Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 4: Flashman and the Dragon, Flashman on the March, Flashman and the Tiger. George Fraser MacDonald
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into our glasses.
“Your good health, Sir Harry!” chortles he, damn his impudence. “Yes … terrible to contemplate. But you mustn’t think I’m jealous; if Lee were a realist, I would make way for him, for he is a splendid soldier who might win the war and establish the Heavenly Kingdom. I hoped so, once.” He shook his head again. “But of late I have seen how blind is his fanaticism, how implicitly he will obey every insane decree from that lunatic he worships. Between them they would make the Taiping a headless centipede, poisonous, clawing without direction – and there would never be an end to this abominable war of extermination. Oh, that’s what it is!” He laughed heartily, chilling my blood. “Do you know why we and the Imps never take prisoners? Because if we did, we could not hold our armies together – if they knew they could be taken prisoner, they would not fight. Consider that hideous fact, Sir Harry, and have some more port.” He reached for the bottle, and I realised he was watching me intently, his fat creased face grinning most oddly.
“Between them, Lee and the Tien Wang will destroy the Taiping,” says he slowly, “unless I can prevent them. And that I can only do if I retain my power – and diminish that of Loyal Prince Lee. A grievous necessity,” sighs the fat hypocrite, beaming happily. “Now, Sir Harry, I wonder if you can foresee – as a strictly neutral observer – how that might be brought about?”
Well, I’d seen where the blubbery villain was headed for some minutes past, and what between flooding relief and fury at the way he’d scared the innards out of me first, I didn’t mince words.
“You mean if Lee falls flat on his arse at Shanghai!”
He looked puzzled – doubtless the expression was seldom heard in the Hong Kong mission where he’d worked. “If Lee were to fail at Shanghai,” I explained. “If he tried to take the place and couldn’t.”
He sucked in port noisily. “But is that possible? Obviously, you have a vested interest in saying that it is, but my dear Sir Harry –” he leaned forward, glittering piggily, “I have been entirely frank with you – dangerously frank – and I trust you to be equally candid with me. You know Mr Bruce’s mind; you know the position at Shanghai. Could Lee be made to fail?”
Of course he knew the answer; he’d been studying it for weeks. “Well, in the first place,” says I, “he’ll not scare Bruce into letting him walk in. He’ll have to fight – and as I told you at our first meeting, it won’t be against a mob of useless Imps who’ll fall down if a Taiping farts at them.” I waited until his bellow of mirth had subsided. “He’ll be meeting British and French regulars for the first time – not many of ’em, but they can be reinforced, given time. We have Sikhs at Chusan, two regiments at Canton –”
“Three,” says he. “I have information.”
I’ll bet he had. “With the fleet lying off Peiho – oh, and this gang of Fred Ward’s for what it’s worth –”
“Lee will have fifty thousand men, remember! Could Shanghai resist such a force?”
The temptation to say we could lick him from China to Cheltenham was irresistible, so I resisted it. He knew the case better than I did, so there was nothing for it but honesty.
“I don’t know. But it could have a damned good try. If Bruce had warning, now, by a messenger he trusted …” I hung on that for a moment, and he nodded “…Šhe’d have two weeks to garrison before Lee arrived. In which case you can wish Lee luck, because by God he’ll need it!”
If you’ve ever seen a fat Chinaman holding four aces, you’ll know how he was staring at me as he envisaged the delightful prospect of Lee disgraced, himself supreme – the deliberate sacrifice of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taiping lives, and the certain loss of Shanghai to the Taiping cause forever, were mere trifles so long as Jen-Kan won his political battle over Lee.17 Suddenly he gave a little crowing laugh, and filled my glass.
“You confirm my conclusions exactly!” cries he. “Lee will certainly be defeated before Shanghai. Of course, in contriving this I am compromising myself most dangerously, but I know Mr Bruce will be discreet; he and H.M. Government have much to gain from an enlightened control in the Taiping movement. The steamships order, for example, need not be affected by our brief mutual hostilities at Shanghai, which will soon be forgotten. Britain can resume her policy of neutrality, and left to ourselves we shall defeat the Manchoos.” He raised his glass to me. “Your own immediate profit should be considerable – you will be the hero who brought the momentous warning that saved Shanghai. I drink to your further advancement, my friend.” He smacked his liver lips and leaned back, blinking up at the sunlight filtering through the fronds overhead. “I foresee happy times.”
He had it all pat, the fat, grinning, ruthless scoundrel – but, d’you know, I can’t say he was a whit worse than any other statesman of my acquaintance, and a sight jollier than most. I asked when I would go.
“Tonight,” says he, “it is all arranged, with complete secrecy. I shall easily conceal your absence until the appropriate time, two weeks hence, when I will send word to Lee – who should be at Chingpu by now – that his advance to Shanghai can begin.” He giggled and took another mammoth swig of port. “Your escort will take you as far as Chingpu, by the way, where by all accounts your friend Mr Ward will be in the vicinity. But you will keep well clear of Chingpu itself. Lee would not be pleased to see you.” He turned to grin at me. “We know what you will tell Mr Bruce of the Heavenly King (regrettable, but there it is), and of the Loyal Prince Lee … I wonder what you will say of Hung Jen-Kan?”
“That he drinks port at the wrong time of day.”
He choked on his glass. “You intend to ruin my reputation, in fact. Ah, well, I am sure Mr Bruce will receive an honest account from you. The fact that it will be totally misleading is by the way.” He heaved another of his mountainous sighs.
“You imagine I act out of unscrupulous self-interest; true, all revolutionaries do. They agitate and harangue and justify every villainy in the name of high ideals; they lie, to delude the people, whom they hold in contempt. They seek nothing but their personal ends – my only defence is that my ends are modest ones. I seek power to see the revolution accomplished; after that, I have no wish to rule. I want the biggest library in China, and to visit my cousins in San Francisco, and to read the Lesson, just once, in an English country church.” He began to shake with laughter again. “Tell Mr Bruce that. He won’t believe a word of it. Oh, and you will not forget to mention the steamships? An order worth a million, remember – whatever happens with Lee.” He looked like a contented pig. “As Superintendent of Trade, Mr Bruce will not overlook the importance of the almighty dollar.”18
I hadn’t arrived at Nanking in any great style, but it was Pullman travel compared to the way I went, under hatches on a stinking Yangtse fish-barge, with two of Jen-kan’s thugs for company. I daren’t show face until we were well away from the city, white fan-quis being as common in those parts as niggers in Norway; not that I’d have been hindered, but Jen-kan might have had awkward explanations to make if it got about that Flashy was heading east ahead of time. So we spent a day and night in the poisonous dark and came ashore somewhere on the Kiangyin bend, where two more thugs were waiting with ponies. Farther down, the river was infested by gangs of Imp deserters and bandits (no doubt the Provident Brave Butterflies were spreading their wings, among others), and while the land to the south was swarming with Taiping battalions, Jen-kan had reckoned we’d make better and safer time on horseback, taking a long sweep to come in by Chingpu, where Frederick T. Ward’s foreign legion was preparing to have another slap at the Taiping garrison.
I don’t remember much about that ride, except that I was damned stiff after months out of the saddle, but I know we raised Chingpu on a misty dawn, looking down from a crest to the