Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 3: Flashman at the Charge, Flashman in the Great Game, Flashman and the Angel of the Lord. George Fraser MacDonald
Читать онлайн книгу.
out, would have been very unwise odds to offer.
However, after that small discussion the weeks had slipped by without any other important Russians visiting the place, and then came my diversion with Valla, and East’s ridiculous day-dream went clean out of my mind. And then, about ten days after I had started galloping her, a couple of Ruski staff captains jingled into the courtyard one morning, to be followed by a large horse-sled, and shortly afterwards comes the Count’s major-domo to East and me, presenting his apologies, and chivvying us off to our rooms.
We took the precaution of muffling the hidden speaking-tube, and kept a good watch from East’s window that day. We saw more sleds arrive, and from the distant hum of voices in the house and the sound of tramping on the stairs we realized there must be a fair-sized party in the place. East was all excited, but what really stirred him was when a sled arrived late in the afternoon, and Pencherjevsky himself was in the yard to meet it – attired as we’d never seen him before, in full dress uniform.
“This is important,” says East, his eyes alight. “Depend upon it, that’s some really big wig. Gad! I’d give a year’s pay to hear what passes below tonight.” He was white with excitement. “Flashman, I’m going to have a shot at it!”
“You’re crazy,” says I. “With a Cossack mooching about the passage all night? You say he sleeps – he can wake up, too, can’t he?”
“I’ll chance that,” says he, and for all I could try – appeals to his common sense, to his position as a guest, to his honour as an officer (I think I even invoked Arnold and religion) he remained set.
“Well, don’t count on me,” I told him. “It ain’t worth it – they won’t be saying anything worth a damn – it ain’t safe, and by thunder, it’s downright ungentlemanly. So now!”
To my surprise, he patted my arm. “I respect what you say, old fellow,” says he. “But – I can’t help it. I may be wrong, but I see my duty differently, don’t you understand? I know it’s St Paul’s to a pub it’ll be a fool’s errand, but – well, you never know. And I’m not like you – I haven’t done much for Queen and country. I’d like to try.”
Well, there was nothing for it but to get my head under the bed-clothes that night and snore like hell, to let the world know that Flashy wasn’t up to mischief. Neither, it transpired, was the bold East: he reported next day that the Cossack had stayed awake all night, so his expedition had to be called off. But the sleds stayed there all day, and the next, and they kept us cooped up all the time, and the Cossack remained vigilant, to East’s mounting frenzy.
“Three days!” says he. “Who can it be, down there? I tell you, it must be some important meeting! I know it! And we have to sit here, like mice in a cage, when if we could only get out for an hour, we might find out something that would – oh, I don’t know, but it might be vital to the war! It’s enough to drive a chap out of his wits!”
“It already has,” says I. “You haven’t been shut up like this before, have you? Well, I’ve been a prisoner more times than I care to think of, and I can tell you, after a while you don’t reason straight any longer. That’s what’s wrong with you. Also, you’re tired out; get to sleep tonight, and forget this nonsense.”
He fretted away, though, and I was almost out of patience with him by dinner-time, when who should come up with the servants bearing dinner, but Valla. She had just dropped in to see us, she said, and was very bright, and played a three-handed card game with us, which was a trying one for East, I could see. He was jumpy as a cat with her at the best of times, blushing and falling over his feet, and now in addition he was fighting to keep from asking her what was afoot downstairs, and who the visitors were. She prattled on, till about nine, and then took her leave, and as I held the door for her she gave me a glance and a turn of her pretty blonde head that said, as plain as words: “It’s been three nights now. Well?” I went back to my room next door, full of wicked notions, and leaving East yawning and brooding.
If I hadn’t been such a lustful brute, no doubt prudence would have kept me abed that night. But at midnight I was peeping out, and there was the Cossack, slumped on his stool, head back and mouth open, reeking like Davis’s cellar. Valla’s work, thinks I, the charming little wretch. I slipped past him, and he never even stirred, and I padded out of the pool of lamplight round him and reached the big landing.
All was still up here, but there was a dim light down in the hall, and through the banisters I could see two white-tunicked and helmeted sentries on the big double doors of the library, with their sabres drawn, and an orderly officer pacing idly about smoking a cigarette. It struck me that it wasn’t safe to be gallivanting about this house in the dark – they might think I was on the East tack, spying – so I flitted on, and two minutes later was stallioning away like billy-o with my modest flower of the steppes – by jingo, she was in a fine state of passion, I remember. We had one violent bout, and then some warm wine from her little spirit lamp, and talked softly and dozed and played, and then went to it again, very slowly and wonderfully, and I can see that lovely white shape in the flickering light even now, and smell the perfume of that silver hair, and – dear me, how we old soldiers do run on.
“You must not linger too long, sweetheart,” says she, at last. “Even drunk Cossacks don’t sleep forever,” and giggled, nibbling at my chin. So I kissed her a long good-night, with endearments, resumed my night-shirt, squeezed her bouncers again for luck, and toddled out into the cold, along her corridor, down the little stairs to the landing – and froze in icy shock against the wall on the second step, my heart going like a hammer.
There was someone on the landing. I could hear him, and then see him by the dim light from the far corridor where my room lay. He was crouched by the archway, listening, a man in a night-shirt, like myself. With a wrenching inward sigh, I realized that it could only be East.
The fool had stayed awake, seen the Cossack asleep, and was now bent on his crack-brained patriotic mischief. I hissed very gently, had the satisfaction of seeing him try to leap through the wall, and then was at his side, shushing him for all I was worth. He seized me, gurgling.
“You! Flashman!” He let out a shuddering breath. “What –? You’ve been … why didn’t you. tell me?” I wondered what the blazes he meant, until he whispered fiercely: “Good man! Have you heard anything? Are they still there?”
The madman seemed to think I’d been on his eavesdropping lay. Well, at least I’d be spared recriminations for fornicating with his adored object. I shook my head, he bit his lip, and then the maniac breathed in my ear: “Come, then, quickly! Into the gallery – they’re still down there!” And while I was peeping, terrified, into the dimness through the banisters, where the white sentries were still on guard, he suddenly flitted from my side across the landing. I daren’t even try a loud whisper to call him back; he was fumbling with the catch of the little door in the far shadows, and I was just hesitating before bolting for bed and safety, when from our corridor sounded a cavernous yawn. Panicking, I shot across like a whippet, clutching vainly at East as he slipped through the low aperture into the gallery. Come back, come back, you mad bastard, my lips were saying, but no sound emerged, which was just as well, for with the opening of the little gallery door the clear tones of someone in the library echoed up to us. And light was filtering up through the fine screen which concealed the gallery from the floor below. If our Cossack guard was waking, and took a turn to the landing, he’d see the dim glow from the open gallery door. Gibbering silently to myself, half-way inside the little opening, I crept forward, edging the door delicately shut behind me.
East was flat on the dusty gallery floor, his feet towards me; it stank like a church in the confined space between the carved wooden screen on the one hand and the wall on the other. My head was no more than a foot from the screen; thank God it was a nearly solid affair, with only occasional carved apertures. I lay panting and terrified, hearing the voice down in the library saying in Russian:
“… so there would be no need to vary the orders at present. The establishment is large enough, and would not be affected.”
I remember those words because