Since that was precisely what I’d been about to do, I was briefly at a loss. I’d twigged early enough that he was no common spear-carrier; there’s no lack of Abs with handsome figureheads, with fine aquiline noses for looking down, but he had spoken with that calm assurance that you don’t find in the private soldier, and I’d marked him down as an Abyssinian gentleman-ranker, so to speak. But there had been something else.
“You spoke of your companion… Damash?… as a fat little hippo. Common men do not talk so of superiors who wear the red-fringed shama. That made me wonder.” I climbed to my feet. “But when you cry ‘Peace, hyena!’ to one who commands the Emperor’s fighting women and wears a silver shield on her arm [41]… then I do more than wonder. And whether you despise courtly flattery or no, I have stood before the face of many kings and queens in my time, and know the look… not at once, perhaps, but at last.”
There’s no doubt about it, I’m good at dealing with barmy savages. They scare the bile out of me, and perhaps terror lends wings to my wits, for when I think of the monsters I’ve conversed with and come away with a whole skin, more or less… Mangas Colorado, Ranavalona, General Sang-kol-in-sen, Crazy Horse, Dr Arnold, God knows who else… well, it took more than luck, I can tell you. You must know when to grovel and scream for mercy, but also when to take ’em aback with impudence or argument or pure bamboozle. To find myself in the presence of Mad King Theodore was enough to turn my bowels to buttermilk, but having seen him quiet and crazy in quick time, and realised that he was intelligent well above par, like many madmen, I knew that straight talk and a firm front to cover my quaking guts were my best bet… oh God, I hoped so, and tried not to quiver as I waited, watching him.
You never can tell what they’ll do when you answer ’em cool and apparently steady: some laugh, some ponder, some snarl, some set about you (I’m thinking of Arnold), and some, like Theodore, study you in disquieting silence. Then:
“You were quite wrong, you see, Miriam. He is no fool.”
“Your majesty was wrong also,” says she pertly. “He knew you.”
“Not until I had studied him, and seen what manner of man he was. Damash served his turn.” To me he said: “What success had you with Queen Masteeat? Oh, we can be plain now: I have known for weeks that a British envoy was on his way to seek her help, and since you reached her yesterday we have been watching… fortunately for you.” He gestured towards the Galla dead. “Did you not prosper with her?”
If I said no, I hadn’t prospered, and he had a spy at her court to tell him otherwise, or had intercepted my message to Napier, I was done for. If I told him the truth, that the Gallas were taking the field to cut him off, God knew what he would do. I’d seen already how swiftly his mood could change; I daren’t risk it. I said there’d been no time even to broach Napier’s request, and was subjected to another silent stare.
“No time for talk?” says he. “But time for these—” he gestured again “—to bring you out for death? No, that is not Queen Masteeat’s way.”
“Not with a fine tall soldier,” sniggers Miriam, who seemed to go in no awe of him at all. He paid her no heed.
“So who condemned you? And why?”
I told him the truth of it, since it could do no harm, and he pre sumably knew that Uliba-Wark had guided me south. “We were separated by your riders at the Silver Smoke; she chose to think I had abandoned her, and these dead men were her hirelings to murder me.” I nodded at the clearing. “And there she lies.”
“Uliba-Wark? Dead?” Theodore stared, and wheeled abruptly, striding to the group about Uliba’s body; they scattered like birds. Miriam followed him in some alarm. “I saw it was a woman, but I did not know her, negus, truly…”
“It is no matter,” says Theodore. He looked down at what remained of Uliba, and shrugged without disgust. “She was a stinging gadfly, a sower of discord, a trouble in the eyes of God and man. She coveted her sister’s throne, they say. Behold her now.”
“She coveted men, by all accounts,” says Miriam, and gave me her jeering grin. “Were you her lover, ras of the British?”
I was not about to mention a lady’s name, but her question seemed to catch Theodore on the raw somehow, for he stared hard at her, head back, and then at me, and then at her again, and smiled at last, crooking a finger.
“Hither, wanton,” says he, and she came to his side. He put an arm about her waist and fondled her chin, and she purred like a kitten and nuzzled him. “Speak not of love to fine tall soldiers,” says he. So that explained the licence she enjoyed; one of his concubines, obviously, as well as commanding his killing women. Versatile female. And Theodore of Abyssinia was as jealous as the next man.
And now Damash came rolling back, followed by a groom leading two horses. Behind him the women had finished their revolting chore, and were assembling more or less in ranks, except for Gorilla Jane who was dragging along one of the Galla corpses. Then I saw that it wasn’t a corpse, but a living being, bleeding from a dozen wounds. Theodore, still with his arm about Miriam, addressed me.
"Ras Flashman, though you come with the power of the English Queen to destroy me, who have wished for nothing but peace between her throne and mine, and laboured by the power of God to that end against the wickedness of evil men, yet I hold no malice in my heart towards you, or your Dedjaz Napier, who writes cordially to me and I to him. I take you to be my guest in Magdala, where we shall look into each other’s hearts, in love and friend ship.”
He seemed to expect an answer, so I said, “Much obliged… ah, negus.” He kissed Miriam and toyed with her hand a moment.
“Bring the ras to Islamgee,” says he, and mounted. Damash was budged into the saddle by the groom, but as they prepared to ride off Gorilla Jane cried that here was the Galla chief still alive, though incomplete, and what should be done with him. At her feet, with her companions crouched over it like vultures, was that dreadful thing, stirring feebly, and I saw it was Goram.
Miriam brightened. “We should question him, negus.”
“A Galla warrior will tell you nothing,” says Theodore. He stood in his stirrups, a hand raised. “The blessing of God upon you brave women. And the blessing also on you, Ras Flashman, and His mercy and peace.” He wheeled his horse, and as he passed Gorilla Jane and the shattered wreck of Goram, he added: “Throw him on the fire.” So they did.
I spent a week as “guest” of the Emperor Theodore, and it was one of the longest of my life. How our pris oners, Cameron and Co., endured it for two solid years is beyond me. There may be nothing worse than being in the hands of a deadly enemy, but finding yourself at the mercy of a lunatic runs it close, for there’s no telling what he’ll do—load you with chains or send you presents, threaten you with flogging or swear eternal friendship over a glass of tej, discuss the causes of the American Civil War or invite you to kill him ’cos life has become a burden—that was Theodore, the maniac who held our lives in his hands, tor turing our gracious Queen’s consul half to death, and firing twenty-one-gun salutes to celebrate her birthday. Not the worst host I’ve ever been billeted on, perhaps, but quite the most unpredictable.
There was no way of foreseeing, as they brought me away from that place of slaughter where the Gallas died, that those seven days of horror and hope, of living on the razor’s edge, were to see the final act of the astonishing melodrama, part-tragedy, part-farce, known as the Abyssinian War. For me, it was the last mile of that wild journey that had begun a few short months ago in Trieste. I tell you it as it was; it’s all true.