The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald
scamper away, holding her bonnet on. There was shouting from the house, footsteps running – and the Hova struck, his spear darting at my face. By sheer instinct I deflected it, straightening my arm in an automatic lunge – God bless you, dear old riding-master of the 11th Hussars! – and he screamed like the d----d as my point took him in the chest, his own rush driving it into his body. His fall wrenched the hilt from my hand, and then I was high-tailing after Elspeth, turning her into the trees, where the horses still stood patiently, cropping at the grass.
I heaved her bodily on to one of them, her skirts riding up any old how, vaulted aboard the other, and with a hand to steady her, forced the beasts out on to the road beyond. There was a tumult of hidden voices by the gate, but I knew we were clear if she didn’t fall – she was always a decent horsewoman, and was clinging to the mane with her good hand. We ploughed off knee to knee, in a swaying canter that took us to the end of one road and down the next, and then I eased up. No sounds behind, and if we heard any we could gallop at need. I clasped her to me, swearing with relief, and asked how her hand was.
“Oh, it is painful!” cries she. “But Harry, what does it mean? Those dreadful people – I thought I should swoon! And my dress torn, and my finger broke, and every bone in my body shaken! Oh!” She shuddered violently. “Those fearful black soldiers! Did you … did you kill them?”
“I hope so,” says I, looking back fearfully. “Here – take my cloak – muffle your head as well. If they see what you are, we’re sunk!”
“But who? Why are we running? What has happened? I insist you tell me directly! Where are we going—”
“There’s an English ship on the coast! We’re going to reach her, but we’ve got to get out of this h--lish city first – if the gates are closed I don’t—”
“But why?” cries she, like a d--n parrot, sucking her finger and trying to order her skirts, which wasn’t easy, since she was astride. “Oh, this is so uncomfortable! Why are we being pursued – why should they – oh!” Her eyes widened. “What have you done, Harry? Why are they chasing you? Have you done some wrong? Oh, Harry, have you offended the Queen?”
“Not half as much as she’s offended me!” I snarled. “She’s a … a … monster, and if she lays hands on us we’re done for. Come on, confound it!”
“But I cannot believe it! Why, of all the absurd things! When I have been so kindly treated – I am sure, whatever it is, if the Prince were to speak to her—”
I didn’t quite tear my hair, but it was a near-run thing. I gripped her by the shoulders instead, and speaking as gently as I could with my teeth chattering, impressed on her that we must get out of the city quickly; that we must proceed slowly, by back streets, to the gates, but there we might have to ride for it; I would explain later—
“Very good,” says she. “You need not raise your voice. If you say so, Harry – but it is all extremely odd.”
I’ll say that for her, once she understood the urgency of the situation – and even that pea-brain must have apprehended by now that something unusual was taking place – she played up like a good ’un. She didn’t take fright, or weep, or even plague me with further questions; I’ve known clever women, and plenty like Lakshmibai and the Silk One who were better at rough riding and desperate work, but none gamer than Elspeth when the stakes were on the blanket. She was a soldier’s wife, all right; pity she hadn’t married a soldier.
But if she was cool enough, I was in a ferment as we picked our way by back-roads to the city wall, and followed it round towards the great gates. By this time there were hardly any folk about, and although the sight of two riders brought some curious looks, no one molested us. But I was sure the alarm must have gone out by now – I wasn’t to know that Malagassy bandobasta being what it was, the last thing they’d have thought to do was close the gates. They never had, so why bother now? I could have shouted with relief when we came in view of the gate-towers, and saw the way open, with only the usual lounging sentinels and a group of loafers round a bonfire. We just held steadily forward, letting ’em see it was the sergeant-general; they stared at the horses, but that was all, and with my heart thumping we ambled through under the towers, and then trotted forward among the scattered huts on the Antan’ plain.
Ahead of us the sky was lightening in the summer dawn, and my spirits with it – we were clear, free, and away! – and beyond those distant purple hills there was a British warship, and English voices, and Christian vittles, and safety behind British guns. Four days at most – if the horses I’d sent to Ankay were waiting ahead of us. In that snail-pace country, where any pursuit was sure to be on foot, no one could hope to overtake us, no alarm could outstrip us – I was ready to whoop in my saddle until I thought of that menacing presence still so close, that awful city crouching just behind us, and I shook Elspeth’s bridle and sent us forward at a hand-gallop.
But our luck was still with us. We sighted the change horses just before dawn, raising the dust with the groom jogging along on the leader, and I never saw a jollier sight. They weren’t the pick of the light cavalry, but they had fodder and jaka in their saddle-bags, and I knew they’d see us there, if we spelled ’em properly. Thirty miles is as far as any beast can carry me, but that would be as much as Elspeth could manage at a stretch in any event.
I dismissed the bewildered groom, and on we went at a good round trot. A small horse-herd ain’t difficult to manage, if you’ve learned your trade in Afghanistan. My chief anxiety now was Elspeth. She’d ridden steady – and commendably silent – until now, but as we forged ahead into the empty downland, I could see the reaction at work; she was swaying in the saddle, eyes half-closed, fair hair tumbling over her face, and although I was in a sweat to push on I felt bound to swing off into a little wood to rest and eat. I lifted her out of the saddle beside a stream, and blow me if she didn’t go straight off to sleep in my arms. For three hours she never stirred, while I kept a weather eye on the plain, but saw no sign of pursuit.
She was all demands and chatter again, though, when she awoke, and while we chewed our jaka, and I bathed her finger – which wasn’t broke, but badly bruised – I tried to explain what had happened. D’you know, of all the astonishing things that had occurred since we’d left England, I still feel that that conversation was the most incredible of all. I mean, explaining anything to Elspeth is always middling tough – but there was something unreal, as I look back, about sitting opposite her, in a Madagascar wood, while she stared round-eyed in her torn, soiled evening dress with her finger in a splint, listening to me describing why we were fleeing for our lives from an unspeakable black despot whom I’d been plotting to depose. Not that I blame her for being sceptical, mind you; it was the form her scepticism took which had me clutching my head.
At first she just didn’t believe a word of it; it was quite contrary, she said, to what she had seen of Madagascar, and to prove the point she produced, from the recesses of her under-clothing, a small and battered notebook from which she proceeded to read me her “impressions” of the country – so help me, it was all about b----y butterflies and wild flowers and Malagassy curtain materials and what she’d had for dinner. It was at this point that it dawned on me that the conclusion I’d formed on my visits to her at Rakota’s palace had been absolutely sound – she’d spent six months in the place without having any notion of what it was really like. Well, I knew she was mutton-headed, but this beat all, and so I told her.
“I cannot see that,” says she. “The Prince and Princess were all politeness and consideration, and you assured me that all was well, so why should I think otherwise?”
I was still explaining, and being harangued, when we took the road again, and for the best part of the day, which took us to the eastern edge of the downs, near Angavo, where we camped in another wood. By that time I had finally got it into her head what a h--l of a place Madagascar was, and what a hideous fate we were escaping; you’d have thought that would have reduced her to terrified silence, but then, you don’t know my Elspeth.