Flashman and the Cobra

by Robert Brightwell

  When I awoke the bedside candles had burned out and the room was dark. For a minute I could not remember where I was. I could tell it was not my room, but then I made out the naked form of the girl in bed next to me and memories started to come back. That sobered me up. Here I was in love with Louisa, thwarted by her father, who viewed me as untrustworthy, and now I found myself naked in bed with her sister after a strenuous bout of lovemaking. God we had made some noise and I suddenly wondered if the maid was now awake or even if Louisa had heard us from her room, which was on the other side of the maid’s. Now that I listened for it I could still hear the lady’s maid snoring, and if Louisa had heard her sister entertaining, hopefully she would not know it was me. From what I could recall we had not wasted time on conversation.

  I had to move: I could not be found in there, it would be the hell of a scandal. Slowly I half-rolled out of the bed and started feeling around for my clothes. Five minutes and much searching around the dark floor later, I had found all of my clothes but just one of my shoes. I could not find the other one anywhere and could only hope that I had lost it somehow on the way up the stairs. I was soon dressed and moved to the door, opening it quietly. The maid was lying on her back with her mouth open, snoring, with a nearly empty bottle of brandy on the bedside table. To my left was the door to the landing and opposite was the door I presumed to Louisa’s room. I thought briefly of paying her a visit, but I was in enough trouble. I eased out onto the landing and breathed a sigh of relief.

  It was the middle of the night, the hotel was quiet and I could easily make it back to my own room without being seen. No one need know about tonight. Sarah knew her sister was in love with me and so I reasoned that she would keep quiet about our dalliance, and I was not going to tell anybody. The next few meetings might be awkward, especially if Louisa was around, but perhaps we could both just pretend that it had never happened.

  I staggered down the hall, trying desperately to convince myself that I could get away with this. I came to my own room, stepped inside and stopped dead in my tracks. By the candles that were burning low in the candlesticks on either side of the bed I could see that it was already occupied.

  “Bloody hell!” I said as I took in who was in my bed.

  The figure stirred, waking up as she heard my exclamation. “Thomas, what took you so long?” said Louisa, starting to sit up in the bed. “I gave you enough signals not to delay. Don’t you want to taste forbidden fruit?” As she sat up the sheet fell away and I could see that she was naked. The conductor was starting to raise his baton again and this time it would be a full symphony.

  I was a young man then and it turned out to be a full symphony and an encore before we finally fell asleep in each other’s arms. I was clearly not the first lover of either of the Berkeley girls and I wondered idly who else there might have been. It was a more promiscuous age, but single girls still had to protect their reputation to at least appear pure for marriage. If they fell with child before marriage then foreign travel was normally arranged before the pregnancy showed. Naples was a favourite destination, with the child either adopted by a family there or discreetly brought back to England and left with a family where the mother could keep a maternal eye on its development, often by being the official godmother.

  I awoke a few hours later as Louisa stirred beside me. “I need to get back to my room,” she said sleepily. “I gave Rosie a full bottle of brandy to enjoy when we went out. She cannot hold her drink and was completely out of it when I came to your room, but she will be waking up with a hangover soon.”

  There had been a moment when I first awoke to find Louisa still in my arms when I had been blissfully happy. But mention of the snoring maid brought other memories back too, and in the back of my head a small alarm bell started ringing. If Louisa ever found out where I spent the first part of the night I was toast, but surely Sarah had as much to lose in her sister’s friendship as I did. Still, it would be best if the girls did not compare notes about last night as one inopportune word from either of them could spell disaster for me.

  I stroked Louisa’s bare shoulder and asked, “Darling, you won’t tell anyone about tonight, will you?”

  “Of course not. Well, only Sarah. We share everything.” As it turned out she was certainly not wrong about that!

  “No, please, do not even tell Sarah. Promise me you won’t tell her.”

  “Of course, if it means that much to you. Are you ashamed of me then?”

  “You know I am not. I just don’t want any complications. I want this to be just the two of us.” For someone who knows me so well she can be extraordinarily trusting, and she reached down and kissed me. I had a quick fondle before she squirmed away, laughing.

  “You just remember to get father out of prison this morning,” she said as she slipped on her gown and moved towards the door. She opened it a crack to check the corridor was empty and was gone. I lay back on the bed with a stupidly happy smile on my face.

  I was young and naive and actually thought I might have the ghost of a chance of keeping last night’s events secret. Louisa had promised not to tell Sarah. I hoped Sarah would be too embarrassed to admit that she had made a play for the man she knew her sister loved. I really did not understand women or sisters, not having any of my own. If I had, I would not have been lying in bed grinning like a fool, but instead would have been packing and preparing to run from the cataclysm that was about to fall on me.

  Chapter 4

  The hotel was still quiet when I got dressed and left with a hundred guineas of Berkeley’s gold in my pocket. I had arranged to hire a carriage for the morning. I planned to go to the Conciergerie early to spring his lordship and take him back to the hotel. Then I was going back to the British embassy to collect Wickham for our meeting with the French general. The streets were not busy and soon we were pulling up in front of the forbidding entrance of the prison. But I was still in high spirits and soon was past the guards and heading to the corridor where I had found Berkeley before. This time there was no shouting or bellowing coming from the cells. All was silent, and the desk where the sergeant had been sitting was empty. I thought perhaps Berkeley had been taken somewhere else and so went to the cell door and removed the rag still stuffed in the little window. Through it I saw an astonishing sight. Berkeley, whom I had only ever seen red-faced and angry, was sitting on his bed with tears streaming down his cheeks. His face was grey and his eyes were fixed on the opposite wall. His shoulders shook slightly as he sobbed. I was stunned. I didn’t know what to say.

  Then I heard footsteps approaching. I quickly put the cloth back in the cell door window to hide the shocking view and turned to find the old sergeant ambling towards me.

  “Ah, Monsieur Flashman, you have ze ’undred guineas for me?” he asked with a smile as he sat back down at the desk.

  “I thought we agreed eighty guineas last night,” I replied, moving towards him. “And what have you done to him? He is crying in there.”

  The sergeant laughed. “We agreed eighty before I found out that ze prisoner ’ad given you a note for ze full ’undred. So now the price is an ’undred, unless you want me to tell ze prisoner that you are trying to steal twenty guineas from im?” The old soldier looked up at me with a knowing smile; he knew he had me. “I don’t think your friend will stand another night in ze cells. We ’ave done nothing to ’im, but I told you that those walls talk.”

  “What about splitting the difference, ten guineas for you and ten for me?” The day was starting to take a downward turn and my early jauntiness was starting to fade.

  “Why should I do that when I can ’ave the full ’undred?” The sergeant was still smiling like a card player with a handful of aces. “No, ze price is an ’undred, but because I like you I will throw in a quick tour of ze prison, to show you what it is that ’as quietened your friend down.”

  I could see I had no choice and dropped the bag with eighty guineas on the table and reached in my pocket for the twenty I had
already taken out of it. The soldier was a wily old fox and must have seen every trick in the book. I should have guessed that he would have found a way to get Berkeley to confirm the amount he had paid. The sergeant put the remaining coins in the bag and then pocketed it.

  “It is a pleasure doing business with you, monsieur,” he said, getting up and patting his pocket. “If it makes you feel better, I normally charge five guineas to rich British visitors to show them ze sights.”

  “Oh, it is certainly worth a hundred guineas to get that old bastard to stop his constant complaining,” I replied. “Especially as he is paying for it himself.” The sergeant laughed and I smiled back; he was a rogue and he knew that I was a chancer too.

  “These cells were all full in ze old days,” he said as he started to lead me down the corridor towards the door at the far end. “This where we kept people who were about to be taken to the guillotine. It is near the main entrance where the carts collected them to take them to the Place de la Revolution.”

  “Were you here then?” I asked.

  “Yes, there was a group of around fifteen of us and we used to ’elp ’ere and sometimes in ze square.”

  “You mean you helped with the guillotine?”

  “Yes, the executioner was the one to always release the blade but we ’elped get people from the carts and strap them to the board that was then tipped under the blade.” He opened a door at the end of the corridor and began to lead the way down some stairs.

  “How many people did you help execute?” I asked. I was fascinated to speak to someone who was there at the centre of this political inferno.

  “ ’Undreds. I am not proud of it, but France was very different then. It was a crazy time. The revolution was being run by a group called the Committee of Public Safety.” He gave a snort of derision. “They were more interested in revolutionary theories and philosophy than the people. In the summer of ’ninety-four they introduced new rules forbidding the use of defence counsels and the ’earing of witnesses. You just had to plead your case to the Revolutionary Tribunal and do it quickly before they tired of listening to you. The so-called Committee of Public Safety also introduced a law that made death the sole penalty for guilt. At the busiest time we were executing nearly thirty people a day, and that was just in Paris.”

  “Were they mostly aristocrats?”

  “God, no. We used to put five in a cart and on average one might be what you would call an aristocrat, one would a merchant or lawyer and the rest were common workers.” He opened a door at the bottom of the staircase and we stepped outside into a courtyard.

  “You ’ave to understand, everyone was frightened then,” he continued. “Anybody could accuse anyone of being a counter-revolutionary, and if you were accused, the chances were that you would die. People were accused to settle old scores or because the denouncer wanted to show their revolutionary fervour to protect themselves. I know one man who denounced nearly twenty people to show that ’e was loyal to the revolution. They were all killed, but it did him no good as ’e was denounced in turn and ended up ’ere. Even though we knew most of them were innocent, there was nothing we could do. If we refused to do our duties, we would have just been executed too.”

  I started to appreciate the full horror of the revolution. This had all happened less than ten years ago. The prison around me began to feel even more sinister. We were walking across a courtyard towards an open-sided wooden building on the far side. Walking towards us was a morose army officer who looked like he had the cares of the world on his shoulders. The sergeant threw him a salute but the officer did not seem to notice and walked past both of us, lost in his thoughts.

  “That is Lieutenant Sanson,” said the sergeant, as though the name should mean something to me. When I did not respond he added, “He is the son of Sanson the Great.”

  “Who is Sanson the Great?” I asked.

  The sergeant seemed offended by my ignorance. “Most British people I show around have heard of Sanson the Great.”

  “Well, I haven’t. Who is he?” I asked again.

  “He was the royal executioner. His father and grandfather had been executioners before him. When the revolution happened he became the revolutionary executioner in Paris. He ended up executing his old employer, the king.”

  “Well, his son does not seem very happy about it.”

  “Ah, that is a sad story,” said the sergeant. “Lieutenant Henri Sanson is the great Sanson’s eldest son and his father wanted him to be his successor. But Henri did not want to go into the family business and so the younger son, Gaston, started to train with his father instead. But back in ’ninety-two the pair of them were executing some people, including an old woman who cursed the son. When the son held up the old woman’s head to show it to the people he slipped on some blood and fell off the scaffold and was killed.”

  I could not help laughing at the irony of it. “You mean the old woman’s curse killed him? I don’t believe it.”

  “It is true, I was there. The old man, who ’ad spent his life killing people, was distraught. Henri then ’ad to become an executioner, the one thing he did not want to do. Since then he has been tormented by memories of everyone he has killed.”

  “How did the terror end?” I asked.

  “The fear of being accused brought many people together and eventually a group working with some soldiers arrested Robespierre and his Committee for Public Safety. Robespierre tried to shoot himself at the end but the stupid fool missed and managed to shoot off half his jaw instead. They were all executed the next day. I was there for that too. We had to tie Robespierre’s jaw on to his head with a cloth before we could execute him. He just seemed confused, as though he did not know what was going on. Most of those men who had ordered the death of hundreds went to their death shouting and pleading for mercy. Only the one called Saint Just, one of the most ruthless killers, showed any courage at the end.”

  We had now reached the open shed at the end of the yard. There was a tarpaulin, which the sergeant pulled pack to reveal what appeared to be a pile of lumber.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “Can’t you guess?” said the sergeant. “Here, let me give you another clue.” He pulled off another cloth to reveal a large, angled blade. It was a dismantled guillotine. “This is the one that was used during the terror. That steel has taken hundreds of lives.” He pointed to a wide board that had some straps on it. “That is the board we strapped people to; it stopped them struggling as we lowered them under what they used to call the National Razor. Often people started to panic when they saw the basket waiting to catch their head.”

  I shuddered at the thought. “I suppose at least the death was quick.”

  “Compared to hanging, yes. But you had to be careful as the heads would live for a few seconds after death. I have been bitten a few times picking heads out of the basket. If you called their name they would look at you for a few seconds before their eyes glazed over.”

  “Good God, so when you held up their heads to the crowd, their last glimpse in life was the crowd cheering their death?”

  “I suppose it was, yes, if I was quick holding the head up.”

  We fell silent for a moment as I reflected on this horror, but the sergeant seemed unconcerned as he covered up the blade and dragged the tarpaulin back over the wood.

  “Don’t any of those deaths keep you awake at night?” I asked.

  “There was one,” he admitted. “It was a young girl; she was only fifteen, beautiful with blond hair. She had been sentenced to death with her parents and they all arrived together in the cart. I had to decide whether to give her a few minutes of extra life, but let her watch her parents die, or kill her first. I decided it would be a kindness to take her first. The mother was hysterical but we prised them apart. I can still see that young, tear-stained face. The poor girl was shaking with fear. I told her to shut her eyes and count slowly to one ’undred and it would soon be finished. She did what I told her and we go
t her on the guillotine quickly to get it over with. She had been counting aloud and I remember she had reached thirty-three when the blade dropped. When I picked up her head her eyes were still tightly shut and her lips were still moving slightly as though she was still counting. I often see that face in my dreams.” His eyes were fixed on the door we were now walking back towards the cells and for the first time I saw him show some emotion. “I dream of her voice too, counting, but I always wake up as she gets to thirty-three. That is the only ghost that haunts me, but I know that it will follow me to the end of my days.”

  “I had no idea they killed children as well.”

  “They didn’t normally. If the parents were killed then the children went to relatives or orphanages. If a woman was pregnant, she was held in prison until she gave birth and then she was executed, sometimes the same day. The baby would then go to family or an orphanage. After that girl was killed I asked around a bit because it was playing on my mind. The family were accused of being counter-revolutionaries, but that meant nothing. I spoke to a neighbour and she told me that the parents had turned down a request to give their daughter as a mistress to some revolutionary official. They should have run then but they didn’t. The official had the whole family arrested and killed out of spite.” He shook his head. “That was how it was then, people drunk with the power of life and death over others.”