Flashmans' Lady fp-6

by George MacDonald Fraser

  She was all demands and chatter again, though, when she awoke, and while we chewed our jaka, and I bathed her finger - which wasn't broke, but badly bruised - I tried to explain what had happened. D'you know, of all the astonishing things that had occurred since we'd left England, I still feel that that conversation was the most incredible of all. I mean, explaining anything to Elspeth is always middling tough - but there was something unreal, as I look back, about sitting opposite her, in a Madagascar wood, while she stared round-eyed in her torn, soiled evening dress with her finger in a splint, listening to me describing why we were fleeing for our lives from an unspeakable black despot whom I'd been plotting to depose. Not that I blame her for being sceptical, mind you; it was the form her scepticism took which had me clutching my head.

  At first she just didn't believe a word of it; it was quite contrary, she said, to what she had seen of Madagascar, and to prove the point she produced, from the recesses of her under-clothing, a small and battered notebook from which she proceeded to read me her "impressions" of the country - so help me, it was all about bloody butterflies and wild flowers and Malagassy curtain materials and what she'd had for dinner. It was at this point that it dawned on me that the conclusion I'd formed on my visits to her at Rakota's palace had been absolutely sound - she'd spent six months in the place without having any notion of what it was really like. Well, I knew she was mutton-headed, but this beat all, and so I told her.

  "I cannot see that," says she. "The Prince and Princess were all politeness and consideration, and you assured me that all was well, so why should I think otherwise?"

  I was still explaining, and being harangued, when we took the road again, and for the best part of the day, which took us to the eastern edge of the downs, near Angavo, where we camped in another wood. By that time I had finally got it into her head what a hell of a place Madagascar was, and what a hideous fate we were escaping; you'd have thought that would have reduced her to terrified silence, but then, you don't know my Elspeth.

  She was shocked - not a bit scared, apparently, just plain indignant. It was deplorable, and ought not to be allowed, was how she saw it; why had we (by which I took it she meant Her Britannic Majesty) taken no steps to prevent such misgovernment, and what was the Church thinking about? It was quite disgusting - I just sat munching jaka, but I couldn't help, listening to her, being reminded of that old harridan Lady Sale, tapping her mittened fingers while the jezzail bullets whistled round her on the Kabul retreat, and demanding acidly why something was not done about it. Aye, it's comical in its way - and yet, when you've seen the memsahibs pursing their lips and raising indignant brows in the face of dangers and horrors that set their men-folk shaking, you begin to understand why there's all the pink on the map. It's vicarage morality, nursery discipline, and a thorough sense of propriety and sanitation that have done it - and when they've gone, and the memsahibs with them, why, the map won't be pink any longer.

  The one thing Elspeth couldn't accept, though, was that the outrageous condition of Madagascar was Ranavalona's fault. Queens, in her conception of affairs, did not behave in that way at all; the mother of Prince Rakota ("a most genteel and obliging young man") would never have countenanced such things. No, it could only be that she was badly advised, and kept in ignorance, no doubt, by her ministers. She had been civil enough to me, surely? - this was asked in an artless way which I knew of old. I said, well, she was pretty plain and ill-natured from the little I'd seen of her, but of course I'd hardly exchanged a word with her (which, you'll note, was true; I said nothing of bathing and piano-playing). Elspeth sighed contentedly at this, and then after a moment said softly:

  "Have you missed me, Harry?"

  Looking at her, sitting in the dusk with the green leaves behind her, in her dusty gown, with the tangled gold hair framing that lovely face, so serene in its stupidity, I suddenly realized there was only one sensible way to answer her. What with the shock and haste and fear of our flight it absolutely hadn't occurred to me until that moment. And afterwards, lying in the grass, while she stroked my cheek, it seemed the most natural thing - as if this wasn't Madagascar at all, with dreadful danger behind and unknown hardship before - in that blissful moment I dreamed of the very first time, under the trees by the Clyde, on just such a golden evening, and when I spoke of it she began to cry at last, and clung to me.

  "You will bring us there again - home," says she. "You are so brave and strong and good, and keep me safe. Do you know," she wiped her eyes, looking solemn, "I never saw you fight before? Oh, I knew, to be sure, from the newspapers, and what everyone said - that you were a hero, I mean - but I did not know how it was. Women cannot, you know. Now I have seen you, sword in hand - you are rather terrible, you know, Harry - and so quick!" She gave a little shiver. "Not many women are lucky enough to see how brave their husbands are - and I have the bravest, best man in the whole world." She kissed me on the forehead, her cheek against mine.

  I thought of her finger, under that crushing boot, of the way she'd stood up in the bushes and walked straight out, of the bruising ride from Antan', of all she'd endured since Singapore - and I didn't feel ashamed, exactly, because you know it ain't my line. But I felt my eyes sting, and I lifted her chin with my hand.

  "Old girl," says I, "you're a trump."

  "Oh, no!" says she, wide-eyed. "I am very silly, and weak, and … and not a trump at all! Feckless, Papa says. But I love to be your `old girl' "— she snuggled her head down on my chest —"and to think that you like me a little, too … better than you like the horrid Queen of Madagascar, or Mrs Leo Lade, or those Chinese ladies we saw in Singapore, or Kitty Stevens, or - my dearest, whatever is the matter?"

  "Who the hell," roars I, "is Kitty Stevens?"

  "Oh, do you not remember? That slim, dark girl with the poor complexion and soulful eyes she thinks so becoming - although how she supposes that mere staring will make her attractive I cannot think - you danced with her twice at the Cavalry Ball, and assisted her to negus at the buffet …

  We were off again before dawn, crossing the Angavo Pass which leads to the upland Ankay Plain, going warily because I knew the Hova Guard regiment which I'd sent out couldn't be far away. I kept casting north, and we must have outflanked them, for we saw not a soul until the Mangaro ford, where the villagers turned out in force to stare at us as we crossed the river with our little herd. It was level going then until the jungle closed in and the mountains began, but we were making slower time than I'd hoped for; it began to look like a five-day trek instead of four, but I wasn't much concerned. All that mattered was that we should keep ahead of pursuit; the frigate would still be there. I was sure of this because it was bound to wait for an answer to the protest which, according to Laborde, had only reached the Queen a couple of days ago. Her answer, even if she'd sent it at once, would take more than a week to reach Tamitave, so if we kept up our pace we'd be there with time in hand.

  I kept telling myself this on the third day, when our rate slowed to a walk with the long, twisting climb up the red rutted track that led into the great mountains. Here we were walled in by forest on either hand, with only that tortuous path for a guide. I knew it because I'd been flogged over it in the slave-coffle, and I had to gulp down my fears as we approached each bend - suppose we met someone, in this place where we couldn't take to our heels, where to stray ten yards from the path would be certain death by wandering starvation? Suppose the path petered out, or had been overgrown? Suppose swift Hova runners overtook us?

  I was in a fever of anxiety - not made any easier by the childish pleasure Elspeth seemed to be taking in our journey. She was forever clapping her hands and exclaiming at the saucer-eyed white monkeys who peered at us, or the lace-plumed birds that fluttered among the creepers; even the hideous water-snakes which cruised the streams, with their heads poking out, excited her - she barred the spiders, though, great marbled monsters as big as my hand, scuttling on webs the size of blankets. And once she fled in terror from a
sight which had our horses neighing and bucking in the narrow way - a troop of great apes, bounding across the path in leaps of incredible length, both feet together.43 We watched them crash into the under-growth, and not for the first time I cursed the luck that I hadn't even a clasp-knife with me for defence, for God knew what else might be lurking in that dark, cavernous forest. Elspeth wished she had her sketch-book.

  There's forty miles of that forest, but thanks to good Queen Ranavalona we didn't have to cross it all, as you would today. The jungle track runs clear across towards Andevoranto, whence you travel up the coast to Tamitave, but in 1845 there was a short-cut - the Queen's buffalo road, cut straight through the hilly jungle to the coastal plain. This was the track, hacked out by thousands of slaves, which I'd seen on the way up; we reached it on the fourth day, a great avenue through the green, with the mountain mist hanging over it in wraiths. It was eerie and foreboding, but at least it was flat, and with half our beasts already abandoned in exhaustion, I was glad of the easier going.

  It's strange, as I look back on that remarkable journey, that it wasn't nearly as punishing as it might have been. Elspeth still swears that she quite enjoyed it; I dare say if I hadn't been so apprehensive - about our beasts foundering, or losing our way if the mist settled down, or being overtaken by pursuers (although I knew there was scant chance of that), or how we were going to make our final dash to the frigate - I might have marvelled that we came through it so easily. But we did; our luck held through hill and jungle, we hardly saw a native the whole way, and on the fourth afternoon we were trotting down through the strange little conical hillocks that line the sandy coastal plain, with nothing ahead of us but a few scattered villages and easy level going until we should come to Tamitave.

  Of course, I should have been on my guard. I should have known it had gone too smooth. I should have remembered the horror that lay no great way behind, and the mad hatred and bloodlust of that evil woman. I should have thought of the soldier's first rule, to put yourself in the enemy's shoes and ask what you would do. If I'd been that terrible bitch, and my ingrate lover had tried to ruin me, cut up my guardsmen, and lit out for the coast - what would I have done, given unlimited power and a maniac's vengeance to slake? Sent out my fleetest couriers, over plain and jungle and mountain, to carry the alarm, rouse the garrisons, cut off escape - that's what I'd have done. How far can good runners travel in a day - forty miles over rough going? Say four days, perhaps five, from Antan' to the coast. We were approaching Tamitave on the evening of the fourth day.

  Aye, I should have been on my guard - but when you're within the last lap of safety, when all has gone far better than you'd dared hope, when you've seen the Tamitave track and know that the coast is only a few scant miles away over the low hills, when you have the gamest, loveliest girl in the world riding knee to knee with you, that eager idiot smile on her face and her tits bouncing famously, when the dark terrors have receded behind you - above all, when you've hardly slept in four nights and are fit to topple from the saddle with sheer weariness … then hope can fuddle your wits a little, and you let the last of your rations slip from your hand, and the dusk begins to swim round you, and your head is on the turf and you slip down the long slide into unconsciousness - until someone miles away is shaking you, and yelping urgently in your ear, and you come awake in bleary alarm, staring wildly about you in the dawn. "Harry! Oh, Harry - quickly! Look, look!"

  She had me by the wrist, tugging me to my feet. Where was I? - yes, this was the little hollow we'd camped in, there were the horses, the first ray of dawn was just peeping over the low downs to the east, but Elspeth was pulling me t'other way, to the lip of the hollow, pointing.

  "Look, Harry - yonder! Who are those people?"

  I stared back, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes - the distant mountains were in a wall of mist, and on the rolling land between there were long trails of fog hanging on the slopes. Nothing else - no! there was movement on the crest a mile behind us, figures of men coming into plain view, a dozen - twenty perhaps, in an irregular line abreast. I felt an awful clutch at my heart as I stared, disbelieving what I saw, for they were advancing at a slow trot, in an ominously disciplined fashion; I recognized that gait, even as I took in the first twinkle of steel along the line and made out the white streaks of the bandoliers - I'd taught 'em how to advance in skirmishing order myself, hadn't I? But it was impossible …

  "It can't be!" I heard my voice cracking. "They're Hova guardsmen!"

  If any confirmation were needed it came in the faint, wailing yell drifting on the dawn air, as they came jogging down the slope to the plain.

  "I thought I had better rouse you, Harry," Elspeth was saying, but by then I was leaping for the horses, yelling to her to get aboard. She was still babbling questions as I bundled her up bareback, and flung myself on to a second mount. I slashed at the three other beasts remaining to us, and as they fled neighing from the hollow I spared another wild glance back; three-quarters of a mile away the skirmishing line was coming steadily towards us, cutting the distance at frightening speed. God, how had they done it on foot in the time? Where had they come from, for that matter?

  Interesting questions, to which I still don't know the answer, and they didn't occupy me above a split second just then. In the nick of time I stifled my coward's instinct to gallop wildly away from them, and surveyed the ground ahead of us. Two, perhaps three miles due east, across rolling sandy plain, was the crest from which, I was pretty sure, we'd look down on the shore; there was the Tamitave track a mile or so to our right, with a few villagers already on it. I struggled to clear my wits - if we rode straight ahead we ought to come out just above the Tamitave fort, north of the town proper - the frigate would be lying in the roads - Christ, how were we going to reach her, for there'd be no time to stop and scheme, with these devils on our heels. I looked again; they were well out on the plain by now, and coming on fast … I gripped Elspeth's wrist.

  "Follow me close! Ride steady, watch your footing, and for God's sake don't slip! They can't catch us if we keep up a round canter, but if we tumble we're done!"

  She was pale as a sheet, but she nodded and for once didn't ask me who these strange gentlemen were, or what they wanted, or if her hair was disarranged. I wheeled and set off down the slope, with her close behind, and the yell as they saw us turn was clear enough now; a savage hunting cry that had me digging in my heels despite myself. We drummed down the hill, and I forced myself not to look back until we'd crossed the little valley and come to the next crest - we'd gained on them, but they were still coming, and I gulped and gestured furiously to Elspeth to keep up.

  I'd have to count up all the battles I've been in to tell you how often I've fled in panic, and I've made a few other strategic withdrawals, too, but this was as horrid as any. There was the time Scud East and I went tearing along the Arrow of Arabat in a sled with the Cossacks behind us, and the jolly little jaunt I had with Colonel Sebastian Moran in the ammunition cart after Isandhlwana, with the Udloko Zulus on our tail - and couldn't they cover the ground, just? But in the present case the snag was that very shortly we were going to reach the sea, and unless our embarkation went smoothly - God, the frigate must be there! … I stole another look over my shoulder - we were a clear mile ahead now, surely, but there they were still, just appearing on a crest and streaming over it in fine style.

  I took a look at our horses; they weren't labouring, but they weren't fit to enter the St Leger either. Would they last? Suppose one went lame - why the blazes hadn't I thought to drive the spare beasts ahead? But it was too late now.

  "Come on," says I, and Elspeth gave me a trembling look and kicked in her heels, clinging to the mane. The last slope was half a mile ahead; as we dropped our pace for the ascent I looked back again, but there was nothing in sight for a good mile.

  "We'll do it yet!" I shouted, and we covered the last few yards to the top through slippery sand, the sun blazed in our eyes as we reached the crest, the breez
e was suddenly stiff in our faces - and there below us, down a long sandy slope, was the spreading panorama of beach and blue water, with the surf foaming not a mile away. Far off to the right was Tamitave town, the smoke rising in thin trails above the thatched roofs; closer, but still to the right, was the fort, a massive circular stone tower, with its flag a-flutter, and its outer wooden palisade; there were white-coated troops, about a platoon strong, marching towards it from the town, and looking down from our point of vantage I could see great activity in the central square of the fort itself, and round the gun emplacements on its wall.

  The sun was shining straight towards us out of a blue, cloudless sky, the rays coming over a thick bank of mist which mantled the surface of the sea a mile off-shore. A beautiful sight, the coral strand with its palms, the gulls wheeling, the gentle roll of bright blue sea - there was only one thing missing. From golden beach to pearly bank of mist, from pale clear distance in the north to the vague smokiness of the town waterfront to the south, the sea was as bare as a miser's table. There was no British frigate in Tamitave roads. There wasn't even a blasted bumboat. And behind us, as I turned my frantic gaze in their direction, the Hovas were just coming in sight on the hillside a scant mile away.

  I can't recall whether I screamed aloud or not; I may well have done, but if I did it was a poor expression of the sick despair that engulfed me in that moment. I know the thought that was in my mind, as I pounded my knee with my fist in an anguish of rage, fear, and disappointment, was: "But it must be there! It has to wait for her message!" and then Elspeth was turning solemn blue eyes on me and asking: