The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware (50 page)

Not long after they had all made themselves as comfortable as they could for the night, they were roused in a most unwelcome manner. A number of men emerged out of the darkness and endeavoured to force their way in. The Italians believed the would-be intruders to be Montenegrins, but their fierce war cries gave no certain indication of their nationality.

Roger quietly slipped out of the back door to defend Mary should any of the menacing newcomers go round to the woodshed. He found her still asleep, and she did not even wake when several shots were fired. There followed a silence that lasted for a good five minutes. Gathering from it that the attackers had been driven off, Roger returned to the room and found that the Italians were settling down again. Sergeant Balderino chaffed him for his lack of courage, but he took no umbrage, being only too glad that Mary's safety had not been imperilled, and replied with a laugh that his guests owed him protection for having given them hospitality.

The only other disturbance during the night was the terrible hacking cough of one of the men named Carlo. Towards morning it ceased and, when the others roused, he was found to be dead. After carrying his body out, they made breakfast, which Roger shared with them, off some more of his oats; then, on departing, with the optimism of their carefree natures, invited him to come to see them in Mantua when the war was over.

Only too well Roger realised how fortunate he had been in the two groups of men who had shared the farmhouse with him during the past two nights; for, had either of them been Germans, their inbred brutality being so stimulated by their hatred for the French, they might well have killed him, and Czechs, Albanians or Poles could also have proved hostile and dangerous. For the night to come the chances were against his luck continuing, so he was hoping that Mary might have recovered sufficiently to take the road again with him that day.

When he went out to her he found that she had had a good night and was much better. Her eye still pained her badly, but when he had redressed it she said she felt well enough to get up. However, when she did, had crawled out from her hiding place and started to walk, she was very unsteady on her legs, so Roger reluctantly decided that she would not for long be able to ride the horse and they must remain there for at least another day.

By then the Emperor was well over a day's march ahead, and the bulk of the Grand Army had followed him. During the morning not even an apology for a formation went by. On the previous day there had been occasional irregular squads travelling in company, or a few guns and limbers led by an officer or N.C.O., but now there were only stragglers.

Soon after ten o'clock, Roger heard distant gunfire. Hour by hour it grew nearer. Presently a body of a hundred or more men came up the road. They bore no resemblance to a company on the march, as they were no in fours or even attempting to keep step. All the same Roger realised that they were a unit and probably all that was left of a battalion. Several more groups of roughtly the same size passed at about ten-minute intervals. The were obviously the rearguard, falling back to take up the next position where the ground offered possibilities for
good defence, while other units continued to hold the line from which they had retreated.

Within an hour of entering Orcha, the gallant Ney, with his nine hundred men, had offered himself to the Emperor as Commander of the rearguard for the army. No man was better suited for the task, and Roger well remembered how persistently the Marshal had fought off the pursuing British when he had commanded Masséna's rearguard in Portugal. Napoleon had gladly accepted Ney's offer and allocated to him about a division of his best remaining troops.

But Roger did not wait to see the red-headed Marshal go by. It was certain that he would be commanding the last unit of the Grand Army to fall back, and if the Russians were not actually engaging him they would be following up within a mile of his retreating men.

Roger had already taken everything he possessed into the woodshed. Now, having put out the fire, he went there himself, crawled through the hole he had left in the wall of logs, then filled it up behind him.

Soon after he had stretched himself out beside Mary, a succession of explosions sounded quite near the farm, and he told her that a French gun must have taken up its position nearby. There followed other explosions of various intensity, as the Russians shelled the French and their cannon balls exploded. Then there came bursts of musket fire. Once a man screamed and later they heard the wild war cry of charging Cossacks. The sounds of battle continued for half an hour, then faded away in the distance.

While the fighting had continued in their immediate vicinity, they had dreaded every moment that the farm buildings might be used as a strong point, bombarded and blown to pieces. Now they could breath again. But Roger was wondering if he had not been foolish to have refrained from mounting Mary, weak as she was on the horse the
day before and joining the half-frozen scarecrows of the Grand Army who had then still been passing.

Now there was no possible hope of rejoining them. He and Mary were cut off behind the Russian front. How, in the depths of winter, with only one horse, very little food and surrounded by illimitable wastes of snow, could they hope to survive?

When the silence had continued for an hour or more Roger went out to reconnoitre. Snow was falling again, so visibility was bad. But through the ever-moving curtain of flakes he could make out blocks of infantry marching along the road at short intervals in good order. Even had he not been able to see them, he would have known them to be there from catching the sound of the melancholy Russian marching songs they were singing.

His dread now was that some body of signallers or a small battalion staff would decide to doss down in the farmhouse for the night. To have relit the fire would have drawn attention to the building, so there could be no hot meal for them that evening. Even though they found it difficult to get their teeth into the semi-frozen bacon so had to hack it in bits and suck it, they made do on some of that and small pieces of the marzipan; but Roger gave his horse as much oats as it could be persuaded to eat.

He was now anxious to get away from the farm; as, apart from the risk of remaining there for another night, it was quite probable that next day the Russians would notice it and come there, not for shelter but to chop up the building for fire-wood.

The pain in Mary's eye was now no more than a dull ache. In all other respects she was again as well as she
had been when they left Moscow. By the light of a single candle they made their preparations. It was essential to travel as light as they could, so Roger decided to leave behind his saddle and, instead, tie the sleeping bag on his horse's back for Mary to ride on. As they would be moving only at a walking pace, she would not need stirrups. Into one of the panniers he packed the rest of the bacon, the sugar, tea, marzipan and a bundle of candles, and into the other oats and hay for the horse, three and a half bottles of brandy and another that had mule's blood mixed with it. He then fastened his sword belt round Mary's waist, in order to be free of his sword.

As he did so he recalled his civilian suit and greatly regretted having parted with it when the mule had died. If they ran into a
sotnia
of Cossacks and he had been wearing it, he could have persuaded them that he was a Latvian business man, for his fur coat did not disguise the fact that he was a French officer.

Knowing that they no longer dared follow the road, and he must plod through deep snow, he would have given all the gold in his money belt for a pair of snow-shoes. But even if he could have procured a pair, what of the horse? It was far heavier than he was and its hooves would sink deep into the snow. Still, Ney and his men had not had snow-shoes when they had left the road to Krasnoye, and made their great detour round to Orcha. Perhaps the going would not be so hard as he expected.

After he had pulled away enough logs in the wall to get his horse through, he led it out and mounted Mary on it. The snow had stopped falling, but that by no means pleased him, as there was a rising sickle moon, and it gave enough light for them to be seen at some distance. But as some consolation there was no wind, and the sky was clear. So, with the help of the stars and the map that had been issued to him, he hoped to be able to keep direction. Returning for the last time to the woodshed,
he passed round the back of his neck the thick strap that joined the two panniers, so that they hung down on either side of him. Taking the bridle of the horse he led it away from the refuge that had served them so well.

As they crossed the now deserted road, Mary asked, ‘Where are we heading for?'

Roger gave a grim little laugh, ‘For the Baltic coast, my dear. From here we go due north until we strike the river Dvina, then we follow its course until it reaches the sea at Riga.'

‘How far is Riga?'

‘The better part of three hundred miles.'

‘Oh, Roger!' Mary exclaimed. ‘We shall never get that far.'

‘I think we shall,' he replied tersely. ‘That is unless we fall in with some Russian troops and they find out that under my furs I am wearing a French uniform. We have already travelled nearly twice that distance.'

‘But, darling, it will take us weeks, and our stores will give out long before we could reach Riga.'

‘My sweet, it is the only course open to us. To go east would take us deeper into Russia. To go west would bring us again into the battle zone, with the risk of being killed by one side or the other, or murdered for such supplies as we have left by some of those poor devils who are being driven mad by hunger. I tell you, Mary, that is our best chance, and I am determined not to die in this damnable country.'

The going proved easier than Roger had thought would be the case, because the intense cold froze the snow solid within a short time of it falling. The country was well wooded with larch, pine and fir trees, so there were plenty of small fallen branches to make fires with whenever they halted. The woods, too, were a god-send in enabling them to avoid other people. After the first night and day they had little to fear from the cossacks, as the
Russian army had passed on in its tireless pursuit of the enemy. But every hour or two they discerned in the distance solitary figures or groups rarely exceeding half a dozen who, although clad in the wierdest assortment of garments, they knew must be deserters. Whenever they were crossing an open space and such dubious characters came in sight, Roger quickly took the horse by the bridle, turned it and headed for the nearest wood, in which it was easy to disappear.

In order further to minimise the risk of dangerous encounters, they decided to travel mostly by night and lie up in a wood, snug in the big sleeping bag during a good part of each day. In the woods, too, they could light a fire where they halted, without its being seen from a distance and attracting unwelcome attention.

On their second day out, after having a meal they were both in the bag and Roger was just dozing off, when he was suddenly roused by a wail of misery from Mary. She was half sitting up, had got out a small mirror she carried, pushed up the bandage round her head and, for the first time, was examining her injured eye.

As Roger was unhappily aware after having dressed it each morning and night, where her eye had been there was now only a black pit containing a multi-coloured scab. Dropping the mirror, Mary burst into a passion of tears.

Wriggling up, Roger threw an arm about her shoulders and drew her to him as he said quickly, ‘Don't cry, darling. Please don't cry. I know it is a terrible misfortune for you. But it might have been worse. You're not blind. You can still see with the other one.'

‘It's not that!' she sobbed. ‘It's not that. I'm hideous, hideous; and you'll never love me any more.'

‘You absurd child.' He kissed her cold cheek. ‘Never say that again. Of course I'll go on loving you. Your face has nothing to do with your personality, and
it's that I love. Besides, when we get back to England we will have you fitted with a glass eye, and no-one will realise that you've lost one of your own. Unless … yes. Stap me, I have it! You shall have a bright blue one. The contrast to your green one will prove most mightily intriguing, and make you the toast of the town.'

His attempt to take her mind off her misfortune by a joke brought a half-smile to her cracked lips. But she could not stop crying, and it was a long time before his comforting and caresses persuaded her that her disfigurement would make no difference to his feelings for her.

That night the moon was obscured by clouds and they virtually stumbled on a little town that, from his map, Roger believed to be Zepel. If he was right they had covered twenty-five miles in a little over two days and nights, which he considered to be good going. The town was burned out and, having made a cautious reconnaissance, they reached the conclusion that it had been completely evacuated. The cold was almost petrifying, as a wind was blowing from the east, so they decided to seek shelter among the ruins. Near the far end of the single street they came upon a hovel that still had a roof, but from it moisture had dripped down during the daytime to form a curtain of icicles, two feet long, over the open doorway. Breaking them off they went inside, lit a fire and spent the remainder of the night there.

The next six days and nights were uneventful. At times they saw small towns or villages in the distance, but as soon as they entered still-inhabited country they were careful to keep well away from them. The greater part of their way lay through forests where more icicles hung like stalactites from the branches of trees made feathery and sparkling by the snow, and an utter silence reigned. Even on nights when the moon was hidden, the all-pervading snow gave them enough light to see their way without difficulty
between the trunks of the trees, and these at least broke the force of the wind that never ceased to blow across the open areas. But they found the absolute silence, broken only by the occasional howling of wolves seeking the bodies of dead deserters, eerie and oppressive, and the climate tried them sorely.