The older you get, the longer you take to heal. The hole in my gut was as neat and handy as a wound can hope to be, and thirty years earlier would have been right in a fortnight, but now it turned angry, no doubt from the strain imposed by my frustrating half-dalliance with Madame de la Tour d’Auvergne, damn her wanton ways. The stitches had come adrift, and had to be replaced by my little medico, I developed a fever which returned me to bed for more than a week, and after that I was no better than walking wounded, for I was weak as a rat and common sense demanded that I should go canny, as Elspeth would say.
She was much in my mind at that time, but then she always is when I’ve passed through the furnace and am looking for consolation. The thought of that loving smile, the child-like innocence of the forget-me-not eyes, the soft sweet voice, and the matronly charms bursting out of her corset, made me downright homesick, and with Caprice turning me off, the stupid little trollop, I’d have been tempted to set my sights on London if it hadn’t been for the prospect of rattling Kralta all over Vienna. I couldn’t forego that, in all conscience; our railway idyll had given me an appetite, and after it was satisfied would be time enough to cry off with the new love and on with the old.
So I bore my captivity into November, glad to be alive, and passing the time pondering on the mysteries of those few short days of strange adventure – barely a week, from the time when I’d been sitting in Berkeley Square gloating over Kralta’s picture, to the awful moment when I’d pegged out in that hellish mine, with Caprice clucking over me like an anxious hen and Starnberg’s corpse floating in the limpid brine. Reviewing it all … I knew what had happened, but not why; in all the confusion of lies and deceits and voltes-face, there were mysteries, as I say, which I didn’t understand, and still don’t.
On the face of it, Bismarck had concocted a lunatic but logical scheme to save the Austrian Emperor from assassination, and it had succeeded in a way he could never have foreseen, with his trusted henchman proving traitor but being foiled by old Flashy’s blundering. Well, lucky old Otto – and lucky Franz-Josef and lucky Europe. (And when we’d gone, no one would ever believe it.) Knowing my opinion of Bismarck, you may wonder that I don’t suspect him of some gigantic Machiavellian double-deal whereby he’d invented the tale of a Holnup plot (to hoax simpletons like me and Kralta) so that Starnberg could murder Franz-Josef with Bismarck’s blessing, and start another war – he’d done it before, God knows, twice at least, and wouldn’t have scrupled to do it again if it had suited his book. But it didn’t, you see; he’d built Germany into a European Power, by blood and skulduggery, and had nothing to gain by another explosion. He could rest on his laurels and let nature take its usual disastrous course – as it is doing, if only imbeciles like Asquith would notice. Well, I’m past caring.
At a lesser remove, I couldn’t figure Starnberg’s behaviour in the mine. Why, having done his level damnedest to kill me, had he saved me from going down that awful chasm into the bowels of the earth? ’Cos he’d wanted to put me away with his own steel? To prolong my agony? Or from some mad, quixotic impulse which he mightn’t have understood himself? Search me. Folk like the Starnbergs, father and son, don’t play by ordinary rules. I only hope there ain’t a grandson loose about the place.
I still wondered, too, why Caprice had cut him down in cold blood, and why she wouldn’t talk of it, even. Vanity would have tempted me to take Hutton’s judgment that she was dead spoony on me and had done him in for that reason, if she had not since handed me my marching orders. (And on the pretext of fidelity to some muffin of a military historian! I still couldn’t get over that. Aye, well, the silly bint would rue her lost opportunities when next Professor Charles-Alain clambered aboard her – in the dark, probably, and wearing a nightcap with a tassel, the daring dog.) My own view, for what it was worth, was that she’d murdered Starnberg because it struck her (being female) as the fitting and tidy thing to do – and gave her the last word, so there. Delzons, her chief, who knew her better than anyone, had a different explanation which he gave me the day before we left Ischl, and you must make of it what you will.
Hutton had gone back to London by then, after assuring me that Government was satisfied; no official approval, of course, but no censure either; my assistance had been noted, and would be recorded in the secret papers. Aye, I’m still waiting for my peerage.
Delzons had stayed on to close the Ischl house as soon as I was fit to take the open air. Paris was no keener on maintaining bolt-holes out of secret funds than London, and the pair of us transferred to the Golden Ship, myself to complete my convalescence and Delzons to enjoy a holiday – or so he said, but I suspect he was keeping an eye on me to see that I didn’t get into mischief. I was glad enough of his company, for he was the best kind of Frog, shrewd and tough as teak, but jolly and with no foolish airs.
It would be late November, when I was healed and feeling barely a twinge, that we walked across the Ischl bridges and up the hill to the royal lodge. The trees were bare, there was a little snow lying, and the river was grey and sullen with icy patches under the banks. The lodge itself was silent under a leaden sky, with only a servant in sight, sweeping leaves and snow from the big porch; it would be months before Franz-Josef returned to add to the collection of heads in that dark panelled chamber where his aides had crawled about, giggling in drink, and I’d had conniptions as I stared at the doctored cartridges.
We circled the place, and Delzons pointed out the spot where he’d lain doggo and Caprice had slipped away to shadow the Holnups. I studied the open ground, dotted with trees and bushes, between where we stood and the lodge, and remarked that a night-stalk would have been ticklish even for my old Apache chums, Quick Killer and Yawner.
“But not for la petite,” smiles Delzons. “She has no equal. Is it not remarkable, one so delicately feminine, so pretty and vivace, so much a child almost, but of a skill and courage and … and firm purpose beyond any agent I have seen?” He nodded thoughtfully. “We have a word, colonel, that I think has no equivalent in English, which I apply to nothing and no one but her. Formidable.”
“She’s all o’ that.” Plainly he was as smitten with her as Hutton had been, but with Delzons it was fond, almost paternal. “Where did she learn to stalk and … so on?”
“In the Breton woods as a child, with her three elder brothers.” He chuckled. “She was une luronne – a tomboy, no? Oui, un garçon manqué. Six years younger than they, but their match in all sport, running, climbing, shooting … oh, and daring! And they were no poules mouillées, no milksops, those three lads. Yet when she was only twelve she was their master with foil and pistol. Some brothers would have been jealous, but Valéry and Claude and Jacques were her adoring slaves – ah, they were close, those four!”
“You knew ’em well, then,” says I, as we strolled back.
“Their father was my copain in Crimea, before I joined the intelligence. I was to them as an uncle when they were small, and grew to love them, Caprice above all … well, a lonely bachelor engrossed in his work must have something to love, non?” He paused, musing a moment, then went on. “But then I was posted abroad for several years, and lost touch with the family until the terrible news reached me that the father and three sons had all fallen in the war of ’70 – he was by then chef de brigade, and the three boys had but lately passed through St Cyr. I was desolate, above all for Caprice, so cruelly deprived at a stroke of all those she loved. I wrote to her, of my grief and condolence, assuring her of my support in any way possible. Thus it was, two years later, when I came home to command the European section of the département secret, that she came to see me – asking for employment. Mon dieu!” He heaved in emotion, and at once became apologetic. “Oh, forgive me … perhaps I weary you? No? Then let us sit a moment.”
We settled on a bench by the path overlooking the river, and Delzons lit his pipe, gazing down at the distant snow-patched roofs.
“You conceive my amazement, not only to discover that my little gamine had become a lovely young woman, but that she should seek an occupation so unsuitable, mais inconcevable, for one so chaste et modeste. ‘Why, dear child?’ I asked. ‘I cannot be a soldier like my father and brothers. I shall fight for France in my own way.’ That was her reply. As gently as might be, I suggested that there were other ways to serve, that the world of the département secret was a hard and dangerous one, and … highly unpleasant in ways which she, a convent-reared girl of eighteen, could not conceive. Do you know what she said, colonel? ‘Uncle Delzons, I have studied the world from the tableaux vivants of the Folies Gaités, and moved among its clientele, who are also hard, dangerous, and unpleasant.’ Before I could even express my scandal, for I had known nothing of this, she added – oh, so quiet and demure with that laughter in her innocent eyes – ‘Also I am fluent in languages, and fence and shoot even better these days.’”
Delzons took the pipe from his mouth, looked at it, and stuck it back. “What could I say? I was shocked, yes – but I saw, too, that beneath the fresh, lovely surface there was a metal that I had never suspected. It is rare, such metal, and essential to the département secret. And if I had refused her, I knew there were other sections of the département which would not.” He laughed ruefully. “The truth was, she was a gift to any chef d’intelligence. And so she proved, in small things at first, as translator, courier, embassy bricoleur – what you call jack-of-all-trades – and later as secret agent in the field … and you know what that means. Yes … she was the best.”
I said he must have been sorry to lose her, and he grimaced. “She told you? Yes, sorry … but I rejoiced also. For six years I had lost sleep, whenever she went into danger. Oh, seldom enough – our work, as you are aware, brings a moment’s peril in a year of routine – but when that peril comes … No, I am glad she has gone. When I think of the risks she ran – of her facing a man like Starnberg to the death, my heart ceases to beat. If we had lost her … my friend, I should have died. It is true, my heart would have ceased forever then.”
The usual exaggerated Froggy vapouring, but Delzons wasn’t the usual Frog, and I guessed he believed it. I took the opportunity to canvass his opinion.
“Well, you needn’t ha’ fretted. He was a capital hand with a sabre, but not in her parish.” I paused deliberately. “Can’t think I’ve ever seen a neater … execution.”
His head came round sharply. “Ah! You confirm M. ’Utton’s opinion – which I happen to share. The evidence of Starnberg’s wounds was conclusive. As you say … an execution.” His eyes were steady on mine. “But in my report, self-defence. As it must always be when an agent kills … in the line of duty.”
That reminded me of something Hutton had said. “He told me Stamberg wasn’t the first she’d sent down. Were the others self-defence, too?”
He frowned and muttered a nasty word. “I have a great respect for our colleague ’Utton, but he talks too much.” He sucked at his dead pipe, and continued rapid-fire. “Yes. She has killed before. Twice. In Egypt, in Turkey. One was a minor diplomat who had found out she was a French agent. The other an informer whose silence was essential. She was not under my control on either occasion. My responsibility is for Europe. She was on detachment to another section. I did not seek details.” Abruptly he got to his feet, his mouth set like a trap. “Nor have she and I ever mentioned the incidents. Shall we walk on, colonel?”
And this was the girl who had giggled with me over Punch. I fell into step beside him as we walked down to the bridges, his stick fairly cracking at each stride, but there was a grim grin under his heavy moustache.
“Oh, M. ’Utton!” cries he. “So talkative, so shrewd! No doubt he offered you his theory that she slew Stamberg in cold blood because of a tendre for you? Bon sang de merde!” He gave a barking laugh. “Enraged because he had wounded, perhaps slain, her lover! Perhaps you believe that yourself, because you were lovers in Berlin – oh, I know all about her ‘holiday task’ for Blowitz! What, you do not believe ’Utton’s theory? I congratulate you!” He calmed after a few steps. “Your affaire in Berlin was an amour passant, then. Not of the heart.”
Gad, they’re a tactful, tasteful lot, the French. “Not on my side,” I told him.
“Nor on hers, whatever the so-shrewd ‘Utton may think. Shall I tell you why she killed Starnberg as she did?”
He had stopped on the bridge, turned to face me. “I told you her father and brothers fell in the war of ’70 against the Germans, and what she said of fighting in her own way. I did not tell you how they died. Papa and Jacques were killed in the battle at Gravelotte. Claude died of his wounds, neglected … in a German hospital. Valéry was in the intelligence. He was captured at St Privat on a mission d’espionnage. He was shot by a firing squad of Fransecky’s Pomeranians, the day after the signing of the armistice, February the first, 1871!” Suddenly the eyes in the bulldog face were bright with angry tears. “They knew the armistice had been signed, but they shot him just the same. Just the same! German chivalry.”
It had started to snow, and he was hunched up against the chill wind, staring down at the river.
“So they were gone, all four, it seemed in a moment … as the poet says of a snowflake on the water. Did I mention that the diplomat in Turkey and the informer in Egypt were both Germans? No? Well, Caprice does not like Germans. As the Count von Starnberg discovered. But I am keeping you standing in the cold, colonel! Give me your arm, my friend! Shall we seek a café and a cup of chocolate – with a large cognac to flavour it, eh?”
Some clever ass has said that “if” is the biggest word in the language, but I say it’s the most useless. There have been so many coincidences in my life, good and bad, that I’ve learned the folly of exclaiming “If only …!” They happen, and that’s that, and if the one that brought my Austrian odyssey to a close was uncommon disastrous – and infuriating, because I’d foreseen its possibility – well, I can be philosophic now because, as I’ve observed before, I’m still here at ninety, more or less, and you can’t ask fairer than that.
But that don’t mean I’ll ever forgive the drunk porter who mislaid my trunk at Charing Cross, because if he hadn’t … there, you see, “if” almost got the better of me, and no wonder when I think what came of that boozy idiot’s carelessness. Shocking state the railways are in.
However, we’ll come to Charing Cross all in good time. I’d have been there weeks earlier if (there it is again, dammit) Kralta hadn’t been so amorously intoxicated, and the circumstances of our reunion in Vienna so different from what I’d expected. When I took the train from Ischl early in December I was looking forward to a couple of cosy and intimate weeks in which I rogered her blue in the face, sparked her to the opera or whatever evening amusements Vienna offered, wined and dined of the best, saw the sights, took her riding (for she looked too much like a horse to be anything but an equestrian), viewed the Blue Danube from the warm comfort of her bedroom, and back to the muttons again. A modest enough ambition, and would have had me home again by Christmas. Well, I was taken aback, if not disappointed, by what awaited me at the Grand Hotel, and followed in the ensuing weeks.
I’d telegraphed from Ischl to advise her that I’d be rolling in, and when I arrived at the Grand, which was the newest and best-appointed of the leading hotels, she was awaiting me in a suit of rooms that Louis XIV might have thought too large and opulent for his taste. Vienna’s like that, you see; in most great cities the new districts are where the Quality hang out, but in Vienna the old sections are the exclusive ones, infested by the most numerous nobility in Europe, living in palaces and splendid mansions built centuries ago by ancestors who plainly felt that even a lavatory wasn’t a lavatory unless it could accommodate a hunt ball, with gilded cherubs on the ceiling and walls that looked like wedding cakes. Even new hotels like the Grand were to match, and the whole quarter reeked of money, privilege, and luxury in doubtful taste. It was reckoned to be the richest Upper Ten outside London, and the two hundred families of princes, counts, and assorted titled trash spent ten million quid among ’em per annum, which ain’t bad for gaslight and groceries. They spent more, ate more, drank more, danced more, and fornicated more than any other capital on earth (and that’s Fetridge23 talking, not me), and cared not a rap for anything except their musical fame, of which they’re wonderfully jealous – not without cause, I’d say, when you think of the waltz.
I’d arranged to arrive in town late, at an hour when Kralta would be cleared for bed and action, but when I reached the hotel close on midnight I saw that I’d been too long in the provinces; the hall was thronged with revellers, the dining salon was full, and an orchestra was going full swing. Even so, I was unprepared for the start I received when I was ushered into her drawing-room: where I’d looked to find her alone, there were thirty folk if there was one, all ablaze in the pink of fashion, and me in my travelling dirt. And she, whom I’d imagined flinging aside her fur robe and flying to my arms, was magnificent in tiara, long gloves, and ivory silk, the image of her photograph, standing amidst her society gaggle, waiting calmly for me to approach, as though she’d been royalty. Which of course she was – European royalty, leastways.
But I couldn’t complain of her welcoming smile, with a hand stretched out for me to kiss. “At last, we meet in Vienna!” says she softly, and then I was being presented to Prince This and Baroness That, and Colonel von Stuff and Madame Puff – and this I’ll say for them, there wasn’t a sneer or a sniff at my tweeds, such as you’d get from Frogs or Dagoes or our own reptilia; Vienna wasn’t only polite, it was downright friendly and hospitable, putting a glass in my hand, coaxing me to the buffet, inquiring after my journey, asking how long I’d been in town, exclaiming that I must call or dine or see such-and-such, the men frank and genial, the women gay and easy – some damned handsome pieces there were, too – and Kralta, smiling coolly with her hand on my sleeve, guided me effortlessly through the crowd and out into a secluded alcove – and then she was in my arms, her mouth open under mine, fairly writhing against me, and I was making up for weeks of abstinence and wondering when we could get to work in earnest when suddenly she left off and buried her head on my shoulder.
“Thank God you are safe!” says she, in a choking voice. “When I heard what that … that vile traitor had done to you, I thought I should run mad! Oh, thank God, thank God!”
Thank a nimble little Parisienne cut-throat, thinks I, but all I did was murmur comfort, kissing her again and swearing that I’d been baying the moon at the thought of her, and when could we get shot of her guests? She laughed at that, holding my hands and regarding me fondly, and I found myself marvelling that a woman whose looks didn’t compare to half of those on view in her drawing-room could rouse such desire in me – mind you, there wasn’t a shape among ’em to match the splendid body in its ivory sheath, or a carriage to set beside that striking figurehead with its long gold tresses coiled beneath the diamond crown.
I had to bottle my ardour for more than an hour, for while the fashionable crowd soon dispersed, four who seemed to be her prime intimates stayed to sup with us. They were an oddish group, I thought: some Prince or other, a distinguished greybeard with an order on his coat, and three females, all extremely personable. One of ’em, a countess, was dark and soulful and soft-spoken, and possessed of the most enormous juggs I’ve ever seen; how she managed her soup, heaven knows, for I’ll swear she couldn’t see her plate. T’others were a prattling blonde who flirted out of habit, even with the waiters, and a slender, red-haired piece who drank like a Mississippi pilot, with no visible effect. The Prince was plainly a big gun, and most courteous to me, and Kralta was at her most stately, so it was a decorous enough meal bar the blonde’s chatter and coquettish glances, which no one deigned to notice. Good form, the Viennese.
We parted at last, thank the Lord, with bows and nods and polite murmurs, Kralta led the way to her bedchamber, and I was all over her at once, with growls of endearment and a great wrenching of buttons. It was a true meeting of minds, for I doubt if a woman ever stripped faster from full court regalia, and we revelled in each other like peasants in a hayrick, from bed to floor and back again, I believe, but I ain’t sure. And when we were gloriously done, and I lay gasping while she wept softly and kissed the healed scar on my flank, murmuring endearments, I thought, well, this is why you came to Europe, Rash, and Ischl was worth it. She said not a word then or thereafter about Starnberg or the plot, and I was content to let it lie.
I staggered out presently to visit the little private lavatory in an ante-chamber off the drawing-room, and was taken flat aback when who should come out of the thunder-house but the Prince, clad in a silk robe with his beard in a net. What the deuce he was doing on the premises, I couldn’t imagine, but I admired his aplomb, for I’d ventured out in a state of nature, and he didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow, but waved me in with a courtly hand, bade me “Gute nacht”, and disappeared through a door on the far side of the drawing-room. I performed my ablutions in some bewilderment, and my good angel prompted me to wrap a towel round myself before venturing out, for when I did, damned if the door he’d used didn’t open, and a massive bosom emerged, followed by the soulful countess in a night-rail fashioned apparently from a scrap of mosquito-net. She gave a start at the sight of me, murmured “Entschuldigung!”, collared a decanter from the sideboard, and with a sleepy smile and “Bis spate!”, vanished whence she had come.
Kralta was repairing the damage before her mirror when I rolled in, much perturbed.
“That Prince and the women – they’re out there, large as life! Who is he, for God’s sake?”
“My husband,” says she. “You were presented to him.”
Well, all I’d caught in the confusing moment of arrival had been “von und zum umble rumble”, as so often happens. I considered, hard.
“Ah! I see. Your husband, eh? And the women?”
“His mistresses,” says she, carefully rouging her lip. “It is convenient that we share the apartment. It is quite large enough, you see.” She began to brush her hair, while I struggled for an appropriate rejoinder, and could think of only one.
“Mistresses, eh? Well, well.” She continued to brush calmly, so I added another trenchant observation. “He has three of them.”
“Yes. The fair one, Fraulein Boelcke, I had not met before this evening. She talks too freely, don’t you think?”
But my conversational bolt was shot. For once I was at a loss – as who would not be, on discovering that while he was bulling a chap’s wife all over the shop and probably making a hell of an uproar, the chap himself was virtually next door brushing his teeth or pomading his eyebrows – and even now might be conducting an orgy just across the way with three trollops while the wife of his bosom was smiling tenderly on her bemused lover, kissing him fondly, leading him back to bed, and settling into his arms for conversation and drowsy fondling which must lead inevitably to another outbreak of feverish passion? And it did, even noisier and more protracted than before, for this time she occupied the driving seat, if you know what I mean, and rode herself into a sobbing frenzy they could have heard in Berlin.
I’m an easy-going fellow, as you know, but it struck me as I lay there, urging her on with ecstatic roars and the occasional slap on the rump, and afterwards cradling her to sleep on my breast, that this was a pretty informal household, and would take getting used to. I’m all for cuckolding husbands, and don’t give a dam if they know it, unless they’re the hellfire horse-whipping sort who’ll resent it; indeed, there’s nothing like a good gloat in the grinding teeth of some poor muff to whom you’ve awarded antlers. But when the muff is not only complaisant but approving, and meets you with every politeness at luncheon next day, and his wife is on cordial terms (as cordial, that is, as Kralta could ever be) with the fair trio he’s been using as though he were the Sultan of Swat … well, it’s novel, and I wasn’t sure that I cared for it above half.
It took me a few weeks to settle my thoughts on the subject, and reflection was made no easier by the distractions Vienna afforded. I’ve never wallowed in such sumptuous indulgence in my life; even being a crowned head in Strackenz didn’t compare to it. The place was dedicated to sheer pleasure in those days, and I guess I became intoxicated in a way that had nothing to do with drink, although there was enough and to spare of that. Perhaps I was still fagged from my ordeal; at all events I was content to be borne along on that gay, dazzling tide, idling and stuffing and boozing and viewing the capital’s wonders by day, consorting with Kralta’s vast social circle (which included the Prince and his skirts as often as not) of an evening, and letting her have her haughty head by night.
She was a demanding mistress, and if she’d hadn’t been such a prime mount, and besotted with me to boot, I might have brought her to heel – or tried to. That she was an imperious piece I knew, but now I saw it wasn’t just her nature, which was the root of her pride, but the life she led which fostered that almighty growth. Vienna seemed to be at her feet; she was deferred to on all sides, and placed on a social level not far short of imperial, toad-eaten by the flower of society, and ruling it with a tilted chin and cold eye. The style in which she lived argued fabulous wealth, and she spent it like a whaler in port, on the slightest whim; small wonder she liked to call the tune in bed.
Speaking of imperial, I had a taste of that when she took me, with the Prince and his hareem in tow, to a gala ball at Schonbrunn, where the Emperor and Empress condescended to mingle with Vienna’s finest. That was a damned odd turn, eerie almost, for a moment came when, with Kralta standing by like a magnificent ring-mistress, I found myself face to face with Franz-Josef and the superb Sissi. He drew himself up to his imposing height, whiskers at the high port, and stared me straight in the eye for a long moment; he said not a word, but held out his hand, and ’twasn’t the usual touch-and-away of royalty, but a good strong clasp followed by a hearty shake before he passed on, Sissi following with a smiling turn of her lovely head. That’s his vote of thanks for services rendered, thinks I, and the most he can do or I can expect – but I was wrong. There was something more, though whether ’twas his idea or Sissi’s I can’t say. When the dancing began, and I was restoring myself with a glass of Tokay after whirling Kralta’s substantial poundage round the floor, a lordly swell with a ribboned order presented himself and informed me that Her Imperial Majesty would be graciously pleased to accept if I were to beg the honour of leading her out for the next dance.
It was unprecedented, I’m told, to a foreign stranger, and a commoner at that. You may be sure I complied, with a beating heart, I confess. And so I waltzed beneath the chandeliers of Old Vienna, under the eyes of the highest and noblest of the Austrian Empire, with Strauss himself flogging the orchestra, and my partner was that magical raven-haired beauty who had all Europe at her feet, and I didn’t tread on ’em once. Afterwards I led her back to Franz-Josef, and received his courteous nod and her brilliant smile.
Well, I’ve rattled the Empress of China and Her Majesty of Madagascar, to say nothing of an Apache Princess and (to the best of my belief) an Indian Rani, and that’s my business, to be written about but not spoken of. But I can tell my great-grandchildren face to face that I’ve danced with the Queen of Hearts. And she, of course, has danced with me.
We spent Christmas at a castle of Kralta’s – or her husband’s, I never found out which – high in the snowy Tyrolean mountains, and toasted in the New Year in a luxurious hunting lodge in a little valley whose inhabitants spoke a strange sort of German laced with Scotch expressions – the legacy, I’m told, of medieval mercenaries who never went home, doubtless for fear of arrest. Both places were full of titled guests invited (or commanded, rather) by Kralta, and we drove in sleighs and skated and tobogganed and revelled by evening and pleasured by night, and it was Vienna in the Arctic, with the Prince always on hand, bland and affable as ever with his popsies around him (one of ’em a new bird, an Italian, who’d replaced the garrulous blonde, no doubt on Kralta’s orders) and it was all such enormous fun that I was heartily sick of it.
Don’t misunderstand me – it wasn’t a surfeit of debauchery and the high life, although there does come a time when you find yourself longing for a pint and a pie and a decent night’s sleep. And it was only partly that I was beginning to miss English voices and English rain and all those things that make the old country so different, thank God, from the Continent. No, I was beginning to realise what had irked me from the first – being just another player in their game, having it taken for granted that I’d be a compliant member of Kralta’s curious ménage, as though I were the latest recruit, if you know what I mean. I’ve always been a free lance, so to speak, going my own way on my own terms, and the notion that Viennese society was raising its weary eyebrows and saying: “Ah, yes, this Englishman is new to her entourage; how long will he last, one wonders?”, and that Kralta probably thought of me as her husband did of his trollops … no, it didn’t suit.
The final straw came on a night in the hunting lodge when I’d become so infernally bored that I’d gone to the village for a prose with the peasants at the tavern, and came home in the small hours. Some of the guests were still about in the principal rooms, drinking and flirting and casting (I thought) odd looks in my direction. I went up, and was making for the chamber I shared with Kralta when a soft voice called and I turned to see the Prince’s maîtresse-en-titre, she of the heroic bosom, standing in an open doorway in a silk night-rail that was never designed for sleeping.
“The Prince is with her highness tonight,” says she, with an arch look. Is he, by God! thinks I, and for a moment was seized with an impulse to stride in and drag him off her by the nape of his cuckolded neck – or her off him, more like, the arrogant bitch. Countess Grosbrusts was watching to see what I made of it, so I looked her over thoughtful-like, and she smiled, and I grinned at her, and she shrugged, and I laughed, and she laughed in turn which set ’em shaking, and as she turned into her room, casting a backward glance, I sauntered after, thinking what a capital change for my last night in Austria.
It was the custom at the lodge for the whole troop to gather for a late breakfast in the main salon, so I waited until all had assembled, despatched a lackey to Kralta’s quarters with orders to pack my traps and send ’em to the station, strolled down with Lady Bountiful on my arm, and announced to the company that I was desolated to have to leave them that day, as urgent affairs in London demanded my attention (which was prophetic, if you like).
Kralta, seated in state by the fire with her toads clustered round stirring her chocolate for her, went pale; she was looking deuced fetching, I have to say, in a white fur robe which prompted happy memories of the Orient Express. I made my apologies, and her eyes were diamond-hard as she glanced from me to my buxom companion and then to the Prince (who was looking a shade worn, I thought), but she would not have been Kralta if she hadn’t responded with icy composure, regretting my departure without expression on that proud horse face. I kissed her hand, made my bow to the Prince, advised him to stick at it, saluted the company, and departed, with a last smile at the splendid white figure seated in state, her golden hair spilling over her shoulders, inclining her head with the regal condescension she’d used at our first meeting. By and large I like to leave ’em happy, but I doubt if she was.
Three days later I was at Charing Cross Station on one of those damp, dismal evenings when the fog rolls inside the buildings and the heart of the returning traveller is gladdened by the sight and smell of it all, London with its grime and bustle and raucous inhabitants, and there ain’t a “Ja, mein Herr,” to be heard, or a sullen Frog face, and not a plate of sauerkraut in sight. I could even listen with fair good humour to the harassed excuses of the Cockney porter carrying my valise as he protested that he didn’t knaow nuffink abaht the trunk, guv’, ’cos ’Erbert ’ad gorn ter the guard’s van for it, and where the ’ell ’e’d got ter, Gawd ownly knew. Sid and Fred were appealed to, search parties were despatched, and ’Erbert was discovered in the left-luggage office, reclining on a lower shelf in a state of merry inebriation. My porter gave tongue blasphemously.
“I knoo the barstid was ’arf-seas over when ’e come on! Din’ I say? Din’ I? Well, ’e can pick up ’is money if the super sees ’im, an’ chance it! Serve the bleeder right, an’ all! I’m sorry, guv’! Look, I’ll whistle a cab for yer, and Sid an’ Fred’ll ’ave yer trunk run dahn in no toime!”
It was music to my ears, and I dawdled patiently, drinking in the sights and sounds of home, and even chuckling at the sight of the semi-comatose ’Erbert leaving off his rendition of “Fifteen men onna dead man’s chest, yow-ow-ow an’ a bottlarum” to assure my porter, whose name was Ginger, that ’e was a blurry good mate an’ a jolly ole pal, before subsiding among the piled baggage.
“Stoopid sod!” cried Ginger. “Gawd knaows w’ere ’e’s put it! Doan’t worry, guv’, we’ll foind it! ’Ere, Sid, wot trains is goin’ aht jus’ naow? Can’t ’ave the gen’man’s trunk bein’ sent orf by mistake, can we?”
“Eight o’clock’s leavin’ shortly f’m Platform Free!” said Sid.
“Jeesus wept, that’s the bleedin’ boat train! Naow, ’e wouldn’t, would ’e? ’Ere, Fred, be a toff an’ nip dahn to Free, jus’ ter mike shore, an’ we’ll ferret abaht rahnd the cab-stands an’ that – jus’ you wait, guv’! We’ll ’ave it in arf a tick!”
I continued to loiter as Fred set off for Platform Three, and just then a neat little bottom tripped past, making for the tea-room, and I sauntered idly after it, curious to see if the front view lived up to the trim ankles and waist. No more than that, but it changed my life, for as I strolled along my eye caught sight of “3” above a ticket gate, and I changed course to see how Fred was doing in his quest for my trunk. The train was within a few minutes of leaving, heavy bags were going into the guard’s van, and Fred was emerging, shaking his head – and at that moment I caught sight of a familiar face down the platform, and strolled along to make sure. He was carrying a bag, and making for a group of fellows standing by a carriage door. I hove up by him, grinning.
“Hollo, Joe!” says I. “Taken up portering, have you?”
He wheeled round, and absolutely almost dropped the bag in astonishment. “Good God – Flashman!” cries he. “Why – they’ve found you, then!”
“Found me! They can’t even find my blasted trunk! Here, what’s the matter? I ain’t a ghost, you know!”
For he was staring at me as though he couldn’t believe his eyes – or eye, rather, for he’d only one ogle, and it was wide in astonishment, which you didn’t often see in the imperturbable Garnet Wolseley.
“Stewart! He’s here!” cries he, to the men by the carriage, and as they turned to look my heart gave a lurch, and my stick fell clattering to the platform. The man addressed, tall, dark, and grinning all over his face, was striding forward to grip my hand – young Johnny Stewart, a Cherrypicker long after my time, but an old comrade from Egypt.
“Wherever did you spring from?” cries he. “Heavens, I’ve been turning the town upside down for you – at your clubs, your house, everywhere …”
But I wasn’t listening. I’d recognised the others at once – Cambridge, commander-in-chief of the Army, with his grey moustache and high balding head; Granville, the Foreign Secretary; and jumping down from the carriage and hastening towards me with his quick, neat step, hand outstretched and eyes bright with joy, the last man on earth I wanted to see, the man I’d left England to avoid at all costs: Chinese Charley Gordon.
“Flashman, old friend!” He was pumping my fin like a man possessed. “At the eleventh hour! Did you know – oh, but you must have, surely? Where have you been? Stewart and I had given up all hope!”
Somehow I found my voice. “I’ve been abroad. In Austria.”
“Austria?” laughs he. “That ain’t abroad! I’ll tell you where’s abroad – Africa! That’s abroad!” He was grinning in disbelief. “You mean you didn’t know I was going back to Sudan?”
I shook my head, my innards like lead. “I’m this minute off the train from Calais –”
“The very place we’re bound for! Stewart and I are off to Suakim this very night! He’s my chief o’ staff … and just guess –” he poked me in the chest “– who I’ve been moving heaven and earth to have as my intelligence bimbashi! Isn’t that so, Garnet? But you were nowhere to be found – and now you drop from the skies! … and you never even knew I was going out!”
“’Twasn’t confirmed until today, after all,” says Joe.
“If Flashman had been in Town, he’d ha’ caught the scent a week ago!” cries Gordon. “Eyes and ears like a dervish scout, he has! How d’ye think he’s here? He knew by instinct the game was afoot, didn’t you, old fellow? My word, and I thought only we Hielandmen had the second sight!” He stepped closer, and his eyes held that barmy mystic glitter that told me God was going to be hauled into the conversation. “Providence guided you … aye, guided you to this very platform! Don’t let anyone try to tell me there’s nothing in the power of prayer!”
If there had been I’d have been back in Austria that minute, or in Wales or Paisley even – anywhere away from this dangerous maniac gripping my sleeve and not letting me get a word in edgewise. I shot a wild glance at the others: Cambridge pop-eyed, Granville smiling but puzzled, Stewart alert and wondering, and only Joe having the grace to frown and chew his lip. I was speechless at the effrontery of the thing, but Gordon, of course, couldn’t see an inch beyond what he thought was a priceless stroke of luck, the selfish hound. It was famous, the happiest of omens … and at last I found my tongue.
“But I’ve just arrived – I’m going home!” I protested, and any normal man would have been checked for a moment at least, but not Gordon, drunk with enthusiasm.
“You were – and you shall, one o’ these days! But you don’t think I’m letting you slip now? Not when Fate has delivered you into my hands?” He was all jocularity – and earnest an instant later, gripping my coat. “Flashman, this is big, believe me. Bigger than China, even – perhaps bigger than anything since the Mutiny. I don’t know yet – but I do know it calls for the best we’ve got. It’s going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever tackled … and I need you, old comrade.” He was a head shorter than I, and having to stare up at me with those pale hypnotic eyes that made you feel like a rabbit before a snake. “See here, I know it’s sudden, and here I am springing it on you like a jack-in-the-box – but the Mahdi’s sudden too, and Osman Digna, and every minute counts! Let me tell you on the train – too much to explain now – and I don’t even know how I’ll set about it, only that we’ve got to set the Sudan to rights before that madman destroys it. It may mean a fight, it may mean a rearguard action, can’t tell yet – and neither can they.” He jerked his head at the others. “But they’re putting the power in my hands, Flashman, and I can choose whoever I wish.”
He stepped back, and he was grinning again. “And I have no hesitation in asking leave of His Grace the Commander-in-Chief –” a duck of the head towards Cambridge “– and the Cabinet –” a nod to Granville “– and our chief man-at-arms –” a flourish at Joe, who was trying to interrupt “– to enlist Sir Harry Flashman, and to the dickens with regulations and usual channels! Well, Harry, what d’ye say?”
Before I could speak, Joe got his word in. “Short notice –” he was beginning, and got no further.
“When did he ever need notice? Some notice he had at Pekin, didn’t he? Remember, Garnet? Or at Balaclava, or Cawnpore, or Kabul!” He wasn’t soft-spoken at the best of times, and in his excitement he was almost shouting, and passengers were turning to stare at us. “He don’t need more than a word and a clear road! Do you?”
This was desperate, but the suddenness of it all still had me at a loss for words – that was the effect that Gordon had, you know, when he was in full cry. He was all over you, beating you down by his vanity-fed fervour, blind to everything but his own point of view. Five minutes ago I’d been carelessly eyeing a jaunty backside while Fred or Ginger looked for my luggage – and now I was being dragooned into God knew what horror by this arrogant zealot – and they called the Mahdi a fanatic!
“Hold on, Charley!” I blurted out. “I … I’m looking for my traps, dammit! And … and I haven’t seen my wife yet, or … or –”
“Your traps can be sent on!” cries he. “Why, you’re all packed! And Wolseley’ll make your excuses at home, won’t you, Garnet? We shan’t be away forever, you know. Besides,” cries he merrily, “if I know bonny Elspeth she’ll never let you hear the last of it if you don’t fall in now! Why, if she were here she’d be bustling you aboard!”
That was the God’s truth, by the way. Duty was Elspeth’s watchword, especially when it was my duty – hadn’t she shot me off to India more than once, weeping, I grant you (though what she’d been up to with those grinning Frogs after Madagascar, once I’d been despatched to the cannon’s mouth, I didn’t care to imagine). But just the thought of her now, not a couple of miles away, and the radiant smile and glad cry with which she’d run to me, lovelier by far than those stale loves I’d been wasting my time on for weeks past, and her adoring blue eyes … no, the hell with Gordon, the selfish lunatic, having the impudence to buttonhole me in this outrageous fashion! And I was bracing myself to put my foot down when Cambridge spoke.
“Irregular, I suppose,” says he, shaking his fat head – but not in denial. “But, even so … well, nothing to hinder … if you’re sure, Gordon?”
“Of course I’m sure!” He always was, and not about to have his judgment questioned by a mere grandson of George the Third. He was absolutely frowning at them – the Army commander, the Foreign Secretary, and the greatest soldier of the age (who was carrying his bag for him, God love me!)24 And they were helpless, glancing resignedly at each other and apologetically at me – because he was Gordon, you see. What he was doing wouldn’t have washed with them for a moment, if he had been any other man. But then, no other man would have done it.
Granville was raising his fine brows in a why-not fashion. “It rests with Colonel Flashman, of course.” There was a silence, and then Joe Wolseley gave me a shrug and a nod. “I’d be only too glad … to explain to Lady Flashman, if you …” He left it there.
They were all looking at me … and I knew it was all up. It was appalling, and beyond belief, and no fate was too dreadful for Gordon, damn his arrogant confidence as he stood there smiling triumphantly … but I knew, as I’d known so often, what the answer must be. The Great Christian Hero had tapped my shoulder – and I’d never live it down if I refused. I could have wept at the cruelty of the malign fate that had guided me to Platform Three at that hour – ten minutes later, and the blasted train would have been away, carrying Gordon to Hell or Honolulu for all I cared.
But when the cards are dealt, you must play ’em – and with style, for your reputation’s sake. Flashy has his own way of bowing to the inevitable – and I knew dam’ well it would run round Horse Guards and the clubs like wildfire in the morning …
“I say – you know Chinese Gordon’s gone to the Sudan? Fact – and taken Flashman with him! Met him quite by chance at the station, told Wolseley and Cambridge he must have him along, wouldn’t dream of facing the Mahdi without him. They gave him his way, of course, but wondered what Flashman, who’s retired, would think of being press-ganged at a moment’s notice. D’you know what Flash Harry said, cool as you please? ‘Well, the least you can do, Gordon, is pay for my blasted ticket!’”
[This extract from the Papers ends at 8 p.m. on January 18, 1884, with the departure of Major-General Charles George (“Chinese”) Gordon for the Sudan, accompanied by a reluctant Flashman. A year later Gordon died in the siege of Khartoum.]