You will know all about him, no doubt. He was the ass who presided over the mess we made in the Crimea, and won deathless fame as the man who murdered the Light Brigade. He should have been a parson, or an Oxford don, or a waiter, for he was the kindliest, softest-voiced old stick who ever spared a fellow-creature’s feelings – that was what was wrong with him, that he couldn’t for the life of him say an unkind word, or set anyone down. And this was the man who was the heir to Wellington – as I sat in his office, looking across at his kindly old face, with its rumpled white hair and long nose, and found my eyes straying to the empty right sleeve tucked into his breast, he looked so pathetic and frail, I shuddered inwardly. Thank God, thinks I, that I won’t be in this chap’s campaign.
They had just made him Commander-in-Chief, after years spent bumbling about on the Board of Ordnance, and he was supposed to be taking matters in hand for the coming conflict. So you may guess that the matter on which he had sent for me was one of the gravest national import – Prince Albert, our saintly Bertie the Beauty, wanted a new aide-de-camp, or equerry, or toad-eater-extraordinary, and nothing would do but our new Commander must set all else aside to see the thing was done properly.
Mark you, I’d no time to waste marvelling over the fatuousness of this kind of mismanagement; it was nothing new in our army, anyway, and still isn’t, from all I can see. Ask any commander to choose between toiling over the ammunition returns for a division fighting for its life, and taking the King’s dog for a walk, and he’ll be out there in a trice, bawling ‘Heel, Fido!’ No, I was too much knocked aback to learn that I, Captain Harry Flashman, former Cherrypicker and erstwhile hero of the country, of no great social consequence and no enormous means or influence, should even be considered to breathe the lordly air of the court. Oh, I had my fighting reputation, but what’s that, when London is bursting with pink-cheeked viscounts with cleft palates and long pedigrees? My great-great-great-grandpapa wasn’t even a duke’s bastard, so far as I know.
Raglan approached the thing in his usual roundabout way, by going through a personal history which his minions must have put together for him.
‘I see you are thirty-one years old, Flashman,’ says he. ‘Well, well, I had thought you older – why, you must have been only – yes, nineteen, when you won your spurs at Kabul. Dear me! So young. And since then you have served in India, against the Sikhs, but have been on half pay these six years, more or less. In that time, I believe, you have travelled widely?’
Usually at high speed, thinks I, and not in circumstances I’d care to tell your lordship about. Aloud I confessed to acquaintance with France, Germany, the United States, Madagascar, West Africa, and the East Indies.
‘And I see you have languages – excellent French, German. Hindoostanee, Persian – bless my soul! – and Pushtu. Thanks of Parliament in ’42, Queen’s Medal – well, well, these are quite singular accomplishments, you know.’ And he laughed in his easy way. ‘And apart from Company service, you were formerly, as I apprehend, of the 11th Hussars. Under Lord Cardigan. A-ha. Well, now, Flashman, tell me, what took you to the Board of Ordnance?’
I was ready for that one, and spun him a tale about improving my military education, because no field officer could know too much, and so on, and so on …
‘Yes, that is very true, and I commend it in you. But you know, Flashman, while I never dissuade a young man from studying all aspects of his profession – which indeed, my own mentor, the Great Duke, impressed on us, his young men, as most necessary – still, I wonder if the Ordnance Board is really for you.’ And he looked knowing and quizzical, like someone smiling with a mouthful of salts. His voice took on a deprecatory whisper. ‘Oh, it is very well, but come, my boy, it cannot but seem – well, beneath, a little beneath, I think, a man whose career has been as, yes, brilliant as your own. I say nothing against the Ordnance – why, I was Master-General for many years – but for a young blade, well-connected, highly regarded …?’ He wrinkled his nose at me. ‘Is it not like a charger pulling a cart? Of course it is. Manufacturers and clerks may be admirably suited to deal with barrels and locks and rivets and, oh, dimensions, and what-not, but it is all so mechanical, don’t you agree?’
Why couldn’t the old fool mind his own business? I could see where this was leading – back to active service and being blown to bits in Turkey, devil a doubt. But who contradicts a Commander-in-Chief?
‘I think it a most happy chance,’ he went on, ‘that only yesterday His Royal Highness Prince Albert’ – he said it with reverence – ‘confided to me the task of finding a young officer for a post of considerable delicacy and importance. He must, of course, be well-born – your mother was Lady Alicia Paget, was she not? I remember the great pleasure I had in dancing with her, oh, how many years ago? Well, well, it is no matter. A quadrille, I fancy. However, station alone is not sufficient in this case, or I confess I should have looked to the Guards.’ Well, that was candid, damn him. ‘The officer selected must also have shown himself resourceful, valiant, and experienced in camp and battle. That is essential. He must be young, of equable disposition and good education, unblemished, I need not say, in personal reputation’ – God knows how he’d come to pick on me, thinks I, but he went on: ‘– and yet a man who knows his world. But above all – what our good old Duke would call “a man of his hands”.’ He beamed at me. ‘I believe your name must have occurred to me at once, had His Highness not mentioned it first. It seems our gracious Queen had recollected you to him.’ Well, well, thinks I, little Vicky remembers my whiskers after all these years. I recalled how she had mooned tearfully at me when she pinned my medal on, back in ’42 – they’re all alike you know, can’t resist a dashing boy with big shoulders and a trot-along look in his eye.
‘So I may now confide in you,’ he went on, ‘what this most important duty consists in. You have not heard, I daresay, of Prince William of Celle? He is one of Her Majesty’s European cousins, who has been visiting here some time, incognito, studying our English ways preparatory to pursuing a military career in the British Army. It is his family’s wish that when our forces go overseas – as soon they must, I believe – he shall accompany us, as a member of my staff. But while he will be under my personal eye, as it were, it is most necessary that he should be in the immediate care of the kind of officer I have mentioned – one who will guide his youthful footsteps, guard his person, shield him from temptation, further his military education, and supervise his physical and spiritual welfare in every way.’ Raglan smiled. ‘He is very young, and a most amiable prince in every way; he will require a firm and friendly hand from one who can win the trust and respect of an ardent and developing nature. Well, Flashman, I have no doubt that between us we can make something of him. Do you not agree?’
By God, you’ve come to the right shop, thinks I. Flashy and Co., wholesale moralists, ardent and developing natures supervised, spiritual instruction guaranteed, prayers and laundry two bob extra. How the deuce had they picked on me? The Queen, of course, but did Raglan know what kind of a fellow they had alighted on? Granted I was a hero, but I’d thought my randying about and boozing and general loose living were well known – by George, he must know! Maybe, secretly, he thought that was a qualification – I’m not sure he wasn’t right. But the main point was, all my splendid schemes for avoiding shot and shell were out of court again; it was me for the staff, playing nursemaid to some little German pimp in the wilds of Turkey. Of all the hellish bad luck.
But of course I sat there jerking like a puppet, grinning foolishly – what else was there to do?
‘I think we may congratulate ourselves,’ the old idiot went on, ‘and tomorrow I shall take you to the Palace to meet your new charge. I congratulate you, Captain, and’ – he shook my hand with a noble smile – ‘I know you will be worthy of the trust imposed on you now, as you have been in the past. Good day to you, my dear sir. And now,’ I heard him say to his secretary as I bowed myself out, ‘there is this wretched war business. I suppose there is no word yet whether it has begun? Well, I do wish they would make up their minds.’
You have already guessed, no doubt, the shock that was in store for me at the Palace next day. Raglan took me along, we went through the rigmarole