The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  “And for a hundred pounds I endure this!” cries she, kicking her fettered foot and fetching herself a crack on the shin with the chain. “Ah, merde, it will not come off – and I shall never be clean again! Oh, but it is not only this disgusting confiture, this … this ordure collant, but his loathsome touch, his foul body and vile breath, his hideous tongue upon me … ugh! Muscovite ape! Oh, do not look at me – I cannot bear to be seen!” In fact she looked adorable, if you can imagine an Alma Tadema beauty striking passionate poses while picking feathers off her bottom.

  I soothed her by undoing the ankle-chain, lifting her into the bath, and lovingly soaping her from head to foot while murmuring endearments. I’m a dab hand at this, having trained under Queen Ranavalona, so to speak, and after a while her plaintive cursing gave way to little sighs and whimpers, her eyes closed and her mouth trembled, and when I suggested I could do with a sluicing myself she responded with an enthusiasm that would have done credit to those poor little Kashmiri sluts who bathed me so devotedly at Lahore, the night the ceiling fell in.e Aye, I’ve wallowed in some odd spots in my time, but nowhere more happily than Berlin, with that delightful mermaid performing as though Shovel-off had never existed, and the floor ankle-deep in suds. Heaven knows what the charwoman had to say in the morning.

  It cheered Caprice up no end, and by the time we’d dried off and drowsed a little and made an early breakfast of coffee and rolls, she was her vivacious self again, even making fun of Shovel-off’s amorous peculiarities. Her first report for Blowitz was a brief one, the Galloping Cossack having been too intent on his muttons for much conversation, but having taken his measure she was sure she could make him sing in due course. “A shallow fool, mais pompeux, and his brain is in his –” was her charming verdict. “Also he is jealous of his leader, the Prince Gorchakov.” She lowered an eyelid. “Let me touch that key, and he will boast everything he knows!”

  And I guess he did. Having sampled her myself, and marked her Al at Flashy’s, I’d still wondered if she could keep Shuvalov in thrall for the whole Congress – it lasted a month, you know – but damme if she didn’t. Not that he saddled her up every night, you understand, but more often than not, and whether she was ringing the changes, Pride o’ the Hareem one night, Gretchen the Governess the next, or was tempting him with different flavours of jam, I didn’t inquire. She kept him happy, I had my ration of her, and for the rest, Blowitz’s arrangements went like clockwork: there he was every day, browsing at the Kaiserhof while I lunched at t’other side of the room, never a glance between us, and each picking up the other’s tile when we left.

  We had one scare, when an idiot diner by mistake went off with my hat containing Caprice’s report. My first thought was, oh lor’, we’re rumbled, and I was ready to make for the long grass till I saw that Blowitz was on the q.v., but instead of leaping up with screams of “Ah, voleur! Rendez le chapeau!” as you’d expect from a Bohemian Frog, he quietly despatched a waiter in pursuit, the apologetic diner replaced my roof on its peg – and no attention had been drawn to Blowitz or to me. My opinion of little fat Stefan went up another rung; he was a cool hand – and even, it seemed to me, sometimes a reckless one.

  It was about halfway through the Congress, when the other correspondents were all in a frenzy at the absolute lack of news from the secret sessions, that he broke cover with an item that was plainly from the horse’s mouth. Gorchakov had made some speech in camera, and there was the gist of it in The Times two days later. Diplomatic Berlin was in uproar at once; who could have leaked the news? It was after this that Bismarck, who took the breach as a personal affront, looked under the table to see if Blowitz was roosting there. His fury was even greater soon after, when The Times had the news that D’Israeli had threatened to leave Berlin over some wrangle that had arisen, and then decided to stay after all.

  Of course the blabberer in both cases had been Shuvalov, as I learned from Caprice, who had passed the glad tidings on to Blowitz via my tile. I was fearful that Shovel-off might twig he was being milked, but she “Pouf!”-ed it away; he was too dull and besotted to know what he was saying after she’d put him over the jumps, and depend upon it, says she, Stefan knew what he was about.

  She was right, too. The little fox had been angling, like every other scribbler, for an interview with Bismarck – and after the column about Dizzy appeared, hanged if he didn’t get one! Otto, you see, was so piqued and mystified that his precious Congress was being blown upon, that he invited Blowitz to dinner, no doubt hoping to learn what his source had been. Fat chance. Blowitz came away with a five-hour interview, leaving the Iron Chancellor none the wiser and fit to be tied, The Times triumphed yet again, and the rest of the press gang could only gnash their teeth.

  What between helping to spoil Bismarck’s digestion and whiling away the golden afternoons with Caprice (for we’d abandoned our nocturnal meetings, and I was collecting her reports in the mornings) I was in pretty bobbish form, and took to promenading about the town in search of amusement. I didn’t find it on one day at least, when chance took me down the Wilhelmstrasse past the Congress hall, and who should I meet face to face but dear Otto himself; he was with a group of his bag-carriers and other reptiles, coming down the steps to his carriage, and for one blood-freezing instant our eyes met – as they had not done since that day at Tarlenheim thirty years before when he’d launched me unsuspecting into his ghastly Strackenz murder plot. I’d never have recognised him if I hadn’t seen his mug in the papers, for the nasty young Norse God had turned into a jowly sausage-faced old buffer whose head seemed to grow straight out of his collar without benefit of neck. Just for a second he stared, and I thought bigod he remembers me, but there ain’t a thing he can do, so why don’t I exclaim: “Well, Otto, old sport, there you are, then! Drowned any Danish princelings lately?” It’s the kind of momentary madness that sometimes takes me, but thank God I tipped my tile instead, he did likewise, frowning, and a moment later he was clambering aboard and I was legging it in search of a gallon or two of brandy. Quite a turn he’d given me – but then, he always did. Bad medicine, Bismarck; bad man.

  I kept clear of the official cantonment thereafter, and by the last week of the Congress was beginning to be infernally bored, even with Caprice; when I found myself knocking at her door in the expectation of having it opened by Elspeth, smiling blonde and beautiful, I realised it was time for the train home. Oddly enough, if I’d cut out then it wouldn’t have mattered, for Blowitz no longer needed her reports, although he continued to change hats with me at the Kaiserhof.

  The fact was his stock had risen so high with his three “scoops” that he was being fed information by the bushel, the embassy fawns being anxious to stand well with him; he even put it about, very confidential-like, that Bismarck had promised to give him the treaty before it was published, which wasn’t true, but made them toad-eat him harder than ever. I knew nothing of this, of course, and on the penultimate day of the Congress, a Friday, as I was strolling home enjoying the morning after a strenuous late breakfast with Caprice, I was taken flat aback by Blowitz’s moon face goggling at me from the window of a drosky drawn up near my hotel.

  “In! In!” hisses he, whipping down the blind, so I climbed aboard, demanding what the devil was up, and before I was seated he was hammering on the roof and bawling to the coachee to make for the station with all speed.

  “We leave on the 12.30 for Cologne!” cries he. “Fear not, your bill is paid and your baggage awaits at the train!”

  “The dooce it does! But the Congress don’t end till tomorrow –”

  “Let it end when it will! It is imperative that I leave Berlin at once – that I am seen to leave, mortified and en colère!” He was red with excitement – and beaming. “Regardez-moi – do I look sufficiently enraged, then?”

  “You sound sufficiently barmy. But what about the treaty – I thought t’wasn’t to be finished until this evening?”

  He pulled back the lapel of his coat, chuck
ling, whipped out a bulky document, waved it at me, and thrust it away again. “A treaty of sixty-four articles – approved, printed, fini! What d’you say to that, my boy? Nothing remains but the preamble and a few extra clauses to be adopted at today’s session.” He rubbed his hands, squirming with delight. “It is done, dear friend, it is done! Blowitz triumphs! He is exalted! Ah, and you, my brave one, my accomplice extraordinary, I could embrace you –”

  “Keep your dam’ distance! Look here, if you’ve got the thing, what are you in such an infernal hurry for?”

  He smote his forehead. “Ah, forgive me – in my joy I go too fast. Let me explain.” He was licking his lips at his own cleverness. “You remember I told you in Paris how I would persuade some diplomat of eminence to give me an advance copy of the treaty? Eh bien, this morning I received it. I rejoice, knowing that no other journalist will see the treaty until after the signing ceremony tomorrow. But in the meantime a crisis has raised itself. Since my interview with Prince Bismarck the German press has been in jealous agitation, and to pacify them he has let it be known that he will give them the treaty this evening! When I learn this, I am thunderstruck!” He assumed a look of horror. “Of what use to me to have the treaty in my pocket if it is to appear in the Berlin journals tomorrow? Where then is my exclusive account, my priority over my rivals?”

  “Down the drain, I’d say. So why are you exalted?”

  “Because I see at once how to frustrate them. I go to Prince Hohenlohe, the German Minister, and demand that as a reward for my services to the Congress – and because I am Blowitz – Prince Bismarck should give the treaty only to me, so that I may publish it in The Times tomorrow. Hohenlohe consults Bismarck, who refuses (as I knew he would). He says I must wait until it is signed. But,” he raised a pudgy finger, “I know Bismarck. He is one for strict justice. Having said I must wait until tomorrow, he will now make the German papers wait also. So, in effect, I have gained a postponement … you see?”

  I don’t know if Macchiavelli was a fat little cove with long whiskers, but he should have been.

  “When Prince Hohenlohe tells me my request is refused, I play my part. I am affronted. My disgust knows no bounds. I tell him I am leaving Berlin at once in protest. If Blowitz is to be treated with such contempt, they may keep their Congress and their treaty. Hohenlohe is dismayed, but I am adamant. I take my leave in what you call the dudgeon – and word flies from mouth to mouth that Blowitz is beaten, that he sulks like a spoiled child, my rivals rejoice at my failure – and breathe sighs of relief … and all the time the treaty is here –” he tapped his breast, chortling “– and tomorrow it will appear in The Times and in no other paper in the world!”

  He paused to draw breath and gloat; you never saw smugness like it, so I pointed to the one fly I saw in his ointment.

  “But you haven’t got the preamble or the clauses they’re adopting today.”

  He gave a lofty wave. “Soit tranquil, my ’Arree. From Hohenlohe I go tout suite to M. de St Vallier, the French Ambassador – who I know has a copy of the preamble. In confidence I show him the treaty. He is staggered, he goes pale, but when I ask for the preamble and clauses, he throws up the hands, crying why not, since already I have so much? He cannot give me his copy of the preamble, but he reads it aloud, page upon page, and now it is here –” he tapped his brow “– and will be dictated to my secretary after we board the train.”

  I ain’t given to expressions of admiration, as you know, but looking at that grinning cherub with his baby peepers and daft whiskers I confess I put a finger to my hat brim. “Though I still don’t see why you’re in such an almighty sweat to leave. Can’t you telegraph your story to London?”

  “From Berlin? Oh, my boy, you want to laugh! Where my every action is watched, my movements followed – why, let a telegraph clerk catch a glimpse of my message and I should be in a police cell!” He grew earnest. “But it is not the authorities I fear – it is envious rivals. My little charade of pique will deceive the many, but not all. Some, knowing Blowitz, will suspect me still. They may board the train. They would rob me if they could. That,” says he, clapping a hand on my knee, “is why I bring you with me. I am small, you are large. Who knows what they may attempt between here and Paris? But what have I to fear,” cries he, with a great idiot laugh, “when the bravest soldier of the British Army, the partner of my fate, is by my side?”

  A great deal, I could have told him, if Bismarck’s bullies were after him; he’d find himself relying on the communication cord. But no, that wasn’t likely; even Otto wouldn’t dare. Blowitz’s brother journalists were another matter, as I saw when we reached the station, and they were on the platform to see him off with covert grins and ironic tile-doffing; I hadn’t realised what respect and jealousy my stout friend attracted. He bustled down the train looking like an angry frog in his great fur coat and felt hat, ignoring their greetings, and I played up by taking his arm and wearing my most threatening scowl.

  The secretary and Blowitz’s colleague, Wallace, were already aboard, and when we pulled out punctually on 12.30, Blowitz told the secretary to get out his book, folded his hands across his paunch, closed his eyes, and recited steadily for half an hour. It was fearful stuff, all in German, with an occasional phrase in French or English by way of explanation, and he didn’t even pause; once, when the train clanked to an unexpected halt and we were almost jolted from our seats, he forged right ahead with his dictation, and when it was done he sat drooping like a limp doll, and then went straight off to sleep. For concentration and power of mind, I don’t recall his equal.

  Sure enough, there were fellows from the other papers on the train. Wallace spotted two Germans and an Italian in the next carriage, but once one of ’em had tried to look in on us, and I’d sent him about his business, they let us alone. They followed us when we alighted for refreshment at Cologne, but we baffled ’em by each taking a different way back to the train, so that they had to separate, one dogging Blowitz, another behind me, the third after the secretary – and no one at all to watch Wallace, who was lurking in the W.C. with treaty, preamble and all inside his shirt, until the time came for him to board another train to Brussels, where he would telegraph the whole thing to London. Wallace had wondered if the Belgians would accept such an important document; Blowitz told him that if there was any difficulty he was to send for the superintendent, tell him The Times was thinking of setting up (and paying handsomely for) a daily line to London, and that this despatch was by way of a test. Of course, if Brussels didn’t want the business …’nuff said.

  So next morning, Saturday July 13, 1878, before the leading statesmen of Europe had even penned their signatures to the treaty, Otto Bismarck was goggling apoplectically at a telegram from London informing him that the whole sixty-four articles, preamble, etc., were in that day’s Times – with an English translation. Talk about a “scoop”! Blowitz was drunk with glory, conceit, and gratitude when I managed to tear myself from his blubbering embrace in Paris, and I wasn’t displeased myself. T’isn’t every day you play a part in one of the great journalistic coups, and whenever I see some curmudgeon at the club cursing at the labour of cutting open his Times and then complaining that there’s no news in the dam’ thing, I think, aye, you should see what goes to the making of those paragraphs that you take for granted, my boy. My one regret as I tooled back to London was that I hadn’t been able to bid a riotous farewell to Caprice; she’d been worth the trip, ne’er mind spoking Otto’s wheel, and I found myself smiling fondly as I thought of Punch and the gauzy lace clinging to that houri shape in the sunlight … Ah well, there would doubtless be more where that came from.

  In case you don’t know, the great Berlin Treaty panned out to general satisfaction – for the time being anyway. “Big Bulgaria” was cut in two; Roumania, you’ll be charmed to learn, became independent; Austria won the right to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina (which only an idiot would want to do, in my opinion, but then I ain’t the Emperor Fra
nz-Josef); Russia got Bessarabia, wherever that may be; the Turks remained a power in the Balkans, more or less, and by some strange sleight of hand we managed to collar Cyprus (no fool, D’Israeli, for all he dressed like a Pearly King). There had been a move at one stage (this is gospel, though you mayn’t credit it) to invite my old comrade William Tecumseh Sherman, the Yankee general, to become Prince of Bulgaria, but nothing came of it. Pity; he was the kind of savage who’d have suited the Bulgars like nuts in May.

  At all events, what they call “a balance” was achieved, and everyone agreed that Bismarck had played a captain’s innings, hoch! hoch! und he’s ein jolly good fellow. So he ought to have been content – but I can tell you something that wasn’t suspected at the time, and has been known to only a handful since: the Congress left darling Otto an obsessed man. It’s God’s truth: the brute was bedevilled by the galling fact that little Blowitz had stolen a march on him, and he could not figure out how it had been done. Astonishing, eh? Here was the greatest statesman of the age, who’d just settled the peace of Europe for a generation and more, and still that trifle haunted him over the years. Perhaps ’twas the affront to his dignity, or his passion for detail, but he couldn’t rest until he knew how Blowitz had got hold of that treaty. How do I know, you may ask? Well, I’m about to tell you – and I’m not sure that Bismarck’s mania (for that’s what it amounted to) wasn’t the strangest part of the adventure that befell me five years later, and which had its origins in my meetings with Grant and Macmahon, Caprice’s picture, and the Congress of Berlin.8