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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you keep going and speak civil to the gentleman and you’ll get a sugar-plum at tea.
The gong had stopped, and the only sounds in that joss-laden silence were clanks and laboured breathing; I reached the steps, and under the Bannermen’s proddings dragged my way upwards, kow-towing all the way; thirty-three of them were there, and then I stopped, sprawled stark, with a pair of yellow velvet boots just ahead, and the hem of a robe that seemed to be made of solid gold inlaid with emeralds.
“He doesn’t look like a soldier,” said a drowsy voice. “Where is his armour? Why is he not wearing it?”
“Your slave, kneeling, begs Your Imperial Majesty to look on these rags of garments which the Red-headed savages wear.” This was Sang, and it was the first time I’d heard him speak at anything but the top of his voice. “They have no armour.”
“No armour?” says the other. “They must be very brave.”
That’s foxed you, you bastard, thinks I, but after a minute Sushun explained that we were so bloody backward we hadn’t thought of armour yet, and Sang cried aye, that was it.
“No armour,” says the drowsy voice, “yet they have great guns. That is not consistent. You – how is it that you have guns, but no armour?”
“Address the Son of Heaven, pig!” yells Sang, and the Bannermen bashed me with their spear-shafts. I scrambled to my knees, looked up – and blinked. For if the fellow on the throne wasn’t Basset, my orderly from the 11th Hussars, he was dooced like him, except that he was Chinese, you understand. It was just one of those odd resemblances – the same puffy, pasty, weak young face and little mouth, with a pathetic scrap of hair on the upper lip; but where Basset’s eyes had been weasel-sharp, this fellow’s were watery and dull. He looked as though he’d spent the last ten years in a brothel – which wasn’t far wrong.37 All this I took in at a glance, and then hastened to answer his question.
“Our guns, majesty,” says I, “were stolen from your imperial army.” At least that ought to please Sang, but with a face like his you couldn’t be sure.
“And your ships?” says the drowsy voice. “Your iron ships. How do you make such things?”
By George, this wasn’t going according to Sushun’s scenario at all. Here was I, all ready with a prepared statement, and this inquisitive oaf of an Emperor asking questions which I daren’t answer truthfully, or Sang would have my innards all over the yard.
“I know of no iron ships, majesty,” says I earnestly. “I think they are a lie. I have never seen them.”
“I have seen pictures,” says he sulkily, and thought for a moment, an unhappy frown on his soft yellow face. “You must have come to the Middle Kingdom in a ship – was it not of iron?” He looked ready to cry.
“It was a very old wooden ship, majesty,” says I. “Full of rats and leaked like a sieve. I didn’t want to come,” I cried on a sudden inspiration, “but I was seduced from my allegiance to your Divine Person by evil people like Pa-hsia-li and the Big Barbarian, you see, and they made me a Banner chief in the Red-headed Army and a trusted creature of the Big Barbarian himself, and …”
It was the only way I could get into Sushun’s speech and forestall further embarrassment; I poured it out, keeping my eyes lowered and knocking head obsequiously at intervals, and putting a heart-rending pathos into my final appeal for his Divine Forgiveness. If he’d then said, what about all these railways and telegraphs and the Crystal Palace, hey, I’d have been stumped, but he didn’t. Silence reigned, and when I stole a glance up at the Imperial Throne, damned if he hadn’t gone to sleep! Bored stiff, no doubt, but highly disconcerting when you’ve been pleading for your life, and Sang and Sushun glaring like Baptists at a Mass. None of ’em seemed to know what to do; the Son of Heaven smacked his lips, broke wind gently, and began to snore. There were whispered consultations, and finally one of them went off and returned with a stout little pug in a plain robe, who approached the throne, knocked head, and began to tickle the royal ankle.
The Emperor grunted, woke, stared around, and asked sleepily which tortoiseshell was turned over tonight.
“The Fragrant Almond Leopardess, oh Kwa-Kuin Ruling the World,” squeaks the stout party, and the Emperor pulled a face.
“No!” says he petulantly. “She is large and clumsy and without culture. She sings like a crow.” He sniggered, and Sang and the others, who’d been mirroring his disapproval, chuckled heartily. “Let it be the Orchid,” says the Emperor, sighing happily, and everyone beamed; I may even have nodded approbation myself, for he looked at me again, and frowned.
“I saw a picture of an iron ship with three great chimneys,” says he sadly, and then he got up unsteadily, and everyone dropped to their knees, crying: “There cannot be two suns in the heaven!” and knocked head vigorously. I watched him shuffle off, attended by the stout fellow; he walked like an old, sick man, for all he couldn’t have been thirty. The Solitary Prince, Son of Heaven, the most absolute monarch on earth, yearning for a trip on a steamship.
The fact remained that he hadn’t told ’em to give Flashy a pound from the till and a ticket to Tooting; I doubted if Sang would either, for while I’d done my damnedest to carry out his orders, I knew I hadn’t made much of a hit, and if he was displeased … my fears were realised as I was abruptly jerked to my feet, and that hateful voice was snarling at the Bannermen:
“Put him below! Tomorrow he can join the other barbarian curs in the Board of Punishments.”
My blood froze at the words, and as they seized my fetters I was foolish enough to protest. “But you swore to let me off! I said what you wanted, didn’t I? You said you’d spare me, you lying beast!”
He was on me like a tiger, striking viciously at my face while I cowered and yammered. “I said I would spare you the wire jacket!” he shouted, and fetched me a final clip that knocked me down. “So, I will spare you … the wire jacket! You may yet come to beg for it as a blessed release! Away with him!”
They hauled me off, and since I was in such fear that I woke the echoes with my roaring, they gagged me brutally before rushing me down a spiral stairway. It wasn’t the way we’d come, and I was expecting stone cells and dripping walls, but evidently they didn’t have such amenities in the Emperor’s private apartments, for the room they thrust me into seemed to be a furniture store, dry and musty, but clean enough, with chairs and tables piled against the walls. The swine made me as comfortable as possible, though, throwing me back down on a narrow wooden bench and shackling my wrists so tightly beneath it that I couldn’t budge an inch and must lie there supine with my legs trailing on the floor either side. Then they left me, a prey to the most horrid imaginings, and unable even to whine and curse by reason of my gag.
The Board of Punishments … I’d heard of it, and horrid rumours of what happened there – if I’d known what Parkes and Loch and the others were already suffering, I’d have gone off my head. Mercifully, I didn’t know, and strove to drive the awful fears out of my mind, telling myself that the army was only a few miles away, that even mad monsters like Sang must realise the vengeance that Elgin would take if we were ill-treated, and hold his hand … and then I remembered Moyes and Nolan, and the vicious, mindless spite with which they’d been murdered, and I knew that my only hope was that rescue would get here in time. They were so close! Grant and the Frogs and Probyn and Nuxban Khan and Wolseley and Temple, those splendid Sikhs and Afghans and Royals; I could weep to think of them in their safe, strong, familiar world, loafing under the canvas, sitting about on Payne & Co’s boxes, reading the Daily Press, chewing the rag about … what had it been, that evening a century ago, before we rode to Tang-chao … oh, aye, the military steeplechase at Northampton, won by a Dragoon over twenty fences and three ploughs, and spectators riding alongside had spoiled sport … “Goin’ to ride next year, Flash?” “Garn, he’s top-heavy!” “They say the Navy are enterin’ in ’61 – sailors on horseback, haw-haw!” That’s how they’d be gassing and boozing and idling away precious time, the selfish