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

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СКАЧАТЬ Rittmeister Flashman?” says he. “My privilege to welcome you to Bavaria. Starnberg, very much at your service.” And he clicked his heels, bowing. “You’ll forgive my French, but it’s better than my English.”

      “Better than my German, at any rate,” says I, taking stock of him. He was about twenty, of middle height and very slender, with a clean-cut, handsome face, brown curls, and the wisp of a moustache on his upper lip. A very cool, jaunty gentleman, clad in the tight tunic and breeches of what I took to be a hussar regiment, for he had a dolman over his shoulder and a light sabre trailing at his hip. He was sizing me up at the same time.

      “Dragoon?” says he.

      “No, hussar.”

      “English light cavalry mounts must be infernally strong, then,” says he, coolly. “Well, no matter. Forgive my professional interest. Have I interrupted your breakfast?”

      I assured him he had not.

      “Splendid. Then if you’ll oblige me by getting dressed, we’ll lose no more time. Lola can’t abide to be kept waiting.” And he lit a cheroot and began to survey the room. “Damnable places, these hotels. Couldn’t stay in one myself.”

      I pointed out that I had been kept kicking my heels in one for the past three days, and he laughed.

      “Well, girls will be girls, you know,” says he. “We can’t expect ’em to hurry for mere men, however much they expect us to jump to it. Lola’s no different from the rest—in that respect.”

      “You seem to know her very well,” says I.

      “Well enough,” says he negligently, sitting himself on the edge of a table and swinging a polished boot.

      “For a messenger, I mean,” says I, to take some of the starch out of him. But he only grinned.

      “Oh, anything to oblige a lady, you know. I fulfil other functions, when I’m so inclined.” And he regarded me with an insolent blue eye. “I don’t wish to hurry you, old fellow, but we are wasting time. Not that I mind, but she certainly will.”

      “And we mustn’t have that.”

      “No, indeed. I imagine you have some experience of the lady’s fine Latin temper. By God, I’d tame it out of her if she was mine. But she’s not, thank heaven. I don’t have to humour her tantrums.”

      “You don’t, eh?”

      “Not hers, nor anyone else’s,” says Master von Starnberg, and took a turn round the room whistling.

      Cocksure men irritate me as a rule, but it was difficult to take offence at this affable young sprig, and I had a feeling that it wouldn’t do me much good if I did, so while he lounged in my sitting-room I retired to the bed-chamber to dress. I decided to wear my Cherrypicker rig, with all the trimmings of gold-laced blue tunic and tight pants, and when I emerged Starnberg cocked an eye and whistled appreciatively.

      “Saucy regimentals,” says he. “Very pretty indeed. Lola may not mind too much having been kept waiting, after all.”

      “Tell me,” I said, “since you seem to know so much: why do you suppose she sent for me?—I’m assuming you know that she did.”

      “Oh, aye,” says he. “Well, now, knowing Lola, I suggest you look in your mirror. Doesn’t that suggest an answer?”

      “Come now,” says I, “I know Lola, too, and I flatter as easily as the next man. But she would hardly bring me all the way from England, just to …”

      “Why not?” says he. “She brought me all the way from Hungary. Shall we go?”

      He led the way down to the street, the two cuirassiers marching at our heels, and showed me into a coach that was waiting at the door. As he swung himself in beside me, with his hand on the window-frame, his sleeve was slightly pulled back, and I saw the star-shaped white scar of a bullet-wound on his wrist. It occurred to me that this von Starnberg was a tougher handful than he looked at first sight; I had noticed the genuine cavalry swing, toes pointing, as he walked, and for all his boyishness there was a compact sureness about him that would have sat on a much older man. This is one to keep an eye on, thinks I.

      Lola’s house was in the best part of Munich, by the Karolinen Platz. I say “house”, but it was in fact a little palace, designed by King Ludwig’s own architect, regardless of expense. It was the sight of it, shining new, like a little fairy-tale castle from Italy, with its uniformed sentries at the gate, its grilled windows (a precaution against hostile crowds), its magnificent gardens, and the flag fluttering from its roof, that brought it home to me just how high this woman had flown. This magnificence didn’t signify only money, but power—unlimited power. So why could she want me? She couldn’t need me. Was she indulging some whim—perhaps going to repay me for being in Ranelagh’s box the night she was hissed off the stage? She seemed to be capable of anything. In a moment, after clapping eyes on her palace, I was cursing myself for having come—fear springs eternal in the coward’s breast, especially when he has a bad conscience. After all, if she was so all-powerful, and happened to be vindictive, it might be damned unpleasant …

      “Here we are,” says Starnberg, “Aladdin’s cave.”

      It almost justified the description. There were flunkeys to hand us out, and more uniformed sentries in the hall, all steel and colour, and the splendour of the interior was enough to take your breath away. The marble floor shone like glass, costly tapestries hung on the walls, great mirrors reflected alcoves stuffed with white statuary and choice furniture, above the staircase hung a chandelier which appeared to be of solid silver, and all of it was in a state of perfection and brilliance that suggested an army of skivvies and footmen working full steam.

      “Aye, it’s a roof over her head, I suppose,” says Starnberg, as we gave our busbies to a lackey. “Ah, Lauengram, here is Rittmeister Flashman; is the Gräfin receiving?”

      Lauengram was a dapper little gentleman in court-dress, with a thin, impassive face and a bird-like eye. He greeted me in French—which I learned later was spoken a good deal out of deference to Lola’s bad German—and led us upstairs past more lackeys and sentries to an anteroom full of pictures and people. I have a soldier’s eye for such things, and I would say the loot value of that chamber would have kept a regiment for life, with a farm for the farrier-sergeant thrown in. The walls appeared to be made of striped silk, and there was enough gold on the frames to start a mint.

      The folk, too, were a prosperous-looking crew, courtly civilians and military in all the colours of the rainbow; some damned handsome women among them. They stopped their chattering as we entered, and I took advantage of my extra three inches on Starnberg to make a chest, touch my moustache, and give them all the cool look-over.

      He had barely started to introduce me to those nearest when a door at the far end of the room opened, and a little chap came out backwards, stumbling over his feet, and protesting violently.

      “It is no use, madame!” cries he, to someone in the far room. “I have not the power! The Vicar-General will not permit! Ach, no, lieber Herr Gott!” He cowered back as some piece of crockery sailed past him and shattered on the marble floor, and then Lola herself appeared in the doorway, and my heart took a bound at the sight of her.

      She was beautiful in her royal rage, just as I remembered, although now she had clothes on. And although her aim seemed as СКАЧАТЬ