Flashman on the March

He was nearing sixty in Abyssinia, and if he looked worn it was no wonder. We’d shared several campaigns, but he’d had the rougher passage every time, thanks to his talent for getting in harm’s way – and out again, usually leaking blood. God knows how many wounds he’d taken; once, I recall, he’d had his field-glasses shot out of his hand, three bullet-holes in his coat, and a slug through his foot – he probably clicked his tongue and frowned that time. Not surprisingly, he was as often sick as well; he’d been in a shocking state, they say, when he licked Tantia Topi in the Mutiny, and according to Colin Campbell there had been ‘no twa pun o’ him hingin’ straight’ when he’d planned the capture of Lucknow. (That means he wasn’t at all well, by the way.) When he wasn’t being all heroic, chasing Sikhs with elephant guns and hammering Pathans on the border, he’d laid half the canals and most of the roads in northern India, from Lahore to the Khyber, and built Darjeeling. Now, on the brink of retirement and pension, they’d handed him the poisoned chalice of Abyssinia … and here he was, welcoming me with that famous smile which everyone remembered, perhaps because it was so out of keeping with the stern, old-fashioned figurehead, asking about my doings, remarking how well I looked, inquiring after Elspeth (whom he’d never met), drumming up sandwiches and beer for my refreshment, observing again what luck it was my turning up like this, and how glad they were of the Maria Theresas.

Dashed unnerving, so much cordiality from a man who’d never been one of your hearties. In a generation of great captains like Campbell and Rose and Outram, such giants as the Lawrences and Nicholson and Havelock and Harry Smith, to say nothing of fighting madmen like Hope Grant and Rake Hodson, Napier had always been the modest, quiet man on the edge of the party, only occasionally showing a flash of sardonic humour, but always happy to escape to his work and his studies, music and painting and peering at rocks.fn1

Since he’d mentioned the dollars, I reminded him tactfully that I’d been homeward bound when I’d allowed Speedicut to press me into the service, and hinted politely that I’d be obliged for a warrant and a trifle of journey money to see me on my way again.

‘See to that, Moore, if you please,’ says he to the Sapper, whom he introduced as his secretary and interpreter. ‘By the way, how many languages do you have, Moore? A dozen? How does that compare with your store … Sir Harry?’ He’d been on the brink of calling me ‘Flashman’, being my senior by ten years, and now a general; mere ‘Harry’ would have been beyond him altogether these days, and I made a note not to address him by the old familiar ‘Bob’.

I said I might scratch by in a dozen, but wasn’t fluent in more than six.

‘One of them being Arabic, I seem to remember,’ says Napier, which set me worrying. Why Arabic? He didn’t enlarge, but dismissed Moore and my escort and settled back in his chair, motioning Speedy to take a seat by the table. ‘Well, this is quite splendid, Sir Harry. I gather from Vienna’s message that you’ve been in Mexico lately. Political indaba,fn2 was it?’

‘Not exactly, sir. Foreign enlistment, you might say.’

‘I see. So you have no official position just now? On the retired list?’ He nodded. ‘Well, Moore will have your warrant ready in the morning … if you want to use it immediately, that is.’ He glanced at Speedy, and Speedy, sitting there in his barbarous finery like the King of the Cannibal Islands, smiled ever so roguish, as though he were in on some jolly secret.

‘I don’t follow, sir … why shouldn’t I use it?’

‘No reason at all,’ says Napier, ‘except that, knowing your … your knack for adventurous service, shall I call it? … it had occurred to me that you might care to postpone your departure … in a good cause after your own heart?’ He ended on a question, and Speedy chuckled, damn him, watching me with the idiot grin of one waiting to see a glad surprise sprung.

‘It is an altogether unofficial thing, and indeed must be strictly secret.’ Napier sat forward, instinctively lowering his voice. ‘You are entirely strange in the country, Sir Harry, and care has been taken that no highland Abyssinian should lay eyes on you, and that your presence here is unknown to all but a few of our own people who can be relied upon. You see, there is a part to be played – a secret and, it may well be, a perilous part, and one that no other man in the Army could even attempt to play.’ He paused, his hooded eyes on mine. ‘A part on which the success or failure of the expedition may well depend.’ He paused again. ‘Shall I continue?’

At this point, when it was plain that some beastly folly was about to be unveiled, Inner Flashman would gladly have cried: ‘Not unless you wish to risk seeing a grown man burst into tears and run wailing into the Abyssinian night!’ Outer Flashman, poor devil, could only sit sweating nonchalantly, going red in the face with funk and hoping that Napier might construe it as apoplectic rage at the prospect of having my travel arrangements upset. He took stricken silence for assent, and rose, beckoning me to an easel on which was a map of the country – a most odd map in that it had length but little breadth, like the one which I attach to this memoir, and was made up of several photographs glued together, something I had never seen before.

‘You know what’s to do – find Theodore and secure the release of the captives by whatever means. Here are we at Attegrat, and there is Theodore, with his army, on the road from Debra Tabor to Magdala. Between us lie three hundred miles of country which, as I’ve no doubt our croakers will have told you –’ he gave an amused snort ‘– is an impassable wilderness of unclimbable peaks and bottomless chasms in which certain disaster awaits if our supply should fail, or hostile tribes bar our way or lay waste the country, or Theodore himself engages us with overwhelming force, or any one of a hundred difficulties arises to bring us to a standstill.’

He paused to see how I was taking this, and gave one of his little tired sighs.

‘Well, Sir Harry, I can tell you that with your silver to pay our way, we’ll not fail of supply, if we move swiftly. The tribes …’ he shrugged, ‘are unpredictable and untrustworthy. Kussai of Tigre has thirty thousand warriors, and Menelek of Shoa and Gobayzy of Lasta each as many, but they will not trouble us unless we show signs of faltering or failure. Kussai offers us passage and assistance, and all three hope we shall depose Theodore. Then they will scramble for his throne.’

‘They’re mortal scared of him,’ put in Speedy. ‘Menelek besieged Magdala last year, but thought better of it. He and Gobayzy are still in the field with their armies, willing to wound but afraid to strike.’ He scratched his beard thoughtfully. ‘Can’t say I blame Gobayzy. He sent a message of defiance to Theodore last month, and Theodore gave his messenger the slow death – that’s half-cutting off the limbs at knees and elbows, twisting ’em to seal the arteries, and leaving the victim for the wild beasts. I’ve seen it done,’ he added, no doubt seeking to cheer me up.

‘Quite so,’ says Napier briskly. ‘It is of a piece with the atrocities he has been inflicting for years past on his southern provinces.’ He touched a spot on the map west of Magdala. ‘Gondar, where he has been repressing rebellion by wholesale slaughter, torturing tens of thousands to death, laying waste the countryside. Debra Tabor, which he has burned and whose inhabitants have suffered indescribable cruelties, crucifixions, mass burnings alive, and the like. He seems to have gone completely mad, for all Abyssinia is in a ferment against him, except for his army, and that is dwindling, we’re told, through constant desertions. At the moment he is leading it back to Magdala, but slowly, because he is carrying his heavy guns and like us is having to build his road as he goes, no doubt with the labour of rebels enslaved in Gondar.’

‘He always likes to have a few political enemies to slaughter from time to time,’ says Speedy. ‘He’ll execute ’em in hundreds along the way. Thank God our folk are in Magdala and spared that march! When I think of the torture and abuse they’ve suffered …’ His huge hands clenched on the spear lying across his knees, and he growled deep in his throat. ‘One o’ these days I’ll have a word with his majesty on the treatment of white prisoners!’

Napier received this with polite interest before resuming. ‘In any event, he will reach Magdala before we do. He may make his stand there. I hope and believe he will. But if he doubts his ability to withstand a siege, he may retire into the southern wilderness, taking the captives with him—’

‘Unless he’s chopped ’em first!’ grunts Speedy.

‘That, too, is a possibility,’ says Napier quietly. ‘Or he may march to meet us, and we must be prepared to fight him in the passes, perhaps even without our artillery if our transport should prove too slow. That would be a hard thing, but if we must we shall abandon guns, baggage, tents, porters, auxiliaries, and all the rest, and meet him with rifle and bayonet and sixty rounds a man, as we did against the Hassemezeia in the Black Mountain. God willing, we shall have done with him before the June rains, but if not we shall march and fight through them. And at need we shall follow him to the Congo or the Cape.’

They were the kind of words you’d expect to hear from a Brooke or a Custer, spoken with a heroic flourish and a fist on the table. Napier said them with all the fervour of a man reading a railway time-table … but I thought, farewell and adieu, Brother Theodore, your goose is cooked; this quiet old buffer with the dreary whiskers may not shout the odds, but what he says he will surely do. It remained to be seen what ghastly part he expected me to play in the doing. He touched the map again, drawing his finger in an arc south of Magdala.

‘Whether he flees, or is driven southward after we defeat him, that is where his line of retreat must be cut off. And that can be done only with native help – no, not Gobayzy or Menelek, who are not only untrustworthy but would certainly regard a request for assistance as weakness on our part, and might even turn on us. We must enlist a people who are implacable enemies of Theodore but have no political interest in his fate or, for that matter, in Abyssinia, which they regard simply as a source of plunder and slaves. They are the Gallas, of whom you may have heard. Speedy, you have the floor.’

‘Thank’ee, Sir Robert,’ says Speedy, and stood up, possibly to assist thought, for he stood frowning a moment, scratching his beard with his spear. ‘The Gallas,’ says he. ‘Aye. You remember the Ghazis in Afghanistan, Sir Harry? Well, the Gallas are cut from the same cloth – ferocious, cruel, mad as bloody hatters!’ He snapped his fingers. ‘No, I can give you a better comparison than the Ghazis – some fellows you know from the American West. Aye, the Gallas are the Apaches of Abyssinia! They seem to live only for raid and murder and abduction – the Lord alone knows how many youths and maidens they carry off each year and sell into Egypt and Arabia. You saw those burned villages and wasted fields on the way here? Those were Galla work. They are a monstrous crew, and as wicked and dangerous as any tribe in Africa. They loathe Theodore because they’re Mohammedans – so far as they’re anything – and he tried to Christianise ’em, mostly by fire and sword and massacre. He didn’t succeed, but he captured their great amba at Magdala, and made it his capital just so that he could keep an eye on ’em. And they’re waiting and praying for the day when they can tear him down!’

‘And with our arrival they believe that day may be coming,’ says Napier, and Speedy, who’d been going like a camp-meeting preacher, took the hint and sat down. ‘And we must convince them that it is at hand. They fear Theodore, with good cause, and they will not move against him unless they are certain that we are determined on his overthrow and will not rest until he is dead or our prisoner.’

So that was it. Flashy, ambassador extraordinary to a nation of bloodthirsty slave-traders, charged with the task of talking them into a war against a barbarian tyrant who was probably a good deal more civilised than they were themselves – that was what was about to be proposed, plain as print. Fortunately, it was impossible; there was something that Napier, in his eagerness to plunge me into the soup, had overlooked. Perhaps my relief showed in glad surprise which he misunderstood, for he nodded, with a glance at Speedy, who was gleaming in anticipation.

‘I see you read my mind, Sir Harry,’ says Napier. ‘Yes, it is a task for you, and you alone. I said no other man in the Army could play the part required – for it is a part, and one that you have played before, when you entered Lahore disguised as an Afridi horse-coper, when you smuggled Kavanagh out of Lucknow, when you spent months as a sowar of native cavalry at Meerut before the Mutiny.’ He was smiling again, no doubt at my ruptured expression. ‘But your unique fitness for the work aside, I know it is the kind of service that you have always sought, and excelled at, which is why, I am not ashamed to say, I thanked Almighty God in my prayers when the telegraph told me it was you who was bringing the silver from Trieste.’

It was no consolation to me that Speedy was regarding me with something like worship at this recital of my supposed heroics. Of all the godless suggestions! I tried to compose my features into the right expression of bewildered amused regret as I kicked his appalling proposal into touch.

‘But, sir, you’re forgetting something! Of course I’d do it like a shot, or any other useful work …’ Safe enough, thinks I, fool that I was. ‘… but I don’t speak Amharic, or any other local dialect, for that matter—’

‘But you do speak Arabic!’ cries Speedy. ‘That’ll serve your turn. There’s no lack of Arabic speakers up-country, especially among the Mohammedan Gallas, and Queen Masteeat is one of ’em.’

‘Queen who?’

‘Masteeat, Queen o’ the Wollo Gallas, the strongest – aye, and the most savage – tribe in the Galla confederacy. She’s the lass who’ll decide whether they march against Theodore or not. Win her over and we’ve won the Gallas, by the thousand!’ He gave another of his booming laughs that set his barbaric ornaments shaking. ‘Mind you, it may be easier said than done. She’s a remarkable lady, and I doubt if there’s been a shrewder or more ruthless crowned female in this neck of the world since Cleopatra!’

‘Yes, you did say she was formidable,’ murmurs Napier. ‘Indeed, she must be to hold sway over such people. And she is young, and a widow, is she not?’ he went on, his eyes on the big moths fluttering round the lamp. ‘Personable?’

‘What Galla girl isn’t?’ grins Speedy. ‘Masteeat means “looking glass”, so there you are. Not that she’s a girl in years – fair, fat, and forty rather, a real stately Juno, but with a fine bright eye and a whale of an appetite … for her vittles, I mean, regular glutton—’

‘To be sure,’ nods Napier. ‘What more?’

‘Well, tell you the truth, Sir Robert, I was less interested in her looks than in getting out of her presence ek dum – when a playful tyrant with power of life and death starts to wonder whether a chap my size could tackle a full-grown lion with a knife … well, I’m glad to bid her good day!’

‘Dear me. Why should she wonder any such thing?’

‘Well, sir, she was three parts drunk at the time, but I reckon the real reason was feminine pique ’cos I’d declined a post in her service.’ He said it straight-faced, the great idiot; some fellows don’t know a gift mare when she kicks ’em in the trinkets. ‘She’d ha’ pitted me against one of her pet monsters if her chamberlain hadn’t dissuaded her. Oh, she’s a rum ’un, Queen Masteeat. Jolly enough foxed, but wilful and sharp as a sabre when sober, for all her languid airs. Why, for two years she’s ruled the confederacy in despite of her elder sister Warkite, Queen of the Ambo Gallas, and there’s a third claimant—’

‘Thank you, Speedy,’ interrupted Napier. ‘Well … however wilful her majesty, she will hardly fail to respect a senior officer of a British army advancing on Magdala. What do you think, Sir Harry?’

Since Speedy had thrown my Arabic in my face I’d been listening to their exchanges with mounting alarm, and now I made for the only bolthole I could see, while playing up like an eager Dick Champion.

‘Why, of course I’ll go, sir, if you wish it – nothing I’d like better!’ A ringing laugh followed by a rueful smile. ‘But … I hate to say it … surely Captain Speedy is far fitter for this work than I? He knows this queen, and speaks her first language, and knows the country and customs—’

‘That is precisely what disqualifies him – every Abyssinian knows him, and secrecy is essential. Theodore’s spies inform him of every move we make – but he must not know that I have sent an envoy to the Gallas.’ Napier spoke with solemn emphasis, tapping a finger. ‘He would surely set his agents to work to prevent their lending us aid. He might even encompass the death of Queen Masteeat – and your life would not be worth two pice if he knew of your mission. You will be deep in enemy country, remember. That is why you must put on native garb again, a harmless Asian traveller going about his affairs unsuspected.’

You’ll notice that what had begun as an invitation had become a cut-and-dried certainty in the mind of this abominable dotard. I’d be skulking behind enemy lines, figged out like Ali Baba, risking capture by a maniac who twisted his victims’ limbs off, and playing travelling salesman to a demented bitch who thought it ever so jolly to throw visitors to the lions – and not a thing to be done about it except feign eagerness with a churning stomach and a grin of glad hurrah, as I sat sweating in that stifling tent with Napier regarding me like a prize pupil and the benighted buffoon Speedy clapping me on the shoulder.

Once again I was hoist with my undeserved reputation for derring-do, my fraudulent record of desperate service, and once again I couldn’t refuse – not and keep my good name. Time was I’d have wriggled and lied and gone to any length to escape from the coils of duty, but experience had taught me to recognise a hopeless case, and this was a beauty – for Napier was right: on the face of it, I was the only man. And I was too great a poltroon to face the disgrace and disgust and social and professional ruin if I shirked and slunk home … no, I hadn’t the game for that.

So I did my damnedest to look like a greyhound in the slips, stiffening the sinews and imitating tigers – and damme if Napier wasn’t regarding me with decidedly wry amusement.

‘I see that I was right in supposing the mission to be one after your own heart. I wonder,’ he sounded almost jocular, ‘if it is perhaps rendered doubly attractive by the fact that it concerns a royal lady of … striking personality. You may not be aware, Speedy, that Sir Harry has great experience in that line. When he was employed as envoy extraordinary to the court of the Maharani of the Punjab he so far succeeded that her majesty proposed marriage. Or so Sir Henry Lawrence assured me. And I recall that on the Pekin expedition the army was consumed with jealousy of the favour shown to him by the Empress of China.’ He made a curious noise which I could only interpret as a roguish chuckle. ‘Really, my dear Sir Harry, you should consider giving a course of lectures at Sandhurst or Addiscombe on the subject of courtly address.’

My, wasn’t this free and easy chat, though? Could he be hinting at the unspoken thought, which had certainly been in the pious minds of Broadfoot and Elgin,25 that I’d best secure royal cooperation by galloping her into what a Frenchman of my acquaintance called a condition of swoon? Surely not? They’d been worldly, wily politicals, but this was a grave, straight-laced senior of the old school who’d never dream … and then I remembered that this same Napier, with his antique whiskers and one foot in the grave, had recently married a spanking little filly of eighteen, which had plainly influenced his outlook on commerce with the fair sex; no wonder he looked as though he’d been fed through the mangle.26 Yes, I knew what he was thinking, the randy old rake; well, I was in no mood to appreciate his lewd levity, if that’s what it was. I said the reports of my diplomatic success had been greatly exaggerated, and that the Army had a deuce of an imagination.

‘But, seriously, sir, are you sure I’m the best man for this?’ Bursting with eagerness to go, you see, but voicing honest doubt. ‘I mean, it’s too big a thing to risk failure, I can see that, and while I’d do my level best, well … It wouldn’t do,’ I burst out, ‘if I let you down through ignorance or inexperience of the country—’

‘My dear Sir Harry,’ says he, so moved by my manly modesty that he put a hand on my shoulder, ‘I know of no man less likely to fail, and none in whom I repose such trust,’ and that, with him looking noble and Speedy muttering ‘Hear, hear!’ was my fate signed, sealed, and shoved down the drain, and I could only await my marching orders looking resolute and wondering how I might still slide out, God only knew how, along the way to the lair of this royal Medusa.

Napier lost no time, calling in Moore to make notes and taking me flat aback by saying I must set out that same night. ‘It is essential you be beyond the possibility of detection before dawn. You need not go far. The guide who is to escort you to Queen Masteeat lives only a few miles hence, and will afford you a roof to rest and prepare for your journey. And to let your beard start to grow,’ he added, ‘so that Khasim Tamwar may present a rather less European appearance.’

‘That’s my nom de guerre, is it? Who am I?’

‘An Indian subject of the Nizam of Hyderabad, whom you served as a diplomat in Syria and Arabia, now travelling to Galla to buy their famous horses for the Nizam’s cavalry – the Gallas ride like centaurs, by the way. You will naturally present the Nizam’s compliments to her majesty, and …’ he raised a finger for emphasis ‘… to her alone will you reveal that you are a British officer and my envoy.’ He took a doubtful tug at his moustache. ‘For your own safety I wish you could remain Indian, but if she is to be persuaded to go to war your true identity may be essential. You agree, Speedy?’

‘Let him be Sir Harry Flashman,’ grins Speedy. ‘Clean-shaven, if possible. I daresay that’s what fetched the Empress of China.’

Napier chose not to be amused. ‘It is no light thing he will be asking her to do. Her life and her people’s lives depend upon it.’ He returned to the map. ‘I spoke of cutting off Theodore’s retreat, and we may have to settle for that, but I am hoping for something more – a steel ring of Galla warriors round Magdala to prevent his even leaving it, to hold him there until we have forced our way through the passes. Then, if he refuses to surrender, we shall take the place by storm.’ He gave me his steady look. ‘That steel ring is what I want of Queen Masteeat. It will be for you to persuade her.’

My innards set to partners at the prospect, but there was a question to be asked.

‘If she’s like any queen of my acquaintance, she’ll have to be bought. Since you tell me Magdala was a Galla place, I guess she’ll want it back. But what more?’

‘The possession of Magdala is a political question, and no concern of ours. You may offer her fifty thousand dollars to invest the city. If she is unwilling to do more than harass Theodore’s retreat, you will lower the payment at your discretion.’

And if she threatens to feed my essentials to her lions, how discreet should I be then, eh? But I kept the thought to myself.

Napier sat silent a moment, then spoke slowly. ‘I’m sorry, Sir Harry, but that is all the brief I can give you. Speedy has shown us her character: shrewd, formidable, but capricious, by turns amiable and ruthless, and no doubt as cruel as such despots usually are. But her present situation and ambitions are hidden from us. That she is Theodore’s mortal enemy is all we can tell with certainty. Yours is a task,’ says he, shaking his grizzled head, ‘which might tax a seasoned ambassador, but I know you will succeed as you have done in the past, and then,’ the old lined face lit up again with that brilliant smile, ‘you can do what no mere diplomat could do, by offering Queen Masteeat a soldierly skill far beyond her own commanders’, to direct the investment of Magdala and, if she wills it, lead her troops into battle!’