Flashman's Escape (12 page)

I was gasping for air as she finished, the blood still rushing in my ears. I strained to listen, and despite the noise we had been making, the snoring in the next room went on with the same regular rhythm.

“How did you know about the hole in the ceiling?” I whispered.

“Silly, I made it months ago when this was my room so that I could go out and see some of the boys in the village.” I grinned in the darkness. “What are you smiling for?”

“Those boys you were with before,” I told her. “I feel sorry for them. Wherever they go in the world, being in bed with a woman is likely to be a disappointment after being with you.”

She purred with pleasure at the compliment. “You have been to many countries?” she asked.

“Yes, quite a few. In India they have temples to the art of lovemaking. You could be a high priestess over there.”

“I have only been in this village and the surrounding towns. My father made me live in the hills when the French came. I want to travel and visit different countries. Will you take me to Britain and this place called India?”

I grinned and patted her shoulder. “We’ll see,” I said in the same tone you might use on a child asking for something that you had no intention of giving them. But Maria del Pilar was not going to be fobbed off like a child, as I was to discover later.

We lay in each other’s arms for most of that night, before Maria disappeared up her rope and back to her own room. The next morning we studiously avoided each other, assisted in that purpose by her parents, who were clearly oblivious to our earlier liaison.

So began one of the most pleasurable months of my life. During the day I would rest in the sun and take gentle exercise, walking or helping the old man in his forge with the bellows. In the evening an angel would drop from the heavens and take me to paradise. My strength slowly recovered and as it did so we became more adventurous in that tiny bedroom. I recalled various colourful Indian temple freezes and we carried out our own re-enactments, all without making a sound. In fact I got so used to silent lovemaking that when I was next in a brothel the girl complained that I showed her no appreciation. We were fortunate that her parents were heavy sleepers and only once did we wake them. Maria was doing something exquisite with her fingers while I took her from behind and I let out an involuntary howl of pleasure.

“
Señor
Flashman,” called her mother, knocking quietly at the door. “Are you all right?”

The door was less than a yard away from where her daughter was bent over the end of the bed receiving the Flashy one-gun salute. I am proud to say that I did not even break my rhythm as I quietly moved one foot in front of the door while I whispered back, “I am sorry I woke you, ma’am. I have cramp in my wounded leg. I am just doing some exercises to loosen the muscles. Best not come in as I am naked.”

“I am sorry you are hurt,
señor
,” called back the trusting mother. “Exercise as much as you want.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” I replied, grabbing hold of her daughter’s hips and pulling them towards me. “I am sure what I am doing will bring relief.”

Of course I was getting over-confident, a state which normally presages disaster. But there was no sign of imminent calamity the next morning when I helped the smith with the bellows. In fact quite the reverse.

“My wife tells me you were in in pain last night,” he said between pounding a horseshoe.

“Oh, it was nothing, just the old wound settling down,” I replied jovially, patting the fast-healing injury in my thigh.

“I am sorry I did not hear you. I am a little deaf after all these years hammering metal.” He grinned as he plunged a new horseshoe in a bucket of water. As it hissed and steamed he flexed his huge shoulders. “I have a bottle of muscle liniment if you need it. You are welcome to borrow some. I have to say that I have enjoyed having you here much more than I thought. You are an honourable man and have stayed well clear of Maria. My wife thinks that she has a new boy in the village as she has been very distracted lately.”

“Well, you know what young boys are like,” I replied airily, happy to deflect suspicion in a new direction. “I have enjoyed staying here too. In fact I was wondering if we could extend our agreement? I have another two coins I could give you.”

The smith agreed to a second month without any difficulty at all and so I happily continued my time of daily and nightly exercise. I am bound to say that the liniment worked well too. It stung like a whip stroke, but it had a powerful alcohol in it that brought heat deep within my thigh and the muscle seemed to get stronger by the day.

Chapter 12

It was midway through the second month that things started to unravel. Too much of anything can become tiresome after a while, and Maria was starting to get tedious. It was not so much the lovemaking, which was as creative as usual, but the whispered conversations afterwards. The girl was obsessed with leaving the village. She was constantly nagging at me to help her get away. To get a few days’ peace I had even suggested to her mother that if a boy in the village was getting a bit forward, taking her away for a couple of days might be a good idea. But before that scheme could be put in to action Maria launched a plan of her own.

We were lying on my narrow bed after a bout of fornication that would have earned her a standing ovation at Mrs Belmont’s House of Pleasure in Piccadilly when she ruined the mood.

“I have not had my monthly bleed this month,” she whispered. The blood chilled in my veins. “If you have given me a baby, you will marry me, won’t you?” Displaying an appalling knowledge of geography that was only exceeded by her ignorance of my intentions, she added, “You can take me away from here and we can live in a palace in India and go to London for dances.”

I had a horrible flashback to a similar conversation when I was just eighteen. I doubted that girl had been pregnant then and I was by no means sure now about Maria. She saw me as a means of escape and might be trying the oldest trick in the book to get me to do her bidding. In any event I was not going to marry her; for one thing I already had an estranged wife in England, a little detail I had not thought fit to mention.

“Is it one or two days’ ride between London and India?” she twittered on. “Will we need to go by carriage? Do you have a carriage of your own?”

“Let’s wait and see if you are going to have a baby first,” I told her. “Your father would be very cross with you if he knew you had been visiting me.” My mind was suddenly filled with a vision of a metal bolt getting crushed flat with a hammer. The thought left me quite shrivelled.

“Oh, he won’t mind if you marry me,” she prattled on in my ear. “I think my father likes you.”

I managed to persuade her to keep quiet for a few more days, but she was now so excited about the thought of leaving the village that I did not think she would keep it to herself for long. Just the next morning as I was talking to her father in the smithy she swept past. Instead of ignoring me as usual she gave me a dazzling smile. For the first time in ages a look of suspicion crossed her father’s face.

“What has got into her? Why was she smiling at you?” he asked.

“Oh, she was worried about a boy in the village; I mentioned him to your wife. I have had a word with the lad and he won’t trouble her again.”

The smith grunted his acceptance of this explanation but he still gave me a hard look and I realised that I needed to leave the village without delay. Otherwise it would only be a matter of time before the ‘sparks would fly’.

After a somewhat tense dinner with the family I made my preparations and retired to my room. Soon I heard the now familiar sounds of the family retiring for the night. In a short while the snoring began in the next room and then I heard the sound I had been waiting for. Light shone through the cracks in the ceiling, which had widened considerably in recent weeks, and then the patch was removed and the rope was lowered down.

“Darling,” I whispered as she dropped directly into my waiting arms. “I have wanted to hold you all day,” I lied as I hugged her to me.

“If we tell Papa that you will marry me, we could be together all of the time,” she urged in my ear.

“You know, I think you are right about that. Let’s tell him tomorrow.”

“Really?” She nearly squealed with delight and I hurriedly put my hand over her mouth.

“Shh, they cannot find us like this. They must believe that you are chaste and pure. Do you understand?”

She nodded silently.

“But while we wait, I want to try something new.”

“New?” she queried and I could understand her puzzlement. For in the last few weeks we had covered most of the content of the Hindu love manuals and she had taken to every single depravity with the enthusiasm of a glutton in a bakery. She thought we had done all that was possible with the sexual act and she was not far wrong, but I still had a surprise in store.

“Yes, what I am going to teach you is how they make love in the Sultan’s harem in Constantinople. They say it is the very best way.”

“You are not going to tickle me again, are you?”

“Er no, not this time. I want to blindfold you and tie you down to the bed. That way you will not know when I am going to touch you or where. They say it is very sensual.”

“All right,” she agreed, shrugging her nightgown off over her head and then lying down spread-eagled on the bed. My God, I thought, this is going to be a lot easier than I anticipated. I brought out the cloth blindfold and cords that I had ready and in a minute I had her all tied up.

“Now I need to gag you as the pleasure this technique brings might be too much to stop you crying out.”

“Quickly then,” whispered the little nymph, even opening her mouth for me to place a small ball of cloth inside to muffle sound. I secured it with another strip of linen around her head.

“Listen carefully now,” I murmured in her ear. “The pleasure is increased by waiting. Sometimes the sultan makes the harem lady wait an hour while he watches her body, smells her and breathes on her. You must be patient, my lovely.” As I was saying this I was starting to pull on my clothes. I reckoned this could give me at least an hour to get away before any alarm was raised. Perhaps she would not be discovered until dawn. I made a loop in the rope hanging from the ceiling to help pull myself up and was just about to climb up into the roof space, when I looked down on her. That nubile young girl, all willing and expectant… by God it would be a crime to leave now.

Even if I say so myself, I played that body like a concert pianist plays his instrument. I already knew all of her favourite places to be touched and I soon had her arching her back with desire and begging for me through the gag. By then I was in quite a lather myself and set to with the enthusiasm of the desperate and the damned. We had just reached the crescendo of the piece when there was an urgent knocking on the door.

“
Señor
Flashman?” It was the deep voice of the smith and it sounded so close, just the other side of wood plank. “Are you all right? My wife says you have been thrashing about and whimpering in there. Shall I come in?”

“No!” I almost shouted the word as the man’s daughter wriggled sensuously underneath me. “Please don’t come in. I have had a nightmare, dreaming about the battle. It keeps happening; please ignore me if you hear any more noise.”

“If you are sure,” he replied and I heard him mutter “War is a terrible thing” to his wife as he stomped back to his bed.

That was one scare too many for me; it was definitely time to go. I whispered to Maria to keep still and I would start with her again in a while and she nodded eagerly. I waited a couple of minutes for the snoring to resume and then swung myself up into the roof. Using Maria’s candle, I carefully crossed the ceiling, stepping on the beams, until I dropped though the hole in the storeroom that she used as a bedroom. Moving into the kitchen, I grabbed a leather satchel and stuffed it with some bread, a spare shirt the smith had hanging to dry and the bottle of muscle liniment. Then I silently let myself out of the back door. The house was quiet and I imagined Maria still lying on my bed and waiting for my next touch.

I made my way to the main street that ran through the village and there I had a decision to make. As it turned out, my life depended on it. In a few hours the girl would be discovered and then all hell would break loose. The old smith and whatever friends he could find would be in a fever to track me down and exact their revenge. They would expect me to go towards Lisbon, which had been the direction the convoy had been heading when I had left it. But that road stretched up into the hills and there seemed little cover. I wanted to get to Lisbon, but I wanted to protect my manhood from that hammer much more. So I turned east, away from Lisbon, and started a steady jog as fast as my injured leg would go, down the hill to the edge of a scrub of trees that would hide me. Just ten minutes later I knew I had made the right decision.

Instead of hours I had only minutes to make my getaway. I imagine that Maria must have started thrashing about, either because she guessed I had gone or to encourage me to start again. In any event her father must have decided to investigate after all, only to find his naked and blindfolded daughter spread-eagled on the bed. The first I knew of this was a woman’s scream, swiftly followed by a roar of rage from the old man. I had nearly reached the trees when I heard him bellow into the night from the village behind me, “Englishman, I am going to find you and kill you for this!”

Well, that was just the motivation I needed to keep moving. It was too dark for the smith to see me from the village and I was soon in the trees. I walked for most of the night, anxious to put as much distance between me and any search party as possible. By dawn I stopped to rest by a river and imagined the smith and his friends riding full tilt to find me down the Lisbon road.

Any sense of complacency evaporated a short while later when I heard the sound of dogs barking. It did not take long for me to realise that they were getting closer and that the bastards were using hounds to track my trail. I was in the river in a moment. It was only waist deep but the current was strong. The water, I knew, would hide my scent but it was impossible to move quickly upstream and away from my pursuers. A few minutes later and I was desperate, realising that I had made a terrible mistake. I had only gone a few hundred yards and I was exhausted. My injured leg was throbbing from the exertion. I could hear men shouting now, encouraging the dogs as they barked and howled while they chased me to ground. At any moment they would burst through the trees and see Flashy standing wet and crippled in the middle of the stream, as exposed as a boil on a tart’s backside.

There was a bend in the river and I forced myself round it. As I did so I heard splashing in the distance; they must have reached the spot where I had entered the water. I crossed to the far bank to see if there was a place I could hide there but a flash of movement showed that they now had men and dogs on both sides of the river. They were taking no chances and would pick up my scent again as soon as I stepped onto land. Oh God.

For a moment I was frozen in panic. I had thought I was being so clever, but now it looked like Maria’s enraged father would get my cock on his block after all. My mind was filled with a sudden image of that glowing bolt and the sparks as the hammer pounded down to flatten it. I only had seconds left before I was discovered. I would be spotted in the river and I would be tracked down if I left it; what was I to do?

I glanced desperately about me. The bend in the river had undercut some of the bank, causing a tree to come down, which lay partially submerged in the river. I threw myself among the branches, cutting my hands and knees as I scrambled over the wet, slimy wood searching for a place to hide. There was a fork where a bow left the trunk and I dropped into the gap, with a tangle of old branches and twigs half covering me. The water was less than waist deep this near the bank; surely they would see me? I crouched down and scooped up handfuls of the foul-smelling river mud and plastered it over my hair and face and down my front to hide the white shirt. My old army coat had faded to an orangey brown from three summers under the Spanish sun and would not stand out against the river bed. I did not have time to do more before I saw the first dog. It was a youngster, splashing in and out of the stream and playing, while the rest of the pack followed the scent.

I lowered myself into the water and straightened out so that just my eyes, mouth and nose were above the surface. I had to push my arm hard into the mud under the trunk to get a purchase and hold myself steady. As I did so, I felt something slimy wiggle away from my fingers. The dog’s barking sounded more distant with my ears under the water and then I could hear men’s voices and knew that they must be close.

I only glimpsed the men on the far bank through the branches. There were three of them, all armed with muskets, and I did not know any of them. I thought the young pup had spotted me for a moment as he splashed through the water, heading straight for the fallen tree. But then he picked up a floating stick and turned to carry his prize back to the bank. As I breathed a sigh of relief I saw a wizened old hound sniffing around the exposed roots of the fallen tree I was hiding in. With an easy grace he hopped up onto the trunk and started to walk down it towards me. I realised that my scent must be on some of the branches as I had scrambled over them. The dog stopped and sniffed the air; if he signalled he had the scent, I was done for.