the great Mutiny, with the same tired, overwhelming feeling of relief because I knew ’twas all over at last, and here I was none too much the worse, watching content as the Duke of Wellington’s Irish fell in, with the markers shouting, and a young chap was planting the Colour to thunderous cheers and helmets flying before all came to attention for “God Save the Queen” followed by “Rule, Britannia', and the orderly was bidding Shaughnessy bring me a stretcher, and a huge figure with a spreading black beard was stooping over me with a roar of greeting, and my hand was being gripped in an enormous paw.
“Good God!” cries Speedy. “Sir Harry!”
“Right enuff y’are, yer honour!” agrees the departing Shaughnessy. “Tis himself, so it is, an’ none other!”
“You’re wounded!” cries Speedy. “But you’re well, what? Oh, this is famous! It will crown Sir Robert’s day! We’d almost given you up after Prideaux said Theodore wouldn’t release you!” He pumped my hand, beaming. “And here you are—and what a splendid job you did with the Gallas! Sealed this
Which was music to the ears, of course… and then he glanced round at a cry of “Toowodros! Toowodros!', and there was an Ab eagerly identifying Theodore’s body for a couple of officers who had just come up.
Now, what followed meant nothing to me at first, but it did an hour later, after… well, the events I’m about to relate. They’re no great matter, but they provide an interesting glimpse of human nature, I think, and demonstrate how people will believe what they want to believe, and honourable men will swear to what they think is a damned lie, never realising that it happens to be true. Thus:
Speedy heard the Ab, and stared, shot me a brief wondering glance, and strode across to the corpse. He bent over it and came back exclaiming “Phew!” in astonishment. Then he checked, and I saw he was looking at my left hand which, to my surprise, was resting on Theodore’s revolver. Speedy glanced back at the body, then at me with just a hint of knowing in his eyes, and stooped quickly to snatch up the gun and thrust it under his tunic.
“We’ll have you under cover in a jiff—out o’ the rain!” cries he, and Shaughnessy arriving with the stretcher, he and the orderly bore me into one of the thatched houses nearby. Speedy chivvied them away, Shaughnessy adjuring me to hiv a care, Sorr Harry man, dear, and outside the bands were striking up “Hail the Conquering Hero Comes', almost drowned out by another great roar of cheering. It was Napier, never far behind the infantry as usual, come to take possession of his conquest; Speedy stood chafing in the doorway, and I heard him summon a soldier and order him to stand guard and let no one in or out.
There were a couple of scared-looking Ab women in the house, and Speedy dashed them some dollars, telling them to give me a flask of
“Have him covered up at once!” he was barking. “Good God, was there ever anything more disgraceful? Have him taken into a house directly and made decent! Has the Queen been informed? Ah, Rassam is seeing to her; very good.” I was to learn that his great bate was about Theodore’s body lying in the rain, stripped almost naked by chaps seeking souvenirs. Speedy said something I didn’t catch, and Napier said: “To be sure, the doctors must examine the body tomorrow and report to a board of inquiry… now, where is our Ambassador Extraordinary?”
This as he appeared in the doorway, helmet in hand, with Speedy at his elbow muttering that the less said the better, at all costs the press mustn’t get wind—
“Sir Harry!” Napier was gripping my hand, eyes alight in the tired old face. “No, no, sit still, my dear fellow! Not too painful a hurt, I trust? Ah, that is good news!” Then he was echoing Speedy’s earlier congratulations, thanking me for “a task well done as only you could have done it,” without which the campaign might have come adrift, and so forth, etc. “It was a body blow when we learned you’d been taken, I can tell you. But we’ll hear all about that presently, and your other adventures. For the moment it’s enough that you’re here!” He beamed, paused a moment, and sat down, fingering his dreary moustache.
“So… the work’s done, by the mercy of Providence,” says he. “And the King is dead. A sad end. But not untimely. How did it happen?”
I told him straight, suicide. He glanced at Speedy, and nodded.
“Suicide,” says he. “I see.”
Something in his tone made me repeat it. “That’s right, sir. He put the piece in his mouth and let fly.”
Another thoughtful nod. “Apart from yourself, was any other person present?”
“No, sir. No one.”
“Very good.” He looked decidedly pleased. “Very good. Dr Blanc will confirm your account when he examines the body tomorrow.”
“Johnson’ll convene the board of inquiry. They’ll make it offi cial,” says Speedy. “Suicide, that is.”
There followed a brief silence during which I kept a straight face. Suddenly it had become plain that they were under the incredible delusion that I had shot Theodore, but they didn’t care to say so in as many words, which was vastly diverting. Of course it was what they’d wanted, and had hinted to me through Prideaux, and Speedy, having seen the pistol in my hand and Theodore stark and stiff, had concluded that I’d done the dirty deed to save H.M.G. the painful embarrassment of having to try and possibly hang the black bugger.
Which explained why, within an hour of the last shot in the war being fired, when the Commander-in-Chief should have been con solidating his victory, with a hundred important military matters awaiting his decision, he was here post-haste to ensure a conspiracy of silence, leave me in no doubt that I’d not suffer for my good deed, and join Speedy in regarding me with that rather awed respect which says more clearly than words, gad, you’re a ruthless son-of-a-bitch, thank God.
I might have protested my innocence, but I didn’t get the chance.
Napier was addressing me in his gentlest voice, with that old familiar Bughunter smile.
“Harry,” he began. So I was “Harry” now, without any formal honorific; well, well. “Harry, you and I have known each other ever so long. Yes, ever since you lobbed that blessed diamond at old Hardinge… ‘Here, catch!’” He gave a stuffed chuckle. “You should have seen their faces, Speedy! However… that’s by the way.” He became serious. “Since then, I have known no officer who has done more distinguished service, or earned greater fame, than you… no, no, it is true.” He checked my modest grunts with a raised hand. “Well, what I wish you to know is that whatever services you may have done in the past, none has been more… gratefully valued, than those performed in Abyssinia. I refer not only to your mission to the Queen of Galla, so expertly accomplished, but to that… that other service which you have done today.”
He paused, choosing his words, and when he resumed he didn’t look at me directly. “I know it cannot have been easy for you. Perhaps to some of our old comrades, those stern men with their iron sense of duty, men like Havelock and Hope Grant and Hodson (God rest them), it might have seemed nothing out of the way… but not, I think, to you. Not to one in whom, I believe, duty has always been tempered with humanity, yes, and chivalry. Not,” he concluded, looking me in the eye, “to good-hearted Harry Flashman.” He stood up and shook my hand again. “Thank you, old fellow. That said, we’ll say no more.”
If I sat blinking dumbly it was not in manly embarrassment but in amazement at his remarkable misreading of my nature. All my life people had been taking me at face value, supposing that such a big, bluff daredevilish-looking fellow must be heroic, but here was a new and wondrous misconception. Just because I’d tickled his funnybone years ago by my offhand impudence to Hardinge, and been hail-fellow Flash Harry with the gift of popularity (as Thomas Hughes observed), I must therefore be “good-hearted'… and even humane and chivalrous, God help us, the kind of decent Christian whose conscience would be wrung to ribbons because he’d felt obliged to do away with an inconvenient nigger for the sake of the side.
That was why Napier had been gassing away like a benign vicar, judging me by himself, quite unaware that I’ve never had the least qualm about kicking the bucket of evil bastards like Theodore—but only when it’s suited me. You may note, by the way, that for once my eye-witness report conforms exactly with accepted his toric fact. All the world (Napier and Speedy excepted) believes that King Theodore took his own life, and all the world is
