Flashman and the Cobra Read online

  “Is that official still alive?” I asked as we started to climb back up the stairs.

  The sergeant grinned. “No, that was one execution I made sure I was there for. I made certain he was last out of the cart too, so he could see the others die before his turn. He was kicking and screaming in terror right up to the end.”

  We had now returned to the corridor. “You had better get your friend now. I showed him the guillotine last night and made him touch the blade. I told him that anyone who touches the blade will feel the ghosts of the people it took. When I came in this morning there he was crying like a baby, but many do that when they know what the cells were used for. It’s the walls, you’ll see.” He unlocked Berkeley’s cell door and stomped away to another part of the prison.

  [Editor’s note: Shocking as the preceding paragraphs are, they are verified by contemporary facts. I will mention just one example here. There are several first-hand accounts of the death of Charlotte Corday, who was executed for murdering the revolutionary leader Marat in his bath. Her head was picked up immediately after being severed by a man named Legros, who then slapped her cheek. Several witnesses report an expression of “unequivocal indignation” crossing her face. The executioner, Sanson the Great, while happy to kill Corday was appalled at the unprofessional behaviour of Legros and had it made clear that Legros was not one of his assistants but a carpenter hired to make repairs to the guillotine. For poor Charlotte Corday the indignities were not over as the Revolutionary Council ordered a post-mortem to see if this unmarried woman was a virgin because they could not believe a woman would commit such an act of murder without a male lover putting her up to it. To their dismay she was found virgo intacta, i.e. a virgin, showing that women had also been encouraged to rise up against authority by revolutionary principles.]

  I pushed the door open and Berkeley looked up at me, his bottom lip trembling.

  “Get me out of here, Flashman, please,” Berkeley whispered. I cannot look at those walls any more.”

  I stepped into the cell and looked at the walls. They had graffiti scratched into every stone surface. I had not looked at them closely when I was in the cell before, but I looked now. The walls were covered with names and initials and a few dates. Some deeply carved names had not been completed before the carver was dragged off to their death. Evidently many of the occupants had felt the need to leave a permanent reminder of their existence before that existence ceased. I was surrounded by primitive memorials carved by those who knew they were about to die. I now understood what the sergeant meant about the walls talking. Having just listened to his tales of the terror, I felt a chill in the room too and had no wish to linger. I helped Berkeley to his feet and guided him out of the chamber..

  He was quiet all the way down to the carriage, but when we stepped out into the sunshine he suddenly stopped and gripped my arm. “God knows what the future holds, Flashman, but I want my daughters to be happy. If you make Louisa happy, I will not stand in your way.” We climbed up into the carriage and he continued, “You won’t get the title of course, that will go to my nephew, but Louisa will probably inherit the estate. Sarah will marry into money, she is a very calculating girl that one, but Louisa seems to have set her heart on you.” He reached over and patted me on the knee. “You will be your brother’s neighbour, and Flashmans will own half the county.” He even laughed at the thought.

  I began to wonder if the spirit of some executed French aristocrat had possessed him during that night in prison. However it had happened, this complete personality change seemed the best one hundred guineas of someone else’s money I had ever spent. Suddenly the day was brightening up again. I had started it with Louisa in my bed and now I was looking at wealth and happiness for the rest of my days. We rode back to the hotel, and while Berkeley still looked shaken, my heart was singing. I had far less idea of the fate that was about to befall me than that poor girl counting to a hundred with her eyes tight shut.

  I knew something was wrong as soon as I stepped into the hotel. Around a dozen people were in the entrance lobby, and they all stopped their conversations to look at us. At first I thought they were looking at Berkeley, who was still ashen-faced, but then I realised that it was me they were staring at. Some, particularly a handful from the party last night, half-smiled sympathetically, but others were looking at me in a decidedly hostile way.

  “Your daughters are in the green drawing room, sir.” A footman had come up to Berkeley and he guided the pale faced lord towards a door on the far side of the room. With a growing feeling of trepidation, I followed.

  Sarah and Louisa were sitting together on a settee on the far side of the room. The only other occupant of the room was Mrs Fairfax, the chaperone, who seemed to inflate with outrage at the sight of me. Sarah had her arm around Louisa and they were both crying. Louisa’s shoulders were shaking with sobs and I felt a sharp stab of guilt. Sarah dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief and gave me what appeared to be a look of triumph as I entered the room with her father. In Sarah’s lap was a black object that I recognised as my missing shoe from the pair I had worn last night; it must have been found in Sarah’s room after all.

  Berkeley saw his daughters crying and assumed that their grief was over his imprisonment. “It is all right, girls, I am back,” he called. “There is no need to cry. Thomas here got me out of prison without any difficulty.”

  “How could you, Thomas?” cried Louisa as she looked up and saw me. “Wasn’t one sister enough for you?”

  Berkeley looked confused. “What, did you not want him to get me released?” he asked. Then, still looking puzzled, he added, “One sister?”

  In the few moments I had been in the room I could see no way that this encounter could end positively for me and I began to edge back towards the door. I had a nasty feeling that Berkeley’s benign personality change would only survive a few more seconds.

  Sarah raised her arm and pointed at me with the portent of a Roman emperor giving the thumbs down to a gladiator and intoned, “Thomas got me drunk last night, raped me and then he seduced Louisa, all in the same night.”

  Both male jaws in the room dropped in outrage. I was expecting an ugly scene but this was ridiculous. “Rape!” I exploded angrily. “There are twenty witnesses in this hotel who will testify that you were all over me last night, dangling your tits in my face. As for seducing your sister, we both know that I found her naked in my damned bed.”

  I suddenly realised now what that little alarm bell had been when Louisa had told me she had got the maid drunk. Sarah had known the maid would be drunk, which meant she must have known of her sister’s plan to wait for me in my bed. This explained why she was so keen to go to her room rather than mine.

  “You knew that,” I said, pointing an accusing finger back at Sarah, “which was why you were all over me the second Louisa was out of sight.”

  “You... you villain,” gasped Berkeley hoarsely. The colour was returning to his face and he seemed to be struggling for breath. “You dare to sully my girls and then accuse them of playing some part in your foul designs.” His voice started to rise as he got more into his usual stride. “I will ruin you. I will have you hunted down like the dog you are and whipped through the streets. I will put a price on your head big enough to get every cut-throat in London looking for you.”

  Berkeley was not the only one to get angry, as I started to realise that what I had thought were spontaneous acts of lust or love were in fact carefully planned by both of the sisters. It was as though I were an unwitting prize in a competition between them.

  “Go to hell,” I snarled at him. I turned to the girls and added, “I don’t know what game you two were playing, but you both knew more about what was going on last night than I did. Now the pair of you have the nerve to sit there and accuse me of rape. Well, you can go to hell too.”

  With that I turned on my heel and tried to storm out. I yanked the door back to walk with as much dignity as I could muster from the room.
Unfortunately that plan foundered immediately as I found my way impeded by about a dozen people who had all crowded up against the door to eavesdrop on the encounter. “Get out of the damn way,” I shouted as I tried to push through. They sprang back like startled hares, trying to pretend they had not been near the door at all, but the delay gave Berkeley time to recover his wits. He started to move towards me, his face now puce with rage.

  “You are a dead man, Flashman,” he was roaring. “I will have you hunted down and killed. There is no place you can hide.”

  I was heading back out of the hotel but now devilment took me and I paused and turned around. “I suppose,” I said in a voice of polite enquiry, “that this means that your offer just half an hour ago of your daughter’s hand in marriage and inheritance of your estate is withdrawn?” Some in the eavesdropping crowd smiled at my effrontery. Berkeley was not a popular man and several had been at the party last night and had seen for themselves how ridiculous the rape claim was. I was determined to leave the hotel with my head held high. I paused, as though considering the matter, before I added. “I must speak to my lawyer. I might have a breach of promise claim there.”

  I am not sure what you call the shade that is darker than puce but Berkeley’s face went that colour on hearing my final remark. He gaped like a fish, his knees started to sag and he would have fallen if others had not rushed forward to hold him up. I did not stay around but walked out of the doors and into the waiting carriage, outwardly calm but with my mind in a whirl.

  Chapter 5

  I climbed back in the waiting carriage and ordered it to the British embassy. Despite my casual air when leaving the hotel, my emotions were struggling to keep up with the pace of events. Just twenty-four hours ago I had been tooling aimlessly around the palace gardens. Since then Berkeley had been arrested and I had visited the British embassy twice to secure his release, been to the ball at the Austrian embassy, met the first consul, bedded both Berkeley sisters, seen first-hand the horrors of the revolution, released Berkeley, been promised happiness and a fortune, lost happiness and a fortune, been threatened with death and disgrace... Oh, and I had also got myself embroiled back in Government business too. I was still pondering the peccadilloes of life when the carriage came to a stop and I realised that we had arrived at the only building in Paris with the British flag flying above it.

  Wickham must have been watching for me for he was out of the door almost before we had come to stop.

  “What ho, Flashman!” he called as he swung himself up into the carriage. He called out an address to the driver and settled into the seat beside me. He looked full of beans and patted me on the knee in greeting. “I trust you are in fine fettle this morning. You seemed to be enjoying yourself with Louisa Berkeley last night. I take it she is the object of your desires?”

  “Things have become a little complicated on the Berkeley front,” I replied. But I did not want to talk about it just yet; the wound was still too raw. Wickham’s ear for gossip meant that he would doubtless hear the news from other guests of the hotel before the day was out anyway. To change the subject I asked, “Who is this French general we are meeting?”

  “Ah, his name is de Boigne, Benoit de Boigne. Have you heard of him?”

  “No, is he a secret counter-revolutionary or someone Bonaparte has overlooked for command? Why is he talking to us?” Then another thought struck me. “Shouldn’t we be doing this in a more clandestine way? I know we are at peace, but surely you are being followed?”

  Wickham laughed. “Of course I am being followed. Fouché, the head of their secret police, has a whole team tracking my every move. But there is no need to worry. De Boigne is in favour with Bonaparte. What we are going to talk about will be of little interest to the first consul, at least for the moment.”

  “So he is an experienced commander then?” I asked.

  “Gosh, yes. He has built up and commanded armies of a hundred thousand men, won countless battles and made his master ruler of the region.”

  “A hundred thousand men,” I repeated, astonished. “That is more than twice the size of the army that Bonaparte took to conquer Egypt. Why haven’t I heard of him?”

  “Because he did all of this in India, in Mahratta country, in wars between Indian princes. Our papers usually just report on events that the British are involved in, but make no mistake, he is a very capable commander. When the British arrived in India and started beating the native rulers with European tactics, many of the native princes quickly employed European mercenaries to train their armies in these new types of warfare. De Boigne was one of those mercenaries. He worked his way up until he commanded the army of one of the leading princes and then he steadily beat the armies of all his rivals. Along the way he amassed a big personal fortune and married a beautiful Indian wife in a Muslim ceremony.”

  “So why did he leave?”

  “I am not sure; that is one of the things to find out. Initially he went to England with his wife, two children and Indian servants and bought an estate in Dorset. I think his wife was struggling to settle in England and so he left them there while he travelled to London. It seems that there he married again, possibly without mentioning the existence of his first wife, or perhaps he thought that a Muslim ceremony did not count in England.”

  I laughed. “Let me guess, the new wife is much younger and prettier than his Indian wife and claims to have married him for his personality and not the vast fortune?”

  “That would be about the size of it. Adele, his new French wife, was sixteen when they met; he was forty-seven. She was a French émigré living in London, from a penniless but noble family who doubtless pushed her into the match.” Wickham pulled out from his pocket a paper on which he had written some notes on de Boigne. “To be fair de Boigne is still providing generous support to his first family but his second marriage has not been a success. It seems that as well as being vague about his marital history he also gave the impression that he was of noble birth. He was born Benoit Leborgne and he was the son of a fur merchant. When his wife and in-laws found out they turned against him, while still taking him for as much money as they could. The age difference and rampant snobbery soon outweighed any affection there might have been and so he left England and came to France to escape them.”

  “How did he make his money? Was it loot from battles?” I asked.

  “Partly. But the Indian princes pay well for European expertise and de Boigne, being a merchant’s son, also did some trading on the side. He traded gems, gold, silver, silks and spices and made a fortune. Lots of Europeans get rich in India, which is why people go. If you are lucky, you can live like a king and come back with a hatful of jewels.”

  That got me thinking about my own prospects. My rental income was just about enough to live on but there were no government posts in prospect that would increase my wealth. On the contrary, I now had Berkeley’s thugs to worry about as well. He would not want any public scandal involving his daughters, so there was no chance of a rape charge in the courts. On the other hand I should not have provoked him as he was rich and had influence. He could easily arrange for someone to disappear and smooth over any awkward questions from the authorities. He was now sure to hire some heavies to at least give me a beating and might even order me killed. I would have to be bloody careful when I went to London; I would not be the first person to be dropped, dead, in a weighted sack off a Thames bridge, never to be seen again. I needed to keep a low profile for a while, but going to India seemed extreme. I had no military experience to sell or skills in trade.

  The carriage came to a halt in front of an expensive townhouse and we got down.

  “You never did tell me what he wanted to talk to us about,” I reminded Wickham.

  “He was not entirely clear on that with me. He just said it was about India and would be to our mutual interest and could save lots of British lives.” Wickham reached up to yank on the bell pull. “We will soon find out.”

  The door was opened
by an Indian servant who despite the warm day was wearing an overcoat. “You are Wickham sahib?” he asked in halting English.

  “Yes, and this is Mr Flashman, my colleague. Do you speak French?”

  “I speak good French,” said the Indian more confidently in that language. “Please follow me and I will take you to the general.”

  He showed us across a sumptuously decorated hall that had a tiger-skin rug and a huge range of what I took to be Oriental weaponry decorating the walls. Then doors were opened into a very comfortable study and a tall, thin, grey-haired man got up to greet us.

  “Monsieur Wickham and Monsieur Flashman, General,” announced the servant.

  “Thank you, Kapil. Welcome, gentleman, welcome,” said de Boigne in perfect English. “Please sit down,” he said, gesturing to some comfortable chairs around a table. His back was ramrod straight and I could understand how his newest in-laws had thought he was from the aristocracy; he exuded a relaxed air of authority.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you,” said Wickham. “I have to say that your invitation was quite intriguing. You realise that I am likely to have been followed here by Fouché’s agents. I trust our meeting does not compromise you in any way?”

  “Fouché and his spies are amateurs in intrigue compared to the people I am used to,” said de Boigne, smiling. “In any event, this matter is far too important to worry about that.”

  At this point, an elegantly dressed woman wearing a scarlet and gold sari entered the room carrying a tray with a teapot, cups and saucers and a plate of strange triangular-shaped pastries.

  “Ah, tea,” said de Boigne. “The pastries are an Indian dish called samosas; they are quite heavily spiced.”