Flashman on the March

with an arm about my shoulders, muttering instructions which I was still too dazed to make out, waves of pain were coursing up my left leg which was wrapped knee to ankle in a bloody cloth which oozed crimson on to my boot, and it penetrated my clouded senses that I’d been wounded. The air was crackling with small-arms fire, thunder was rumbling overhead, the rain was pelting harder than ever, and as Theodore turned from looking down the hill and strode past us without a word, tossing aside his rifle in the second gateway, I looked down the hill myself and saw a sight which I can see still, clear as day, forty years on.

Only a stone’s throw below us the Ab musketeers were falling back from the wall, and above the parapet a flag was fluttering in the fierce wind, a little way to the left of the gate. At first I thought it must be some banner of Theodore’s, but then there were helmets and khaki tunics either side of it, and now they were tumbling over the wall, and the flag was being flourished from side to side as the fellow carrying it was boosted up bodily by his mates to stand on the top. That was when I saw it was a regimental Colour, and here they came, a regular flood of riflemen, whooping and cheering like billy-o, charging the Ab musketeers who fairly ran before them. [53]

Khaki tunics and white robes were struggling in the gateway, bayonets against spears, and clubbed firearms on both sides; khaki was winning, and as the Abs were driven back some of our fellows were tearing aside the piled stones from the gates, which were thrust wide to admit a crowd of cheering attackers, Sappers and Pioneers and a great mob of Irish of the Dukes. They chased the Abs along the wall, and spears and swords and muskets were being flung aside as their owners threw up their arms in surrender. A few of the hardier spirits were running up the rocky path towards us, turning to fire a last shot at our fellows, and getting a fusilade in return. Shots sang above us and splintered the rocks around us, and Wald Gabr ran from my side, seized Theodore’s fallen rifle, and thrust the butt into my left arm-pit.

'Tenisu, dedjaz, tenisul Up, up, for our lives!”

Sound notion, and if you think it’s agony to run hobbling with a splinter of steel buried in your calf muscle, you’re right, but it’s wonderful what you can do when Snider slugs are buzzing about your ears. I knew better than to try to identify myself in the heat of battle; with my improvised crutch going and Wald Gabr holding me up on t’sother side I lurched through the gate, screaming at every step, and ahead of us Ab civilians were scattering up the slope, mothers with chicos, old folk and striplings, all frantic to escape the murderous struggle behind us.

Ten yards ahead there was a great bale of forage bound with cords, six foot square, and a capital place to go to ground, for my leg was giving out, leaking blood like a tap, my improvised crutch slipped from my grasp, and I lunged at the bale and grabbed it to save myself pitching headlong. I hauled myself round the bale by its cords, so that it was between me and the mischief behind, but lost my hold and fell on all fours, being damned noisy about it, too, for my leg was giving me gyp. Wald Gabr sprawled beside me, and then strong hands seized my arms and hauled me up, yelping, and it was Theodore, gripping me under the shoulders and gently easing me into a sitting position with my back to the bale.

“Be still!” He was breathing hard. “Go, good and faithful servant!” says he to Wald Gabr. “God prosper you… and have you in his keeping!”

The lad hesitated, and Theodore laughed and slapped him on the arm. “Go, I say! Get you to Tigre again! Take a king’s thanks… and blessing! Fare well, gun-bearer!”

Wald Gabr turned and ran, and Theodore watched him disappear among the huts. Then he looked past the bale towards the second gate, still breathless and rubbing the rain from his face; the plain shama over his shoulders was wringing wet and clinging to him. The firing behind had slackened, but there was a distant shouting of orders followed by a ragged cheer. He closed his eyes for a moment and sighed before he spoke, and these were his words, and mine, on that rainy afternoon on Magdala height:

Theodore: I shall never go to Jerusalem now. There will be no Tenth Crusade. [Draws pistol, offers it butt first.] Suicide is an abomination in God’s sight, a sin not to be forgiven. Oh, friend, will you do a last kindness to your enemy?

Flashy: Don’t be a bloody ass! Throw it away, man! They ain’t coming to kill you—put up your hands and give in, can’t you? It’s all up, dammit!

Theodore: You will not? Do I ask too much, then? So be it. Perhaps God, who marks the fall of humble sparrows and proud kings, will forgive even this, in His infinite mercy…

Flashy: God don’t give a tuppenny dam one way or t’sother! Give over, you crazy bastard—

But he was cocking the piece, and now he put the muzzle in his mouth and his thumb on the trigger, and blew the back of his head away. The explosion threw him back, off his feet, but by some freak convulsion of his hand the pistol flew into the air and fell beside my wounded leg. His body twitched for a few seconds and then shrank and was still, head on one side and a bloody puddle spreading beneath it. I could see his face; unmarked, impassive, untroubled, the eyes closed as though in sleep.

D’you know, I wasn’t even shocked at the abruptness of it? It seemed fit and proper, somehow, and I thought then what I think still, that it was a thing almost fore-ordained, as though he’d been searching for it all his life. And there it was, and that was all about it; short, sweet, simple, and saved everyone a deal of bother.

I clenched my eyes shut with a spasm of pain, and when I opened them my eye fell on the pistol, and on the silver plate on its stock. I picked it up, and laughed aloud, but not in mirth. The plate was engraved:

Presented

by

VICTORIA Queen of Great Britain and Ireland

to

THEODORUS Emperor of Abyssinia

as a slight token of her gratitude

for his kindness to her servant Plowden

1854

Ironic, you’ll agree, but now came a clatter of running feet, and into sight on my right came two khaki ruffians, helmets askew, dirty bearded faces alight with devilment. The nearer covered me with his rifle.

“Jayzus, ye’re white!” cries he. “Who the hell are ye, den, and what’s to laugh at?”

“Put up that piece and come to attention, you rascal!” I’ve encountered T. Atkins (and P. Murphy) often enough to know how to bring him to heel when the battle-lust is on him. “I’m Colonel Sir Harry Flashman, Seventeenth Lancers! Get me a medical orderly!”

“In de name o’ God!” cries Paddy. “An’ is it yerself, den, Sorr Harry? Be Christ it is, an’ so ye are! ’Tis himself, Mick, de Flash feller—beggin’ yer pardon, Sorr Harry—”

“Are yez sure?” says Mick, all suspicion. “He looks like a bloody buddoo to me.”

“Buddoo? Will ye hear him? Did I not see Ould Slowcoach pin de cross on him at Allahabad—beggin’ his pardon an’ all, Sir Colin, I should say—but man, Sorr Harry, I doubt ye’re woundit—”

“Who’s de nigger?” demands Mick, scowling at Theodore’s corpse and plainly still doubtful of me.

“The King of Abyssinia,” says I. “Let him be—and damn your eyes, get me an orderly and a stretcher!”

“At once, at once!” shouts Paddy. “Run, Mick, an’ see to’t! Just you bide there, Colonel Sorr Harry, sorr, an’ give yer mind peace—”

“There’s no Seventeenth Lancers in your man’s colyum,” says Mick. “An’ if there was, whut’s he doin’ here ahead o’ the Colours, even? Tell me dat, Shaughnessy!”

Shaughnessy told him, in Hibernian terms, but I paid him no heed, for more bog-trotters were arriving, with wild hurrahs and halloos, pausing a moment to gape at me, and then at Theodore’s body, for now there were Abs on hand tugging at their sleeves and pointing—“Toowodros! Toowodros!” [54] Presently the man Mick returned with an orderly who set to work on my injured calf, making me yell with the fiery bite of raw spirit in the wound, and drawing cries of delight and commiseration from my audience as he held up a gleaming two-inch sliver of shrapnel which he had removed from my quivering flesh.

“Nate as Hogan’s knapsack!” they cried. “A darlin’ little spike, compliments o’ Colonel Perm!” and laughed heartily, urging me to be aisy, Sorr Harry dear, for I must ha’ tekken worse at Balaclavy, sure an’ I had, is dat not so, eh, Madigan? It was a mercy when a Colour Sergeant came bawling for them to fall in, and they melted away, all but the orderly and Private Pat Shaughnessy, my self-appointed sponsor and protector… and suddenly I felt not too poorly at all, for all the throbbing discomfort of my leg, and my aching skull, sitting with my back to the bale in the gentle rain.

I’d been here before… wounded and propped up against a gun-wheel at Gwalior ten years since, at the end of