Flashman on the March

She ain’t going to get the chance to will it, you dear old optimist, thinks I, ’cos supposing I get the length of seeing and persuading her, the last thing I’ll ask for is command of her rabble of bloodthirsty niggers. But of course I slapped my knee and stiffened the sinews some more, and Speedy swore that he envied me the trip. God help him, I’ve no doubt he meant it.

‘With Theodore on the road from Debra Tabor to Magdala,’ says he, moving to the map, ‘it’s my guess that Masteeat will be on the move herself, court, council, army and all, keeping an eye on his line of march. Her country lies south of Magdala, but unless I’m mistaken she’ll have come west, somewhere along the Nile27 – see, there – between the Bechelo and Lake Tana.’

‘How far are we from the Nile?’ asks Napier.

‘About three hundred miles, sir, but Sir Harry may have to skirt about. Still, riding steady and with not too many troubles en route, he should be there in a fortnight or thereabouts.’

‘This is February the twenty-fifth,’ muses Napier, ‘and God willing I shall have the army before Magdala by the end of March. You have four weeks, Sir Harry, in which to find Queen Masteeat, exercise your persuasive arts …’ he said it with a dead straight face ‘… and bring her army to encircle Theodore.’ He pulled out a battered half-hunter. ‘It will be full dark soon, and the less time you lose, the better. We took the liberty,’ he went on calmly, ‘of counting on your help, and behind the screen yonder you will find the dress and accoutrements appropriate to Khasim Tamwar, diplomat and horse-coper of Hyderabad. You have every confidence in the guide, Speedy?’

‘Absolute, sir. Uliba-Wark knows the Amhara country like a book, and just how to seek out Queen Masteeat. You couldn’t wish for a better jancada,fn3 Sir Harry, believe me.’

‘Excellent,’ says Napier. ‘I suggest we make them known to each other without delay.’ And as Speedy went out: ‘Meanwhile, Sir Harry, perhaps while you change you can reflect on any questions or observations you wish to put to me. Now, Moore, tomorrow’s orders …’

The suddenness of it struck me dumb. I’d been slapped in the face before with commissions there was no avoiding, but always there had been a breathing space, of hours at least, in which to digest the thing, gather my scattered wits, fight down my dinner, and wonder how best to shirk my duty. But here, after the barest instruction, this cool old bastard was launching me to damnation with barely time to change my shirt – which was what I found myself doing a moment later in the screened corner of the tent, like a man in a nightmare, automatically donning the native clobber because there was nothing else for it, the pyjamys and tunic and doeskin boots (which fitted, for a wonder), winding the waist-sash and slinging the cloak, vowing I’d be damned if I’d wear a puggaree, they could find me a hood or Arabi kafilyeh … and now there was bustle beyond the screen, Napier had given over dictating and was demanding of Speedy if they’d been seen, and Speedy was reassuring him and turning to me with a triumphant grin as I emerged in my fancy dress … and stopped dead in my tracks.

‘Your jancada, Sir Harry!’ cries he. ‘Guide, philosopher, and friend, what? Uliba-Wark – Sir Harry Flashman!’

After the shocks of the past hour I should have been ready for anything, but this was the sharpest yet, and I realised from Speedy’s eager look, and Napier’s watchful eye, that they’d known it would be, and were on edge to see how I’d take it. Behind Speedy stood two tall Ab warriors, wrapped in their dark shamas,fn4 but by his side was a woman such as I’d not seen yet in my brief stay in the country. The word that came into my mind was ‘gazelle’, for she was tall and slender and carried herself with a grace that promised speed and sudden energy; her face was strong and handsome rather than beautiful, almond-shaped after the style of the Malagassy belles I remembered, with heavy chiselled lips and pale amber skin that shone with a cosmetic oil of some kind. Her blue-black hair was cut in a fringe low on the brow, with thick braids to her shoulders. She wore a long black cloak embroidered with shells, but when she turned towards me it fell open, and Moore the Sapper, who’d been staring at her like a boy in a toyshop, dam’ near bit his pencil in two, for beneath she wore only a leather tunic which covered her like a second skin from bosom to thigh, exposing bare arms and shoulders and long splendid legs. Light buskins, sundry necklaces and bangles, and ladder-shaped gold earrings completed her costume, and she carried a light spear, slim as a wand and needle-tipped.

She was appraising me in a quite unfeminine way, amiable enough but with a decided damn-you-me-lad air, and taking in that striking shape in its close-fitting leather I could have wished the pair of us far away in Arcady. You know me; every new one is the ideal woman, especially when there’s that light in the eye that tells me we’re two of a mind. What lay ahead might be as grim as ever, but there should be jolly compensations.

‘Salaam, Uliba-Wark,’ says I, giving her my Flashy smile, open and comradely, and from her raised chin and lazy glance I knew I’d read her aright, and our fancy was mutual.

‘Salaam aleikum, farangi effendi,’ says she, cool and formal, and Speedy added promptly, in English: ‘You may depend upon her for your life, Sir Harry. I have.’

‘And so shall I,’ says I, likewise in English. Speedy spoke to her in what I took to be Amharic, and Napier motioned me aside.

‘There was so much for you to digest in so little time that we thought it best to keep the introduction of your escort to the last,’ says he. ‘Do I take it that you have no … reservations?’

‘Because she’s a woman? Lord, no! When I think of some of the ladies I’ve had to depend on, Sir Robert …’ I could have smiled, thinking of Cassy the killing slave, or the Silk One sabre in hand, or Lakshmibai at the head of her riders, or black Aphrodite bashing Redskins with her brolly, or my own daft, dauntless Elspeth. ‘Well, I’d not have swapped ’em for any man – and this one will know her business, or I’m no judge. You don’t hesitate to let her know my name, I notice.’

‘A measure of the trust Speedy reposes in her. And it would have been difficult – and indeed dangerous – to try to deceive her. She is,’ says he, frowning, ‘an unusual woman. Her husband, a petty chieftain, is at present a prisoner in the hands of King Gobayzy of Lasta, and the … lady, Madam Uliba-Wark, has let it be known that she will not set foot outside her citadel until he is restored to her—’

‘So this is the Lady of Shalott?’ I had to explain that I’d heard of her. ‘Well, she’s outside it now, with a vengeance!’28

‘Her husband’s subjects are unaware of that. While she is away with you, they will suppose her secluded by her vow, which makes a convenient excuse for her absence from public view.’

‘You mean it was cooked up just for this? Phew! Speedy knows her of old, I gather … is she a political of ours?’

‘Not quite that. She will be paid for this service, of course. Which reminds me, Moore has a purse of two hundred dollars for your expenses … Yes,’ says he, taking another tug at his face-furniture, hesitant-like, ‘another thing you should know is that, ah, Madam … Uliba is peculiarly qualified for this mission by being herself a Galla – indeed, she is the younger half-sister of the rival queens, Masteeat and Warkite, the child of a concubine, and so excluded from the throne. A position,’ he sounded almost apologetic, ‘which Speedy tells me she very much resents.’

Well, he’d kept the best for the last, hadn’t he? I began to see why I’d been instructed by careful stages, and why he’d interrupted Speedy a while ago, so that only now, at the eleventh hour, had the full mischief become plain – I was to be escorted, on my embassy to a queenly barbarian, by a jealous sibling who was no doubt itching to cut her big sister’s throat and seize her throne … and didn’t she look the part, too, a real Abyssinian Goneril with that handsome figurehead and arrogant tilt to her chin, toying with her little spear and knowing dam’ well that everyone in the tent was eyeing her shape – by gad, it was all there, though. You can see I was distracted, what with the prospect of deadly danger, diplomatic complications, a possible attempted coup d’etat, a siege to arrange … and two weeks in the intimate company of as splendid a piece of bounce as I’d seen since … since that fat little bundle on the voyage to Trieste – not that Fraulein von Thingamabob could compare with this superb Amazon. I won’t deny I’d rather have been squiring Elspeth to a Belgravia bunfight in safe, humdrum old England, but what the devil, when your fate’s fixed, you make the best of it, and now that Napier was asking if there was anything more he could do for me, I did what I’d done so often, and put on a Flashy brag, the bravado of despair, I guess it is, the fraudster’s instinct to play out the charade.

‘I’d be obliged for a revolver and fifty rounds, sir. Oh, and a box of cheroots, if you have one to spare.’

D’you know, he clapped his hands, and when I think back to that strange, fateful evening at Mai Dehar, my most vivid memory isn’t of the bizarre commission they laid on me, or the pantomime figure of Speedy in his outlandish toggery, or even of those sleek polished limbs a-glow in the lamplight … no, what I remember is a tired, lined old face lit by a sudden brilliant smile.

‘Come closer, into the firelight where I can see you,’ says Uliba-Wark. ‘If you are to be a horse-trader out of Hindustan you’d best look like one.’

I shifted my seat before the fire until our faces were no more than a foot apart, and was pleasantly aware of smooth shoulders and well-filled tunic bodice, and the faint musky perfume of oiled skin as she leaned forward, black eyes intent. She put out a hand to feel my hair, which fortunately I was wearing long, and flicked at my whiskers with disdain.

‘Those must go, and you’ll let your hair grow and oil it with ghi in the Indian fashion.’ She ran a finger-tip through my moustache, cool as you please. ‘Less hair on your upper lip and no beard.’ So much for your notions, Napier. ‘You can speak the tongue of India, at need?’

‘More than one of them, sultana,’ says I. ‘And better than my Arabic, for which you must forgive me. It is a long time since I was among the badawi.’

‘You speak it well enough,’ says she. ‘Why do you call me sultana? I am no queen.’

‘You look like one.’ It’s a compliment I’ve found useful with barbarian ladies, and it made this one laugh with a curl of those enchanting lips that looked as though they’d been carved from purple marble.

‘That has been said to me before,’ says she, ‘and surely you have said it to others.’ She sat back, folding her long legs beneath her, mocking me. ‘Well, Khasim Tamwar, for so I must think of you now, you are a very handsome rogue of a horse-trader with a tongue to match, and now that we’ve exchanged our compliments we can leave flirting for the moment and be serious.’

Napier was right; she was unusual. Talking to her in my halting Arabic, and accustoming my ears to hers, so musically different in accent from the guttural desert speech, I found her a bewildering contradiction: she looked like a noble savage, a primitive from out yonder, but with a thoroughly worldly mind, unless I was much mistaken, and while she bore herself with the freedom and authority of a man, she was as conscious of her sex and how to use it as any coquette on the boulevards.

She’d charmed Napier, no question, which I’d have thought nigh impossible for a half-naked female savage toting a spear, but he’d referred to her, hesitantly, as ‘Madam’ and inclined his head gallantly over her hand on parting. And he’d been ready to consign me, and the fate of my mission, to her without a qualm, apparently; you know how bare had been his instructions to me, and it was only at the last minute that he’d touched on the vital matter of how I should communicate with him after I’d reached Queen Masteeat. If all went well with her, no doubt she’d provide a messenger; if things went wrong … well, we’d just have to wait and see, what?

I doubt if I’ve ever been sent into the deep field with a more definite object and less instruction on how to attain it, but now that we were under way, sitting round a camp-fire a mile or so from Mai Dehar, I felt encouraged by the way Uliba-Wark had taken things in her stride: one moment I’d been wrapping the money-belt of two hundred dollars under my sash, being bidden God speed by Napier and having my hand mangled by Speedy – and the next we were out in the chill dark, her two Ab escorts hasting ahead up the hill, dim shadows disappearing over the crest behind the camp. She hadn’t even motioned me to follow, just a glance to make sure I was keeping pace with her. In a moment we’d passed beyond the glow of the camp, and I’d lost her in the gloom until a slim hand closed on mine, leading me at a swift walk – and that guidance, steady and sure, had confirmed what I’d said to Napier: she knew her business.

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