Royal Flash

It came like the answer to a pagan’s prayer, along with a dun from some tailor or other, an anti-popish tract, a demand for my club subscription, and an invitation to buy railway shares – all the usual trash. Why I should remember the others, I don’t know. I must have a perverse memory, for the contents of the big white envelope should have been enough to drive them out of my head.

It was a fine, imposing cover – best quality paper, with a coat-of-arms on the back, which I have before me now. There was a shield, quartered red, blue, blue, and white, and in the quarters were a sword, a crowned lion, what looked like a fat whale, and a pink rose. Plainly it was either from someone of tremendous rank or the manufacturers of a new brand of treacle.19

Inside there was a letter, and stamped at the top in flowery letters, surrounded by foliage full of pink-bottomed cupids, were the words, ‘Gräfin de Landsfeld’. And who the deuce, I wondered, might she be, and what did she want with me.

The letter I reproduce exactly as it now lies in my hand, very worn and creased after sixty years, but still perfectly legible. It is, I think, quite the most remarkable communication I have ever received – even including the letter of thanks I got from Jefferson Davis and the reprieve I was given in Mexico. It said:

Most Honoured Sir,

I write to you on instruction of Her Grace, the Countess de Landsfeld, of whom you had the honour to be acquainted in Londres some years ago. Her Grace commands me to inform you that she holds the warmest recollection of your friendship, and wishes to convey her strongest greetings on this occasion.

I made nothing of this. While I couldn’t have recited the names of all the women I had known, I was pretty clear that there weren’t any foreign countesses that had slipped my mind. It went on:

Sir, while Her Grace doubts not that your duties are of the most important and exacting nature, she trusts that you will have opportunity to consider the matter which, on her command, I am now to lay before you. She is confident that the ties of your former friendship, no less than the chivalrous nature of which she has such pleasing memory, will prevail upon you to assist her in a matter of the most extreme delicate.

Now he’s certainly mad, this fellow, thinks I, or else he’s got the wrong chap. I don’t suppose there are three women in the world who ever thought me chivalrous, even on short acquaintance.

Her Grace therefore directs me to request that you will, with all speed after receiving this letter, make haste to present yourself to her in München, and there receive, from her own lips, particulars of the service which it is her dearest wish you will be obliged to render to her. She hastens to assure you that it will be of no least expense or hardship to you, but is of such particular nature that she feels that you, of all her many dear friends, are most suitable to its performing. She believes that such is the warmth of your heart that you will at once agree with her, and that the recollection of her friendship will bring you at once as an English gentleman is fitting.

Honoured Sir, in confidence that you will wish to assist Her Grace, I advise you that you should call on William Greig & Sons, attorneys, at their office in Wine Office Court, Londres, to receive instruction for your journey. They will pay £500 in gold for your travelling, etc. Further payments will be received as necessary.

Sir, Her Grace commands me to conclude with the assurance of her deepest friendship, and her anticipation of the satisfaction of seeing you once again.

Accept, dear Sir, etc.,

R. Lauengram,

Chamberlain.

My first thought was that it was a joke, perpetrated by someone not quite right in the head. It made no sense; I had no idea who the Gräfin de Landsfeld might be, or where ‘München’ was. But going over it again several times, it occurred to me that if it had been a fake, whoever had written it would have made his English a good deal worse than it was, and taken care not to write several of the sentences without howlers.

But if it was genuine, what the devil did it mean? What was the service (without expense or hardship, mark you) for which some foreign titled female was willing to slap £500 into my palm – and that only a first instalment, by the looks of it?

I sat staring at the thing for a good twenty minutes, and the more I studied it the less I liked it. If I’ve learned one thing in this wicked life, it is that no one, however rich, lays out cash for nothing, and the more they spend the rummer the business is likely to be. Someone, I decided, wanted old Flashy pretty badly, but I couldn’t for the life of me think why. I had no qualification that I knew of that suited me for a matter of the most ‘extreme delicate’: all I was good at was foreign languages and riding. And it couldn’t be some desperate risk in which my supposed heroism would be valuable – they’d as good as said so. No, it beat me altogether.

I have always kept by me as many books and pamphlets on foreign tongues as I can collect, this being my occasional hobby, and since I guessed that the writer of the letter was pretty obviously German I turned up an index and discovered that ‘München’ was Munich, in Bavaria. I certainly knew no one there at all, let alone a Gräfin, or Countess; for that matter I hardly knew any Germans, had never been in Germany, and had no acquaintance with the language beyond a few idle hours with a grammar some years before.

However, there was an obvious way of solving the mystery, so I took myself off to Wine Office Court and looked up William Greig & Sons. I half expected they would send me about my business, but no; there was as much bowing and scraping and ‘Pray to step this way, sir’ as if I had been a royal duke, which deepened my mystification. A young Mr Greig smoothed me into a chair in his office; he was an oily, rather sporty-looking bargee with a very smart blue cutaway and a large lick of black hair – not at all the City lawyer type. When I presented my letter and demanded to know what it was all about, he gave me a knowing grin.

‘Why, all in order, my dear sir,’ says he. ‘A draft for £500 to be issued to you, on receipt, with proof of identity – well, we need not fret on that score, hey? Captain Flashman is well enough known, I think, ha-ha. We all remember your famous exploits in China—’

‘Afghanistan,’ says I.

‘To be sure it was. The draft negotiable with the Bank of England. Yes, all in perfect order, sir.’

‘But who the devil is she?’

‘Who is who, my dear sir?’

‘This Gräfin what’s-her-name – Landsfeld.’

His smile vanished in bewilderment.

‘I don’t follow,’ says he, scratching a black whisker. ‘You cannot mean that you don’t have the lady’s acquaintance? Why, her man writes to you here …’

‘I’ve never heard of her,’ says I, ‘to my knowledge.’

‘Well,’ says he, giving me an odd look. ‘This is dam—most odd, you know. My dear sir, are you sure? Quite apart from this letter, which seems to suggest a most, ah … cordial regard, well, I had not thought there was a man in England who had not heard of the beauteous Countess of Landsfeld.’

‘Well, you’re looking at one now,’ says I.

‘I can’t believe it,’ cries he. ‘What, never heard of the Queen of Hearts? La Belle Espagnole? The monarch, in all but name, of the Kingdom of Bavaria? My dear sir, all the world knows Donna Maria de – what is it again?’ and he rummaged among some papers – ‘aye, here it is “Donna Maria de Dolores de los Montez, Countess of Landsfeld”. Come, come, sir, surely now …’

At first the name meant nothing, and then it broke on me.

‘De los Montez? You don’t mean Lola Montez?’

‘But who else, sir? The close friend – indeed, some say more than friend – of King Ludwig. Why, the press is never without some fresh sensation about her, some new scandal …’ and he went on, chattering and smirking, but I never heeded him. My head was in a spin. Lola Montez, my Rosanna – a Countess, a monarch in all but name, a royal mistress by the sound of it. And she was writing to me, offering me hard cash – plainly I needed more information.

‘Forgive me, sir,’ says I, breaking in on his raptures. ‘The title misled me, for I’d never heard it before. When I knew Lola Montez she was plain Mrs James.’

‘Oh, dear me, my dear sir,’ says he, very whimsical. ‘Those days are far behind us now! Our firm, in fact, represented a Mrs James some years ago, but we never talk of her! Oh, no, I daresay not! But the Countess of Landsfeld is another matter – a lady of quite a different colour, ha-ha!’

‘When did she come by the title?’

‘Why, some months ago. How you should not …’

‘I’ve been abroad,’ says I. ‘Until this week I hadn’t seen an English newspaper in almost a year. I’ve heard of Lola Montez’s doings, of course, any time over the past three years, but nothing of this.’

‘Oh, and such doings, hey?’ says he, beaming lewdly. ‘Well, my dear sir, your friend at court – ha-ha – is a very great lady indeed. She has the kingdom under her thumb, makes and breaks ministers, dictates policies – and sets all Europe by the ears, upon my word! Some of the stories – why, there is an article in one of the sheets calling her “The Modern Messalina”’ – he dropped his voice and pushed his greasy face towards me – ‘and describing her picked bodyguard of splendid young men – what, sir, hey? She goes abroad with a guard of cuirassiers riding behind her coach, sets her dogs on whoever dares to cross her path – why, there was some unfortunate who didn’t doff his cap, sir – flogged almost to death! True, sir. And none dare say her nay. The King dotes on her, his courtiers and ministers hate her but go in fear and trembling, the students worship her. For luxury and extravagance there has been nothing like her since La Pompadour, they say. Why, sir, she is the nine-day wonder!’

‘Well, well,’ says I. ‘Little Mrs James.’

‘Pray, sir!’ He pretended distress. ‘Not that name, I beg you. It is the Countess of Landsfeld who is your friend, if I may be so bold as to remind you.’

‘Aye, so it is,’ says I. ‘Will you tell me what she wants of me, then?’

‘My dear sir,’ says he, smirking. ‘A matter of “the most delicate”, is it not? What that may be – surely you are in a better position than I to say, eh? Ha-ha. But you will be going to Bavaria, I take it, to hear the particulars “from her own lips”?’

That was what I was asking myself. It was unbelievable, of course: Lola a queen, to all intents – that was wild enough. But Lola seeking my help – when our last encounter had been distinguished by the screaming of abuse and the crashing of chamber pots – to say nothing of the furore at the theatre when she had seen me among her betrayers … well, I know women are fickle, but I doubted if she remembered me with any affection. And yet the letter was practically fawning, and she must have dictated the sense of it, if not the words. It might be she had decided to let bygones be bygones – she was a generous creature in her way, as so many whores are. But why? What could she want me for – all she knew of me was my prowess in bed. Did the maîtresse en titre want to instal me as her lover? My mind, which is at its liveliest in amorous imagination, opened on a riotous vision of Flashy, Pride of the Hareem … but no. I have my share of conceit, but I could not believe that with the pick of all the young stallions of a palace guard, she was yearning for my bonny black whiskers.

And yet here was a lawyer, authorised on her behalf, ready to advance me £500 to go to Munich – ten times more than was necessary for the journey. It made no sort of sense – unless she was in love with me. But that was out of court; I’d been a good enough mount for a week or so, no doubt, but there had been nothing deeper than that, I was certain. What service, then, could I perform that was so obviously of importance?

I have a nose for risk; the uneasy feeling that had come over me on first reading her letter was returning. If I had any sense, I knew, I would bid the greasy Mr Greig good day and tell him to tear his draft up. But even the biggest coward doesn’t run until some hint of danger appears, and there was none here at all – just my uneasy instinct. Against which there was the prospect of getting away from my damned relations – oh, God, and the horrors of accompanying the Morrisons into Society – and the certainty of an immediate tidy sum, with more to follow, and sheer curiosity, too. If I did go to Bavaria, and the signs were less pleasant than appeared at present – well, I could cut stick if I wanted. And the thought of renewing acquaintance with Lola – a ‘warm’ and ‘friendly’ Lola – tickled my darker fancies: from Greig’s reports, even if they were only half true, it sounded as though there was plenty of sport at the Court of Good King Ludwig. Palace orgies of Roman proportions suggested themselves, with old Flashy waited on like a Sultan, and Lola mooning over me while slaves plied me with pearls dissolved in wine, and black eunuchs stood by armed with enormous gold-mounted hair-brushes. And while cold reason told me there was a catch in it somewhere – well, I couldn’t see the catch, yet. Time enough when I did.

‘Mr Greig,’ says I, ‘where can I cash this draft?’

Getting away from London was no great bother. Elspeth pouted a little, but when I had given her a glimpse – a most fleeting one – of Lauengram’s signature and of the letter’s cover, and used expressions like ‘special military detachment to Bavaria’ and ‘foreign court service’, she was quite happily resigned. The idea that I would be moving in high places appealed to her vacant mind; she felt vaguely honoured by the association.

The Morrisons didn’t half like it, of course, and the old curmudgeon flew off about godless gallivanting, and likened me to Cartaphilus, who it seemed had left a shirt and breeches in every town in the ancient world. I was haunted by a demon, he said, who would never let me rest, and it was an evil day that he had let his daughter mate with a footloose scoundrel who had no sense of a husband’s responsibilities.

‘Since that’s the case,’ says I, ‘the farther away from her I am, the better you should be pleased.’

He was aghast at such cynicism, but I think the notion cheered him up for all that. He speculated a little on the bad end that I would certainly come to, called me a generation of vipers, and left me to my packing.

Not that there was much of that. Campaigning teaches you to travel light, and a couple of valises did my turn. I took my old Cherrypicker uniform – the smartest turn-out any soldier ever had anywhere – because I felt it would be useful to cut a dash, but for the rest I stuck to necessaries. Among these, after some deliberation, I included the duelling pistols that a gunsmith had presented to me after the Bernier affair. They were beautiful weapons, accurate enough for the most fastidious marksman, and in those days when revolving pistols were still crude experimental toys, the last word in hand guns.

But I pondered about taking them. The truth was, I didn’t want to believe that I might need them. When you are young and raw and on the brink of adventure, you set great store by having your side-arms just right, because you are full of romantic notions of how you will use them. Even I felt a thrill when I first handled a sabre at practice with the 11th Light Dragoons, and imagined myself pinking and mowing down hordes of ferocious but obligingly futile enemies. But when you’ve seen a sabre cut to the bone, and limbs mangled by bullets, you come out of your daydream pretty sharp. I knew, as I hesitated with those pistols in my hands, that if I took them I should be admitting the possibility of my own sudden death or maiming in whatever lay ahead. This was, you see, another stage in my development as a poltroon. But I’d certainly feel happier with ’em, uncomfortable reminders though they were, so in they went. And while I was at it, I packed along a neat little seaman’s knife. It isn’t an Englishman’s weapon, of course, but it’s devilish handy sometimes, for all sorts of purposes. And experience has taught me that, as with all weapons, while you may not often need it, when you do you need it badly.

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