Memory of Flames

• MEMORY OF FLAMES
  
• CHAPTER 1
  
• CHAPTER 2
  
• CHAPTER 3
  
• CHAPTER 4
  
• CHAPTER 5
  
• CHAPTER 6
  
• CHAPTER 7
  
• CHAPTER 8
  
• CHAPTER 9
  
• CHAPTER 10
  
• CHAPTER 11
  
• CHAPTER 12
  
• CHAPTER 13
  
• CHAPTER 14
  
• CHAPTER 15
  
• CHAPTER 16
  
• CHAPTER 17
  
• CHAPTER 18
  
• CHAPTER 19
  
• CHAPTER 20
  
• CHAPTER 21
  
• CHAPTER 22
  
• CHAPTER 23
  
• CHAPTER 24
  
• CHAPTER 25
  
• CHAPTER 26
  
• CHAPTER 27
  
• CHAPTER 28
  
• CHAPTER 29
  
• CHAPTER 30
  
• CHAPTER 31
  
• CHAPTER 32
  
• CHAPTER 33
  
• CHAPTER 34
  
• CHAPTER 35
  
• CHAPTER 36
  
• CHAPTER 37
  
• CHAPTER 38
  
• CHAPTER 39
  
• CHAPTER 40
  
• CHAPTER 41
  
• CHAPTER 42
  
• CHAPTER 43
  
• CHAPTER 44
  
• CHAPTER 45
  
• EPILOGUE
  
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  
• COPYRIGHT
  

Praise for Armand Cabasson

‘A vivid portrayal of the Grande Armée ... worth reading’

Literary Review

‘With vivid scenes of battle and military life ... Cabasson’s atmospheric novel makes a splendid war epic ...’

Sunday Telegraph

‘Cabasson skilfully weaves an intriguing mystery into a rich
historical background.’

Mail on Sunday

ARMAND CABASSON

Translated from the French by Isabel Reid

AS he advanced along the corridor an image rose before him. It was as if each of his steps was the ratchet of a cog setting in train other movements. He had prepared his plan with the precision of a watchmaker. That night he was finally starting up the complex mechanism. He heard a noise on the stairs. Someone was coming up. He had orientated himself in the dark by feeling along the wall and had already counted four doors. Now he went back, opened the third door and hid in the bedroom that had previously belonged to the colonel’s only daughter. The room had been unoccupied since she had married. The yellowish-orange light of a candle filtered under the door before moving away. A heavy footstep, slow and uneven: Mejun, the oldest of the colonel’s servants, a retired sergeant whose leg had been shattered by an Austrian cannonball at the Battle of Marengo. He was on his way to light the fire in the study as he did every evening; but he was half an hour early. The colonel must have hurried through his supper.

Leaning against the door, the intruder steadied his nerves - he knew the layout and habits of the house inside out. Mejun went back along the corridor with no inkling that anything was amiss. The intruder slipped out of the bedroom and finally reached the study, where he hid behind the long velvet curtains. All he had to do now was wait.

But almost immediately he was drawn out of his hiding place. The hearth. The fire. The flames, like golden tongues licking the air, seemed to call to him. It was as if they recognised him and wanted to show him something. The way they bent and leapt, weaving themselves together and then separating, the dark interstices they created ... Faces with flaming skin and sooty eyes appeared in the dancing tapestry. Pain contorted their features; their mouths opened wide in silent screams. They disappeared, to be replaced by others, coming towards him. In vain they shouted for help, until their unbearable suffering robbed them of consciousness. The presences were so real ... the logs crackled and one of them split and burst into a shower of sparks. The frenzy of the victims increased. He saw nothing but the fire. It filled his thoughts; he was reduced to a human husk burning inside. The door creaked, bringing him back to reality, leaving him barely time to hide again. Footsteps. The exhausted trudge of someone determined to work for a little longer before strength failed. The wood of the desk chair groaned. Only the colonel was allowed to sit there. A pen began to scratch hastily across the paper. The old officer did not notice the intruder coming up behind him.

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL Quentin Margont stood to attention. He was wearing his uniform of the infantry of the line. Although he had been promoted two months ago to field officer of the National Guard of Paris, he had not yet received his new uniform. He had been summoned to the magnificent office in the Tuileries Palace where he now confronted two of the most celebrated figures of the Empire. Unfortunately he disliked the first and was suspicious of the second.

Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon, had accumulated a dizzying array of titles: King of Spain (or, even more impressively King of Spain and the Indies), Lieutenant-General of the Empire, Commander of the Army and the National Guard of Paris. The Emperor had entrusted him with the defence of the capital whilst he himself fought in the north-east of France. It was astonishing to think that in 1812, just before Napoleon had launched his Russian campaign at the head of an army of four hundred thousand men, the Empire had been at its zenith. Yet today, 16 March 1814, less than two years later, he was fighting in France with only seventy thousand soldiers, trying to halt the invasion of three hundred and fifty million Austrians, Hungarians, Russians, Prussians, Swedes, Hanoverians and Bavarians, split into the Army of Bohemia, the Army of Silesia, the Army of the North (part of which operated in Holland, the other part in Belgium). To say nothing of the sixty-five thousand English, Spanish and Portuguese under the Marquess of Wellington, who had just seized Bordeaux and whom Marshal Soult was trying to contain. Or of the Austrians based in Italy, who were fighting Prince Eugene de Beauharnais. How the mighty were fallen! The thought of it made Margont quite dizzy. Would it still be possible to save the ideals embodied by the Revolution? Perhaps Napoleon would be victorious against all odds. After all he had just pulled off some stupefying victories: against the Russians under Olssufiev at Champaubert on 10 February, and under Sacken at Montmirail on the nth. On the 12th he had defeated Yorck’s Prussians at Chateau-Thierry, on the 14th the

Prussians and the Russians under the indefatigable Blücher at Vauchamps, on the 17th both Wittgenstein’s Russians at Mormant and then an Austro-Bavarian force under Wrede at Nangis. And the Allies had been even more astounded when Napoleon routed the Austrians, Hungarians and Wurtembergers under the wily generalissimo Schwarzenberg.

The astonishing thing was that Joseph - whom Margont judged, perhaps a little harshly, to be incompetent - resembled the Emperor, with his round puffy face, brown eyes, high forehead and sparse black hair. He considered himself very intelligent, but he was like a mediocre copy of a painting pretending to be the original.

Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Prince de Bénévent, known as The Limping Devil’ was in every way, whether considering his qualities or his faults, the polar opposite. Brilliant, farsighted, witty, manipulative, charming, affable, obsequious, deceitful and unpredictable, he had the gift of the gab. It was rumoured that he had dared to say, after the cataclysmic outcome of the Russian campaign, ‘It’s the beginning of the end.’ The Emperor suspected him of having betrayed him on several occasions and of now plotting for the return of the Bourbons. Relations between them were so confrontational that Napoleon had referred to him to his face as ‘shit in silk stockings’.

But Talleyrand knew how to make himself indispensable. As a dignitary he was always involved in diplomatic manoeuvring, either officially or unofficially. Margont considered him an astute weathervane, adept at anticipating the changes in the wind. But it was not impossible that this devious man did, in his own way, love his country. Perhaps he was sincerely trying to help France and not just working for his own advancement, but he was doing it with the arrogance of someone who believes that only his way will work.

The sixty-year-old, in his powdered wig, was observing Margont with an intensity that belied his relaxed posture and his world-weary air.

‘At ease,’ barked Joseph. ‘Lieutenant-Colonel Margont, we have

summoned you because we need you for a secret mission.’

He was studying papers spread out on the desk as he spoke and did not look at Margont, who felt certain that he knew what those papers said about him and longed to seize them and hurl them into the fire that was inadequately heating the vast room.