The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald
says de Gautet.
“Starnberg—how do you reach the Prince’s dressing-room from the door where Detchard will admit you?”
“Twelve paces along a passage, up the stairway to the right, left at the first landing, then ten paces along to a passage on the right. The Prince’s dressing-room is the first door on the left.”
“From door to door—fifty seconds,” says Bismarck. “If you wish, I can tell you the precise nature of the furnishings in the Prince’s chamber, and their positions in the room. For example, there is a statuette of a kneeling cupid on the overmantel. Now—are you convinced that my organisation is sound, and my information complete?”
“How do you know that some drunk footman won’t come blundering along in the middle of everything?” I cried.
I thought he would hit me, but he restrained himself.
“It will not happen,” he said. “Everything will fall out exactly as I have said.”
There was no point in arguing, of course; I sat in despair while he went on.
“Once inside that room, you will be Prince Carl Gustaf. That is the fact of paramount importance. From that moment Flashman no longer exists—you understand? With you will be Detchard and the Prince’s physician, Orsted, who is also privy to our plans. If at any moment you are in doubt, they will guide you. And when you set out next morning on your royal progress across the border into Strackenz, you will find that among the dignitaries who will greet you will be both de Gautet and Starnberg—it has been arranged that they will join your train as gentlemen of honour. So you will not lack for friends,” he added grimly. “Now drink your brandy.”
I gulped it down; I needed it. At the back of my mind I suppose there had still been some futile hope that I would be able to slip out of this at the last moment, but Bismarck had squashed it flat. I was going to have to go through with it, with Rudi and de Gautet hovering alongside ready, at the first false move, to put a bullet into me, I didn’t doubt. Why the hell, I asked myself for the thousandth time, had I ever come to this bloody country?
“The wedding will take place on the day after your arrival in the city of Strackenz,” Bismarck went on, for all the world as though he had been telling me the time of day. “You have already received some instruction in the details of the ceremony, of course. And then—all plain sailing, as your people say.”
He sat down, and poured himself a glass of brandy from the decanter. He sipped at it, while I sat mute, staring at my glass. “Well, Mr Flashman; what have you to say?”
“What the hell does it matter what I say?” I burst out. “I’ve no choice, damn you!”
To my amazement, he actually chuckled. He stretched his legs and twirled the stem of his glass between his fingers.
“None at all,” says he, grinning. “Flashman, you should be glad. You will be making history—aye, great history. Do you realise, I wonder, the magnitude of what we are doing? We are nailing a little hinge to a door, a great door which will open to reveal the destiny of a greater Germany! And you—a half-pay officer of no account, a pawn even in your own country’s affairs—you are going to make it possible! Can you imagine what it means?” The man was positively beaming now, with a kind of fierce joy in his eyes. “For we are going to win! We six here, we are staking ourselves, our lives, everything—and we are going to succeed! I look at you, and I know we cannot fail. God has sent you to Germany, and I send you now to Strackenz.” There was a nice little comparison there, all right. “And in Strackenz you will play such a game as has never been played before in the history of the world. And you will not fail—I know it! What a destiny! To be one of the architects of the new Fatherland!” He lifted his glass. “I salute you, and drink to our enterprise!”
Believe it or not, he actually raised my spirits a little with that. Of course, it was all humbug, designed to put some backbone into me—that was all he knew—but the man was so supremely confident it was infectious: if he really believed we could bring it off—well, perhaps we could. The others cheered and we all drank, and Bismarck sighed and refilled his glass. I’d never seen him anything like this before; for the moment he was almost jovial, showing an entirely new side of his nature—all carefully calculated for my benefit, I imagine.
“How will we look back on this?” he mused. “When we are old, and in our country places, and the bold lads of a new day are elbowing for power in the chancelleries? I wonder.” He shook his head. “I think I will wear leather breeches and allow myself to be laughed at in Stettin wool market, and sell two thalers cheaper to anyone who calls me ‘baron’.27 And you, Flashman—you will sit in your club in St James, and grow fat on port and your memories. But we will have lived, by God! We will have fought! We will have won! Is it not something to have moved great affairs, and shaped the course of time?”
No doubt I should have shared his enthusiasm, like Kraftstein, who was hanging on every word, and looking like a ruptured bullock. But all I could think to myself was, God, I wish John Gully had really set to work on you. What I said aloud was:
“Herr Bismarck, I am much moved. And now, with your permission, I intend to get as drunk as possible. Afterwards, tomorrow, I shall be at your service, since I can’t do anything else. But if I’m to shape the destiny of Europe, I’ll need a good skinful of liquor inside me to set me off. So will you kindly oblige me with the bottle, and a cigar, and as many dirty drinking songs as you and your friends can remember? And if this seems to you a coarse and pagan spirit in which to approach our glorious adventure for the Fatherland, well—you’ve made your preparations; let me now make mine.”
As a result of the night’s excesses, which Bismarck didn’t discourage, I had a raging headache and a heaving stomach on the morning of my departure from Schönhausen. So I remember very little of it, which is no loss. For that matter my recollections of the journey north to Strackenz are hazy, too; I’ve travelled too far in my time to be anything but bored by it, and there was nothing to see that I recall except flat snowy fields, the occasional village, and bleak woodlands of bare black trees.
Rudi was full of spirits as usual, and de Gautet was his smooth, civil self, but I knew he wouldn’t forget or forgive that schlager-thrust in the guts. I hadn’t forgotten the two cuts I owed him, either, so we were even there. He never referred to our encounter, but now and then in the coach I would catch his dark eyes on me, and then they would slide away, looking anywhere but at me. He was one who wouldn’t be sorry of the excuse to draw a bead on my back if I tried to run for it.
Following Bismarck’s lead, both of them had dropped the pretence of calling me “highness”—Bersonin’s “theory”, as Bismarck had called it, being well enough in my training period, I suppose, but now considered unnecessary. But they lost no chance of lecturing me on such subjects as the geography of Strackenz, the ceremonial forms of its court, and the details of the wedding ceremony. I suppose I took it all in, for there was nothing else to do, but it has all gone now.
We were three days on the road, and the last afternoon of the journey took us deep into forest-country, all ghostly and silent under the snow. It was very beautiful and solemn, with never a soul to be seen along the rough track winding among the trees, until about four in the afternoon we stopped in a little clearing where a small hut stood, with thin smoke wreathing up from its chimney into the steely sky.
There were two or three brisk-looking fellows in peasant clothes to rub down the horses and usher us into the cottage—not that I took them for peasants, for I heard two of them in talk with Rudi. They were gentlemen, by German standards, but tough, active customers for all that—the kind who’ll cut your throat and send back the wine at dinner afterwards.
We had a meal, Rudi and I, while de Gautet paced up and down and peered out at the darkening sky and consulted his watch and fidgeted generally until Rudi told him to leave off, and made him sit