The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  The boy looked startled, and then smiled, the court clowns started to look outraged, Albert looked puzzled, but then he smiled, too, and Raglan hum-hummed approvingly. Albert said:

  “There, now, Willy, you have an English comrade. You see? Very goot. You will find there are none better. And now, you will go with – with ‘Harry’” – he gave a puffy smile, and the court clowns purred toadily, – “and he will instruct you in your duties.”

  * * *

  a See Flashman.

  Chapter 2

  I’ve been about courts a good deal in my misspent career, and by and large I bar royalty pretty strong. They may be harmless enough folk in themselves, but they attract a desperate gang of placemen and hangers-on, and in my experience, the closer you get to the throne, the nearer you may finish up to the firing-line. Why, I’ve been a Prince Consort myself, and had half the cutthroats of Europe trying to assassinate me,a and in my humbler capacities – as chief of staff to a White Rajah, military adviser and chief stud to that black she-devil Ranavalona, and irregular emissary to the court of King Gezo of Dahomey, long may he rot – I’ve usually been lucky to come away with a well-scarred skin. And my occasional attachments to the Court of St James’s have been no exception; nurse-maiding little Willy was really the most harrowing job of the lot.

  Mind you, the lad was amiable enough in himself, and he took to me from the first.

  “You are a brick,” he told me as soon as we were alone. “Is that not the word? When I saw you today, I was sure you would tell them of the billiard place, and I would be disgraced. But you said nothing – that was to be a true friend.”

  “Least said, soonest mended,” says I. “But whatever did you run away for that night? – why, I’d have seen you home right enough. We couldn’t think what had become of you.”

  “I do not know myself,” says he. “I know that some ruffians set upon me in a dark place, and … stole some of my clothes.” He blushed crimson, and burst out: “I resisted them fiercely, but they were too many for me! And then the police came, and Dr Winter had to be sent for, and – oh! there was such a fuss! But you were right – he was too fearful of his own situation to inform on me to their highnesses. However, I think it is by his insistence that a special guardian has been appointed for me.” He gave me his shy, happy smile. “What luck that it should be you!”

  Lucky, is it, thinks I, we’ll see about that. We’d be off to the war, if ever the damned thing got started – but when I thought about it, it stood to reason they wouldn’t risk Little Willy’s precious royal skin very far, and his bear-leader should be safe enough, too. All I said was:

  “Well, I think Dr Winter’s right; you need somebody and a half to look after you, for you ain’t safe on your own hook. So look’ee here – I’m an easy chap, as anyone’ll tell you, but I’ll stand no shines, d’ye see? Do as I tell you, and we’ll do famously, and have good fun, too. But no sliding off on your own again – or you’ll find I’m no Dr Winter. Well?”

  “Very well, sir – Harry,” says he, prompt enough, but for all his nursery look, I’ll swear he had a glitter in his eye.

  We started off on the right foot, with a very pleasant round of tailors and gunsmiths and bootmakers and the rest, for the child hadn’t a stick or stitch for a soldier, and I aimed to see him – and myself – bang up to the nines. The luxury of being toadied through all the best shops, and referring the bills to Her Majesty, was one I wasn’t accustomed to, and you may believe I made the most of it. At my tactful suggestion to Raglan, we were both gazetted in the 17th, who were lancers – no great style as a regiment, perhaps, but I knew it would make Cardigan gnash his elderly teeth when he heard of it, and I’d been a lancer myself in my Indian days. Also, to my eye it was the flashiest rigout in the whole light cavalry, all blue and gold – the darker the better, when you’ve got the figure for it, which of course I had.

  Anyway, young Willy clapped his hands when he saw himself in full fig, and ordered another four like it – no one spends like visiting royalty, you know. Then he had to be horsed, and armed, and given lashings of civilian rig, and found servants, and camp gear – and I spent a whole day on that alone. If we were going campaigning, I meant to make certain we did it with every conceivable luxury – wine at a sovereign the dozen, cigars at ten guineas the pound, preserved foods of the best, tip-top linen, quality spirits by the gallon, and all the rest of the stuff that you need if you’re going to fight a war properly. Last of all I insisted on a lead box of biscuits – and Willy cried out with laughter.

  “They are ship’s biscuits – what should we need those for?”

  “Insurance, my lad,” says I. “Take ’em along, and it’s odds you’ll never need them. Leave ’em behind, and as sure as shooting you’ll finish up living off blood-stained snow and dead mules.” It’s God’s truth, too.

  “It will be exciting!” cries he, gleefully. “I long to be off!”

  “Just let’s hope you don’t find yourself longing to be back,” says I, and nodded at the mountain of delicacies we had ordered. “That’s all the excitement we want.”

  His face fell at that, so I cheered him up with a few tales of my own desperate deeds in Afghanistan and elsewhere, just to remind him that a cautious campaigner isn’t necessarily a milksop. Then I took him the rounds, of clubs, and the Horse Guards, and the Park, presented him to anyone of consequence whom I felt it might be useful to toady – and, by George, I had no shortage of friends and fawners when the word got about who he was. I hadn’t seen so many tuft-hunters since I came home from Afghanistan.

  You may imagine how Elspeth took the news, when I notified her that Prince Albert had looked me up and given me a Highness to take in tow. She squealed with delight – and then went into a tremendous flurry about how we must give receptions and soirées in his honour, and Hollands would have to provide new curtains and carpet, and extra servants must be hired, and who should she invite, and what new clothes she must have – “for we shall be in everyone’s eye now, and I shall be an object of general remark whenever I go out, and everyone will wish to call – oh, it will be famous! – and we shall be receiving all the time, and –”

  “Calm yourself, my love,” says I. “We shan’t be receiving – we shall be being received. Get yourself a few new duds, by all means, if you’ve room for ’em, and then – wait for the pasteboards to land on the mat.”

  And they did, of course. There wasn’t a hostess in Town but was suddenly crawling to Mrs Flashman’s pretty feet, and she gloried in it. I’ll say that for her, there wasn’t an ounce of spite in her nature, and while she began to condescend most damnably, she didn’t cut anyone – perhaps she realized, like me, that it never pays in the long run. I was pretty affable myself, just then, and pretended not to hear one or two of the more jealous remarks that were dropped – about how odd it was that Her Majesty hadn’t chosen one of the purple brigade to squire her young cousin, not so much as Guardee even, but a plain Mr – and who the deuce were the Flashmans anyway?

  But the Press played up all right; The Times was all approval that “a soldier, not a courtier, has been entrusted with the grave responsibility entailed in the martial instruction of the young prince. If war should come, as it surely must if Russian imperial despotism and insolence try our patience further, what better guardian and mentor of His Highness could be found than the Hector of Afghanistan? We may assert with confidence – none.” (I could have asserted with confidence, any number, and good luck to ’em.)

  Even Punch, which didn’t have much to say for the Palace, as a rule, and loathed the Queen’s great brood of foreign relations like poison, had a cartoon showing me frowning at little Willy under a signpost of which one arm said “Hyde Park” and the other “Honour and Duty”, and saying: “What, my boy, do you want to be a stroller or a soldier? You can’t be both if you march in step with me.” Which delighted me, naturally, although Elspeth thought it didn’t make me look handsome enough.

  Little Will
y, in the meantime, was taking to all this excitement like a Scotchman to drink. Under a natural shyness, he was a breezy little chap, quick, eager to please, and good-natured; he could be pretty cool with anyone over-familiar, but he could charm marvellously when he wanted – as he did with Elspeth when I took him home to tea. Mind you, the man who doesn’t want to charm Elspeth is either a fool or a eunuch, and little Willy was neither, as I discovered on our second day together, as we were strolling up Haymarket – we’d been shopping for a pair of thunder-and-lightningsb which he admired. It was latish afternoon, and the tarts were beginning to parade; little Willy goggled at a couple of painted princesses swaying by in all their finery, ogling, and then he says to me in a reverent whisper:

  “Harry – I say, Harry – those women – are they –”

  “Whores,” says I. “Never mind ’em. Now, to-morrow, Willy, we must visit the Artillery Mess, I think, and see the guns limbering up in –”

  “Harry,” says he. “I want a whore.”

  “Eh?” says I. “You don’t want anything of the sort, my lad.” I couldn’t believe my ears.

  “I do, though,” says he, and damme, he was gaping after them like a satyr, this well-brought-up, Christian little princeling. “I have never had a whore.”

  “I should hope not!” says I, quite scandalized. “Now, look here, young Willy, this won’t answer at all. You’re not to think of such things for a moment. I won’t have this … this lewdness. Why, I’m surprised at you! What would – why, what would Her Majesty have to say to such talk? Or Dr Winter, eh?”

  “I want a whore,” says he, quite fierce. “I … I know it is wrong – but I don’t care! Oh, you have no notion what it is like! Since I was quite small, they have never even let me talk to girls – at home I was not even allowed to play with my little cousins at kiss-in-the-ring, or anything! They would not let me go to dancing-classes, in case it should excite me! Dr Winter is always lecturing me about thoughts that pollute, and the fearful punishments awaiting fornicators when they are dead, and accusing me of having carnal thoughts! Of course I have, the old fool! Oh, Harry, I know it is sinful – but I don’t care! I want one,” says this remarkable youth dreamily, with a blissful look coming over his pure, chaste, boyish visage, “with long golden hair, and big, big round –”

  “Stop that this minute!” says I. “I never heard the like!”

  “And she will wear black satin boots buttoning up to her thighs,” he added, licking his lips.

  I’m not often stumped, but this was too much. I know youth has hidden fires, but this fellow was positively ablaze. I tried to cry him down, and then reason with him, for the thought of his cutting a dash through the London bordellos and trotting back to Buckingham Palace with the clap, or some harpy pursuing him for blackmail, made my blood run cold. But it was no good.

  “If you say me nay,” says he, quite determined, “I shall find one myself.”

  I couldn’t budge him. So in the end I decided to let him have his way, and make sure there were no snags, and that it was done safe and quiet. I took him off to a very high-priced place I knew in St John’s Wood, swore the old bawd to secrecy, and stated the randy little pig’s requirements. She did him proud, too, with a strapping blonde wench – satin boots and all – and at the sight of her Willy moaned feverishly and pointed, quivering, like a setter. He was trying to clamber all over her almost before the door closed, and of course he made a fearful mess of it, thrashing away like a stoat in a sack, and getting nowhere. It made me quite sentimental to watch him – reminded me of my own ardent youth, when every coupling began with an eager stagger across the floor trying to disentangle one’s breeches from one’s ankles.

  I had a brisk, swarthy little gypsy creature on the other couch, and we were finished and toasting each other in iced claret before Willy and his trollop had got properly buckled to. She was a knowing wench, however, and eventually had him galloping away like an archdeacon on holiday, and afterwards we settled down to a jolly supper of salmon and cold curry. But before we had reached the ices Willy was itching to be at grips with his girl again – where these young fellows get the fire from beats me. It was too soon for me, so while he walloped along I and the gypsy passed an improving few moments spying through a peephole into the next chamber, where a pair of elderly naval men were cavorting with three Chinese sluts. They were worse than Willy – it’s those long voyages, I suppose.

  When we finally took our leave, Willy was fit to be blown away by the first puff of wind, but pleased as punch with himself.

  “You are a beautiful whore,” says he to the blonde. “I am quite delighted with you, and shall visit you frequently.” He did, too, and must have spent a fortune on her in tin, of which he had loads, of course. Being of a young and developing nature, as Raglan would have said, he tried as many other strumpets in the establishment as he could manage, but it was the blonde lass as often as not. He got quite spoony over her. Poor Willy.

  So his military education progressed, and Raglan chided me for working him too hard. “His Highness appears quite pale,” says he. “I fear you have him too much at the grindstone, Flashman. He must have some recreation as well, you know.” I could have told him that what young Willy needed was a pair of locked iron drawers with the key at the bottom of the Serpentine, but I nodded wisely and said it was sometimes difficult to restrain a young spirit eager for instruction and experience. In fact, when it came to things like learning the rudiments of staff work and army procedure, Willy couldn’t have been sharper; my only fear was that he might become really useful and find himself being actively employed when we went east.

  For we were going, there was now no doubt. War was finally declared at the end of March, in spite of Aberdeen’s dithering, and the mob bayed with delight from Shetland to Land’s End. To hear them, all we had to do was march into Moscow when we felt like it, with the Frogs carrying our packs for us and the cowardly Russians skulking away before Britannia’s flashing eyes. And mind you, I don’t say that the British Army and the French together couldn’t have done it – given a Wellington. They were sound at bottom, and the Russians weren’t. I’ll tell you something else, which military historians never realize: they call the Crimea a disaster, which it was, and a hideous botch-up by our staff and supply, which is also true, but what they don’t know is that even with all these things in the balance against you, the difference between hellish catastrophe and brilliant success is sometimes no greater than the width of a sabre blade, but when all is over no one thinks of that. Win gloriously – and the clever dicks forget all about the rickety ambulances that never came, and the rations that were rotten, and the boots that didn’t fit, and the generals who’d have been better employed hawking bedpans round the doors. Lose – and these are the only things they talk about.

  But I’ll confess I saw the worst coming before we’d even begun. The very day war was declared Willy and I reported ourselves to Raglan at Horse Guards, and it took me straight back to the Kabul cantonment – all work and fury and chatter, and no proper direction whatever. Old Elphy Bey had sat picking at his nails and saying: “We must certainly consider what is best to be done” while his staff men burst with impatience and spleen. You could see the germ of it here – Raglan’s ante-room was jammed with all sorts of people, Lucan, and Hardinge, and old Scarlett, and Anderson of the Ordnance, and there were staff-scrapers and orderlies running everywhere and saluting and bustling, and mounds of paper growing on the tables, and great consulting of maps (“Where the devil is Turkey?” someone was saying. “Do they have much rain there, d’ye suppose?”), but in the inner sanctum all was peace and amiability. Raglan was talking about neck-stocks, if I remember rightly, and how they should fasten well up under the chin.

  We were kept well up to the collar, though, in the next month before our stout and thick-headed commander finally took his leave for the scene of war – Willy and I were not of his advance party, which pleased me, for there’s no greater fag than break
ing in new ground. We were all day staffing at the Horse Guards, and Willy was either killing himself with kindness in St John’s Wood by night, or attending functions about Town, of which there were a feverish number. It’s always the same before the shooting begins – the hostesses go into a frenzy of gaiety, and all the spongers and civilians crawl out of the wainscoting braying with good fellowship because thank God they ain’t going, and the young plungers and green striplings roister it up, and their fiancées let ’em pleasure them red in the face out of pity, because the poor brave boy is off to the cannon’s mouth, and the dance goes on and the eyes grow brighter and the laughter shriller – and the older men in their dress uniforms look tired, and sip their punch by the fireplace and don’t say much at all.

  Elspeth, of course, was in her element, dancing all night, laughing with the young blades and flirting with the old ones – Cardigan was still roostering about her, I noticed, with every sign of the little trollop’s encouragement. He’d got himself the Light Cavalry Brigade, which had sent a great groan through every hussar and lancer regiment in the army, and was even fuller of bounce than usual – his ridiculous lisp and growling “haw-haw” seemed to sound everywhere you went, and he was full of brag about how he and his beloved Cherrypickers would be the élite advanced force of the army.

  “I believe they have given Wucan nominal charge of the cavalwy,” I heard him tell a group of cronies at one party. “Well, I suppose they had to find him something, don’t ye know, and he may vewwy well look to wemounts, I dare say. Haw-haw. I hope poor Waglan does not find him too gweat an incubus. Haw-haw.”

  This was Lucan, his own brother-in-law; they detested each other, which isn’t to be wondered at, since they were both detestable, Cardigan particularly. But his mighty lordship wasn’t having it all his own way, for the Press, who hated him, revived the old jibe about his Cherrypickers’ tight pants, and Punch dedicated a poem to him called “Oh Pantaloons of Cherry”, which sent him wild. It was all gammon, really, for the pants were no tighter than anyone else’s – I wore ’em long enough, and should know – but it was good to see Jim the Bear roasting on the spit of popular amusement again. By God, I wish that spit had been a real one, with me to turn it.