"Flashman, Harry - Flashman and the Angel of the Lord" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flashman Harry)
I sat, believe me, and he gave a great white-whiskered grin, chuckling, and poured two stiff tots from the decanter on the buffet. "No orange this time, I think," sneers he. "Ye'll want it straight, if I'm a judge. Cigar? Or cheroot? You Far Easters like 'em black, I believe . . . go on, man
utrum horum mavis accipe,*(* Take whichever you prefer.) and take your ease! Your health - while you've got it!"
I downed the brandy as if it was water, for I'd seen Spring jovial before, and knew what could come of it. He seated himself opposite me at the table, sipped and wiped his whiskers, and eyed me with genial malevolence. I'd as soon be smiled at by a cobra.
"So ye didn't heed me," says he. "Well, ye've more bottom than ever I gave you credit for. And if you were half the man you look, instead of the toad I know you to be .. . I'd not blame you. Miranda is a maid to bewitch any man. I'm proud o' that girl, Flashman, with good cause . . . and if I thought ye'd laid a finger on her ..." suddenly the hellish glare was back in his eyes, and his scar was pulsing "- I'd serve you as I served another reptile that tried to defile her, by God, I would!" He smashed his fist on the table. "I found her fighting for her chastity - aye, in her own chamber, by heaven - with a foul seducing frog-eating son-of-a-bitch who sought to have his vile way with her when my back was turned! My daughter, the bastard!" There was spittle on his beard. "What d'ye say to that, hey?"
When a maniac inquires - answer. "Damnable! French, was he? Well, there you are -"
"D'ye know what I did to him?" His voice was soft now, but the empty eyes weren't. "I stripped him stark, and cut the life out of him - sixty-one strokes, and you wouldn't have known he was human. Murder, you'll say -"
"No, no, not at all - quite the -"
"- but the fact is, Flashman, I was beside myself!" cries this raving ogre. "Aye, homo extra est corpus suum cum irascitur,*(*An angry man is beside himself.) you remember . . .
"Absolutely! May I trouble you for the brandy, captain -"
"There were those suspected me - d'ye think I gave a dam? It was just, I tell you! Condign punishment, as the articles say . . . and that lass of mine, that young heroine - I'll never forget it, never! Fighting like a tigress against that beast's base passion . . . but not a tear or a tremor .. . thank God I came in time!"
You should have seen her base passion a few hours ago, thinks I, and quailed at the memory . . . God, if ever he found out! He sipped brandy, growling, came out of his reverie of Miranda-worship, and realised he'd been confiding in the scum of the earth.
"But you were no threat to her!" He curled his lip. "No, not you - ye see, Flashman, I could trust her virtue to be stronger even than your depravity, else I'd never ha' let you within a mile of her, let alone permit her to beguile you here! Aye, that jars you! Oh, you've been had, my son!" For an instant the pale eyes were alight with triumph, then he was scowling again. "But I've been through hell this day, knowing she was within your reach; my skin crawls yet at the thought of it . . . but she's my daughter, steel true, blade straight, and too much for you or a dozen like you!"
It hit me like a blow. I'd known there was something horribly amiss when he'd arrived unexpected, but then Miranda had quieted him, and he'd been civil (for him), and only now was it plain that I'd been trapped, most artfully and damnably, by this murderous pirate and his slut of a daughter - but why? It made no sense; he had no quarrel with me - he'd said so, in those very words.
"What d'ye mean? What d'ye want of me? I've done nothing, you heard her -"
"Nothing, you say? Oh, you've done nothing today, I know that - or you'd not be alive this moment! But think back ten years, Flashman, to the night when you and your conniving whore Willinck crimped me out of Orleans -"
"I'd no hand in that, I swear! And you told me -"
"- that I bore no grudge?" His laugh was a jeering snarl. "More fool you for believing me - but your wit's all in your loins and belly, isn't it? You can't conceive what it meant for a man of my breeding - my eminence, damn your eyes! a scholar, a philosopher, honoured and respected, a man of refinement, a master and commander even in the degraded depths of a slave-ship - a man born to have rule - aye, better to reign in hell than serve in heaven!" roars he, spraying me with his incoherent rage, so consumed by it that for once Latin quotation failed him. "To be hounded before the mast by scum who wouldn't have pulley-haulied on my ship, herded with filthy packet rats, fed on slop and glad to get ii, threatened with the cat, by Jesus - aye, stare, rot you! I, John Charity Spring, Fellow of Oriel . . . damn them all to hell, thieves, trimmers and academic vermin . . ." His voice sank to a hoarse whisper, for he was back on the Oxford Coack again, contemplating his ruined career, his berserk fit over, thank God, for I'd never seen him worse. He took a huge breath, filled his glass, and brooded at me.
"I cleaned the heads on that ship, Flashman - all the way to the Cape." His tone was almost normal now. "Thanks to you. And d'ye think a day has passed in ten years when I haven't remembered what I owe you? And now . . . here you are, at last. We may agree with Horace, I think - Raro antecedentem scelestum deseruit pede poena claudo. I see from your vacant gape that you're no better acquainted with his works than you were on the College, damn your ignorance! - so I'll tell you it means that Justice, though moving slowly, seldom fails to overhaul the fleeing villain." He shoved the bottle at me. "Have some more brandy, why don't you? Your flight's over, bucko!"
This was desperate - but terrified as I was, I could see something that he had overlooked, and it spurred me now to unwonted defiance, though I came to my feet and backed away before I voiced it.
"Keep your bloody brandy - and your threats, 'cos they don't scare me, Spring! I don't know what your game is, but you'd best take care - because you've forgotten something! I'm not a friendless nobody nowadays - and, I ain't some poor French pimp, neither! You think you draw water? Well, you ain't the only one!" A heaven-sent thought struck me. "Your governor, Grey, has charged me - Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., K.B., and be damned to you! with a personal message to Lord Palmerston, d'ye hear? So you can come off your blasted quarter-deck, because you daren't touch me!" I cast a quick glance at the companion, ready to run like hell.
The pale hypnotic eyes never blinked, but his mouth twisted in a grin. "My, what a dunghill rooster we've grown, to be sure! Vox et praeterea nihil!* (* [You are] a voice and nothing more.) But you've forgotten something, too. No one saw you come aboard here. It was a hired rig that brought you to my house - and my servants are safe folk. So if the distinguished Flashman, with all his trumpery titles, were to disappear . . . why, he sailed on the mail for home! And if, by chance, word came months from now that you never boarded the mail . . . a mystery! And who more baffled than your old shipmate, John Charity Spring? What, silent, are we? Stricken speechless?"
He pushed back his chair and reached a flask from the buffet. "You'd better try some schnapps, I think. There .. . don't bite the glass, you fool! Drink it! Christ, what a craven thing you are! Sit down, man, before you fall - vitiant artus aegrae contagia mentis,*(*When the mind is ill at ease, the body is somewhat affected.) as Ovid would say if he could see you. And rest easy - I'm not going to harm a hair of your precious head!"
That was no comfort at all, from him; I knew that diseased mind too well - he meant me some hideous mischief, but I could only wait shuddering until he told me what it was, which he was preparing to do with sadistic relish, brimming my glass and resuming his seat before he spoke.
"When I heard you'd landed, it was a prayer answered. But I couldn't see how to come at you, until Miranda showed the way - oh, she has all my confidence, the only creature on earth in whom I put trust. `Let me beckon him,' says she - and didn't she just, on that first night at Government House! It was gall to my soul to see it - my girl . . . and you, you dirty satyr! A dozen times I would ha' cried it off, for fear of what harm might come to her, but she laughed away my doubts. `Trust me, Papa!' My girl! D'ye wonder I worship the earth she treads on? Would you believe," he leaned forward, gloating, "'twas she advised I should warn you off ! `He'll come all the faster, to spite you . . . if he thinks it safe', says she. She knew you, d'ye hear - oh, yes, Flashman, she knows all my story, from Oxford to the Middle Passage - and she's as bent on settling her father's scores as he is himself ! We have no secrets, you see, my girl and I.'
"And you came to the bait, like the lustful swine you are," says Spring. "And it's time to cast our accounts and pay, eh, Flashman?"
You know me. With any other of the monsters I'd known, I'd have pleaded and whined and tried to buy off - but he was mad, and my mind seemed to be growing numb. Another wave of nausea came over me, my head swam, and I took a stiff gulp of schnapps to steady myself.
"Belay that!" growls Spring, and snatched the glass from me. "I don't want you dead to the world before I've done." He seized my wrist. "Sit still, damn you . . . ha! pulse sluggish. Very good." He dropped my hand and sat back, and as the sick fit shook me again, I saw that he was smiling.
"Now you know what a crimped sailorman feels like," says he. "Yes, the schnapps is loaded - just like the mixture that fat tart slipped to me in Orleans. I believe in eye for eye, you see - no more, no less. You shipped me out, drugged and helpless, and now you're going the same way - you can live on skilly and hard-tack, you can try your V.C. and K.B. on a bucko mate, you can have your arse kicked from here to Baltimore, and see how you like it, damn your blood!" His voice was rising again, but he checked himself and leaned forward to thumb up my eyelid - and I couldn't raise a hand to stop him.
"That's right," says he. "Baltimore, with a skipper of my acquaintance. If I were a vindictive man, it would ha' been Orleans, but I'm giving you an even chance, d'ye see? Baltimore's about right, I reckon. You've been there before - so you know what's waiting for you, eh?"
He stood up, and I tried to follow, but my legs wouldn't answer. I heaved - and couldn't move a muscle, but the horror of it was that I could see and hear and feel the sweat pouring over my skin. God knows what poison he'd fed me, but it had gripped me all in an instant; I tried to speak, but only a croak came out. Spring laughed aloud, and stooped to me, the demonic pale eyes gleaming, and began to shout at me.
"Hear this, damn you! You'll go ashore, derelict and penniless - as I did! And word will go ahead of you, to the police, and the federal people, not only in Baltimore, but in Washington and Orleans! You'll find they have fine long memories, Flashman - they'll remember Beauchamp Mill-ward Comber! The U.S. Navy have their file on him, I dare-say - perjury, impersonation, and slave-trading . . . but that's nothing, is it? You're wanted for slave-stealing, too, as I recall, which is a capital offence - and they're a dam' sight hotter on it now than they were ten years ago, even! And then there's the small matter of complicity in the murder of one Peter Omohundro - oh, it's quite a score, and I don't doubt there's more that I don't know about!"
He stood straight, and now he seemed to have swollen into a ghastly giant, white-bearded and hideous, who struck at me, but I couldn't feel the slaps, although they were jar-ring my head right and left.
"See how much good your medals and honours and the brave name of Sir Harry Flashman does you when the Yankee law has you by the neck! Aye, olim meminisse juvahit, rot you ... !" His bellowings were growing fainter. "Crawl or run or worm your way out of that! If you can - good luck to you! Bon voyage, you son-of-a-bitch ... !"
The pounding in my ears blotted out all other sounds, and my sight was going, for I could no longer make out his form, and the cabin lights were dwindling to pin-points. The nausea had passed, my senses were going - but I remember clear as day my last thought before I went under, and 'twasn't about Spring or Miranda or the hellish pickle awaiting me. No; for once I'd recognised his quotation - it had been framed on the wall of the hospital at Rugby, where I'd sobered up on that distant day when Arnold kicked me out ... "Olim meminisse juvabit",*(*It will be pleasant to remember former troubles - Virgil (not Seneca).) and dooced appropriate, too. Seneca, if memory serves.
Three times in my life I've been shanghaied, and each time there was a woman in the case - Miranda Spring, Phoebe Carpenter, and Fanny Duberly, although I acquit pretty little Fan of any ill intent, and the occasion in which she was concerned saw me trepanned with my eyes open; on the two others it was Flashy outward bound with a bellyful of puggle from which I didn't awake until we were well out to sea, and there's no worse place to come to than below deck on a windjammer when the skip-per's in a hurry.
This one was an American with a broken nose and a beard like a scarf beneath his rock of a chin; my heart sank at the sight of him, for he had Down-easter12 written all over him. I'd hoped, when I crawled out of the stuffy hole in which I found myself and puked my heart out on a deck that seemed to be near perpendicular, that I'd find a good corruptible Frog or Dago on the poop, but Spring had chosen his man well, damn him. This one had eyes like flint and whined through his nose.
"Spew over the side, cain't ye!" was his greeting as I staggered up out of the scuppers and held on for my life; he stood braced without support in a gale that was bringing green sea over the rail in icy showers, soaking me in an instant, but at least it washed my tiffin and supper away. "Do that in a calm an' ye'll swab it up yourself, mister! Now, git back below till ye can stand straight, an' keep out o' the way, d'ye hear?"
It's not easy to conduct negotiations on a spray-lashed deck during a howling tempest, but I was wasting no time. "A hundred pounds if you'll take me to Port Nolloth or Walfish Bay!" I'd no notion where we were in the South Atlantic, but I doubted if we were far out as yet, and any port would do so long as it wasn't Baltimore - or the Cape, with Spring infesting the place. "Five hundred if you'll carry me to England!"
"Got it on ye?" shouts he. I hadn't; I'd been stripped clean of cash, papers, even my cheroot-case.
"You'll have it the moment we drop anchor! Look, a thousand if you set me down anywhere between Brest and London - it don't have to be English waters, even!"
That was when he knocked me down, grabbed me by the belt, and heaved me aft; I'm over thirteen stone, but I might have been his gunny-sack. He threw me into his cabin, kicked the door to, and watched me crawl to my feet.
"That's the short way of tellin' you I ain't for sale," says he. "Least of all to a lousy Limey slave-stealer."
Even in my distempered state, that sounded damned odd. "You ain't a Southerner! You're a Yankee, dammit!"
"That I am," says he. "An' I make my livin' 'tween Benin an' Brazil, mostly - that satisfy ye?" A slaver, in other words, if not this voyage. Trust Spring. So I tried another tack.
"You'll hang for this, d'ye know that? You're a kidnapper, and I'm Sir Harry Flashman, colonel in the British Army, and -"
"Spring told me that's what ye'd say, but you're a liar an' he ain't. Your name's Comber, an' in the States they've got warrants out for you for everythin' 'cept pissin' in the street - Spring told me that, too! So any hangin' there is, you'll do it."
"You're wrong, you fool! I'm telling the truth, you Yankee idiot - don't hit me -"
He stood over me, rubbing his knuckles. "Now, you listen, mister, 'cos I'm runnin' out o' patience. John C. Spring is my friend. An' when he pays an' trusts me for a job, I do it. An' you're goin' to Baltimore. An' we'll lay off Sparrow's Point a couple o' days while the letters he give me goes ashore, to let the taps know you're comin'. An' then you go. An' till then you'll work your passage, an' I don't give two cents' worth of a Port Mahon sea-horse's droppings if you're Comber or Lord Harry Flasher or President Buchanan! Savvy? Now you git up, and walk along easy to the focsle - it's that way - an' give your callin' card to Mr Fitzgibbon, who's the mate, an' he'll show you to your stateroom. Now - skat!"
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