The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  We were boozing in his yamen after luncheon, and he was telling me of Ward’s latest exploit – a slap at another Taiping outpost, Chingpu, with three hundred men. Unluckily for him the rebels had ten thousand under two good leaders, Chow the Taiping, and Savage, a Royal Navy deserter; they’d torn Ward’s attack to bits, killing about a hundred, and the bold Fred had been carried home with five wounds.

  “But they say he will come back to Chingpu!” cries Jen-kan. “Poor fellow! Loyal Prince Lee himself has gone down from Soochow to take command; he will crack this Ward under his thumbnail, and then …” he beamed, filling my glass, “… he will sweep on to Shangahi.”

  I sat up at this. “When do I go? Two weeks?”

  He studied me for a long moment, with his fat crafty grin, and pulled his old robe round his big shoulders. “Let us talk outside … in English,” says he, collaring the bottle, and we strolled out into the warm sunshine, Jen-kan blinking contentedly at his miniature garden – you know the kind of thing, from Chinese exhibitions: dwarf trees and flowers set among tiny streams and lakes and waterfalls, with doll’s-house pagodas and bridges all to scale, like Lilliput.

  “Why do we love things in little?” muses Jen-kan, admiring the line of tiny palms that fringed the garden. “Do they make us feel like giants … or gods, perhaps?” He sipped his wine. “Speaking of gods, I have often meant to ask you … what did you think of the Heavenly King?”

  Now, neither of us had ever mentioned my visit to the Palace, though I was certain he knew about it. And while he was no fanatic, like Lee, I supposed he must be devoted to the Heavenly Loose-screw, so I hesitated how to answer. He settled his broad bottom on a rock under a tree. “I ask, because I am curious to know what you will tell Mr Bruce.”

  “What d’you think I’ll tell him?” says I, wary-like, and he grinned, and then chuckled, and finally laughed so hard he had to set down his glass. He blinked at me, his shoulders shaking.

  “Why, that he is a debauched, useless imbecile!” cries he. “What else can you say, except that he is a poor deranged mystic, a hopeless lunatic who makes an obscene parody of Christianity? That is the truth, and that is what you will tell Mr Bruce!”

  He took a deep swig, while I stood mum and a mite apprehensive; what he’d said was a capital offence in these parts, and for all I knew, listening might be, too. He shook his head, grinning.

  “Oh, but you should have seen him once! In the old days. To know him then, my dear Sir Harry … I intend no blasphemy, but it was to understand the force that must have lived in Christ, or Buddha, or Mahomet. And now, poor soul … a mad shell, and nothing left within except that strange power that can still inspire devotion in folk like the Loyal Prince Lee.” He chuckled. “Even in people like me, sometimes. Enough to make me wish you had not seen him that night. I would have prevented it, but I learned of Lee’s intention too late – those were my men who intervened in the garden … unsuccessfully. Four of them died.” He gave an amused snort that made my skin crawl. “And, do you know – next day Lee and I greeted each other as usual, and said – nothing! We Taiping politicians are very discreet. Let me fill your glass.”

  I wasn’t liking this one bit. He’d never been this forthcoming before, and when great men wax confidential I find myself taking furtive looks over my shoulder. I just had to think of Palmerston.

  “I saw Lee’s purpose, of course,” says the pot-bellied rascal. “He hoped you would fall under our divine ruler’s spell, become a fanatical advocate of Anglo-Taiping alliance, and convince Mr Bruce likewise.” He shook his bullet head. “Poor Lee, he is such an optimist. With respect, my dear Sir Harry, soldiers should not meddle in affairs of state.” I was with him there. “For now I was in a difficulty. Until that night I had accepted, though without enthusiasm, Lee’s plan of marching on Shanghai and forcing Britain’s hand. But once you had seen the Tien Wang … well, I asked myself what must follow when you reported his deplorable condition to Mr Bruce. Alas,” he consoled himself with another hefty gulp, “it was all too plain. Whatever force we took to Shanghai, we could never persuade Britain to recognise a regime led by such a creature! Mr Bruce would only have to picture the reaction of Prince Albert and the Church of England. They would fight us, rather. No … whatever hope we had of an alliance must perish the moment you set foot in Bruce’s office.”

  If there’s one thing that can make me puke with terror, it’s having an Oriental despot tell me I’m inconvenient. “You think I’d be giving Bruce news?” I blurted. ‘Dammit, the whole world knows your Heavenly King’s a raving idiot!”

  “No, I think not,” says he mildly. “Some may suspect it, but most charitably regard the rumours as Imp propaganda and missionary gossip. They would not know the full deplorable truth … until you told them.” He looked wistfully at the bottle, now empty. “And then, we agree, Mr Bruce would reject us – and Lee would take Shanghai by storm, with all the horrors of sack and slaughter inevitable in such a victory, and we would be at war with Britain. A war we could not hope to win.” He sighed heavily. “It seemed to me that our only hope must be that your report never reached Mr Bruce, in which case, happily ignorant of the Tien Wang’s condition, he might well allow Lee to occupy Shanghai peacefully. Ah … you are not drinking, Sir Harry?”

  My reply to this was an apoplectic croak, and he brightened.

  “In that case, may I take your glass? Being fat, I am slothful, and it seems a long way to the house for another bottle. I thank you.” He drained my glass and wiped his lips contentedly. “I do like port, I confess.”

  “But … but … look here!” I interrupted, babbling. “Don’t you see, it won’t matter a bit if they know the Heavenly King’s cracked! Because I can tell ’em that you’re not, and that you’re guiding the revolution … sir … not that mad doxy-galloper! I swear that when Bruce knows you’re in charge – why, he’ll be far more inclined to accept the Taiping, knowing you have it in hand … make a treaty, even –”

  “Why, you are jolly kind!” beams the bloated Buddha. “But, alas, it would not be true. Lee is already as powerful as I, and when he succeeds at Shanghai, whether by persuasion or storm, it will be a triumph which cannot fail to enhance him and eclipse me utterly. It was while I was considering your own position that this fact burst on me with blinding force – I could see no issue at Shanghai that would not increase Lee’s power and undermine my own. And that was terrible to contemplate … no, it is no use, we must have the other bottle!”

  And he was off to the house like an obese whippet, kilting up his robe, his fat calves wobbling, while I sat alarmed and bewildered. He came back flourishing a bottle, laughing merrily as he resumed his seat and splashed port into our glasses.

  “Your good health, Sir Harry!” chortles he, damn his impudence. “Yes … terrible to contemplate. But you mustn’t think I’m jealous; if Lee were a realist, I would make way for him, for he is a splendid soldier who might win the war and establish the Heavenly Kingdom. I hoped so, once.” He shook his head again. “But of late I have seen how blind is his fanaticism, how implicitly he will obey every insane decree from that lunatic he worships. Between them they would make the Taiping a headless centipede, poisonous, clawing without direction – and there would never be an end to this abominable war of extermination. Oh, that’s what it is!” He laughed heartily, chilling my blood. “Do you know why we and the Imps never take prisoners? Because if we did, we could not hold our armies together – if they knew they could be taken prisoner, they would not fight. Consider that hideous fact, Sir Harry, and have some more port.” He reached for the bottle, and I realised he was watching me intently, his fat creased face grinning most oddly.

  “Between them, Lee and the Tien Wang will destroy the Taiping,” says he slowly, “unless I can prevent them. And that I can only do if I retain my power – and diminish that of Loyal Prince Lee. A grievous necessity,” sighs the fat hypocrite, beaming happily. “Now, Sir Harry, I wonder if you can foresee – as a strictly n
eutral observer – how that might be brought about?”

  Well, I’d seen where the blubbery villain was headed for some minutes past, and what between flooding relief and fury at the way he’d scared the innards out of me first, I didn’t mince words.

  “You mean if Lee falls flat on his arse at Shanghai!”

  He looked puzzled – doubtless the expression was seldom heard in the Hong Kong mission where he’d worked. “If Lee were to fail at Shanghai,” I explained. “If he tried to take the place and couldn’t.”

  He sucked in port noisily. “But is that possible? Obviously, you have a vested interest in saying that it is, but my dear Sir Harry –” he leaned forward, glittering piggily, “I have been entirely frank with you – dangerously frank – and I trust you to be equally candid with me. You know Mr Bruce’s mind; you know the position at Shanghai. Could Lee be made to fail?”

  Of course he knew the answer; he’d been studying it for weeks. “Well, in the first place,” says I, “he’ll not scare Bruce into letting him walk in. He’ll have to fight – and as I told you at our first meeting, it won’t be against a mob of useless Imps who’ll fall down if a Taiping farts at them.” I waited until his bellow of mirth had subsided. “He’ll be meeting British and French regulars for the first time – not many of ’em, but they can be reinforced, given time. We have Sikhs at Chusan, two regiments at Canton –”

  “Three,” says he. “I have information.”

  I’ll bet he had. “With the fleet lying off Peiho – oh, and this gang of Fred Ward’s for what it’s worth –”

  “Lee will have fifty thousand men, remember! Could Shanghai resist such a force?”

  The temptation to say we could lick him from China to Cheltenham was irresistible, so I resisted it. He knew the case better than I did, so there was nothing for it but honesty.

  “I don’t know. But it could have a damned good try. If Bruce had warning, now, by a messenger he trusted …” I hung on that for a moment, and he nodded “… he’d have two weeks to garrison before Lee arrived. In which case you can wish Lee luck, because by God he’ll need it!”

  If you’ve ever seen a fat Chinaman holding four aces, you’ll know how he was staring at me as he envisaged the delightful prospect of Lee disgraced, himself supreme – the deliberate sacrifice of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taiping lives, and the certain loss of Shanghai to the Taiping cause forever, were mere trifles so long as Jen-Kan won his political battle over Lee.17 Suddenly he gave a little crowing laugh, and filled my glass.

  “You confirm my conclusions exactly!” cries he. “Lee will certainly be defeated before Shanghai. Of course, in contriving this I am compromising myself most dangerously, but I know Mr Bruce will be discreet; he and H.M. Government have much to gain from an enlightened control in the Taiping movement. The steamships order, for example, need not be affected by our brief mutual hostilities at Shanghai, which will soon be forgotten. Britain can resume her policy of neutrality, and left to ourselves we shall defeat the Manchoos.” He raised his glass to me. “Your own immediate profit should be considerable – you will be the hero who brought the momentous warning that saved Shanghai. I drink to your further advancement, my friend.” He smacked his liver lips and leaned back, blinking up at the sunlight filtering through the fronds overhead. “I foresee happy times.”

  He had it all pat, the fat, grinning, ruthless scoundrel – but, d’you know, I can’t say he was a whit worse than any other statesman of my acquaintance, and a sight jollier than most. I asked when I would go.

  “Tonight,” says he, “it is all arranged, with complete secrecy. I shall easily conceal your absence until the appropriate time, two weeks hence, when I will send word to Lee – who should be at Chingpu by now – that his advance to Shanghai can begin.” He giggled and took another mammoth swig of port. “Your escort will take you as far as Chingpu, by the way, where by all accounts your friend Mr Ward will be in the vicinity. But you will keep well clear of Chingpu itself. Lee would not be pleased to see you.” He turned to grin at me. “We know what you will tell Mr Bruce of the Heavenly King (regrettable, but there it is), and of the Loyal Prince Lee … I wonder what you will say of Hung Jen-Kan?”

  “That he drinks port at the wrong time of day.”

  He choked on his glass. “You intend to ruin my reputation, in fact. Ah, well, I am sure Mr Bruce will receive an honest account from you. The fact that it will be totally misleading is by the way.” He heaved another of his mountainous sighs.

  “You imagine I act out of unscrupulous self-interest; true, all revolutionaries do. They agitate and harangue and justify every villainy in the name of high ideals; they lie, to delude the people, whom they hold in contempt. They seek nothing but their personal ends – my only defence is that my ends are modest ones. I seek power to see the revolution accomplished; after that, I have no wish to rule. I want the biggest library in China, and to visit my cousins in San Francisco, and to read the Lesson, just once, in an English country church.” He began to shake with laughter again. “Tell Mr Bruce that. He won’t believe a word of it. Oh, and you will not forget to mention the steamships? An order worth a million, remember – whatever happens with Lee.” He looked like a contented pig. “As Superintendent of Trade, Mr Bruce will not overlook the importance of the almighty dollar.”18

  Chapter 8

  I hadn’t arrived at Nanking in any great style, but it was Pullman travel compared to the way I went, under hatches on a stinking Yangtse fish-barge, with two of Jen-kan’s thugs for company. I daren’t show face until we were well away from the city, white fan-quis being as common in those parts as niggers in Norway; not that I’d have been hindered, but Jen-kan might have had awkward explanations to make if it got about that Flashy was heading east ahead of time. So we spent a day and night in the poisonous dark and came ashore somewhere on the Kiangyin bend, where two more thugs were waiting with ponies. Farther down, the river was infested by gangs of Imp deserters and bandits (no doubt the Provident Brave Butterflies were spreading their wings, among others), and while the land to the south was swarming with Taiping battalions, Jen-kan had reckoned we’d make better and safer time on horseback, taking a long sweep to come in by Chingpu, where Frederick T. Ward’s foreign legion was preparing to have another slap at the Taiping garrison.

  I don’t remember much about that ride, except that I was damned stiff after months out of the saddle, but I know we raised Chingpu on a misty dawn, looking down from a crest to the town, perhaps a mile away. It was wooded country, with paddy here and there, and many waterways – you could see the little mat sails beetling along among the dykes, ever so pretty in the pearly morning light; it would have been quite an idyllic scene if there hadn’t been the deuce of a battle going on round Chingpu’s high mud walls.

  We’d heard the guns before we came in view, and they were banging away splendidly, wreathing the walls and gate-towers in thick grey smoke, while dead to our front great disorderly lines of men were advancing to the assault. To my astonishment I saw they were Imps, straggling along any old how, but in the van there was a fairly compact company in green caps, and I knew these must be Ward’s people. Without a glass I couldn’t make them out clearly, but they were holding together well under the fire from the walls, and presently they were charging the main gate, while the Imp supports milled about and let off crackers and waved banners in fine useless style.

  Farther back, behind the attackers, were more Imp battalions by a river-bank, with a gunboat blazing away at nothing in particular, and about a mile away on my right was a low hill on which a couple of banners were flying, with a number of mounted men wheeling about and occasionally dashing out to the attacking force. Gallopers; the hill must be the attackers’ head-quarters, so it behoved me to make for it. I was just pointing it out to my escort when there was a tremendous pandemonium from the plain before the town, the boom of guns and crackle of musket-fire redoubled, the crimson Taiping banners were waving wildly along the walls,
and suddenly in the smoke-clouds before the gate there was a great glare of orange light followed by the thunderous roar of an explosion.

  That was Ward’s lads mining the main gate, and as the smoke cleared, sure enough, one of the supporting towers was in ruins, and green caps were surging into a breach as wide as a church. At this the Imps, seeing their side winning, set up a huge halloo and went swarming in to join the fun; in a moment the whole space before the breach was choked with men, while the supporting lines, throwing disorder to the winds, crowded in behind, blazing away indiscriminately – and that should have been the end of Chingpu. What the attackers had forgotten, or didn’t know, was that they were assaulting a stronghold commanded by Loyal Prince Lee. They were about to find out, and it was a sight to see.

  All along the front wall it was like an enormous football scrimmage; there must have been hundreds trying to get to the breach, and more arriving every second. On the side wall nearest to me there wasn’t a single attacker, and now a banner waved on the battlements, a side-gate opened, and out came a column of Taiping red-coats, trotting orderly four abreast. They streamed out, hundreds strong, rounding the front angle, and went into the attacking mob like a scarlet thunderbolt. At the same moment, from the other side of the town, a second Taiping column completed the pincer movement, the black silk flags went up, and within five minutes there wasn’t a living attacker within quarter of a mile of Chingpu, and the whole Imp rout was streaming back towards the river, utterly broken. I never saw a neater sally in my life; as the Taipings broke off the pursuit and began to strip the dead, I reflected that it was as well Jen-kan wasn’t seeing this, or he might have entertained doubts about Shanghai’s ability to hold Lee at bay.

  But you don’t dally on the touch-line when the game’s over; I wheeled my pony and made for the head-quarters hill, keeping well to flank of the fleeing Imps, with my escort thundering along behind. The gallopers and standard-bearers were streaming away over the brow, so I circled the hill and found myself in a little wood beyond which lay a broad sunken road, with what looked like a party of sightseers coming down it. There was a disconsolate chap in a green cap carrying a banner which he was plainly itching to throw away, a few stragglers and mules, two minions carrying a picnic basket, and finally, flanked by a galloper with his arm in a bloody sling, and a noisy cove in a Norfolk jacket and gaiters, came a sedan chair, borne by perspiring coolies and containing Frederick T. Ward.