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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ with contempt, “that if the king’s best friend desires a private chapel and confessor, she shall have one, and he shall provide it if he values his office. Does he think he can defy me?”

      “Oh, madame, please,” cries the little chap. “Only be reasonable! There is not a priest in Germany could accept such a confession. After all, your highness is a Lutheran, and—”

      “Lutheran, fiddlesticks! I’m a royal favourite, you mean! That’s why your master has the impertinence to flout me. Let him be careful, and you, too, little man. Lutheran or not, favourite or not, if I choose to have a chapel of my own I shall have it. Do you hear? And the Vicar-General himself shall hear my confession, if I think fit.”

      “Please, madame, oh, please!” The little fellow was on the verge of tears. “Why do you abuse me so? It is not my fault. Dr Windischmann objects only to the suggestion of a private chapel and confessor. He says …”

      “Well, what does he say?”

      The little man hesitated. “He says,” he gulped, “he says that there is a public confessional at Notre-Dame, and you can always go there when you want to accuse yourself of any of the innumerable sins you have committed.” His voice went up to a squeal. “His words, madame! Not mine! Oh, God have mercy!”

      As she took one furious step forward he turned and ran for his life past us, his hands over his ears, and we heard his feet clatter on the stairs. Lola stamped her foot, and shouted after him, “Damned papist hypocrite!”, and at this the sycophantic crowd in the ante-chamber broke out in a chorus of sympathy and reproach.

      “Jesuit impertinence!”

      “Intolerable affront!”

      “Scandalous insolence!”

      “Silly old bastard.” (This was Starnberg’s contribution.)

      “Impossible arrogance of these prelates,” says a stout, florid man near me.

      “I’m Church of England myself,” says I.

      This had the effect of turning attention on me. Lola saw me for the first time, and the anger died out of her eyes. She surveyed me a moment, and then slowly she smiled.

      “Harry Flashman,” says she, and held out a hand towards me—but as a monarch does, palm down and pointing to the ground between us. I took my cue, stepping forward and taking her fingers to kiss. If she wanted to play Good Queen Bess, who was I to object?

      She held my hand for a moment afterwards, looking up at me with her glowing smile.

      “I believe you’re even handsomer than you were,” says she.

      “I would say the same to you, Rosanna,” says I, cavalier as be-damned, “but handsome is too poor a word for it.”

      Mind you, it was true enough. I’ve said she was the most beautiful girl I ever met, and she was still all of that. If anything, her figure was more gorgeous than I remembered, and since she was clad in a loose gown of red silk, with apparently nothing beneath it, I could study the subject without difficulty. The effect of her at close quarters was dazzling: the magnificent blue eyes, the perfect mouth and teeth, the white throat and shoulders, and the lustrous black hair coiled up on her head—yes, she was worth her place in Ludwig’s gallery. But if she had ripened wonderfully in the few years since I had last seen her, she had changed too. There was a composure, a stateliness that was new; you would always have caught your breath at her beauty, but now you would feel a little awe as well as lust.

      I was leering fondly down at her when Starnberg chimes in.

      “‘Rosanna’?” says he. “What’s this, Lola? A pet name?”

      “Don’t be jealous, Rudi,” says she. “Captain Flashman is an old, very dear friend. He knew me long before—all this,” and she gestured about her. “He befriended me when I was a poor little nobody, in London.” And she took my arm in both of hers, reached up, and kissed me, smiling with her old mischief. Well, if that was how she chose to remember our old acquaintance, so much the better.

“Listen, all of you,” she called out, and you could have heard a pin drop. “The Rittmeister Flashman is not only the closest to my heart of all my English friends—and those, you remember, include the noblest in the land—but the bravest soldier in the British Army. You see his decorations”—she leaned across me to touch my medals, and the presence of two almost naked, beautifully rounded breasts just beneath my face was delightfully diverting. Lola was always vain of her bosom,²¹ and wore it all but outside her gown; I wished I had had a pinch of snuff to offer her. “Who ever saw a young captain with five medals?” she continued, and there was a chorus of murmured admiration. “So you see, he is to be honoured for more reasons than that he is my guest. There is no soldier in Germany with a higher reputation as a Christian champion.”

      I had sense enough to look quizzical and indulgent at this, for I knew that the most popular heroes are those who take themselves lightly. I had heard this kind of rot time without count in the past few years, and knew how to receive it, but it amused me to see that the audience, as usual, took it perfectly seriously, the men looking noble and the women frankly admiring.

      Having delivered her little lecture, Lola took me on a tour of introduction, presenting Baron this and Countess that, and everyone was all smirks and bows and polite as pie. I could sense that they were all scared stiff of her, for although she was her old gay self, laughing and chattering as she took me from group to group, she was still the grande dame under the happy surface, with a damned imperious eye. Oh, she had them disciplined all right.

      Only when she had taken me apart, to a couch where a flunkey served us Tokay while the others stood at a respectful distance, did she let the mask drop a little, and the Irish began to creep back into her voice.

      “Let me look at you comfortably now,” says she, leaning back and surveying me over her glass. “I like the moustaches, Harry, they become you splendidly. And the careless curl; oh, it’s the bonny boy still.”

      “And you are still the most beautiful girl in the world,” says I, not to be outdone.

      “So they say,” says she, “but I like to hear it from you. After all, when you hear it from Germans it’s no compliment—not when you consider the dumpy cows they’re comparing you with.”

      “Some of ’em ain’t too bad,” says I carelessly.

      “Ain’t they, though? I can see I shall have to keep an eye on you, my lad. I saw Baroness Pechman wolfing you up a moment ago when she was presented.”

      “Which one was she?”

      “Come, that’s better. The last one you met—over there, with the yellow hair.”

      “She’s fat. Overblown.”

      “Ye-es, poor soul, but some men like it, I’m told.”

      “Not I, Rosanna.”

      “Rosanna,” she repeated, smiling. “I like that. You know that no one ever calls me by that name now. It reminds me of England—you’ve no notion how famous it is to hear English again. In conversation, I mean, like this.”

      “Was that why you sent for me—for my conversation?”

      “That—and СКАЧАТЬ