In an Adventure With Napoleon (15 page)

‘Better than that,’ said the ant with a scarf. ‘You are about to meet a general of warfare yet to come. Say hello to General 2893B, from the year
1988
!’

This time the wardrobe opened and a regimented unit of black-clad figures marched in robotic unison towards the bed, humming a sinister dirge.
²⁵
At their head stood an awkward figure with a hook for a hand and tin foil on his face.

‘Hello, General 2893B,’ said Napoleon, waving. ‘I don’t know anything about you, but I have a suspicion as to what you’re going to tell me.’

General 2893B looked down at a piece of paper and spoke in a deep monotone. ‘People of earth, I am General 2893B of the future. With my mindless legions I have fought throughout the solar system, on the surface of the moon against monsters, in the gas mines of Jupiter
against robots and on the ice fields of Mercury against the Irish. I am undefeated because I have complete knowledge of all the greatest generals in history.’

‘And what do they say about me in 1988?’ asked Napoleon.

‘I had never heard of you until I was asked to appear in your dream, when I thought it was only polite to look you up. It turns out that in my time Napoleon is known for only one thing – being beaten in an election for Head of the Residents’ Association on St Helena. He lost to the greatest man we know of, the legendary Pirate Captain. You are almost forgotten, simply because your foolish pride prevented you from letting the Pirate Captain win uncontested. It’s a crying shame.’

General 2893B bowed, whispered, ‘Was that all right?’ to somebody behind him, and then squashed back inside the wardrobe with the other bits of dream.

‘So, Napoleon, to sum up, what have we learned from tonight?’ said the ant with a scarf. ‘We have seen generals from the past and future and all three have illustrated the advantages of caving in to your opposition. I hope that’s pretty clear.’

‘Oh, dream spirit, you have shown me such wondrous things,’ said Napoleon, ‘and it’s a bit much for me to take in right now. I’ll certainly bear in mind everything I have seen and I wouldn’t want you to think you’ve wasted your time. But this dream has made me strangely tired, which is odd given that I’m supposedly fast asleep.’

‘We will now depart for mysterious realms,’ said the ant with a scarf, ‘but it really is incredibly important to pay attention to these prophetic dreams. Ignore them at your peril.’ He drew the curtains and waited until Napoleon’s snores resumed. The generals clambered back out of the cupboard.

‘He’s off,’ whispered Alexander the Great. ‘Let’s get out of here before he wakes up and ruins the whole thing.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Genghis Khan, ‘just as soon as we’ve all had a chance to go through his drawers and try on his medals.’

he Pirate Captain and Napoleon stood behind a curtain at the village hall, each trying to look more relaxed than the other. Napoleon did this mainly by ostentatiously yawning, whilst the Captain pretended to be busy concentrating on the newspaper crossword.

‘So,’ said the Captain, in as blasé a voice as he could do. ‘Had any interesting dreams lately?’

Napoleon stopped yawning and nodded. ‘Do you know, as a matter of fact, Captain, I have. I dreamed that a rather overweight cowboy man was trying to persuade me to do something, though for the life of me I couldn’t work out what it was.’

‘Really? No clue at all?’ said the Captain, a little crestfallen. ‘Because I knew a fellow once who ignored his
dreams and he ended up cursed. Smelt like asparagus from that day on. Couldn’t do a thing about it. So best to take them seriously.’

‘The strange thing is,’ said Napoleon, ‘my dreams are usually very realistic. Whereas this one was like something an idiot child might have staged.’

‘Still. Those idiot children know things, don’t they? I generally do whatever they tell me.’

The Pirate Captain was about to go into more detail about the many things he had done at the behest of idiot children, but at that moment the curtain came up and the Governor called them forward onto the stage. The pirate crew were all loyally sitting in the front rows and a handful of St Helena residents were lounging at the back. A goat wandered around the hall eating the chairs. There was a ripple of polite applause as the candidates took their places behind two lecterns. Napoleon saluted the audience whilst the Pirate Captain waved with both hands and stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled.

The Governor motioned for quiet and sat down at a desk in the middle of the stage with a little stack of cards in front of him. Each card had a question on it which he had carefully copied out of an old copy of Hansard the night before, because despite repeated requests, the islanders hadn’t submitted any questions at all and the pirates seemed to have missed the point of the debate entirely and focused on queries that were either rhetorical
(‘What’s up, candidates?’) or irrelevant (‘Who is Britain’s heaviest farmer?’). The Governor shuffled the cards and everyone held their breath:

Napoleon held his breath because this was a tense moment.

The Governor held his breath because he didn’t want to accidentally blow the questions all over the floor after spending so much time getting them neatly stacked.

The Pirate Captain held his breath because he was trying to use his ‘powers’ to force a question about beard maintenance to mystically rise from the pack.

The pirates held their breath because of the ‘elephant in the room’. There wasn’t an actual elephant in the Village Hall today, but if there had been, knocking over stacks of leaflets and drinking the Pirate Captain’s tea, it would have had ‘Pirate of the Year Awards Debacle’ painted on its flanks. Holding their breath wouldn’t make the Pirate Captain any better at answering questions, but the pirates wanted to fit in.

The goat didn’t hold its breath.

The Governor cleared his throat and picked up a card. ‘Candidates, here is your first question: as Head of the Residents’ Association, how do you plan to boost St Helena’s image overseas and increase our popularity as a
tourist destination? Monsieur Bonaparte? Would you like to kick us off?’
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‘A fine question,’ said Napoleon, thumping his lectern dramatically. ‘We need to play up what this island is already famous for. So I intend to construct a theme park called Napoleon Land. The centrepiece will be a rollercoaster shaped like my hat, which will not only be a physical rollercoaster, but also an emotional one as it will reflect the ups and downs of my celebrated life to date. And you will be able to buy “Napoleon-floss,” though this will just be garlic-flavoured candyfloss.’