Flashman on the March fp-12

by George MacDonald Fraser

  There’s no doubt about it, I’m good at dealing with barmy savages. They scare the bile out of me, and perhaps terror lends wings to my wits, for when I think of the monsters I’ve conversed with and come away with a whole skin, more or less… Mangas Colorado, Ranavalona, General Sang-kol-in-sen, Crazy Horse, Dr Arnold, God knows who else… well, it took more than luck, I can tell you. You must know when to grovel and scream for mercy, but also when to take ’em aback with impudence or argument or pure bamboozle. To find myself in the presence of Mad King Theodore was enough to turn my bowels to buttermilk, but having seen him quiet and crazy in quick time, and realised that he was intelligent well above par, like many madmen, I knew that straight talk and a firm front to cover my quaking guts were my best bet… oh God, I hoped so, and tried not to quiver as I waited, watching him.

  You never can tell what they’ll do when you answer ’em cool and apparently steady: some laugh, some ponder, some snarl, some set about you (I’m thinking of Arnold), and some, like Theodore, study you in disquieting silence. Then:

  “You were quite wrong, you see, Miriam. He is no fool.”

  “Your majesty was wrong also,” says she pertly. “He knew you.”

  “Not until I had studied him, and seen what manner of man he was. Damash served his turn.” To me he said: “What success had you with Queen Masteeat? Oh, we can be plain now: I have known for weeks that a British envoy was on his way to seek her help, and since you reached her yesterday we have been watching… fortunately for you.” He gestured towards the Galla dead. “Did you not prosper with her?”

  If I said no, I hadn’t prospered, and he had a spy at her court to tell him otherwise, or had intercepted my message to Napier, I was done for. If I told him the truth, that the Gallas were taking the field to cut him off, God knew what he would do. I’d seen already how swiftly his mood could change; I daren’t risk it. I said there’d been no time even to broach Napier’s request, and was subjected to another silent stare.

  “No time for talk?” says he. “But time for these—” he gestured again “—to bring you out for death? No, that is not Queen Masteeat’s way.”

  “Not with a fine tall soldier,” sniggers Miriam, who seemed to go in no awe of him at all. He paid her no heed.

  “So who condemned you? And why?”

  I told him the truth of it, since it could do no harm, and he pre sumably knew that Uliba-Wark had guided me south. “We were separated by your riders at the Silver Smoke; she chose to think I had abandoned her, and these dead men were her hirelings to murder me.” I nodded at the clearing. “And there she lies.”

  “Uliba-Wark? Dead?” Theodore stared, and wheeled abruptly, striding to the group about Uliba’s body; they scattered like birds. Miriam followed him in some alarm. “I saw it was a woman, but I did not know her, negus, truly…”

  “It is no matter,” says Theodore. He looked down at what remained of Uliba, and shrugged without disgust. “She was a stinging gadfly, a sower of discord, a trouble in the eyes of God and man. She coveted her sister’s throne, they say. Behold her now.”

  “She coveted men, by all accounts,” says Miriam, and gave me her jeering grin. “Were you her lover, ras of the British?”

  I was not about to mention a lady’s name, but her question seemed to catch Theodore on the raw somehow, for he stared hard at her, head back, and then at me, and then at her again, and smiled at last, crooking a finger.

  “Hither, wanton,” says he, and she came to his side. He put an arm about her waist and fondled her chin, and she purred like a kitten and nuzzled him. “Speak not of love to fine tall soldiers,” says he. So that explained the licence she enjoyed; one of his concubines, obviously, as well as commanding his killing women. Versatile female. And Theodore of Abyssinia was as jealous as the next man.

  And now Damash came rolling back, followed by a groom leading two horses. Behind him the women had finished their revolting chore, and were assembling more or less in ranks, except for Gorilla Jane who was dragging along one of the Galla corpses. Then I saw that it wasn’t a corpse, but a living being, bleeding from a dozen wounds. Theodore, still with his arm about Miriam, addressed me.

  "Ras Flashman, though you come with the power of the English Queen to destroy me, who have wished for nothing but peace between her throne and mine, and laboured by the power of God to that end against the wickedness of evil men, yet I hold no malice in my heart towards you, or your Dedjaz Napier, who writes cordially to me and I to him. I take you to be my guest in Magdala, where we shall look into each other’s hearts, in love and friend ship.”

  He seemed to expect an answer, so I said, “Much obliged… ah, negus.” He kissed Miriam and toyed with her hand a moment.

  “Bring the ras to Islamgee,” says he, and mounted. Damash was budged into the saddle by the groom, but as they prepared to ride off Gorilla Jane cried that here was the Galla chief still alive, though incomplete, and what should be done with him. At her feet, with her companions crouched over it like vultures, was that dreadful thing, stirring feebly, and I saw it was Goram.

  Miriam brightened. “We should question him, negus.”

  “A Galla warrior will tell you nothing,” says Theodore. He stood in his stirrups, a hand raised. “The blessing of God upon you brave women. And the blessing also on you, Ras Flashman, and His mercy and peace.” He wheeled his horse, and as he passed Gorilla Jane and the shattered wreck of Goram, he added: “Throw him on the fire.” So they did.

  I spent a week as “guest” of the Emperor Theodore, and it was one of the longest of my life. How our pris oners, Cameron and Co., endured it for two solid years is beyond me. There may be nothing worse than being in the hands of a deadly enemy, but finding yourself at the mercy of a lunatic runs it close, for there’s no telling what he’ll do—load you with chains or send you presents, threaten you with flogging or swear eternal friendship over a glass of tej, discuss the causes of the American Civil War or invite you to kill him ’cos life has become a burden—that was Theodore, the maniac who held our lives in his hands, tor turing our gracious Queen’s consul half to death, and firing twenty-one-gun salutes to celebrate her birthday. Not the worst host I’ve ever been billeted on, perhaps, but quite the most unpredictable.

  There was no way of foreseeing, as they brought me away from that place of slaughter where the Gallas died, that those seven days of horror and hope, of living on the razor’s edge, were to see the final act of the astonishing melodrama, part-tragedy, part-farce, known as the Abyssinian War. For me, it was the last mile of that wild journey that had begun a few short months ago in Trieste. I tell you it as it was; it’s all true.

  It was still pitch dark and drizzling gently when we set out, Miriam and I and a few others mounted, with the rest of those female crocodiles trotting behind. I didn’t reckon we’d gone far by sunrise, five miles perhaps, and then we were in a stony desolation of tall cliffs and deep ravines, rounding a mighty eminence of rock on our right hand and following a saddle that connected it to another towering flat-topped height a mile or so ahead, which came into full view as the dawn mist lifted and the sunlight struck it and turned it for a moment into a mountain of gold. I asked where we were.

  “Selassie,” says Miriam, pointing ahead and then jerking a thumb at the cliff to our right. “Fala.”

  These were the names I’d heard only yesterday, in Fasil’s room at Masteeat’s camp… yesterday, dear God, it seemed an eternity ago! I pictured that sand-table model and tried to match it to what I was seeing… yes, there below us was the road that Theodore had made for his artillery, winding between Fala and Selassie, with folk and carts moving along it, and gangs of what looked like men in chains. As near as I could judge we were coming from the southwest, and if you look at my map you’ll see what was about to come into my view as we rounded Fala.

  Beyond the saddle, at the foot of Selassie, was a group of tents—or pavilions, rather, for they were larger and set apart from the camp of little bivouacs
at the northern end of the long plain that I knew must be Islamgee. And at the far southern end of that plain, less than two miles from where I sat transfixed, was a great tower ing cylinder of black rock sprouting out of the plain like a column fashioned by some giant sculptor—and the reason I sat transfixed was that I knew what it was before Miriam said the word: “Magdala".

  So there it was, the eagle’s nest, the stronghold where Mad King Theodore had held a handful of British and German cap tives for four years, his last outpost where he would be trapped with nowhere to run, for I didn’t doubt that Masteeat’s regiments would even now be marching to cut him off from that wilderness of peaks in the hazy southern distance. And there, below me on Islamgee, was his army—how many strong? Seven thousand, ten? Was he waiting there to meet Napier in the open, or would he retire into Magdala, pulling up the metaphorical drawbridge—gad, if he did, that rock would be a bastard to take by storm! Or might he even march to meet Napier, who must be close by now, surely… And on the thought I turned to gaze north-westwards, straining my eyes across that rock-strewn plain that stretched away across the Arogee plateau directly below us, five miles and more to a distant dark line running across our front, which I knew must be the chasm of the Bechelo. From it the King’s Road wound across the undulating land to Arogee and between Fala and Selassie to the very foot of Magdala.

  Surveying that broken ground, bordered by hills and gullies, it struck me that Theodore could do a sight worse than choose the third course—advance beyond Arogee to lay ambushes in the rough country bordering his road; better that than being besieged in Magdala or meeting our people on the flat plain of Islamgee where they’d make mincemeat of him in open battle…

  Miriam gave a cry of excitement and stood in her stirrups, shading her eyes and pointing—and as I followed her finger I felt that same wild thrill of disbelief giving way to joy that I’d felt in the garden of Lucknow when we’d heard, ever so faint on the morning air, the far whisper of the pipes that told us Campbell was coming. For it was there, through that shimmering heat haze and the last wisps of mist, on the lip of the plateau beyond the Bechelo… as though to a cue, the last actor was coming on to the stage, with no sound of pipes or rumble of gunfire, heralded only by tiny shining pinpricks of light barely visible in the dusty distance, and I’d ha’ given a thousand for a glass just then, for I’d seen ’em too often to be mistaken—lance-points catching the morning sun… But whose? Bengali Native Cavalry? Scindees? For instinct told me they must be ours, and now it was confirmed by eyes that were younger and sharper than mine.

  "Farangil” cries Miriam, with an added oath. “On Dalanta! The Negus was right—those vermin of Dawunt and Dalanta should have been destroyed! They have lain down before your people! Aiee, they come! See there, they come!”

  “How d’ye know they’re my people?”

  I didn’t know, then, that Theodore had fallen out with the tribes on the Dalanta plateau, which lies north of the Bechelo river, slap across Napier’s line of march, and that the obliging niggers had cleared the way for us. [42] But I could read the consternation on Miriam’s pretty face.

  “They can be no one else! We had word when they crossed the Jedda three days ago; now they are on the lip of the Bechelo, and once across the ravine…” She gave a disgusted shrug and spat, and I gazed towards salvation and concluded reluctantly that I daren’t try a run for it, not on a miserable Ab screw that was bound to founder within a mile. Besides, all I had to do was wait; Napier was far closer than I’d dared to hope, and even with the Bechelo chasm to cross, which I knew from Fasil’s model was three-quarters of a mile deep, he couldn’t be more than two days’ march away. I absolutely smacked my palm in delight, and Miriam cried out scorn fully:

  “Ha! You rejoice at their coming? But what of their going, when the Amhara drive them like sheep back to Egypt?”

  I knew she didn’t believe it, just from her sullen scowl. “If the Amhara are mad enough to try, they’ll find those sheep are wolves,” I told her. “They’ll eat your army of peasants at a bite… no, they’ll not need to, for their guns will blow your rabble to bits, and the elephants will trample the dead.” Unless Theodore has the sense to go to ground on that bloody rock, I might have added, but didn’t.

  “Elephants!” She shuddered; they’re mortal scared of jumbo, you see, being convinced he can’t be tamed. She looked thoughtful, and as we rode on I guessed she was wondering how she’d fare in person if Theodore took a hiding. Sure enough, after a moment:

  “Suppose your people triumphed… what would they do to Habesh?”

  “To a pretty lass like you, you mean? I know what I’d do.”

  “No!” cries she fiercely. “You would protect me!”

  “Would I now? In gratitude for wanting me fed into the fire?”

  “You were a prisoner then!” She rode closer, and said in a low tone, “Now, if your people triumphed, you could do me good… and I would be grateful.” Softly, with her knee against mine, if you please.

  “My dear, you’re a girl after my own heart,” says I. “But what if your side won, eh? They won’t… but just suppose…”

  “Then I would protect you from the wrath of Theodore! As I shall, even now.”

  “I doubt if he’ll be wrathful with me just now,” says I. “Not with the British Army on his doorstep.”

  She stared at me. “You do not know him! Oh, believe me, ras of the British, you know him not at all!”

  In fact, she was wrong; I did know him, all too well—but I’d forgotten, you see. I thought of him as the well-spoken soldier I’d mistaken for a bodyguard—given to sudden bursts of temper over trifles, if you like, and didn’t care two straws about roasting an enemy, but that’s African war for you. But I’d not associated that man, who’d seemed to be sane enough, and a reasoning being, with the ghastly tales I’d heard of atrocities, of women and children massacred, of frightful tortures practised on countless victims… I’d forgotten Gondar, and that dreadful garden of the crucified. Yet that horror had been the work of the intelligent, earnest man who’d cross-examined me so briskly, and smiled and joked and dallied with the bonny bint riding beside me. It didn’t seem possible… until we rode down from the Fala saddle to the camp below Selassie. Then it became all too horribly plain.

  The first intimation came when we had to halt at the King’s Road while a procession of Ab prisoners shuffled by. There were hundreds of them, in the most appalling condition, starved skeletons virtually naked, many of them covered in loathsome sores. Every one of them was chained, some in fetters so heavy they could barely drag them along, others manacled wrist to ankle with chains so short they couldn’t stand upright, but must totter along bent double. The stench was fit to choke you, and to complete their misery they were driven along by burly guards wielding girafs, the hippo-hide whips which are the Ab equivalent of the Russian knout.

  “Who in God’s name are they?” I asked Miriam. “Rebels?”

  “Huh, you’ll find no living rebels here!” says she. “They die where they’re taken.”

  “So these are criminals? What the hell have they done?”

  Her answer defied belief, but it’s what she said, with a shrug, and I was to learn that it was gospel true.

  “What have they done? Smiled when the King was in ill humour—or scowled when he was merry. Served him a dish that was not to his taste, or mentioned tape-worm medicine, or spoken well of someone he dislikes, or came in his way when he was drunk.” She laughed at my incredulity. “You don’t believe me? Indeed, you do not know him!”

  “By God, I don’t believe you!”

  “You will.” She surveyed the last of that pitiful coffle as it stag gered past. “True, not all have committed those offences; some merely had the misfortune to be related to the offenders. Oh, yes, that is enough, truly.”

  “But… for smiling? Tape-worm medicine? And he takes it out on whole families? How long have they been chained, for God’s sake?”

  “
Some, for years. Why he brings them down now from their prison on Magdala, who knows? Perhaps to preach to them. Perhaps to kill them before your army arrives. Perhaps to free them. We shall see.”

  “He must be bloody mad!” cries I. Well, I’d heard it said often enough, but you don’t think what it means until you see the truth of it at point-blank. And here was this lovely lass, riding at ease in the warm sunlight, tits at the high port and talking cool as you please of a monster to rival Caligula. She must have read the stricken question in my eye, for she nodded.

  “Yes, he is a dangerous master, as his ministers and generals will tell you.” She smiled, chin up. “But those who know him, and his moods, and how to please him, find in him a devout and kind and loving friend. But even they must learn to turn his anger, for it is terrible, and when the fit is on him he is no better than a beast. Is that mad, Ras Flashman of the British? Come!”

  She led the way across the road to the nearest pavilions, the first of which was the great red royal marquee with carpets spread on the ground about it, guards on the fly, and servants everywhere. Groups of men in red-fringed shamas were gathered before the other large pavilions, evidently waiting, and the plain beyond was covered almost to Magdala by a forest of bivouacs and shelters. The army of Abyssinia was at rest, thousands of men loafing and talking and brewing their billies like any other soldiers, save that these were black, and instead of shirt-sleeves and dangling gal luses there were white shamas and tight leggings, and as well as the piled firearms there were stands of spears and racks of sickle-bladed swords. They looked well, as the Gallas had done, and perhaps as soon as tomorrow they would go out to face the finest army in the world under one of the great captains. And how many of them would come well to bed-time? How many Scindees and King’s Own and Dukes and Baluch, for that matter? Fall out, Flashy, thinks I, this ain’t your party; lie low, keep quiet, and above all, stay alive.