Evil in a Mask (11 page)

On the seventh day his hopes were realised. The officer in charge of the prisoners informed him that an order had come for his transfer to Tilsit, where the Commander-in-Chief had his headquarters. That midday he said good-bye to his fellow prisoners, without disclosing the reason for his transfer then, with an infantry subaltern as escort, he set off in a well-equipped sleigh for the headquarters of the Russian Army.

Tilsit was on the Niemen and some thirty-odd miles from Insterburg, so it proved a long, cold drive across the still frozen plains, ameliorated only by the fact that Roger had been provided with furs and that the young officer responsible for him had taken the precaution to bring half a dozen large
brodchen
stuffed with caviare, a similar number of
apfel-strudel
with rich, flaky pastry, and a bottle of captured French cognac.

By evening they reached the larger city and, somewhat to Roger's disquiet, instead of being taken to the Palace occupied by General Bagration, he was checked in at another, larger prisoner-of-war camp.

This camp consisted of several score of hutments. In it there were confined a thousand or more French soldiers and, fenced off in a separate enclosure, quarters that housed some seventy officers. Among the latter were three with whom Roger was acquainted. They welcomed him gladly as a comrade in misfortune, but were as depressed as those he had left behind at Insterburg. They were, in fact, even more gloomy about their
prospects, as they had learned the results of the battle of Eylau.

For the first time the Emperor had there met his match in the Russians. That bloody battle had proved no victory for the French, although Napoleon had claimed it as one. But he had been enabled to do so only owing to the fact that he had retained the ground he held, whereas the more cautious Bagration, against the advice of his Generals, had withdrawn during the night. Actually, the appalling slaughter had resulted only in a draw.

Again, for fear of causing his companions unhappy envy, Roger did not disclose his hopes of shortly ending his captivity by being exchanged. But he now felt confident that on the next day he would be sent for to the General's headquarters and, anyway, informed that negotiations with regard to him were in progress.

He was disappointed in that and several days followed, during which he had to listen to the complaints of his fellow prisoners at having had to participate in this ghastly campaign, in which blizzards and lack of decent food, near-mutinous conscripts and shortage of equipment had proved a far greater tax on their morale than having to engage the enemy. Nostalgically, they longed to be back in their native France, or in the sunshine of Italy, or even in Egypt—two thousand miles from their own country and cut off from it by the British Fleet—but there at least Bonaparte's untiring activities had converted Cairo into a semblance of Paris on the Nile.

Roger had been in Tilsit for four days when the Camp Commandant assembled the officer prisoners and addressed them:

‘Messieurs,' he said. ‘The spring will shortly be upon us. Already the ice shows signs of breaking up. Your Emperor is not given to letting the grass grow beneath his feet; so we must anticipate that soon he will reopen the campaign. Naturally, my Imperial master has good hopes of defeating him. But the fortunes of war can never be foretold. General Prince Bagration has therefore decided that it would be wise to send
all the prisoners in this camp—officers and men—into central Russia. We shall do our best to ensure that you do not suffer undue hardship, but we have no transport to spare so you will be marched to your new destination in easy stages. Please prepare yourselves to start tomorrow.'

His announcement was received in unhappy silence. Everyone present knew that to protest was useless. After a moment, Roger stepped forward and said in Russian, ‘Sir, may I have a word with you in private?'

Nodding, the Commandant beckoned him outside and asked, ‘Now, what have you to say?'

Swiftly, Roger told him that at the request of Hetman Dutoff, General Bagration was arranging an exchange for him; then asked him to see the General and secure a permit for him to remain in Tilsit until the exchange had been arranged.

The Commandant shook his head. ‘I regret, Colonel, but I cannot oblige you. I have been told nothing about this proposed exchange; and today General Bagration is away, inspecting troops far to the south of Tilsit. My orders are explicit. I can make no exceptions and tomorrow, when your fellow prisoners begin their march to the north, you must march with them.'

Roger stared at the Commandant aghast. That an officer in his position should know nothing about such matters as exchanges of prisoners being arranged at headquarters was not surprising. But this order for the removal of the prisoners when General Bagration happened to be absent from Tilsit, making it impossible to get in touch with him, was a most evil stroke of fortune.

It meant that Roger's hopes of shortly regaining his freedom were completely shattered. Communications in Russia were so poor that, except between the larger cities, letters often took months to reach their destination, and the odds were that the prisoners were being sent to some place deep in the country. Having been brought from Insterburg to Tilsit seemed a certain indication that Dutoff had carried out his promise to request the General to communicate with French headquarters on Roger's behalf, and his transfer ordered in anticipation that an exchange would be agreed. But such matters could not be arranged overnight and it might be some days yet before a reply came through.

One of Napoleon's virtues was his loyalty to old friends. In fact, he was so generous in that way that he had frequently declined to punish officers who had served with him in his early campaigns, even when Fouché's secret police had produced irrefutable evidence that they were conspiring against him. At worst, he had sent them off to some distant command, as a precaution against their creating trouble for him in Paris. In consequence, Roger had no doubt whatever that, when the Emperor learned that he was alive, he would at once take steps
to ensure that ‘
le brave Breuc
' did not languish for a day longer than could be helped as a prisoner of the Russians.

But General Bagration had many other things to think about besides the exchange of prisoners; and, when he was told that Roger was no longer in Tilsit, he might quite possibly forget to do anything about him. Napoleon, too, had other things to think about and, once the spring campaign opened, he would be so fully occupied that it might be months before the thought of Roger again entered his mind. Even if Bagration did send an order for Roger's return, how long was it going to take to reach a prison camp in the depths of Russia?

These devastating imponderables having chased one another through his agitated mind, it suddenly occurred to him that, although General Bagration was absent from Tilsit, some member of his staff might know about the proposed exchange and intervene on his behalf. Promptly, he begged the Commandant to visit the headquarters and make enquiries. The Commandant, a pleasant, elderly man, at once agreed to do so.

That afternoon the officers' quarters became a scene of gloomy activity. They were all issued with haversacks, flasks of vodka, and stout boots and warmer clothes for those who needed them. While they packed their few belongings, they commiserated with one another upon this harsh blow of fate. Had they been allowed to remain at Tilsit and the Emperor achieved the defeat of the Russians, as they had all been praying that he would, that would have assured their speedy release; but if they were then hundreds of miles away in the Ukraine or perhaps up in Esthonia, their situation would be very different.

The French had no means of knowing if any of them were still alive or had died on the field of Eylau; so, should the Emperor achieve a decisive victory, it would not be possible for him to require their individual release. Therefore, should the Czar have thoughts of renewing the war when he had had time to gather a new army together, he might decide, in order to weaken his enemy, to release only a limited number of the prisoners he had taken and, unless those now at Tilsit were
among the lucky ones, that could mean indefinite captivity for them.

Roger spent agonising hours waiting to hear from the Commandant. If headquarters were already negotiating for his exchange, he could count himself as good as free; but if they were not, he feared that within the week he might be dead. The Commandant had said that the march would be made in easy stages and measures taken to see that the prisoners suffered no undue hardship. That was all very well, but since winter set in, Roger had frequently seen French troops on the march, and the grim evidence of their passing—a trail like a paper chase but, instead of paper, the bodies of men not fully recovered from recent wounds, or youngsters of poor physique weakened by semi-starvation who, exhausted, had dropped out. As there was no transport available to pick them up, they had been left to die in the gently-falling snow.

The Commandant had seemed a decent old fellow; but the officer in charge of the contingent of prisoners might prove a very different type. Roger's vivid imagination conjured up visions of Cossacks using their knouts to drive flagging stragglers on to the last gasp until they dropped. The officers might escape such brutal treatment, but his ill-mended broken ankle had left him lame and still pained him if he put his full weight on it. He greatly doubted if he could manage to walk more than three miles without collapsing. And what then? The Russians had no cause to love the French, and a Frenchman abandoned here and there along the road, to die, would not cause them the loss of one wink of sleep.

He knew, too, the sort of country they would have to march through; for he had traversed it once in the opposite derection; not actually through Tilsit, but from St. Petersburg by way of Paskov, Dvinsk, Vilna, Grodno, Warsaw and Breslau right down to Dresden—eight hundred miles of plains as flat as an ocean until one reached the Saxon capital. He had then been travelling day and night at the utmost speed that a private coach and relays of the best horses available could carry him; and, after a further five hundred miles to Paris, he had arrived half-dead from exhaustion. But at least he had been sheltered
from the weather by the coach, and able to keep himself warm under a pile of furs; whereas plodding along those interminable roads, he and his companions would be exposed to icy winds and driving blizzards.

At last dusk fell; but still he waited in vain for the Commandant either to return or send for him. As usual, at eight o'clock, an N.C.O. came to lock them in for the night. In desperation, Roger asked to be taken to the Commandant's office, but the man told him that the Commandant always slept put at his own
datcha
a mile or more away, so would not be available until the next morning.

During the years, Roger had been in many tight corners and had spent many anxious nights, but he could not recall one in which he had not at least managed to doze for an hour or two. Strive as he might to make his mind a blank, he could not sleep a wink. To fall asleep from gradually creeping cold was said to be one of the easiest deaths, and it was not fear of that which kept him tossing and turning. It was intense resentment at the injustice of his having escaped such a fate on the field of Eylau, and the still worse one of being shot at Znamensk, only now, when all had seemed set fair for him, to be condemned by his lameness as one of the many who must inevitably fall by the wayside on the terrible march to the north.

When morning came, the bugle call roused the prisoners at the usual hour. Having freshened themselves up as well as they could and been given a hot meal, they got their things together expecting shortly to be ordered out to the parade ground; but they were kept uneasily hanging about until past ten o'clock.

At length the order came, and they lined up outside, to answer the daily roll call. The Commandant than appeared and walked straight towards Roger. More haggard than ever from his sleepless night, Roger took a pace forward and saluted, then held his breath, hope surging up in him that at this eleventh hour he was to be reprieved. Brushing up his fine moustache, the elderly officer said:

‘I thought there was a chance that by this morning General
Bagration might have returned from his tour of inspection, so I did not go to his headquarters until half an hour ago. I am sorry to tell you that he is not yet back, and the principal officers of his staff went with him. So no one knows anything of this proposed exchange you told me about; and I have no alternative but to send you north with the others.'

With an effort Roger rallied himself from this final dashing of his hopes, to thank the Commandant for the trouble he had taken; then fell back in line with his companions.

Led and flanked by a mounted guard of Cossacks, the long column of prisoners left by the main gate of the cantonment, the seventy-odd officers leading. Marching erect and in step to demonstrate their good discipline, they were taken through the principal street of the city, watched by a curious crowd. As they approached the central square, they realised why their departure had been delayed until mid-morning. A cluster of officers in brilliant uniforms were sitting their horses there, to watch them pass. Evidently the General commanding in Bagration's absence had decided to inspect them at that hour.

As the head of the column came level with the group of mounted officers, a command rang out, ‘Eyes right.' Roger automatically obeyed the order. Suddenly his lacklustre glance became alive with astonishment. Two yards in front of the main group, sitting a fine bay horse, was a man who looked to be about thirty, wearing a plain uniform with a single star on his chest. It was the Czar Alexander.

For a moment Roger was completely nonplussed. He had been presented to the Czar in 1801. But that was six years ago. Could a monarch be expected to remember one of the many hundred people whom he had received at his Court? Was it even possible to get to and speak to him without being killed by one of the Cossacks riding alongside the column? But death lay waiting on the frozen road to the north.