Flashman at the Charge fp-4

by George MacDonald Fraser

  D'you know, when a man talks like that to me, I feel downright insulted. Why other, unnamed lives, or the East India Company's dividend, or the credit of Lord Aberdeen, or the honour of British arms, should be held by me to be of greater consequence than my own shrinking skin, I've always been at a loss to understand.

  "You're missing the point," I told him. "Of course, one doesn't think twice about one's neck when it's a question of duty"—I don't, anyway—"but one has to be sure where one's duty lies. Maybe I've seen more rough work than you have, Scud, and I've learned there's no point in suicide—not when one can wait and watch and think. If we sit tight, who knows what chance may arise that ain't apparent now? But if we go off half-cock, and get killed or something—well, that won't get the news to Raglan. Here's something: now that Ignatieff don't need us any more, they may even exchange us. Then the laugh would be on them, eh?"

  At this he cried out that time was vital, and we daren't wait. I replied that we daren't go until we saw a reasonable chance (if I knew anything, we'd wait a long time for one), and so we bandied it to and fro and got no forrarder, and finally went to bed, played out.

  When I thought the thing over, alone (and got into a fine sweat at the recollection of the fearful risk we'd run, crouching in that musty gallery) I could see East's point. Here we were, by an amazing fluke, in possession of information which any decent soldier would have gone through hell to get to his chiefs. And Scud East was a decent soldier, by anyone's lights but mine. My task, plainly, was to prevent his doing anything rash—in other words, anything at all—and yet appear to be in as big a sweat as he was himself. Not too difficult, for one of my talents.

  In the next few days we mulled over a dozen notions for escaping, each more lunatic than the last. It was quite interesting, really, to see at what point in some particular idiocy poor Scud would start to boggle; I remember the look of respectful horror which crept into his eyes when I regretted absently that we hadn't dropped from the gallery that night and cut all their throats, the Tsar's included—"too late, now, of course, since they've all gone," says I. "Pity, though; if we'd finished 'em off, that would have scotched their little scheme. And I haven't had a decent set-to since Balaclava. Aye, well."

  Scud began to worry me, though; he was working himself up into a fever of anxiety and impatience where he might do something foolish. "We must try!" he kept insisting. "If we can think of no alternative soon, we're bound to make a run for it some night! I'll go mad if we don't, I tell you! How can you just sit there?—oh, no, I'm sorry, Flashman; I know this must be torturing you too! Forgive me, old fellow. I haven't got your steady nerve."

  He hadn't got Valla to refresh him, either, which might have had a calming effect. I thought of suggesting that he take a steam-bath with Aunt Sara, to settle his nerves, but he might have enjoyed it too much, and then gone mad repenting. So I tried to look anxious and frustrated, while he chewed his nails and fretted horribly, and a week passed, in which he must have lost a stone. Worrying about India, stab me. And then the worst happened: we got our opportunity, and in circumstances which even I couldn't refuse.

  It came after a day in which Pencherjevsky lost his temper, a rare thing, and most memorable. I was in, the salon when I heard him bawling at the front door, and came out to find him standing in the hallway, fulminating at two fellows outside on the steps. One looked like a clergyman; the other was a lean, ugly little fellow dressed like a clerk.

  "… effrontery, to seek to thrust yourself between me and my people!" Pencherjevsky was roaring. "Merciful God, how do I keep my hands from you? Have you no souls to cure, you priest fellow, and you, Blank, no pen-pushing or pimping to occupy you? Ah, but no—you have your agitating, have you not, you seditious scum! Well, agitate elsewhere, before I have my Cossacks take their whips to you! Get out of my sight and off my land—both of you!"

  He was grotesque in his rage, towering like some bearded old-world god—I'd have been in the next county before him, but these two stood their ground, jeopardizing their health.

  "We are no serfs of yours!" cries the fellow Blank. "You do not order us," and Pencherjevsky gave a strangled roar and started forward, but the priest came between.

  "Lord Count! A moment!" He was game, that one.

  "Hear me, I implore. You are a just man, and surely it is little enough to ask. The woman is old, and if she cannot pay the soul-tax on her grandsons, you know what will happen. The officials will block her stove, and she will be driven out—to what? To die in the cold, or to starve, and the little ones with her. It is a matter of only one hundred and seventy silver kopecks—I do not ask you to pay for her, but let me find the money, and my friend here. We will be glad to pay! Surely you will let us—be merciful!"

  "Look you," says Pencherjevsky, holding himself in. "Do I care for a handful of kopecks? No! Not if it was a hundred and seventy thousand roubles, either! But you come to me with a pitiful tale of this old crone, who cannot pay the tax on her brats—do I not know her son—worthless bastard!—is a koulak*(*A peasant with money, a usurer.) in Odessa, and could pay it for her, fifty times over! Well, let him! But if he will not, then it is for the government to enforce the law—no man hindering! No, not even me! Suppose I pay, or permit you to pay, on her behalf, what would happen then? I shall tell you. Next year, and every year thereafter, you would have all the moujiks from here to Rostov bawling at my door: 'We cannot pay the soul-tax,30 batiushka; pay for us, as you paid for so-and-so.' And where does that end?"

  "But -" the priest was beginning, but Pencherjevsky cut him short.

  "You would tell me that you will pay for them all? Aye, Master Blank there would pay—with the filthy money sent by his Communist friends in Germany! So that he could creep among my moujiks, sowing sedition, preaching revolution! I know him! So get him hence, priest, out of my sight, before I forget myself!"

  "And the old woman, then? Have a little pity, Count!"

  "I have explained!" roars Pencherjevsky. "By God, as though I owe you that much! Get out, both of you!"

  He advanced, hands clenched, and the two of them went scuttling down the steps. But the fellow Blank31 had to have a last word:

  "You filthy tyrant! You dig your own grave! You and your kind think you can live forever, by oppression and torture and theft—you sow dragon's teeth with your cruelty, and they will grow to tear you! You will see, you fiend!"

  Pencherjevsky went mad. He flung his cap on the ground, foaming, and then ran bawling for his whip, his Cossacks, his sabre, while the two malcontents scampered off for their lives, Blank screaming threats and abuse over his shoulder. I listened with interest as the Count raved and stormed:

  "After them! I'll have that filthy creature knouted, God help me! Run him down, and don't leave an inch of hide on his carcase!"

  Within a few moments a group of his Cossacks were in the saddle and thundering out of the gate, while he stormed about the hall, raging still:

  "The dog! The insolent garbage! To beard me, at my own door! The priest's a meddling fool—but that Blank! Anarchist swine! He'll be less impudent when my fellows have cut the buttocks off him!"

  He stalked away, finally, still cursing, and about an hour later the Cossacks came back, and their leader stumped up the steps to report. Pencherjevsky had simmered down a good deal by this time; he had ordered a brew of punch, and invited East and myself to join him, and we were sipping at the scalding stuff by the hall fire when the Cossack came in, an old, stout, white-whiskered scoundrel with his belt at the last hole.32He was grinning, and had his nagaika in his hand.

  "Well?" growled Pencherjevsky. "Did you catch that brute and teach him manners?"

  "Aye, batiushka," says the Cossack, well pleased. "He's dead. Thirty cuts—and, pouf? He was a weakling, though."

  "Dead, you say?" Pencherjevsky set down his cup abruptly, frowning. Then he shrugged: "Well, good riddance! No one'll mourn his loss. One anarchist more or less will not trouble the prefect."

  "The fellow B
lank escaped," continued the Cossack. "I'm sorry, batiushka -"

  "Blank escaped!" Pencherjevsky's voice came out in a hoarse scream, his eyes dilating. "You mean—it was the priest you killed! The holy man!" He stared in disbelief, crossing himself. "Slava Bogu!*(*Glory to God!) The priest!"

  "Priest? Do I know?" says the Cossack. "Was it wrong, batiushka?"

  "Wrong, animal? A priest! And you … you flogged him to death!" The Count looked as though he would have a seizure. He gulped, and clawed at his beard, and then he blundered past the Cossack, up the stairs, and we heard his door crash behind him.

  "My God!" says East. The Cossack looked at us in wonder, and then shrugged, as his kind will, and stalked off. We just stood, looking at each other.

  "What will this mean?" says East.

  "Search me," I said. "They butcher each other so easily in this place—I don't know. I'd think flogging a priest to death is a trifle over the score, though—even for Russia. Old man Pencherjevsky'll have some explaining to do, I'd say—shouldn't wonder if they kick him out of the Moscow Carlton Club."

  "My God, Flashman!" says East again. "What a country!"

  We didn't see the Count at dinner, nor Valla, and Aunt Sara was uncommunicative. But you could see in her face, and the servants', and feel in the very air of the house, that Starotorsk was a place appalled. For once East forgot to talk about escaping, and we went to bed early, saying good-night in whispers.

  I didn't rest too easy, though. My stove was leaking, and making the room stuffy, and the general depression must have infected me, for when I dozed I dreamed badly. I got my old nightmare of drowning in the pipe at Jotunberg, probably with the stove fumes,33 and then it changed to that underground cell in Afghanistan, where my old flame, Narreeman, was trying to qualify me for the Harem Handicap, and then someone started shooting outside the cell, and shrieking, and suddenly I was awake, lathered with sweat, and the shooting was real, and from beneath me in the house there was an appalling crash and the roar of Pencherjevsky's voice, and a pattering of feet, and by that time I was out of bed and into my breeches, struggling with my boots as I threw open the door.

  East was in the passage, half-dressed like myself, running for the landing. I reached it on his very heels, crying: "What's happening? What the devil is it?", when there was a terrible shriek from Valla's passage, and Pencherjevsky was bounding up the stairs, bawling over his shoulder to the Cossacks whom I could see in the hall below:

  "Hold them there! Hold the door! My child, Valentina! Where are you?"

  "Here, father!" And she came hurrying in her night-gown, hair all disordered, eyes starting with terror. "Father, they are everywhere—in the garden! I saw them—oh!"

  There was a crash of musket-fire from beyond the front door, splinters flew in the hall, and one of the Cossacks sang out and staggered, clutching his leg. The others were at the hall windows, there was a smashing of glass, and the sound of baying, screaming voices from outside. Pencherjevsky swore, clasped Valla to him with one enormous arm, saw us, and bawled above the shooting:

  "That damned priest! They have risen—the serfs have risen! They're attacking the house!"

  I've been in a good few sieges in my time, from full-dress affairs like Cawnpore, Lucknow, and the Pekin nonsense a few years ago, to more domestic squabbles such as the Kabul residency in '41. But I can't think of one worse managed than the moujiks' attack on Starotorsk. I gathered afterwards that several thousand of them, whipped on by Blank's fiery oratory, had just up and marched on the house to avenge their priest's death, seizing what weapons were handiest, and making no attempt at concealment or concerted attack to take the place on all sides at once. They just stamped up the road, roaring, the Cossacks in their little barrack saw them, knocked a few over with rifle fire, and then retired to the main house just as the mob surged into the drive and threw themselves at the front door. And there it was, touch and go, with the moujiks beating on the panels, smashing in the downstairs windows on that side to clamber in, waving their trowels and torches and yelling for Pencherjevsky's blood.34

  As he stood there, clasping Valla and glaring round like a mad thing, I doubt if he fully understood it himself- that his beloved slaves were out to string him from the nearest limb, with his family on either side of him. It was like the sun falling out of the sky for him. But he knew deadly danger when he saw it, and his one thought was for his daughter. He seized me by the arm.

  "The back way—to the stables! Quickly! Get her away, both of you! We shall hold them here—the fools, the ingrate clods!" He practically flung her into my arms. "Take a sled and horses, and drive like the wind to the Arianski house—on the Alexandrovsk road! There she will be safe. But hasten, in God's name!"

  I'd have been off at the run, but East, the posturing ass, had to thrust in:

  "One of us will stay, sir! Or let a Cossack escort your daughter—it is not fitting that British officers should -"

  "You numskull!" bawled Pencherjevsky, seizing him and thrusting him violently towards the back corridor. "Go! They will be in, or round the house, while you stand prating! This is no affair of yours—and I command here!" There was a tearing crash from the front door, several pistol shots amid the clamour of the mob and the shouting of the Cossacks, and over the banisters I saw the door cave in, and a torrent of ragged figures pouring in, driving the Cossacks back towards the foot of the stairs. The smoky glare of their torches turned the place suddenly into a struggling hell, as the Cossacks swung their sabres and nagaikas to force them back.

  "Get her away!" Pencherjevsky encircled both me and Valla for an instant in his bear-like hug, his great, bearded face within an inch of my own, and there were tears in his glaring eyes. "You know what is to do, my son! See to her—and to that other life! God be with you!"

  And he bundled us into the corridor, and then rushed to the head of the stairs. I had a glimpse of his towering bulk, with the smoky glare beneath him, and then the chorus of yells and screams from the hall redoubled, there was a rushing of feet, a splintering of timber—and East and I were doubling down the back-stairs at speed, Valla sobbing against my chest as I swept her along.

  We tore through the kitchen, East pausing to grab some loaves and bottles, while I hurried out into the yard. It was dead still in the moonlight; nothing but the soft stamp of the beasts in their stalls, and the distant tumult muffled on the other side of the house. I was into the coach-building in a flash, bundled Valla into the biggest sled, and was leading round the first of the horses when East joined me, his arms full.

  I don't know the record for harnessing a three-horse sled, but I'll swear we broke it; I wrenched home the last buckle while East scuttled across the snow to unbar the gate. I jumped into the driver's seat and tugged the reins, the horses whinnied and reared and then danced forward, any old how—it's deuced difficult, tooling a sled—and with me swearing at the beasts and East swinging up as we slid past, we scraped through the gateway on to the open road beyond.

  There was a bang to our left, and a shot whistled overhead, causing me to duck and the horses to swerve alarmingly. They were rounding the house wall, a bare thirty yards away, a confused, roaring rabble, torches waving, running to head us off. East seized the whip from its mount and lashed at the beasts, and with a bound that nearly overturned us they tore away, down the road, with the mob cursing at our tail, waving their fists, and one last shot singing wide as we distanced them.

  We didn't let up for a mile, though, by which time I had the beasts under control, and we were able to pull up on a gentle rise and look back. It was like a Christmas scene, a great white blanket glittering in the full moon, and the dark house rising up from it, with the red dots of torch-light dancing among the outbuildings, and the thin sound of voices echoing through the frosty air, and the stars twinkling in the purple sky. Very bonny, I suppose—and then East clutched my arm.

  "My God! Look yonder!"

  There was a dull glow at one corner of the house; it grew into an ora
nge flame, licking upwards with a shower of sparks; the torches seemed to dance more madly than ever, and from the sled behind there was a sudden shrieking sob, and Valla was trying to struggle out—my God, she still had nothing on but her night-dress, and as she half fell out it ripped and sent her tumbling into the snow.

  I threw the reins to East, jumped down, and bundled her quickly back into the sled. There were furs there, any amount of them, and I swaddled her in them before the cold could get at her. "Father! Father!" she was moaning, and then she fainted dead away, and I laid her down on the back seat and went forward to East, handing him up one of the furs—for we had nothing but our shirts and breeches and boots, and the cold was crippling.

  "Let's get on," says I, wrapping up myself, with my teeth chattering. "The sooner we're out of here, the better. Come on, man, what ails you?"

  He was sitting staring ahead, his mouth open, and when he swung round to me, he was positively laughing.

  "Flashman!" he cried. "This is our chance! Heaven-sent! The sled—the horses—and a clear start! We're away, old fellow—and no one to stop us!"

  It shows you what a hectic scramble it had been, with not a moment's pause to collect one's wits from the shock of waking until now, but for a second I didn't see what he was driving at.. And then it struck me—escape. We could light out for Yenitchi, and East's causeway, and not a living soul would know we had gone. One couldn't be sure, of course, but I doubted whether any civilized being would survive what was happening at Starotorsk; it might be days before the police or the army came on the scene and realized that there were three persons not accounted for. And by then we could be in Sevastopol—always assuming we got through the Russian army. I didn't like it, but I didn't much care for the Alexandrovsk road, either, wherever that was—God knew how far the insurrection would spread, and to be caught up in it, with Pencherjevsky's daughter in tow, would be asking to be torn limb from limb.