“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.