The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  With my thoughts back in more genial channels, I remembered the news I’d been coming home to tell Elspeth – well, she would have to wait for it until after I’d been to the Palace. Serve her right for going out with Watney, damn him. In the meantime, I spent the next hour looking out my best clothes, arranging my hair, which was grown pretty long and romantic, and cursing Oswald as he helped me with my cravat – I’d have been happier in uniform, but I didn’t have a decent one to my name, having spent my time in mufti since I came home. I was so excited that I didn’t bother to lunch, but dandied myself up to the nines, and then hurried off to meet His Nose-ship.

  There was a brougham at his door when I arrived, and I didn’t have to wait two minutes before he came down, all dressed and damning the secretary and valet who were stalking along behind him.

  “There probably isn’t a damned warming-pan in the place,” he was barking. “And it is necessary that everything should be in the finest order. Find out if Her Majesty takes her own bed-linen when she travels. I imagine she does, but don’t for God’s sake go inquiring indiscreetly. Ask Arbuthnot; he’ll know. You may be sure that something will be amiss, in the end, but it can’t be helped. Ah, Flashman,” and he ran his eye over me like a drill sergeant. “Come along, then.”

  There was a little knot of urchins and people to raise a cheer as he came out, and some shouted: “There’s the Flash cove! Hurrah!” by which they meant me. There was a little wait after we got in, because the coachman had some trouble with his reins, and a little crowd gathered while the Duke fretted and swore.

  “Dammit, Johnson,” growls he, “hurry up or we shall have all London here.”

  The crowd cheered and we rolled off in the pleasant autumn sunshine, with the guttersnipes running behind whooping and people turning on the pavements to lift their hats as the Great Duke passed by.

  “If I knew how news travelled I’d be a wiser man,” says he. “Can you imagine it? I’ll lay odds they know in Dover by this time that I am taking you to Her Majesty. You’ve never had any dealings with royalty, I take it?”

  “Only in Afghanistan, my lord,” says I, and he barked a little short laugh.

  “They probably have less ceremonial than we do,” he says. “It is a most confounded bore. Let me tell you, sir, never become a field-marshal and commander-in-chief. It is very fine, but it means your sovereign will honour you by coming to stay, and not a bed in the place worth a damn. I have more anxiety over the furnishing of Walmer, Mr Flashman, than I did over the works at Torres Vedras.”27

  “If you are as successful this time as you were then, my lord,” says I, buttering him, “you have no cause for alarm.”

  “Huh!” says he, and gave me a sharp look. But he was silent for a minute or two and then asked me if I felt nervous.

  “There is no need why you should be,” says he. “Her Majesty is most gracious, although it is never as easy, of course, as it was with her predecessors. King William was very easy, very kind, and made people entirely at home. It is altogether more formal now, and pretty stiff, but if you stay by me and keep your mouth shut, you’ll do.”

  I ventured to say that I’d felt happier at the prospect of charging into a band of Ghazis than I did at going to the palace, which was rubbish, of course, but I thought was probably the thing to say.

  “Damned nonsense,” says he, sharply. “You wouldn’t rather anything of the sort. But I know that the feeling is much the same, for I’ve experienced both myself. The important thing is never to show it, as I am never tired of telling young men. Now tell me about these Ghazis, who I understand are the best soldiers the Afghans can show.”

  He was on my home ground there, and I told him about the Ghazis and Gilzais and Pathans and Douranis, to which he listened very carefully until I realised that we were rolling through the palace gates, and there were the Guards presenting arms, and a flunkey running to hold the door and set the steps, and officers clicking to attention, and a swarm of people about us.

  “Come on,” says the Duke, and led the way through a small doorway, and I have a hazy recollection of stairs and liveried footmen, and long carpeted corridors, and great chandeliers, and soft-footed officials escorting us – but my chief memory is of the slight, grey-coated figure in front of me, striding along and people getting out of his way.

  We brought up outside two great double doors with a flunkey in a wig at either side, and a small fat man in a black tail coat bobbed in front of us, and darted forward muttering to twitch at my collar and smooth my lapel.

  “Apologies,” he twittered. “A brush here.” And he snapped his fingers. A brush appeared and he flicked at my coat, very deftly, and shot a glance in the Duke’s direction.

  “Take that damned thing away,” says the Duke, “and stop fussing. We know how to dress without your assistance.”

  The little fat man looked reproachful and stood aside, motioning to the flunkeys. They opened the door, and with my heart thumping against my ribs I heard a rich, strong voice announce:

  “His Grace the Duke of Wellington. Mr Flashman.”

  It was a large, magnificently furnished drawing-room, with a carpet stretching away between mirrored walls and a huge chandelier overhead. There were a few people at the other end, two men standing near the fireplace, a girl sitting on a couch with an older woman standing behind, and I think another man and a couple of women near by. We walked forward towards them, the Duke a little in advance, and he stopped short of the couch and bowed.

  “Your Majesty,” says he, “may I have the honour to present Mr Flashman.”

  And only then did I realise who the girl was. We are accustomed to think of her as the old queen, but she was just a child then, rather plump, and pretty enough beneath the neck. Her eyes were large and popped a little, and her teeth stuck out too much, but she smiled and murmured in reply – by this time I was bowing my backside off, naturally.

  When I straightened up she was looking at me, and Wellington was reciting briskly about Kabul and Jallalabad – “distinguished defence”, “Mr Flashman’s notable behaviour” are the only phrases that stay in my mind. When he stopped she inclined her head at him, and then said to me:

  “You are the first we have seen of those who served so bravely in Afghanistan, Mr Flashman. It is really a great joy to see you returned safe and well. We have heard the most glowing reports of your gallantry, and it is most gratifying to be able to express our thanks and admiration for such brave and loyal service.”

  Well, she couldn’t have said fairer than that I suppose, even if she did recite it like a parrot. I just made a rumbling sound in my throat and ducked my head again. She had a thick, oddly-accented voice, and came down heavy on her words every now and then, nodding as she did so.

  “Are you entirely recovered from your wounds?” she asked.

  “Very well, thank’ee, your majesty,” says I.

  “You are exceedingly brown,” says one of the men, and the heavy German accent startled me. I’d noticed him out of the tail of my eye, leaning against the mantel, with one leg crossed over the other. So this is Prince Albert, I thought; what hellish-looking whiskers.

  “You must be as brown as an Aff-ghan,” says he, and they laughed politely.

  I told him I had passed for one, and he opened his eyes and said did I speak the language, and would I say something in it. So without thinking I said the first words that came into my head: “Hamare ghali ana, achha din,” which is what the harlots chant at passers-by, and means “Good day, come into our street”. He seemed very interested, but the man beside him stiffened and stared hard at me.

  “What does it mean, Mr Flashman?” says the Queen.

  “It is a Hindu greeting, marm,” says the Duke, and my guts turned over as I recalled that he had served in India.

  “Why, of course,” says she, “we are quite an Indian gathering, with Mr Macaulay here.” The name meant nothing to me then; he was looking at me damned hard, though, with his pretty little mouth s
et hard. I later learned that he had spent several years in government out there, so my fat-headed remark had not been lost on him, either.

  “Mr Macaulay has ben reading us his new poems,”28 says the Queen, “They are quite stirring and fine. I think his Horatius must have been your model, Mr Flashman, for you know he defied great odds in defence of Rome. It is a splendid ballad, and very inspiring. Do you know the story, Duke?”

  He said he did, which put him one up on me, and added that he didn’t believe it, at which she cried out and demanded to know why.

  “Three men can’t stop an army, marm,” says he. “Livy was no soldier, or he would hardly have suggested they could.”

  “Oh, come now,” says Macaulay. “They were on a narrow bridge, and could not be outnumbered.”

  “You see, Duke?” says the Queen. “How could they be overcome?”

  “Bows and arrows, marm,” says he. “Slings. Shoot ’em down. That’s what I’d have done.”

  At this she said that the Tuscans were more chivalrous than he was, and he agreed that very likely they were.

  “Which is perhaps why there are no Tuscan empires today, but an extensive British one,” says the Prince quietly. And then he leaned forward and murmured something to the Queen, and she nodded wisely, and stood up – she was very small – and signed to me to come forward in front of her. I went, wondering, and the Duke came to my elbow, and the Prince watched me with his head on one side. The lady who had been behind the couch came forward, and handed something to the Queen, and she looked up at me, from not a foot away.

  “Our brave soldiers in Afghanistan are to have four medals from the Governor-General,” she said. “You will wear them in course of time, but there is also a medal from their Queen, and it is fitting that you should wear it first of all.”

  She pinned it on my coat, and she had to reach up to do it, she was so small. Then she smiled at me, and I felt so overcome I didn’t know what to say. Seeing this, she went all soulful about the eyes.

  “You are a very gallant gentleman,” says she. “God bless you.”

  Oh, lor’, I thought, if only you knew, you romantic little woman, thinking I’m a modern Horatius. (I made a point of studying Macaulay’s “Lays” later, and she wasn’t too far off, really; only the chap I resembled was False Sextus, a man after my own heart.)

  However, I had to say something, so I mumbled about her majesty’s service.

  “England’s service,” said she, looking intense.

  “The same thing, ma’am,” says I, flown with inspiration, and she cast her eyes down wistfully. The Duke gave what sounded like a little groan.

  There was a pause, and then she asked if I was married. I told her I was, but that I and my wife had been parted for the past two years.

  “What a cruel separation”, says she, as one might say “What delicious strawberry jam”. But she was sure, she said, that our reunion must be all the sweeter for that parting.

  “I know what it means to be a devoted wife, with the dearest of husbands,” she went on, glancing at Albert, and he looked fond and noble. God, I thought, what a honeymoon that must have been.

  Then the Duke chimed in, making his farewells, and I realised that this was my cue. We both bowed, and backed away, and she sat looking dumpy on the couch, and then we were in the corridor again, and the Duke was striding off through the hovering attendants.

  “Well,” says he, “you’ve got a medal no one else will ever have. Only a few of ’em struck, you see, and then Ellenborough announced that he was giving four of his own, which did not please her majesty at all. So her medal is to be stopped.”29

  He was right as it turned out; no one else ever received the medal, with its pink and green ribbon (I suspect Albert chose the colours), and I wear it on ceremonial days along with my Victoria Cross, my American Medal of Honour (for which the republic graciously pays me ten dollars a month), my San Serafino Order of Purity and Truth (richly deserved), and all the other assorted tinware which serves to disguise a cowardly scoundrel as a heroic veteran.

  We passed through the covey of saluting Guardsmen, bowing officials, and rigid flunkeys to our coach, but there was no getting through the gates at first for the crowd which had collected and was cheering its head off.

  “Good old Flashy! Hurrah for Flash Harry! Hip! hip! hooray!”

  They clamoured at the railings, waving and throwing up their hats, jostling the sentries, surging in a great press round the gateway, until at last the gates were pushed open and the brougham moved slowly through the struggling mass, all the faces grinning and shouting and the handkerchiefs waving.

  “Take off your hat, man,” snaps the Duke, so I did, and they roared again, pressing forward against the sides of the coach, reaching in to clasp my hand, beating on the panels, and making a tremendous racket.

  “He’s got a medal!” roars someone. “God save the Queen!”

  At that they woke the echoes, and I thought the coach must overturn. I was laughing and waving to them, but what do you suppose I was thinking? This was real glory! Here was I, the hero of the Afghan war, with the Queen’s medal on my coat, the world’s greatest soldier at my side, and the people of the world’s greatest city cheering me to the echo – me! while the Duke sat poker-faced snapping: “Johnson, can’t you get us out of this damned mess?”

  What was I thinking? About the chance that had sent me to India? About Elphy Bey? About the horror of the passes on the retreat, or the escape at Mogala when Iqbal died? Of the nightmare of Piper’s Fort or that dreadful dwarf in the snake-pit? About Sekundar Burnes? Or Bernier? Or the women – Josette, Narreeman, Fetnab and the rest? About Elspeth? About the Queen?

  None of these things. Strange, but as the coach won clear and we rattled off down the Mall with the cheers dying behind us, I could hear Arnold’s voice saying, “There is good in you, Flashman,” and I could imagine how he would have supposed himself vindicated at this moment, and preach on “Courage” in chapel, and pretend to rejoice in the redeemed prodigal – but all the time he would know in his hypocrite heart that I was a rotter still.30 But neither he nor anyone else would have dared to say so. This myth called bravery, which is half-panic, half-lunacy (in my case, all panic), pays for all; in England you can’t be a hero and bad. There’s practically a law against it.

  Wellington was muttering sharply about the growing insolence of the mob, but he left off to tell me he would set me down at the Horse Guards. When we arrived and I was getting out and thanking him for his kindness, he looks sharply at me, and says:

  “I wish you every good fortune, Flashman. You should go far. I don’t imagine you’re a second Marlborough, mind, but you appear to be brave and you’re certainly damned lucky. With the first quality you may easily gain command of an army or two, and lead ’em both to ruin, but with your luck you’ll probably lead ’em back again. You have made a good beginning, at all events, and received today the highest honour you can hope for, which is your monarch’s mark of favour. Goodbye to you.”

  We shook hands, and he drove off. I never spoke to him again. Years later, though, I told the American general, Robert Lee, of the incident, and he said Wellington was right – I had received the highest honour any soldier could hope for. But it wasn’t the medal; for Lee’s money it was Wellington’s hand.

  Neither, I may point out, had any intrinsic value.

  I was the object of general admiration at the Horse Guards, of course, and at the club, and finally I took myself home in excellent fettle. It had been raining cats and dogs, but had stopped, and the sun was shining as I ran up the steps. Oswald informed me that Elspeth was above stairs; oho! thinks I, wait till she hears where I’ve been and who I’ve seen. She’ll be rather more attentive to her lord and master now, perhaps, and less to sprigs of Guardees; I was smiling as I went upstairs, for the events of the afternoon had made my earlier jealousy seem silly, and simply the work of the little bitch Judy.

  I walked into the bedroom keeping my le
ft hand over the medal, to surprise her. She was sitting before her glass, as usual, with her maid dressing her hair.

  “Harry!” she cries out, “where have you been? Have you forgot we are to take tea with Lady Chalmers at four-thirty?”

  “The devil with Lady Chalmers, and all Chalmerses,” says L “Let ’em wait.”

  “Oh, how can you say so?” she laughed at me in the mirror. “But where have you been, looking so splendid?”

  “Oh, visiting friends, you know. Young couple, Bert and Vicky. You wouldn’t know ’em.”

  “Bert and Vicky!” If Elspeth had developed a fault in my long absence, it was that she had become a complete snob – not uncommon among people of her class. “Whoever are they?”

  I stood behind her, looking at her reflection, and exposed the medal. I saw her eyes light on it, and widen, and then she swung round.

  “Harry! What … ?”

  “I’ve been to the palace. With the Duke of Wellington. I had this from the Queen – after we had chatted a little, you know, about poetry and …”

  “The Queen!” she squeals. “The Duke! The palace!”

  And she leaped up, clapping her hands, throwing her arms round my neck, while her maid clucked and fussed and I, laughing, swung her round and kissed her. There was no shutting her up, of course; she rained questions on me, her eyes shining, demanding to know who was there, and what they said, and what the Queen wore, and how the Queen spoke to me, and what I replied, and every mortal thing. Finally I pushed her into a chair, sent the maid packing, and sat down on the bed, reciting the whole thing from start to finish.

  Elspeth sat, round-eyed and lovely, listening breathlessly, and squealing with excitement every now and then. When I told her the Queen had asked about her she gasped and turned to look at herself in the mirror, I imagine to see if there was a smut on her nose. Then she demanded that I go through it all again, and I did, but not before I had stripped off her gown and pulled her on top of me on the bed, so that between gasps and sighs the breathtaking tale was re-told. I lost track of it several times, I admit.