Flashman And The Tiger

Speaking of imperial, I had a taste of that when she took me, with the Prince and his hareem in tow, to a gala ball at Schonbrunn, where the Emperor and Empress condescended to mingle with Vienna’s finest. That was a damned odd turn, eerie almost, for a moment came when, with Kralta standing by like a magnificent ring-mistress, I found myself face to face with Franz-Josef and the superb Sissi. He drew himself up to his imposing height, whiskers at the high port, and stared me straight in the eye for a long moment; he said not a word, but held out his hand, and ’twasn’t the usual touch-and-away of royalty, but a good strong clasp followed by a hearty shake before he passed on, Sissi following with a smiling turn of her lovely head. That’s his vote of thanks for services rendered, thinks I, and the most he can do or I can expect—but I was wrong. There was something more, though whether ’twas his idea or Sissi’s I can’t say. When the dancing began, and I was restoring myself with a glass of Tokay after whirling Kralta’s substantial poundage round the floor, a lordly swell with a ribboned order presented himself and informed me that Her Imperial Majesty would be graciously pleased to accept if I were to beg the honour of leading her out for the next dance.

It was unprecedented, I’m told, to a foreign stranger, and a commoner at that. You may be sure I complied, with a beating heart, I confess. And so I waltzed beneath the chandeliers of Old Vienna, under the eyes of the highest and noblest of the Austrian Empire, with Strauss himself flogging the orchestra, and my partner was that magical raven-haired beauty who had all Europe at her feet, and I didn’t tread on ’em once. Afterwards I led her back to Franz-Josef, and received his courteous nod and her brilliant smile.

Well, I’ve rattled the Empress of China and Her Majesty of Madagascar, to say nothing of an Apache Princess and (to the best of my belief) an Indian Rani, and that’s my business, to be written about but not spoken of. But I can tell my great-grandchildren face to face that I’ve danced with the Queen of Hearts. And she, of course, has danced with me.

We spent Christmas at a castle of Kralta’s—or her husband’s, I never found out which—high in the snowy Tyrolean mountains, and toasted in the New Year in a luxurious hunting lodge in a little valley whose inhabitants spoke a strange sort of German laced with Scotch expressions—the legacy, I’m told, of medieval mercenaries who never went home, doubtless for fear of arrest. Both places were full of titled guests invited (or commanded, rather) by Kralta, and we drove in sleighs and skated and tobogganed and revelled by evening and pleasured by night, and it was Vienna in the Arctic, with the Prince always on hand, bland and affable as ever with his popsies around him (one of ’em a new bird, an Italian, who’d replaced the garrulous blonde, no doubt on Kralta’s orders) and it was all such enormous fun that I was heartily sick of it.

Don’t misunderstand me—it wasn’t a surfeit of debauchery and the high life, although there does come a time when you find yourself longing for a pint and a pie and a decent night’s sleep. And it was only partly that I was beginning to miss English voices and English rain and all those things that make the old country so different, thank God, from the Continent. No, I was beginning to realise what had irked me from the first—being just another player iii their game, having it taken for granted that I’d be a compliant member of Kralta’s curious ménage, as though I were the latest recruit, if you know what I mean. I’ve always been a free lance, so to speak, going my own way on my own terms, and the notion that Viennese society was raising its weary eyebrows and saying: "Ah, yes, this Englishman is new to her entourage; how long will he last, one wonders?", and that Kralta probably thought of me as her husband did of his trollops … no, it didn’t suit.

The final straw came on a night in the hunting lodge when I’d become so infernally bored that I’d gone to the village for a prose with the peasants at the tavern, and came home in the small hours. Some of the guests were still about in the principal rooms, drinking and flirting and casting (I thought) odd looks in my direction. I went up, and was making for the chamber I shared with Kralta when a soft voice called and I turned to see the Prince’s maitresse-en-titre, she of the heroic bosom, standing in an open doorway in a silk night-rail that was never designed for sleeping.