Flashman in the Great Game. George Fraser MacDonald
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it was damnable that I should be lurking in fear of my life in England – or Scotland, even. I hadn’t been in this kind of terror on British soil since I’d been a miserable fag at Rugby, carrying Bully Dawson’s game bag for him, and we’d had to hide from keepers at Brownsover. They’d caught me, too, and I’d only got off by peaching on Dawson and his pals, and showing the keepers where … and suddenly, where there had been nothing a moment ago, a shadow moved in the gloom beneath the trees, stopped, and took on form in the half-light. Ignatieff was standing just inside the edge of the fir wood.
I stopped breathing, while he turned his head this way and that, searching the thickets; he had his gun cocked, and by God he wasn’t looking for stags. Then he snapped his fingers, and the moujik came padding out of the dimness of the wood; he was heeled and ready as well, his eyes glaring above his furze of beard. Ignatieff nodded to the left, and the great brute went prowling off that way, his piece presented in front of him; Ignatieff waited a few seconds and then took the way to the right. They both disappeared, noiselessly, and I was left fumbling feverishly for my caps. I slipped them under the hammers with trembling fingers, wondering whether to stay where I was or try to wriggle farther back into the undergrowth. They would be on either side of me shortly, and if they turned into the bracken they might easily … and with the thought came a steady rustling to my left, deep in the green; it stopped, and then started again, and it sounded closer. No doubt of it, someone was moving stealthily and steadily towards my hiding place.
It takes a good deal to stir me out of petrified fear, but that did it. I rolled on my side, trying to sweep my gun round to cover the sound; it caught in the bracken, and I hauled frantically at it to get it clear. God, what a din I must be making – and then the damned lock must have caught on a stem, for one barrel went off like a thunderclap, and I was on my feet with a yell, tearing downhill through the bracken. I fairly flung myself through the high fronds, there was the crack of a shot behind me, and a ball buzzed overhead like a hornet. I went bounding through, came out in a clearing with firs on either side, sprang over a bank of ferns – and plunged straight down into a peat cutting. I landed belly first in the stinking ooze, but I was up and struggling over the far side in an instant, for I could hear crashing in the bracken above me, and knew that if I lost an instant he’d get a second shot. I was plastered with muck like a tar-and-feather merchant, but I still had my gun, and then I must have trod on a loose stone, for I pitched headlong, and went rolling and bumping down the slope, hit a rock, and finished up winded and battered in a burn, trying frantically to scramble up, and slithering on the slimy gravel underfoot.
There was a thumping of boots on the bank, I started round, and there was the moujik, not ten yards away. I didn’t even have time to look for my gun; I was sprawling half out of the burn, and the bastard had his piece at his shoulder, the muzzle looking me straight in the face. I yelled and grabbed for a stone, there was the crash of a gunshot – and the moujik dropped his piece, shrieking, and clutched at his arm as he toppled backwards among the rocks.
‘Careful, colonel,’ says a voice behind me. ‘He’s only winged.’ And there, standing not five yards off, with a smoking revolver in his hand, was a tall fellow in tweeds; he just gave me a nod, and then jumped lightly over the rocks and stood over the moujik, who was groaning and clutching his bleeding arm.
‘Murderous swine, ain’t you?’ says the newcomer conversationally, and kicked him in the face. ‘It’s the only punishment he’ll get, I’m afraid,’ he added, over his shoulder. ‘No diplomatic scandals, you see.’ And as he turned towards me, I saw to my amazement who it was – Hutton, the tall chap with the long jaw who’d taken me to Palmerston only a few nights before. He put his pistol back in his arm-pit and came over to me.
‘No bones broken? Bless me, but you’re a sight.’ He pulled me to my feet. ‘I’ll say this, colonel – you’re the fastest man over rough country I ever hope to follow. I lost you in five minutes, but I kept track of our friends, all right. Nice pair, ain’t they, though? I wish to God it had been the other one I pulled trigger on – oh, we won’t see him again, never fret. Not until everyone’s down the hill, and he’ll turn up cool as you like, never having been near you all day, what?’
‘But – but … you mean, you expected this?’
‘No-o – not exactly, anyway. But I’ve been pretty much on hand since the Russian brotherhood arrived, you know. We don’t believe in taking chances, eh? Not with customers like Master Ignatieff – enterprising chap, that. So when I heard he’d decided to join the shoot today, I thought I’d look along – just as well I did, I think,’ says this astonishing fellow. ‘Now, if you’ve got your wind back, I suggest we make our way down. Never mind our little wounded bird yonder – if he don’t bleed to death he’ll find his way back to his master. Pity he shot himself by accident, ain’t it? That’ll be their story, I daresay – and we won’t contradict it – here, what are you about, sir?’
I was lunging for my fallen gun, full of murderous rage now that the danger was past. ‘I’m going to blow that bloody peasant’s head off!’ I roared, fumbling with the lock. ‘I’ll teach—’
‘Hold on!’ cries he, catching my arm, and he was positively grinning. ‘Capital idea, I agree – but we mustn’t, you see. One bullet in him can be explained away by his own clumsiness – but not two, eh? We mustn’t have any scandal, colonel – not involving Her Majesty’s guests. Come along now – let’s be moving down, so that Count Ignatieff, who I’ve no doubt is watching us this minute, can come to his stricken servant’s assistance. After you, sir.’
He was right, of course; the irony of it was that although Ignatieff and his brute had tried to murder me, we daren’t say so, for diplomacy’s sake. God knows what international complications there might have been. This didn’t sink in with me at once – but his reminder that Ignatieff was still prowling about was enough to lend me wings down the hill. Not that even he’d have tried another shot, with Hutton about, but I wasn’t taking chances.
I’ll say this for the secret service – which is what Hutton was, of course – they’re damned efficient. He had a gig waiting on the road, one of his assistants was despatched to the help of my ghillie, and within a half-hour I was back in Balmoral through the servants’ entrance, being cleaned up and instructed by Hutton to put it about that I’d abandoned the shoot with a strained muscle.
‘I’ll inform my chiefs in London that Colonel Flashman had a fortunate escape from an unexpected danger, arising from a chance encounter with an old Russian friend,’ says he, ‘and that he is now fit and well to proceed on the important task ahead of him. And that, in the meantime, I’m keeping an eye on him. No, sir, I’m sorry – I can’t answer any of your questions, and I wouldn’t if I could.’
Which left me in a fine state of consternation and bewilderment, wondering what to make of it all. My immediate thought was that Palmerston had somehow arranged the whole thing, in the hope that I’d kill Ignatieff, but even in my excited condition that didn’t make sense. A likelier explanation was that Ignatieff, coming innocently to Balmoral and finding me on the premises, had decided to take advantage of the chance to murder me, in revenge for the way I’d sold him the previous year. That, knowing the man and his ice-cold recklessness, was perfectly sound reasoning – but there was also the horrid possibility that he had found out about the job Palmerston had given me (God alone knew how – but he’d at least discovered from the idiot Elspeth that I was going to India) and had been out to dispose of me in the way of business.
‘A preposterous notion,’ was Ellenborough’s answer when I voiced my fears to him that night. ‘He could not know – why, the Board decision was highly secret, and imparted only to the Prime Minister’s most intimate circle. No, this is merely another example of the naked savagery of the Russian bear!’ He was full of port, and wattling furiously. ‘And virtually in Her Majesty’s presence, too! Damnable! But, of course, we can say nothing, Flashman. It only remains,’ says he, booming sternly, ‘for you to mete out conclusive justice to this villain, if you chance to encounter him in India. In the meantime, I’ll see that the Lord Chamberlain excludes him from any diplomatic invitations which may be extended to St Petersburg