The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald

(by which I took it she meant Her Britannic Majesty) taken no steps to prevent such misgovernment, and what was the Church thinking about? It was quite disgusting – I just sat munching jaka, but I couldn’t help, listening to her, being reminded of that old harridan Lady Sale, tapping her mittened fingers while the jezzail bullets whistled round her on the Kabul retreat, and demanding acidly why something was not done about it. Aye, it’s comical in its way – and yet, when you’ve seen the memsahibs pursing their lips and raising indignant brows in the face of dangers and horrors that set their men-folk shaking, you begin to understand why there’s all the pink on the map. It’s vicarage morality, nursery discipline, and a thorough sense of propriety and sanitation that have done it – and when they’ve gone, and the memsahibs with them, why, the map won’t be pink any longer.

      The one thing Elspeth couldn’t accept, though, was that the outrageous condition of Madagascar was Ranavalona’s fault. Queens, in her conception of affairs, did not behave in that way at all; the mother of Prince Rakota (“a most genteel and obliging young man”) would never have countenanced such things. No, it could only be that she was badly advised, and kept in ignorance, no doubt, by her ministers. She had been civil enough to me, surely? – this was asked in an artless way which I knew of old. I said, well, she was pretty plain and ill-natured from the little I’d seen of her, but of course I’d hardly exchanged a word with her (which, you’ll note, was true; I said nothing of bathing and piano-playing). Elspeth sighed contentedly at this, and then after a moment said softly:

      “Have you missed me, Harry?”

      Looking at her, sitting in the dusk with the green leaves behind her, in her dusty gown, with the tangled gold hair framing that lovely face, so serene in its stupidity, I suddenly realized there was only one sensible way to answer her. What with the shock and haste and fear of our flight it absolutely hadn’t occurred to me until that moment. And afterwards, lying in the grass, while she stroked my cheek, it seemed the most natural thing – as if this wasn’t Madagascar at all, with dreadful danger behind and unknown hardship before – in that blissful moment I dreamed of the very first time, under the trees by the Clyde, on just such a golden evening, and when I spoke of it she began to cry at last, and clung to me.

      “You will bring us there again – home,” says she. “You are so brave and strong and good, and keep me safe. Do you know,” she wiped her eyes, looking solemn, “I never saw you fight before? Oh, I knew, to be sure, from the newspapers, and what everyone said – that you were a hero, I mean – but I did not know how it was. Women cannot, you know. Now I have seen you, sword in hand – you are rather terrible, you know, Harry – and so quick!” She gave a little shiver. “Not many women are lucky enough to see how brave their husbands are – and I have the bravest, best man in the whole world.” She kissed me on the forehead, her cheek against mine.

      I thought of her finger, under that crushing boot, of the way she’d stood up in the bushes and walked straight out, of the bruising ride from Antan’, of all she’d endured since Singapore – and I didn’t feel ashamed, exactly, because you know it ain’t my line. But I felt my eyes sting, and I lifted her chin with my hand.

      “Old girl,” says I, “you’re a trump.”

      “Oh, no!” says she, wide-eyed. “I am very silly, and weak, and … and not a trump at all! Feckless, Papa says. But I love to be your ‘old girl’” – she snuggled her head down on my chest – “and to think that you like me a little, too … better than you like the horrid Queen of Madagascar, or Mrs Leo Lade, or those Chinese ladies we saw in Singapore, or Kitty Stevens, or – my dearest, whatever is the matter?”

      “Who the h--l,” roars I, “is Kitty Stevens?”

      “Oh, do you not remember? That slim, dark girl with the poor complexion and soulful eyes she thinks so becoming – although how she supposes that mere staring will make her attractive I cannot think – you danced with her twice at the Cavalry Ball, and assisted her to negus at the buffet …”

      We were off again before dawn, crossing the Angavo Pass which leads to the upland Ankay Plain, going warily because I knew the Hova Guard regiment which I’d sent out couldn’t be far away. I kept casting north, and we must have outflanked them, for we saw not a soul until the Mangaro ford, where the villagers turned out in force to stare at us as we crossed the river with our little herd. It was level going then until the jungle closed in and the mountains began, but we were making slower time than I’d hoped for; it began to look like a five-day trek instead of four, but I wasn’t much concerned. All that mattered was that we should keep ahead of pursuit; the frigate would still be there. I was sure of this because it was bound to wait for an answer to the protest which, according to Laborde, had only reached the Queen a couple of days ago. Her answer, even if she’d sent it at once, would take more than a week to reach Tamitave, so if we kept up our pace we’d be there with time in hand.

      I kept telling myself this on the third day, when our rate slowed to a walk with the long, twisting climb up the red rutted track that led into the great mountains. Here we were walled in by forest on either hand, with only that tortuous path for a guide. I knew it because I’d been flogged over it in the slave-coffle, and I had to gulp down my fears as we approached each bend – suppose we met someone, in this place where we couldn’t take to our heels, where to stray ten yards from the path would be certain death by wandering starvation? Suppose the path petered out, or had been overgrown? Suppose swift Hova runners overtook us?

I was in a fever of anxiety – not made any easier by the childish pleasure Elspeth seemed to be taking in our journey. She was forever clapping her hands and exclaiming at the saucer-eyed white monkeys who peered at us, or the lace-plumed birds that fluttered among the creepers; even the hideous water-snakes which cruised the streams, with their heads poking out, excited her – she barred the spiders, though, great marbled monsters as big as my hand, scuttling on webs the size of blankets. And once she fled in terror from a sight which had our horses neighing and bucking in the narrow way – a troop of great apes, bounding across the path in leaps of incredible length, both feet together.⁴³ We watched them crash into the undergrowth, and not for the first time I cursed the luck that I hadn’t even a clasp-knife with me for defence, for G-d knew what else might be lurking in that dark, cavernous forest. Elspeth wished she had her sketch-book.

      There’s forty miles of that forest, but thanks to good Queen Ranavalona we didn’t have to cross it all, as you would today. The jungle track runs clear across towards Andevoranto, whence you travel up the coast to Tamitave, but in 1845 there was a short-cut – the Queen’s buffalo road, cut straight through the hilly jungle to the coastal plain. This was the track, hacked out by thousands of slaves, which I’d seen on the way up; we reached it on the fourth day, a great avenue through the green, with the mountain mist hanging over it in wraiths. It was eerie and foreboding, but at least it was flat, and with half our beasts already abandoned in exhaustion, I was glad of the easier going.

      It’s strange, as I look back on that remarkable journey, that it wasn’t nearly as punishing as it might have been. Elspeth still swears that she quite enjoyed it; I dare say if I hadn’t been so apprehensive – about our beasts foundering, or losing our way if the mist settled down, or being overtaken by pursuers (although I knew there was scant chance of that), or how we were going to make our final dash to the frigate – I might have marvelled that we came through it so easily. But we did; our luck held through hill and jungle, we hardly saw a native the whole way, and on the fourth afternoon we were trotting down through the strange little conical hillocks that line the sandy coastal plain, with nothing ahead of us but a few scattered villages and easy level going until we should come to Tamitave.

      Of course, I should have been on my guard. I should have known it had gone too smooth. I should have remembered the horror that lay no great way behind, and the mad hatred and bloodlust of that evil woman. I should have thought of the soldier’s first rule, to put yourself in the enemy’s shoes and ask what you would do. If I’d been that terrible b---h, and my ingrate lover had tried to ruin me, cut up my guardsmen, and lit out for the coast – what would I have done, given unlimited power and a maniac’s vengeance to slake? Sent out my fleetest couriers, over plain