Black Ajax Read online

  That, I think, is as much as I care to remember for you. No more is necessary, for I have told you all that I know of Tom Molineaux. The transfo'mation of Mollybird into Senora Rossignol, by that scented vermin de la Guise an' others, I am happy to leave to your 'magination. He was right, of course. I should be grateful to Tom. If he'd been true to Mollybird, there'd ha' been no elegant coloured lady, with her fine house an' servants an' carriage an' all, inquirin' of a gennleman visitor if he would care to partake of a service of aft'noon tea an' pastries … If you'd be so kind as to draw the bell-rope yonder … ?

  CAPTAIN BUCKLEY (“MAD BUCK”)

  FLASHMAN,

  late of the 23rd Light Dragoons

  Black? What black? Ah, Molineaux, the fellow who gave Cribb pepper and a half … that black. Should think I do remember him. Made a rare packet of rhino out o' the brute, cost old Crocky and Jew King a fortune, wept all the road to Jerusalem, ha-ha! Aye, a sound investment, Black Tom, knew it the moment I clapped eyes on him, at the old Nag and Fish – the Horse and Dolphin,* you must know it, in St Martin's Street as you come off Leicester Square … no? Gone now, I dare say, but 'twas there I launched Tom on the road to Fistic Fame, as Egan would say, for 'twas my word that swayed Richmond, no doubt o' that. It was his ken in those days, where the sporting set was used to play cricket in the back field … oh, Alvanley, Sefton, poor old Berkeley Craven (blew his brains out over the '36 Derby, affected ass), Mellish, Webster, God knows who. I played a single-wicket match there once against Byron, the late poet. Odd fish, bit his nails, wore curl papers in bed to give his manly locks the romantic twist, got in a fearful wax 'cos I called him Sleeping Beauty … not a bad bowler, mind; not in Brummell's parish, but too good for me. No, boxing was my game – and milord Byron wasn't up to my snuff there, I can tell you, gamecock though he was. Small wonder. Why, I was the best amateur miller of the day, bar Barclay Allardice. I floored Cribb … once. Shan't tell you what he did to me …

  Did I know Molineaux? Good God, man, I told you I remember him, but one don't know that sort of specimen. Nigger pugs, what next? Anyway, what the devil is he to you, whoever you are? Who let you in here, for that matter? You ain't a patient, are you? Or one o' those damned mealy brain-scrubbers? No … you don't have the

  style to be barmy, and not sly enough for a pill-slinger … damn them all …

  Ah, the Superintendent let you in, did he? And said you might talk to me? Burn his blasted impudence, never asked my leave – who the dooce does he think he is, my keeper? Aye … that's precisely what he does think, rot him. Well, let me tell you, sir, that my apartments are not to let, like most of 'em. I am one of a select band of gentlemen resident in this charming rural establishment because we have lost the battle with delirium tremens – temporarily, I hasten to add – and are in need of a breather between rounds, so to speak. We are here of our own free will, at exorbitant rates, have the freedom of the grounds, do not consort with the loonies, and … I say, you don't happen to have a drop of anything with you, I suppose? Flask, bottle, demijohn, something of the sort?

  Ah, pity. We might have spent a convivial hour discussing thingummy … Molineaux, did you say? Interesting aborigine, that … don't suppose there's a man in England could tell you more of his doings, in and out o' the green fairy circle, than I … oh, the old pugs, to be sure, but their wits are addled, and fellows like Egan and Hazlitt would just rap a deal of romantic nonsense. They don't know the story of Barclay's gloves, or Joe Ward and the bullets, or how that ass Sefton came within an ace of challenging Prinny to a duel – yes, over Molineaux, I do assure you – or the indiscretions of Lady … ah, but we shan't mention names, what would they say at Almack's?

  Yes, we could have had a jolly prose together … but I cannot abide dry discourse, what? So, good day to you … don't roll your eyes or laugh too loud on the way out or they'll clap you in the comic box before you can say “Bender!” Adieu, adieu …

  What's that? You could call again after luncheon … with a spot o' lush, no doubt. My dear fellow, what a capital notion. Put 'em in separate pockets so that they don't clink … the attendants here have ears like dago guerrillas, 'tis like being in the blasted Steel … Better still, tell you what – see down yonder, past the trees, there's a gap in the fence that our turnkeys haven't twigged yet, much frequented by the local mollishers – personable young females of loose conduct, sir, who disport themselves with us wealthier inmates, for a consideration. Gad, the state of the country! I shall be there at two, you can run the cargo in safety, and we shall not be espied or earwigged …

  Damn you, did I say two o'clock or did I not? Already? Gad, how time flies. Well, thank God you weren't beforehand … You'd best be off, m'dear – here's a guinea for you. Tomorrow at six, mind … There she trips, my village Titania … sweet seventeen and goes like a widow of fifty. Don't look askance at me, sir, if you were in this bloody bastille you'd be glad of a tickletail yourself. Now, have you brought … oh, famous! Sir, you are a pippen of the first flight! Brandy, bigod, that'll answer. Fix bayonets and form square, belly, the Philistines are upon thee … Ah-h-h! Aye, that's the neat article. Sir, your good health …

  Now, tell me, how did you get my direction in the first place? My son? 'Pon my soul, that was uncommon condescending of him; he don't use to oblige strangers, unless … didn't lend him money, did you? You married? Ah, you have a sister … oh, charming fellow, absolutely, quite the military lion, too. Taking her to see the hippopotamus, is he … and then to Astley's? I see … oh, couldn't be in better hands. No need for you to race back to Town …

  Well, now, since we have time before us, I tell you what – ne'er mind questions, I'll recollect, and you can take notes. Capital … Now, you're too young, I take it, to remember London in the old days – in the French war, I mean, before the Regency? Just so. Well, if you're to understand about Molineaux, and how he came to make such an almighty stir, and so forth, I must set you right about that time. 'Twas as different from today as junk from Offley's beef. Free and easy and jolly, no one giving a dam, churches half-empty and hells packed full, fashion and frolic the occupations, and sport the religion. Boney might be master of the Continent, and Wellington hanging on by his eyelids in Spain, but they were the deuce of a long way from Hyde Park and the night cellars; the many-headed might be on short commons and the government in Queer Street, but when were they not, eh? A few sobersides fretted about morality and revolution, but since most o' the country was three-parts drunk, nobody minded them. The Town was on the spree, and we were “on the Town”.

  Hard to swallow, eh, for your serious generation, taking your lead from our sedate young Queen, God bless her, and her pump-faced German noodle – ah, there's the difference, in a nutshell! You have the muff Albert, God help you, pious, worthy, dull as a wet Sabbath and dressed like a dead Quaker; we had fat Prinny, boozy and cheery and chasing skirt, in the pink of fashion as cut by Scott and approved by Brummell. That's the difference thirty years has made. Your statesmen don't gamble or fight duels; there ain't one trace-kicker among your Society women; royalty don't fornicate or have turn-ups at coronations nowadays; and what noble lord trains a prize pug or flees to France with the duns in full cry? Where are your dandy Corinthian out-and-outers, dazzling the ton, sparring with the Black Beetles or charging Kellerman's cavalry, breaking their necks over hedges, and all for the fun of it? Or your peep-o'-day Quality beauties, with their night-long parties, but fresh as daisies in Hyde Park by day? Or your high-flight Cyprians, rising by wit and beauty from nowhere to enchant the bucks and set the scandalised tea-cups rattling from Apsley House to Great Swallow Street?

  No, they wouldn't suit in this stale age, for they were a different breed, male and female. I don't see the like today of Moll Douglas or Caro Lamb, or Jane Harley – Lady Oxford to you, who had so many brats by assorted sires they called 'em the Harleian Miscellany – or dear Hetty Stanhope, even, who decamped to be a Turkish sultana, as I recall. Women had style, then, as well as
beauty. And men today are so damned sane and proper, not like Camelford, who went to France in disguise to try to murder Napoleon, or Jack Lade who married a highwayman's wench, or my chum Harry Mellish who locked Clarence in the roundhouse and once lost forty thousand pounds on the roll of a single dice, or the three Barrymores – Hellgate, Cripplegate, and Newgate, so Prinny called 'em, and their noble sister was Billingsgate, on account of her fishwife tongue. Aye, it was a different age, gone now – and good riddance, you may think. But if it was wild and reckless, it was alive, with spirits that England couldn't accommodate today. It was ready for any kind of lark and freak, and to hail the likes of Tom Molineaux as a nine-day wonder.

  He wouldn't be that nowadays, I can tell you. Not to the modern taste, any more than the bucks and beauties of his time would be.

  Why's that, eh? I'll tell you why your age is different, and staid, and settled. It's 'cos you ain't had a good war in years; you han't peered into the abyss and looked death and ruin in the face. We did, with Europe under the Corsican's boot, the French at our gate, and Old England on the lion's lip. You may say now that the crisis was passed by '10 or '11, but we didn't know it. We'd just seen the finest force that Britannia ever sent overseas, forty thousand strong, wrecked at Walcheren, and our battered Peninsulars being driven back to Portugal. The devil with it, we said, we'll beat 'em yet, and whether we do or whether we don't, we'll eat, drink, and be merry, for 'tis all one. That's why England was full of sin and impudence, then.

  No doubt you think our great concerns should ha' been Boney, or the Luddites, or when the King, poor Old Nobbs, would lose the last of his wits (such as he had), and whether Prinny would bring in the Whigs. Those are the matters treated of by bookworms and historians and fellows of that sort, who regard 'em as the burning topics of the day. Not a bit of it.

  What d'ye think was the talk of the Town when I came back from the Peninsula in '09? Aye, I was invalided home after Talavera – that was the excuse, leastways, but the fact was I'd fought four duels in three weeks, and Old Hooky wouldn't stand it: swore I did our own side more harm than Victor. Damned sauce. I'd done the Frogs harm enough, and he knew it.

  Talavera … Gad, that was the day. Who's heard of it now, the Spanish Waterloo, where the Peninsular war trembled in the balance? If we'd lost, Spain was lost, and perhaps the war; Wellesley would never ha' been Wellington, that's certain, and Boney would ha' conquered Russia. Talavera … heat, and dust, and bloody bayonets. Wellington vowed it was the most desperate fight he'd ever seen, with Victor outnumbering us two to one – aye, we proved that one Briton was worth two Frogs, that day. Good men, though, those same Frogs – d'ye know, there was a truce in the midst of the battle, when we and they watered our beasts together in the Portina brook, and exchanged snuff and civilities? Old Villatte, who commanded their cavalry, was there, and offered “King” Allan of the Guards his flask. King sluiced his ivories and shook hands.

  “Thank'ee, mon general,” says King. “Hot day, ain't it? Why don't you go home?”

  “Apres vous, m'sieur,” grins old Villatte, and everyone burst out laughing, and our rankers and the French moustaches were swapping fills o' their pipes, and we cheered each other back to the lines.

  Then they came at us like tigers, as only Frogs can, with “Old Trousers” thundering along a two-mile front, that huge mass of infantry tearing a great hole in our line. Fraser Mackenzie's Midlanders held on like bulldogs, it was touch and go, and then Victor let drive at our left flank below the Medellin Hill, and I thought we was done for.

  “Now or never!” cries Anson. “Off you go, Ponsonby!” and away we went, 23rd Lights and German Legion, knee to knee against that huge tide of Froggy horse in the valley, with the trumpeters sounding charge. We were going full tilt when the hidden gully opened almost under our hooves, and “Hold on, Flash!” bawls Ponsonby, but my hunter was over it like a swallow, and the rest came jumping or tumbling after, and we went into their Green Chasseurs like a steel fist, sabres whirling and fellows going down like ninepins, such a turn-up as you never saw. There was a French square behind us, and great waves of their cavalry before, two hundred of our 23rd boys went down, but we scattered the Chasseurs, and then their Chevaux Legers and Polish Lancers broke over us like a tide, with those damned whistles in their helmets wailing like banshees. I took a lance in the leg and a cut on the neck – see here – but was holding my own till my poor little grey went down and some blasted Pole put a bullet through my sword-arm.

  Time's up, Flash, thinks I, you won't make scratch this time, for what was left of us was being trampled underfoot, but they took me prisoner, along with a few others, and I was exchanged next day, leaking like a cracked pot. But they hadn't turned our flank, bigod, and our centre held, Froggy drew off with his bellyful, leaving seven thousand dead to our five thousand, Old Hooky ceased to be Wellesley and became Lord Wellington … and that was Talavera.

  You know what came of it … we lived to fight another day, Hooky withdrew to Portugal, foxed Massena with Torres Vedras, and held French armies in Spain that Boney could have used in Russia where he froze to death, France was beat – and all because the Light Brigade crossed that gully, perhaps. I like to think so, at all events; worth being skewered and trampled, what? In the meantime, I came home … now, where the devil was I, before you reminded me of the Peninsula?

  Ah, yes, I was asking what you supposed the buzz was in Town that autumn of '09? The war? The King's madness? The Cabinet? No such thing. The name on every lip wasn't Talavera or Hooky or Boney, but Mary Clarke – and I'll lay a million to a mag you never heard of her, eh? I thought not.

  Ah, Mary! She was the sweetest little nesting-bird, and my first love 'fore I went to Spain – well, one of 'em. Shape of Aphrodite, sassy as a robin, and devoted to the study of cavalry subalterns – when she wasn't accommodating the Duke of York, that is. She was his prize pullet, you see, and we lesser lights (I was a mere cornet of horse then, but she was nuts on me) had to slip in at her back door in Gloucester Place like so many area sneaks. Gad, she was the bang-up Cyprian, though! Ten horses, three cooks, twenty servants, dined off a French duke's plate, and entertained like a bashaw's niece – York gave her a thousand a month, and you may believe 'twasn't enough. So dear Mary set up shop selling Army promotions, slipping the tickets for York to sign when he was too lushy or baked with her fond attentions to notice, I dare say. Oh, a prime racket she had, until some parliamentary pimp blew the gaff.

  There was the devil to pay, York had to resign command of the Army, Mary was called to the Bar of the House and had 'em in fits with her sauce and sharp answers, and to crown all she threatened to publish York's love-letters. I saw some of 'em, and they were hot-house stuff, I can tell you. Cost the old calf's head ten thou' and a pension of four hundred a year to buy 'em back.

  D'ye wonder that Mary Clarke was all the chat from St James's to St Giles? Mere wars and Commons votes weren't in it with her – or with Moll Douglas, the bird of paradise whom Mornington, Hooky's brother, had in tow when he went out as Minister to Spain. That set the tongues wagging at Almack's, for what made it worse was that Mornington's lawful blanket wouldn't divorce him or clear out of Apsley House. She'd been another bareback rider until Mornington married her; French piece, Gabrielle Hyacinthe de Something. Shocking taste in women he had. Whores, the lot o' them.

  What's this to do with Molineaux? Why, to impress upon you what a light-minded crew of sensation-seekers Society was, ripe for any novelty – female, criminal or sporting for choice – and because it pleases me to hold forth at length while sampling this excellent drop o' short. So don't dam' well interrupt. We'll come to the Dusky Miller presently.

  Speaking of sport, there was a mighty stink at Newmarket about that time, when two touts called Bishop and Dan Dawson were bribed to see that certain horses didn't start, so they blew arsenic into the water troughs, poisoned I don't know how many runners. They were grabbed, Bishop peached to save his neck, but it was the Paddington f
risk for Danny, and half the turf set went down to Cambridge to see him drop, more than one noble lord, I'm told, heaving a sigh of relief when he died with his mouth shut.

  Not that politics was altogether neglected in the clubs and drawing-rooms. Why, the day I landed there was a disagreement in Cabinet. Foreign secretary, Canning, an intriguing toad, if you ask me, with an eye on Downing Street, blamed the war minister, Castlereagh, for the Walcheren fiasco, and Castlereagh demanded pistols for two on Putney Heath. The pair of cakes missed each other altogether with their first shots, tried again, Castlereagh put a slug in Canning's leg, and Canning shot a button off his lordship's coat. I heard the news from Kangaroo Cooke, York's old aide.

  “Bet you're glad they weren't alongside at Talavera,” says he. “Still, they scored one hit, which is more than Tierney and Pitt could manage – and say this for 'em, it's a dam' stylish way to bring down a government.”

  Wasn't he right, though? Can't see Melbourne or Peel having the game to shoot each other, worse luck.

  So, sir, there you have me, back in Town … and I can see the leery look in your eye as you hear me refer so familiarly to Society, with idle mention of nobility and royalty, and ask yourself, do I speak of what I know, or am I a rasher o' wind retailing second-hand goods? Yes, you do, damn your impudence, I know. You've cast about, I don't doubt, and are aware that the Flashmans are a smoky lot, not halfway up the tree nowadays. My son has the fame of his Afghan laurels, as I had mine in the Peninsula, but they don't last, and once the shine has gone, you're an unregarded relic of a disreputable age.

  We ain't Quality, never were. Know what my father was? A slave-trader, making enough from black ivory to be a nabob, bought himself a house in South Audley Street and a place in the shires, sent me to Rugby, stumped up for my colours – but he was still trade, and if I was to cut my way into the charmed circle I must do it with my sabre. God knows I tried, at Rolica and Vimeiro, and scouting along the Douro, hunting glory, and in that charge at Talavera. I was “Mad Buck” when I came home, hero of the hour – aye, and for the hour – pointed out at Horse Guards, worth a hail-fellow from Clarence and a shake of the hand from Prinny, who swore he couldn't ha' done better himself, by George, sir, he couldn't … and wondered if I dare turn my eyes on the beauteous 'Lishy Paget – now she was Quality, and above my touch, but I had the style and the shoulders, and I reckoned the Flashman blunt wouldn't hurt.