Flashman And The Tiger

I was too dizzy with pain to do anything but curse and weep, and now he was away again, yelling "Helfen, mein Herr!" while I tried to pull myself up by a tree, wrenching at my gaiter-buttons and sock to reveal an ankle that was grazed bloody and already turning blue. God, had he broken it? I nursed the injury with both hands, feeling it beginning to puff and swell, and now footsteps were approaching, Willem’s voiced raised in concern.

"… caught his leg between two stones, I think. I don’t believe it’s broken, but too badly wrenched to walk, I fear. On the first day of our expedition, too!"

"You say your friend is an Englishman?" It was a deep voice, curiously flat and deliberate.

"Why, yes, an Army acquaintance. Neither of us has been to the Saltzkammergut before, you see, and we planned … ah, here he is! How is it, Harry? I say, it looks bad!" He turned to his companion. "By the way, I am Count Willem von Starnberg … Herr … ?" He finished on a question, the cunning young bastard, letting on that he didn’t know whom he was addressing, and I gritted my teeth and tried to act up, noting as I did so that it was a good job there were no Highland regiments in the Austrian service, for the Emperor Franz-Josef would have looked abominable in a kilt, with those knobbly knock-knees looking like knuckle-ends between his woollen stockings and his little black lederhosen. He wore a shooting jacket and a ridiculous hat with a feather, but there was nothing clownish about the austere frowning face with its heavy whiskers as he stooped to survey my damage. Nothing sympathetic, either, just bovine serious.

"It needs attention," was the royal diagnosis. "Can you walk, sir?"

There must be an actor buried in me, for as Willem bent to help me, and I met Franz-Josef’s heavy stare, I fairly gaped wide-eyed and made as though to scramble up.

"My God!" I croaked. "Your majesty! I … I…" Babble, babble, babble, while Willem looked suitably startled and clicked his heels, and Franz-Josef made another of his lightning deductions.

"You know me?"

Didn’t I just, though, begging his pardon, introducing myself with profuse apologies for coming adrift in his coverts, doffing my tile while Willem did likewise, bowing like a clockwork doll while Franz-Josef registered amazement by blinking thoughtfully.

"The officer of Mexico!" says he. "You are he who attempted to save my unhappy brother. I invested you with the Order of Maria Theresa, at Corfu, was it not?"

After that, it was old home week with a vengeance, with Franz-Josef nodding gravely, Willem protesting that we were a hellish nuisance, All-Highest, and wouldn’t have dreamed of intruding if we’d only known, Flashy clinging gamely to his tree, and presently even more gamely to the stalwart back of the loader, who was summoned to tote me downhill. I lay there, breathing in his aroma of rifle-oil and cow-dung, wondering what the harvest might be, and Willem walked ahead with Franz-Josef, making deferential noises of gratitude and apology, and to my astonishment making his majesty laugh—say that for the Starnbergs, they could charm birds from the trees when they wanted to, and by the time we reached the lodge the Emperor of Austria was positively jocose, issuing orders to flying minions, and not going off to change his ghastly breeks until he had seen me installed on a couch in a gun-room, with servitors rallying round with hot water and cold compresses, and Willem chivvying them aside while he attended to my bandages himself.

"We’re there," he murmured softly. "He knows my family, by name, anyway." I could have said that if he’d known any more of the Starnbergs than that, we’d have been on our way to gaol this minute, but held my peace. "Play up when the doctor comes, mind."

Which I did, with Willem and Franz-Josef, now respectable in a suit, standing by. The sawbones was a plump little cove with gooseberry eyes and trailing whiskers who prodded my injury and pronounced it ugly, but seemed to think I ought to be able to hobble. Capital, thinks I, there’ll be no reason to offer us houseroom, and we can scuttle back to Ischl and let the Holnup have a free run, but Willem had the answer to that, rot him.

"Your thigh wound, remember," says he, very sober. "A serious injury from my friend’s Afghan days," he assured the doctor, "which reacts to any distemper in the limb. Why, Harry, you were laid up for a week in Scotland, I recall, when you’d done no more than stub your toe!"