Free Sweet Poison by David Roberts

particular character he drank deeply. It seemed to steady him a little, and when he replaced his glass on the table the Duke thought he looked less feverish; quite unconsciously the old man stroked his stomach as though the wine was helping his digestion. ‘My doctor tells me I must drink very sparingly but, as I tell him, I have so few pleasures – pleasures of the flesh – left to me that I am loath to give up one of the few I can still enjoy,’ Craig said sadly.
    The Bishop too claimed to drink very little but the Duke noticed with amusement that he drained his glass quickly and refilled it from the decanter, which was now circulating for the third time. The Duke saw that Friedberg was a little at a loss to know how to enter the conversation about wine without making a fool of himself, and hurriedly moved to include him in the general bonhomie by asking him if port was much drunk in Germany, and was told that it was not. ‘We prefer brandy or liqueurs but when I am in England and,’ he bowed his head, ‘in such distinguished company, I do as the Romans do – that is the phrase, is it not? – and with the greatest of pleasure’. Saying which he tossed down his port as though it was slivovitz, which made the Duke wince. Von Friedberg went on to spoil the mood of quiet contentment around the table by embarking on a long and boring lecture about the superior merits of the wines of Alsace – a part of Germany, he was moved to say with drunken solemnity, whatever the French might like to claim.
    The Duke roused himself to bring Friedberg to heel – politely, of course. Rather subtly, he thought, he interrupted Friedberg by asking General Craig if he had any particular memories of other great wines he had drunk. The General said he could not say he remembered tasting wines nobler than those he had drunk this evening – he nodded to the Duke in tribute – but he had drunk wines in some queer places. He launched into a story of finding a case of champagne, almost boiled by the sun, in General Gordon’s apartments in Khartoum in 1896. ‘It may have been a great year for port,’ he said ruefully, ‘but not for champagne – at least not in the Sudan. I had always believed General Gordon to have been a teetotaller so what the champagne was doing there in his rooms I have no idea. I brought the wine to Kitchener in his tent and he decreed it would be drunk that night under the stars in memory of the man we had come to rescue. It turned out to be a rather embarrassing occasion. Of course, we had no means of chilling the wine and I got a good deal of chaff for, when the bottles were broached and all we officers – of whom I was the youngest and most junior – had a glass in our hand, and our chief had made a little speech, we all drank only to have to spit out the wine which, as I ought to have guessed, was filthy. Fortunately, the chief thought it was funny. He didn’t have much of a sense of humour – great man though he was – but when he did find something funny he would let himself go. On this occasion he roared with laughter, slapped me on the back and said that as a punishment he required me to drink my glass dry, which I did, and was promptly sick. I think perhaps the chief was really celebrating his safe arrival in Khartoum. It had been a most terrible campaign and we were all heartily looking forward to going home. I shall always remember the occasion: the horrible wine, the chief’s laughter and my being sick in the sand. It cemented a special relationship all we young officers had with Kitchener, but I have a feeling that poor Gordon’s ghost might have been hovering nearby quietly satisfied that we who had come too late to save him had at least come too late to enjoy his wine.’
    The Duke smiled and turned to the Bishop. ‘I suppose there is no point in soliciting a story from you, is there Cecil? I know you are not a drinker.’
    ‘Well, no, Duke, though I do remember when I was a young curate