The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald
as though I hadn’t spoken. “Of your discovery; of the Prince’s murder.”
“We cannot leave him there, with those villains!” burst out Hansen.
“No, so we’ve rejected that,” says Sapten. “And we come back to the only course—a desperate and dangerous one, for it may cost his life in the end. But nothing else remains.”
He paused, and I felt my spine dissolve. Oh, Jesus, here it was again—whenever I hear the words “desperate and dangerous” I know that I’m for it. I could only wait to hear the worst.
“To storm Jotunberg is impossible,” says Sapten. “It stands in the lake of the Jotunsee, and only at one point is it accessible from the shore, where a causeway runs out towards it. There were two guards on the causeway tonight, at the outer end, where the gap between causeway and castle is spanned by a drawbridge. That bridge is raised, which is a sign that those within know that their plans have gone astray. Doubtless when the man you killed this morning failed to return to his friends, they took alarm. Two of them, at any rate, rode into the castle tonight—Hansen and I saw them; a youngster, a gay spark, for all he looked little more than a boy, and a big ruffian along with him—”
“Starnberg and Kraftstein,” says I. “Major Sapten, they are a devilish pair—they’ll stop at nothing!”
“Well, how many more were already in the castle, we don’t know. Probably no more than a handful. But we could never hope to surprise them. So we must find another way, and quickly.” He sat back. “Erik, it is your scheme. Let him hear it.”
One look at Hansen’s face—his eyes were glittering like a fanatic’s—prepared me for the worst.
“Where a storming party must fail, we may prevail by stealth. Two brave men could cross the Jotunsee at night from the opposite bank, by boat as close as they dared, and then by swimming. Part of the fortress is in ruin; they could land in the darkness, enter the castle silently, and discover where the prince is hidden. Then, while one guarded him, the other would hasten to the drawbridge and lower it so that our people, hidden on the shore, could storm across the causeway. They could easily overpower its garrison—but somehow the prince’s life would have to be preserved while the fighting lasted. Whether this could be done—” he shrugged. “At least the two who had entered first could die trying.”
And the very fact that they were telling me this informed me who one of those two was going to be. Of all the lunatic, no-hope schemes I ever heard, this seemed to be the primest yet. If they thought they were going to get me swimming into that place in the dark, with the likes of Rudi and Kraftstein waiting for me, they didn’t know their man. The mere thought was enough to set my guts rumbling with fright. I’d see them damned first. I’d sooner be—swinging at the end of Sapten’s rope? That was what would happen, of course, if I refused.
While I was gulping down these happy thoughts, Grundvig—whom I’d known from the first was a clever chap—sensibly suggested that where two men could swim, so could a dozen, but Hansen shook his fat head with determination.
“No. Two may pass unobserved, but not more. It is out of the question.” He turned to look at me, his face set, his eyes expressionless. “I shall be one of the two—Carl Gustaf is my friend, and if he is to die I shall count myself happy to die with him. You do not know him—yet without you, he would not be where he is. Of all people, you at least owe him a life. Will you come with me?”
Whatever I may be, I’m not slow-witted. If ever there was a situation made for frantic pleading in the name of common sense, I was in it now—I could have suggested that they try to bargain with Rudi, or send a messenger to Bismarck (wherever he was) and tell him that they were on to his games; I could have gone into a faint, or told them that I couldn’t swim, or that I got hay fever if I went out after dark—I could simply have roared for mercy. But I knew it wouldn’t do; they were deadly serious, frightened men—frightened for that Danish idiot, instead of for themselves, as any sane man would have been—and if I hesitated, or argued, or did anything but accept at once they would rule me out immediately for a coward and a hypocrite and a backslider. And then it would be the Newgate hornpipe for Flashy, with the whole damned crew of Sons of the Volsungs hauling on the rope. I knew all this in the few seconds that I sat there with my bowels melting, and I heard a voice say in a deadly croak:
“Yes, I’ll come.”
Hansen nodded slowly. “I do not pretend that I take you from choice; I would sooner take the meanest peasant in our band. But you are a soldier, you are skilled in arms and in this kind of work.” (Dear lad, I thought, how little you know.) “You are a man of resource, or you could never have done the infamous thing that has brought you here. Perhaps there is a queer fate at work in that. At all events, you are the man for this.”
I could have discussed that with some eloquence, but I knew better. I said nothing, and Hansen said: “It will be for tomorrow night, then,” and he and Grundvig got up and went without another word.
Sapten lingered, putting on his cloak, watching me. At last he spoke.
“It is one of the lessons a man learns as he grows old,” says he, “to put away desires and emotions—aye, and even honour—and to do what must be done with the tools to hand, whatever they may be. So I let you go with Hansen tomorrow. Succeed in what is to do, for as God’s my witness, if you don’t I’ll kill you without pity.” He turned to the door. “Perhaps I misjudge you; I don’t know. In case I am guilty of that, I promise that whatever befalls, I shall not rest until I have ensured the safety of that wife and daughter who so concerned you earlier today, but whom you seem to have forgotten tonight. Take comfort from the knowledge that little golden-haired Amelia is in my thoughts.” He opened the door. “Goodnight, Englishman.”
And he went out, no doubt very pleased with himself.
I spent the next hour frantically trying to dig under the wall of the cabin with my bare hands, but it was no go. The earth was too hard, and full of roots and stones; I made a pitifully small scrape, and then hurriedly filled it in again and stamped it down in case they saw what I’d been up to. Anyway, even if I had succeeded in breaking out, they’d have run me to earth in the forest; they were trained woodsmen and I’d no idea where I was.
Once my initial panic had passed, I could only sit in miserable contemplation. There was a slim chance that before tomorrow evening something might happen to change Hansen’s lunatic plan—or I might receive a heaven-sent opportunity to escape, although I doubted that. Failing these things, I should certainly be launched—literally, too—into the most dangerous adventure of my life, and with precious little prospect of coming through it. So I would end here, in a god-forsaken miserable German ruin, trying to rescue a man I’d never met—I, who wouldn’t stir a finger to rescue my own grandmother. It was all too much, and I had a good self-pitying blubber to myself, and then I cursed and prayed a bit, invoking the God in whom I believe only in moments of real despair to intervene on my behalf.
I tried to console myself that I’d come out of desperate straits before—aye, but wasn’t my luck about due to run out, then? No, no, Jesus would see the repentant sinner right, and I would never swear or fornicate or steal or lie again—I strove to remember the seven deadly sins, to make sure I missed none of them, and then cudgelled my brains for the Ten Commandments, so that I could promise never to break them again—although, mind you, I’d never set up a graven image in my life.
I should have felt purified and at peace after all this, but I found I was just as terrified as ever, so I ended by damning the whole system. I knew it would make no difference, anyway.
That next day was interminable; my heart was in my mouth every time footsteps approached the cabin door, and it was almost a relief when Sapten and his two companions came for me in the evening. They brought a good deal of gear with them, explaining that we should make all our preparations here before setting out, and just the activity of getting ready took my mind momentarily off the horrors ahead.
First Hansen and I stripped right down, so that we could be rubbed all over with grease as a protection against the cold when