Flashman on the March

I told him that Napier left nothing to chance, and had calculated time and distance and supply to a nicety, and set his pace accordingly; as to his route, across what Theodore called the salt plain, it was the shortest way to Magdala. I weighed every word, you may be sure, for I knew that however amiable he might be just now, the least little thing could turn him into a murderous maniac. I had to force myself to remember that, in the face of his smiles and cheery chat, but ’twasn’t easy. Here he was, in his harlequin coat and glit tering pants, sitting at ease on a gun carriage, laughing and sipping tej, all geniality as he turned the talk to every topic under the sun—the range of our rifles, and our courts martial, and did the Queen ever review her troops, and my opinion of the Prussian needle gun, and the probable cost of his boy’s education at an English school, and what difficulties he might face being black and foreign, and was it likely, did I think, that he’d take up with an English girl… it was all so pleasant and normal, hang it, that I wondered was it possible that this portended a peaceful outcome—in effect, a sur render? I daren’t hope; with this demented bugger, there was no knowing.

And as he talked, his army was falling in on the great plain of Islamgee, rank upon rank, spearmen and swordsmen and riflemen and cavalry by the thousand, white-robed fighters with their banners before them, churning up the dust in rolling clouds, through which appeared presently the Magdala prisoners, plodding wearily to the tent-lines.

The Europeans were in the van, and a sorry lot they were, like tramps on the look-out for a hen-roost; if you’d seen ’em at your gate you’d have set the dog on them. There were a dozen or so of them, all strangers to me, of course, but I guessed that the two in red coats must be Prideaux of the Bombay Army and Cameron, the consul whose imprisonment had started the whole row. Prideaux was your Compleat Subaltern, tall, fairish, with moustache and whiskers; Cameron was burly and black-bearded and had a crutch under one arm. They, and one or two of the others, walked in the oddest way, lifting their feet high at every step, as though treading through mud or heather. That, I discovered, is what wearing heavy irons for months on end does to you; they’d been relieved of them only a few days ago.

Leading the group was a chipper little dago with a bristling head of hair and soup-strainer to match, and at his elbow a hulking fellow who was all beard and pouched eyes; they were Rassam and Blanc, and they were the fellows who, with Prideaux, had carried the first request for Cameron’s release to Theodore two years ago, and been promptly jailed themselves. Who the others in the group were I don’t know, and it don’t matter, for these four were the ones singled out by Theodore for introduction to me. He hailed Rassam effusively, with his usual inquiries about health and happiness and had he slept well, and then took them aback by announcing me with a fine flourish. For of course they all knew me, by name and fame, and shook my hand in turn, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, which I found mighty interesting.

Rassam didn’t like me—or rather, he didn’t like my presence. You see, he’d been the leader of the pack, on account of being in some sort of political job at Aden, and was their spokesman with Theodore, with whom he was very thick. I don’t say he toadied (and I’d not blame him if he had, with a creature like Theodore), but he was at pains to be busy, very much the Emperor’s confidant, and I guess he feared being cut out by the celebrated Flashy. If that seems odd, well, captivity breeds strange germs in people’s minds, rival ries and enmities flourish, and little things wax great. Of course, he was some kind of Levantine Turk or Bedouin chi-chi, so you’d not have expected him to behave like the British prisoners.

Prideaux was the youngest, thirty-ish or thereabouts, cool as a trout with an affected lazy look which I guessed concealed a sharp mind and a deal of hard bark; from the way he glanced towards Theodore I knew that captivity hadn’t cracked him. Nor had it done anything to Cameron’s spirit, although it had played havoc with his body; he’d been racked and flogged even worse than the rest, and was a sick man, but he had that dogged, quiet manner which is generally admired, especially by devout Christians. Not my style, but useful in companions in misfortune. Blanc was a sawbones in the Bombay medical service, grave and tough, and respected by the chief men on the amba for his skill in doctoring them and their families.

Rassam, as I say, wasn’t glad to see me; Prideaux was, and showed it; Blanc was, but didn’t, for demonstration wasn’t his style. Cameron was too used up to do more than acknowledge me, and of course all four wondered what my arrival portended, what news did I have of Napier’s progress, and what, above all, was Theodore about to do.

That last remained a mystery. He sat the five of us down before his tent, and started gassing about everything under the sun—how his fancy dress was made of French silk, how he had had to rebuke Damash for belittling our army, and then a great harangue about a rifle that someone had stolen from the King’s tent several months before and poor Damash had led an expedition to recover it and been cut up by the Gallas. From that he passed on to the Crimea, and the American war, and I noticed that Cameron, Blanc and Prideaux had nothing to say, but Rassam was in like quicksilver, always echoing Theodore, and evidently afraid that I’d put him in the shade, having been in both campaigns. I took no part, until Theodore summoned his little son Alamayo, a bright nipper of six, and I chaffed him about going to Rugby, while Rassam listened with a stuffed smile. But not a word was said about Napier, or Theodore’s intentions, and I could feel Prideaux fairly bursting with impatience beside me.

At last Theodore said we might retire to rest in a tent that had been set aside for us, and we withdrew, except for Rassam, who stayed, hinting that he’d be glad of a private word in the King’s ear.

“No doubt to pay him a few well-chosen compliments,” says Prideaux. “Would you believe he wrote Theodore a letter congrat ulating him on getting all his artillery to Magdala? He’ll be offering to taste his food next.” [44]

“Policy,” says Blanc, shrugging. “Theodore likes him, and if he takes advantage of it, do we not all benefit?”

“I just wish he didn’t seem to like Theodore quite so much,” says Prideaux. “I like to be sure our spokesman is on our side. But that’s no matter,” he added, turning eagerly on me. “However did they come to take you, sir, and what can you tell us? Is Napier about to attack?”

I’d made up my mind to tell them nothing of my mission to Masteeat, on the principle of least said, soonest mended, and also I was leery of Rassam. So I said I’d been on a long scout and run into an ambush. Napier I believed to be no more than a day’s march away, but did Theodore mean to fight him, that was the point? I asked if they had any notion.

“All we know is that he is insane,” says Blanc, “and altogether unpredictable. He has received a letter of ultimatum from Sir Robert Napier, and Rassam urges him to write in reply, but it is dangerous even to hint that he would be well advised to sue for peace.”

“Theodore’ll fight,” says Cameron, sounding dog-tired. “He cannot back down now.”

“Then God help us all,” says Blanc. “But I believe you are right, Consul. Even if he faces certain defeat, he will give battle, out of pride and superstition. Oh, he is ruled by his astrologers, and his lunatic fatalism! You heard him just now, lamenting his lost rifle? He regarded it as a talisman, and is sure that catastrophe will follow if it is not recovered! That is why he is here, at Magdala—nothing but superstition.” Seeing my expression, he laughed, and explained.

“Magdala is another talisman; he believes that while he holds it, he cannot fail. Only last week he cried aloud that while he had lost all Abyssinia, Magdala remained, and he would hold it and emerge again as a conqueror. He truly believes it, too.”

“He can’t believe it!” Automatically I added: “He must be—”

“Mad?” says Prideaux. “You’ve noticed, sir? Yes, his majesty is a trifle erratic.”

“We can thank God for it,” says Cameron. “If he didn’t think of that rock as a symbol of victory, he would not have determined to hold it… and God knows where we would have been taken to by now. At least we’re here, where Napier can find us.”

They were silent, and I knew they were thinking: “If we survive.” At least they were sane enough to do nothing but wait; no wild talk of trying to break out, or blow up the powder magazine which was only a few yards from our tent, by the artillery park. Captivity had taught them patience; that was evident from what they told me of schemes for escape that had been considered and rejected, of plots with the rebels to storm the amba in Theodore’s absence, and of the hideous consequences of conspiracies gone amiss, with the guilty being mutilated and flung over cliffs, and one girl of sixteen being flogged to death with girafs. Small wonder that attempts to suborn their jailers hadn’t got far, although in some respects even leading men on the amba had been helpful and friendly, despite the risk of arousing Theodore’s displeasure.

Thus there had been a continuous correspondence carried on with our politicals in Egypt and Aden, with letters sewn into the clothes of Ab couriers, and supplies of money and comforts coming in for the prisoners. You may read about it at length in the memoirs of Blanc and Rassam, if you’ve a mind to, and it’s the strangest tale—in a way, my own experience of Theodore mirrors it in minia ture. For sometimes they’d been treated as honoured guests, some times beaten and tortured; splendidly fed with luxurious dinners of seven courses, and loaded with chains; well housed and allowed the freedom to wander, tend their gardens, and promised early release, then dragged away from one prison to another. There had simply been no pattern to their strange existence. No wonder, when Samuel the ferret came to summon us back to the royal presence, my companions exchanged anxious looks. “Now what?” wonders Prideaux. “Chains or candy?”

In fact it was to be given an alarming reassurance—reassuring because it was a promise from Theodore, speaking at his sanest, that in the event of danger we’d be put in a safe place, along with his family; alarming because it suggested that battle was imminent.

That was not my only anxiety. Among the great concourse of priests, generals, courtiers, astrologers, and servants assembled before the red pavilion to hear his majesty’s pronouncements were a number of his women, with the bloated “Queen” Tamagno to the fore. She was seated with her attendants close to the King, being fanned with great ostrich plumes, and once again I was conscious of being appraised like a prize bullock in the ring. Prideaux mut tered beside me.

“Careful o’ that one, sir. She’s a Haymarket Hussar, (* Haymarket Hussar: a courtesan of the better class. Grant Road was the prostitutes’ quarter in Bombay.) and quite desperate altogether.” From which I gathered that he, too, had taken the lady’s fancy, and avoided her for his own good.

“Haymarket or Grant Road?” says I, and he said ’twas no joke, Theodore being a real mad miser with his women. “A fellow on sentry-go at the hareem cadged a cup of tej from one of the concubines, and was lashed to a pulp. Best to keep together when the likes of Madam Tamagno’s on the prowl; safety in numbers, what?”

“Unless she likes to drill by platoons,” says I, and he exclaimed “I say!", at which point Theodore announced that it was time for him to address the troops, who’d been waiting patiently in the sun for an hour or more. So we were marshalled by Damash, and trooped obediently in the King’s wake through the camp to the plain where the flower of the Habesh military stood at attention in orderly silence, and gazing at the huge array under the silken banners, I found myself praying that Napier would keep to the open ground.

The speech was pure Theodore, a rousing address contradicted at the end. He began by trotting before them on a stallion and then dismounted to climb on a rock, displaying himself in his rainbow attire and delivering a great harangue against the invaders of the country. “Understand,” bellows he, “that in a day or two you will be obliged to confront the finest army in the world outside Africa, men far superior to you in strength and in arms, whose very uniforms are bedecked with gold, to say nothing of their treasures, which can only be borne by elephants!” That’ll cheer them up, thinks I, but then he went on, flourishing his arms on high.

“Are you ready to fight?” bawls he. “To fight, and enrich your selves with the spoil of these white slaves! Will you conquer, or will you leave me in the lurch? Think of my great deeds in the past, of my conquests, of great battles in which you have triumphed over my enemies! You have adorned your weapons with their weapons, ha-ha! [Prolonged cheering.] When these white kaffirs approach you, what will you do? You will wait until they fire on you, and before they can reload, you will fall upon them with your spears! [Less enthusiastic cheers.] Your valour will meet with its reward, and you will enrich yourselves with spoils beside which this rich dress that I am wearing will seem but a shabby trifle.” [Sensation, and clashing of spears and swords.]

Stirring stuff, and I was remarking to Prideaux on the neat way he’d cried up our army and then changed tack by depicting us as lambs to the slaughter, when a beaming old codger at the head of one of the foot regiments stepped forward, brandishing his spear and shouting:

“Oh, only wait, great king, until these foreign asses make their appearance! We’ll tear them to pieces, and those who are lucky enough to escape will have a sorry tale to tell in England!”

To which any intelligent leader would have responded with a hearty grin and a flourished fist. So what does Theodore do, eh? Waits for the cheering to die down, and then cries:

“What are you talking about, you old fool? Have you ever seen a British soldier? Do you know what weapons he carries? Why, before you know where you are he’ll have given you a bellyful of bullets! These people have cannon, elephants, guns without number! We can’t fight them! You think our muskets are any good? If they were, they wouldn’t have sold them to us!” And while his army stared in amazed silence, he turned to the priests and generals and courtiers. “It’s your fault, you people of Magdala! You should have advised me better!”

D’you know, for a second I thought he was trying a dam’ silly joke? But he wasn’t. All in a moment his black mood had come on him, and he was telling the truth. Why, heaven only knows. He’d given his troops jingo and ginger, and now he was striding off to his tent with a face like a wet week, leaving ’em stunned and silent with the fight knocked clean out of them. By the way, if you doubt my story, look at Blanc and Rassam.

After his parade, he flung himself aboard a mule and rode up Selassie to spy out Napier’s movements. He can’t have liked what he saw, for he came down in the foulest of tempers; we were dining in our tent, but we heard him screaming curses, and soon after there was a volley of musketry which seemed to come from the direc tion of the Fala saddle. A few single shots sounded a moment later, and Rassam told one of the servants to find out what was afoot, but the guards on our tent wouldn’t let him pass.

So we waited, wondering, and then word came. Theodore had remembered that a few months before one of his storekeepers had deserted and taken refuge among the Gallas; the recollection had sent him into a frenzy and he had ordered up the store keeper’s wife and infant, who had been in prison since the deser tion. They and five other of his Ab prisoners had been taken to the nearest precipice, shot by a firing squad, and their bodies thrown down the cliff. The later single shots had been the fin ishing off of those who were still alive after the fall.

“Including the child?” says Cameron, and Samuel, who had brought the news, said yes, including the child. He begged that we should not remonstrate with Theodore, who had embarked on another drinking spree, and was still undetermined what to do about Napier, whose troops were believed to be preparing to cross the Bechelo river next morning.

When Samuel had gone there was a long silence, broken by Prideaux.

“Napier will be here the day after tomorrow.”

More silence and then Rassam says: “We must do nothing to excite the King’s… passions. In the morning I think I shall ask him to communicate with Sir Robert.”

Nobody said aye or no to that. Nobody wanted to utter a word that might influence Rassam, who might in turn influence Theodore, perhaps with terrible consequences. It all hung in the balance—Napier’s progress, Theodore’s madness, sheer blind chance. Blanc muttered something in Latin, and I asked what it was.

“A quotation I recollected from somewhere,” says he. ‘At the mercy of Tiberius.’”

I’m not good on dates as a rule, but I know the next day was April the ninth, because Rassam said it aloud as he made an entry in his journal, and it stays fixed in my memory [45] as the day on which I was forced to witness one of the foulest crimes I’ve ever seen. As you know, I’m no stranger to human wickedness and cruelty and death; slaughter in battle aside, I’ve watched mass scalpings and blowing from guns and the knouting of a Russian peasant, and I’ve seen the torture pits of Madagascar and what was left of the occupants of a New Mexican hacienda after the Mimbreno Apaches had come to call. But what happened on the eve of Good Friday at Islamgee was an atrocity apart—I can’t tell why, unless it’s because ’twas so unexpected and unreal and without sense or reason, committed not by a prim itive savage but by a man who only moments before had been earnestly considering Christian ethics and the problems of Church and State. Blind passion I can understand, and cruelty for its own sake, but I guess madness is a law unto itself. And yet none of these, not anger or sadistic bloodlust or lunacy, even, has ever seemed to me sufficient explanation for what happened on that day at Islamgee.

Yet it began tamely enough, after a peaceful night in which the five of us slept undisturbed in our fine silk tent, with the other European prisoners and the German workmen in lesser tents close by. No one spoke of last night’s murders, and we were at break fast when a messenger arrived bearing compliments to Rassam from the King, which delighted him, and an order for me to present myself to the royal presence instanter, which didn’t. I wasn’t specially happy myself to be singled out, but there was nothing for it, so off I went.

There was great action afoot in the camp, and on the north end of Islamgee where the ground rose to the Fala saddle. A mighty crowd of prisoners had been herded together by the troops; there must have been several hundred, chained and foully dirty, squat ting in the dust, and recalling the mob of them I’d seen yesterday I found myself wondering how Magdala had contained them all, for that’s where they’d come from; it struck me Theodore must have had half the local population in close tack—rebels, criminals, folk whose faces didn’t fit, but now it seemed there was to be a great jail clearance, for the armourers were passing among them with hammers and leather straps, setting them free, and great rusty piles of fetters were in evidence, while their late wearers wandered about looking dazed and lost. Still, I took it as a good sign; perhaps his mad majesty was seeing sense at last.

My hopes were soon shot; he might be wearing his humane socks, but he was pulling on his jackboots over them. Beyond the assembled prisoners the slopes up to the Fala shoulder were crawling with troops, and they were dragging his artillery pieces along a newly made road to the summit on which the morning mist was just beginning to blow away. My heart sank, for I knew the Fala height commanded the Arogee plain which Napier’s force was bound to cross, and a well-placed park of artillery could play havoc with our advance if the Ab gunners knew their business.

My messenger and I were mounted, but we had the deuce of a job forcing our way up the crowded slope and along the narrow roadway. It was churned to mud by recent rains, and the carts carry ing the guns were up to the axles in the red glue. The great mortar Sevastopol was chained in place on its enormous cart, with hun dreds of hauliers straining on its huge hawsers, slithering and ploughing through the muck, and Theodore himself on the cart yelling orders and encouragement. It began to rain, coming down in stair-rods that pitted the mud like buckshot, and the steam came off the sweating gangs in clouds; we were sodden in no time, and our beasts were fairly streaming down their flanks.

Theodore waved and roared to me to come on the wagon with him, which I was glad to do, for he had Samuel and a couple of servants holding great brollies overhead. Even so, he was soaked, and presently tore off his shirt and stood bare to the waist, laughing and rubbing the water over his chest and arms as though he were in a bath. He seemed in capital spirits, exulting over the damage that his mortar would do, “for there has never been such a weapon in the world, and how will your soldiers be able to endure it? Even its thunder will terrify the bravest; they will scatter like frightened sheep!”

I said he’d never seen British and Indian soldiers, and they’d not scatter, because they knew that noise never killed anyone. He looked a bit downcast at this, so I asked him, greatly daring, if he’d decided to fight.

“If I must!” cries he. “I do not want war, but who is this woman who sends her soldiers against a king? By what right does she come to steal my country?”

I wasn’t going to argue, and he ran on about how he had been insulted, and it was not to be borne; he had written in good will and friendship, as one monarch to another, and had been ignored (which I knew was true), and he’d never have laid a finger on any of our people if Cameron hadn’t conspired with his enemies the Egyptians, and he’d have let that pass, even, if only he’d been shown the courtesy due to his rank, but it was plain that the British Government looked down on African kings as petty rulers of no account. So what else could he do, by the power of God, but defy those who had despised and affronted him, even if he died for it?

With him shouting at me through the downpour, getting angrier by the minute, and poor Samuel struggling with his brolly in the wind and beseeching me with his eyes to say something to turn away wrath, I cried that Theodore was absolutely right, he’d been disgracefully put upon, no question, and it was just a shame that so many fine men, Ab and British, should have to die because our Foreign Office had no bloody manners. Even as I said it, I realised that I’d struck a good line, so I expanded on the arrogance, stu pidity, and downright laziness of our civil servants, but what could you expect from folk who’d gone to disgusting dens of vice and ignorance like Harrow and Eton, and had he given any further thought to the idea of sending that splendid little lad to Rugby, capital school, been there myself…

It may be that the best way to talk to a maniac is to drivel as much as he does, especially if you don’t let him get a word in. My balderdash quite disconcerted him, and by good luck the great wagon suddenly lost a wheel, we had to leap clear for our lives, and Sevastopol finished up to its trunnions in mud. It took a couple of hours to right it, and another hour to reach the top of Fala, by which time the rain had cleared, and the sun broke through the sullen clouds—and there, far across the plain of Arogee, was the Dalanta plateau above the Bechelo, black with the tiny figures of men and animals. Hurry, hurry, old Bob, thinks I, you’re almost there.

Gabrie, the Ab field-marshal, was in charge of emplacing the guns, and making by far too good a job of it for my liking, while Theodore stood Napoleon-like on the edge of the bluff, arms folded, sombrely regarding the distant deployment of the army that was coming to destroy him. He seemed not at all alarmed, remarking that it would be most gratifying to see how a European general disposed his troops, and was it true that Napier was the best commander of his day? I said he was the best we had, careful and steady but sure, perhaps not as inspired as Wolseley or the American Lee, but safer than either, and less prodigal of his soldiers’ lives than Grant.

He nodded. “You think he will destroy me?” says he, and I saw what I hoped was a chance.

“Not if you meet him in love and friendship, getow. Those were the words you used to me, if you remember.”

“I said if he came in love and friendship!” He pointed towards the Bechelo. “Do you see them there? He is the invader, I am the besieged! Would you have me submit to the thieves who come to rob me of my throne, of my country?” He was starting to shout now, striding to and fro, waving his arms and shooting angry glares at me. “That is the counsel of cowards like Damash and Dasta and the fool Samuel! Where is he? Where is Samuel?” He looked around, stamping, but Samuel, luckily for him, wasn’t on hand. Theodore stood snarling for a moment, snapped at one of his attendants to give him a shama, and once he’d wrapped it round his shoulders he came muttering to me.

“They would surrender, Damash and the others. They hate me, all of them, and would run away if they had the courage. Why do they not kill me, eh? Because they fear me, by death, and dare not strike!” He was starting to froth again, and the mad stare was in his eyes. “Well, they had better kill me, because if they do not I shall kill them all, by the power of God, one at a time!” Suddenly he seized me by the shirt, thrusting his face into mine, raving in a whisper.

“You know I must sleep with loaded pistols under my pillow? They know it, too, and fear to murder me in my bed! They would poison me, but my food and drink are tasted! But I do not fear!” He released his grip, closed his eyes, and began to mumble to himself as though in prayer. Then he looked up at the darkening sky, and his voice was shaking. “If He who is above does not kill me, no one will. If He says I must die, no one can save me!”

It came out in a yell, and I looked round to see what Gabrie and his staff were making of it—but they weren’t even looking at him, but busied themselves even more with the teams slewing the cannon into place. They knew he was stark mad, but they were too fearful to do anything about it. And it wasn’t just fear; they were in thrall to him, to the sheer power of his will and spirit. I felt it too, as well as my terror of him; he had that force that I’d seen in others, like Brooke of Sarawak and old John Brown; they weren’t to be resisted, or reasoned with, just avoided if possible—but I couldn’t avoid Theodore.

And then in a moment the morbid fury that had possessed him so suddenly was gone, and he was striding about the gun positions, commending and criticising and even laughing; I saw him slap an Ab gunner on the shoulder and say something that set them in a roar; then he was deep in consultation with one of his Germans, climbing up on to Sevastopol to examine the firing mechanism. He was still chuckling as he came back to me, putting a hand on my shoulder confidential-like.

“They are easy to amuse, are they not? Do you not find it so, with your soldiers? Come, we shall go down and drink a little tej together.” He seemed content to walk, nodding to the gunners and assuring them that when they were called on to load up and fire, he would be on hand to direct them. They cheered and hammered their hilts on the guns as we went down the hill.

“You heard me speak to them yesterday, my friend, did you not? Did I rouse them on to battle? Did I inspire them? Oh, my good friend, I was fakering, (* Bragging. Not in OED, but apparently a favourite word of Theodore’s.) no more than that. But they believe, because they are simpletons and love me.” It didn’t seem to occur to him that they might just as easily believe what he’d shouted at the old general, that they were doomed to defeat. “If I say, ‘Fight, my chil dren!’ they will fight, even if it means death. But are your soldiers any different, Ras Flashman? Why do they do it, my friend?”

I told him, because they took the shilling; the sepoys, for their salt. He said it was a great mystery, and waxed philosophical about the minds and motives of fighting men—sane, sensible chat such as you’d hear in a gathering of civilians, if not from soldiers, who ain’t interested. But the point is, if you’d seen and heard him then, you’d have said here was this intelligent, good-humoured, per fectly normal man of authority, with not an ounce of harm in him. Quite so.

We came off the Fala saddle just as it began to drizzle, with clouds gathering overhead and the light starting to fade. It was about four in the afternoon, and the armourers who’d been freeing pris oners were packing up their traps and shepherding those who were still chained to some old broken-down stables on the south side of the Islamgee plain, not a furlong from Theodore’s tent and ours. They were to be kept there overnight, and freed next day, the last of the six hundred or so whom Miriam and I had seen being brought down from Magdala two days earlier. About two hundred had been freed yesterday, but only half as many today, most of the armourers having been diverted to the work on Fala. Those still chained and sent to the stables were more than two” hundred in number.

I’m exact about this so that you can be clear about how things stood on that close, sultry afternoon as I walked with Theodore and his attendants to his pavilion, aware of a slight commotion from the chained prisoners as they were driven towards the stables. I didn’t know, of course, that they’d had no food since they’d left Magdala, and only such water as they’d begged from the soldiers’ camp nearby. Nor did I know that most of them were “political” prisoners who’d offended, often in the most trivial ways—as Miriam said, by laughing when his majesty was in the dumps, and vice versa.

Impatient at still being in irons with another hungry night ahead of them, they were in no mood to go quietly to the stables, hence the row they were making, but no one paid much heed, least of all Theodore; three o’clock was when he started drinking as a rule, and being an hour late he lost no time in embarking on a splendid spree in his tent, with the tej flowing like buttermilk, and myself expected to go bowl for bowl with him. I couldn’t; the amount he sank in the first hour would have put me on the floor, and he jeered at me for a weakling and summoned “Queen” Tamagno to join us, vowing that she would show me how to drink.

Which I’m bound to say she did, seating her ponderous bulk beside him and laying into the liquor like a thirsty marine. Theodore applauded and kept her goblet brimmed, kissing and caressing her between his own hearty swigs, murmuring endearments like a lovesick swain, which was sufficiently repellent, but what was truly unnerving was that she never took her eyes off me once. I believe he sensed her interest, for after a while he left off cuddling and told her to leave us, and she heaved up her great jelly of a body in its gaudy silks and went, giving me a last long stare over her fat shoulder. Again, I was damned glad to see her away.

When she’d gone he drank in silence for some time, pretty moody, eyeing me in a most discomforting way, as though on the point of an outburst, but when it came it was the last thing I might have expected. For he heaved a great sigh, supped some more tej, and exclaimed:

“My dear friend, do not misjudge me. I truly love you, not you alone but my good friend Mr Rassam, and Mr Prideaux also, although it is difficult to love the Consul Cameron who betrayed me to the Egyptians. But I try.” A longish pause in which he stared at the roof of the tent. “I also love the Dr Blanc, who has healed many of my people. But you I love most of all, for you have shown no fear of me.” Then I’m a sight better actor than I thought I was, thinks I. “I have behaved ill to you, dear friend, but I had an end to serve.” He paused again, looking heavy, and then came the most astonishing declaration I ever heard from this astonishing man.

“I never used to believe I was mad,” says he, and the tears were rolling down his cheeks. “People said I was mad, but I did not believe it. But after the way I have behaved to you, raising my hand to strike you, putting you in chains, I believe I am mad.” He gave a great retching sigh, wiping his cheeks. “But you will forgive me. As Christians we ought to forgive each other.”

I cried amen to that in a hurry, assuring him there was nothing to forgive, he’d behaved like a perfect gentleman, and if all kings played such a straight bat the world would be a better place… that was the gist of it, anyway.

“I try to be a good Christian,” says he, “although some of the priests doubt my devotion. It is the bane of a monarch’s life, in all religions and countries, that his priests are forever at work to gain ascendancy over him. It was so, I have heard, with some of your English kings. My priests, in their insolence, say that I wear three matabs—a Christian one, a Muslim one, and a Frankish one! What folly! I told them: ’You pretend that I wish to change my religion, but it is a lie! I would sooner cut my throat!” And on that he stopped, drank, and raised his head to listen.

I’d been aware for a few moments of another sound above the faint murmur of the camp, but only now, when he cocked his head, frowning, did I identify it: a distant chant, one word over and over: "Abiet! Abietl", which means “Lord, master” in Amharic, and with it now came a faraway clashing of chains, and Theodore was exclaiming impatiently and calling out to know what was the matter. Samuel came hurrying to explain that the chained prisoners were pleading for water and bread, and knowing his unpredictable majesty I’d not have been surprised if he’d told Samuel to shut them up p.d.q., or ordered him to serve them a hearty supper.

He did neither. For a moment he sat perfectly still, and then came to his feet without haste, staring from Samuel to me and back again, and then his expression changed, uncannily and quite slowly, from blank to wondering to frowning to growing rage and then to such a glare of demonic malevolence as sent a shudder up my spine. He let out an almighty scream of fury, scrambling over his couch to snatch up his sabre from the table, and swept it from its sheath.

“Swine! Filth! Treacherous vermin! I shall school them, by the power of God!” He lunged at me, seizing my arm, and dragged me after him. “Come! Oh, come and see how I teach them to squeal for food while my faithful soldiers are starving!” It was news to me that they were starving, but I didn’t mention that. He was bawling for his guards, hauling me out of the pavilion, hurling Samuel out of his path, and rushing on, brandishing his sword. I’d no choice but to run with him, for his grip was like a vice on my arm, and I’d no wish to resist and have him decapitate me.

“Guards! Guards!” he kept shouting. “Attend me! To the stables!” They came running out of the dusk from the tents, and behind me I heard Rassam’s voice demanding to know what was up, and Samuel begging him to go back to his tent and keep his compan ions under cover. I’d have given a pension to join them, but Theodore urged me on, vowing vengeance on the villains who’d dared to disturb his leisure. There was a squall of rain, I remember, just as we reached the stable buildings near the edge of the Islamgee cliff, and a rumble of thunder overhead.

“Bring them out!” bawls Theodore. “Let us see these pampered animals! Have them out, I say!” He let go my arm at last, yelling at me out of a face that seemed to have lost all human expression; he was like a demented ape, spraying spittle and gibbering at me. “You’ll see! You’ll see!”

A guard drew the bar from its sockets and flung open the double doors, and a chained woman, bent double, stumbled out into the half-light. Theodore ran forward, shrieking curses, and brought down the sabre in a sickening cut that fell between neck and shoulder and almost severed the arm. The woman fell screaming, blood spurting up in a fountain, and as a second prisoner blundered out Theodore buried the sabre in his skull. It snapped with the force of the blow and the fellow sank dead with the foible embedded in his brow, leaving the bloody truncheon of the sword in Theodore’s hand. He glared at it, mouthing incoherently, and raised it to slash his next victim… a naked boy of about five who came running out, howling, with his fists screwed into his eyes.

Stricken horrified as I was, I thought, that’ll sober him, the beastly lunatic, and indeed he did throw the bloody shard of the sabre away, but he screamed an order at the nearest guard, and the brute seized the child and hurled him wailing over the cliff.

That was how it began, the horror in the twilight at Islamgee, but it got worse. For with that ghastly infanticide, his mad rage seemed to cool, and I thought that ends it, but I was wrong; he continued his hellish extermination of the prisoners with a calm deliberation that was infinitely more terrible than his murderous fury; killing in a frenzy is at least to be understood, but what can you say of one who, in level tones, inquires of a poor devil his name and offence, and on being answered, almost idly condemns him to be flung to his death?

That is what Theodore did to two hundred prisoners in the next two hours. As thus:

“What is your name, and country, and why are you here?”

“Maryahm, great abiet, of Magdala! I only laughed with my friend Zaudi, your page—”

“Away with him!”

So Maryahm was flung down two hundred feet, and a moment later Zaudi followed him, condemned because he’d handed Theodore a musket that had misfired.

You may think I am inventing horrors to freeze your blood, but look in Blanc and Rassam and you’ll find it’s simple truth. He sat on a rock, like the chairman of governors at a prizegiving, mad as a hatter, and as each unfortunate was dragged out there was the same ritual of question, answer, and execution, with musketeers being sent down the cliff to finish off any survivors. Some went begging and screaming, a few flung defiance at him, others went sheeplike, without protest. Two young lads, I remember, were thrown over because their father had taken liberties with one of the royal concubines, but when the man himself was hauled out, Theodore had him unchained and let go. That was the folly of it; no sense, no logic, no reason, and the lousy bastard didn’t enjoy it, or even care. He just killed them, and I watched, and marvelled, and found myself hoping that Arnold was right, and that there was a Hell for him.

Blanc says 307 were thrown down, and 91, all rebel chiefs and his deadly enemies, were reserved for slaughter another day. Rassam puts the total of dead at 197, of whom he says only 35 had committed any crime, the rest having broken cups or lost rifles or laughed, like Maryahm, or been the sons of a flirtatious father. I take Rassam’s figure as more likely, but I was too stunned to keep count. I don’t even know why he stopped; probably because he was bored, or it was getting dark. [46]

He was silent on the way back to his tent, insisting that I join him for a supper which I couldn’t bring myself to eat, but sat mute while he gorged with great appetite and drank himself insensible after an almighty prose about his ancestors and how he’d fight to the death and be worthy of them. “You will see my body,” says he, slurred and 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 charpoy.

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 tej, and a ghastly vision smote me of the fate of those who had the bad luck to be related to people who made advances to royal concu bines, and I gave one almighty heave and sent unrequited love, all seventeen stone of her, flying from the charpoy. She hit the floor with a fearful flopping sound, and before she’d even had time to squawk I was through the fly of the tent like a startled fawn, seizing the sentry by the throat and demanding directions. He gasped and pointed as Theodore’s voice was heard again, louder this time, calling for his creature comfort, and I hope she heard him and did her duty like a good little concubine. But by that time I was under canvas, tripping over sleepers in the dark and burrowing under a pile of blankets.

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 merely to sites to pitch camp. Napier wasn’t expecting an Ab attack, and got too far forward (in my opinion), and the baggage column had easier going on the King’s Road and likewise arrived too quickly in an exposed position. Phayre got the blame, justly or not I can’t say. If Theodore had allowed Gabrie to attack at once, the baggage column was done for, and that might have spelled disaster; I say might because Napier was a complete hand when it came to improvising, as he was about to show.

Well, Theodore hesitated to cast the dice, with Gabrie pleading to be let loose. Not long, perhaps, but I reckon long enough, before he cried, “Go, then!” Gabrie was off like a shot, waving his scarf to advance the army, and Theodore yelled to the gunners to fire. The German workmen had been measuring the charges, but the Ab gunners manned the pieces, and the first salvo almost caught Napier himself, a chain-shot landing a few yards behind him. And by then he’d had another nasty start, as the whole crest from Fala to Selassie suddenly came to life with seven thousand Ab infantry rolling down to Arogee like a black-and-white tide, bellowing their war-songs and bidding fair to sweep away the Sappers screening Napier’s knoll, who had only muzzle-loading Brown Bess to stem the flood. And to the right the baggage column, caught in the open and barely guarded, must be engulfed by the savage legions bearing down on it.

I thanked God in that moment that I was watching that charge from behindhand not from in front of it, for it must have been a sight to freeze the blood, those great robed figures racing down in a chanting mass almost a mile from wing to wing, sickle-swords and spears flourished, black shields to the fore, braids and robes flying, and out in front old Gabrie, sabre aloft, his brilliant red silk cloak billowing behind him, the five hundred scarlet-clad cavalry chieftains at his back. From above it looked like the discharge from an overturned ant-hill spilling across the plain towards an enemy caught unprepared by the sheer speed of the attack.

That was when Bob Napier earned his peerage. He had a couple of minutes’ grace, and in that time he had the King’s Own, who’d been hurrying towards the sound of the guns, skirmishing past him to join the Sapper screen, and in behind the khaki figures I saw the dark puggarees of the Baluch. As they deployed, waiting for the onslaught, Napier opened up with the Naval Brigade rocket batteries which he’d called up to a point just behind his knoll. In a moment the white trails of smoke were criss-crossing the plain, the rockets smashing into the Ab ranks, cutting furrows through them; they wavered and checked, appalled at this terrible new weapon they’d never seen before, but then they came on again full tilt through the pouring rain, the King’s Own stood fast, and on the word three hundred Sniders let fly in a devastating volley that blew the red-coated horsemen’s charge to pieces and staggered the infantry mass behind them.

Why they didn’t run then and there, I can’t fathom. The rockets must have been terror enough, but now they were meeting rapid-fire breech-loaders for the first time, yet still they came on until the Sniders and the Enfields of the Baluch stopped them in their tracks, and they gave back, firing their double-barrelled muskets as they went and being shot down as they tried to find cover among the rocks and scrub oaks. The King’s Own advanced steadily, a mounted officer who I guess was Cameron keeping them in hand; still the Abs retreated and died… but they never ran, and I guess my time there must have made me an old Abyssinian hand, for I find myself writing "Bayete, Habesh!” on their behalf. There, it’s written. In their shoes I’d not ha’ stopped running till Magdala.

While this was happening, Theodore was pounding away with his Fala battery, which I realised was unlikely to damage anyone (the chain-shot that almost did for Napier must have been a great fluke), but on the right the baggage of the second brigade was in mortal peril. The right wing of the Ab charge was thundering down on it, the spearmen singing like Welshmen, careless of the shells bursting above them from the guns of the Mountain Train formed up on the King’s Road ahead of the baggage. Our guns were flanked by the Punjabi Pioneers, burly Sikhs in brown puggarees and white breeches, and as the Abs came surging up the slope to their posi tion, letting fly their spears, they were met by two shattering volleys—and then the Sikhs were charging them with the bayonet against Ab spears and swords, smashing into their ranks like a steel fist, outnumbered but forcing the robed tribesmen back, and standing by Theodore on Fala I had to clamp my jaws tight to stop myself yelling, for I remembered their fathers and uncles at Sobraon, you see, and within I was crying: "Khalsa-ji! Sat-sree-akall” There’s no hand-to-hand fighter in the world better than a Sikh with his bayonet fixed; they scattered the spearmen like chaff and charged on, and I saw the fancy red puggarees of the 10th Native Infantry among them as they pitchforked the enemy into the gullies—those same ravines that I’d marked on Fasil’s table as a death-trap if we’d blundered into them.

There were more Abs trying to outflank the baggage convoy, but the Sikhs and Native Infantry shot them down among the rocks, and the few King’s Own who acted as baggage guards stood off those who got within striking distance. But this part of the action was too far for me to see, and events on Fala were claiming my attention.

Theodore’s half-dozen cannon had been belching away to no good purpose, partly because his Ab gunners were incompetent, partly because the German loaders, I suspect, were making sure that the charges were all wrong. Why chain-shot was being used, I couldn’t figure, because it’s a naval missile, but that’s Theodore’s army for you: lions for bravery but bloody eccentric. But even if his gunners had been Royal Artillery they’d have had the deuce of a job, for firing dropping shot from a height is a dam’ fine art.

So is building, loading, and firing mortars. Theodore’s pet toy, Sevastopol, may have been the biggest piece of ordnance in the history of warfare for all I know, but the German artisans who cast it, never having made a gun before, botched it either accidental or a-purpose, for at its first discharge it blew up with an explosion you could have heard in Poona. I suspect it was deliberate mis chief [47] from the fact that there wasn’t a squarehead in sight when it was fired, and only the Ab gunners felt the full force of the blast which killed three or four and wounded as many more; it nearly did for Theodore himself, but fortunately for him there was an unwitting guardian angel on hand to save him.

I see it plain even today: the gunners climbing on the mortar housing, the rabble of attendants and staff watching from a respectful distance, the gunners at the other pieces holding their fire, the rain squalls sweeping across the muddy plateau, Theodore on his mule with his umbrella at the high port… and I had just turned to take a towel from a servant to wipe the water streaming down my face, when a tremendous rushing thunder seemed to burst out of the ground itself, the very earth shook, and bodies, debris, and gallons of mud were flying everywhere. I wasn’t five yards away, but by one of those freaks for which there’s no accounting the blast passed me by; I didn’t even stagger, and was thus in a position to move nimbly as seventy tons of solid iron, jarred loose from its housing by that colossal explosion, toppled ponderously in my direction.

Which was capital luck for his Abyssinian majesty, thrown by his startled mule and landing slap in my path as I dived for safety. Ask any man who’s been hit foursquare by a fleeing Flashy, four teen stone of terrified bone and muscle, and he’ll agree that it’s a moving experience; Theodore went flying, brolly and all, and I landed on top of him while the enormous mortar, belching smoke, rocked to a standstill on the very spot where he’d been trying to keep his balance.

His words as we scrambled, mud-soaked, to our feet, were most interesting. “You saved me!” he yelled, and then added: “Why?” Some questions are impossible to answer: “I beg your pardon, I didn’t mean to,” would have been true but inappropriate, but I suppose I made some sort of noise for he stared at me, looking pretty wild, and then turned to the ruin of his mortar, gave a strange wail and clasped his head in his hands, and sank to his knees in the puddles. Unlike mine, his emotions were not shuddering terror at our escape, nor was he overwhelmed by gratitude. I suppose the fact was that Sevastopol had cost him a deal of labour, dragging it half across Ethiopia, and here he was literally hoist with his own petard. And serve the selfish bastard right.

His grief for his useless lump of iron was quickly cut short as a Congreve rushed past overhead, and another absolutely struck one of the cannon, spraying fire and shrapnel everywhere and mor tally wounding the Ab gun-captain. The Naval gunners had found our range, and several more rockets hissed above us, weaving crazily, for they were no more reliable than they’d been years before when I’d fired them at the Ruski powder ships under Fort Raim. One came a sight too close for comfort, though, scudding between the guns and killing a horse. For the first time I saw Theodore scared, and he wasn’t a man who frightened easy. He clasped his shield before him and shouted: “What weapons are these? Who can stand against such terrible things?” But it didn’t occur to him to leave the summit, although presently he bade the gunners cease fire. “They do not fear my shot!” cries he, and began to weep, pacing about the summit and finally taking station on the forward edge to stare stricken at the final retreat of his army.

For it was as good as over now, a bare hour and a half after he’d started the fight with his first gun. The plain was thick with dead and dying Abs, the defeated remnant scrambling back over the rocky slopes of Fala and Selassie, turning here and there to fire their futile smooth-bores and scream defiance at the King’s Own and Baluch advancing without haste, picking their targets and reloading without breaking stride. The sun was dipping behind the watery clouds, and then it broke through as the rain died away, sending its beams across the battlefield, and a splendid rainbow appeared far away beyond the Bechelo. It was damned eerie, that strange golden twilight, with the rocket trails fizzing their uncertain way over the field to explode on the Fala saddle, and the muffled crack of the Mountain Battery’s steel guns, the red blink of their discharges more evident as the dusk gathered over Arogee.

Messengers had been galloping up since the onset, mostly just to hurrah at first, but now came the news that old Gabrie had gone down, and presently it became clear that most of those scarlet-clad cavalry chiefs had fallen with him. Theodore threw his shama over his head, crying bitterly, and sat down against a gun-carriage. Now he wouldn’t look down at the carnage below, or at the wreck of his army stumbling wearily back over the Fala saddle to Islamgee, but at last he dismissed the gun-teams, keeping Samuel and myself and his pages with him. When darkness fell, Ab rescue parties ven tured out with torches to find their wounded, whose wails made a dreary chorus in the dark, and Speedy told me later that when our stretcher-bearers, whom Napier had sent out to bring enemy wounded to our field hospital, had encountered Ab searchers in the dark, they’d worked together without a thought. Our medicos patched up quite a few of Theodore’s people, which, as Speedy observed, made you realise how downright foolish war can be.

But then, ’twasn’t really a war, nor Arogee a proper battle. Like Little Big Horn, it was more of a nasty skirmish, and like Big Horn it had an importance far beyond its size.

On the face of it, there wasn’t much for the Gazette. No dead on our side, although I believe a couple of our thirty wounded died later, and only seven hundred Abs killed—I say only, you under stand because when you’ve seen Pickett’s charge and the Sutlej awash with thousands of corpses, Arogee’s a fleabite (provided you ain’t one of the seven hundred, that is). For our fellows, it had been a day’s shooting, but for the Abs it was Waterloo. They’d been shot flat, massacred if you like, by Messrs Snider and Enfield, gallant savages decimated by modern weapons… but for once the liberals can’t sniff piously over that, for even at close quarters, steel against steel, Ab swords and spears had been no match for Sikh bayonets. For the Abs, it was shameful disaster, and for Theodore it was finis. [48]

For our side, it was something unheard of, a victory without loss at the end of a campaign that had been supposed to end in catas trophe. But Speedy told me there was no joy in our camp, only pity and admiration for a foe who hadn’t been good enough, and a perverse irritation that it hadn’t been worth all the toil and effort. T. Atkins and J. Sepoy had expected a real battle, an Inkerman or Balaclava, a Mudki or Ferozeshah, against a foe they could touch their hats to. Arogee had been a sell; the Abs had been no opposition at all—oh, they’d tried, and been a mighty disappointment.

That, I can assure you, is what my countrymen felt. Victory had been so easy that they felt cheated. D’you wonder that I shake my head over ’em? [49]

It was well after dark before Theodore could rustle up the will to bestir himself. He sat for a good two hours like a man stunned, not seeming to hear the cries of the wounded below Fala, or that sudden ghastly scream which told us that the jackals and hyenas were at work. At last he summoned Samuel and dictated a letter to Rassam asking him to make his peace with Napier. I can give it exact, for Samuel gave me a copy later, as evidence that he’d done his bit to bring about an armistice. It was a real Theodore effusion:

My dear friend, how have you passed the day? Thank God, I am well. I, being a king, could not allow people to come and fight me without attacking them first. I have done so and my troops have been beaten. I thought your people were women but I find they are men. They fought very bravely. Seeing that I am not able to withstand them, I must ask you to reconcile me to them.

He gave it to a couple of the Germans to take to Magdala, and then we went down to Islamgee, through a torch-lit purgatory of dead who’d been brought up from the battlefield, and wounded being cared for by their comrades. It was raining again, and the guttering flares shone on rows of shrouded corpses, and on lean-tos and tents where the Ab surgeons were at work. Under one long canopy were laid the scarlet-clad bodies of some of the five hundred chiefs who had led the charge and been peppered by the King’s Own and Baluch, who’d supposed that one of ’em must be Theodore.

He stood silent a while, looking at them, and then moved slowly along the line, stopping now and then to touch a hand, or lay his own on a forehead, before turning away. Someone called his attention to another body in a tent nearby, and when they drew back the shroud who should it be but Miriam, looking pale and beautiful and very small. It took me aback; I’d forgotten her in the tumult of the last few days, and seeing her lifeless gave me a shock that I find hard to describe. I mean, I bar vicious bitches who are prepared to burn me to death by inches, but she’d been a lovely peach and I’d have dearly liked to explain the Kama Sutra to her by demonstration. So I can’t say I was grief-stricken, or even moved, much, just sorry as one is to see a beautiful ornament broken, and irritated by the waste.

Some of her mates were around her, keening what I guess was a death-song, and I asked the ugly little trot I’d christened Gorilla Jane how it had happened. Miriam hadn’t been in the battle, but watching with the others from the Fala saddle, and a screaming fire-devil had exploded by her: a rocket. The others had escaped injury, so I guess bonny little Miriam was the only female casu alty of Arogee. Well, at least I gave her a moment’s thought, which was more than Theodore did; he spared her not so much as a glance as he strode on to his tent. Gratitude of princes, what?

You’d ha’ thought, would you not, that it was now all over at last? His army had been thrashed out of sight, he’d confessed with bitter tears that there was no resisting such weapons, and he’d asked Rassam to make peace for him. He changed his mind in the course of the night, which he spent getting raging drunk, and vowing that he’d be damned before he’d sue to Napier, but by dawn he was seeing reason again (for the time being) and I was treated to the sight of Prideaux, in full fig, limping down from Magdala to get his marching orders from the Emperor: he, and one of the German prisoners, a preacher named Flad, were to go with one of Theodore’s sons-in-law, a nervous weed named Alamee, to open negotiations with Napier.

His majesty was in his sunniest mood by now, inquiring after Prideaux’s health, pressing drink on him, and complimenting him on his appearance—at which I couldn’t help smiling approval, for our jaunty subaltern was putting on dog in no uncertain manner. His old red coat was sponged and pressed, his whiskers shone with pomade, his cap was on three hairs, his cane under his arm, and his monocle in his eye. Rule Britannia, thinks I, and stamped my heel in reply to the barra salaam (* Big salute.) he threw me as he and his com panions rode down to Napier’s head-quarters beyond Arogee. Theodore watched their progress through his glass from the summit of Selassie, and was much gratified when one of his scouts panted up to report that the party had been received with cheering and hats in the air.

If he thought that this natural rejoicing at seeing two of the pris oners free at last was a happy omen, he was brought back to earth when they returned in the afternoon with Napier’s reply. By then his mood had changed for the worse, thanks to his chiefs, who came to the Selassie summit en masse to point out that he still had nine-tenths of his army in good fettle, and if they fell on Napier by night, when artillery and rockets would be useless, they could make him sorry he’d ever crossed the Bechelo. Whether Theodore believed this or not, he was looking damned surly by the time Prideaux and Flad and Alamee returned to inform him that Napier’s terms amounted to unconditional surrender, with the prisoners freed and Theodore willing to “submit to the Queen of England", with a promise that he’d be given honourable treatment.

Reasonable enough, considering the trouble and expense we’d been at, and the barbarous way he’d behaved, wouldn’t you say? But you ain’t the descendant of Solomon and Sheba, with notions of imperial grandeur, unable even to contemplate submitting your sacred person to the representative of a mere woman who’d added injury to insult by ignoring your letter and then invading your country. Just to show you how far he was from understanding us, his first question was: did honourable treatment mean we’d assist him against his enemies, and would we look after his family—wives, concubines, numerous offspring, etc?

Flad, who interpreted, put this to Prideaux, who said, being an honest English lad from a good home, that we’d do the decent thing, goodness me. Flad was explaining this in diplomatic terms when Alamee, who’d been hopping nervously as Theodore’s scowl grew blacker, seized his majesty’s arm and drew him out of earshot, chattering twenty to the dozen.

“Talkin’ sense into him, I hope,” says Prideaux to me. “Is the feller changin’ his mind? His army don’t look like surrenderin’, I must say!” Nor did they, ranged in their silent thousands on the lower slopes of Selassie beneath us, and on Fala across the way. “Never saw so many glowerin’ faces! Well, he’d better swallow the terms, ’cos they’re the best he’ll get—what, after the way he’s carried on, keepin’ us chained for two years, torturin’ poor old Cameron, butcherin’ his own folk right and left! The man’s a blasted Attila! And if he expects Napier to just say, ‘So long, old fellow!’ and pack his traps, he’s sadly mistaken!”

“He’s mad, remember,” I told him—and what happened next bore me out, for Theodore began to rage and stamp as Alamee pleaded with him. “Please, Father, there is no hope!” he was crying. “The choice is surrender or death! The English dedjaz swears that if a hair of the Europeans’ heads is touched, he will tarry here five years if need be to punish the murderers—his words, Father, not mine!”

“Be silent, imbecile!” bawls Theodore, and there and then sat himself down on a rock and dictated a reply to Napier at the top of his voice, while we and his chiefs and minions listened in dis belief. For you never heard such stuff, starting off with a Theodoric rant about the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and then a great harangue—not addressed to Napier, but to the people of Abyssinia, and how they’d fled before the enemy, and turned their backs on him, and hated him, after the way he’d fed their multitudes, the maidens protected and unprotected, the women made widows at Arogee, and aged parents without children… amazing babble, while he glared up at the heavens and his admiring court exclaimed in awe.

“He’s slipped his cable,” mutters Prideaux. “God help us!”

But now Theodore seemed to remember to whom he was writing, for he complained that Napier had prevailed by military discipline, the implication being that it wasn’t fair “and my followers who loved me were frightened by one bullet, and fled in spite of my commands. When you defeated them, I was not with the fugitives. Believing myself to be a great lord, I gave you battle, but by reason of the worthlessness of my artillery, all my pains were as nought…”

You may think I’m exaggerating, that no one could blather such nonsense, but it’s there in the Blue Books, and I heard it up yonder on Selassie, how his ungrateful people had taunted him by saying he’d turned Muslim, which wasn’t true, and he had intended with God’s help to conquer the whole world, and die if he couldn’t fulfil his purpose, and he’d hoped after subduing Abyssinia to lead his army against Jerusalem and expel the Turks. And if it had been dark at Arogee he’d have licked us properly. Not since the day of his birth had anyone dared lay a hand on him, and finally, a warrior who had dandled strong men like infants would never submit to be dandled by others.

So there. When he’d done dictating, he had the scribe read it over to him, which gave Prideaux the chance to tell me that Napier sent his compliments and congratulations, the Gallas had the southern approaches sealed, and he’d despatched another agent to Masteeat to see that my good work was continued.

“Sir Robert was quite bowled over at first to hear that you had fallen into Theodore’s hands, and Captain Speedy—what a remark able chap he is!—wondered if you hadn’t allowed yourself to be taken on purpose.” Prideaux was regarding me with that look of wary respect that my heroic reputation invariably excites in the young. “Sir Robert said why ever should you do any such thing, and Captain Speedy said it might be all for the best, because if it came to a point, you would know what to do. Sir Robert asked what did he mean, but Captain Speedy made no reply.” Prideaux coughed and fixed me with an earnest eye. “I tell you this, Sir Harry, because after a moment’s reflection Sir Robert told me to give you his order that whatever befell, you were to remain with the Emperor Theodore and use your best judgment.” He coughed again. “I’m not sure what he meant, sir, precisely, but I’m sure you do.”

I knew all right, as the Gates of Fate clanged to behind me. Whatever befell, I was to use my best judgment to ensure that the Emperor of Abyssinia didn’t leave Magdala alive.

Sound political biznai, of course. Theodore could not be allowed to go free and unpunished, the country wouldn’t stand for it. On t’sother hand, he’d be a most embarrassing prisoner to call to account. Much better for all concerned if he simply left the scene, and who better to shove him off the tail of the cart than good old Flashy, favourite ruffian of the Foreign Office, Palmerston-recommended, practically by Appointment Assassin Extraordinary to Her Majesty, demises discreetly arranged, mod erate terms… if I were a sensitive man (and not a little flattered to be regarded as the most fatal nemesis since Jack Ketch) I might easily be offended. ’Twasn’t the first time; I’d been sicked on to murder poor old John Brown in ’59, as you know, but shirked, so the Yankees had to do it themselves, to the disgust of the world, and serve ’em right.

In the meantime, having finished listening to his own letter and nodded approval, Theodore had to endure another bout of im passioned whispering from Alamee, who was terrified that the letter would bring down Napier’s wrath on everyone’s head. Prideaux explained to me that our people, Speedy especially, had left Alamee in no doubt of what would happen if the war went on, and scared him to death by having Perm show him our guns and rockets; Speedy had also hinted that if Alamee and the other chiefs didn’t restrain Theodore, it would be the worse for them. But whatever warnings Alamee was pouring into the royal ear seemed to be having no effect; he was told to hold his tongue, Prideaux and Flad were sped on their way with the letter, and when Prideaux asked for a drink of water before setting off he was told peremptorily that there wasn’t time.

I couldn’t guess what Napier would make of the lunatic message, but one thing was sure: he daren’t take action that might risk the prisoners. There was no knowing what Theodore was liable to do. At the moment of despatching the letter he was ready for a fight, and so were his followers, but within an hour he seemed to be thinking better of it. He called a council of his chiefs, insisting that I and his German artisans attend, and even placed me on a stool beside his seat of state. Then, with his chiefs ranged in a semi circle before him—a dozen black villains with their spears and swords across their knees, looking daggers at me and the square heads—he began to shout abuse at them, much in the style of his letter to Napier: they had betrayed him when his back was turned, they were sheep when he wasn’t on hand to inspire them, they were a heathen generation whom he had nourished and sheltered in a heathen land, but now he was here to lead and inspire, and out of the evil that he had done, good would surely come. So let them speak: what was to be done?

They were in no doubt. I can see them now, the dark faces with their teeth bared, the clenched fists thumping their knees as one after another voted to kill the prisoners and fight to the death; Ras Engedda, the chief minister, even hinted that Theodore had been too soft altogether; the prisoners should be herded into a hut and burned alive if Napier attacked. This was received with acclamation by all but two, Alamee and another, and I feared the worst until I noticed that Theodore was looking sourer with each suc cessive vote for the war party, and all of a sudden he exploded.

“Are you blind that you cannot see the English want only their prisoners? Let them go and we shall have peace, but if they are hurt not one of us will be left alive! You urge me to war and reproach me for weakness, so kill me if you will, but do not revile me!” He was fairly foaming, driving his spear into the carpet again, and they piled out in haste, all but Ras Engedda and Alamee and another whom he sent post-haste to bring the prisoners down from Magdala. Then he calmed down, and gave me the sanest, happiest smile.

“Be of good cheer, my best of friends!” says he, and to the Germans: “And you also, good friends and servants who have worked so well for me. Soon you will be with your rescuers.”

Which cheered them up no end, and they went out blessing him and tugging their forelocks—and they were no sooner through the fly than he snatched a pistol from his belt, shoved it between his teeth, and squeezed the trigger—and it misfired. But he was a trier, the same Theodore; before I’d time to think “That’s your sort, old man!” he’d thumbed back the second hammer, and if Engedda hadn’t made a flying dive, the interfering ass, and knocked the piece from his hand, the pavilion canopy would have needed laundering, for this barrel went off splendidly and blew a hole in the tent-pole. After which Theodore groaned, sighed, threw his shama over his face, lay down, and went to sleep.

I, out of sheer curiosity, picked up the pistol and took the cap from the barrel that had misfired. It looked sound, so I tapped it smartly with the pistol butt, and it cracked with a puff of smoke. Why it had missed fire, heaven knows; perhaps there’s a fate that looks after mad monarchs.

Dr Blanc told me later that when they received the summons to go down to Theodore, they were sure they were going to die. The Abs guarding them were full of woe and weeping, bidding them farewell, and when they came down the track from the Kobet Bar Gate of Magdala and across the Islamgee plain towards the Fala saddle, sure enough there was a firing party waiting for them, and your correspondent having the conniptions as I watched the ragged little party plodding towards us. For when a messenger had come to tell Theodore they were on their way, he had suddenly roused himself, bidden me sharply to accompany him, and strode out on to the Islamgee plain, calling for a file of musketeers.

He stopped on the edge of the precipice, a bare couple of furlongs from the spot where he’d massacred the prisoners (whose corpses, you’ll be charmed to know, were still lying in heaps on the rocks below, in our full view) and ordered the musketeers to fall in against the cliff which rose sheer behind us. The road on which we stood was no more than a narrow ledge between the cliff and the drop. Theodore beckoned me to his side, and when the pris oners hove in view round a bend in the road he sent his lad Gabr to tell Rassam to approach alone. At this Engedda, who had stalked after us with a face of thunder, demanded to know what was to do.

“Will you let them go?” bawls he. “Will you fawn on this crea ture—and you, a king, and he a white cur?” Talk about bearding the lion, but Theodore only waved him away and went to meet Rassam, shaking hands, inquiring warmly after his health, sitting him down on a rock and asking if he wanted to go down to Napier now, or wait till next day, since it would soon be dusk. Rassam said, whatever suited his majesty, and Theodore began to cry, and burst out: “Go now, then, and the peace of God go with you! You and I have always been friends, and I beg you to bear in mind that if ever you cease to befriend me, I shall kill myself!”

If I’d been Rassam, I’d have gone while the going was good, for with Theodore it never stayed good for long, but he was a sparky little ha’porth, glancing back at the others waiting, and then looking a question at Theodore, who cried: “Or I may become a monk!” Rassam asked, what about the others, and Theodore shouted: “You had better go! Yes, go now!” He gestured angrily as Rassam hesi tated before turning away. “Go, I say! Begone, in the name of God!”

But Rassam didn’t go more than a yard before he stopped, and Theodore snatched a piece from the nearest musketeer and cocked it, Engedda gave a cry of triumph, and I thought, oh, Jesus, this is where it ends, for even if he spares Rassam who’s his favourite he means to do for the rest of us including me… for he’d turned away from Rassam to face the remaining prisoners, and he was mouthing and weeping and presenting his musket as they began to walk towards us.

There weren’t above a dozen of them, and who most of ’em were I can’t tell you, for I never inquired, but the one in front saved all their lives, and no doubt mine. He was Henry Blanc, the Bombay medico, bluff, burly, and a bearcat for nerve, for he was sure his time was up, but here he came at a steady stride, head high and beard a-bristle, and “Good day, your majesty!” says he, while Theodore glared tearfully with his finger twitching on the trigger, and that brisk greeting, so unexpected, had him all adrift, and he gave back a pace, lowering his piece, and absolutely asked Blanc how he did, and bade him farewell as he passed by to join Rassam. And I know, for I’ve seen things on the knife-edge all too often, that if Blanc had shown fear, or even hesitated, the Abyssinian expedition would have ended in bloody failure with the prisoners butchered by that madman and his musketeers. Well, he didn’t funk nor hesitate, and since it’s thanks to him that I’m here to write this memoir, well, here’s to Henry Blanc, M.D., staff assistant surgeon to H.M. Bombay Army. Saluel [50]

After that it was plain sailing, for Theodore’s wild fit passed, he put aside his musket, and cried farewell blessings on the others as they edged past him on the narrow road, all smiles in their relief except Cameron, limping on his stick, for when Theodore said he hoped they were parting friends, Cameron bade him adieu with a curt nod and went by.

And that was how the famous prisoners of Magdala walked down the Fala track to freedom—not all of ’em, by any means, for there were about forty more still up on the amba, women and kids and hangers-on, but Cameron’s little crowd were the principals, the ones the fuss had been all about. [51] When the last of them had gone by, Theodore stood staring after them as if they’d been his departing family, and blow me if he didn’t start to blubber again, and sank down on a rock with his head in his hands. It was too much for Engedda.

“Are you a woman, that you cry?” shouts he. “Let us bring them back, those white men, kill them, and run away! Or let us fight and die!”

Theodore was on his feet in a second, blazing. “Fool! Dog! Donkey! Have I not killed enough these past two days? D’you want me to kill these, too, and cover Habesh in blood?”

I’d never seen a man stand toe to toe with Theodore, and if he’d pistolled Engedda on the spot I’d not have been surprised, but he just stared him out of countenance, and Engedda growled in disgust and turned on his heel. Theodore passed a hand over his eyes and gestured after the departing prisoners. “Do you not wish to go with your friends, Ras Flashman? It is done now. You are free to go.”

Ironic, you’ll agree. A few hours earlier, I’d have been up and away with a roundelay… but since then Prideaux had brought Napier’s orders, and they were not to be disobeyed, not if I was to keep my credit. Well, it was no great matter now; Theodore was crying uncle, the Queen’s man was back in the Queen’s keeping, and all that remained was the occupation of Magdala by her forces—and the disposal of its ruler, whatever that might entail. I was bound to stay, so I came to attention, regimental as you please.

“Thank’ee, your majesty, but with your permission I’ll stay awhile. Perhaps I can be of service to your majesty.”

He frowned, bewildered, and then the tears were welling in his eyes again, coursing down the black cheeks as he clasped my hand and regarded me with owlish emotion.

“Oh, my friend, my dear friend in Christ! My soldiers betray me, my people turn against me, my generals revile me… and from the ranks of my enemies comes one friend to stand by me!” He wrung my fin like a pump handle. “Ah, you strange British! I did not know you until now! There are no people like you in all the world! None, none, I say!”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” says I, but he swore in choked accents that it was so, and sat down on his rock again, howling with sentiment and mopping his face. Then he had a quick pray, saying he had hardened his heart for many years, but now God had softened it, with some assistance from me, and Satan had been at work on him, but was now driven out, and he regretted the dis courtesy of his letter to Napier, and must put that right.

“For this is Easter, and we are all Christians and friends,” says he. “You are my best friend of all, and I shall open my heart to you and to all your people!”

Which he did next day with a civil note to Napier and a gift of a thousand cattle and several hundred sheep; [52] bent on reconcilia tion he might be, but he was no fool, knowing that if Napier accepted them, it was tantamount to a truce and might even be regarded as a settlement, since he’d freed the prisoners, which was supposedly all that was required. Crafty old Theodore—but equally crafty old Napier, for he refused the gift, but responded with a decent gesture, sending up the body of old Gabrie, which our stretcher-bearers had collected from the battle-field of Arogee.

Flad brought it back, and Theodore was much moved; because of some misunderstanding by the interpreters, he didn’t realise at this time that Napier had rejected his cattle, so he was all gladness and good humour, bidding Flad jovially to go up to Magdala and collect Mrs Flad and the remaining prisoners, “and God give you a happy meeting.” So Flad went, and a stranger procession you never saw than that which presently emerged from the Kobet Bar, for where I’d expected about forty Europeans, there was a caravan of more than two hundred folk, mostly black or chi-chi, for most were servants, with a few Ab wives and chicos of the prisoners. There were more than three hundred beasts laden with baggage, and it looked like the Exodus as they churned up the dust down the winding track from Magdala rock, through the empty market stalls at the foot, and out across the deserted plain of Islamgee. There was hardly an Ab soldier in sight, for they’d struck their camp and withdrawn to Selassie and Fala.

Theodore watched them go by from his pavilion. He’d sent for his queen—the real one, Tooroo-Wark, a lovely slip of a lass—and her son, little Alamayo, and at her request sent a nurse to one of the prisoners’ wives, a Mrs Morris, who was about to pup, and indeed did so the next day in the British camp; they called the kid Theodore in appreciation. Mrs Morris had a palki; Mrs Flad and the other wives were on mules, and presently they disappeared down the road to Arogee, men, women, beasts, babes in arms, porters, bags and baggage—and that, Theodore seemed to think, was the end of it.

How wrong he was he learned on that sunny Easter Sunday evening, when word came that Napier had turned back his cattle, and it sank in at last that we would settle for nothing less than unconditional surrender, which must mean what he had always dreaded: the delivery of his royal person to a foreign enemy. Perhaps that fear was in his mind when he had his gun-teams drag the artillery from the Fala summit to the far end of the Islamgee plain, either in an effort to convince Napier of his peaceful intent or to prepare a last defence for Magdala. I don’t know which, but I know that his high spirits when the prisoners left wore thin as the hours went by, and no good word came from Napier.

“What more can they want? Oh, my friend, have I not done all that they asked? They have beaten my army and broken my power; it must be peace, my friend, tell me it must be peace!”

If he said it once he said it a dozen times, but there was no re assuring him. In the pavilion lamplight the handsome face was tired and haggard; he’d aged a year in a few days, and I’ll swear his hair was even greyer. Strange, there was nothing mad about him now, just a flat sober certainty in his words when Meshisha, his executioner, who’d been in charge of taking the cattle down to our lines, came back after dark to report that they’d been turned back by Speedy; the mention of that name struck Theodore like a blow.

“The Basha Fallakal My enemy, always my enemy! So now, having got what they want, these people will seek to kill me!” He stood, fists clenched, a picture of despair. “There is nothing left for me here. The time has come to find a new home in the place where I was little, long ago. There, by the power of God, I may find peace at last.”

You can always tell when something is coming to an end. You know, by the way events are shaping, that it can’t last much longer, but you think there are still a few days or weeks to go… and that’s the moment when it finishes with a sudden bang that you didn’t expect. Come to think of it, that’s probably true of life, or so it strikes me at the age of ninety—but I don’t expect it to happen before tea. Yet one of these days the muffins will grow cold and the tea-cakes congeal as they summon the lads from belowstairs to cart the old cadaver up to the best bedroom. And if I’ve a moment before the light fades, I’ll be able to cry, “Sold, Starnberg and Ignatieff and Iron Eyes and Gul Shah and Charity Spring and all the rest of you bastards who tried to do for old Flashy, ’cos he’s going out on his own, and be damned to you!”

This cheery reflection is brought on by my memories of that Easter Sunday night, when I knew the curtain must soon come down on Magdala, perhaps in a day or two… and ’twas all over, receipted and filed before Monday sunset. It happened so quickly that I can remember only the vital moments; the hours between have faded. (Mind you, a shell splinter in the leg is no help to leisurely observation; we’ll come to that presently.)

But I’m clear enough about the almighty row that broke when Theodore summoned his chiefs and told ’em it was time to cut and run, that they must be off before dawn, making for Lake Tana where Napier could never follow them. They shouted him down, swearing they could never assemble their families and goods in such short time, and demanding that he make peace. He cussed them for dis loyal cowards and they heaped reproaches on him.

“If you had not released the captives we could have made terms with the farangisV cries one.

“And if they had refused we could have cut the white dogs’ throats and made the hearts of their countrymen smart!”

“Aye, at least we could have been revenged! As it is, we have no choice but to make peace!”

“We are your men to the end, but only if you make terms. If you will not, you are alone.”

He might have read the end of his rule in the scowls on their black faces, but he still couldn’t bring himself to surrender. He told Damash to start dragging guns and mortars from Islamgee up the rocky track to Magdala, and Engedda, the firebrand, thinking this meant a last stand, swore to stand by him, but the rest dispersed in sullen silence, and it was from that moment that the desertions began in earnest. Scores of warriors and their families left their posts on Selassie and Fala, and only a few hundred were prepared to help Damash move the guns, while Theodore struck his camp below Selassie. Then we must all retire across the Islamgee plain in the gathering dark, Flashy aboard a mule with his heart in his boots, for like Engedda I assumed that his fickle majesty had changed his mind yet again, and was determined to fight it out. I was mistaken, but before I come to that I must tell you how the land lay in the closing act of our Abyssinian drama.

From the deserted village market-place at the far end of the Islamgee plain, Magdala rock rose three hundred feet sheer, with only one way up: a narrow track that was really no more than a ledge running steeply up the cliff-face. Near the top it turned sharply to the right towards Magdala’s first gate, the Kobet Bar, flanked by a high wall and stockade reinforced by thorn bushes. The gate was massive, with supporting towers and a sloping roof like that of a lych-gate. Fifty yards behind it was a second gate, and beyond that lay the Magdala plateau proper with its little township of houses and churches and the palace, big thatched buildings of typical Ab design.

One thing was plain: given a few decent guns, the Salvation Army could have held Magdala against anyone, Napier included, and if Theodore had got his cannon up to command that narrow track, there would have been no shifting him until his water ran out. But he didn’t, thanks be; and once he and I and his immediate following had struggled up past the gun-teams sweating and blaspheming in the dark, and reached the Kobet Bar Gate, he realised their task was hopeless, and there was nothing for it but flight or surrender.

There must have been about twenty of us in the little guard tower flanking the gate, waiting breathless on the word of that haggard figure standing with his head bowed in thought. I remember Engedda grim-faced, and little tubby Damash exhausted after his gun-dragging exertions; Hasani, the Magdala commander, Wald Gabr the valet and gun-bearer, and others whose anxious black faces I can still see in the flickering torchlight but whose names I never knew. At last Theodore lifted his head, and the old barmy light was back in his eyes.

“Warriors who love me, gird yourselves!” cries he, and shook his spear. “Leave everything behind but your arms, and follow me! Hasani, assemble them and those others who remain true at the upper gate! Away!” And as they trooped out, he turned to me. “Dear friend, we part here. You can serve me no longer. I go now beyond your army’s vengeance, and you and I will never meet again.” He seized my hand in both of his. “Farewell, British soldier! Think kindly of Theodore who is your friend! If you should hear of my death at the hands of my foes, do not grieve. My destiny is my destiny!”

He strode out with a flourish worthy of Macbeth, and I heard him bawling orders to Hasani. I was left, mighty relieved and quite used up, with a couple of Ab artillerymen for company; the rest were lying tuckered out, down the track by their abandoned guns; there was no point in my moving, with Islamgee crawling with confused and disgruntled warriors who mightn’t take kindly to a stray farangi. Better to wait patiently for Napier to arrive, so I dis posed myself for a nap, thanking God I was rid of a royal knave.

I wasn’t, of course. He was back at dawn with his fretful fol lowers, several hundred of ’em; they’d tried to break out of Magdala by the back door, which would have meant a terrifying descent of the Sangalat cliffs in pitch darkness, if they’d been mad enough to attempt it. They’d been discouraged by the presence of Gallas who were waiting for them at the foot of the precipice chanting, “Come down, beloved, oh come down!” I must say I liked the Gallas’ style.

With his retreat cut off and the greater part of his army milling about down on Islamgee, waiting to surrender, I was sure he must call it a day. But even now he couldn’t bear to submit. He told his little band of loyalists that they and any others on the plateau were free to go, and if he was disheartened at the stampede down to Islamgee, he didn’t show it. With the few score who remained he made a last futile attempt to bring the guns and mortars up the track, and when that failed he had them piling rocks behind the wings of the Kobet Bar Gate, lifting and carrying himself and shouting encouragement.

It wouldn’t have been tactful to stand watching while they laboured away, so I waited until the gate tower was empty, pur loined Theodore’s telescope which he had left with his baggage, and withdrew along the inside of the wall to a spot where I could take survey of the Islamgee plain. There were a few folk in the market-place at the foot of the track, children playing on the guns which had been left behind by Damash’s crew, but farther along the plain there were great multitudes of Abs of every sort, civilian and military, stirring in a confused way but going nowhere—waiting for the invaders to arrive, in fact. They were thick on the slope of Selassie, a bare mile from my perch, and farther off I could see them on Fala; there must have been a good twenty or thirty thou-i sand of them.

How long I sat watching I’m not sure, but the sun was well up and disappearing behind dark rain clouds when I heard a faint distant sound that had me on my feet and put an abrupt end to the barrier-building at the gate—the whisper of a bugle far off beyond Fala, and now the mass of folk on Islamgee were moving off towards the sound, and streaming down the Selassie slope to the gap leading to Arogee. There was sudden activity at Kobet Bar, men moving down the track to the guns which Damash had been able to get part way up; I saw Theodore ordering them as they tailed on the tackles, trying to haul the heavy pieces up the steep incline but making poor work of it. There was a great murmur from the moving throng on the plain, and then another faraway sound rising above it, stirring and shrill, and I found myself whispering “Oh, oh, the dandy oh!", for I knew it of old, the music of the Sherwood Foresters, and it couldn’t be more than a couple of miles away, beyond the Fala saddle, growing louder by the minute, and now the movement of the crowds was becoming a flood, and damned if I wasn’t doing a Theodore myself, brushing the tears from my cheeks, and mut tering about the young May moon a-beaming love, the glow-worm’s lamp a-gleaming love, and even exclaiming aloud, “Good for you, old Bughunter, that’s your sort!", for here he was, horse, foot and guns, at the end of the impossible march to the back of beyond which the wiseacres had sworn could never be made.

His army was as he’d said it would be, bone weary and strug gling up the last few miles, filthy and sunbaked and rain-sodden and still unsure of what was waiting, for rumour said that Theodore had ten thousand warriors at his back, and as he looked up at the heights of Fala and Selassie on either hand, Napier must have shuddered at the thought of how his force could have been shot to tatters by an enemy with heavy pieces determined to dispute his passage. Now, on the Fala height that might have been our undoing, there were figures moving, and when I steadied the telescope on the parapet, there in the glass circle were the green coats of the Baluch, their Enfields at the trail as they came on in skirmishing order, and behind them the devil’s own legion of the 10th Native Infantry, Sikhs and Pathans and Punjabis in all the colours of the rainbow, and along the Fala saddle I could make out the red coats and helmets of the Sappers with their scaling ladders, and khaki-clad riflemen were swarming up the Selassie slopes, but whether Sherwoods or King’s Own or Dukes, I couldn’t tell.

There was no fighting at all, for the Abs had no thought but total surrender, and thousands of them laid down their arms and trooped on to Arogee while our people were struggling to get the mountain guns on to the Selassie summit, to be turned on Magdala if need be. That ain’t liable to happen, thinks I, not with Theodore down to his last few hundred and his guns still stuck halfway up the mountain—and as though in contradiction of that thought, there he was, the lunatic, going hell-for-leather on horseback down the track to the market-place, with a score of riders at his back, Engedda and Hasani among them. A trumpet sounded, and across the Islamgee plain I saw the glitter of sabres where a squadron of bearded sowars were cantering to meet them—Bombay Lights, I’m told, and just the boys to do Theodore’s homework for him if he lingered.

He did, though, standing in his stirrups, flourishing his sword and yelling defiance. I was too far away to make out the words, but according to Loch, who commanded the Lights, he was shouting challenges, daring anyone to meet him in single combat, taunting them as women, boasting of his prowess—“Theodore’s finest hour", according to some romantic idiot, but it didn’t last long, for no one took the least bit of notice of him, and behind the Lights the Dukes were advancing in open order, halting and firing by ranks, and his majesty and friends were obliged to scatter and run. I watched them scrambling back to the Kobet Bar Gate, one of ’em clutching a bloody arm, Theodore last man in, still waving his sword and shouting the odds.

Now was the time to hammer some sense into him at last, so I abandoned my perch and came back to the gate where the members of his sortie were unsaddling and gasping for breath. Theodore was throwing his reins to Wald Gabr and ordering everyone to the para pets; apart from his riders there were perhaps fifty or sixty war riors armed with muskets—and they were preparing to hold their fortress against three British and two Indian battalions, three detach ments of cavalry, four batteries of artillery, plus Sappers and Miners, the Naval Brigade, and those Sikh Pioneers who had given them bayonet at Arogee. Sixty against the three and a half thousand that Napier was about to launch at Magdala.

I didn’t know, then, how great the odds were, but it was plain that he was staking everything on a frontal assault with the pick of his army; Islamgee was turning into a parade ground for British infantry, six companies at least of Dukes in the lead with the Royal Engineers and the Madras Sappers and Miners at their head—the storming party whose work it would be to mine and blow open the gate—and behind them the Sherwoods in line, and then the reserve battalions, and far in the rear I could see the Armstrongs and steel guns deploying under Selassie, and there were even elephants coming into view with the mortars.

It wasn’t a time for ceremony. Theodore was stripping off his gaudy harlequin robe, bare to the waist until Wald Gabr threw a plain coat over his shoulders; I marched up to him and handed him his glass.

“You must raise a white flag,” says I. “There’s nothing else for it. Take a look from the wall.”

He took the glass in silence, motioned me to follow him, and turned to jump nimbly on to the parapet, where his musketeers were already lining the firing-step. I took post by him as he surveyed the advance, still distant but inexorable, rank upon khaki rank with the red Sappers before, the Dukes’ Colours flapping in the rainy gusts, swinging along with rifles sloped and bayonets fixed, and the Foresters’ band breaking from “Young May Moon” into “British Grenadiers". Theodore lowered the telescope, smiling as he shook it in time to the music.

“What a sight!” cries he. “It is a pleasure to behold! Ah, my friend, they do me great honour! I shall make a noble end!”

I kept my head and my temper. “There’s no need to make an end, your majesty! They ain’t coming to kill or to conquer! They have what they came for—”

“But it is not enough,” says he quietly, and you never saw a calmer, saner man in your life. “They must have me also, for their pride, and for their country’s honour. They have had a long march.” He put his hand on my shoulder, still smiling, resigned and a little weary. “Come, my friend, there should be no false words.between you and me, no twisting of truth, no pretences. They must have me as a prisoner. You know it, and I know it. Is it not so?”

“They’ll treat you well… honourably. I’ve known the Dedjaz Napier all my life—he’s a good man, and you know he respects you as a brave soldier. He’ll treat you as a king, not as a prisoner.”

I believed it then, but later I wasn’t so sure. Even as we were speaking, our cavalry was skirting round to cover the west flank of Magdala, and reining up in horror at the rotten, stinking corpses of the three hundred captives he’d flung from the Islamgee cliff. Aye, that would have taken the shine off his surrender, if he’d made one… which he was not about to do, as he made plain in one of the strangest farewells I’ve ever heard. He shouted to Engedda and some others who were reinforcing the rocky barrier behind the gate, directing them to join the defenders on the parapet, and then turned to me.

“Now, my good friend, my friend of only a short while but no less dear for that, you must go up into the city.” He gestured towards the second gate and the thatched buildings on the plateau beyond. “There you will be safe until your people come.” I started to protest, but he held up a hand to silence me.

“I will fight. It is all that is left. Afterwards, you may see my body, and perhaps you will say, ‘There lies a bad man who has injured me and mine.’ Perhaps you will not wish to give me a Christian burial.” He paused, frowning at me. “Will you be good to him who has despitefully used you, forgiving him by the power of God?”

I must have said something, heaven knows what, for he went on—and so help me, these were his words, with the enemy at the gate, his pathetic rabble returning fire, and the rain starting to come down in sheets.

“There is a custom which I should wish to be observed, the wrap ping of my body in a waxed cloth—my queen will know how it should be prepared. When this has been done, and the body exposed to the sun, the heat causes the cloth to adhere to the flesh, thus forming an impervious shroud which will help to preserve the body. Will you see this done, my friend?”

The only answer in the circumstances would have been a bewil dered “yes", if I’d had time to give it, but at that moment one Millward, commanding the mountain guns and rockets at the foot of Selassie, let fly a tremendous and wonderfully accurate barrage; all at once the ground was shaking with shell-bursts, rockets smashed into the wall, and Theodore and I were blown off our feet by the blast of one shell that fell just inside the gateway. Stones and dirt came pattering down on us as we scrambled to our feet, deafened and shaken, the gateway was hidden in a cloud of smoke, and out of it reeled Engedda, chest and shoulder drenched in blood, his mouth wide in a soundless scream. Theodore was running towards him when two more shells exploded within yards of us, throwing up columns of earth and filling the air with the whine of shrapnel. I saw Theodore stagger but run on, and thought, good luck to your majesty, it’s your fight, not mine, as I fled for dear life up the twisting rocky gully to the second gate. Common sense told me that Napier wouldn’t shell the town with its Ab civilians, and indeed Millward had strict orders to that effect and his gunners dropped their shot all on the main gate and wall—but rockets are another dixie of skilly altogether; they go where they list, and it was one of these that laid me low.

I heard the shrieking hiss and ear-shattering explosion, choking white smoke was all about me, and I felt a tremendous blow on my left calf, not painful but numbing, as though it had been sandbagged. I went down like a shot rabbit, cracking an elbow on the rocks, but heaved myself up in haste as another rocket screamed by and exploded near the second gate. Like a fool, I tried to run, my wounded leg gave way beneath me, and I went head-first into a large rock by the wayside and lost all interest in the proceedings.

They say that from the first cannonade to the final storming of the main gate was three hours, but it might have been three days or three minutes for all I knew. How long I was unconscious I cannot tell, but when I came to, and the first dizzy moments had passed, I was being heaved into a sitting position on a boulder beside the second gate, Theodore was standing a few yards away, a rifle in his hand, his valet Wald Gabr was supporting me 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 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 amba tight as a drum—oh, aye, we know how he tried to run for it! But who’d have thought Magdala would fall so fast and easy! Thanks to you, sir! Thanks to you!”

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 tej, and whatever else I might need. Then he was off, prom ising to be back presently, and I guess about an hour passed, in which I discovered I could walk with only a little discomfort, and the women brought me some humbasha (* A large flat loaf of coarse bread.) and I sat listening to the bands playing and the bustle and shouted orders until I heard Speedy returning—and Napier with him, his voice raised in anger, which wasn’t his style at all.

“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. ("But no one must ever know, Sir Robert… controversy… press gang, scoundrel Stanley… questions in the House… uproar … regicide, scandalum magnatum… honour of the Army…")

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 right.

I messed in Napier’s tent that night, with Speedy and Merewether and a couple of staff-wallopers, and Henty and Austin of the Times the only correspondents. Henty was eager to know what I’d been up to, but Napier proved to have a nice easy gift of diplomatic deflection, and a frosty look or two from Austin showed Henty what the Thunderer thought of vulgar curiosity.

“We must beware of the others, though,” says Speedy later, when he and I were alone with Napier. “Stanley’s a damned ferret, and his editor hates us like poison. [55] The less they know of Sir Harry’s activities, the better.”

I didn’t see that it mattered, but Napier agreed with him. “You should not become an object of their attention. Indeed, I think it best that your part in the whole campaign should remain secret. If it were known that you had been our emissary to Queen Masteeat’s court, it would be sure to excite the correspondents’ interest, and if they were to discover that you were alone with Theodore when he died, it might lead to… unwelcome specu lation.” Speedy was nodding like a mechanical duck. “Fortunately, when Prideaux brought the news that you were in Theodore’s hands, I was able to send another agent to Queen Masteeat to carry on the work you had so expertly begun. You will not mind,” says he, giving me the Bughunter smile, “if I mention him in my despatches, rather than yourself? [56] For secu rity, you understand. Have no fear, your credit will be whispered in the right ears—and what’s a single leaf more or less in a chaplet like yours?”

There was nothing to say to this, and I didn’t much care anyway, so I allowed myself to succumb to the Napier charm.

“It means you’ll be spared the labour of a written report!” cries he genially. “You can do it verbatim, here and now! Give him a b. and s., Speedy, and one of your cheroots. Now then, Harry, fire away!”

So I told ’em the story pretty much as I’ve told it to you, omitting only those tender passages with Uliba and Masteeat and that bint at Uliba’s amba whose name escapes me… no, Malee, that was it… and the attempt on my virtue by Theodore’s queen-concubine. Nor did I tell them of my plunge down the Silver Smoke. Why? ’Cos they wouldn’t have believed it. But the horrors of Yando’s aerial cage, and the atrocities of Gondar, and my ordeal at the hands of the kidnappers whom Uliba had ordered to abduct me so that she could do me atrociously to death, and how I’d been rescued by Theodore’s fighting women, and Uliba given her passage out—these I narrated in my best laconic Flashy style, and had Speedy’s hair standing on end—an alarming sight.

“Impossible! I cannot credit it!” He was horror-stricken. “You say Uliba tried to kill you? Had Galla renegades carry you off so that she could… could murder you? No, no, Sir Harry… that cannot be—”

“I’m sorry, Speedy, but it’s true.” I was deliberately solemn now. “I would not believe it either, had I not seen it. I know you had the highest regard for her—not least for her loyalty. So did I. But I know what she did, and—”

“But why?” bawls he. “Why should she wish you harm?” He was in a great wax, glowering through his beard like an ape in a thicket, suspicion mingling with his shocked disbelief. “It wasn’t in her, I tell you! Oh, I know she was a vixen, and cruel as the grave to her enemies, and would have seized her sister’s throne—but that was honest ambition! She was true to her salt, and to her friends—”

“A moment, Speedy,” says Napier. “You may have touched it—her designs on the Galla throne. Did she,” turning to me, “try to enlist your help in her coup? Because if she did, and was refused, might she not, in resentment—”

He was interrupted by Speedy’s furious gobble of protest; plainly Uliba had kindled more than mere professional admiration in his gargantuan bosom, and he simply could not bring himself to believe her capable of murderous betrayal… and yet here was the redoubtable Flashman swearing to it, so it must be true. But WHY? Fortunately she was no longer alive to tell how I’d tried to kick her into a watery grave (not that anyone would have believed her; after all, Masteeat hadn’t); still, it would be best if some perfectly splendid explanation for her sudden hatred of me could be found; an explanation that would convince Speedy beyond all doubt. Napier’s wouldn’t wash with him, but I had one that would lay him out cold… so I waited until his indignant wattling had subsided, and weighed briskly in.

“Fraid that won’t answer, Sir Robert. Oh, she’d have welcomed our help in usurping her sister’s crown, but she never asked me point-blank. Dare say she might have done, but as I told you, Theodore’s riders pursued us, we were separated, and when I reached Masteeat’s court, Uliba had made her bid and failed and been arrested—”

“With respect, Sir Harry,” roars Speedy, showing no respect whatever, “we know that! But it don’t answer the question why she should want you dead! Bah, it’s madness! I will not believe it!” And then he gave me the cue I’d been waiting for. “What offence could you possibly have given her, to provoke such… such malice?”

I sat frowning, tight-lipped, for a long artistic moment, took a sip at my glass, sighed, and said: “The greatest offence in the world.”

Napier’s brows rose by the merest trifle, but Speedy goggled, bewildered. “What the… whatever d’ye mean, Sir Harry?”

I hesitated, drew a deep reluctant breath, and spoke quiet and weary, looking anywhere but at him. “If you must have it, Speedy… yes, your protege Uliba-Wark was a first-class jancada, a brave and resolute comrade, as fine a scout and guide as I ever struck… and a vain, proud, passionate, unbridled, promiscuous young savage!” What I could see of his face through the furze was showing utter consternation; he was mouthing “Promiscuous?” dumbly, so I made an impatient noise and spoke quickly.

“Oh, what the devil, she made advances, I rejected ’em, and I dare say you’ve heard of the fury of a woman scorned! Aye, think of Uliba, a barbarian, a cruel vixen as you’ve said yourself… scorned!” Now I looked him in the eye. “Does that answer you?”

Between ourselves, I ain’t sure it would have answered me, but I’m a cynical rotter. To decent folk, the sight of bluff, straight, manly old Flashy (good-hearted, remember), badgered into saying things that shouldn’t be said, dammit, traducing a woman’s good name, and a dead woman at that… well, it’s a discomforting sight. The man’s so moved, and reluctant, you’re bound to respect his emotions. You wouldn’t dream of doubting him.

Speedy was making strange noises, and Napier answered for him. “I am sure it does.”

“My… my dear Sir Harry!” Speedy sounded as though he’d been kicked in the essentials. “I… I… oh, I am at a loss! I… I know not what to say!” He didn’t, either, muttering confused. “Uliba… so trusted… oh, wild, to be sure… but depraved? A traitress? And to attempt your life… wounded vanity…"He made vague gestures. “I can only beg your pardon for… oh, I did not doubt your report for a moment, I assure you!” Bloody liar. “But it seemed so impossible… I could not take it in…”

Here he ran out of words, and drew himself up, beard at the high port, shaking his great head while he clasped my hand, and I meditated on the astonishing ease with which strong men of Victorian vintage could be buffaloed into incoherent embarrassment by the mere mention of feminine frailty. Something to do with public school training, I fancy.

“My dear chap!” I clapped his arm in comradely style; it was like patting an elephant’s leg. “I’m sorry, believe me. Truly sorry.” Sigh. “I can guess what you feel… disappointment, mostly, eh? When someone lets you down… Well, best just to have a drink and forget it, what?”

The board of inquiry sat next day and decided that Theodore had shot himself. A reasonable conclusion, given that Blanc testified that there were powder burns in the oral cavity and the back of the head was missing, but since the report didn’t mention these details, and the verdict was what Napier and Speedy wanted, I dare say that they continued to believe that mine was the hand that fired the fatal shot.

They buried Theodore next day, in the ramshackle thatched amba church, at the request of his sad, pretty little queen, Tooroo-Wark. I loafed along out of interest, not respect. There were only a few on hand: the Queen, the boy Alamayo, a guard of the Duke’s Irish (but no saluting volley), and fat little Damash nursing a wound and terrified he’d be hanged for resisting our attack. I reassured him, and he gave a great sniff.

“And now you leave us without a king! We were born in bondage, and must die as slaves. Why do you not stay to govern?”

I told him we didn’t want to, and ’twas up to him and his like to govern themselves.

“You mean we must cut each other’s throats,” grumbles he. “This is Africa.” I told him to mind his manners and not interrupt the ancient dodderer of a priest who was gabbling the service. The corpse had been nicely wrapped, by Samuel, I believe; they shovelled it into the shallow grave, and that was the end of the heir to Solomon and Sheba and Prester John.

They like to say he was mad, as though that paid for all, but I saw him sane as well as mad, and a vile, cruel bastard he was, as foul as Caligula or Attila, and got only a tiny part of what he deserved. I remember Gondar, and the slaughter of Islamgee, and if anyone ever deserved a Hell, he did.

Meanwhile, the campaign was done, the captives free, Magdala in immense confusion with thousands of Ab fugitives to be looked after, herded down into the plain, and protected from the sur rounding Gallas, who not unreasonably were athirst for a share of the loot of the amba. They were disappointed, for the Micks and Sappers and little Holmes of the British Museum got in first, and the Gallas were dispersed by rifle fire, which I thought a mite hard, since their blockade had been so vital to our success. As to the loot, I heard there was a fair amount of precious stuff picked up, but most of it was bought up by the prize-master and sent down to Arogee on the elephants. [57]

For once—and for the only time in my experience of sixty years’ soldiering in heaven knows how many campaigns—there was no butcher’s bill. We hadn’t lost a man in storming Magdala, just seventeen wounded, and with only two dead at Arogee and one care less chap who shot himself accidentally on the march up, [58] I doubt if we had more than half a dozen fatalities in the whole campaign, mortally sick included. If there were nothing else to testify to Napier’s genius, that casualty return alone would do, for I never heard of its like in war. [59]

I spent only one night on the Magdala amba, for the place was as foul as a midden, and became a positive bedlam when the looters discovered a great cache of tej in the royal cellar. Private Shaughnessy and his chums came calling, eager to pay their respects and inquire after my health, Sorr Harry man, dear—it’s hell to be popular with the riff-raff. So after seeing Theodore planted, I took a mule down to Napier’s head-quarters at Arogee, and found myself a billet with Charlie Fraser, who commanded the staff and was colonel in my old regiment, the 11th Cherrypickers. Not that it was much quieter there, for there were upwards of thirty thousand Abs about the place, warriors as well as civilians who’d fled from Magdala. Among them were the two queens, Tooroo-Wark and Tamagno, and their retinues, and nearly three hundred of Theodore’s political prisoners, princes and chiefs, who’d been in the amba’s jails. Some of ’em had been in captivity for fifteen or twenty years, and one for more than thirty.

I’d been lucky. The great tyrant had held me for less than a week, and now it was all over, the captains and the queens would shortly be departing, [60] and I could rest content at last with only a mild ache in my calf, and take my ease after dangers and hardships nobly borne, resigned to endure the discomfort of a ride to the coast, fol lowed by a tranquil voyage home at H.M.G.’s expense. You’ve come through again, old lad, thinks I; no public credit, perhaps, but Napier’s right, you ain’t short in that line. Half a million in silver through your hands, and not a penny of it to bless yourself with, but what o’ that? Elspeth and I had enough between us… and the mere thought of her name brought the glorious realisation that in a few short weeks I’d be reunited with all that glorious milk-white goodness that had been lying fallow (I hoped, but with her you never could tell) while I’d been wasting myself on Mexican trollops and suety frauleins and black barbarians. I could close my eyes and see her, taste her red lips, inhale the perfume of her blonde curls… oh, the blazes with gallivanting about the world, I was for home for good this time, and the sooner Napier broke camp and marched north, the better.

At that, he stayed not upon the order of his going. With Theodore dead, Abyssinia was without a ruler, and while Napier was adamant that the succession was no business of ours, he felt bound to settle the possession of Magdala itself, and ensure the safety of its inhabitants—that, he insisted, was a matter of national honour. But Magdala was the first horn of his dilemma: it lay in Galla territory, but Theodore had captured and held it for ten years as a bulwark against Muslim encroachment on Christian Abyssinia, and Napier didn’t want to change that. So it was decided to offer the amba to Gobayzy of Lasta, the closest available Christian monarch. From all I’d heard, he was a sorry muffin, but it was no concern of mine, although I’d have given the place to Masteeat, for old gallops’ sake. She had the same notion, as did Warkite, her elder sister and rival for the supreme monarchy of all the Galla tribes; with Uliba now singing in the choir invisible they were the only claimants to the throne, and sure enough, within two days of the fall of Magdala, up they rolled to Arogee to state their cases.

Warkite was first to arrive, a plain, querulous creature but not quite the witch-like crone I’d been led to expect. Her handicap was that while Masteeat had a son who’d make a king some day, Warkite’s boy had been murdered by Theodore, and though she had a grandson, he was reputed illegitimate. She’d been consorting with Menelek, King of Shoa, the despised “fat boy” who had once laid siege to Magdala but lost his nerve and turned tail when it was at his mercy. Now, she made a poor impression on Napier, lamenting her misfortunes, railing against Masteeat, and looking less regal by the minute.

Napier asked Speedy and me aside what we thought. I said that if it came to a war Masteeat would eat her alive, having the men, the brains, and the will. Speedy agreed, adding that Masteeat had turned up trumps against Theodore, and should be recognised Queen of Galla, whoever had Magdala.

So that was Warkite for the workhouse. When Napier asked if she couldn’t be reconciled with her sister, she let out a great screeching laugh and cried that if they made peace today, Masteeat would betray her tomorrow. Word came just then that Masteeat was expected hourly, and Warkite was off like a rising grouse, never to be seen again.

I confess I was looking forward to my Lion Queen’s arrival, and she came in style, with an entourage of warriors and servants, sashaying along under a great brolly borne by minions, her imposing bulk magnificent in silks of every colour, festooned with jewellery, a turban with an aigret swathing her braids, and bearing a silver-mounted sceptre. The whole staff were on hand to gape at her, and she acknowledged them with a beaming smile and queenly incli nations, head high and hand extended in regal fashion as Napier came to greet her. She was overwhelming, and for a moment I thought he’d kiss her hand, but he checked in time and gave her a stiff bow, hat in hand.

He was about to present his staff when she gave a great whoop of "Basha Fallakal” at the sight of Speedy, while I was favoured with a sleepy smile but no sign at all of recognition; since the last time we’d met had been at the gallop on the floor of her dining-room, I thought her demeanour was in quite the best taste, friendly but entirely decorous. To the others she was all dignified affability, being still sober. Napier clearly was impressed, and as Speedy remarked to me: “There’s our Queen of all Galla, what?”

They gave her dinner, and she entranced and appalled the company by laying into the goods like a starving python; as Stanley reported: “She ate like a gourmande, disposing of what came before her without regard to the horrified looks… pudding before beef, blancmange with potatoes… emitting labial smacks like pistol cracks.” She also drank like a fish, shouting with laughter, more boisterous and vulgar with every draught… and no one, even Napier, seemed to mind a bit. It may have been her exotic novelty, or her undoubted sexual attraction, or simply the good nature that shone out of her, but I think there was also a recognition that despite her gross manners she was altogether too formidable to be over looked. [61]

Speedy and I were the only ones present who could talk to her directly without an interpreter, and when she’d spoken with him a few minutes alone over the coffee, she beckoned me to take his place beside her. Watching her across the table during the meal, I’d been bound to wonder what she knew of the fate of Uliba-Wark, if anything, and if she might refer to it; now, she did, but in a most roundabout way, and to this day I can only guess how she came to learn what befell on that ghastly night. Perhaps some Galla escaped the massacre; I can only repeat what she said after I had filled her cup with tej, and she had gulped it down, wiped her lips with the tail of her turban, and smiled her fat-cheeked saucy smile.

“The Basha Fallaka says I am to have my fifty thousand dollars. Your Dedjaz Napier—what a fine and courtly man he is!—has pledged his word. But", she pouted and took another swig, “he does not say whether I am to have Magdala.” She looked a question.

“If my word goes for anything, you will. But you know it’s been offered to Gobayzy.”

She giggled maliciously. “Gobayzy will shudder away like a frightened bride! What, accept an amba surrounded by my warriors? He’d sweat his fat carcase to a shadow at the mere thought. No, he will refuse, beyond doubt.”

“Then Magdala’s yours, lion lady. There is no one else.”

She nodded, sipped and wiped again, and sat for a moment. Then she spoke quietly: “Uliba-Wark is at peace now. My little Uliba, who loved and hated me. Perhaps she loved and hated you also. I do not know and I do not ask.” She took another sip and set down her cup. “You were there when she died. No, do not tell me of it. Some things are better not known. Enough that she is at peace.”

That was all she said to me, and I saw her only once more, on the following day outside her splendid silk pavilion, when Gobayzy sent word that he was honoured by the offer of Magdala, but on the whole he’d rather not. So the amba was hers, says Napier, but she must understand that he was bound to destroy its defences and burn all its buildings, to mark the disapproval (that was the word he used, so help me) of its late ruler’s conduct in daring to imprison and maltreat British citizens. She assured him that fire could only purify the place, and departed with her retinue, borne in a palki and smiling graciously on the troops who cheered her away.

The same afternoon Magdala was set on fire. The King’s Own had it cleared of its last inhabitants by four o’clock, the Sappers and Miners had laid their charges, and presently in a series of thun derous explosions the gates and defences were blown up, the last of the cannon destroyed, and the whole ramshackle town with its thatched palaces and prisons and houses put to the torch. It went up in a series of fiery jets which the wind levelled in a great rushing of flame which, as Stanley says, turned the whole top of the amba with its three thousand buildings into a huge lake of fire. The whole army watched, and I heard a fellow say that Hell must look like that, but he was wrong; the Summer Palace burning, that was Hell, wonderful beauty smashed and consumed in a mighty holocaust; Magdala was a vermin-ridden pest-hole which its dwellers had been only too glad to leave.

Indeed, they couldn’t get far enough away from it, and it was a swarming multitude tens of thousands strong, men, women, chicos, beasts and all their paraphernalia, that set off from Arogee that same day, down the defile to the Bechelo; that was Napier’s other great concern, to see them safe beyond the reach of the Galla marauders who’d been denied the plunder of Magdala and were itching to make up for it at the expense of the fugitives. Our troops rode herd on them the whole way, but Napier would run no risks, and had cavalry patrols escort them for another twenty miles beyond the river.

The next day, the eighteenth, the army set off north, with the Sherwood Foresters leading the way, their band thumping out “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again” and “Brighton Camp", and behind them the Native Infantry sepoys swinging along followed by the jingling troopers, the Scindees and lancers and Dragoon Guards, and behind them the guns and the matlows of the Naval Brigade, and last of all the 33rd, the Irish hooligans of the Duke of Wellington’s, the long khaki column winding down the defile, dirty, bedraggled, tired, and happy, catching the drift of the music on the air and joining in:

I seek no more the fine and gay, They serve but to remind me, How swift the hours did pass away With the girl I left behind me

Napier sat his horse by the track, with Speedy and Charlie Fraser and Merewether and myself, watching them go by, and how they roared and cheered and waved their helmets at the sight of him, the old Bughunter who’d taken them there against all the odds and now was taking them back again. He smiled and nodded and raised his hat to them, looking ever so old and weary but content, turning in his saddle to gaze back at those three massive peaks where he’d wrought his military miracle—Selassie and Fala gilded in the morning sun, and beyond them Magdala like a huge smouldering volcano, the plume of black smoke towering up into the cloudless sky.

“Going home now, gentlemen,” says he, and Merewether said something about a great feat of arms, and how the country would acclaim the army and its leader. Napier said he guessed the Queen and the people would be pleased, and H.M.G. also, no doubt, “but you may be sure it will not be all unalloyed satisfaction. It never is.”

Speedy wasn’t having that. “Why, Sir Robert, who can complain except a few miserable croakers—no doubt the same Jeremiahs who swore the campaign was doomed in the first place—and now they’ll carp about the cost? As though such a thing was to be fought on the cheap with a scratch army and fleet! They’ve had it at bargain rates!”

“I doubt if the Treasury will agree with you,” laughs Napier, in high spirits. “No, I was thinking rather of the wiseacres in the clubs and newspapers who will find fault with us for doing no more than we were sent to do: rescue our countrymen. I dare say there will be voices raised in the House demanding to know why we have left a savage country in confusion and civil war—”

“Which is how it was for centuries before we came!” cries Charlie. “And the Ethiopian can’t change his skin, can he? He’ll go murdering whether we’re here or not!”

“The Chief’s right, though,” says Merewether. “There’s bound to be an outcry because we’re not leaving a garrison to pacify the tribes and police the country—oh, and distribute tracts to folk who were Christian before we were! As though Abyssinia were a country to be pacified and ruled with fewer than ten divisions and a great civil power!”

“Which would call for an expenditure of many millions, far more than we have spent—and with no hope of return.” Napier was smiling as he said it, but I wondered if some hint of censure had already reached him from home. They’d given him a free hand, and he hadn’t stinted.

“And if we were to occupy the confounded place, Mr Gladstone would never forgive us!” says Merewether. “What, enlarge the empire, bring indigenous peoples to subjection, and exploit them for our profit! Rather not!”

There was general laughter at this, and Napier said with his quiet smile that we must resign ourselves to being regarded as callously irresponsible or rapaciously greedy. “Brutal indifference or selfish imperialism; those are the choices. As an old Scotch maidservant of my acquaintance used to say: ‘Ye canna dae right for daein’ wrang!’” [62]

More laughter, and Charlie said, well, thank goodness at least no one could complain that there had been dreadful slaughter of helpless aborigines by the weapons of civilisation. “Twasn’t our fault jolly old Theodore kicked the bucket!” he added. Merewether said thank goodness for that, and I could feel the uneasy silence of Napier and Speedy. No doubt it was out of consideration for me that Napier checked his mount until I was alongside, and then says cheerily: “You’re very silent, Harry. Have you no philosophic reflec tions on the campaign? No views on what should or should not be done now that it’s over?”

I glanced back at the smoke rising from Magdala like some huge genie escaping from his bottle, and then at the long dusty column of horse, foot, and guns swinging down the defile. And I thought of that hellish beautiful land and its hellish beautiful people, of Yando’s cage and the horrors of Gondar, of bandit treasure aswarm with scorpions, of the terrifying thunder of descent into a watery maelstrom, of a raving lunatic slaughtering helpless captives, of fighting women drunk on massacre, of a graceful she-devil aglow with love and ice-cold in hate… and was finally aware of the gently smiling old soldier waiting for an answer as we rode in sun light down from Arogee.

“My views, sir? Can’t think I have many… oh, I don’t know, though. Wouldn’t mind suggesting to Her Majesty’s ministers that next time they get a letter from a touchy barbarian despot, it might save ’em a deal of trouble and expense if they sent him a civil reply by return of post…”

[On which characteristically. caustic note

the twelfth packet of the Flashman Papers

comes to an end.]