Читать книгу The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection - George Fraser MacDonald - Страница 41

In a lifetime that has included far too many unpleasant surprises, I can think of few nastier shocks than that moment. Strange as it seems, from the very start of this German affair, Bismarck had never even crossed my mind—probably because I didn’t want to remember him. Having done the dirty on him in England with John Gully, I’d had no wish ever to meet him again—especially at such a disadvantage as now. Well, when you’ve caused a man to be cut up by a prize pug, and made him look an idiot into the bargain, you bar renewing his acquaintance in a lonely castle with four of his hired thugs ushering you into his presence.

Equally alarming was the discovery that he was at the bottom of the plot that had snared me: if it had looked sticky before, it looked a lot worse now.

“Welcome to Schönhausen, Mr Flashman,” says he, with the vaguest curl of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “Pray be seated.”²⁴

Bersonin set a chair for me at the table end opposite Bismarck, and then took station by the door. The other three stood by the fireplace, Rudi leaning against the overmantel. Bismarck studied me along the table’s length: he looked as nasty as ever, with those pale blue eyes and his arrogant stare. His face had roughened up a bit, though, since I first knew him, and he was sporting a heavy moustache; booze and guzzling had added a good deal of flesh to him, especially about the neck.

My heart was thumping like a hammer, and as always when I am scared half out of my wits my face was going red. Bismarck misread the signs.

“You don’t appear pleased to see me,” says he, laying aside his pistol. “But then, why should you? There is a score to settle on my side; I still miss a tooth, thanks to your pugilist friend.” He paused, while I quaked. “However, don’t imagine that I contrived your coming all the way here from England just to settle a personal difference. It happens, amazing though it may seem, that I need you. What do you think of that?”

“My God,” says I, “if that’s so, why the devil didn’t you ask me, like a civilised human being, instead of going through that damned charade in Munich? Of all the ridiculous, dangerous—yes, and damned bad-mannered—”

“Don’t be a fool. We will not pretend that if I had asked you, you would have come. It was necessary to use guile and force, in turn, to ensure your presence here. And to further ensure that you would be—pliable. For you have been left in no doubt what will happen to you if you do not do exactly what I require.”

“I’ve been left in no doubt that I’ve been bloody well kidnapped! And assaulted and falsely accused! I’ve been left in no doubt that you’re a damned villain. And—”

“Shall we leave these vapourings?” he broke in harshly. “You know something of what I am, and I know exactly what you are—a brutal, lecherous ruffian. Yes, but with certain abilities, which you will use as I direct.”

“What the devil is it you want, curse you? What use can I possibly be to you?”

“That is better. Give him a brandy, Kraftstein, and a cigar. Now then, Mr Flashman, you will listen to me, and what I tell you will never be repeated—never, as you love your life.”

As I think back on it now, it is still difficult to believe that it happened—that I really sat in that long room, with a glass and a cigar, while that cold, masterful man who was to be the greatest statesman of his age, outlined to me the amazing plan which was to be the first, small stepping-stone in his great career. It was mad, incredible nonsense, but it is true. Bismarck then was nothing—in the political sense, anyway. But he had dreamed his dreams (as Lola had told me years before) and now he was setting about in that cold, German certainty, to make them realities. Strange, isn’t it, that without me he could not have begun as he did? He needed the lecherous, brutal ruffian (an incomplete description, but Bismarck always was a great one for half-truths).

“Let me begin by asking you a question,” says he. “What do you know of Schleswig and Holstein?”

“Never even met ’em,” says I. Rudi laughed aloud, and de Gautet gave his sidelong smile.

Bismarck didn’t show any amusement. “They are states,” he said, “not persons. I shall tell you about them.”

And he began to explain what historians call “the Schleswig-Holstein question”. I won’t bore you with it here, because even diplomats agree that it is the most infernally complex affair that ever bedevilled European politics. Nobody has ever got to the bottom of it—indeed, Palmerston once said that only three people understood it: one was Pam himself, and he had forgotten it, another was a famous statesman, and he was dead, and the third was a German professor, and he had gone mad thinking about it. So there. But the nub was that the two states, which lay directly between Denmark and the German Confederacy, were nominally ruled by the King of Denmark, although most of the inhabitants were Germans. Both Germany and Denmark claimed Schleswig and Holstein, and the people living there were forever arguing about who they should belong to.

That, then, was the famous question²⁵—and of course, Bismarck knew the answer.

“It is beyond dispute,” says he, “that these two states are German by right. It has become of the first import that they should be German in fact.”

I couldn’t see what the devil this had to do with me, and said so.

“Be silent, and listen,” he snarled. “You will see very soon. Now, answer me: in the intervals between your drinking and whoring and hunting, do you take any interest in politics?”

“Well, I’m a Tory, I suppose. Haven’t ever bothered to vote, mind you. Why?”

“Gerrechter Herr Gott,” says he. “This, gentlemen”—he glanced at the others—“is a specimen of the ruling caste of the most powerful country on earth—for the present. Incredible, is it not?” His eyes scornful, he turned back to me. “You know, in effect, nothing of affairs of state—your own, or any others. Very good. But even you, Mr Flashman, must be aware that of late, all over Europe, there have been storm clouds gathering. There is a dangerous sentiment of liberalism, fostered by so-called progressive groups of intellectuals, which is infecting the populaces of states. Discontent and disaffection have been created; everywhere there are movements for reform”—he spat the word out—“reform, that slogan of the shiftless by which they mean destruction of stability in the hope that they will find some pickings among the ruins. Reform! Yes, your own country has given in to it, as probably even you have heard—”

“Should think I have. My guv’nor lost his seat in the House.”

“—and with what result? Concession has bred anarchy, as it always does. Are your masses satisfied? Of course not: they never are.”

“Not that he ever spent much time there, of course …”

“But as yet England has not reaped the full consequence of her statesmen’s stupidity. It will come in time, just as it is coming all over Europe. We have been wasted and enfeebled by peace these thirty years past, until there is hardly a man in Europe—I except Metternich—with the vision to see beyond the borders of his own state, to look past the petty trivialities of his own domestic politics, at the dark picture of the continent. They blind themselves to what is happening all about them; they consider only how to safeguard their own miserable little countries, with no thought for the whole. They cannot see, it seems, that unless those who lead and rule Europe stand together for the preservation of order and government, they will be swept away piecemeal on a rising tide of revolution.”

He had worked himself into a mild passion by this time; his eyes were bright and he was crouched forward in his chair, hurling his words down the table at me.

“Well,” says I, “I grant you things are a bit slack, here and there, and my wife has remarked that good servants are getting damned hard to find. But if you think England’s in for revolution, you’re well off the mark. We leave that sort of thing to Frogs and niggers.”

“I am not interested in your imbecile observations. I tell you what is, in Europe, and what its consequences must be unless measures are taken to prevent it. Here, in Germany, we have the cancer in a malignant form: the liberal movements are afoot throughout the confederacy. As a member of the Prussian Diet I see them at work openly in Berlin; as a rural landowner I am aware of them even in the countryside. I see them sapping the strength of the German people. If such insidious doctrines have their way, in a loose, undisciplined confederacy such as ours, the result will be chaotic. Germany, and especially German unity, for which far-sighted men have laboured for generations, will receive a mortal blow, from which it might take a century to recover. That she cannot afford. The world is on the move: the great nations are already jockeying for position in the race for power which is sure to move with incredible swiftness, now that science and industry are providing the impetus. If Germany is to take her place among the leaders, she must have unity, she must have strength, she must have discipline”—his great fist smacked the table with each phrase—“she must submit herself to the guidance and government of a supreme authority, who will do for her what Napoleon did for France, what Washington did for America. These were not liberals, Mr Flashman; these were not progressive intellectuals. Germany must have her Napoleon, if she is to have her—”

“Waterloo?” I was sick of all his bombast. Mind you, the moment I’d said it, I wished I hadn’t, for he stopped dead and stared at me in silence with those blazing blue eyes. Then he sat back in his chair, and spoke quietly.

“There will be no Waterloo. However, this is academic, and certainly wasted on a mind such as yours. I have said enough, I think, to explain to you the necessity for ensuring that the spread of liberal thought must be checked before it breeds revolution proper. For this, there must be measures, wherever possible, to buttress existing government, and to preserve order. Stability must be maintained wherever seditious influences are at work. And nowhere are they more in evidence than in Schleswig and Holstein.”

“I wondered when we should get back to them,” says I, and glanced at the others to see how they had taken Bismarck’s tirade. Young Rudi was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling, but de Gautet was all ears, and as for Kraftstein, he was pointing like a damned retriever, as though ready to bark in admiration. It occurred to me that if he found Bismarck’s claptrap absorbing, there was probably no lack of other idiots in Germany who would do so too.

“If you care to study the map of Europe above that bookcase,” Bismarck continued, “you will see that at the eastern limit of Holstein, where it adjoins Mecklenburg, there is a small duchy called Strackenz. It, like Schleswig and Holstein, has ties both with Germany and Denmark; like them, also, it is riven internally by contending parties. Being a rural, backward province, it is of less apparent importance than its larger neighbours, but this is an illusion. In fact, it is the spark on the tinder; if the dissension between the contending parties in Strackenz were to erupt into disorder, this would undoubtedly be used by revolutionary elements as an excuse to foment unrest in the neighbouring provinces; Denmark and Germany could become involved—believe me, great wars have begun over smaller matters than Strackenz.

“Is it plain to you that the peace must be kept in this little province? If it is, then given time, German diplomacy will ensure the incorporation of Schleswig and Holstein into the German confederacy, and the process of our national unification will have begun. But if in the immediate future anything should occur to plunge Strackenz into unrest, if the rival factions there should be given any crisis to exploit—then, my work will be ruined before it has been commenced.”

I can’t say I gave a tuppenny damn about his work, or the building of a united German state, and I couldn’t for the life of me see what all this had to do with me. Still, I could only listen. Bismarck was leaning forward again, staring at me and tapping the table.

“Such a crisis is at hand. Here are the facts. Strackenz is ruled by a Duchess Irma, who has recently reached marriageable age. She is exceedingly popular with her subjects, being young and personable and therefore supremely fitted to rule, in the eyes of superstitious peasants. It has been arranged that she should marry a prince of the Danish royal family, a nephew, in fact, of King Christian himself, one Prince Carl Gustaf. This informs you of the importance that Denmark attaches to even such a tiny province as Strackenz. The point is that the marriage will be hailed by the Danish faction in Strackenz, who are an unusually troublesome group—possibly because they are so far away from Denmark itself. And if they are contented, Strackenz will continue in peace. Its German population will know how to wait,” he added with confidence.

I confess I stifled a yawn, but he ignored it.

“Politically, then, the match is not only desirable, but essential. Its stabilising influence apart, I am not without hopes of Carl Gustaf, with whom I am acquainted. He would make a popular consort and ruler in Strackenz.”

He hesitated, his eyes unwinking on mine, and I stirred impatiently.

“Well, then,” says I, “good luck to the happy couple, and God bless ’em all-and Tiny Tim. Will you come to the point as far as I’m concerned—if I am at all, which I’m beginning to doubt.”

“Oh, you are,” says he, nodding grimly. “I said there was a crisis in Strackenz. It is this: as things stand, the wedding, which is to be solemnised in six weeks’ time, cannot take place.”

“Can’t it, now? Why not?”

“Prince Carl Gustaf, who is in many ways an admirable young man, has nevertheless his share of young men’s folly.” Bismarck paused. “He has contracted a social disease, which makes it impossible that he marry, at least for the time being.”

“A what?”

“A social disease.”

“You mean he’s got a dose of clap?” I let loose a guffaw. “Well, that’s damned inconsiderate of him. Bad luck on Duchess what’s-her-name, too. Still, boys will be boys, eh? But that makes things awkward, I agree. What are you going to do about it?”

Bismarck didn’t reply for a moment. There was a dead silence in the room, an expectant silence that made me uneasy.

“Well,” says I at length. “What next?”

Bismarck stood up abruptly, went over to a desk against the wall, and took a small object from it. He weighed it in his hand as he paced slowly back to the table.

“If the wedding does not take place, Strackenz will explode. The Danish party will see to it; liberal agitators will whip up anti-German feeling with tales of a plot. But it is obviously impossible for Prince Carl to marry for several months, when his … condition has responded to treatment.”

He seemed to expect a comment, so I suggested the wedding be postponed.

“On what pretext? If the real reason were known, the marriage could never take place at all, obviously. And the Strackenz pot would boil over. At the moment, no one knows of Carl Gustaf’s malady except his own physician, and two highly-placed Danish ministers. The rest of Denmark, like Germany and Strackenz, suspects nothing amiss, and expects the wedding to go forward.”

“You say only three people know that this Prince has Cupid’s measles? Then how do you …”

“I have my own sources. The three I mentioned, the Prince, and ourselves are the only people who know, rest assured.” He juggled the object in his hand. “The wedding must take place.”

“Well, he’ll just have to marry her, clap and all, won’t he? What else …”

“Out of the question,” says de Gautet, speaking for the first time. “Humanitarian reasons apart, it would surely be discovered afterwards, and the ensuing scandal would have as disastrous an effect as a postponement of the marriage.”

“Well, then, talk sense,” says I. “If the Prince can’t marry her in six weeks, the wedding’s off, ain’t it? You’ll have to think of something else.”

“We have,” says Bismarck. “And the wedding will take place.”

“You’re talking bloody nonsense,” says I. “Anyway, what the hell do I care? What has all this to do with me?”

Bismarck tossed down on the table the thing he had been holding. It slithered along the length of the wood and stopped in front of me. I saw it was a gold case, oval and about four inches long.

“Open it,” says Bismarck.

I touched the catch, and the thing sprang open. In it was a miniature, in very fine colour, showing a man in uniform, youngish, but with a completely bald head which gave him an unnatural look. He wasn’t bad-looking, though, and it seemed to me I knew him … and then the case dropped from my fingers, and the room seemed to swim about me. For I did know him; saving the bald head, the face in the miniature was my own. It was all too familiar from my own mirror: the likeness was uncanny, exact.

“Prince Carl Gustaf of Denmark,” says Bismarck, and his voice seemed to be coming through a fog.

I’m not often at a loss for words, but at that moment I sat stricken dumb. The enormity of the idea—for it was as plain as a pikestaff in an instant—was beyond reasonable comment. I just sat and gaped from them to the miniature and back, and Rudi’s jovial laugh rang out.

“Magnificent!” cries he. “I’d not have missed that moment for a dukedom! I wish you could have seen your face—your own face, I mean.”

“You will remember,” says Bismarck, “that when we first met in London I was puzzled to remember where I had seen you before. I had not, of course—but I had seen the young Prince Carl when he visited Berlin. I realised then that you were doppelgängers, identical bodies, and regarded it as an interesting fact; no more. Three months ago, when I first learned of the Prince’s indisposition, and that his response to treatment was too slow to make it possible that he be married on the required date, I remembered the fact again. I perceived that here lay a way out. At first, as you may appreciate, I rejected the notion as absurd. Then I applied myself to study it minutely, and saw that it was possible. Incredible, perhaps, but still possible. I planned it step by step, and saw that with proper care and preparation it was more than that—it was virtually certain of success. My decision taken, I set in motion the events that have brought you here to Schönhausen.”

At last I found my tongue. “You’re mad!” I shouted. “You’re a raving lunatic! You’d substitute me … for him … to … to … pose … to attempt the maddest, most ridiculous …”

“Silence!” he shouted, and came round the table, his face working with passion. “Do you suppose I have entered on this matter lightly? That I have not examined it, time and time again, before I determined on it? Do you imagine I designed the plan that has brought you here, and spent the time and money I have used, without being certain that I could complete the whole business?” He bent down, his face close to mine, and spoke rapidly and quietly. “Consider, if you have the intelligence, the minute thoroughness of the stratagem that has brought you this far. Planned, my English numbskull, with a care and precision that your slow wits cannot conceive.”

“Genius,” says Kraftstein, jerking his head like a doll.

“Only one thing was a matter of chance—your presence in England. It was the prerequisite, and by good fortune it was there. The rest—organisation.” Bismarck took a breath and straightened up. “And as we have begun, so we will proceed.”

Well, I saw one thing: he was mad; they all were. And, by God, if they thought they were dragging me into their lunacy, they had got the wrong man.

“I won’t touch it,” says I, “and that’s flat. D’you think I’m as big a fool as you are? Good God, man, the thing’s impossible; I wouldn’t last five minutes as … a substitute for this poxed-up Danish fellow. And what then, eh?”

Bismarck considered me a moment. Then: “Fill his glass, Kraftstein.” He walked back to his seat, and stretched his legs.

“It is, perhaps, unreasonable to expect you to accept the scheme without being convinced of its soundness. Tell me, why do you suppose it might fail?”

There were about seven hundred answers to that, and I burst out with the first one that came to mind.

“I couldn’t get away with it! How could I pretend to be a Danish prince?”

“Take my word for it that you could. The likeness, believe me, is astounding. No one would suspect the imposture for a moment.”

“But I don’t speak Danish, dammit!”

“But you have a gift for languages, remember? In the few weeks available, you can be given a smattering. No more than that will be necessary, for His Highness speaks German indifferently well, as you will before you take his place. You have a tolerable fluency as it is.”

“But … but … well, how the devil do you propose that I should take his place? Go to Denmark, I suppose, and present suitable references! Balderdash!”

“You need not go to Denmark. I have been in constant communication with Prince Carl Gustaf. Naturally, he does not know of our plan, but he does have great faith in me. One of the ministers I mentioned is in my employ. Through him, all has been arranged. The Prince will set out from Denmark when the time comes with his retinue; he has been led to believe that I have found a way out of his difficulties. He is rather a simple fellow, although amiable, and supposes that I can arrange matters. In that belief he will come to Holstein, en route to Strackenz, and in Holstein the substitution will take place. The mechanics you may leave to me.”

It was like listening to some grotesque fairy-tale. The cool, precise way in which he told it was staggering.

“But … but this retinue—his people, I mean …”

“The minister who is my agent will accompany the Prince. His name is Detchard. With him at your side, you need have no fears. And no one will suspect you: why should they?”

“Because I’ll give myself away in a hundred things, man! My voice, my actions—God knows what!”

“That is not so,” said Bismarck. “I tell you, I know the Prince, his voice, his mannerisms—all of it. And I tell you that if you shave your head and upper lip, your own mothers would not know you apart.”

“It’s true,” says Rudi, from the fireplace. “You aren’t just alike: you’re the same man. If you learn a few of his habits—gestures, that sort of thing—it can’t fail.”

“But I’m not an actor! How can I—”

“You wandered in Afghanistan disguised as a native, did you not?” says Bismarck. “I know as much about you as you do yourself, you see. If you can do that, you can easily do this.” He leaned forward again. “All this has been thought of. If you were not a man of action, of proved resource and courage, of geist und geschicklichkeit, wit and aptitude, I would not have entertained this scheme for a moment. It is because you have all these things, and have proved them, that you are here now.”

Well, that was all he knew. God help him, he believed the newspapers, and my huge, overblown reputation—he thought I was the daredevil Flash Harry of popular report, the Hero of Jallalabad, and all that tommy-rot. And there was no hope that I could persuade him otherwise.

“But my God!” says I, appalled. “What you are proposing is that I should go to Strackenz and marry this damned woman! I mean—I’m married already!”

“You are a Protestant. This will be a Roman ceremony. It will be in no way binding on you, morally or in fact.”

“Who cares about that? What I mean is—I’d have to live with her, as King of Strackenz, or whatever it is. How could I? What about the real Prince Carl?”

“He will be kept close under lock and key, in a convenient place in Mecklenburg. He will there recover from his illness. And in due course I will explain matters to him—the full truth. I will point out to him that he has no choice but to continue with the remainder of my plan.”

“And what’s that, in God’s name?”

“When he has recovered—in perhaps a month or two after your marriage—you will go hunting from a certain lodge. You will become separated from your companions. They will find you, eventually, or rather they will find the real Prince. He will have fallen from his horse, and taken a slight graze on the head. It will necessitate some days’ rest and recovery. Thereafter he will return to Strackenz City and his bride. If she notices any difference in him, it will be attributed to the effect of his head wound. But it will hardly cause her to suspect that he is not the man she married. I expect that they will live and rule long and happily together.”

“And what the hell happens to me?”

“You, my dear sir, will by then be far over the frontiers of Germany—with ten thousand pounds sterling in your pocket.” Bismarck permitted himself a smile. “We do not ask you to work for nothing, you see. Your silence will be assured—for if you decided to tell your incredible tale, who would believe it? But why should you? You will have come out of the affair most profitably.”

Aye, profitably for you, thinks I, with a bullet in the back of my head or a knife between my ribs. It was as clear as day that at the end of the affair I’d be a heap safer dead than alive, from their point of view. I looked from Bismarck to the cheerfully smiling Rudi, who had perched himself on the table edge; to Kraftstein, frowning at me from his massive height; to de Gautet, with his snake’s eyes—I even glanced round at Bersonin, glowering in silence by the door. By gum, I’ve seen some pretty sets of villains in my time, but I believe that if I were ever asked to recruit a band of cut-throats for some nefarious enterprise, Bismarck’s beauties would head my list.

“I see what is in your mind,” says Bismarck. He rose, taking out his cigar case, and presented me with a weed, which he lit for me from a candle. “You do not trust me. You believe that afterwards I should have you destroyed, nicht wahr? That I would break my promise.”

“Oh, well,” says I, “the thought hadn’t occurred, but now that you mention it …”

“My dear Mr Flashman,” says he, “credit me with some intelligence. I have only to put myself in your shoes—as I’m sure you have just been putting yourself in mine. I should be highly suspicious, if I were you. I should require to be convinced that all was—above board, is it not?”

I said nothing, and he took a turn round the table.

“Ask yourself,” says he, “what I have to gain by playing you false. Security? Hardly so, since you will be in no case, living, to do harm to us. As I’ve said, no one would believe your story, which indeed would incriminate you if you were foolish enough to tell it. What else? Killing you would present … problems. You are not a child, and disposing of you might well cause some unforeseen complication in my plans.”

“We’re honest with you, you see,” says Rudi, and Kraftstein nodded vigorously. De Gautet tried to smile reassuringly, like a contrite wolf.

“And ten thousand pounds, you may believe me, is neither here nor there,” went on Bismarck. “It is a cheap price to pay for laying the foundation of the new Germany—and that is what is at stake here. You may think we are daydreaming, that we are foolish visionaries—you may even think us villains. I do not care. It does not matter. It is a great thing that we are going to do, and you are only a tiny pawn in it—but, like all tiny pawns, vital. I need you, and I am willing to pay for what I need.” He drew himself up, virile, commanding, and full of mastery. “You seek guarantees of my good faith. I have tried to show you that it is in my interest, and Germany’s, to keep faith. To this I add my word as a junker, a soldier, and a gentleman: I swear on my honour that what I have promised I shall fulfil, and that when you have concluded your part in this scheme you shall have safe-conduct out of Germany, with your reward, and that no harm shall come to you.”

He swung about on his heel and went back to his chair; the others sat dead still. And then, after just the right interval had elapsed, he added:

“If you wish, I can swear it on the Bible. For my own part, I believe that a man who will tell a lie will swear one also. I do neither. But I am at your disposal.”

It was very prettily said. For a moment he almost had me believing him. But I’d moved in just as seedy company as friend Bismarck, and was up to all the dodges.

“I don’t care about Bible oaths,” says I. “And, anyway, I’m not sure that I like your little plot. I’m no pauper, you know—” which was a damned lie, but there—“and I’m not sweatin’ to earn your ten thousand. It’s dishonest, it’s deceitful, and it’s downright dangerous. If there was a slip, it would cost me my head—”

“And ours, remember,” says de Gautet. “You would be in a position to betray us, if you were taken.”

“Thanks very much,” says I. “That would be a great consolation. But, d’you know, I don’t think I care for the whole thing. I’m all for a quiet life, and—”

“Even in a Bavarian prison,” says young Rudi sweetly, “serving ten years as a ravisher?”

“That cock won’t fight,” says I. “Even suppose you took me back to Munich now, how would you explain my absence between the supposed crime and my arrest? It might not be so easy.”

That made them think, and then Bismarck chimed in.

“This is to waste time. Whatever pressures were used on you initially, the point is that you are here, now, and I need hardly tell you what will happen if you refuse my offer. We are very lonely here. None saw you come; none would ever see you go. Am I plain? You have no choice, in fact, but to do as I require, and collect the fee which, I promise, will be paid.”

So there we were; the good old naked threat. They could slit my throat as neat as ninepence if they chose, and none the wiser. I was in a most hellish fix, and my innards were churning horribly. But there was no way out—and they might be honest at the end of the day. By God, I could use ten thou. But I couldn’t believe they would come up to scratch (I wouldn’t have, in Bismarck’s place, once I’d got what I wanted). I didn’t even dare think of the risks of their hare-brained impersonation scheme, but on the other hand I couldn’t contemplate the alternative if I refused. On the one side, a lunatic adventure fraught with frightful danger, and possibly a handsome reward; on the other side—death, no doubt at the bare hands of Herr Kraftstein.

“Tell you what, Bismarck,” says I. “Make it fifteen thousand.”

He stared at me coldly. “That is too much. The reward is ten thousand, and cannot be increased.”

I tried to look glum, but this had cheered me up. If he was intending to play me false in the end, he wouldn’t have hesitated to raise the stakes; the fact that he didn’t suggested he might be going to level after all.

“You’re no pauper, you know,” chuckled Rudi, damn him.

I sat like a man undecided, and then I cried:

“I’ll do it, then.”

“Good man!” cries Rudi, and clapped me on the back. “I swear you’re one after my own heart!”

De Gautet shook my hand, and announced that they were damned lucky to have such a resolute, resourceful, cool hand in the business with them; Kraftstein brought me another glass of brandy and pledged me; even Bersonin deserted his post at the door and joined in the toast. Bismarck, however, said no more than “Very good. We will begin our further preparations tomorrow,” and then took himself off, leaving me with the four jacks in the pack. They were all affability now; we were comrades in fortune, and jolly good fellows, and they did their best to get me gloriously fuddled. I didn’t resist; I was shaking with the strain and in need of all the fortifying liquor I could get. But through all their noisy bonhomie and back-slapping one thought kept pounding in my brain; oh, Jesus, in the soup again; how in God’s name shall I get out this time?

You can guess how much sleep I had that first night at Schönhausen. Well liquored as I was when Bersonin and Kraftstein helped me to bed and pulled my boots off, my mind was all too clear; I lay there, fully clothed, listening to the wind whining round the turrets, and watching the candle shadows flickering on the high ceiling, and my heart was pumping as though I had run a race. The room was dank as a tomb, but the sweat fairly ran off me. How the devil had it all happened? And what the devil was I to do? I actually wept as I damned the folly that had ever made me come to Germany. I could have been safe at home, pleasuring myself groggy with Elspeth and sponging off her skinflint father, facing nothing worse than the prospect of bear-leading her family in Society, and here I was imprisoned in a lonely castle with five dangerous lunatics bent on dragooning me into a hare-brained adventure that was certain to put my head in a noose. And if I resisted, or tried to escape, they would wipe me out of existence as readily as they would swat a fly.

However, as usual, once I had cursed and blubbered myself empty, my mind started searching for some ray of comfort—anything to cling to, for if you are coward enough your vainest hopes can be magnified beyond all reason. Six weeks, Bismarck had said, before this impossible wedding—say five weeks or a month at least before my substitution for Carl Gustaf had to take place. Surely much could happen in that time. Clever and wary as they were, Bismarck’s gang couldn’t watch me all the time—in four weeks there must be a moment when such a practised absconder as myself could cut and run for it. A horse, that was all I needed, and a look at the sun or the stars, and I was confident that my terror could outstrip Bismarck’s vengeance. God knew how far away the frontier was, but I was willing to wager my neck that I could reach it faster than any rider living. My neck, of course, was exactly what I would be wagering.

With these jolly musings I passed the night, imagining a score of madcap means of escape—and as many nightmares in which Bismarck caught me in the act. It was all a waste of time, of course; within me I knew that anyone who could plot as subtly as he had done wasn’t going to give me the ghost of a hope of escaping. And I had a shrewd suspicion that if a chance did arise, I’d be too funky to take it. These fellows would stop at nothing.

They proved it, too, on my first morning at Schönhausen.

The great oaf Kraftstein summoned me at dawn, and I was pulling on my boots when Rudi strode in, very fresh and whistling cheerfully, rot him.

“And did your highness sleep well?” says he. “I trust your highness is sufficiently rested after your journey.”

I told him sourly that I wasn’t in a mood for his comedy.

“Oh, no comedy at all,” says he. “High drama, and unless you want it to develop into tragedy you’ll act as you’ve never acted before. From this moment you are His Highness Prince Carl Gustaf, blood royal and Lord’s anointed. Do you follow me? You speak German, and nothing else—your Danish we’ll take care of presently—and you will comport yourself as a member of the Danish ruling house.”

“Talk sense,” I growled. “I don’t know how.”

“No, but we’re going to teach you—your highness,” says he, and for once his eyes had no laughter in them. “So. The first thing is to make you look the part. All right, Kraftstein.”

And then and there, despite my protests, Kraftstein sat me in a chair and set to work, first cropping my hair and whiskers, and then soaping and shaving my skull. It was a long and unpleasant process, and when it was done and I looked in the glass I could have burst into tears. The ghastly creature with his great, gleaming dome of a skull was a horrid parody of me—my face, surmounted by a naked convict head.

“Damn you!” I burst out. “Damn you! You’ve ruined me!”

I expected them to mock me, of course, but neither twitched so much as a muscle.

“Your highness will be under the necessity of shaving your head daily,” murmured Rudi. “Kraftstein will instruct you. Now, may I suggest that your highness wears uniform today?”

They had that, too; rather a trim rig, I had to admit, in bottle green, which fitted me perfectly and would have given me a fine dashing air if it hadn’t been for that bald monstrosity above the collar.

“Admirable,” says Rudi, standing back from me. “May I compliment your highness on your appearance?”

“Drop that, blast you!” I snarled at him. “If I have to play your damned game, you’ll spare me your infernal nonsense until it starts, at least. I’m your prisoner, ain’t I? Isn’t that enough for you?”

He waited a moment, and then says, in exactly the same tone:

“May I compliment your highness on your appearance?

I stood glaring at him, on the point of swinging my fist into his impassive face, but he just stared me down, and I found myself saying:

“All right. If you must—all right.”

“Very good, your highness,” says he gravely. “May I respectfully suggest that we go down to breakfast. I find that Schönhausen gives one a rare appetite—the country air, of course. Will you lead on, Kraftstein?”

I wasn’t hungry, but Rudi attacked his food in good spirits, and chattered away throughout the meal. He treated me with a nice blend of familiarity and respect, and you would never have guessed if you had seen us that it was all a sham. He was a splendid actor, and although it would have made me feel a complete fool if I hadn’t been too miserable to mind, I began to realise even then that there was method in what he was doing. Kraftstein just put his head down and gorged, but on the one occasion he addressed me, he too called me “highness”.

Bismarck came in just as we were finishing, and he for one wasn’t playing charades. He stopped dead on the threshold, though, at sight of me, and then came into the room slowly, studying my face, walking round me, and examining me carefully for a minute or more. Finally he says:

“The likeness is astounding. In effect, he is Carl Gustaf.”

“So your friends have been trying to convince me,” I muttered.

“Excellent. It is not quite perfect, though. Two small details remain.”

“What’s that?” says Rudi.

“The scars. One either side, the left immediately above the ear, the one on the right an inch lower and running slightly downward—so.” And he drew his finger across my shaven skin; the touch sent mice scampering down my spine.

“By heaven, you’re right,” says Rudi. “I’d forgotten. How do we give him those?”

My innards turned to water as Bismarck surveyed me with his icy smile.

“Surgery? It is possible. I’ve no doubt Kraftstein here could employ his razor most artistically …”

“You’re not cutting my bloody head, you bastard!” I shouted, and tried to struggle out of my chair, but Kraftstein seized me with his enormous hands and thrust me back. I yelled and struggled, and he clamped his paw across my jaws and squeezed until the pain made me subside, terrified.

“But there is a better way,” says Bismarck. “They can be administered in the proper form—with the schlager. De Gautet can do it without difficulty.” He added, with a nasty look at me: “And it will satisfy a small debt that I owe to our friend here.”

“Aye,” says Rudi doubtfully, “but can he do it exactly—they must be in precisely the right places, mustn’t they? No use giving him a wound where Carl Gustaf doesn’t have one.”

“I have every confidence in de Gautet,” says Bismarck. “With a sabre he can split a fly on the wing.”

I was listening to them appalled; these two monsters calmly discussing the best means of giving me a slashed head. If there is one thing I can’t endure, it is pain, and the thought of cold steel slicing into my skull nearly made me swoon. As soon as Kraftstein took his hand away I was yammering at them; Bismarck listened scornfully for a few seconds, and then says:

“Silence him, Kraftstein.”

The giant seized the nape of my neck, and a fearful pain shot down my back and across my shoulders. He must have fixed on some nerve, and I screamed and writhed in his grasp.

“He can go on doing that until you die,” says Bismarck. “Now get up, and stop behaving like an old woman. It won’t kill you to have a couple of cuts from a schlager. Every German youth is proud to take them; a little drink from the ‘soup-plate of honour’ will do you good.”

“For God’s sake!” I burst out. “Look, I’ve agreed to do what you want, but this is abominable! I won’t—”

“You will,” says Bismarck. “Prince Carl Gustaf has two duelling scars, received while he was a student at Heidelberg. There is no question of your impersonating him without them. I am sure,” he went on, smiling unpleasantly, “that de Gautet will administer them as painlessly as possible. And if they cause you some trifling smart, you may console yourself that they have been paid for in advance, by your amiable friend Mr Gully. You recall the occasion?”

I recalled it all right, and it was no consolation at all. So now the swine was going to get his own back, and if I resisted I’d have Kraftstein pulling pieces out of me with his bare hands for my pains. There was nothing for it but to submit, and so I allowed myself to be led down to a big bare room off the courtyard where there were fencing masks and foils hung on the walls, and chalk lines on the floor, like a fencing school.

“Our gymnasium,” says Bismarck. “You will spend some time here during your preparation—you are heavier than Carl Gustaf by a pound or two, I should judge. Perhaps we can relieve you of some of it this morning.”

Coming from a man with sausages of fat beginning to bulge over his collar, this was pretty cool, but I was too busy gulping down my fear to mind. Presently de Gautet arrived, looking even more snake-like than he had the previous night, and when Bismarck explained what was to do, you could see the rascal’s mouth start to water.

“You must be exact to the inch,” says Bismarck. “Look here.” He stood in front of me, drawing from his pocket the little miniature he had shown me last night, glancing at it and then at me and frowning. “You see how they run—so and so. Now, the crayon.” And to my horror he took a fat black pencil which Kraftstein held out, and with great care began to mark on the skin of my head the places where the cuts were to go.

It was the final obscene touch that brought the bile up into my mouth, so that I almost spewed at him. He stood there, his face close to mine, hissing gently through his teeth and sketching away on my crawling flesh as though it had been a blackboard. I shuddered away, and he growled at me to be still. I was paralysed—I don’t think that of all the beastly things that man ever did, or all the terror he caused me, that there was anything as loathsome as that casual marking of my skin for de Gautet to cut at. There is only one word for it—it was German. And if you don’t understand what I mean, thank God for it.

At last he was done, and Kraftstein could arm us for the schlager play. It seemed horrible to me at the time, but looking back from the safety of old age I can see that it is more childish than anything else. For all their pride in taking scars to impress everyone with how manly they are, the Germans are damned careful not to cause themselves any serious damage. Kraftstein fitted big metal caps onto the crowns of our heads; they were equipped with spectacles of iron in front to protect the eyes and nose, and there were heavy padded stocks to go round our necks. Then there was a quilted body armour to buckle round our middles, with flaps to cover the thighs, and a padded bandage to wrap round the right arm from wrist to shoulder. By the time we were fully equipped I felt like Pantaloon with dropsy; it was so ridiculous that I almost forgot to be afraid.

Even when the schlager was put into my hand it looked such a ludicrous weapon that I couldn’t take it seriously. It was more than a yard long, with a triangular blade, and had a huge metal bowl at the hilt to protect the hand: it must have been about a foot across.²⁶

“The soup-plate of honour,” says Bismarck. “You have used a sabre, I suppose?”

“Ask your man about that when we’ve finished,” says I, blustering with a confidence I didn’t feel: de Gautet was swishing his schlager in a frighteningly professional way.

“Very good,” says Bismarck. “You will observe that your opponent’s head is covered, as is yours, at all points except for the cheeks and lower temples. These are your targets—and his. I may tell you that, with de Gautet, you are as likely to hit those targets as I was to strike Mr Gully. You may cut, but not thrust. Do you understand? I shall call you to begin and to desist.”

He stepped back, and I found myself facing de Gautet across the chalked floor; Rudi and Kraftstein had taken their places along the walls, but Bismarck stayed within a couple of yards of us, armed with a schlager to strike up our blades if need be.

De Gautet advanced, saluting with a flourish; in his padding he looked like some kind of sausage-doll, but his eyes were bright and nasty through the spectacles. I didn’t salute, but came on guard sabre-fashion, right hand up above my head and blade slanting down before my face.

“Salute!” snaps Bismarck.

“Pish to you!” says I, guessing that it would offend his fine Teutonic spirit to ignore the formalities. I was getting cocky, you see, because all this paraphernalia had convinced me that the business wasn’t really serious at all. I’m not a sabre expert—a strong swordsman, rather than a good one, was how the master-at-arms in the 11th Hussars had described me—and if I have to use one I’d rather it wasn’t in single combat, but in a mêlée, where you can hang about on the outskirts, roaring your heart out and waiting for an opponent with his back turned. However, it seemed to me now that I ought to be able to guard the unprotected areas that de Gautet would be cutting at.

He came on guard, the blades grated between us, and then he twitched his wrist, quick as light, right and left, aiming deft little cuts at the sides of my head. But Flashy’s nobody’s fool; I turned my wrist with his, and caught the cuts on my own blade. He cut again, and the blade rang on my cap, but I broke ground and let go a regular roundhouse slash at him, like a dragoon full of drink. With the schlager, I learned later, you are supposed to employ only wrist cuts, but I was just an ignorant foreigner. My sweep, if it had landed, would have loosed Mr de Gautet’s guts all over the floor, but he was quick and turned it with the forte of his blade.

He came in again, on guard, his narrow eyes on mine, and the blades rasped together. He feinted and cut hard, but I was there again, and as we strained against each other I sneered at him over the crossed blades and exerted all my strength to bear down his guard. I felt his blade giving before mine, and then it whirled like lightning and it was as though a red-hot iron had been laid against my right temple. The pain and shock of it sent me staggering back, I dropped my schlager and grabbed at my face, and as Bismarck jumped between us I saw the most unpleasant sight I know, which is my own blood; it coursed down my cheek and on to my hand, and I howled and dabbed at the wound to try to staunch it.

“Halt!” cries Bismarck, and strode over to inspect my wound—not because he gave a tuppenny damn about me, but to see if it was in the right place. He seized my head and peered. “To an inch!” he exclaimed, and tipped his hand triumphantly to de Gautet, who smirked and bowed.

“Fahren sie fort!” cries Bismarck, stepping back, and signing to me to pick up my schlager. Shaking with pain and rage, and with the blood feeling as though it were streaming out of me, I told him what he could do with it; I wasn’t going to stand up to be cut to bits for his amusement.

He went red with fury. “Pick it up,” he rasped, “or I’ll have Kraftstein hold you down and we’ll set the other scar on you with a rusty saw!”

“It’s not fair!” I shouted. “I think my skull’s fractured!”

He damned me for a coward, snatched up the schlager, and thrust it into my hand. And in case worse should happen, I squared up to de Gautet again, resolving to take the other cut as quickly as possible, and then to settle the account in my own way, if I could.

He shuffled in, full of bounce, cutting smartly right and left. I parried them, tried a quick cut of my own, and then flicked up my point to leave my left side unguarded. Instinctively he slashed at the gap, and I took it with my eyes shut and teeth gritted against the pain. My God, but it hurt, and I couldn’t repress a shriek; I reeled, but kept a tight grip on my schlager, and as de Gautet stepped back, satisfied with his butchery, and glanced towards Bismarck, I forced myself into a sudden lunge that sent my point through his lousy body.

The next thing I knew I had been hurled to the floor, and as I lay there, blinded with my own blood, all hell broke loose. Someone fetched me a tremendous kick in the ribs, I heard Rudi shouting and de Gautet groaning—delightful sound—and then I must have fainted, for when I opened my eyes I was sprawled on one of the benches, with Kraftstein sponging the blood from my face.

My first thought was: they’ll settle my hash now, for certain, and then I realised that Bismarck and de Gautet had vanished, and only young Rudi was left, grinning down at me.

“I couldn’t have done better myself,” says he. “Not much, anyhow. Our friend de Gautet won’t be quite so cock-a-hoop another time. Not that you’ve damaged him much—you barely nicked his side—but he’ll ache for a day or two. So will you, of course. Let’s have a look at your honourable scars.”

My head was aching abominably, but when he and Kraftstein had examined it, they pronounced it satisfactory—from their point of view. De Gautet had laid his cuts exactly, and provided the wounds were left open they would quickly heal into excellent scars, Kraftstein assured me.

“Give you a most distinguished appearance,” says Rudi. “All the little Prussian girls will be fluttering for you.”

I was too sick and shocked even to curse at him. The pain seemed to be searing into my brain, and I was half-swooning as Kraftstein bandaged my skull and the pair of them supported me upstairs and laid me down on my bed. The last thing I heard before I slipped into unconsciousness was Rudi saying that it would be best if my highness rested for a while, and I remember thinking it odd that he had slipped out of his play-actor’s role for a while and then back into it.

That was my only experience of schlager-play, and it was one too many. But it taught me something, and that was a fearful respect for Otto Bismarck and his ruffians. If they were capable of that kind of cold-blooded mutilation then there was nothing they wouldn’t do; from that moment I put all thought of trying to escape from Schönhausen out of my mind. I hadn’t the game for it.

As to the scars, they healed quickly under Kraftstein’s care. I’ll carry them to my grave, one close to my right ear, the other slightly higher, but just visible now that my hair is thinner. Neither is disfiguring, fortunately; indeed, as Rudi observed, there is something quite dashing-romantic about them. They’ve been worth a couple of campaigns, I often think, in giving people the wrong impression of my character.

They hurt most damnably for a couple of days, though, during which I kept to my room. That was all the convalescence they would allow me, for they were in a great sweat to begin what Rudi was pleased to call my “princely education”.

This consisted of some of the hardest brain work I’ve ever had in my life. For a solid month, every waking hour, I lived, talked, walked, ate and drank Prince Carl Gustaf until I could have screamed at the thought of him—and sometimes did. At its worst it amounted to gruelling mental torture, but in recalling it now I have to admit that it was brilliantly done. I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but the three of them—Rudi, Kraftstein, and Bersonin—came as close as one humanly could to turning me into another person.

They did it, subtly and persistently, by pretending from the first that I was Carl Gustaf, and spending hour after hour reminding me about myself. I suppose to approach the thing in any other way would have been useless, for it would have been constant admission of the imposture, and what an idiot, hare-brained scheme it was. They took me through that Danish bastard’s life a hundred times, from the cradle upwards, until I swear I must have known more about him than he did himself. His childhood ailments, his relatives, his ancestors, his tutors, his homes, his playmates, his education, his likes, his dislikes, his habits—there wasn’t a call of nature that he had answered in twenty years that I wasn’t letter-perfect in by the time they had done. Hour after hour, day after day, they had me sitting at that long table while they poured fact after fact into me—what food he liked, what pets he had had, what he read, what colour his sister’s eyes were, what nursery name his governess had called him (Tutti, of all things), how long he had lived at Heidelberg, what his musical tastes were (“Fra Diavolo”, by one Auber, had apparently impressed him, and he was forever whistling an air from it; it says something for their teaching that I’ve whistled it off and on for fifty years now). Where they had got all their information, God only knows, but they had two huge folders of papers and drawings which seemed to contain everything that he had ever done and all that was known about him. I couldn’t tell you my own grandmother’s Christian name, but God help me I know that Carl Gustaf’s great-uncle’s mastiff was called Ragnar, and he lived to be twenty-three.

“And what was your highness’s favourite game when you were little?” Rudi would ask.

“Playing at sailors,” I would reply.

“What was the English ship you boasted to your mother you had captured at Copenhagen?”

“The Agamemnon.”

“How did you come to capture it?”

“How the blazes do I know? I was only three, wasn’t I? I can’t remember.”

“You have been told. It was stuck in a mudbank. In your infant re-enactment you covered yourself in mud in a garden pond, don’t you remember?”

That was the kind of thing I had to know, and when I protested that no one was ever likely to ask me what games I had played when I was little, they wouldn’t argue, but would pass patiently on—to remind me of the fever I had had when I was fourteen, or the time I broke my arm falling from an apple tree.

All our talk was conducted in German, at which I made capital progress—indeed, Rudi’s one fear was that I might be too proficient, for Carl Gustaf apparently didn’t speak it too well, for all his Heidelberg education. Bersonin, who despite his taciturnity was a patient teacher, instructed me in Danish, but possibly because he himself only spoke it at second hand, I didn’t take to it easily. I never learned to think in it, which is unusual for me, and I found it ugly and dull, with its long vowels that make you sound as though you had wind.

But the real curse of my days was being instructed in the actual impersonation. We had the tremendous advantage, as I was to see for myself later, that Carl Gustaf and I were real doppelgängers, as like as two tits. Even our voices were the same, but he had mannerisms and tricks of speech that I had to learn, and the only way was for me to try attitudes and phrases over and over, in different styles, until Rudi would snap his fingers and exclaim: “Er ist es selbst! Now say it again, and yet again.”

For example, it seemed that if you asked Carl Gustaf a question to which the normal answer would have been “yes” or “of course”, he, instead of contenting himself with “ja”, would often say “sicher”, which means “positively, certainly”, and he would say it with a jaunty air, and a little stab of his right fore-finger. Again, in listening to people, he would look past them, giving tiny occasional nods of his head and making almost inaudible grunts of agreement. Lots of people do this, but I don’t happen to be one of them, so I had to practise until I found myself doing it almost without thinking.

And he had a quick, brisk laugh, showing his teeth—I worked at that until my throat smarted and my jaws ached. But this was easy compared with the contortions I went through in trying to mimic his trick of raising one eyebrow by itself; I came near to setting up a permanent twitch in one check, and eventually they decided to let it be, and hope that no one noticed that my eyebrows perversely worked together.

Fortunately, Carl Gustaf was a cheerful, easy-going chap, much as I am myself, but I had to work hard to try to correct the sulky look I get when I’m out of sorts, and my habit of glowering and sticking out my lower lip. This ray of Danish sunshine didn’t glower, apparently; when he was in the dumps he showed it with an angry frown, so of course I had to knit my brows until they ached.

How well I learned my lessons you may judge when I tell you that to this day I have his trick of rubbing one hand across the back of the other (when thinking deeply), and that I entirely lost my own habit of scratching my backside (when puzzled). Royalty—I have Bersonin’s solemn word for it—never claw at their arses to assist thought.

Now the result of all this, day after day, and of the unbroken pretence that my captors kept up, was remarkable and sometimes even frightening. I suppose I’m a good actor, to begin with—after all, when you’ve been shamming all your life, as I have, it must come pretty natural—but there were times when I forgot that I was acting at all, and began to half-believe that I was Carl Gustaf. I might be practising before the long cheval glass, with Rudi and Bersonin watching and criticising, and I would see this bald-headed young fellow in the green hussar rig flashing his smile and stabbing his forefinger, and think to myself, “Aye, that’s me”—and then my mind would try to recapture the picture of the dark, damn-you-me-lad-looking fellow with the curly hair and whiskers—and I would discover that I couldn’t do it. That was when I found it frightening—when I had forgotten what my old self looked like.

Mind you, my character didn’t change; these flashes were only momentary. But I certainly began to believe that we would carry off the imposture, and the terror that I had originally felt about it subsided to a mere craven apprehension of what the end of it all might be—when payday came and the real Carl Gustaf had come back into his own.

However, that was in the future, and in the meantime I was floating with the tide, as is my habit, and letting my puppet-handlers think that butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth. For their part, they seemed delighted with my progress, and one day, about three weeks after I had come to Schönhausen, on an evening when Bismarck joined the rest of us at supper, I did something which convinced Rudi and Bersonin that the first round was won at least.

We were sitting down to table, myself at the head, as usual, and Bismarck plumped down in his chair before I did. Now I was so used by this time to being seated first that I simply stared at him, more in curiosity, I imagine, than anything else; and he, catching my glance, actually began to get to his feet. Rudi, who missed nothing, couldn’t repress a chuckle and a delighted slap of his thigh.

“Right royal, Otto,” says he to Bismarck. “He had you feeling like a bad-mannered little schoolboy there, I’ll swear. Bravo, your highness, you’ll do.”

This was rather more familiarity with me than Rudi had allowed himself since my duel with de Gautet. It didn’t matter to me, of course, but Bersonin was shocked, and muttered that Rudi was forgetting himself. It occurred to me then that I was not the only one who was beginning to believe in my own royalty. Anyway, I played up by remarking to Bersonin casually that the Freiherr was still at an age when impudence took precedence before dignity, and was this hock that we were to drink again to night?

Bismarck observed all this impassively, but I felt sure he was secretly impressed by the naturalness of my princely behaviour, and even more by his own momentary reaction to it.

I should say in passing that Bismarck’s appearance that night was a rare one. For days at a time I never saw him, but from casual conversation among the others I gathered that he was frequently in Berlin—he was a member of their Parliament, apparently, when he wasn’t kidnapping useful Englishmen and plotting lèse majesté. I also learned that he had a wife in the capital, which surprised me; somehow I had come to think of him as brooding malevolently in his lonely castle, wishing he was Emperor of Germany. I remembered that Lola had thought he was a cold fish where women were concerned, but it seemed that this was only a pose; before his marriage, apparently, he had been saddling up with all the wenches on his estate and breeding bastards like a buck rabbit. They called him the Schönhausen Ogre in those days, but of late he had been devoting himself to politics and his new wife, Bersonin said, and taking a serious interest in his farm property. A likely tale, thinks I; his only interest in politics was to get personal power, no matter how, and to gorge himself with food, drink, and women along the way. Nasty brute.

However, as I say, we didn’t see much of him, or of anyone else for that matter. They kept me pretty well confined to one wing of the house, and although there must have been servants I never saw one except the old butler. There wasn’t a woman in the place, which was a dead bore, and when I suggested to Rudi that he might whistle up a wench or two to pass the evenings he just shook his head and said it was out of the question.

“Your highness must contain yourself in patience,” says he. “May I respectfully remind you that your wedding is not far off?”

“Thanks very much,” says I. “And may I respectfully remind you that I’m feeling randified now, and in no mood to hold myself in until my wedding to some young German cow who probably looks like a boatswain’s mate.”

“Your highness need have no fears on that score,” says he, and he showed me a portrait of Duchess Irma of Strackenz which I must say cheered me up considerably. She looked very young, and she had one of those cold, narrow disdainful faces that you find on girls who have always had their own way, but she was a beauty, no question. Her hair was long and blonde, and her features very fine and regular; she made me think of a story I remembered from my childhood about a snow princess who had a heart of ice. Well, I could warm this one up, always assuming our enterprise got that far.

“In the meantime,” says I, “what say to some nice, hearty country girl? She could teach me some more German, you know, and I could teach her anatomy.”

But he wouldn’t hear of it.

So the weeks ran by, and I suppose that gradually the nightmare impossibility of my position must have begun to seem less incredible than it looks now, half a century after; whatever happens to you, however far-fetched, you get used to eventually, I’ve found, and when the time came to leave Schönhausen I was ready for it. I was in a fair funk, of course, but so heartily thankful to be getting out of that draughty mausoleum that even the ordeal ahead seemed endurable.

It must have been a week or so after the meeting with Bismarck that I’ve just described that I was summoned late one evening to his library. They were all there, Rudi, Bismarck, and the Three Wise Men, and I knew at once that something was up. Bismarck was still in his greatcoat, with the last snowflakes melting on its shoulders, and a little pool of water forming round each boot as he stood before the fire. He looked me over bleakly, hands behind his back, and then says:

“The scars are still too livid. Any fool can see they are recent.”

This seemed an excellent reason to me for calling off the whole thing, but Kraftstein said in his ponderous way that he could attend to them; he had a salve which could disguise their pinkness and make them look like old wounds. This seemed to satisfy Bismarck, for he grunted and turned to Rudi.

“Otherwise he is ready? He can play the part? Your head depends on this, remember.”

“His highness is ready to resume his duties,” says Rudi.

Bismarck snorted. “His highness! He is an actor, hired to play a part. Better he should remember that, and the consequences of missing a cue—he’ll be less liable to bungle it. Oh, yes Bersonin, I know all about your theories; I prefer realities. And the reality of this, Mr Flashman, is that tomorrow you leave for Strackenz. You know what is to do, the reward of success—and the price of failure.” His cold eyes played over me. “Are you dismayed?”

“Oh, no,” says I. “when it’s all over I intend to go back to England and take the place of Prince Albert, don’t you know.”

Rudi laughed, but I saw Kraftstein shake his head—no doubt he was thinking that I didn’t look enough like Prince Albert to get away with it.

“Sit down,” says Bismarck. “Give him a brandy, de Gautet.” He came to stand at the table head, looking down at me. “Listen to me carefully. When you leave here tomorrow you will be accompanied by Freiherr von Starnberg and de Gautet. They will take you by coach to the rendezvous we have appointed—you need to know nothing more than that it is a country mansion owned by a nobleman who is to play host to Prince Carl Gustaf for one night during his journey to Strackenz. The journey to the house will take two days, but we are allowing three, for safety.

“On the appointed day Carl Gustaf and his retinue will arrive at the mansion in the afternoon. It stands in wooded country, but is easily accessible; you will be waiting for evening, and when it comes von Starnberg and de Gautet will take you into the grounds under cover of darkness. You will be admitted by a man who is one of the only three in the world, outside this room, who is in our plot. His name is Detchard, a Danish minister entirely faithful to me. He will conduct you secretly to the Prince’s apartment; in the meantime von Starnberg will be effecting the … removal of the real Prince. Have I made myself clear so far?”

By God he had, and as I listened all my old fears came galloping back with a vengeance. The thing was obvious lunacy, and this outrageous creature, standing so straight and immaculate in his greatcoat, was a dangerous maniac.

“But … but, look here,” I began, “suppose something goes wrong—I mean, suppose somebody comes …”

He banged his fist on the table and glared at me. “Nothing will go wrong! No one will come! Righteous Lord God! Do you suppose I know nothing? Do you imagine I have not planned every detail? De Gautet! Tell him—what is the name of the serving-maid whose duty it will be to change the Prince’s bed linen while he is at the house?”

“Heidi Gelber,” says de Gautet.

“Starnberg—how do you reach the Prince’s dressing-room from the door where Detchard will admit you?”

“Twelve paces along a passage, up the stairway to the right, left at the first landing, then ten paces along to a passage on the right. The Prince’s dressing-room is the first door on the left.”

“From door to door—fifty seconds,” says Bismarck. “If you wish, I can tell you the precise nature of the furnishings in the Prince’s chamber, and their positions in the room. For example, there is a statuette of a kneeling cupid on the overmantel. Now—are you convinced that my organisation is sound, and my information complete?”

“How do you know that some drunk footman won’t come blundering along in the middle of everything?” I cried.

I thought he would hit me, but he restrained himself.

“It will not happen,” he said. “Everything will fall out exactly as I have said.”

There was no point in arguing, of course; I sat in despair while he went on.

“Once inside that room, you will be Prince Carl Gustaf. That is the fact of paramount importance. From that moment Flashman no longer exists—you understand? With you will be Detchard and the Prince’s physician, Orsted, who is also privy to our plans. If at any moment you are in doubt, they will guide you. And when you set out next morning on your royal progress across the border into Strackenz, you will find that among the dignitaries who will greet you will be both de Gautet and Starnberg—it has been arranged that they will join your train as gentlemen of honour. So you will not lack for friends,” he added grimly. “Now drink your brandy.”

I gulped it down; I needed it. At the back of my mind I suppose there had still been some futile hope that I would be able to slip out of this at the last moment, but Bismarck had squashed it flat. I was going to have to go through with it, with Rudi and de Gautet hovering alongside ready, at the first false move, to put a bullet into me, I didn’t doubt. Why the hell, I asked myself for the thousandth time, had I ever come to this bloody country?

“The wedding will take place on the day after your arrival in the city of Strackenz,” Bismarck went on, for all the world as though he had been telling me the time of day. “You have already received some instruction in the details of the ceremony, of course. And then—all plain sailing, as your people say.”

He sat down, and poured himself a glass of brandy from the decanter. He sipped at it, while I sat mute, staring at my glass. “Well, Mr Flashman; what have you to say?”

“What the hell does it matter what I say?” I burst out. “I’ve no choice, damn you!”

To my amazement, he actually chuckled. He stretched his legs and twirled the stem of his glass between his fingers.

“None at all,” says he, grinning. “Flashman, you should be glad. You will be making history—aye, great history. Do you realise, I wonder, the magnitude of what we are doing? We are nailing a little hinge to a door, a great door which will open to reveal the destiny of a greater Germany! And you—a half-pay officer of no account, a pawn even in your own country’s affairs—you are going to make it possible! Can you imagine what it means?” The man was positively beaming now, with a kind of fierce joy in his eyes. “For we are going to win! We six here, we are staking ourselves, our lives, everything—and we are going to succeed! I look at you, and I know we cannot fail. God has sent you to Germany, and I send you now to Strackenz.” There was a nice little comparison there, all right. “And in Strackenz you will play such a game as has never been played before in the history of the world. And you will not fail—I know it! What a destiny! To be one of the architects of the new Fatherland!” He lifted his glass. “I salute you, and drink to our enterprise!”

Believe it or not, he actually raised my spirits a little with that. Of course, it was all humbug, designed to put some backbone into me—that was all he knew—but the man was so supremely confident it was infectious: if he really believed we could bring it off—well, perhaps we could. The others cheered and we all drank, and Bismarck sighed and refilled his glass. I’d never seen him anything like this before; for the moment he was almost jovial, showing an entirely new side of his nature—all carefully calculated for my benefit, I imagine.

“How will we look back on this?” he mused. “When we are old, and in our country places, and the bold lads of a new day are elbowing for power in the chancelleries? I wonder.” He shook his head. “I think I will wear leather breeches and allow myself to be laughed at in Stettin wool market, and sell two thalers cheaper to anyone who calls me ‘baron’.²⁷ And you, Flashman—you will sit in your club in St James, and grow fat on port and your memories. But we will have lived, by God! We will have fought! We will have won! Is it not something to have moved great affairs, and shaped the course of time?”

No doubt I should have shared his enthusiasm, like Kraftstein, who was hanging on every word, and looking like a ruptured bullock. But all I could think to myself was, God, I wish John Gully had really set to work on you. What I said aloud was:

“Herr Bismarck, I am much moved. And now, with your permission, I intend to get as drunk as possible. Afterwards, tomorrow, I shall be at your service, since I can’t do anything else. But if I’m to shape the destiny of Europe, I’ll need a good skinful of liquor inside me to set me off. So will you kindly oblige me with the bottle, and a cigar, and as many dirty drinking songs as you and your friends can remember? And if this seems to you a coarse and pagan spirit in which to approach our glorious adventure for the Fatherland, well—you’ve made your preparations; let me now make mine.”