My innards set to partners at the prospect, but there was a question to be asked.
‘If she’s like any queen of my acquaintance, she’ll have to be bought. Since you tell me Magdala was a Galla place, I guess she’ll want it back. But what more?’
‘The possession of Magdala is a political question, and no concern of ours. You may offer her fifty thousand dollars to invest the city. If she is unwilling to do more than harass Theodore’s retreat, you will lower the payment at your discretion.’
And if she threatens to feed my essentials to her lions, how discreet should I be then, eh? But I kept the thought to myself.
Napier sat silent a moment, then spoke slowly. ‘I’m sorry, Sir Harry, but that is all the brief I can give you. Speedy has shown us her character: shrewd, formidable, but capricious, by turns amiable and ruthless, and no doubt as cruel as such despots usually are. But her present situation and ambitions are hidden from us. That she is Theodore’s mortal enemy is all we can tell with certainty. Yours is a task,’ says he, shaking his grizzled head, ‘which might tax a seasoned ambassador, but I know you will succeed as you have done in the past, and then,’ the old lined face lit up again with that brilliant smile, ‘you can do what no mere diplomat could do, by offering Queen Masteeat a soldierly skill far beyond her own commanders’, to direct the investment of Magdala and, if she wills it, lead her troops into battle!’
She ain’t going to get the chance to will it, you dear old optimist, thinks I, ’cos supposing I get the length of seeing and persuading her, the last thing I’ll ask for is command of her rabble of bloodthirsty niggers. But of course I slapped my knee and stiffened the sinews some more, and Speedy swore that he envied me the trip. God help him, I’ve no doubt he meant it.
‘With Theodore on the road from Debra Tabor to Magdala,’ says he, moving to the map, ‘it’s my guess that Masteeat will be on the move herself, court, council, army and all, keeping an eye on his line of march. Her country lies south of Magdala, but unless I’m mistaken she’ll have come west, somewhere along the Nile27 – see, there – between the Bechelo and Lake Tana.’
‘How far are we from the Nile?’ asks Napier.
‘About three hundred miles, sir, but Sir Harry may have to skirt about. Still, riding steady and with not too many troubles en route, he should be there in a fortnight or thereabouts.’
‘This is February the twenty-fifth,’ muses Napier, ‘and God willing I shall have the army before Magdala by the end of March. You have four weeks, Sir Harry, in which to find Queen Masteeat, exercise your persuasive arts …’ he said it with a dead straight face ‘… and bring her army to encircle Theodore.’ He pulled out a battered half-hunter. ‘It will be full dark soon, and the less time you lose, the better. We took the liberty,’ he went on calmly, ‘of counting on your help, and behind the screen yonder you will find the dress and accoutrements appropriate to Khasim Tamwar, diplomat and horse-coper of Hyderabad. You have every confidence in the guide, Speedy?’
‘Absolute, sir. Uliba-Wark knows the Amhara country like a book, and just how to seek out Queen Masteeat. You couldn’t wish for a better jancada,fn3 Sir Harry, believe me.’
‘Excellent,’ says Napier. ‘I suggest we make them known to each other without delay.’ And as Speedy went out: ‘Meanwhile, Sir Harry, perhaps while you change you can reflect on any questions or observations you wish to put to me. Now, Moore, tomorrow’s orders …’
The suddenness of it struck me dumb. I’d been slapped in the face before with commissions there was no avoiding, but always there had been a breathing space, of hours at least, in which to digest the thing, gather my scattered wits, fight down my dinner, and wonder how best to shirk my duty. But here, after the barest instruction, this cool old bastard was launching me to damnation with barely time to change my shirt – which was what I found myself doing a moment later in the screened corner of the tent, like a man in a nightmare, automatically donning the native clobber because there was nothing else for it, the pyjamys and tunic and doeskin boots (which fitted, for a wonder), winding the waist-sash and slinging the cloak, vowing I’d be damned if I’d wear a puggaree, they could find me a hood or Arabi kafilyeh … and now there was bustle beyond the screen, Napier had given over dictating and was demanding of Speedy if they’d been seen, and Speedy was reassuring him and turning to me with a triumphant grin as I emerged in my fancy dress … and stopped dead in my tracks.
‘Your jancada, Sir Harry!’ cries he. ‘Guide, philosopher, and friend, what? Uliba-Wark – Sir Harry Flashman!’
After the shocks of the past hour I should have been ready for anything, but this was the sharpest yet, and I realised from Speedy’s eager look, and Napier’s watchful eye, that they’d known it would be, and were on edge to see how I’d take it. Behind Speedy stood two tall Ab warriors, wrapped in their dark shamas,fn4 but by his side was a woman such as I’d not seen yet in my brief stay in the country. The word that came into my mind was ‘gazelle’, for she was tall and slender and carried herself with a grace that promised speed and sudden energy; her face was strong and handsome rather than beautiful, almond-shaped after the style of the Malagassy belles I remembered, with heavy chiselled lips and pale amber skin that shone with a cosmetic oil of some kind. Her blue-black hair was cut in a fringe low on the brow, with thick braids to her shoulders. She wore a long black cloak embroidered with shells, but when she turned towards me it fell open, and Moore the Sapper, who’d been staring at her like a boy in a toyshop, dam’ near bit his pencil in two, for beneath she wore only a leather tunic which covered her like a second skin from bosom to thigh, exposing bare arms and shoulders and long splendid legs. Light buskins, sundry necklaces and bangles, and ladder-shaped gold earrings completed her costume, and she carried a light spear, slim as a wand and needle-tipped.
She was appraising me in a quite unfeminine way, amiable enough but with a decided damn-you-me-lad air, and taking in that striking shape in its close-fitting leather I could have wished the pair of us far away in Arcady. You know me; every new one is the ideal woman, especially when there’s that light in the eye that tells me we’re two of a mind. What lay ahead might be as grim as ever, but there should be jolly compensations.
‘Salaam, Uliba-Wark,’ says I, giving her my Flashy smile, open and comradely, and from her raised chin and lazy glance I knew I’d read her aright, and our fancy was mutual.
‘Salaam aleikum, farangi effendi,’ says she, cool and formal, and Speedy added promptly, in English: ‘You may depend upon her for your life, Sir Harry. I have.’
‘And so shall I,’ says I, likewise in English. Speedy spoke to her in what I took to be Amharic, and Napier motioned me aside.
‘There was so much for you to digest in so little time that we thought it best to keep the introduction of your escort to the last,’ says he. ‘Do I take it that you have no … reservations?’
‘Because she’s a woman? Lord, no! When I think of some of the ladies I’ve had to depend on, Sir Robert …’ I could have smiled, thinking of Cassy the killing slave, or the Silk One sabre in hand, or Lakshmibai at the head of her riders, or black Aphrodite bashing Redskins with her brolly, or my own daft, dauntless Elspeth. ‘Well, I’d not have swapped ’em for any man – and this one will know her business, or I’m no judge. You don’t hesitate to let her know my name, I notice.’
‘A measure of the trust Speedy reposes in her. And it would have been difficult – and indeed dangerous – to try to deceive her. She is,’ says he, frowning, ‘an unusual woman. Her husband, a petty chieftain, is at present a prisoner in the hands of King Gobayzy of Lasta, and the … lady, Madam Uliba-Wark, has let it be known that she will not set foot outside her citadel until he is restored to her—’
‘So this is the Lady of Shalott?’ I had to explain that I’d heard of her. ‘Well, she’s outside it now, with a vengeance!’28