Flashman's Lady

by George MacDonald Fraser

  “It’s a job for the Royal Navy,” says Balestier. “Our navy boys, too—they’ll have to track this villain, run him to earth, and—”

  “Jeesh!” cries Catchick, heaving himself up. “What are you saying? What Royal Navy? What navy boys? Where is Belcher with his squadron—two t’ousand miles away, chasing the Lanun brigands round Mindanao! Where is your one American navy boat? Do you know, Balestier? Somewhere between Japan and New Zealand—maybe! Where is Seymour’s Wanderer, or Hastings with the Harlequin—?”

  “Dido’s due from Calcutta in two or three days,” says Balestier. “Keppel knows these seas as well as anyone—”

  “And how well is that?” croaks Catchick, flapping his hands and stalking about. “Be practical! Be calm! It is terra incognita out yonder—as we all know, as everyone knows! And it is vast! If we had the whole Royal Navy, American and Dutch as well, from all the oceans of the world, they could search to the end of the century and never cover half the places where this rascal may be hiding—why, he may have gone anywhere. Don’t we know his brig can sail round the world if need be?”

  “I think not,” says Whampoa quietly. “I have reason—I fear I may have reason—to believe that he will not sail beyond our Indies.”

  “Even then—haven’t I told you that there are ten million lurking places between Cochin and Java?”

  “And ten million eyes that won’t miss a steam-brig, and will pass word to us wherever she anchors,” snaps Brooke. “See here—” and he slapped the map they had unrolled on Whampoa’s desk. “The Sulu Queen was last seen heading east, according to Bully Waterman. Very well—he won’t double back, that’s certain; Sumatra’s no use to him, anyway. And I don’t see him turning north—that’s either open sea or the Malay coast, where we’d soon have word of him. South—perhaps, but if he runs through Karamata we’ll hear of it. So I’ll stake my head he’ll stay on the course he’s taken—and that means Borneo.”

  “Oi-hoi!” cries Catchick, between derision and despair. “And is that nothing, then? Borneo—where every river is a pirate nest, where every bay is an armed camp—where even you don’t venture far, J.B., without an armed expedition at your back. And when you do, you know where you are going—not like now, when you might hunt forever!”

  “I’ll know where I’m going,” says Brooke. “And if I have to hunt forever…well, I’ll find him, sooner or later.”

  Catchick shot an uneasy glance across at me where I sat in the corner, nursing my wound, and I saw him pluck at Brooke’s sleeve and mutter something of which I caught only the words “…too late by then.” At that they fell silent, while Brooke pored over his map and Whampoa sat silent, sipping his d----d sherry. Balestier and the others talked in low voices, and Catchick slumped in a chair, hands in pockets, the picture of gloom.

  You may wonder what I was thinking while all this hot air was being expelled, and why I wasn’t taking part as a bereaved and distracted husband should—wild cries of impotent rage and grief, prayers to heaven, vows of revenge, and all the usual preliminaries to inaction. The fact was, I had troubles enough—my shoulder was giving me gyp, and having not recovered from the terror I’d faced myself that night, I didn’t have much emotion left to spare, even for Elspeth, once the first shock of the news had worn off. She was gone—kidnapped by that half-caste scum, and what feelings I had were mostly about him. The slimy, twisting, insinuating hound had planned all this, over months—it was incredible, but he must have been so infatuated with her that he was prepared to steal her, make himself an outcast and outlaw, put himself beyond the bounds of civilisation for good, just on her account. There was no sense in it—no woman’s worth that. Why, as I sat there, trying to take it in, I knew I wouldn’t have done it, not for Elspeth and a pound of tea—not for Aphrodite herself and ten thousand a year. But I’m not a rich, spoiled dago, of course. Even so, it was past belief.

  Don’t misunderstand me—I loved Elspeth, pretty well, no error; still do, if being used to having her about the place is anything to go by, and missing her if she’s too long gone. But there are limits, and I was suddenly aware of them now. On the one hand, she was a rare beauty, the finest mount I’d ever struck, and an heiress to boot, but on t’other, I hadn’t wed her willingly, we’d spent most of our married life apart, and no harm done, and I couldn’t for the life of me work up a frenzy of anxiety on her account now. After all, the worst that could happen, to her, was that this scoundrel would roger her, if he hadn’t done it already while my back was turned—well, that was nothing new to her; she’d had me, and enjoyed it, and I hadn’t been her only partner, I was certain. So being rattled stupid by Solomon would be no fate worse than death to her; if I knew the little trollop, she’d revel in it.

  Beyond that, well, if he didn’t tire of her (and considering the sacrifices he’d made to get her, he presumably intended to keep her) he’d probably look after her well enough; he wasn’t short of blunt, and could no doubt support her in luxury in some exotic corner of the world. She’d miss England, of course, but taking the long view, her prospects weren’t unendurable. It would make a change for her.

  But that was only one side of it, of course—her side, which shows, since I’ve put it first, that I ain’t so selfish after all. What did twist my innards with fury was shame and injured pride. Here was my wife—the beloved of the heroic Flashy—stolen from him by a swarthy, treacherous, lecherous, Etonian nigger, who’d be bulling her all over the shop, and what the deuce was I to do about it? He was cuckolding me, by G-d, as he might well have done twenty times already—by George, there was a fine thought—who was to say she hadn’t gone with him willingly? But no, idiot and flirt that she was, she knew better than that. Either way, though, I looked d----d ridiculous, and there wasn’t a thing to be done. Oh, there would have to be racing and chasing after her and Solomon, to no avail—in those first hours, you see, I was certain that she was gone for good: Catchick was right, we hadn’t a hope of getting her back. What then? There would still have to be months, perhaps years, of fruitless searching, for form’s sake, expensive, confounded risky, and there I’d be, at the end of it, going home, and when people asked after her, saying: “Oh, she was kidnapped, don’t you know, out East. No, never did discover what happened to her.” J---s, I’d be the laughing-stock of the country—Flashy, the man whose wife was pinched by a half-breed millionaire…“Close friend of the family, too…well, they say she was pinched, but who knows?…probably tired of old Flash, what?—felt like some Oriental mutton for a change, ha-ha.”

  I ground my teeth and cursed the day I’d ever set eyes on her, but above all, I felt such hatred of Solomon as I’ve never felt for any other human being. That he’d done this to me—there was no fate too horrible for the greasy rat, but precious little chance of inflicting it, so far as I could see at the moment. I was helpless, while that b----y wop steamed off with my wife—I could just picture him galloping away at her while she pretended maiden modesty, and the world roared with laughter at me, and in my rage and misery I must have let out a muffled yowl, for Brooke turned away from his map, strode across, dropped on one knee beside my chair, gripped my arm, and cries:

  “You poor chap! What must you be feeling! It must be unbearable—the thought of your loved one in the hands of that dastard. I can share your anguish,” he went on, “for I know how I should feel if it were my mother. We must trust in God and our own endeavours—and don’t you fret, we shall win her back.”

  He absolutely had tears in his eyes, and had to turn his head aside to hide his emotion; I heard him muttter about “a captive damosel” and “blue eyes and golden hair of hyacinthine flow” or some fustian of that sort.17 Then, having clasped my hand, he went back to his map and said that if the b----r had taken her to Borneo he’d turn the place inside out.

  “An unexplored island the size of Europe,” says Catchick mournfully. “And even then you are only guessing. If he has gone east, it may as well be to the Celebes or the Philippines.”
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br />   “He burns wood, doesn’t he?” says Brooke. “Then he’ll touch Borneo—and that’s my bailiwick. Let him show his nose there, and I’ll hear of it.”

  “But you are not in Borneo, my friend—”

  “I will be, though, within a week of Keppel’s getting here in Dido. You know her—eighteen guns, two hundred blue-jackets, and Keppel would sail her to the Pole and back on a venture like this!” He was fairly glittering with eagerness. “He and I have run more chases than you can count, Catchick. Once we get this fox’s scent, he can double and turn till he’s dizzy, but we’ll get him! Aye, he can sail to China—”

  “Needle in a haystack,” says Balestier, and Catchick and the others joined in, some supporting Brooke and others shaking their heads; while they were at it, one of Whampoa’s Chinese slipped in and whispered in his master’s ear for a full minute, and our host put down his sherry glass and opened his slit eyes a fraction wider, which for him was the equivalent of leaping to his feet and shouting “Great Scott!” Then he tapped the table, and they shut up.

  “If you will forgive my interruption,” says Whampoa, “I have information which I believe may be vital to us, and to the safety of the beautiful Mrs Flashman.” He ducked his head at me. “A little time ago I ventured the humble opinion that her abductor would not sail beyond the Indies waters; I had developed a theory, from the scant information in my possession; my agents have been testing it in the few hours that have elapsed since this deplorable crime took place. It concerned the identity of this mysterious Don Solomon Haslam, whom Singapore has known as a merchant and trader—for how long?”

  “Ten years or thereabouts,” says Catchick. “He came here as a young man, in about ’35.”

  Whampoa bowed acknowledgement. “Precisely; that accords with my own recollection. Since then, when he established a warehouse here, he has visited our port only occasionally, spending most of his time—where? No one knows. It was assumed that he was on trading ventures, or on these estates about which he talked vaguely. Then, three years ago, he returned to England, where he had been at school. He returns now, with Mr and Mrs Flashman, and Mr Morrison.”

  “Well, well,” cries Catchick. “We know all this. What of it?”

  “We know nothing of his parentage, his birth, or his early life,” says Whampoa. “We know he is fabulously rich, that he never touches strong drink, and I gather—from conversation I have had with Mr Morrison—that on his brig he commonly wore the sarong and went barefoot.” He shrugged. “These are small things; what do they indicate? That he is half-caste, we know; I suggest the evidence points to his being a Muslim, although there is no proof that he ever observes the rituals of that faith. Now then, a rich Muslim, who speaks fluent Malay—”

  “The Islands are full of ’em,” cries Brooke. “What are you driving at?”

  “—who has been known in these waters for ten years, except for the last three, when he was in England. And his name is Solomon Haslam, to which he attaches the Spanish honorific ‘Don’.”

  They were still as mice, listening. Whampoa turned his expressionless yellow face, surveying them, and tapped his glass, which the wench refilled.

  “This suggests nothing to you? Not to you, Catchick? Mr Balestier? Your majesty?” This to Brooke, who shook his head. “It did not to me, either,” Whampoa continued, “until I considered his name, and something stirred in my poor memory. Another name. Your majesty knows, I am sure, the names of the principal pirates of the Borneo coast for several years back—could you recall some of them to us now?”

  “Pirates?” cries Brooke. “You’re not suggesting—”

  “If you please,” says Whampoa.

  “Why—well then, let’s see,” Brooke frowned. “There’s Jaffir, at Fort Linga; Sharif Muller of the Skrang—nearly cornered him on the Rajang last year—then there’s Pangeran Suva, out of Brunei; Suleiman Usman of Maludu, but no one’s heard of him for long enough; Sharif Sahib of Patusan; Ranu—”

  He broke off, for Catchick Moses had let fly one of his amazing Hebrew exclamations, and was staring at Whampoa, who nodded placidly.

  “You noticed, Catchick. As I did—I ask myself why I did not notice five years ago. That name,” and he looked at Brooke, and sipped his sherry. “‘Suleiman Usman of Maludu, but no one has heard of him for long enough’,” he repeated. “I think—indeed, I know, that no one has heard of him for precisely three years. Suleiman Usman—Solomon Haslam.” He put down his sherry glass.

  For a moment there was stupefied silence, and then Balestier burst out:

  “But that can’t be! What—a coast pirate, and you suggest he set up shop here, amongst us, as a trader, and carried on business, and went a-pirating on the side? That’s not just too rich—it’s downright crazy—”

  “What better cover for piracy?” wonders Whampoa. “What better means of collecting information?”

  “But d--n it, this fellow Haslam’s a public school man!” cries Brooke. “Isn’t he?”

  “He attended Eton College,” says Whampoa gravely, “but that is not, in itself, necessarily inconsistent with a later life of crime.”

  “But consider!” cries Catchick. “If it were as you say, would any sane man adopt an alias so close to his own name? Wouldn’t he call himself Smith, or Brown, or—or anything?”

  “Not necessarily,” says Whampoa. “I do not doubt that when his parent—or whoever it was—arranged for his English education, he entered school under his true name, which might well be rendered into English as Solomon Haslam. The first name is an exact translation; the second, an English name reasonably close to Usman. And there is nothing impossible about some wealthy Borneo raja or sharif sending his child to an English school—unusual, yes, but it has certainly happened in this case. And the son, following in his father’s footsteps, has practised piracy, which we know is the profession of half the population of the Islands. At the same time, he has developed business interests in England and Singapore—which he has now decided to cut.”

  “And stolen another man’s wife, to carry her off to his pirate lair?” scoffs Balestier. “Oh, but this is beyond reason—”

  “Hardly more unreasonable than to suppose that Don Solomon Haslam, if he were not a pirate, would kidnap an English lady,” says Whampoa.

  “Oh, but you’re only guessing!” cries Catchick. “A coincidence in names—”

  “And in times. Solomon Haslam went to England three years ago—and Suleiman Usman vanished at the same time.”

  That silenced them, and then Brooke says slowly:

  “It might be true, but if it was, what difference does it make, after all—”

  “Some, I think. For if it is true you need look no farther than Borneo for the Sulu Queen’s destination. Maludu lies north, beyond the Papar river, in unexplored country. He may go there, or take cover among his allies on the Seribas river or the Batang Lupar—”

  “If he does, he’s done for!” cries Brooke excitedly. “I can bottle him there, or anywhere between Kuching and Serikei Point!”

  Whampoa sluiced down some more sherry. “It may not be so easy. Suleiman Usman was a man of power; his fort at Maludu was accounted impregnable, and he could draw at need on the great pirate fleets of the Lanun and Balagnini and Maluku of Gillalao. You have fought pirates, your majesty, I know—but hardly as many as these.”

  “I’d fight every sea-robber from Luzon to Sumatra in this quarrel,” says Brooke. “And beat ’em. And swing Suleiman Usman from the Dido’s foretop at the end of it.”

  “If he is the man you are looking for,” says Catchick. “Whampoa may be wrong.”

  “Undoubtedly, I make frequent mistakes, in my poor ignorance,” says Whampoa. “But not, I think, in this. I have further proof. No one among us, I believe, has ever seen Suleiman Usman of Maludu—or met anyone who has? No. However, my agents have been diligent tonight, and I can now supply a brief description. About thirty years old, over two yards in height, of stout build, unmarked features. Is it e
nough?”

  It was enough for one listener, at any rate. Why not—it was no more incredible than all the rest of the events of that fearful night; indeed, it seemed to confirm them, as Whampoa pointed out.

  “I would suggest also,” says he, “that we need look no further for an explanation of the attack by Black-faces on Mr Flashman,” and they all turned to stare at me. “Tell me, sir—you dined at a restaurant, before the attack? The Temple of Heaven, as I understand—”

  “By G-d!” I croaked. “It was Haslam who recommended it!”

  Whampoa shrugged. “Remove the husband, and the most ardent pursuer is disposed of. Such an assassination might be difficult to arrange, for an ordinary Singapore merchant, but to a pirate, with his connections with the criminal community, it would be simple.”

  “The cowardly swine!” cries Brooke. “Well, his ruffians were out of luck, weren’t they? The pursuer’s ready for the chase, ain’t you, Flashman? And between us we’ll make this scoundrel Usman or Haslam rue the day he dared to cast eyes on an Englishwoman. We’ll smoke him out, and his foul crew with him. Oh, let me alone for that!”

  I wasn’t thinking that far ahead, I confess, and I didn’t know James Brooke at this moment for anything but a smiling madman in a pilot-cap, with an odd taste in friends and followers. If I’d known him for what he truly was, I’d have been in an even more agitated condition when our discussion finally ended, and I was helped up Whampoa’s staircase to a magnificent bedchamber, and tucked in between silk sheets, bandaged shoulder and all, by his stewards and Dr Mackenzie. I hardly knew where I was; my mind was in a perfect spin, but when they’d left me, and I was lying staring up at the thin rays of sunlight that were breaking through the screens—for it was now full day outside—there broke at last the sudden dreadful realisation of what had happened. Elspeth was gone; she was in the clutches of a nigger pirate, who could take her beyond the maps of Europeans, to some horrible stronghold where she’d be his slave, where we could never hope to find her—my beautiful, idiot Elspeth, with her creamy skin and golden hair and imbecile smile and wonderful body, lost to me, forever.