Flashman in the Great Game. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ years: in spite of the hellish pickle he landed me in, I’d swap any politician I ever met for old Pam – damn him.⁴

      However, now that he’d put the doom on me, he couldn’t get rid of me fast enough; before I’d been properly shooed out of the room he was snapping at Barrington to find some American telegraph or other, and chivvying at Wood that they must soon be off to catch their special train at Aberdeen. It must have been about three in the morning, but he was still full of bounce, and the last I saw of him he was dictating a letter even as they helped him into his coat and muffler, with people bustling around him, and he was breaking off to peer again at the chapattis on the table and ask Ellenborough did the Hindoos eat ’em with meat, or any kind of relish.

      ‘Blasted buns,’ says he. ‘Might do with jam, d’you think, what? No … better not … crumble an’ get under my confounded teeth, probably …’ He glanced up and caught sight of me bowing my farewell from the doorway. ‘Good night to you, Flashman,’ he sings out, ‘an’ good huntin’. You look out sharp for yourself, mind.’

      So that was how I got my marching orders – in a snap of the fingers almost. Two hours earlier I’d been rogering happily away, with not a care in the world, and now I was bound for India on the most dangerous lunatic mission I’d ever heard of – by God, I cursed the day I’d written that report to Dalhousie, glorifying myself into the soup. And fine soup it promised to be – rumours of mutiny, mad old Indian princesses, Thugs, and Ignatieff and his jackals lurking in the undergrowth.

      You can imagine I didn’t get much rest in what was left of the night. Elspeth was fast asleep, looking glorious with the candlelight on her blonde hair tumbled over the pillow, and her rosebud lips half open, snoring like the town band. I was too fretful to rouse her in her favourite way, so I just shook her awake, and I must say she bore the news of our impending parting with remarkable composure. At least, she wept inconsolably for five minutes at the thought of being bereft while her Hector (that’s me) was Braving the Dangers of India, fondled my whiskers and said she and little Havvy would be quite desolate, whimpered sadly while she teased me, in an absent-minded way, into mounting her, and then remembered she had left her best silk gloves behind at the evening’s party and that she had a spot on her left shoulder which no amount of cream would send away. It’s nice to know you’re going to be missed.

      I had three days still left at Balmoral, and the first of them was spent closeted with Ellenborough and a sharp little creature from the Board of Control, who lectured me in maddening detail about my mission to Jhansi, and conditions in India – I won’t weary you with it here, for you’ll learn about Jhansi and its attendant horrors and delights in due course. Sufficient to say it did nothing but deepen my misgivings – and then, on the Wednesday morning, something happened which drove everything else clean out of my mind It was such a shock, such an unbelievable coincidence in view of what had gone before (or so it seemed at the time) that I can still think back to it with disbelief – aye, and start sweating at the thought.

      I’d had a thoroughly drunken night at Abergeldie, to take my mind off the future, and when I woke cloth-headed and surly on the Wednesday morning, Elspeth suggested that instead of breakfast I’d be better going for a canter. I damned her advice and sent for a horse, left her weeping sulkily into her boiled egg, and ten minutes later was galloping the fumes away along the Balmoral road. I reached the castle, and trotted up as far as the carriage entrance; beyond it, on the far side of the gravel sweep, one of the big castle coaches that brought quality visitors from Aberdeen station was drawn up, and flunkeys were handing down the arrivals and bowing them towards the steps leading to the side door.

      Some more poor fools of consequence about to savour the royal hospitality, thinks I, and was just about to turn my horse away when I happened to glance again at the group of gentlemen in travelling capes who were mounting the steps. One of them turned to say something to the flunkeys – and I nearly fell from the saddle, and only saved myself by clutching the mane with both hands. I believe I nearly fainted – for it was something infinitely worse than a ghost; it was real, even if it was utterly impossible. The man on the steps, spruce in the rig of an English country gentleman, and now turning away into the castle, was the man I’d last seen beside the line of carrion gallows at Fort Raim – the man Palmerston was sending me to India to defeat and kill: Count Nicholas Pavlovitch Ignatieff.

      ‘You’re sure?’ croaked Ellenborough. ‘No, no, Flashman – it can’t be! Count Ignatieff – whom we were discussing two nights since – here? Impossible!’

      ‘My lord,’ says I, ‘I’ve good cause to know him better than most, and I tell you he’s in the castle now, gotch-eye and all. Cool as damn-your-eyes, in a tweed cape and deer-stalker hat, so help me! He was there, at the door, not ten minutes ago!’

      He plumped down on a chair, mopping at the shaving-soap on his cheeks – I’d practically had to manhandle his valet to be admitted, and I’d left a trail of startled minions on the back-stairs in my haste to get to his room. I was still panting from exertion, to say nothing of shock.

      ‘I want an explanation of this, my lord,’ says I, ‘for I’ll not believe it’s chance.’

      ‘What d’ye mean?’ says he, goggling.

      ‘Two nights ago we talked of precious little else but this Russian monster – how he’d been spying the length and breadth of India, in the very place to which I’m being sent. And now he turns up – the very man? Is that coincidence?’ I was in such a taking I didn’t stand on ceremony. ‘How comes he in the country, even? Will you tell me Lord Palmerston didn’t know?’

      ‘My God, Flashman!’ His big mottled face looked shocked. ‘What d’you mean by that?’

      ‘I mean, my lord,’ says I, trying to hold myself in, ‘that there’s precious little that happens anywhere, let alone in England, that Lord Palmerston doesn’t know about – is it possible that he’s unaware that the most dangerous agent in Russia – and one of their leading nobles, to boot – is promenading about as large as life? And never a word the other night, when—’

      ‘Wait! Wait!’ cries he, wattling. ‘That’s a monstrous suggestion! Contain yourself, sir! Are you positive it’s Ignatieff?’

      I was ready to burst, but I didn’t. ‘I’m positive.’

      ‘Stay here,’ says he, and bustled out, and for ten minutes I chewed my nails until he came back, shutting the door behind him carefully. He had got his normal beetroot colour back, but he looked damned rattled.

      ‘It’s true,’ says he. ‘Count Ignatieff is here with Lord Aberdeen’s party – as a guest of the Queen. It seems – you know we have Granville in Petersburg just now, for the new Tsar’s coronation? Well, a party of Russian noblemen – the first since the war – have just arrived in Leith yesterday, bringing messages of good will, or God knows what, from the new monarch to the Queen. Someone had written to Aberdeen – I don’t know it all yet – and he brought them with him on his way north – with this fellow among ’em. It’s extraordinary! The damnedest chance!’

      ‘Chance, my lord?’ says I. ‘I’ll need some convincing of that!’

      ‘Good God, what else? I’ll allow it’s long odds, but I’m certain if Lord Palmerston had had the least inkling …’ He trailed off, and you could see the sudden doubt of his own precious Prime Minister written on his jowly face. ‘Oh, but the notion’s preposterous … what purpose could it serve not to tell us? No – he would certainly have told me – and you, I’m sure.’

      Well, I wasn’t sure – from what I’d heard of Pam’s СКАЧАТЬ