lashman and the Golden Sword

by Robert Brightwell

  “I saw them cut the cock and balls off another wounded man,” I challenged. “Were they impressed with him as a lover, then? The bastards, they are bloody savages.”

  “No, Flashman, they are just different to us and I suspect that you are more likely to see that than I.”

  “Why? What do you think they will do to us? Will they send us down the mines?”

  “No, they have their spies at the castle. I imagine that if they do not know already, they will soon learn who you are. You have seen that they value men of courage and as a distinguished soldier, they will probably view you as a valuable hostage. When their king hears what has happened here, he will want you as a bargaining chip in future negotiations with our people.”

  “Surely they will want you as a hostage too? Won’t your friend save you?”

  “Normally yes, but I rather fear that this wound in my leg will see me off. The ball is in deep and it will soon become gangrenous.”

  I looked at the hole in his thigh. He had the limb slightly raised and so I knew the bone was not broken, but there was a ragged, raw hole that was still bleeding. I looked at my own body and apart from a few scratches from when I was torn from the tree, I was miraculously unhurt. My shirt, though, had been torn to shreds when I was captured, with one sleeve held on by just a thread. “Here,” I said tearing the sleeve off entirely. I leaned forward and tied it around his wound as tightly as he could bear. We sat quietly through much of that night talking about the battle and whether there were any other survivors at all. Williams had seen King Dinkera and his men moving off into the jungle, pursued by a large party of Ashanti. He mentioned that he had seen the new surgeon shot early in the battle and two more of the militia officers killed during the retreat. I told him that I had run past Brandon, who looked mortally wounded.

  There was sporadic shooting from the jungle during the night. It is hard to imagine now, but I think we must have slept a little. In the morning new horrors awaited us. We both sat quietly, trying to avoid drawing attention to ourselves as the camp slowly came to life. Various Ashanti came over to look at us as though we were specimens in a zoo and I half feared that they would decide that our survival had been a mistake. That trepidation only increased mid-morning when drums began to beat and they started preparing for some sort of ceremony. Had they saved us as a sacrifice? Perhaps the pleas from our separate saviours had been overruled and we were to be put to death after all. My fears seemed confirmed when we were dragged to our feet and, after my bindings were cut, driven forward. Williams put his arm around my shoulders to take the weight of his injured leg and we hobbled along until we were told to sit again beside a large drum. In front of us was a log and my old executioner friend of the night before. By then continuous fear had exhausted me. I remember thinking that if I had to die, at least it would be quick. To our surprise, several badly wounded Ashanti warriors were carried forward and one by one, their necks were placed over the log. There was cheering and chanting at each execution. Williams, who had a little of the language, turned to the man beside him to try to find out what was going on.

  “They are killing those with five wounds,” he told me. “They believe that these men must be sacrificed to their gods.” Well they can kill as many of their own as they like, I thought before swiftly counting the scratches I had incurred. Judging from those brought to the log, the wounds had to be serious to count and most were near death anyway. That was certainly the case with the last body carried forward and we were aghast to see it was a white man.

  His face was covered in blood and I could not make him out, but he was still alive, for he groaned loudly when he was laid over the log. “Who is it?” I asked Williams. “Can you see?”

  “It is Mr Jones,” he told me. “He is one of the traders in the castle, but he also serves as a captain in the militia.” I did not know the name, but I was glad it was not Rickets. After the axe had swung, the body of Jones was laid with the other Ashanti sacrifices and they were all treated with more ceremony before the gathering broke up. Soldiers started collecting their possessions and moving on, some over the log bridges and others down the track we had taken from Assamacow. For a while we were ignored. So we staggered over to where I had last seen Rickets, to see if his body was there. It wasn’t, but that of another militia officer, a man called Robertson was, not to mention a score of other soldiers, all now long dead. There was still the occasional and now distant crackle of musketry from the jungle, indicating that the pursuit of fugitives was continuing. By the time they had finished, I doubted that there would be any other survivors.

  “What a bloody waste,” I said vehemently. “McCarthy said he was going to give the Ashanti a rap across the knuckles. Huh, all he has succeeded in doing is killing hundreds of fine men.”

  “Don’t forget that the governor did a lot of good along the coast, more than any of the company men,” said Williams with surprising softness. “He just did not understand the Ashanti. He thought that a nation that had defeated the likes of Napoleon would instil fear and respect. But we are not the British lion here. In Africa we are more a goat, surrounded by hungry predators.”

  I gave a snort of derision and turned to find an Ashanti officer walking towards us with a squad of soldiers. He gave a long command that I did not understand. Realising he was wasting his time, he then just said, “Assamacow,” and pointed in that direction. I gathered we were on the move. With Williams holding on to my shoulders and our escort surrounding us, we hobbled off down the path, back the way we had come.

  Chapter 13

  It took us three days to reach Assamacow, double the time it had taken to go the other way. At the end of the first afternoon, we were joined by a third prisoner, driven on by his own escort. His white skin was covered in scratches and bruises, but other than that he was unwounded, at least in his body. The shock of the battle and his capture, however, had clearly taken his wits. He was naked when we saw him and he never uttered a word. Williams told me he was another merchant and that his name was Raydon. I vaguely recalled him laughing on the march and wearing the uniform of a militia captain. Well, he was not laughing now and just stared vacantly around him, showing no interest in us or anything else. We were given some water and food, – ironically, macaroni from a barrel abandoned on the trail – but he refused both. We tried to talk to him and jostle him along, but he had given up and seemed to just want to die. On the second day as he grew weaker and slower, the Ashanti obliged. After some discussion between the soldiers and our escort commander, two soldiers took him off the path into the jungle. There was the sound of a shot and only the soldiers came back.

  With little food and only three working legs between the pair of us, Williams and I felt near death ourselves when we finally reached our destination. It was strange to see the Tudor-style architecture of Assamacow again. Where British officers had stood and marshalled supplies just a few days before, now the Ashanti were in charge. This time we were not in one of the grand merchant houses, but instead in what must have been a shed for animals, for it had straw strewn about and a wooden trough for feed. We threw ourselves down, exhausted. Williams’ leg was now swollen and looked bad. We had fashioned crutches from some long sticks and I had helped him hobble along – I could not have abandoned him, for we had seen the fate of those who refused to move. Not only that, he was the only one with a sense of the language. When you are lost in a foreign land and are prisoner to a very strange enemy, it is a great comfort to have one of your own people with you, especially one who can tell you what is going on.

  We had been there some hours when the door was thrown open and three Ashanti officers stood staring at us. One had a cruel face and he said something that made the others laugh. A moment later a soldier with a sack entered and turned the wooden trough upside down to form a narrow platform. On it he started to place items from his sack. When he stood back we viewed the grisly spectacle he had created. McCarthy’s head glared at us indignantly, while that of Ensign Wethere
ll was frozen in the grimace he must have held when the axe fell, with his eyes tight shut. To our surprise there was a third head in the display, that of Mr Buckle, who had been the colony’s engineer. If they were expecting a reaction of horror they were to be disappointed, for we were too exhausted to feel much at all. After a career fighting on land and sea, I had seen far worse sights. Anyway, it was always the wounded that were more distressing than the dead, for whom help was too late.

  I was more concerned about Williams, whose thigh had started to smell ominously as though rot was setting in. It looked like my companion would not be around for much longer and I did not fancy my chances alone. I pointed to the injury and mimed him being shot and pulling the ball out, but the man in charge showed little concern. He just grunted and shut the door, leaving us under the surveillance of the row of severed heads. There was enough light coming through the big gaps at the top and bottom of the door to show the governor’s features. The heads were remarkably well preserved and perhaps it was the movement of shadows through the afternoon, but McCarthy looked increasingly disappointed in us. It was as though we had let him down. In the end I got up and turned all the heads to face the wall.

  Williams managed to get some sleep, and that evening we were finally given some food. A spoonful each of a mushy mess that my companion told me was snail porridge. I was past caring now and would probably have given a leach a taste of its own medicine if I could find one. I wolfed it down and then asked Williams what he thought would happen next.

  “I imagine that they want to take us to Coomassie as hostages, he whispered. “But that is near an eighty-mile walk, I would never make it. They will leave me to die here or speed me along like poor Raydon. You will have to go on your own. But don’t underestimate them, Flashman. You might think of them as savages, but they are clever and sophisticated fellows in their own way.”

  There was no doubt of that, I thought, as I stared at the heads in front of me. The Ashanti had run rings around McCarthy. “What about your friend who saved you?” I asked. Will he not help you again?”

  “He probably thinks his debt is settled,” grunted Williams. “Anyway, my leg is so swollen, I think even one of our surgeons would struggle to get the ball out now.” We lapsed into silence then, both aware that the only trained surgeon we knew of in the colony was presently lying dead by a river a few miles away. It turned out we were wrong in that assumption, although given the pain inflicted, Williams might to this day disagree.

  The next morning two elderly Ashanti men did come and look at his wound. They sniffed it and prodded it, to grunts of pain from their patient, and then went away again. They came back with two lengths of rope, which they proceeded to tie around his leg on either side of the hole, over the swelling. By now the secretary had guessed what they were intending and was struggling and begging them to leave him alone. More guards came to hold him down and two more stood at my side to stop me intervening. Then the two Ashanti sawbones put sticks in the rope loops and started to twist them like a tourniquet. Williams started to writhe and scream in agony and it took four warriors to hold him down. I watched in fascinated horror as pus started to ooze from the wound, but there was still no sign of the ball. After what seemed an age, with Williams now weeping from the pain and begging them to kill him, they covered the wound with some paste and then some leaves, before wrapping the leg in a clean cloth bandage.

  I watched my companion sleep for a while after they left. He was trembling a little now and appeared to be coming down with the fever. While the Ashanti may have had the best intentions, their ministrations looked certain to kill him. Their efforts to force the corruption from his body, must also have pressed it into his blood. That evening more snail porridge arrived. I was ravenous and, mindful of the adage that you must ‘starve a fever,’ I decided to eat Williams’ share as well. He awoke in the middle of the night and asked about food, but I told him none had been delivered.

  “Ah, they are leaving us to die,” he whispered. “Flashman, I have some money. If you ever get back to the castle, you will find the details in my quarters. I would be grateful if you would see that it gets to my sister.”

  Of course, I promised that I would and he settled back to doze. In the morning he was still alive but in such a deep sleep that I could not wake him. When the door to the hut opened, I thought it would be their doctors again, but this time they came for me. I was pulled roughly to my feet and out of the door. As I left, I glanced back over my shoulder. Williams was still lying with his eyes shut on the straw and I did not imagine I would see him again. I thought he would probably die in his sleep and as I was dragged off to a very uncertain fate, I did not know whether to pity or envy him.

  I will spare you the details of the next two weeks, for they were spent on the road to the Ashanti capital of Coomassie. I was taken with one of their regiments, perhaps a thousand men. Half a dozen were assigned to guard me. I had a rope around my neck like a dog and at every moment of those two weeks there was always someone holding on to the other end of my leash. While I could not understand them, I could tell that the soldiers were in good spirits; they had enjoyed a prestigious victory and humiliated an enemy. A number of them were wearing clothes that they had taken from the dead, including several redcoat uniforms removed from our soldiers. Some used the clothing to taunt me in my rags, but I was too tired to give them much of a reaction. Another showed me a watch he had taken, yet there did not seem a huge haul of loot as our numbers had been pitifully few compared to theirs. Doubtless they expected more spoils of their triumph from the royal treasury when they got home. But about a week into the journey they received news that spread consternation through the ranks. I did not understand it then, but I later learned that the Ashanti king had died. Many of the officers rushed on ahead, leaving the soldiers and I to follow on behind.

  We must have passed through half a dozen villages on the way, which did not look any different to the ones I had seen outside of Ashanti territory. The roads got steadily better, though, not paved or anything like that, but wider and clearly well travelled. We no longer had these tracks to ourselves and strangers stopped to stare at me as they went past. Farmers were moving food to the capital on small carts they drew themselves – there were still no horses. I doubted that such animals would survive any longer there than on the coast. Others carried bundles on their heads. Intermingling with the locals were various Arab traders, some heading to the capital and others walking towards the coast.

  The road felt endless and I began to think that we would never arrive, but then one morning we rounded a corner and there, laid out before us, was the outskirts of Coomassie. I stopped in astonishment and was nearly pulled off my feet by the man holding my tether.

  There was a rising sea of rooftops and buildings in front of me, with the meanest hovels on the outskirts, but the walls of much grander buildings beyond. It was huge, far larger than anything else I had seen in Africa. It was not as big as London, but perhaps the size of a small city like Coventry. There were no city walls, but then they probably did not think they needed them as they were the dominant force in the region. The soldiers gave a cheer at the sight of it but as they marched on towards their capital, my guardians tugged at my rope and drew me away a hundred yards from the road to wait in the shade of a tree. Grateful for the rest I dozed for a while until I felt another pull on my leash. I opened my eyes to see a handful of Ashanti officers watching me. One looked familiar and I realised that it was the one who had seen me hiding and later pulled me from my bush. He grinned broadly when he saw the recognition cross my features. Then he pointed to what looked like a large wooden coffin and gestured that I should get inside.

  For a moment I was alarmed – were they going to bury me alive? But then I thought that if they wanted me dead they could have killed me at any point since I had been captured. There was no hostility in my captor’s face, he just pointed to his eyes and then at the city and back at the box. I realised that they wanted t
o bring me into the city without anyone seeing. Heaven knew why, but as I was in no position to argue, I got up and lay down between the rough-hewn planks. A lid was placed on my ‘coffin’ and then I felt myself being hoisted into the air and carried down the street. It was a strange way to travel, although I probably will not care so much the next time I am carried in that manner. I twisted around to squint through a gap in the wood at my surroundings as we passed by. As we got closer to the city centre I noticed more of the half-timbered houses that I had seen the merchants build nearer the coast. Many of them were painted in colourful patterns with swirls and blocks of colour. Unlike the villages, where there was just a cluster of large houses, here there were long streets of them on either side of wide thoroughfares that thronged with people. Many of the houses had large open porches at the front that their owners sat in to watch the goings on in the city.

  I saw that many of the grander houses had bundles of small gold bells hanging from the upper floors, presumably to show off their wealth as well as to make music in the light breeze. But when I looked about, I saw a profusion of gold amongst the citizens of the city. Rich men wore gold necklaces down to their navels; others had bands of the metal around their head or limbs. As well as jewellery, the wealthy citizens were adorned in the finest fabrics. Often they were worn thrown over one shoulder like Roman togas. Some looked to have been made locally, but others were clearly of European manufacture and at least one was of silk. Arab traders in their robes were also much in evidence, particularly in what I judged to be the commercial district, with its rows of stalls selling all manner of goods. There were stacks of weaponry, piles of pots and pans, bolts of cloth and baskets of meat, fish and vegetables. But alongside this great wealth there were also slaves. As I had seen in Rio, they were one of the main beasts of burden in the city.