I sat on a rocket-box, dog tired, eating bread and issue wine, watching an endless stream of chattering, yelling Frog infantry swarming out of the Hall of Audience, weighed down with bolts of silk, bundles of shimmering dragon robes, jade vases, clocks, jewelled watches, pictures, everything they could lay hands on. Some were wearing women's dresses and hats; I remember one roaring bearded sergeant, with a magnificent cloth of gold gown kilted up above his red breeches, dancing a can-can as his mates yelled and clapped; another was skimming plumed picture hats up in the air like a juggler's plates; my little lieutenant had a cashmere shawl embroidered with tiny gems about his shoulders, and the major was casting a connoisseur's eye over a fine gilt-framed painting and exclaiming that it was a Petitot, as ever was. There were enormous piles of loot growing in the court-yard—silks here, clocks there, paintings over yonder, vases farther on … very orderly in their plundering were our Gallic allies, but what would you? When grandpapa has followed Napoleon, you know how such things should be done, so the French army loot by numbers, with a shrewd eye to quality, while the indiscriminate British will lift (or smash) anything that comes in their way, just for the fun of it.
It was sunrise, and the Frogs were exclaiming over the sight of the Hall of Audience gleaming in the first rays, shading their eyes and running off for a better look, when I managed to collar a mule and set off at a nice amble down the Pekin road. The French were camped everywhere, but only a mile along I struck a troop of Dragoons boiling their dixies by the roadside. No, we weren't in Pekin yet, and Grant intended to force a capitulation by wheeling up his guns to the Anting Gate and putting his finger on the trigger, so to speak; so the campaign was over. I commandeered a horse, and a few minutes later was trotting in to the grounds of a fine temple where advance head-quarters had been set up, and the first thing I saw was Elgin still in his night-shirt, the rising sun gilding his pate, munching a bun and waving a bottle of beer at a big map on an easel, with Hope Grant and the staff ringed round him.
There was a tremendous yell when I hove in view, and a tumult of questions as I slid from the saddle, and fellows slapping me on the back and shouting: "The prisoners are safe!" and hurrahing, and Elgin came bustling to shake my hand, crying:
"Flashman, my dear chap! We'd given you up for dead! Thank God you're safe! My dear fellow, wherever have you been? This is capital! My boy, are you hurt? Have those villains ill-used you?"
I couldn't answer, because all of a sudden I felt very weak and wanted to blub. I think it was the kind words—the first I'd heard in ever so long, although it was barely three weeks—and the English voices and everyone looking so cheery and glad to see me, and the anxious glower on Elgin's bulldog face at the thought that I'd been mistreated, and just the knowledge that I was home. Then someone whistled, exclaiming, and they were all staring at the sabre which I'd hung from my saddle, dried blood all over the blade—Sang's blood, and that struck me as ever so funny, for some reason, and I'd have laughed if I'd had the energy. But I just stood mum and choking while they cried out and shouted questions and rejoiced, until Hope Grant shouldered them all aside, pretty rough, even Elgin, and pushed me down on to a stool, and put a cup of tea in my hand, and stood with his hand round my shoulders, not saying a word. Then I blubbed.
Survival apart, the great thing in intelligence work is knowing how to report. Well, you saw that at the start of this memoir, when I danced truth's gossamer tightrope before Parkes at Canton. The principal aim, remember, is to win the greatest possible credit to yourself, which calls not only for the exclusion of anything that might damage you, but also for the judicious understatement of those things which tell in your favour, if any; brush 'em aside, never boast, let appearances speak for themselves. This was revealed to me at the age of nineteen, when I woke in Jalallabad hospital to find myself a hero—provided I lay still and made the right responses. Then, you must convince your chiefs that what you're telling 'em is important, which ain't difficult, since they want to believe you, having chiefs of their own to satisfy; make as much mystery of your methods as you can; hint what a thoroughgoing ruffian you can be in a good cause, but never forget that innocence shines brighter than any virtue ("Flashman? Extraordinary fellow—kicks 'em in the crotch with the heart of a child"); remember that silence frequently passes for shrewdness, and that while suppressio veri is a damned good servant, suggestio falsi is a perilous master. Selah.
I stuck to these principles in making my verbal report to Elgin that afternoon—and for once they were almost completely wasted. This was because the first words I'd uttered, after gulping Grant's tea, were to tell him that there was a vermilion death sentence on Parkes and the other prisoners; this caused such a sensation that, once I'd told all I knew about it (which wasn't much; I didn't know even where they were confined) I was forgotten in the uproar of activity, with diplomatic threats being sent into Pekin, and Probyn ordered to stand by with a flying squadron. And when I sat down with Elgin later, and gave him my word-of-mouth, it was plain that the fate of our people was the only thing on his mind, reasonably enough; my account of the secret intrigues of the Imperial court (which I thought a pretty fair coup) interested him hardly at all.
It cramped my style, which, as I've indicated, tends to be bluff and laconic, making little of such hardships as binding, caging, and starvation. "Oh, they knocked me about a bit, you know," is my line, but he wasn't having it. He wanted every detail of my treatment, and damn the politics; so he got it, including a fictitious account of how they'd hammered me senseless before dragging me, gasping defiance, to audience with the Emperor, so that I didn't remember much about it (that seemed the best way out of that embarrassing episode). I needn't have fretted; Elgin was still grinding his teeth over Sang's threatening me with death by the thousand cuts, and clenching his fist at the butchery of Nolan.
My account of captivity in the Summer Palace, which I'd planned as my pièce de résistance, fell flat as your hat. I gave him the plain, unvarnished truth, too—omitting only the trifling detail that the Emperor's favourite concubine had been grinding me breathless every night. I believe in discretion and delicacy, you see—for one thing, you never know who'll run tattling to Elspeth. Anyway, I'd have thought my story sufficiently sensational as it was.
He received it almost impatiently, prime political stuff and all. I now realise that, even if he hadn't had the prisoners obsessing him, he still wouldn't have been much interested in all the tattle I'd eavesdropped between Yehonala and Little An—he was there to ratify a treaty and show the Chinese that we meant business; the last thing he wanted was entanglement in Manchoo politics, with himself acting as king-maker, or anything of that sort. He brightened briefly at my description of the set-to with Sang and his braves (which I kept modestly brief, knowing that my blood-stained sabre had already spoken more eloquently than I could), but when I'd done his first question was:
"Excepting Prince Sang's murderous attack, was no violence offered to you at the Summer Palace? None at all? No rigorous confinement or ill-usage?"
"Hardly, my lord," says I, and just for devilment I added: "The Yi Concubine's ladies did throw apples at me, on one occasion."