bleary-eyed over his last cup, “and say there is a bad man who has injured me. But you will bury me in Christian ground, because you are a friend.” Then he fell off the couch.
Wiseacres assure me he was in the grip of remorse, or tortured conscience. No such thing. He was a drunken sot as well as a monster, and that’s all about it.
I left him grunting like a Berkshire hog and made my way through the dark and driving rain to our fine silk tent, and there wasn’t a soul within. I demanded of the sentry where they were, and he gave a shifty grin and said they had been moved, by order, to one of the smaller tents. I asked by whose order, and he grinned shiftier yet, and said I might have the place to myself. I was used up and shaking with the hellishness of what I’d seen, so I rolled inside, half-undressed, blew out the lamp and collapsed on my
And I dreamed, such a beautiful dream, of being in that sunny meadow by the Clyde with Elspeth, and we were talking nonsense to each other, and began to kiss and play, and suddenly she was changing and turning black, and becoming Mrs Popplewell of Harper’s Ferry and glorious memory, crying that I was her sho’nuff baby and taking fearful, wonderful liberties, throwing herself astride of me and going like a Derby winner… and I was awake in that darkened tent on Islamgee, and ’twasn’t Mrs Popplewell but some elephantine succubus, smothering me with mountains of fat, and I knew in a trice that it was “Queen” Tamagno, the randy bitch, who’d bribed the sentry so that she could crawl in and have her wicked will of me, and I was debating in confusion whether to cry “Unhand me!” or let her go her mile, when I heard a distant voice crying aloud, and it wasn’t conscience or my better nature but blasted Theodore coming to the surface through an ocean of
I fell asleep, and in the morning it was as though none of it had happened, not the horror of the murdered prisoners, or my flight from the embraces of that female hippo—unspeakable tragedy fol lowed by terrifying farce. But it did happen, and I dare say the shock of it all would have preoccupied me if great events had not claimed my attention. For April the tenth, Good Friday, was the day the Bughunter uncorked his killing bottle.
There are days when you get up and smell death in the air, and that Good Friday was one of them. It was a grey, close morning, with ugly clouds that bore the promise of storm, and waking to the memory of the evening’s horrors drove my spirits to the cellar. I told the others what I’d seen, and it struck them silent until one of ’em, I forget who, dropped to his knees and began to intone the Lord’s Prayer. They thought it was all up with them, and when Theodore came on the scene in a raging temper, and ordered everyone back to Magdala, except me, Prideaux shook my hand in what he plainly thought was a last farewell. I didn’t; my guess was that Theodore was keeping his word to put them in a safe place, and you may be sure I demanded to go with them, but he wouldn’t hear of it.
“You are a soldier!” cries he. “You shall be my witness that if blood is shed, it shall not be my wish! I have word that your army is across the Bechelo and advancing against me. Well, we shall see! We shall see!”
Rassam pleaded with him to send a message to Napier, but he vowed that he’d do no such thing. “You want me to write to that man, but I refuse to talk with a man sent by a woman!”
Which was a new one, if you like, but sure enough when a letter arrived from Napier for Rassam, Theodore wouldn’t listen to it and swore that if Rassam wrote to Napier that would be an end of their friendship. So off they went to Magdala, but Rassam slipped the letter to me, begging me to persuade Theodore to look at it. He was no fool, Rassam, for he and the others were barely out of sight when Theodore bade me give the note to Samuel, who read it to him. It was a straight courteous request for the release of the pris oners, and for a long minute I hoped against hope as he stood frowning in thought, but then he lifted his head and I saw the mad glare in his eye.
“It is no use! I know what I have to do!” He turned on me. “Did I not spend the night in prayer, and do I not know that the die is cast?” Since he’d spent most of the night getting blind blotto, and thereafter roaring for his whore, I doubted if his deci sion had been guided by prayer, much; I think the effect of his massacre was still at work in him, but I’m no mind-reader. All that mattered was that the last chance of a peaceful issue had gone, and it behoved all good men to look after Number One, and bolt at the first chance.
It never came. He kept me with him all day, and since he was never without his bodyguards, to say nothing of servants, and his generals coming and going, I could only wait and watch with my hopes diminishing; plainly the grip was coming, and the question was, when he went down to inevitable bloody defeat, would he take his prisoners with him? Fear said yes; common sense said no, what would be the point? But with a madman, who could tell?
There was a terrific thunder-plump at about noon, and then the sky cleared for a while and the heat came off the ground in waves; it was breathless, stifling, and even when the cloud thickened and rain began to fall in big drops, it brought no coolness with it. Five miles away, although I didn’t know it, Napier’s battalions were fording the muddy Bechelo barefoot, and climbing out of that mighty ravine in sweltering heat, short of water because the river wasn’t fit to drink, breasting the long spur that brought them to the Afichu plateau that I’d marked on Fasil’s sand- table, and coming near exhausted to the edge of the Arogee plain. That was the main column; the second force came up the King’s Road, which I’d warned Napier to avoid—and he almost paid dear for ignoring my advice.
Runners brought word to Theodore of our army’s approach, and from early afternoon the Ab army, seven thousand strong, was moving into position from the Islamgee plain to the lower slopes of Fala and Selassie. Theodore himself, with his generals and atten dants and your reluctant correspondent, went up the muddy slope to the gun emplacements on the Fala summit, and looking back I had my first proper sight of what Napier would be up against: rank upon rank of robed black spearmen and swordsmen and musketeers swinging along in fine style, disciplined and damned business-like with waving banners and their red-robed commanders, five hundred strong on horseback, marshalling them to perfection. I didn’t know what force in guns and infantry Napier might have, but I guessed it wouldn’t be above two thousand, and I was right; odds of three to one, but that wouldn’t count against British and Indian troops… unless something went wrong, which it dam’ nearly did.
From the Fala summit we got our first sight of the approaching columns, almost three miles away across the great expanse of rock and scrub, on the far side of Arogee. Theodore was like a kid in a toyshop with his glass, turning to me bright with excitement and bidding me look and tell him who was who and what they were about. It had begun to rain in earnest now, with lightning flashing in the black clouds and a strong wind sweeping across the summit, but the light was good, Theodore’s glass was a first-class piece, and when I brought it to bear I almost dropped it in surprise, for the first thing I saw was Napier in person.
There was no mistaking him, for like old Paddy Gough he affected a white coat, and there he was, a tiny figure sitting on his pony on a knoll about two miles away with his staff about him, and not a thing between him and us except some Bombay and Madras Sappers skirmishing ahead of his position. No place for a general to be, and it was with some alarm that I traversed the glass and got an even greater shock, for I could see that the bughunting old duffer was courting catastrophe all unaware—and I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed.
His own position, with the first column still some distance behind him, was dangerous enough, but over to the right, coming up the King’s Road, was the second column, and it was led by a convoy of mules, barely escorted, with supply train written all over ’em -rations, ammunition, equipment, the whole quartermaster’s store of the brigade simply begging for some enterprising plunderer to swoop down on them… and here he was, at Theodore’s elbow, leaping with excitement at the heaven-sent chance.
He was old Gabrie, the Ab field-marshal, who’d come thundering up from the Fala saddle where he’d been supervising his army’s assembly, flinging himself from his horse and bawling:
“See, see, Toowodros, they are in our hands!” He was an old pal of Theodore’s, all ceremony forgotten. “Let us go, in God’s name! We have them, we have them!”
If Theodore had been as smart a soldier as Gabrie… well, we might have had a disaster to rank with Isandhlwana or Maiwand, but he hesitated, thank God, and lost the chance. And since it all happened with such speed, so many different factors together, I’d better take time to explain.
The march up the spur and the Afichu plateau to Arogee had taken longer than expected, thanks to the broiling heat, the steep ness of the climb, and the fact that they didn’t think they were marching to battle, but
