lashman and the Golden Sword

by Robert Brightwell

  Aha, I thought, now we are coming to the real reason for your visit. Trick the gullible fool into giving you more information and then leave him to rot in his cell. Well two can play at that game. I wrinkled my brow in concentration as though giving the matter some thought. “I can’t tell you until I know what has occurred since I was captured,” I told her. “What happened to Chisholm and our other armies? Were they attacked too?”

  “No, Chisholm is now acting governor with most of the British soldiers back at Cape Coast Castle. But many of the other tribes have abandoned them and gone back to their own lands. Only King Dinkera and Appea’s people look likely to fight again.”

  “Have any ships arrived there?” I asked.

  “Yes, two ships arrived just after the battle.”

  “I see.” My heart lurched in frustration at how close I had been to sailing home and avoiding this catastrophe entirely. But I pulled myself together. “Well that means that news of the defeat will soon be reaching London if it has not already. If the British government sends reinforcements, then any Ashanti near the fort will be destroyed.”

  “But you said the Ashanti army was formidable when you spoke to the king.” She sounded petulant and disappointed and I guessed that she had been pressing for a second attack.

  I laughed, “Well of course I did, with the king’s executioner standing nearby.” I looked around to check we were not being overheard before whispering, “But just between us, the British have new weapons that will beat the Ashanti.”

  “What do you mean?” she whispered, her eyes glittering with interest.

  “Well you have seen my Collier pistol, they are making muskets with the same mechanism and rifles that are accurate at two hundred yards. You would need to have five times our number to stand a chance or your soldiers would be cut down before they reached our lines.”

  She considered this for a moment and I suppressed a smile of triumph. Collier had indeed made such weapons, but reloading them took too long for consideration by the army. Yet with my pistol as evidence, she could not easily dismiss the threat. “How many men can your big ships carry?” she asked. “If we have an army of fifteen thousand soldiers, we could have over five times as many men as yours.”

  “The British Army was seventy thousand at Waterloo,” I told her, neglecting to mention that less than half of it was actually British. She still seemed doubtful and so I gave my imagination free reign to come up with yet more weapons. “They are using a much larger version of the Collier device on cannon too,” I explained. “The empty chambers are reloaded by gunners as the cannon fires, so that an endless stream of shot can be fired into our enemies. They can also fire shrapnel shells that explode, spraying balls over a wide area. The British will also come with hundreds of rockets that they can fire into the trees to explode, sending splinters everywhere.” I paused and reached out to hold her hand. “I am only telling you this because I would not want you near any attack, it would be too dangerous. But please do not tell anyone else.”

  “Of course I won’t,” she assured me. She prattled on for a while about court gossip – the king was getting rid of most of the old king’s wives – but she was fidgeting and impatient to leave. Eventually she gave me a light kiss on the cheek and whispered, “I will try to come back again soon.”

  After she had gone I leaned back against the wall and smiled to myself. I had done what I could to stop an attack on the coast, but more than that, I had hopefully damaged Malala’s credibility as an informant. By the time the next ships from Britain arrived, I was sure that the Ashanti would have spies at Cape Coast Castle. They would report that the mythical weapons did not exist. Quashie had indicated that Malala had enemies in the court and I hoped that they would then begin to move against her. It was a revenge of sorts and there was something satisfying at the thought of her eventually realising that I had played her this time.

  She came twice more over the next few weeks, each time she brought a small gift and kissed me. Then, presumably to protect herself from further molestation, she would suggest we walk around the exercise yard. She promised that she had tried to get away to visit me at night, but that it was impossible. She also insisted that she was still working to help me escape. After around five minutes, she would work the conversation around to what she really wanted. The first time it was the calibre of the mythical Collier artillery and the second time it was the accuracy of our rockets. While she swore that she had not spoken to anyone about what I had told her, she claimed that she had found out from papers in the palace a little about shells and rockets and wanted to know more. I thought that the existence of a Coomassie reference library with a section on modern weaponry was as likely as Collier artillery, but I played along. I told her about the fins on the rockets and implied that they were unerringly accurate, when in reality they were a damned menace on the battlefield and could explode anywhere.

  They were small victories of deception that gave me some heart, but it was a depressing existence. There was no hope of escape and the highlight of my day was playing pebbles with King Azi. I was feeling truculent when Malala came the fourth time and pretended I was hurt by her long absence and did not want to speak to her. She had brought a sweetened cake, but I insisted that if she wanted to talk we had to go outside the prison as I was fed up of seeing the same walls. “You are a counsellor to the king, you must have the power to take me out of here just for a walk,” I challenged.

  She studied me and must have recognised the genuine anger and frustration in my spirit, for after a moment she agreed. A few minutes later and we were strolling around the large courtyard where the general and his retinue had waited before being admitted into the king’s presence. The guards had leapt to open the gate as Malala, holding her gold-topped cane of office, approached. She was clearly well known as a powerful woman about the palace. We were not entirely alone, two guards had fallen in behind us when we left the prison, but they stayed a respectable distance behind to allow us to talk in private. There were also a few maids carrying supplies into the ornate women’s house that formed one side of the square. Some were dressed in African robes, while others were the veiled servants of the king’s Arab wives.

  “Are you enjoying being out?” Malala asked smiling. “It is a nice sunny day.”

  “It is good,” I admitted. It might seem strange as I was only a hundred yards or so from my cell, but seeing something different after well over a month of captivity in that prison did lighten my heart.

  “I wanted to ask you about the weather,” continued Malala. I cocked an eyebrow in surprise and she went on, “When it rains, do your new guns and rockets still fire?”

  “The rockets are difficult to light in torrential rain,” I admitted, “and of course priming and cartridges can get damp, but gunners often cover them with canvas to try to keep them dry.”

  “But as they uncover the guns to fire, surely the weapons and powder soon become wet?”

  “They do,” I conceded. “I have heard that no one around here fights during the rainy season for precisely that reason.”

  “This is true,” she admitted. “But the Ashanti generals have learned of the new weapons from their spies. I have heard them talk of attacking the British during the rainy season, when they believe these new guns will not work. Our muskets will not fire either, but we will have the advantage of much greater numbers.

  I did not say anything for a while as we paced along, but my mind was whirling. Had all my talk of mythical weapons changed the Ashanti’s plans? And if they had, were the British better off or worse? Little did I know it then, but my intervention was to give us the most unlikely victory – but that was hard to imagine back in that yard. For it seemed to me then that the British garrison was doomed either way. If fifteen thousand well-armed Ashanti marched down the road to Cape Coast Castle, there would be little that the few hundred British soldiers and their native allies could do about it. They might be able to hole up in the fort for a few weeks until the
y were starved out, but there was no chance of a relief force to drive the Ashanti back. The best that they could hope for was being allowed to evacuate the garrison onto a passing ship. If the Ashanti attacked during the rainy season, the situation would be far worse, for half of the garrison was likely to be incapacitated with fever.

  “I know you say that you want to help me escape,” I said at last, “but it does not look like there will be anywhere to escape to soon.”

  I half expected her to look triumphant and to finally drop the pretence of being on my side. She had, with my unwitting assistance, helped the Ashanti to develop a plan of attack that would strike the British at their weakest time. But instead she looked as sad as I did. It was strange as, despite her protestations, I was sure that her loyalty was not to me or my countrymen. “I doubt I will be able to help you at all for much longer,” she sighed. The king wants to marry me.”

  “You mean you will be a queen?” I asked, surprised. For such an ambitious woman, she did not seem pleased at achieving the ultimate position.

  “I will be one of his principle wives,” she corrected. “But if we have a son he might one day be king.” Her chin tilted up a little at that, showing her old pride, but as I looked across at the women’s house on the other side of the square, the reality of her fate dawned on me. She would be just as much a prisoner there as I was in my cell. Unable to leave or even be seen by male members of the court. While she might exert some influence through her pillow talk, she would lose access to sources of information such as me, that had helped her gain status. Her rival counsellors would hold sway with the king and she would have to share even that greaseball with all the other wives. The chances were he would soon find other favourites and she would disappear into obscurity. I almost felt sorry for her.

  She saw where I was looking and must have guessed my train of thought. “The king has shown me around the women’s house, it is brighter inside than it looks out here. There is a central courtyard with no bars on the windows.”

  “I have stayed in worse prisons,” I conceded. “There was a bottle-shaped one in India that was pretty grim.”

  “You have been to India as well as France and Spain,” she exclaimed. “What is India like?”

  “Well there are some stone carvings on the temples there that show every conceivable position for lovemaking, and quite a few that I found impossible. It is hot like here but very different, with huge palaces, different religions and an energy and bustle to the place that I found nowhere else.”

  She laughed and added wistfully, “You will have to sit under my window in the women’s house and tell me all about your travels. Have you been anywhere else?”

  “I have been to Canada. You would not like it there in winter. The water freezes into ice and the rain comes down as snow so that the ground has a deep white covering. It looks magical, but it is bloody cold.”

  “And I suppose that there are dragons and flying horses there too,” she laughed. “Do you take me for a fool to believe such things?”

  It took me quite some time to convince her that snow and ice did exist or that the weather ever got cold enough to necessitate a sensible degree of clothing. To prove that water became a solid, I had to explain how it became steam too. When I mentioned that I had once travelled in a ship powered by a steam engine, she was overawed by all the sights she had not seen. By then we were back near my prison cell. As she turned to leave, I wondered if I would ever see her again.

  Chapter 16

  When the mathematician Archimedes had his moment of revelation, legend tells us that he leapt out of his bath yelling ‘Eureka!’ My moment was a little less dramatic, although I flatter myself that it was just as ingenious.

  It had all started two days before at my regular game of pebbles with King Azi. At first it just looked like a regular reflection of the sun from the many gold decorations on the walls of the women’s house. Then I noticed that the beam of light was unsteadily circling the white stone that served as a jack. Even though we had no common language, I saw that Azi had noticed it too. He gave a slight grunt of surprise and then slowly turned to survey our guards. They were both sitting in the shade of the cells and one looked to be asleep. There was no cause for them to be concerned as the scene was the same as it was every day, with Azi and I playing our game and the other prisoners sitting in another patch of shade and talking among themselves. The light moved once more around the jack and then darted off in the direction of the women’s house. As it did so I noticed the glint of light on metal from one of the ground floor windows.

  We finished throwing our pebbles. As usual Azi was extraordinarily accurate; it was though he had been throwing those stones for years and perhaps he had. But when he picked up the white one, with a glance at me, he threw it on in the direction that the light had taken. It took two more games to get close to the window in the wall – it was here that the guards would normally yell at us to move away. Azi looked up and saw the one conscious guard watching us. He waved an acknowledgement at the man, even though he had not yet shouted, and then made a big show of throwing the jack this time away from the women’s house. The guard sat back and looked at his other prisoners, content we were not causing trouble. He did not see us take a couple of steps back, closer to the window.

  “Engleeshman,” a voice whispered. “That black cow Malala is fooling you. She is not your friend, she tells the king everything you say.”

  “I know,” I called back softly. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Jasmina. I am one of the king’s wives, at least for now. The new king does not like Arab women and I am to be sold to a merchant in town.”

  “You speak good English,” I told her.

  “I was born in Cape Coast Castle, but my father traded with the Ashanti. He was forced to give me as a wife to the old king before he was exiled back to the coast.”

  “When you get out of here, will you be able to get a message to the British for me?” I asked suddenly realising what an opportunity this chance meeting was.

  “Of course, my maids and I will leave in the next few days. My new husband is a trader, he will not let me go home, but I can send a message to the coast.”

  “Thank God,” I breathed. “Tell the British that Thomas Flashman is a prisoner of the Ashanti and that they plan to attack during the rainy season.”

  She promised that she would and as I threw my last stone I felt a surge of elation. Now at last someone would know that I was here, and I had further thwarted Malala’s plans. It was a start. The British may have to abandon the coast, but they would be back. When they knew I was here, I prayed that they would include my release in any new trade negotiations. It was only as I went to bed that night that something began to gnaw at my brain. I was missing something, but I could not work out what it was. All of the next day I wracked my addled wits to find what I could not see, but it was not until the next night that the last piece finally dropped into place. If I recall, I whispered, “Bloody hell,” instead of ‘Eureka’ and then I lay there trying to work out if it was really achievable.

  It was a mad scheme and there were dozens of things that could go wrong, but it was the only plan I had, or could see ever getting. The alternative was spending the rest of my life in that prison with perhaps a letter every few years to remind me of the life I was missing. With that perspective, everything was possible and I spent the rest of the night pacing restlessly around my cell. Suddenly freedom seemed at hand and so close I could almost taste it.

  The next morning, I was in a fever to begin. As soon as I heard them moving I hollered for a guard. “Malala,” I shouted at him. “I must see Malala.” Of course he could not understand me, but he knew the name and that she had visited me before. So it was not hard to guess what I wanted. He nodded and ambled off while I rehearsed in my head for the hundredth time what I was going to say. It would be no easy task, for my whole plan relied on the loyalty of a woman who had made her name with treachery and deceit.

>   “What do you want?” asked Malala curtly when she finally arrived. She had taken three hours to respond to my request and I was on the verge of giving up hope.

  “Could we go and walk again in that square…?” I started.

  “What? I do not have time for this, I have matters of state to attend to. You cannot just summon me every time you want a fresh view.” She was angry and turning to go.

  “Please,” I pleaded. “What I want to talk about will greatly benefit you as well as me.” Her eyes narrowed in suspicion, she clearly thought I was lying just to get out of the cell, but she could not be sure. After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded to a guard and the door was thrown open.

  “So what is it that will be of great benefit to me?” she asked a few minutes later as we walked into the other square.

  I took a deep breath, this was my moment of truth and all of a sudden my plan felt entirely absurd. “You have often told me of how you would like to help me escape,” I blurted out. “What if I could help us both escape?”

  “Escape!” she almost shouted the word at me. “Why would I want to escape? I am about to marry the king and I already have more power and influence than any woman in Coomassie.”

  I gestured at the women’s house, “If you are telling me that you are happy to spend the rest of your life behind those four walls – and we both know that your influence will wane once you are trapped there – then take me back to the prison now.” I paused as she looked across at the decorated carvings and the partially shuttered windows. “But if you want to see stone buildings the size of small mountains, travel in ships powered by steam, walk the streets of London and Paris, perhaps travel to India and explore its exotic temples or go to Canada to see ice and snow, then I can help you.” She stared at me then, her mouth half open in wonder as she started to imagine it. “You would drink cold champagne in the finest hotels, visit royal European palaces, perhaps even see people flying high above your head in hot-air balloons.”