The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  “We?” It was all I could say.

  “Sure … the Kuklos.” The plump pug face beamed in a smile. “Didn’t Atropos tell you we’d be watchin’ you an’ Joe all the way? Sure he did … oh, we lost you in Noo Yawk for a spell, when the police took those three fellows who were shadowin’ you and Miz Mandeville. Mr La Force was real grieved ’bout her … thought she was true to him, never suspected she was operatin’ for the gov’ment … till you an’ she showed up in company with Messervy. You see, we have a man watchin’ him, permanent. Those three men of Hermes’s, in Noo Yawk, they weren’t the only ones we got up there.”

  I found I was shaking in every limb as I lay there stark on the cot; instinctively I jerked the sheets over myself, and her big lips twitched in a smile.

  “Don’t do that, sweethea’t … I jus’ love lookin’ at you. My, but you are the finest! Now, then … tell me ’bout Joe.”

  “I … I don’t know what you mean! If he was in the engine-house … well, he must have been killed or captured –”

  “If he was in there? You know he was … you were in there your own self. We saw you come out, this mornin’, with Messervy.”

  “You … you saw –”

  “Not me. One of my boys. I have two of them, they’re at the Ferry right now, watchin’ the engine-house, waitin’ to see what happened to Joe.” She was regarding me almost amiably, shaking her head. “But you’re all confused, so I’d better tell you. I’m Medusa … you know Mr La Force likes to give us those ole names. I’ve been in these parts all summer, havin’ you watched, at the farm an’ so forth. Oh, Joe didn’t know ’bout that … didn’t know ’bout me, even, bein’ a lot lower down in the Kuklos than I am. All he had to do was watch you, see you did as Mr La Force desired. You know, the raid.” She smiled approvingly. “You did that right well, too … didn’t you? Leastways, it happened … which was what we wanted. Mr La Force’ll be right pleased with you. Maybe give you the ten thousand dollars you asked for … if you feel like collectin’. Do you?”

  She was watching me closely now, as I sat palpitating, too shaken to think, let alone speak. I felt as though I’d been struck by a thunderbolt … it was incredible, too much to take in.

  “We didn’t mind you workin’ for the gov’ment … or pretendin’ to work for them, whichever it was. As things were, you didn’t have a choice, did you? What did they want you to do, anyway? Stop Brown makin’ the raid … or help him to make it? Mr La Force couldn’t make up his mind ’bout that … My belief is … oh, well, it don’t matter what I believe. The raid went in; that’s what matters.”

  She rose from the chair, took my glass, and refilled it.

  “You look like you need this, dahlin’ … go on, drink it down! An’ don’t look like you saw a ghost – all’s well … except for Joe. We have to know what happened to him, in that engine-house. He was quite a pet of Mr La Force’s, you know … he’ll be real grieved if anythin’ bad’s happened to Joe.” She swayed ponderously back to her seat. “So there’s two questions to answer: what happened to Joe … and why didn’t he cut loose an’ run at the hotel, when you did? When I watched the two of you, from my window, comin’ to the hotel yes’day mornin’, I thought: clever fellers, they’ve done their work, an’ now the raid’s happened, they’re gettin’ away from Brown. You did – an’ you know what?” She chuckled, the great body shaking with mirth. “When you came in my door, I thought, how does he know to run to me? He can’t know who I am, that I’m Medusa, he can’t know I’m Kuklos … and then pretty soon I saw that you didn’t, it was just chance brought you to me. An’, dahlin’,” she broke into laughter, “I never miss such a chance! Oh, that was some mornin’s sport we had together! I was so melted, I thought to tell you who I was … but then, I’d seen Joe go back to Brown – I couldn’t understand that. I suspicioned somethin’ was wrong, somewhere … so I kept quiet. Showed you the way out to the loft, tho’, didn’t I, when it looked like –”

  It don’t usually take me long to act, when I’m cornered, but I’d been so shaken that only in the last minute had I summoned my wits sufficiently to move. One ghastly fact had imprinted itself on my mind: she had men watching the engine-house, they’d have seen the Marines bring out Joe’s body under cover of darkness and bury it by the river – they’d dig it up for certain, and find two bullets in his back … and who’d put them there, then? From all that I’d seen of the Kuklos (especially in the last ten minutes) they were experts; they’d know, or soon find out, that the attackers hadn’t fired a single shot … they’d report to Atropos that his pet nigger had been shot and buried clandestine by the government, for whom I might or might not have been acting … by God, he’d want to get to the bottom of it … and he’d not ask as gently as this damned Medusa-Popplewell …

  All this in a flash through my mind, to one lightning conclusion – instant flight. And she was only one woman … I came off the bed in a bound – and stopped dead before the Derringer in her great black hand.

  “Oh, dahlin’,” says she, “that was foolish. What you got to be fractious for? H’m?” She shook her head, no longer smiling. “Now, then … I’ve asked, an’ I’m waitin’. Why did Joe go back to Brown … and what happened to him afterwards?”

  Well, I could answer the first question, at least. “He went back to Brown because he was betraying you. It’s the truth! He … he went over to Brown’s side … I don’t know why, but he … well, Brown convinced him, at the farm, that the raid would lead to a slave rebellion … and that it would succeed, and they’d all win their freedom! Joe believed him, I tell you! He changed sides! He told me so! I swear to God, it’s true!”

  She didn’t move a muscle; the plump black features were without expression. The Derringer stayed trained on my midriff.

  “An’ what happened in the engine-house?”

  “I don’t know! I … I never saw him, after the attack … I don’t know, I tell you! Maybe he was killed, or captured –”

  “You didn’t like him, did you? Fact is, you couldn’t ’bide him. So Mr La Force figured … he thought it was real amusin’. Figured you an’ Joe were rivals for the favours of Miz Mandeville. Were you?” When I didn’t reply, she shrugged. “It don’t matter. She ain’t around any more. Mr La Force can’t abide traitors.”

  “Well, Joe was a traitor! I swear he was!”

  “I don’t disbelieve you, dahlin’. I wouldn’t trust a nigger an inch myself.” She sat there, black and placid, as she said it. “Did you kill Joe?”

  “No, for God’s sake! Why should I?”

  “Maybe ’cos you hated him. Maybe for the U.S. Gov’ment. Maybe even ’cos you’re tellin’ true when you say Joe went over to Brown, an’ you killed him out o’ loyalty to Mr La Force an’ that five thousand dollars he promised you. Honey, I don’t mind!” She leaned forward, smiling almost wistfully – but the Derringer was steady as a rock. “What’s one black buck more or less? If you killed him, fine! It don’t matter to Hannah.”

  “I didn’t! I swear to God –”

  “Dearest, you don’t need to – not to me! It’s what you swear to Mr La Force that signifies … an’ whether he believes you. An’ I truly do doubt whether he’ll believe Joe betrayed him. You know Joe’n he were boys together? Playmates? Why, he loved that Joe like a brother …’bout the only thing he ever loved, I guess. An’ if Joe’s dead … an’ my boys’ll find it out, if he is … I don’t know what Mr La Force’ll do.” She shook her head sadly. “But if he suspicions that you killed him – an’ I do, so I guess he might … well, I jus’ hope you can prove you didn’t.”

  I sat like a rabbit before a snake, while she regarded me with pity and concern. Then she smiled again, and reached out to stroke my cheek with her free hand.

  “Oh, dahlin’, don’t look so down! I tell you, it don’t matter to me! You can kill every nigger in creation if you’ve a mind to, far as I’m concerned. You know why?” Her eyes narrowed, and her voice was trembling. “’Cos you pleasure
d me like I never been pleasured before … I didn’t know there was pleasurin’ like that, an’ believe me, boy, I made a study! I come over faint, jus’ thinkin’ ’bout you.” She shivered and grimaced. “An’ now I got to go back to Popplewell. Oh, sure, there is a Popplewell, randy little runt – all I tol’ you ’bout him an’ my other husbands is true, ’cept I married him two years ago, not two days, an’ ’twasn’t him, but one o’ my white boys, left me at the Wager House.” She gave one of her gross chuckles. “Think they’d take a nigger woman there, be her husband never so rich? No – but they’d take the Devil hisself, if the Kuklos is payin’ the bill.”

  She stood up, and to my amazement slipped the Derringer into the bosom of her robe. Then she stooped over me, took my face in her hands, looking soulful, and kissed me with sudden passion, her tongue and lips working feverishly at my mouth and cheeks and eyes and back to my mouth again, before she broke moistly away, breathing hard.

  “Oh, Ah got sech a kindness fo’ you, Mr Beauchamp Comber, or Mr Tom A’nold, or whatevah yo’ name is! Ah don’ know, an’ Ah don’ care! An’ Ah got sech a mis’ry when Ah think whut Mr La Force’ll do …” She shuddered enormously, with a little whimpering sigh – and I thought, now’s your time, lad, and thrust my whiskers between her boobies, going brrr! She let out an ecstatic wail, the Derringer clattered to the floor, and I sank clutching fingers into her buttocks and munched away for dear life, for I could see only one way out of this fearful dilemma, to play on her feminine frailty in the only way I know how, but even as I grappled, roaring lustful endearments, she heaved away from me, eyes rolling, and thrust out a mighty hand to hold me at arm’s length.

  “Oh, dahlin’! Oh, goddamussy!” she gasped, and in her agitation it came out in broad Dixie. “Oh, honey, don’ think Ah ain’t cravin’ you, ’cos Ah is, sumpn cruel! But we ain’t got the time, dammit!” She stamped, rattling the cabin, and her eyes were wild. “They’s on’y one stop ’tween heah an’ Baltimo’, an’ it comin’ up real soon – oh, lordy, dere’s de whistle! Don’ stand theah!” she panted, seizing my wrist. “You gotta git off, ’cos mah boys at the Ferry’ll telegraph ahead when they fin’ out whutevah’s happened to Joe, an’ the Kuklos’ll be a-waitin’ at Baltimo’ … an’ Ah cain’t let ’em take yuh, Ah jes’ cain’t, ’cos, oh, mah dearie, if anythin’ wuz to happen to yuh, Ah b’lieve Ah’d die!”

  She surged to the door and wrenched it open, and damned if she wasn’t snivelling great tears over her shiny black cheeks.

  “So git outa heah, now, will yuh … oh, gi’ me one las’ kiss, do! Now, git yore ass offa this train … an’ take care, ye heah?”

  [Here the tenth packet of the Flashman Papers ends, at what one must assume is the conclusion of the author’s memoir of John Brown and the Harper’s Ferry episode. What followed will no doubt appear in a later instalment of Sir Harry’s recollections; all that can be said with certainty is that he did not catch the Baltimore packet to Liverpool, since we know from evidence in the eighth packet of the Papers, already published, that six months after his emotional parting from Mrs Popplewell, he was in Hong Kong, without having visited England in the meantime.]

  * * *

  a A particularly pungent cigar.

  APPENDIX I:

  Flashman and John Brown

  Flashman’s was not an affectionate nature. That he loved (or at least was enthralled by) his wife, Elspeth, is evident from his memoirs, and now and then his regard for other ladies goes some way beyond the merely physical – usually, one suspects, when he is writing in a mood of brandy-assisted nostalgia. But outside his family – he plainly doted on his great-grandchildren, and felt for his natural son, Frank Standing Bear, a paternal affection which lasted for several days – he seldom finds much to like in people. He betrays an occasional fellow-feeling, at a safe distance, for such rascals as Rudi von Starnberg, and has a half-amiable tolerance of acquaintances whom he has no cause to detest, like his old chief, Colin Campbell, and his Afghan blood-brother, Ilderim Khan. But that, as a rule, is his limit.

  Yet he seems to have had a kind of protective affection for John Brown. Underneath the sneers and curses there is a hint of indulgence, an inclination to defend the old nuisance and even to give him a Tuscan cheer, which is not characteristic of Flashman. We may be sure it springs from no kindly or charitable impulse, or the least sympathy with Brown’s aims; he found the man and his mission ridiculous, and writes of them with contempt. At the same time, he remembers Brown as “a bloody hard man to dislike”, which is a rare tribute. Of course, it may have been a gratifying novelty to Flashman to come across a strong and fearsome autocrat who treated him with some deference and respect; a strong man, moreover, whom he could manipulate, and in whom he detected an appealing streak of humbug. And however lofty his disdain of Brown, there is no doubt that he took a perverse pride in their association: “I was one of John Brown’s pet lambs, after all.” This is pure Flashman. Throughout his memoirs, he revels in reflected glory, the more so when it is ingloriously undeserved, and when it comes to “dining out”, Harper’s Ferry plainly ranks with Balaclava and Little Big Horn and Cawnpore. One detects a condescending gratitude to Brown and his ragged commandos for adding another leaf to the Flashman laurels, and a complacent satisfaction that he helped them along the road to immortality.

  Whether he liked Brown or not, he has done him justice. The figure who stalks his narrative is the man of the biographies and contemporary accounts, even to his quoted speech, thoughts, manner, appearance, and the small details of everyday. From their first meeting at Concord to the last glimpse of the weary, serene old prisoner lying in the paymaster’s office, Flashman’s story tallies convincingly with recorded fact, and differs no more from the standard authorities than they do from each other. His record of Brown’s travels in the North may be verified in Villard, as may his account of life at the Kennedy Farm, of which Mrs Annie Brown Adams, Brown’s daughter, who acted as look-out for the conspirators, has left a lively record.

  As invariably happens when there is a multitude of eyewitnesses, there are many discrepancies to be found in accounts of the actual raid on Harper’s Ferry. It would have been tedious and confusing to footnote them all, and most of them are trivial: it hardly matters whether John Brown visited the rifle works in person, or at which end of the Potomac bridge the watchmen were posted, or whether Lee was on horseback, or what kind of hat Jeb Stuart wore, or the precise moment when Brown retreated to the engine-house, or the exact place and time of certain incidents. There is no conflict on the main course of events, and here Flashman is in step with other historians.

  It was a weird affair, the handful of men invading in the dark, the hold-up and release of the train, the taking of the prisoners, the first haphazard shootings, the bewildered township waking to find itself menaced by terrorists, gunfight and murder alternating with parleys and demands for breakfast, the militia storming in and taking to drink, the brutal lynchings and the local doctor tending the invaders’ wounded, the siege of the engine-house, the final call to surrender, the last bloody mêlée with the Marines, and, most bizarre of all, the wounded Brown holding court while his captors bombard him with questions. The whole thing has elements of a modern hostage drama followed by a television press conference.

  It was a fiasco; the irony is that it need not have been. Brown, the most incompetent of planners and irresolute of leaders, gained an initial success of which a commando leader might be proud – and then did nothing. He could have stripped the arsenal and been in the hills without losing a man; that he could have organised a slave rebellion is highly improbable, but he would have struck a blow to shake the nation (it was shaken enough, even by his failure). Why did he delay? Did he cling to the hope that the slaves would rally to him, as Cook had assured him they would? It is possible, yet it seems more likely that Flashman’s diagnosis is sound: faced with crisis Brown simply did not know what to do. His judgment failed him, as his courage never did, and with that fatal
indecision which was his besetting weakness he threw away what little chance he had.

  But while Flashman may have read him aright at the Ferry, and while his whole portrait of Brown is a fair one, he has probably come no closer than other biographers to explaining the old abolitionist’s strange and complex character. It is not surprising. Brown was not understood in his own time, and much that has been written about him since has done more to embellish the legend than to clarify the nature of the man. He and his cause are emotional subjects, and the emotions often run to extremes. He has been described in terms that would become a saint, and vilified with an intemperance that is self-defeating. The impression persists in most people’s minds of a good and simple soul on fire with a dream, a fanatical crusader pursuing a splendid goal with imperfect means, a misguided Quixote whose head was wrong but whose heart was right. Great men and women have given him the accolade, and who that reads his story can dissent? Kindness, compassion, a burning love of liberty, a gift of inspiring devotion, and matchless courage, he had; if, as has been charged, perhaps not unjustly, he was also devious, foolish, vain, selfish, unscrupulous, and irresolute in crisis, his admirers can say that these are human faults, and far outweighed by the simple nobility of the martyr who died, and died gladly, to make men free. And then there is Pottawatomie.

  The question of his sanity cannot be answered now. He was held fit to plead at his trial; rightly, so far as we can tell, but not many laymen would, on the evidence, call him normal or balanced. “Reasoning insanity” is the judgment of one eminent historian, and it will do as well as any other. We cannot know him, but it does not matter. He is part of history and historic legend, and if what he tried to do was not heroic, then the word has no meaning.