Flashman And The Tiger

"That Prince and the women—they’re out there, large as life! Who is he, for God’s sake?"

"My husband," says she. "You were presented to him."

Well, all I’d caught in the confusing moment of arrival had been "von und zum umble rumble", as so often happens. I considered, hard.

"Ah! I see. Your husband, eh? And the women?"

"His mistresses," says she, carefully rouging her lip. "It is convenient that we share the apartment. It is quite large enough, you see." She began to brush her hair, while I struggled for an appropriate rejoinder, and could think of only one.

"Mistresses, eh? Well, well." She continued to brush calmly, so I added another trenchant observation. "He has three of them."

"Yes. The fair one, Fraulein Boelcke, I had not met before this evening. She talks too freely, don’t you think?"

But my conversational bolt was shot. For once I was at a loss—as who would not be, on discovering that while he was bulling a chap’s wife all over the shop and probably making a hell of an uproar, the chap himself was virtually next door brushing his teeth or pomading his eyebrows—and even now might be conducting an orgy just across the way with three trollops while the wife of his bosom was smiling tenderly on her bemused lover, kissing him fondly, leading him back to bed, and settling into his arms for conversation and drowsy fondling which must lead inevitably to another outbreak of feverish passion? And it did, even noisier and more protracted than before, for this time she occupied the driving seat, if you know what I mean, and rode herself into a sobbing frenzy they could have heard in Berlin.

I’m an easy-going fellow, as you know, but it struck me as I lay there, urging her on with ecstatic roars and the occasional slap on the rump, and afterwards cradling her to sleep on my breast, that this was a pretty informal household, and would take getting used to. I’m all for cuckolding husbands, and don’t give a dam if (hey know it, unless they’re the hellfire horse-whipping sort who’ll resent it; indeed, there’s nothing like a good gloat in the grinding teeth of some poor muff to whom you’ve awarded antlers. But when the muff is not only complaisant but approving, and meets you with every politeness at luncheon next day, and his wife is on cordial terms (as cordial, that is, as Kralta could ever be) with the fair trio he’s been using as though he were the Sultan of Swat, well, it’s novel, and I wasn’t sure that I cared for it above half.

It took me a few weeks to settle my thoughts on the subject, and reflection was made no easier by the distractions Vienna afforded. I’ve never wallowed in such sumptuous indulgence in my life; even being a crowned head in Strackenz didn’t compare to it. The place was dedicated to sheer pleasure in those days, and I guess I became intoxicated in a way that had nothing to do with drink, although there was enough and to spare of that. Perhaps I was still fagged from my ordeal; at all events I was content to be borne along on that gay, dazzling tide, idling and stuffing and boozing and viewing the capital’s wonders by day, consorting with Kralta’s vast social circle (which included the Prince and his skirts as often as not) of an evening, and letting her have her haughty head by night.

She was a demanding mistress, and if she’d hadn’t been such a prime mount, and besotted with me to boot, I might have brought her to heel—or tried to. That she was an imperious piece I knew, but now I saw it wasn’t just her nature, which was the root of her pride, but the life she led which fostered that almighty growth. Vienna seemed to be at her feet; she was deferred to on all sides, and placed on a social level not far short of imperial, toad-eaten by the flower of society, and ruling it with a tilted chin and cold eye. The style in which she lived argued fabulous wealth, and she spent it like a whaler in port, on the slightest whim; small wonder she liked to call the tune in bed.