I was on guard again in a moment.
"Is there anything your highness requires?" says he.
"I don't think so, Josef," says I, and gave a yawn. "Just going to bed." And then a splendid idea occurred to me. "You may send up a chambermaid to turn down the covers."
He looked surprised. "I can do that, sir."
Now, Flashy would have growled: "Damn your eyes, do as you're bloody well told." But Prince Carl Gustaf merely said: "No, send the chambermaid."
He hesitated a second, his face expressionless. Then: "Very good, your highness." He bowed and went to the door. "Goodnight, highness."
Of course, it was a dam-fool thing to do, but what with the brandy and my randy thoughts, I didn't care. Anyway, wasn't I a prince? And the real Carl Gustaf was no monk, by all accounts—and damned careless about it, too. So I waited in lustful anticipation, until there was another knock, and a girl peeped in when I called out to enter.
She was a pretty, plump little thing, curly-haired and as broad as she was long, but just the thing for me with my thoughts running on Baroness Pechman. She had a bright eye, and it occurred to me that Josef was perhaps no fool. She curtsied and tripped across to the bed, and when I sauntered over—slipping the doorbolt on the way—and stood beside her, she giggled and made a great show of smoothing out my pillow.
"All work and no play isn't good for little girls," says I, and sitting on the bed I pulled her on to my knee. She hardly resisted, only trying to blush and look demure, and when I pulled down her bodice and kissed her breasts she cooed and wriggled her body against mine. In no time we were thrashing about in first-rate style, and I was making up for weeks of enforced abstinence. She was an eager little bundle, all right, and by the time she had slipped away, leaving me to seek a well-earned rest, I was most happily played out.
I've sometimes wondered what the result of that encounter was, and if there is some sturdy peasant somewhere in Holstein called Carl who puts on airs in the belief that he can claim royal descent. If there is, he can truly be called an ignorant bastard.
There are ways of being drunk that have nothing to do with alcohol. For the next few days, apart from occasional moments of panic-stricken clarity, I was thoroughly intoxicated. To be a king—well, a prince—is magnificent; to be fawned at, and deferred to, and cheered, and adulated; to have every wish granted—no, not granted, but attended to immediately by people who obviously wish they had anticipated it; to be the centre of attention, with everyone bending their backs and craning their necks and loving you to ecstasy—it is the most wonderful thing. Perhaps I'd had less of it than even ordinary folk, especially when I was younger, and so appreciated it more; anyway, while it lasted I fairly wallowed in it.
Of course, I'd had plenty of admiration when I came home from Afghanistan, but that was very different. Then they'd said: "There's the heroic Flashman, the bluff young lionheart who slaughters niggers and upholds old England's honour. Gad, look at those whiskers!" Which was splendid, but didn't suggest that I was more than human. But when you're royalty they treat you as though you're God; you begin to feel that you're of entirely different stuff from the rest of mankind; you don't walk, you float, above it all, with the mob beneath, toadying like fury.
I had my first taste of it the morning I left Tarlenheim, when I breakfasted with the Count and about forty of his crowd—goggling gentry and gushing females—before setting out. I was in excellent shape after bumping the chambermaid and having a good night's rest, and was fairly gracious to one and all—even to old Tarlenheim, who could have bored with the best of them in the St James clubs. He remarked that I looked much healthier this morning—the solicitous inquiries after my headache would have put a Royal Commission on the plague to shame-and encouraged, I suppose, by my geniality, began to tell me about what a hell of a bad harvest they'd had that year. German potatoes were in a damnable condition, it seemed.[29] However, I put up with him, and presently, after much hand-kissing and bowing, and clanking of guardsmen about the driveway, I took my royal leave of them, and we bowled off by coach for the Strackenz border.
It was a fine, bright day, with snow and frost all over the place, but warm enough for all that. My coach was a splendid machine upholstered in grey silk, excellently sprung, and with the Danish Royal arms on the panels. (I remembered that the coach Wellington had once taken me in looked like a public cab, and rattled like a wheelbarrow.) There were cuirassiers bumping along in escort— smart enough—and a great train of other coaches bringing up the rear. I lounged and had a cheroot, while Detchard assured me how well things had gone, and would continue to go—he needn't have bothered, for I was in an exalted state of confidence—and then presently we rolled through our first village, and the cheering began.
All along the road, even at isolated houses, there were smiling faces and fluttering handkerchiefs; squires and peasants, farm-girls and ploughmen, infantswaving the red and white Danish colours and the curious thistle-like emblem which is the badge of Holstein,[30] labourers in their smocks staring, mounted officials saluting—the whole countryside seemed to have converged on the Strackenz road to see my royal highness pass by. I beamed and waved as we rushed past, and they hallooed and waved back all the harder. It was a glorious dream, and I was enjoying it to the full, and then Detchard reminded me drily that these were only Holsteiners, and I might save some of my royal energy for the Strackenzians.
It was at the border, of course, that the real circus began. There was a great crowd waiting, the toffs to the fore and the mob craning and hurrahing at a more respectful distance. I stepped out of the coach, at Detchard's instruction, and the cheers broke out louder than ever—the crashing three-fold bark that is the German notion of hip-hip-hip-hooray. An elderly cove with snow-white hair, thin and hobbling stiffly, came forward bowing and handkissing, to bid me welcome in a creaking voice.
"Marshal von Saldern, Constable of Strackenz," whispered Detchard, and I grasped the old buffer's hand while he gushed over me and insisted that this was the greatest day in Strackenz's history, and welcome, thrice welcome, highness.
In turn I assured him that no visitor to Strackenz had ever arrived more joyfully than I, and that if their welcome was any foretaste of what was to come then I was a hell of a fortunate fellow, or words to that effect. They roared and clapped at this, and then there were presentations, and I inspected a guard of honour of the Strackenz Grenadiers, and off we went again, with von Saldern in my coach, to point out to me objects of interest, like fields and trees and things—the old fellow was as jumpy as a cricket, I realised, and babbled like anything, which I accepted with royal amiability. And then he had to leave off so that I could devote myself to waving to the people who were now lining the road all the way, and in the distance there was the sound of a great throng and a tremendous bustle; far away guns began to boom in salute, and we were rolling through the suburbs of the city of Strackenz itself.
The crowds were everywhere now, massed on the pavements, waving from the windows, crouching precariously on railings, and all yelling to beat the band. There were flags and bunting and the thumping of martial music, and then a great archway loomed ahead, and the coach rolled slowly to a halt.
The hubbub died away a little, and I saw a small procession of worthies in robes and flat caps approaching the coach, Ahead was a stalwart lad carrying a cushion with something on it.