Gordon-Cumming. It was an opinion shared by many, and if Flashman is to be believed, they were right.

  His view of the verdict aside, Mr Shore makes several points of interest. He describes the outcry against the Prince of Wales as outrageous, and one has to agree that whatever the faults of the future King Edward VII, he hardly deserved the storm which burst over his hapless head from a press which knew a ripe scandal when it saw one, and was only too glad of a royal scapegoat. Mr Shore wondered if any newspaper “of high standing” in 1932 would have been so censorious. Perhaps not; he did not live to see the 1990s. At the same time, the Prince showed lamentable judgment when the cheating allegation was first brought to his notice, and Mr Shore is plainly right when he suggests that the sensible thing would have been to insist on accused and accusers thrashing the matter out on the spot. There was indeed a remarkable lack of common sense in the way the affair was handled, and in the pathetic belief that it could be kept quiet. Obviously (as Flashman confirms) panic struck not only the Prince and his advisers, but Gordon-Cumming also, or he would never have signed the damning document.

  Mr Shore is scathing on the conduct of the trial, “the Court being turned by consent of the judge into a theatre, and a shoddy theatre at that”.

  Whether Flashman’s sensational disclosure finally settles the controversy is for his readers to decide; it fits the known facts, and if it seems unlikely, that is perfectly in keeping with the rest of The Baccarat Case.

  An entertaining experiment, which I have made myself, is to insert a cover over the introduction to Mr Shore’s book, and over the last page which carries the verdict, and invite someone who knows nothing of the case to read the trial and pronounce Sir William Gordon-Cumming guilty or not. The reactions are interesting.

  FLASHMAN AND THE TIGER

  (1879 and 1894)

  Chapter 12

  You think twice about committing murder when you’re over seventy. Mind you, it’s not something I’ve ever undertaken lightly, for all that I must have sent several score of the Queen’s enemies to their last accounts in my time, to say nothing of various bad men and oddsbodies who’ve had the misfortune to cross me when my trigger-finger was jumpy. More than a hundred, easy, I should think – which ain’t a bad tally for a true-blue coward who’d sooner shirk a fight than eat his dinner, and has run from more battle-fields than he can count. I’ve been lucky, I suppose – and devilish quick.

  But those were killings in the way of business, as a soldier, or in my many misadventures in the world’s wild places, where it was me or t’other fellow. Murder’s different, you see; it takes more courage than I’ve ever had, to think it out, and weigh the consequences, and keep your hand steady as you thumb back the hammer and draw a bead on the unsuspecting back. You need to be in a perfect fever of fear and rage, as I was when I threw de Gautet over the cliff in Germany in ’48, or when I sicked on that poor lunatic steward to shoot John Charity Spring, M.A., on the slave-ship off the Cuba coast. That’s always been more my style, to get some idiot to do the dirty work for me. But there comes a time when there’s no scapegoat handy, and you have to do the business yourself – and that’s when you sweat at the thought of the black cap and the noose at the end of the eight-o’clock walk. It makes my teeth chatter on the glass just to write about it – aye, and suppose you bungle it, and your victim turns on you, full of spite and indignation? That can easily happen, you know, when you’re an old man with a shaky wrist and a cloudy eye, too stiff in the joints even to cut and run. What business have you got at your time of life to be trying to slaughter a man fifteen years younger than you are, in the middle of civilised London, especially when he’s a high-tailed gun-slick with a beltful of scalps who can shoot your ears off with his eyes shut? For that’s what Tiger Jack Moran was, and no mistake.

  So you understand why I say it takes a deal of thought before you determine to go after a man like that with fatal intent, knowing that your speed and cunning have been undermined by a lifetime of booze and evil living and your white hair’s coming out in handfuls. Dammit, I wouldn’t have tackled him in my prime, when I had size and strength and viciousness to set in the balance against my yellow belly. But there I was, a hoary old grandfather, full of years and dignity and undeserved military honours, with my knighthood and V.C., as respectable an old buffer as ever shuffled down St James’s with a flower in my buttonhole, pausing only to belch claret or exchange grave salutes with Cabinet Ministers and clubmen (“Why, there’s old General Flashman,” they’d say, “dear old Sir Harry – wonderful how he keeps going. They say it’s the brandy that does it; grand old chap he is.” That was all they knew.) But there I was, I say, at a time when I ought to have had nothing to do but drink my way gently towards an honoured grave, spend my wife’s fortune, gorge at the best places, leer at the young women, and generally enjoy a dissolute old age – and suddenly, I had to kill Tiger Jack. Nothing else for it.

  What brought the beads out on my withered brow more than anything else was my recollection of our first meeting, so many years before, when I’d seen for myself what an ice-cold killing villain he was – aye, and it was in a place where sheer cool nerve and skill with a gun were the narrow margin between escape and horrible death. You’ll remember the name: Isan’lwana. I can see it still, the great jagged rock of the “Little House” rearing up above the stony, sun-baked African plain, the scattered lines of our red-coated infantry, joking and cat-calling among themselves as they waited for the ammunition that never came; the red-capped Natal Kaffirs scurrying back to take their positions on the rocky slope; a black-tunicked rider of Frontier Horse leaping the gun limbers bellowing a fatuous order to laager the wagons, which went unheeded and was too late by hours; Pulleine fumbling with his field-glasses and shouting hoarsely: “Is that a rider from Lord Chelmsford?”; a colour-sergeant frantically hammering at the lid of an ammunition box; the puffs of smoke from our advanced line firing steadily at the Zulu skirmishers; the rattle of musketry over the ridge to the left; the distant figures of Durnford’s men on the right flank falling back, firing as they came; a voice croaking: “Oh, dear God Almighty!” – and it was mine, as I looked nor’east over the ranks of the 24th, and saw the skyline begin to move, like a brown blanket stirred by something beneath it, and then all along the crest there was the rippling, twinkling flash of thousands of spear-points, and a limitless line of white and coloured shields with nodding plumes behind them, rank after rank, and down the forward slope came the black spilling tide of Ketshwayo’s impis, twenty thousand savages rolling towards our pitiful position with its far-stretched line of defenders, Death sweeping towards us at that fearful thunderous jog-trot that made the earth tremble beneath our very feet, while the spears crashed on the ox-hide shields, and the dust rolled up in a bank before them as they chanted out their terrible bass chorus: “Uzitulele, kagali ’muntu!” – which, you’ll be enchanted to know, means roughly: “He is silent, he doesn’t start the attack.”

>   Which was a bloody lie, from where I was standing petrified, and the horrible thing was, I wasn’t even in the Army, but was there by pure chance (how, exactly, I’ll tell you another time). Much consolation that was, you can imagine, as that frightful black horde came surging across the plain towards our makeshift camp beneath Isan’lwana rock, the great mass in the centre coming on in perfect formation while the flank regiments raced out in the “horns” which would encircle our position. And there was poor old Flashy, caught behind the companies of the 24th as they poured their volley-firing into the “chest” of the Zulu army, cheering and shouting for the ammunition-carriers, and Durnford’s bald forehead glinting in the sun above his splendid whiskers as he pulled his men back to the donga and blazed away at the left “horn” sweeping in towards them.

  For one brief moment, as I cast a frantic eye behind me to pick out the quickest line of retreat to the Rorke’s Drift track, I absolutely thought it might be touch and go. You see, while we were most damnably trapped, without proper defences, in spite of the warnings old Paul Kruger had given to Chelmsford about laagering and trenching every night in Zulu country,1 and while we were only a few hundred white soldiers and loyal niggers against the whole Zulu army – well, a few dozen Martini-Henrys, in the hands of men who know how to use ’em, can stop a whole lot of blacks with clubs and spears. I’d been with Campbell’s Highlanders at Balaclava, when they broke the Ruski cavalry with two volleys, and I still bore the scars of Little Big Horn, where Reno’s troopers held off half the Sioux nation (the other half were killing Custer and me just down the valley, but that’s another story).a Anyway, as I watched the 24th companies on the Isan’lwana slope, pouring their fire into the brown, and the artillery banging away for dear life, cutting great lanes in the impis, I thought, bigod, we’ll hold ’em yet. And we would have done, but the ammunition boxes hadn’t been broken out, and just as the great mass of Zulus, a bare furlong from our forward troops, seemed to be wavering and hanging back – why, the 24th were down to their last packets, and the yelling and cheering turned to desperate cries of:

  “Ammunition, there! Bring the boxes, for God’s sake!”

  Our fire slackened, the 24th took a step back, the Natal Kaffirs came pouring away from the left under the lee of the hill, flinging their arms aside as they ran, the order “Fix bayonets!” rang out from the ranks immediately to my front, and the Zulus regiments rallied and came bounding in in a great mad charge, the rain of throwing spears whistling ahead of them like hail, and the stabbing assegais coming out from behind the white shields as they tore into our disordered front line, the roar of “’Suthu! ’Suthu!” giving way to their hideous hissing “’S-jee! ’S-jee!” as the spears struck home.

  Time for the lunch interval, thinks I; let’s be off. Once they were at close quarters, there wasn’t a hope, and by the look of it, through that hell of smoke and gunfire and fleeing men, with Kaffirs rushing past, and the gunners and wagon-men frantically trying to inspan and flee, the surviving remnants of the 24th weren’t going to hold that huge press of Zulus more than a matter of minutes. Thus far in the battle, being only a well-meaning civilian, I’d made a tremendous show of trying to get the wagons to laager in a circle, so that we could make a stand if our forward troops gave way – it was the sensible thing to do, and it also kept me at a safe distance from the fighting. So I was well placed beside an inspanned cart when the dam burst, and the Nokenke regiment of Ketshwayo’s army (that’s who the historians tell me it was, anyway; I only know they were appalling bastards with leopard-skin head-dresses, screaming fit to chill your blood) came tearing up the hill.

  I was into that wagon in a twinkling, bawling to the driver to go like blazes, and blasting away over the tailboard with an Adams six-shooter in each fist. I wish I’d a pound for every time I’ve looked out at a charging barbarian horde with my guts dissolving and prayers babbling out of me, but that one took the biscuit. They came racing in, huge black-limbed monsters with their six-foot shields up, eyes and teeth glaring over the top like spectres, the plumes tossing and those disgusting two-foot steel blades glittering and smoking with blood. I saw three men of the 24th, back to back, swinging their clubbed rifles, go down before the charge, and the Zulus barely broke stride as they ripped the corpses up with their assegais (to let the dead spirits out, don’t you know) and rushed on. I blazed away, weeping and swearing, thinking oh God, this is the end, and I’m sorry I’ve led such a misspent life, and don’t send me to Hell, whatever Dr Arnold says – and my hammer clicked down on an empty chamber just as the first Zulu vaulted over the side of the wagon, howling like a dervish.

  I screamed and closed with him, seizing his right wrist as the spear-point swung at my breast, my hand slipping on that oily skin; I drove a knee at his groin, butting him for all I was worth and trying to bite his throat – all I got was a mouthful of monkey-skin collar, and God, how he stank! A shot crashed right beside my ear, and the Zulu fell away, his face a mask of blood.2 I never even saw who had shot him, nor did I pause to inquire, for as I reeled away to the side of the wagon, here came a gun-team thundering past, with an artilleryman crouched on one of the leaders, lashing at the beasts and at the Zulus who raced alongside trying to spear him from the saddle. Behind the team the gun was bouncing over the ground, with some poor devil clinging to the muzzle, his feet trailing in the dust, until a Zulu, leaping behind, dashed his brains out with a knobkerrie.

  You don’t think twice at such moments; you truly don’t. I had one glimpse that still stays in my memory – of that rock-strewn slope, covered with charging Zulus spearing the last knots of defenders; of men screaming and falling; of a sergeant of the 24th rolling on the ground locked with a black warrior, while the others paused to watch; of a bullock lumbering past, bellowing, with an assegai in its flank; of bloody corpses, red-coated or black-skinned, sprawled among the dusty ruin of broken carts, ration boxes, and fallen equipment; of hate-filled black faces and polished black bodies – all that in a split second, and then I went over the side of that cart in a flying dive on to the gun that was racketing past, clutching frantically at the hot metal, almost slipping down between barrel and wheel, but somehow managing to stay aboard as it tore onwards, bouncing left and right, towards the little saddle of ground that runs from Isan’lwana hill.

  How I survived the next minute I don’t know. I clung to the gun, keeping low, hearing a spear glance clanging from the metal; a club caught me a blow on the shoulder, but I stuck like a leech, and the gun must have picked up speed, because the closest Zulus were suddenly lost in the dust-cloud, and for a moment we were clear of the immediate pursuit, the driver still holding his seat on the leader and yelling and quirting away as the team topped the crest and went careering down the far slope towards the Rorke’s Drift track.

  The slope was thick with fugitives, white and black, a few mounted but most on foot, going pell-mell down to the broken ground and distant scrub with only one thought in mind – to get away from the merciless black vengeance behind us. They seemed to be making for a deep ravine about half a mile to the left, where it seemed to me they were sure to be caught by the left “horn” of the Zulu army as it came circling in; I struggled up astride the gun and bawled above the din to the driver to bear right for the Rorke’s Drift road. He cast a terrified glance over his shoulder, pointing frantically and shaking his head; I looked, and my heart died. Already, round the far side of the Isan’lwana hill, the vanguard of the Zulu right “horn” was streaming down like a black lance-head to cut the track; I could make out the green monkey caps and plumes of the Tulwana regiment. Five minutes at most, and the ring of steel would have closed round Isan’lwana, and God help anything white that was still inside.

  There was nothing for it but the ravine, and we rushed down the slope at breakneck speed, the driver lashing the exhausted horses, and Flashy going up and down astride that damned barrel like a pea on a drum. I stole a glance back, and beyond the scattered groups of running fugitives I co
uld see the first ranks of the Zulu “chest” coming over the hill; this won’t do, my lad, thinks I, we’ll have to move a deal faster if we want to see Piccadilly again. The gun lurched under me, sickeningly, there was a yell of alarm from the driver ahead, and by God the right rear-wheeler had broken a trace and was veering madly off to the right, head up and snorting; she stumbled and went down as the second trace parted, and I shot off the gun as it slewed round, hit the ground with a fearful jar, and went rolling arse over elbow, tearing the skin off shoulder and knee on the rock-hard earth before I fetched up winded within a yard of the fallen horse.

  I had a hand on its mane as it thrashed up again, hooves flying, and you may be sure I wasn’t the only one. Half a dozen fugitives had the same notion, and one, a sergeant gunner, was half-aboard the beast. “Mine, damn you!” roars he. “She can’t take two!”

  “Right you are, my son,” says I, and knocked him flying. I got a limb across that heaving bare back – and that’s all I ever need.3 Thank God I’ve never seen the mount I couldn’t master; I wound my hands into the mane, dug in my heels, and went head down for the ravine, just as the gun I had lately left went careering into it – team, driver and all. It was a deep, narrow cleft – Christ! was it narrow enough to jump? I tensed myself for the leap, gave her my heel at the last moment, and we went soaring over; there was a horrible instant when we seemed to hang on the far lip, but we scrambled to safety by our eyebrows. I heard a scream behind me, and turned to see a big grey failing to make the same jump; she fell back into the ravine, with her rider crushed beneath her.