Flashman's Lady

by George MacDonald Fraser

  “Never!” Brooke was exultant. “They won’t know it’s naked! And suppose they did—why, we’d just have to begin all over again, wouldn’t we? You talk about the odds against us on the Lupar—were they a whit better at Seribas, or Murdu? Were they any better when you and I, George, took all Sarawak with six guns and a leaky pleasure-yacht? I tell you, gentlemen, I can have this thing over and done in a fortnight! D’you doubt me? Have I ever failed, and will I fail now, when there is a poor, weak creature crying out for rescue, and I, a Briton, hear that cry? When I have the stout hearts and good keels that will do the thing, and crush this swarm of hornets, too, before they can scatter on their accursed errands? What? I tell you, all the Queen’s ships and all the Queen’s men could not bring such a chance together again,23 and I mean to take it!”

  I’d never seen it before, although I’ve seen it more times than I care to count since—one man, mad as a hatter and drunk with pride, sweeping sane heads away against their better judgement. Chinese Gordon could do it, and Yakub Beg the Kirghiz; so could J. E. B. Stuart, and that almighty maniac George Custer. They and Brooke could have formed a club. I can see him still: erect, head thrown back, eyes blazing, like the worst kind of actor mouthing the Agincourt speech to a crowd of yokels in a tent theatre in the backwoods. I don’t believe he convinced them—Stuart and Crimble, perhaps, but not Keppel and the others; certainly not Paitingi. But they couldn’t resist him, or the force that beat out of him. He was going to have his way, and they knew it. They stood silent; Keppel, I think, was embarrassed. And then Paitingi says:

  “Aye. Ye’ll want me to have charge o’ the spy-boats, I suppose?”

  That settled it, and at once Brooke quieted down, and they set to earnestly to discuss ways and means, while I sat back contemplating the horror of the whole thing, and wondering how I could weasel out of it. Plainly they were going to catastrophe, lugging me along with them, and not a thing to be done about it. I turned over a dozen schemes in my mind, from feigning insanity to running away; finally, when all but Brooke had hurried off to begin the preparations which were to take them all night and the following day, I had a feeble shot at turning him from his hare-brained purpose. Perhaps, I suggested diffidently, it might be possible to ransom Elspeth; I’d heard of such things being done among the Oriental pirates, and old Morrison was stiff with blunt which he’d be glad…

  “What?” cries Brooke, his brow darkening. “Treat with these scoundrels? Never! I should not contemplate such—ah, but I see what it is!” He came over all compassionate, and laid a hand on my arm. “You are fearful for your dear one’s safety, when battle is joined. You need have no such fear, old fellow; no harm will come to her.”

  Well, it was beyond me how he could guarantee that, but then he explained, and I give you my word that this is what he said. He sat me down in my chair and poured me a glass of arrack first.

  “It is natural enough, Flashman, that you should believe this pirate’s motives to be of the darkest kind…where your wife is concerned. Indeed, from what I have heard of her grace and charm of person, they are such as might well excite…ah, that is, they might awaken—well, unworthy passion—in an unworthy person, that is.” He floundered a bit, and took a pull at his glass, wondering how to discuss the likelihood of her being rogered without causing me undue distress. At last he burst out:

  “He won’t do it!—I mean, that is—I cannot believe she will be…ill-used, in any way, if you follow me. I am confident that she is but a pawn in a game which he has planned with Machiavellian cunning, using her as a bait to destroy me. That,” says this swollen-headed lunatic smugly, “is his true purpose, for he and his kind can know no safety while I live. His design is not principally against her, of that I am certain. For one thing, he is married already, you know. Oh, yes, I have gleaned much information in the past few days, and it’s true—five years ago he took to wife the daughter of the Sultan of Sulu, and while Muslims are not, of course, monogamous,” he went on earnestly, “there is no reason to suppose that their union was not a…a happy one.” He took a turn round the room, while I gaped, stricken speechless. “So I’m sure your dear lady is perfectly safe from any…any…anything like that. Anything…” he waved his glass, sloshing arrack broadcast “…anything awful, you know.”

  Well, that is what he said, as I hope to die. I couldn’t credit my ears. For a moment I wondered if having his love-muscle shot off had affected his brain; then I realised that, in his utterly daft way, he was simply talking all this rubbish to reassure me. Possibly he thought I was so distraught that I’d be ready to believe anything, even that a chap with one wife would never think of bulling another. Maybe he even believed it himself.

  “She will be restored to you…” he searched for a suitable word, and found one. “unblemished, you may be sure. Indeed. I am certain that her preservation must be his first concern, for he must know what a terrific retribution will follow if any harm should come to her, either in the violence of battle or…in any other way. And after all,” says he, apparently quite struck with the thought, “he may be a pirate, but he has been educated as an English gentleman. I cannot believe that he is dead to all feelings of honour. Whatever he has become—here, let me fill your glass, old chap—we must remember that there was a time when he was, well…one of us. I think you can take comfort in that thought, what?”

  [Extract from the diary of Mrs Flashman, August—, 1844]

  I am now Beyond Hope, and Utterly Desolate in my Captivity, like the Prisoner of Chillon, except that he was in a dungeon and I am in a steamship, which I am sure is a thousand times worse, for at least in a dungeon one stays still, and is not conscious of being carried away far beyond the reach of Loving Friends! A week have I been in durance—nay, it seems like a Year!! I can only pine my lost love, and await in Terror whatever Fate is in store for me at the hands of my heartless abductor. My knees tremble at the thought and my heart fails me—how enviable does the lot of the Prisoner of Chillon seem (see Above), for no such Dread hung over his captivity, and at least he had mice to play with, laying their wrinkly wee noses in his hand in sympathy. Although to be sure I don’t like mice, but no more than I don’t like the Odious Native who brings my food, which I cannot endure to eat anyway, although there have been some Pleasant Fruits added to my diet the last day or two, when we came in sight of land as I saw from my porthole. Is this strange and hostile tropic shore to be the Scene of my Captivity? Shall I be sold on Indian Soil? Oh, dear Father—and kind, noble, generous H., thou art lost to me forever !!

  Yet even such loss is no worse than the Suspense which wracks my brain. Since the first dreadful day of my abduction I have not seen Don S., which at first I supposed was because he was so a prey to Shame and Remorse, that he could not look me in the eye. I pictured him, Restless on his Prow, torn by pangs of conscience, gnawing at his nails and Oblivious of his sailors’ requests for directions, as the vessel plow’ed on heedless over the waves. Oh, how well deserved his Torment!—and yet it is extremely strange, after his Passionate Protestations, that he should Restrain himself for seven whole days from seeing me, the Object of his Madness. I don’t understand it, for I don’t believe he feels Remorse at all, and the affairs of his boat cannot take all his time, surely! Why, then, does the Cruel Wretch not come to gloat over his Helpless Prey, and Jeer at her sorry condition, for my white taffeta is now quite soiled, and so oppressively hot in the confines of my cabin, that I have perforce discarded it in favour of some of the native dresses called sarongas, which have been provided by the creeping little Chinese woman who waits upon me, a sallow creature, and not a word of English, tho’ not as handless as some I’ve known. I have a saronga of red silk which is, I think, the most becoming, and another in blue and gold embroidery, quite pretty, but of course they are very simple and slight, and would not be the thing at all for European Wear, except in déshabillé. But to these am I reduced, and the left heel of my shoe broken, so I must put them both off, and no proper articles
for toilette, and my hair a positive fright. Don. S. is a Brute and Beast, first to wrench me away, and then so heartlessly to neglect me in this sorry condition!

  Post-merid P.M.

  He came at last, and I am distraught! While I was repairing as best I might the ravages slight disorders in my appearance which my cruel confinement has wrought, and trying bow my saronga (the red one) might fold most elegantly—for it is an excellent rule that in all Circumstances a Gentlewoman should make the best of things, and strive to present a collected appearance—I was of a sudden Aware of his Presence. To my Startled Protest, he replied with an insinuating compliment on how well my saronga became me, and such a Look of ardent yearning that I at once regretted my poor discarded taffeta, fearing the base ardour that the sight of me in Native Garb might kindle in him. To my instant and repeated demands that I be taken Home at once, and my Upbraidings for his scandalous usage and neglect of me, he replied with the utmost composure and odiously solicitous inquiries for my Comfort! I replied with icy disdain. “Restore me instantly to my family, and keep your tiresome comforts!” He received this rebuff quite unabashed, and said I must put such hopes from my mind forever.

  “What!” I cried, “you will deny me even some suitable clothing, and proper toilet articles, and a change of bed linen every day, and a proper variety in diet, instead of roast pork, of which I am utterly tired, and a thorough airing and cleaning of my accommodation?” “No, no,” he protested, “these things you shall have, and whatever else your heart desires, but as for returning to your family, it is out of the question, for the die is cast!” “We shall see about that, my lad!” I cried, masking the Terror which his Grim and Unrelenting manner inspired in my Quaking Bosom, and presenting a Bold Front, at which to my astonishment he dropped to his knees, and taking my hand—but with every sign of respect—he spoke in so moving and pleading a manner, protesting his worship, and vowing that when I returned his Love, he would make me a Queen Indeed, and my lightest whim instantly obeyed, that I could not but be touched. Seeing me weaken, he spoke earnestly of the Kindness and Companionship which we had shared, at which, despising my own Frailty, I was moved to tears.

  “Why, oh, why, Don S., did you have to spoil it all by this thoughtless and ungenteel behaviour, and after such a jolly cruise?” I cried. “It is most disobliging of you!” “I could not bear the torture of seeing you possessed by another!” cried he. I asked, “Why, whom who do you mean, Don S.?” “Your husband!” cries he, “but, by h—n, he shall be your husband no longer!” and springing up, he cried that my Spirit was as matchless as my Beauty, which he praised in terms that I cannot bring myself to repeat, although I dare say the compliment was kindly intended, and adding fiercely that he should win me, at whatever cost. Despite my struggles and reproaches, and feeble cries for an Aid which I knew could not be forthcoming, he repeatedly subjected me to the assault of his salutes upon my lips, so fervently that I fainted into a Merciful Oblivion for between five and ten minutes, after which, by the Intervention of Heaven, he was called on deck by one of his sailors, leaving me, with repeated oaths of his Fidelity, in a state of perturbed delicacy.

  There is still no sign of pursuit by H., which I had so wildly hoped for. Am I, then, forgotten by those dearest to me, and is there no hope indeed? Am I doomed to be carried off forever, or will Don S. yet repent the intemperate regard for me—nay, for my mere Outward Show—which drove him to this inconsiderate folly? I pray it may be so, and hourly I lament—nay, I curse—that Fairness of Form and Feature of which I was once so vain. Ah, why could I not have been born safe and plain like my dearest sister Agnes, or our Mary, who is even less favoured, altho’ to be sure her complection is none too bad, or…………* Oh, sweet sisters three, gone beyond hope of recall! Could you but know, and pity me in my affliction! Where is H.? Don S. has sent down a great posy of flowers to my cabin, jungle blossoms, pretty but quite gaudy.

  [End of extract, which passes belief for shamelessness, hypocrisy, and unwarranted conceit !—G. de R.]

  *At this point a heavy deletion of two lines occurs in the manuscript, doubtless to excise some unflattering reference to Lady Flashman’s third sister, Grizel de Rothschild, who edited the journal.

  *Great lord.

  *Blowpipe.

  *“Wood devils”, i.e. users of the sumpitan.

  We dropped down Kuching river on the evening tide of the day following, a great convoy of ill-assorted boats gliding silently through the opened booms, and down between banks dark and feathery in the dusk to the open sea. How Brooke had done it I don’t know—I dare say you can read in his journal, and Keppel’s, how they armed and victualled and assembled their ramshackle war fleet of close on eighty vessels, loaded with the most unlikely crew of pirates, savages, and lunatics, and launched them on to the China Sea like a d----d regatta; I don’t remember it too clearly myself, for all through a night and a day it had been bedlam along the Kuching wharves, in which, being new to the business, I’d borne no very useful part.

  I have my usual disjointed memories of it, though. I remember the long war-praus with their steep sheers and forests of oars, being warped one after another into the jetty by sweating, squealing Malay steersmen, and the Raja’s native allies pouring aboard—a chattering, half-naked horde of Dyaks, some in kilts and sarongs, others in loin-cloths and leggings, some in turbans, some with feathers in their hair, but all grinning and ugly as sin, loaded with their vile sumpitan-pipes and arrows, their kreeses and spears, all fit to frighten the French.

  Then there were the Malay swordsmen who filled the sampans—big, flat-faced villains with muskets and the terrible, straight-bladed kampilan cleavers in their belts; the British tars in their canvas smocks and trousers and straw hats, their red faces grinning and sweating while they loaded Dido’s pinnace, singing “Whisky, Johnny” as they stamped and hauled; the silent Chinese cannoneers whose task it was to lash down the small guns in the bows of the sampans and long-boats, and stow the powder kegs and matches; the slim, olive-skinned Linga pirates who manned Paitingi’s spy-boats—astonishing craft these, for all the world like Varsity racing-shells, slim frail needles with thirty paddles that could skim across the water as fast as a man can run. They darted among the other vessels—the long, stately praus, the Dido’s pinnace, the cutters and launches and canoes, the long sloop Jolly Bachelor, which was Brooke’s own flagship; and the flower of our fleet, the East India paddle-steamer Phlegethon, with her massive wheel and platform, and her funnel belching smoke. They all packed the river, in a great tangle of oars and cordage and rubbish, and over it rang the constant chorus of curses and commands in half a dozen languages; it looked like a waterman’s picnic gone mad.

  The variety of weapons was an armourer’s nightmare; aside from those I’ve mentioned there were bows and arrows, every conceivable kind of sword, axe, and spear, modern rifled muskets, pepper-pot revolvers, horse-pistols, needle-guns, fantastically-carved Chinese flintlocks, six-pounder naval guns, and stands of Congreve rockets with their firing-frames mounted on the forecastles of three of the praus. God help whoever gets in the way of this collection, thinks I—noting especially a fine comparison on the shore: a British naval officer in tail-coat and waterproof hat testing the hair-triggers of a pair of Mantons, his blue-jackets sharpening their brass-hilted cutlasses on a grindstone, and within a yard of them a jabbering band of Dyaks dipping their langa darts in a bubbling cauldron of the beastly white radjun poison.

  “Let’s see you puff your pop-gun, Johnny,” cries one of the tars, and they swung a champagne cork on a string as a target, twenty yards off; one of the grinning little brutes slipped a dart into his sumpitan, clapped it to his mouth—and in a twinkling there was the cork, jerking on its string, transfixed by the foot-long needle. “Ch---t!” says the blue-jacket reverently, “don’t point that b----y thing at my backside, will you?” and the others cheered the Dyak, and offered to swap their gunner for him.

  So you can see the kind of army that James Br
ooke took to sea from Kuching on the morning of August 5, 1844, and if, like me, you had shaken your head in despair at the motley, rag-bag confusion of it as it assembled by the wharves, you would have held your breath in disbelief as you watched it sweeping in silent, disciplined order out on to the China Sea in the breaking dawn. I’ll never forget it: the dark purple water, ruffled by the morning wind; the tangled green mangrove shore a cable’s length to our right; the first blinding rays of silver turning the sea into a molten lake ahead of our bows as the fleet ploughed east.

  First went the spy-boats, ten of them in line abreast a mile long, seeming to fly just above the surface of the sea, driven by the thin antennae of their oars; then the praus, in double column, their sails spread and the great sweeps thrashing the water, with the smaller sampans and canoes in tow; the Dido’s pinnace and the Jolly Bachelor under sail, and last, shepherding the flock, the steamer Phlegethon, her big wheel thumping up the spray, with Brooke strutting under her awning, monarch of all he surveyed, discoursing to the admiring Flashy. (It wasn’t that I sought his company, but since I had to go along, I’d figured it would be safest to stick close by him, on the biggest boat available; something told me that whoever came home feet first, it wasn’t going to be him, and the rations would probably be better. So I toadied him in my best style, and he bored me breathless in return.)

  “There’s something better than inspecting stirrup straps on Horse Guards!” cries he gaily, flourishing a hand at our fleet driving over the sunlit sea. “What more could a man ask, eh?—a solid deck beneath, the old flag above, stout fellows alongside, and a bitter foe ahead. That’s the life, my boy!” It seemed to me it was more likely to be the death, but of course I just grinned and agreed that it was capital. “And a good cause to fight in,” he went on. “Wrongs to punish, Sarawak to defend—and your lady to rescue, of course. Aye, it’ll be a sweeter, cleaner coast by the time we’ve done with it.”