Flashman on the March. George Fraser MacDonald
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first few times and need to be hushed. Elspeth, and my second wife, Duchess Irma, were like ecstatic banshees, I remember.
Unfortunately, she shared another characteristic with Elspeth – she had no more discretion than the town crier, and just as Elspeth had babbled joyfully of our jolly rogering to her elder sister, who had promptly relayed it to her horrified parents, so sweet imbecile Gertrude had confided in her duenna, who had swooned before passing on the glad news to old Tegethoff.
This must have been on the very morning we dropped anchor off the Molo St Carlo at Trieste and I was supervising the lifting of the coffin from below decks, and in the very act of securing Max’s crown and archducal cap to the lid, when Tegethoff damned near fell down the companion, with a couple of aides at his heels trying to restrain him. He was in full fig, cocked hat and ceremonial sword which he was trying to lug out, purple with rage, and bellowing ‘Verräter! Vergewaltiger! Pirat!’fn2 which summed up things nicely and explained why he was behaving like Attila with apoplexy.
One of the aides clung to his sword-arm and hauled him back by main force, while the other, a hulking junkerish brute with scars all over his ugly dial, whipped his glove across my face before dashing it at my feet and stamping off. That was all they had time for just then, what with the barge coming alongside to take Max on shore leave, the Duke of Wurtemburg and all the other big guns lined up on the landing stage, the waterfront swathed in black, and muted brass bands playing a cheery Wagnerian air. But I can take a hint, and saw that by the time they’d finished escorting Max to the Vienna train, I had best be in the nearest deep cover, lying doggo.
So I let the pall-bearers get their load on deck, waited until the guns of the assembled shipping had started their salutes and Tegethoff and Co. would be safely away, and slunk ashore with a hastily packed valise. The cortège was proceeding along the boulevard beyond the Grand Canal which runs into the heart of the city; solemn music, mobs of chanting clergy, friars carrying crosses, battalions of infantry, and I thought ‘Hasta la vista, old Max’ and hurried up-town to lose myself for a few hours.6 Tegethoff’s gang would be off to Vienna with the corpse presently, nursing their wrath against me, no doubt, but unable to indulge it, and then I could consider how the devil I was to raise the blunt for a passage to England, for bar a few pesos and Yankee dollars my pockets were to let.
Trieste ain’t much of a town unless you’re in trade or banking or some other shady pursuit; Napoleon’s spymaster, Fouché, is buried there, and Richard the Lionheart did time in jail, but the only other excitements are the Tergesteum bazaar and the Corso, which is the main drag between the new and old cities, and you can stare at shop windows and drink coffee to bursting point.
At evening I mooched up to the Exchange plaza and into the casino club, where the smart set foregathered and I thought I might run across some sporting rich widow eager for carnal amusement, but I’d barely begun to survey the fashionable throng when I found myself face to face with the last man I’d have thought to meet, my old chum of Rugby and the Cider Cellars, Speedicut, whom I’d barely seen since the night the Minor Club in St James’s was raided, and we’d fled from the peelers and I’d found refuge in the carriage (and later the bed) of Lola Montez, bless her black heart. That had been all of twenty-five years before, but we knew each other on the instant, and there was great rejoicing, in a wary sort of way, for we’d never been your usual bosom pals, both being leery by nature.
So now I learned that he was in the diplomatic, which didn’t surprise me, for he was a born toad-eater with a great gift of genteel sponging and an aversion to work. He was full of woe because, as you’ll already have gathered, he’d brought this fortune in silver down from Vienna for shipment to Abyssinia, and lo! the appointed escort had fallen by the way and he was at his wits’ end to find another – couldn’t go himself, diplomatic duty bound him to Austrian soil, etc., etc… . It was at that point that it dawned on him that here was good old Harry, knight of the realm, hero of Crimea and the Mutiny, darling of Horse Guards, and just the chap who could be trusted with a vital mission in his country’s service. Why, I was heaven-sent and no mistake, dear old lad that I was!
There wasn’t a hope of touching him for a loan to see me home, for coming of nabob wealth he was as mean as Solomon Levi, but by pretending interest I was able to take a decent dinner off him at the Locanda Granda before telling him, fairly politely, for one hates to offend, what he could do with his cargo of dollars. He howled a bit, but didn’t press me, for he hadn’t really expected me to agree, and we parted on fair terms, he to visit the station to see that his minions were taking care of the doubloons, I to find a cheap bed for the night. And I hadn’t turned the corner before I saw something that had me skipping for the nearest alleyway with my undigested dinner in sudden turmoil. Not twenty yards away across the street, the Austrian lout who’d slapped my face and hurled his challenge at my feet was conferring with two uniformed constables and a bearded villain in a billycock hat with plain-clothes peeler written all over him. And there were two armed troopers in tow as well.
Even as I watched them disperse, the officer mounting the steps to the Locanda which I’d just left, the fearful truth was dawning – Tegethoff had left this swine behind to track me down and either hale me to justice as a ravisher of youth (squareheads have the most primitive views about this, as I’d discovered in Munich in ’47 when Bismarck’s bullies interrupted my dalliance with that blubbery slut Baroness Pechmann), or more likely cut me up in a sabre duel. Trieste had suddenly become too hot to hold me – so now you know why a couple of hours later I was in Speedicut’s room at the Victoria, clamouring to be allowed to remove his bullion for him, to Abyssinia or Timbuctoo or any damned place away from Austrian vengeance.
In my funk I even conjured up the nightmare thought that if Tegethoff got his hands on me and instituted inquiries, he might easily discover I was a Legion deserter and hand me over to the bloody Frogs, in which case I’d end my days as a slave in their penal battalion in the Sahara. A groundless fear, looking back, but I’m a great one for starting at shadows, as you may know. I didn’t mention this particular phantasm to Speed, but I did tell him all about Gertrude, ’cos that sort of thing was nuts to him, and he was lost in admiration of my behaviour both as amorist and fugitive.
‘How the blazes you always contrive to slide out o’ harm’s way beats me – aye, often as not with some charmer languishin’ after you! Well, ’twas dam’ lucky for you I was here this time!’
‘Lucky for both of us. So, now that you know all about my guilty past, d’you still feel like trusting me with your half-million? No fears that I might tool along the coast to Monte Carlo and blue the lot at the wheel?’
Put like that, with a wink and a grin, he didn’t care for it above half, but common sense told him I wasn’t going to levant,fn3 and he’d no choice, anyway. So a couple of hours after midnight, there I was at the Klutsch mole, watching Speed’s clerk settle up with the skipper of a neat little smack or yawl or whatever they call ’em, while its crew of Antonios chattered and loafed on the hatches – even in those days Trieste was more Italian than Austrian – and here came Speed in haste across the deserted plaza from the station, with a squad of Royal Marines from his Embassy wheeling the goods on a hand-cart: scores of little strong-boxes with the locks sealed with the royal arms.7 There were four of the Bootnecks8 under a sergeant with a jaw like a pike, all very trim with their Sniders slung; Speed’s dollars would be safe from sea pirates and land banditti with this lot on hand.
It may have been my jest about Monte or his natural fear at seeing his precious cargo pass out of his ken, but now that the die was cast Speed had a fit of the doubtfuls; earlier he’d been begging me to come to his rescue, but now he was chewing his lip as they swung the boxes down to the deck with the Eyeties jabbering and the sergeant giving ’em Billingsgate, while I took an easy cheroot at the rail, trying my Italian pidgin on the skipper.
‘This ain’t a joke, Flash!’ says Speed. ‘It’s bloody serious! You’re carryin’ my career along with those dollars – my good name, dammit!’ As if he had one. ‘Jesus, if anything should go wrong! You will take care, old chap, won’t you? I mean, you’ll do nothin’ wild … you know, like … like …’ He broke off, not caring to say ‘like buggering