The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ but I wasn’t fooled. Kindness might be one of his motives, but there were others, too, that he wasn’t telling about, or I was much mistaken. However, that could wait.

      “What’ll they do with me?” I asked, and he looked me up and down, and then glanced away, uneasily.

      “If the Queen is pleased with you, she may give you a favoured position – as she did with me.” He hesitated. “It is for this reason I help you to make yourself presentable – you are very large and … personable. Since you are a soldier, and the army is her great passion, it is possible that you will be employed in its instruction – drilling, manoeuvring, that kind of thing. You have seen her soldiers, so you are aware that they have been trained by European methods – there was a British bandmaster here, many years ago, under the old treaty, but nowadays such windfalls are rare. Yes …” he gave me that odd, wary glance again, “your future could be assured – but I beg of you, as you value your life, be careful. She is mad, you see – if you give the least offence, in any way, or if she suspects you – even the fact that I, a fellow-foreigner, have spoken to you, could be sufficient, which is why I struck you publicly today …”

      He was looking thoroughly scared, although I felt instinctively he wasn’t a man who scared easy. “If you displease her – then it will be the perpetual corvée – the forced labour. Perhaps even the pits, which you saw yesterday.” He shook his head. “Oh, my friend, you do not even begin to understand. That happens daily here. Rome under Nero – it was nothing!”

      “But in G-d’s name! Can nothing be done? Why don’t they … make away with her? Haven’t you tried to escape, even?”

      “You will see,” says he. “And please, do not ask such questions – do not even think them. Not yet.” He seemed to be on the point of saying more, but decided not to. “I will speak of you to Prince Rakota – he is her son, and as great an angel as his mother is a devil. He will help you if he can – he is young, but he is kind. If only he … but there! Now, what can I tell you? The Queen speaks a little French, a few of her courtiers and advisers also, so when you encounter me hereafter, as you will, remember that. If you have anything secret to say, speak English, but not too much, or they will suspect you. What else? When you approach the Queen, advance and retire right foot first; address her in French as ‘God’ – ‘ma Dieu’, you understand? Or as ‘great glory’, or ‘great lake supplying all water”. You must give her a gift, or rather, two gifts – they must always be presented in pairs. See, I have brought you these.” And he handed me two silver coins – Mexican dollars, of all things. “If, in her presence, you happen to notice a carved boar’s tusk, with a piece of red ribbon attached to it – it may be on a table, or somewhere – fall down prostrate before it.”

      I was gaping at him, and he stamped, Frog-like, with impatience. “You must do these things – they will please her! That tusk is Rafantanka, her personal fetish, as holy as she is herself. But above all-whatever she commands, do it at once, without an instant’s hesitation. Betray no surprise at anything. Do not mention the numbers six or eight, or you are finished. Never, on your life, say of a thing that it is ‘as big as the palace’. What else?” He struck his forehead. “Oh, so many things! But believe me, in this lunatic asylum, they matter! They may mean the difference between life and – horrible death.”

      “My G-d!” says I, sitting down weakly, and he patted me on the shoulder.

“There, my friend. I tell you these things to prepare you, so that you may have a better chance to … to survive. Now I must go. Try to remember what I’ve said. Meanwhile, I shall find out what I can about your wife – but for G-d’s sake, do not mention her existence to another living soul! That would be fatal to you both. And … do not give up hope.” He looked at me, and for a second the apprehension had died out of his face; he was a tough, steady-looking lad when he wanted to be.³⁶ “If I have frightened you – well, it is because there is much to fear, and I would have you on guard so far as may be.” He slapped my arm. “Bien. Dieu vous garde.”

      Then he was at the door, calling softly for the guard, but even as it opened he was back again, cat-footed, whispering.

      “One other thing – when you approach the Queen, remember to lick her feet, as a slave should. It will tell in your favour. But not if they are dusted with pink powder. That is poison.” He paused. “On second thoughts, if they are so dusted, lick them thoroughly. It will certainly be the quickest way to die. A bientôt!”

      If I had my head in my hands, do you wonder? It couldn’t be true – where I was, what I’d heard, what lay ahead. But it was, and I knew it, which was why I plumped down on my knees, blubbering, and prayed like a drunk Methodist, just on the offchance that there is a God after all, for if He couldn’t help me, no one else could. I felt much worse for it; probably Arnold was right, and insincere prayers are just so much blasphemy. So I had a good curse instead, but that didn’t serve, either. Whichever way I tried to ease my mind, I still wasn’t looking forward to meeting royalty.

      At least they didn’t keep me in suspense. At the crack of dawn they had me out, a file of soldiers under an officer to whom I tried to suggest that if I was going to be presented, so to speak, I’d be the better for a change of clothes. My shirt was reduced to a wisp, and my trousers no better than a ragged loin-cloth with one leg. But he just sneered at my sign-language, slashed me painfully with his cane, and marched me off up-hill through the streets to the great palace of Antan’, which I now saw properly for the first time.

      I wouldn’t have thought anything could have distracted my attention at such a time, but that palace did. How can I describe the effect of it, except by saying that it’s the biggest wooden building in the world? From its towering steepled roof to the ground is a hundred and twenty feet, and in between is a vast spread of arches and balconies and galleries – for all the world like a Venetian palazzo made of the most intricately-carved and coloured wood, its massive pillars consisting of single trunks more than one hundred feet long. The largest of them, I’m told, took five thousand men to lift, and they brought it from fifty miles away; all told, fifteen thousand died in building the place – but I guess that’s small beer to a Malagassy contractor working for royalty.

      Even more amazing though, is the smaller palace beside it. It is covered entirely in tiny silver bells, so that when the sun is on it, you can’t even look, for the blinding glare. As the breeze changes, so does the volume of that perpetual tingling of a million silver tongues; it’s indescribably beautiful to see and hear, like something in a fairy-tale – and yet it housed the cruellest Gorgon on earth, for that’s where Ranavalona had her private apartments.

      I’d little time to marvel, though, before we were inside the great hall of the main palace itself, with its soaring arched roof like a cathedral nave. It was thronged with courtiers bedecked in such a fantastic variety of clothing that it looked like a fancy-dress ball, with nothing but black guests. There were crinolines and saris, sarongs and state gowns, muslins and taffetas of every period and colour – I recall one spindly female in white silk with a powdered wig on her head à la Marie Antoinette, talking to another who seemed to be entirely hung in coloured glass beads. The contrast and confusion was bewildering: mantillas and loin-cloths, bare feet and high-heeled shoes, long gloves and barbaric feather headdresses – it would have been exotic but for the unfortunate fact that Malagassy women are d----d ugly, for the most part, tending to be squat and squashed, like black Russian peasants, if you can imagine. Mind you, I saw a lissom backside in a sari here and there, and a few pairs of plumptious bouncers hanging out of low corsages, and thought to myself, there’s a few here who’d repay care and attention – and they’d probably be glad of it, too, for a more sawn-off and runty collection than their menfolk I never did see. It’s curious that the male nobility are far poorer specimens than the common men; Dago blood somewhere, I suspect. They were got up as fantastically as the women, though, in the usual hotch-potch СКАЧАТЬ