Flashman and the Dragon

He greeted (I won’t say welcomed) me with brisk formality, stiff and upright behind his official desk, not a hair out of place on the sleek dark head. Energy was in every line of him, from the sharp prominent nose to the firm capable hands setting his papers just so; he was all business at once, in a clear, hard voice – and suddenly, convincing him didn’t seem quite so easy.

‘This is a singular business, Sir Harry! What’s behind it?’

‘Not much,’ says I, hoping I was right. Clever and easy, I don’t mind – I’m that way myself – but clever and brusque unsettles me. I handed him the ‘requested and required’ note Palmerston had given me when I went to India – the usual secret passport, but pretty faded now. ‘You had no message from me?’

‘I did not know you were in China, until yesterday.’ He glanced up sharply from the passport. ‘This is more than three years old.’

‘When I left England. What I’ve been doing since will have to stay under the rose, I’m afraid—’

He gave a little barking laugh. ‘Not altogether, I fancy,’ says he, with what he probably imagined was a smile. ‘Your knighthood and Victoria Cross are hardly state secrets.’

‘I meant since then – this past year. It has nothing to do with this affair, anyway – that’s a tale that’s soon told.’ I breathed an inward prayer, meeting the steady grey eyes in that lean lawyer face. ‘I’m due home on the Princess Charlotte, sailing on the eleventh—’

‘In three days? Grant is due on the thirteenth. I beg your pardon, pray continue.’

‘Aye, well, two nights ago I was over in Macao, looking up an old chum from Borneo, when I was with Brooke.’ No harm in dropping in that glorious acquaintance, I thought. ‘I needn’t mention his name, it’s of no importance, but he’s a downy bird, Chinese, with an eye in every bush – an old White Lily Society man, you know the sort …’

‘His name might be valuable,’ says Parkes, and his hand went ever so casually to a vase of flowers on his desk; he lifted it with three fingers round the stem, and set it down again. Clever bastard.

‘Exactly,’ says I, and ran my thumb over three fingertips,5 just to show him. ‘Well, we talked shop, and by way of gossip he let fall that a shipment of arms was going upriver to the Taipings – Shih-ta-kai’s people, he thought. Which was nothing to me – until he mentioned that they were British bought-and-paid-for, though he didn’t know who. Not strictly my indaba, you may say, but it struck me that if it got about that British arms were going to the Long-Haired Devils, it might cause us some embarrassment with Pekin, you know?’

I looked for a nod, but he just sat there with his fingers laced on the blotter before him. I’d a feeling that if you’d fired a gun in his ear he wouldn’t have taken his eyes from mine.

‘So I thought I should have a look. Nothing official to be done on Portuguese territory, of course, but my friend knew where the lorchas were preparing to weigh – and there they were, sure enough, ostensibly loaded with opium, if you please. On the spur of the moment I approached the skipper—’

‘That would be Ward.’

It was like a kick in the throat. I couldn’t help staring, and had to improvise swiftly to explain my obvious astonishment.

‘Ward, you say? He told me his name was Foster.’ The sweat was cold on my spine. ‘You knew … about him, and the shipment?’

‘Only his name. My agents in Hong Kong and Macao send notice of all opium shipments, vessels, owners, and skippers.’ He lifted a list from his desk. ‘Lorchas Ruth and Naomi, owned by Yang Fang and Co., Shanghai, commander F. T. Ward. No suggestion, of course, that he carried anything but opium.’ He laid it down, and waited.

‘Well, on impulse, I asked him for a lift to Canton.’ By gum, he’d shaken me for a second, but if that was the extent of his knowledge I was still safe – but was it? This was a foxy one – and on instinct I did the riskiest thing a liar can do: I decided to change my story. I’d been about to tell him I’d stowed away, full of duty and holy zeal, and come thundering out at the critical moment, to prevent the rascals escaping when our sloop hove in sight. Suddenly I knew it wouldn’t do – not with this cold clam. I’ve been lying all my life, and I know: when in doubt, get as close to the truth as you can, and hang on like grim death.

‘I asked him for a lift to Canton – and if you ask what was in my mind, I can’t tell you. I knew it was my duty to stop those guns – and placed as I was, without authority in a foreign port, that meant staying with ’em, somehow, and taking whatever chance offered.’

‘You might,’ he interrupted, ‘have informed the Portuguese.’

‘I might, but I didn’t – and I doubt if you would, either.’ I gave him just a touch of the Colonel, there. ‘Anyway, he refused me, mighty curt. I offered passage money, but he wouldn’t budge – which settled it for me, for any honest trader would have agreed. I was going off, wondering what to do next, when he suddenly called me back, and asked did I know the river, and did I speak Chinese? I said I did, he chewed it over, and then offered to take me if I’d act as interpreter on the voyage. I had only a moment aside to tell my Chinese friend to get word to you, or Hong Kong, of what was forward. But you’ve had no word from him?’

‘None, Sir Harry,’ and not a flicker of expression – I could have brained the man. There’s nothing more discouraging than lying to a poker face, when what you need is gasps and whistles and cries of ‘I’ll be damned!’ and ‘What happened then?’ to whet your prevarications.

‘Aye, well, I can’t say I’m surprised. He’ll talk to a pal, but he’s leery of official circles, blast him. Well, we sailed, and what I needed, of course, was a squint at the cargo. But they never left me alone for a moment. Foster –’ I changed the name just in time ‘– and the Chinks were always on hand, so I must bide my time. I stayed awake the first night, but no chance offered; the second night, I’m afraid, I just caulked out.’ A shrug, and rueful Flashy smile, followed by an eager glint in the eye. ‘But then I had a splendid stroke of luck. Just before dawn, a native girl of the crew – a cook or some such thing, I suppose – woke me, begging for a pipe of opium! Would you believe it? There was no one about – and here was a heaven-sent chance to open a chest, with a ready explanation if I were detected. So I did – and there were the Sharps!’

God, it sounded lame – especially the true parts, which I thought was damned hard. I waited; if the man were human, he must say something. He did.

‘You must have formed some plan by this time – what did you hope to do, alone, against so many?’ He sounded impatient – and downright curious.

‘For the life of me, Mr Parkes, I wasn’t sure.’ I grinned him straight in the eye, bluff, honest Harry. ‘Tackle the crew with my revolver? Try to scuttle her? I don’t know, sir. By the grace of God the sloop hove in sight just then … and I did tackle ’em! And the rest you know.’

He sat for a moment, and I braced myself for the incredulous questions, the outright disbelief – and then he gave his sudden bark of a laugh, and struck the bell at his elbow.

‘Some coffee, Sir Harry? I’m sure you deserve it. That, sir,’ says he, shaking his head, ‘is the most damned unlikely tale I ever heard – and what I’d say to it if I didn’t know it for true, I cannot imagine! Well, it is unlikely, you’ll own?’ He chuckled again, and it seemed to me an indignant frown was in order, so I gave one, but it was wasted since he was talking to the bearer with the coffee-tray. Relief and bewilderment filled me; he’d swallowed it … he knew it was true …? What the deuce …?

‘Speaking in my official capacity, I have to say that your actions were entirely irregular,’ says he, handing me a cup, ‘and might have had serious results – for yourself. You risked your life, you know – and your honour.’ He looked hard at me. ‘A senior officer, found aboard an arms-smuggler, without authority? Even with your distinguished name … well …’ He stirred his own cup, and then smiled – and, d’ye know, I realised he was just twenty-nine, and not the fifty-odd he’d sounded. ‘Between ourselves, it was a damned cool bit of work, and I’m obliged to you. But for you, they might have given us the slip; they’d certainly have made some sort of fight of it. My congratulations, sir. I beg your pardon – more sugar?’

Well, this was Sunday in Brighton all of a sudden, wasn’t it, though? I’d hoped for acceptance, with or without the doubtful glances that have followed me round the world for eighty erratic years – but hardly for this. It didn’t make sense, even – for it was a damned unlikely tale, as he’d said.

‘Saving my poor veracity,’ says I, ‘you say you know it’s true?’ Flashy ain’t just bluff and manly, you see – he’s sharp, too, and I was playing my character. ‘May I know how?’

‘I’d not deny myself the pleasure of enlightening you,’ says he briskly. ‘We have known for some time that arms shipments, provided by a syndicate of British and American sympathisers, have been going up the Pearl to the Taipings – Shih-ta-kai, as your Chinese friend said. Who these sympathisers are, we don’t know –’ that was good news, too, ‘since the work was entirely overseen by a most skilful Chinese, a former pirate, who brought the arms to Macao, shipped them up the Pearl in lorchas, and passed them to the Taipings … where? To be brief, we smoked the pirate out a week ago, and he met with an accident.’ He set down his cup. ‘That forced the syndicate’s hand – they needed a new man, and they chose Ward, heaven knows why, since he knew nothing of the Pearl, or of China. But he’s a good seaman, they say, and from what we know, devoted to the Taiping cause. The idiot. And at the last moment, when he must have been wondering how the deuce he was going to find his way upriver, without a word of Chinese in his head, and rendezvous with the Taipings, you dropped into his lap. We may guess,’ says he, ‘what your fate must have been if he had reached his destination. But I’m sure you weighed that.’

I gave an offhand shrug, and when we’d picked the shattered remnants of my cup from the floor, he pinged his bell again. ‘Fortunately, we now had Mr Ward and his convoy under observation at Macao, and our sloops were waiting for him beyond the Second Bar. Come in!’ cries he, and the door opened to admit the prettiest little Chinese girl, in a flowered robe and high block shoes; a Manchoo, by her coiled hair and unbound feet. She smiled and bobbed to Parkes, and glanced sidelong in my direction.

‘An-yat-heh!’ snaps Parkes, and she turned and bobbed at me. I could only nod back, mystified – and then my heart lurched. She was washed and dressed and painted up like a Mandarin’s daughter, but there was no mistaking. She was the Hong Kong boat girl.

‘Thank you, An-yat-heh!’ says Parkes, and she bobbed again, shot me another slantendicular look, and pitti-pittied out.

‘An-yat-heh,’ says Parkes drily, ‘is a most capable and, I fear, most immoral young woman. She is also the best spy on the Pearl River. For the past week she has been keeping close watch on Frederick Townsend Ward. She saw his lorchas sail from Macao, and followed in a sampan manned by other of our agents. She would have contrived to get aboard the lorchas,’ he went on impassively, ‘even if you had not been there, for it was her task to see where the cargo was landed, in the event that Ward had eluded our patrols. She was surprised to learn, from eavesdropping on the crew, that you were apparently unaware of the true nature of the cargo – for of course the smugglers were not to know that you already had their secret, and spoke of you as a dupe, to be disposed of when you had served your purpose. She was pleased, she tells me, to discover that you were not one of the smugglers; in some ways she is a naive, affectionate girl, and seems to have formed an attachment to you.’

Whether this was accompanied by a leer, a frown, or nothing at all, I can’t say – knowing Parkes, probably the last. I was in too much mental turmoil to notice – by God, the luck! For it fitted – my tale to Parkes corroborated exactly what she must have told him of the voyage. But if I’d given him the stowaway yarn … it didn’t bear thinking about. I put it by, and listened to the brisk, impersonal voice.

‘She is, as I said, a resourceful young woman. When the sloop was sighted, she determined to draw your attention to the cargo, in the hope that when you saw how you had been deceived, you might cause some disturbance, and hinder their escape – as indeed you did. Having no English but pigeon, and doubting her ability to make you understand Cantonese, she hit on the novel plan of persuading you to open a chest by pleading with you for opium.’

I sat quiet for a moment – and if you want to know what I was thinking, it wasn’t what an almighty narrow shave I’d had, or of prayers of thanksgiving, or anything of that sort. No, I was asking myself when, if ever, I’d been so confoundedly fooled by two different women in the space of four days. Mrs Phoebe Carpenter and An-yat-heh, bless ’em. White or yellow, they were a hazardous breed in China, that was plain. Parkes, with the satisfied air of a rooster who has done crowing, was regarding me expectantly.

‘Well, she’s a brave girl,’ says I. ‘Smart, too. And you, sir, are to be congratulated on the efficiency of your secret service.’

‘Oh, we get about,’ says he.

‘I’m sorry that rascal Foster – Ward, did you say? – got clear away.’ I scowled, Flashy-like. ‘I’ve a score to settle with that one.’

‘Not in China, Sir Harry, if you please.’ He was all commissioner again. ‘He served you a scurvy trick, no doubt, but the less that is heard of this business the better. I shall require your word on that,’ and he gave me his stiff-collar look. ‘It has all been quite unofficial, you see. No British law has been broken. The gun-running offence took place within the Imperial Chinese Government’s jurisdiction; we had no legal right to detain or hinder Ward and his fellows. But,’ he gave another of his sour smiles, ‘we do have the gunboats. And since Her Majesty’s Government is strictly neutral as between the Imperials and the Taipings, it is certainly not in our interest that British citizens should be arming the rebels. A thought which prompted your own action, you remember. No.’ He squared off his pencils in columns of threes. ‘We must consider the incident happily – and in your case fortunately – concluded.’

That, of course, was the main thing. I was clear, by the grace of God and dear little An-yat-heh. There would be no inconvenient inquiries which might have led back to the conniving Mrs Carpenter – who, it occurred to me, might well be blackmailed to bed before I sailed for home. As for Ward, I’d not have gone near the dangerous brute; I gave Parkes my word with feigned reluctance.

‘He may not be such a rascal, you know.’ Parkes frowned, as though it irritated him to admit it. ‘He has courage, and his devotion to the rebel cause, if misguided, may well be sincere. There are times when I would be glad to be rid of the Manchoos myself. But that is not our concern.’ He sniffed. ‘For the moment.’

Not my concern at any time, old lad, thinks I. Now that I was apparently out from under, I was in a fret to get away from this omniscient satrap while the going was good. So I shuffled, and began to thank him, bluff and manly, and hope that I hadn’t been too great a nuisance, eh, to him and his gang of busybodies – when he stopped me with a knowing look, and pulled a Portent of Doom (a blue diplomatic packet, to you) from his desk.

‘There is another matter, Sir Harry – one which I fancy you will consider an amend for your recent adventure.’ Eyeing that packet, I suddenly doubted it. ‘You recall that I said I was unaware of your presence in China, until yesterday? Listen, if you please.’ He took a sheet from the packet. ‘Yes, here we are … “it is thought that Colonel Flashman may be en route through China. In that event, you are to require him to proceed forthwith to Shanghai, and there place himself at the disposal of H.M. Minister and Superintendent of Trade.”’

I’d known that packet was damned bad news as soon as I saw it. What the hell did they want me for – and on the eve of my sailing for Home, too? Whatever it was, by God, they weren’t coming between me and my well-earned idleness! I’d send in my papers first, I’d … Parkes was speaking, with that sharp, smug smile on his infernal face.

‘I was at a loss to know how to comply, when the sloop brought you here so unexpectedly opportune. Indeed, we should thank Mr Ward – for had you remained in Hong Kong it is odds that you would have sailed for England before I had time to inquire for you there. Our Chinese despatches can be infernally slow …’

In other words, if that bitch Carpenter hadn’t hocussed me up the Pearl with her lies, I’d have been safe and away. And now the Army had me again. Well, we’d see about that – but for the moment I must choke back my fury until I knew what was what.

‘How extraordinary!’ says I. ‘Well, what a fortunate chance! What can it mean?’

‘Why, they want you for the Pekin business to be sure!’ cries the bloody know-all. ‘The despatch is confidential, of course, but I think I may be forgiven if I tell you that Lord Elgin – whose Embassy to China will be made public shortly – has asked that you be attached to the intelligence staff. I think, too,’ and he was positively jocular, rot his boots, ‘that we may see the hand of Lord Palmerston here. My dear Sir Harry, allow me to congratulate you.’

At the beginning of this memoir I gave you my first Law of Economics; if I have one for Adversity it is that once your essentials are properly trapped in the mangle there’s nothing for it but to holler with a good grace and wait until they roll you out again. Not that hollering does any good, but it relieves the feelings, and mine were in sore need of release after my interview with Parkes. I vented them in a two-day spree in Canton, taking out my evil temper on tarts and underlings, and sleeping off the effects on the mail-boat down to Hong Kong.

For there was nothing to be done, you see. After three years of truly dreadful service, in which I’d been half-killed, starved, hunted, stretched on a rack, almost eaten by crocodiles, assaulted with shot and sabre, part-strangled by Thugs, and damned near blown from a cannon (oh, and won glorious laurels, for what they were worth), I’d been on the very point of escaping to all that made life worth living – Elspeth, with her superb charms and splendid fortune; ease, comfort, admiration, and debauchery – and through my own folly I’d thrown it away. It was too bad; I ain’t a religious man, but if I had been I swear I’d have turned atheist. But there it was, so I must take stock and consider.

There was no question of sending in my papers and going home, although it had passed through my mind. My future content rested too much on the enjoyment of my heroic reputation, which would have been dimmed, just a trifle, if I’d been seen to be shirking my duty. A lesser man could have done it, and naught said, but not Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., K.B.; people would have talked, the Queen would have been astonished, Palmerston would have damned my eyes – and done me dirt, too. And when all was said, it wasn’t liable to be much of a campaign; two or three months, perhaps, in which I’d be well clear of any danger that was going, boozing on the staff, frowning at maps, looking tired and interesting, and moving paper about with my hair becomingly ruffled – oh, I knew my intelligence work, never fear.

So I rolled down to Hong Kong, savouring the revenge I would take on La Belle Phoebe – and what d’you think? She and the gun-running Josiah had cleared out to Singapore, ostensibly to join some missionary society at short notice. A likely tale; give ’em three months and they’d be running the Tongs. But their sudden departure was hardly noticed in a new sensation – Sir Hope Grant had arrived with the advance guard of the fleet and army which was to go up-country, defend Old England’s rights and honour, and teach the Chinks to sing ‘Rule, Britannia’. From Pittan’s Wharf you could see the little white lines of tents where the camp was being laid out on Kowloong, so I decided to tool over and let them see how dam’ lucky they were going to be in their intelligence department.

There were advance parties from all the regiments; the first thing I saw was Sikh riders in the red puggarees of Fane’s Horse and the blue of Probyn’s, tent-pegging on the beach, with white troopers cheering ’em on – and to my astonishment they were Dragoon Guards. God help you if it rains, my lads, thinks I, for with twenty-one stone in each saddle you’ll be up to your bellies in the paddy-mud in no time. It was first-rate mixed cavalry for all that; I watched a bearded, grey-coated sowar, eyes glaring, whip out a peg and wheel away to yells and cheering, and was glad I wasn’t a Manchoo Tartar.

It was the infantry coats I wanted to see, though, for (and I’m a horse-soldier as says it) I know what matters. When the guns haven’t come up, and your cavalry’s checked by close country or tutti-putti, and you’re waiting in the hot, dusty hush for the faint rumble of impi or harka over the skyline and know they’re twenty to your one – well, that’s when you realise that it all hangs on that double line of yokels and town scruff with their fifty rounds a man and an Enfield bayonet. Kitchener himself may have placed ’em just so, with D’Israeli’s sanction, The Times’ blessing, and the Queen waving ’em goodbye – but now it’s their grip on the stock, and their eye at the backsight, and if they break, you’re done. Haven’t I stood shivering behind ’em often enough, wishing I could steal a horse from somewhere? Aye, and if I’m still here it’s because they seldom broke in my time.

So it was with some satisfaction that I noted facings and markers – the old 60th Royal Americans, the Buffs, a fatigue party of the 44th – I felt a cold shudder at the memory of the bloody snow by Gandamack, the starved handful of survivors, and Soutar with the Colours of this same 44th wrapped round his waist as the Ghazis closed in for the kill. Well, we’d have a few Ghazis on our side this time; there were whiskered Pathans chattering round a camp-kettle, so I took a chapatti and a handful of chillis, gave the time of day to a naik with the Sobraon medal, and passed on, drawn by the distant pig-squeal of pipes which always makes my dear wife burst into tears – ah, we’ve our own home-grown savages in tow, have we, thinks I. But they weren’t Highlanders, just the Royals.

Theirs wasn’t the only music on Kowloong, neither. I loafed up to the big tent with the flag, whence came the most hideous, droning, booming din; there was a staff-walloper climbing aboard his Waler, a couple of Maharatta sentries on the fly, and a slim young fellow with a fair moustache sitting on a camp-stool, sketching. I came up on his blind side, just for devilment, and he started round angrily.

‘How often have I told you never to—’ he was beginning, and then his good eye opened wide in amazement. ‘Flashman! My dear fellow! Wherever did you spring from?’

‘Here and there, Joe,’ says I. ‘The Mad Musician is within?’

‘What? Here, I say! You can’t go in just now, you know – he’s composing!’

‘Decomposing, by the sound of it,’ says I, and stuck my head in at the fly. Sure enough, there was the lean, gaunt figure, in its shirt-sleeves, sawing away like a thing demented at a great bull fiddle, glaring at a sheet of music which he was marking between scrapes, and tugging at his bristling grey whiskers, to stimulate the muse, no doubt. I flipped a coin into a glass on the table.

‘Move on to the next street, my good man, will you?’ says I. ‘You’re disturbing the peace.’

Being a sensitive artist – and a major-general – he should have gone up three feet and come down spluttering. But this one had no nerves to begin with, and more mastery of himself than a Yogi. He didn’t so much as twitch – for a second I wondered if he hadn’t heard me – and then he played another chord, jotted it on his manuscript, and spoke without turning his head.