Flashman and the Tiger: And Other Extracts from the Flashman Papers. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ with a chilling contempt which sat perfectly on a rather horsey face with a curved high-bridged nose. Minor Mittel European royalty to the life, with the same stench-in-the-nostrils look as my darling little Irma of Strackenz, but nowhere near as pretty. Striking, though, and there were promising signs: she’d be about forty and properly saddle-broken, with the full mouth and drooping lower lip which betoken a hearty appetite, and a remarkable wasp waist between a fine full rump and upper works which would have made Miss Marie Lloyd look positively elfin. I could imagine stripping her down and watching her arrogance diminish with each departing garment. And she had an Ardent Desire to meet the gallant Sir H.F. I reached for Bradshaw.

      Reading the letter again later, it struck me that there was something familiar about it; an echo of the past which I couldn’t place – until a couple of days later, the afternoon of October the third to be precise, when I was ensconced in my smoker on the Continental Mail Express, and suddenly I knew what I’d been reminded of: that doom-laden summons that had taken me to Lola Montez in Munich, oh, so long ago. There was the same slightly eccentric wording (though Blowitz’s English was a cut above that of Lola’s Chancellor – what had his name been? Aye, Lauengram) and the purport was uncannily similar: an invitation from an exotic titled woman of mystery, for reasons unstated, with a strong hint of fleshly pleasures in prospect … and what besides? In Lola’s case there had been a nightmare of terror, intrigue, imposture, and deadly danger from which I’d barely escaped with my life – oh, but that had been a Bismarck plot in the bad old days; this was jolly little Blowitz, and a doubtless spoiled and jaded piece of aristocracy in search of novelty and excitement … but how had she heard of me (Blowitz cracking me up, to be sure) and why was I worth fetching across the Channel? Odd, that – and for no reason I remembered Rudi Starnberg’s voice across the years: ‘She brought me all the way from Hungary’, and found myself shivering. And why no later than October the fourth?

      Aye, odd … but not fishy, surely? It’s the curse of a white liver that it has you starting at shadows, imagining perils where none exist. On t’other hand, it’s been a useful storm signal over the years, and it was still at work ever so little when we pulled into the Gare du Nord.

      At the sight of Blowitz on the platform, my cares dissolved. He was a trifle plumper in the cheek, a shade greyer in the whisker, but still the same joyful little bonhomme, rolling forward waving his cane with glad cries, fairly leaping up to embrace me and dam’ near butting me under the chin, chattering nineteen to the dozen as he led me out to a fiacre, and not letting me get a word in until we were seated at the self-same table in Voisin’s, when he had to leave off to attend to the maître. I couldn’t help grinning at him across the table, he looked so confounded cheery.

      ‘Well, it’s famous to see you again, old Blow,’ says I, when he’d ordered and filled our glasses. ‘Here’s to you, and to this mysterious lady. Now – who is she … and what does she want?’

      He drank and wiped his whiskers, business-like. ‘The Princess Kralta. But of blood the most ancient in Europe, descended from Stefan Bathory, Arnulf of Carinthia, Barbarossa … name whom you will, she is de la royauté la plus royale – and landless, as the best monarchs are. But rich, to judge from the state she keeps – oh, and received everywhere, on terms with the highest. She is befriended of the German Emperor, for example, and –’ he shot me a quizzy look ‘– of our old acquaintance Prince Bismarck. No-no-no,’ he added hastily, ‘her intimacy with him is of a … how shall I say? … of an unconventional kind.’

      ‘I’ve met some of his unconventional intimates, and I didn’t take to ’em a bit. If she’s one of his –’

      ‘She is not one of anyone’s! I mention Bismarck only because when I first met the Princess she brought me a friendly message from him. C’est vrai, absolument! Can you guess what it was? That he bears me no ill will for my activities at the Congress of Berlin!’ He shook his head, chuckling. ‘Can you believe it, eh?’

      ‘No – and neither will you if you’ve any sense. That bastard never forgave or forgot in his life. Very well, ne’er mind him – what more about this Princess? Is she married?’ It’s always best to know beforehand.

      ‘There is a husband.’ He shrugged. ‘But he does not figure.’

      ‘Uh-huh … so, what does she want with me?’

      He gave a little snort of laughter. ‘What do women ever want with you? Ah, but there is something else also.’ He leaned forward to whisper, looking droll. ‘She wishes to know a secret … a secret that she believes only you can tell her.’

      He sat back as the food arrived, with a cautioning gesture in case I made some indiscreet outcry, I suppose. Since I knew the little blighter’s delight in mysterious hints I just waded into the grub.

      ‘You do not ask what it is?’ he grumbled. ‘Ah, but of course – le flegme Britannique! Never mind, you will raise a brow when you hear, I promise!’

      And I did, for I never heard an unlikelier tale in my life – all of it true, for I saw it confirmed in the little blighter’s memoirs a few years ago, and why should he lie to posterity? But even at the time I believed it because, being a crook myself, I can spot a straight tongue, and Blowitz had one.

      He’d met the Princess Kralta at a diplomatic dinner, and plainly fallen head over heels – as he often did, in his harmless romantic way – and she had equally plainly given him every encouragement. ‘You have seen her likeness, but believe me, it tells you nothing! How to describe her … her magnétisme, the light of charm in those great blue eyes, the little toss of her silky blonde hair as she smiles, revealing the brilliancy of her small teeth – you found her portrait forbidding, non? My friend, when you see those queenly features melt into the tenderest of expressions, the animation of her darting glances, the melodious quality of her voice … ah, mais ravissante –’

      ‘Whoa, steady lad, mind the cutlery. Liked her, did you?’

      ‘My friend, I was enchanted!’ He sighed like a ruptured poodle. ‘I confess it, I who have encountered the charms of the loveliest women in Europe, that the Princess Kralta wove a spell about me. And it is not only her person that allures, her exquisite elegance, her divinity of shape and movement –’

      ‘Aye, she’s well titted out, I noticed.’

      ‘– but the beauty of her nature, her frank friendliness and ease of deportment, the candour of her confidences …’

      He babbled through the next two courses, but don’t suppose that I despised his raptures – there are women like that, and as often as not they’re not the ones of perfect feature. Angie Burdett-Coutts was no radiant looker, but she’d have caused a riot in the College of Cardinals simply by walking by, whereas the Empress of Austria, of whom more presently, was perfection of face and figure and quite as exciting as a plate of mashed turnip. I’d seen enough of la Kralta in her picture to believe that she might well have the magic, February face or no.

      She’d gone out of her way to captivate Blowitz over a period of months, doing him little kindnesses, making friends with his wife, and trusting him with her most intimate confidences – which is the surest way a woman has of getting a man under her dainty thumb. Once or twice she spoke of the Berlin Congress, and Bismarck’s curiosity as to how Blowitz had got his ‘scoop’ – it had irritated Otto that he couldn’t fathom that, and he’d told her he was determined to find out some day.

      ‘Indeed, my friend,’ says Blowitz to me as he plunged into his dessert, ‘she confessed to me that she had promised the Prince she would use all her womanly wiles to wring the secret from me. I admired her honesty in admitting as much, СКАЧАТЬ