shake my hand, crying:
'Flashman, my dear chap! We'd given you up for dead! Thank God you're safe! My dear fellow, wherever have you been? This is capital! My boy, are you hurt? Have those villains ill-used you?'
I couldn't answer, because all of a sudden I felt very weak and wanted to blub. I think it was the kind words—the first I'd heard in ever so long, although it was barely three weeks—and the English voices and everyone looking so cheery and glad to see me, and the anxious glower on Elgin's bulldog face at the thought that I'd been mistreated, and just the knowledge that I was home. Then someone whistled, exclaiming, and they were all staring at the sabre which I'd hung from my saddle, dried blood all over the blade—Sang's blood, and that struck me as ever so funny, for some reason, and I'd have laughed if I'd had the energy. But I just stood mum and choking while they cried out and shouted questions and rejoiced, until Hope Grant shouldered them all aside, pretty rough, even Elgin, and pushed me down on to a stool, and put a cup of tea in my hand, and stood with his hand round my shoulders, not saying a word. Then I blubbed.
Survival apart, the great thing in intelligence work is knowing how to report. Well, you saw that at the start of this memoir, when I danced truth's gossamer tightrope before Parkes at Canton. The principal aim, remember, is to win the greatest possible credit to yourself, which calls not only for the exclusion of anything that might damage you, but also for the judicious understatement of those things which tell in your favour, if any; brush 'em aside, never boast, let appearances speak for themselves. This was revealed to me at the age of nineteen, when I woke in Jalallabad hospital to find myself a hero—provided I lay still and made the right responses. Then, you must convince your chiefs that what you're telling 'em is important, which ain't difficult, since they want to believe you, having chiefs of their own to satisfy; make as much mystery of your methods as you can; hint what a thoroughgoing ruffian you can be in a good cause, but never forget that innocence shines brighter than any virtue ('Flashman? Extraordinary fellow—kicks 'em in the crotch with the heart of a child'); remember that silence frequently passes for shrewdness, and that while suppressio veri is a damned good servant, suggestio falsi is a perilous master. Selah.
I stuck to these principles in making my verbal report to Elgin that afternoon—and for once they were almost completely wasted. This was because the first words I'd uttered, after gulping Grant's tea, were to tell him that there was a vermilion death sentence on Parkes and the other prisoners; this caused such a sensation that, once I'd told all I knew about it (which wasn't much; I didn't know even where they were confined) I was forgotten in the uproar of activity, with diplomatic threats being sent into Pekin, and Probyn ordered to stand by with a flying squadron. And when I sat down with Elgin later, and gave him my word-of-mouth, it was plain that the fate of our people was the only thing on his mind, reasonably enough; my account of the secret intrigues of the Imperial court (which I thought a pretty fair coup) interested him hardly at all.
It cramped my style, which, as I've indicated, tends to be bluff and laconic, making little of such hardships as binding, caging, and starvation. 'Oh, they knocked me about a bit, you know,' is my line, but he wasn't having it. He wanted every detail of my treatment, and damn the politics; so he got it, including a fictitious account of how they'd hammered me senseless before dragging me, gasping defiance, to audience with the Emperor, so that I didn't remember much about it (that seemed the best way out of that embarrassing episode). I needn't have fretted; Elgin was still grinding his teeth over Sang's threatening me with death by the thousand cuts, and clenching his fist at the butchery of Nolan.
My account of captivity in the Summer Palace, which I'd planned as my piece de resistance, fell flat as your hat. I gave him the plain, unvarnished truth, too—omitting only the trifling detail that the Emperor's favourite concubine had been grinding me breathless every night. I believe in discretion and delicacy, you see—for one thing, you never know who'll run tattling to Elspeth. Anyway, I'd have thought my story sufficiently sensational as it was.
He received it almost impatiently, prime political stuff and all. I now realise that, even if he hadn't had the prisoners obsessing him, he still wouldn't have been much interested in all the tattle I'd eavesdropped between Yehonala and Little An—he was there to ratify a treaty and show the Chinese that we meant business; the last thing he wanted was entanglement in Manchoo politics, with himself acting as king-maker, or anything of that sort. He brightened briefly at my description of the set-to with Sang and his braves (which I kept modestly brief, knowing that my blood-stained sabre had already spoken more eloquently than I could), but when I'd done his first question was:
'Excepting Prince Sang's murderous attack, was no violence offered to you at the Summer Palace? None at all? No rigorous confinement or ill-usage?'
'Hardly, my lord,' says I, and just for devilment I added: 'The Yi Concubine's ladies did throw apples at me, on one occasion.'
'Good God!' cries he. 'Apples?' He stared at me. 'In play, you mean?'
'I believe it was in a spirit of mischief, my lord. They were quite small apples.'
'Small apples? I'll be damned,' he muttered, and thought hard for a moment, frowning at the scenery and then at me.
'Did you obtain any inkling of the … purpose for which you were … kept at the house of this … Yi Concubine, did you say?'
'I gathered she had never seen a barbarian before,' says I gravely. 'She seemed to regard me as a curiosity.'
'Damned impertinence!' says he, but I noticed his pate had gone slightly pink. 'What sort of a woman is she? In her person, I mean.'
I reflected judiciously. 'Ravishing is the word that best de-scribes her, my lord. Quite ravishing … in the oriental style.'
'Oh! I see.' He digested this. 'And her character? Strong? Retiring? Amiable, perhaps? I take it she's an educated woman?'
'Not amiable, precisely.' I shook my head. 'Strong-willed, certainly. Exacting, purposeful … immensely energetic. I should say she was extremely well-educated, my lord.'
At this point he noticed that his young secretary, who'd been recording my report, was agog with hopeful interest, so he concluded rather abruptly by saying I'd done extremely well, congratulated me on my safe return, told the secretary to make a fair copy for me to sign, and dismissed me, shooting me a last perplexed look; that business about being pelted with apples by harem beauties had unsettled him, I could see. He wasn't alone, either; outside I found the young pen-pusher blinking at me enviously, obviously wishing that he, too, could be regarded as a curiosity by ravishing orientals.
'I say!' says he. 'The Summer Palace must be a jolly place!'
'Damned jolly,' says I. 'Did you get it all down?'
'I say! Oh, yes, every word! It was frightfully interesting, you know—not at all like most reports.' He peered at his notes through steamy spectacles. 'Ah, yes … what's a concubine?'
'Harlequin's lady-love in the pantomime … no, don't put that down, you young juggins! A concubine is a Chinese noble-man's personal whore.'
'I say! How d'you spell it?'
I told him—and what he told others in his turn I don't care to think, but just to show you how rumours run and reputations are made, Desborough of the Artillery swore to me later that he'd heard one of his gunners telling his chum that there was no daht abaht it, Flash 'Arry 'ad got isself took prisoner a-purpose, see, 'cos 'e was beloved by this yeller bint, the Empress o' China, an' 'im an' Sam Collinson, wot was jealous, 'ad fought a bloody duel over 'er, an' Flash 'Arry touched the barstid in five places, strite up, an' then cut 'is bleedin' 'ead orf, see?
Strange how close fiction can come to truth, ain't it? The oddest thing of all was that the part of the yarn which did gain some acceptance, among quite sensible people, too, was that I'd deliberately allowed myself to be captured, as a clever way of getting into the enemy's head-quarters. Folk'll believe anything, especially if they've invented it themselves. Anyway, you can see why I don't count my report to Elgin entirely wasted.
Later that day he and Grant and our senior commanders went to the Ewen-ming-ewen, officially to view the splendours, but in fact to make sure that the Frogs didn't pick it clean before our army got its share. I was on hand, and absolutely heard Montauban protesting volubly that no looting whatever had taken place—this with his rascals still streaming out of the Hall of Audience with everything but the floor-tiles, and the piles of spoil filling the great courtyard. Some of our early-comers, I noticed, were already among the plunderers; a party of Sikh cavalry were offering magnificent bolts of coloured silk to the later arrivals at two dollars a time, and the Frogs, who'd had the
