The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware (6 page)

As he prepared to leave her, she suddenly thought of the crystal ball that she had brought with her jewels, and insisted that he should remain while she looked into it, in an endeavour to see what the future held for him. Getting it out, she set it up on a small table. They sat down in chairs on either side of it, and held each other's hands while she gazed into the smooth, shining sphere.

For a time they sat perfectly still and remained absolutely silent, while Georgina concentrated. At length, in her sight the ball misted over. The mist dissolved into slowly whirling wisps, then figures appeared in it.

Her big, dark eyes widened and she gave a sudden gasp of dismay. ‘Oh, Roger, I see you in a cell and you are not in uniform, but … but in prisoner's clothes. A man is speaking to you. He is a parson … but not a Frenchman. My psychic sense tells me that this place is not France. You are in Germany and … oh, God! Can it be that you are in a condemned cell and … and being prepared to go to your death?'

Pushing the crystal from her, she burst into a flood of tears. Roger did his utmost to comfort her, but his efforts were of no avail. When she had become a little calmer, she begged him not to go to the Tuileries, but to leave her in Talleyrand's care and seek safety in immediate flight. Knowing that Georgina's predictions were rarely
wrong, he was greatly tempted to agree; but he hesitated because he knew that if he failed to report he would have burnt his boats. While he was still trying desperately to make up his mind which course to adopt, there came a knock at the door.

Roger opened it to find Maître Blanchard standing in the passage. The landlord bowed, ‘I regret to disturb you,
Monsieur le Colonel
, but there is an officer below. He has a carriage waiting, and he says he has been sent to fetch you because the Emperor requires your presence.'

With a nod Roger closed the door and, giving a pale smile, turned back to Georgina, Taking her in his arms, he said softly, ‘There is no escaping fate, dear love, and it looks as though I have tempted it once too often. But I beg you not to despair. Maybe I'll cheat it once again. And now, before I go to meet whatever is in store for me, I pray you grant me a boon. It is something that beyond all else will inspire me to fight death. Do I succeed in surviving this peril and get safely back to England, will you marry me?'

The tears streaming down her lovely cheeks, she nodded. ‘Roger, my own. How could I possibly refuse you? I have been the veriest fool to reject you for so long.'

Ten minutes later he had joined the officer who had been sent for him, and was on his way to the Tuileries.

La Belle Etoile
lay in the Rue de I'Arbre Sec, which was in the oldest part of Paris, to the east of the Louvre. The streets there were narrow, with the wood-framed upper storeys of the houses projecting beyond the gutters. There were no pavements, and the cobbled ways were a seething mass of people, dashing beneath horses' heads or squeezing themselves against the walls to make way for drays and coaches, which could proceed only at a foot pace and were frequently brought to a halt.

It took the carriage in which Roger sat with his escort nearly a quarter of an hour to reach the Place du Louvre; but, having crossed it, they were able to drive at a better pace down the broader thoroughfare that ran alongside the Palace and, not long since, renamed the Rue de Rivoli in honour of Napoleon's victory.

Beyond the Louvre lay the big garden where, on the terrible 10th August 1791, the first scene of the Terror had been enacted by the massacre of Louis XVI's Swiss Guard. Turning left into it, the carriage pulled up in front of the Palais de Tuileries. Two minutes later, Roger was mounting the splendid grand staircase, up which he had often so gaily gone to participate in magnificent fêtes and Imperial ceremonies.

The fact that he had not been asked to surrender his sword and so was not actually under arrest, caused him
some relief; but he was far from taking that as a sign that he had nothing to fear. At the door of the big antechamber on the first floor, his escort, with whom he had exchanged no more than a courteous greeting, handed him over to the Chamberlain-in-Waiting, and left him.

In the lofty white and gold salon, a number of people, mostly officers, were sitting about or talking in small groups. Roger knew a number of them, but had too much on his mind to wish to enter on idle conversation; so, after nodding to a few acquaintances, he sat down on a
fauteuil
at the far end of the room.

He had not been there long when Duroc, Marshal of the Emperor's Palaces and Camps, came into the room to speak to the big, black-bearded General Montbrun who, with Lasalle, St. Croix and Colbert was, after Murat, one of Napoleon's four finest cavalry leaders.

The Marshal was one of Roger's oldest friends. Getting up, he crossed the room toward him. When Duroc had finished talking to the General, he turned, raised his eyebrows and exclaimed with pleasure:

‘How good to see you,
mon cher ami
. I had no idea that you were in Paris.'

‘You surprise me,' Roger replied. ‘I got back only yesterday. But the Emperor has sent for me, and I felt certain you would be able to inform me of the reason.'

‘No. He has made no mention of you to me.'

‘What sort of mood is he in today?'

‘There has been nothing so far to put him out of temper. But he is, of course, as busy as usual; so it will probably be an hour or two before he sees you.'

‘I suppose he and Berthier are hard at it making plans to put an end to the trouble in Spain?

‘Oh, no. He is not worrying himself on that score. He still regards it as no more than risings here and there by ill-armed rabbles, stiffened by an English army of no great size. It now looks as though a peace with Austria
will soon be signed. Then he'll be able to withdraw his legions and send an army of a hundred thousand men to clean up the Peninsula. But you must forgive me now, as I have much to do. Unless he sends you off on some mission, we must agree a night to dine together.'

When Roger returned to his chair, he was in two minds whether or not to be pleased that a long wait lay ahead of him. On the one hand he was anxious to get his audience over, and so learn the worst; on the other he had had little time to think out how he could most effectively use the forged letter, and the delay would give him a chance to do so.

He had been pondering the matter for three-quarters of an hour when Marshal Brune came in and took a seat near him. Brune was the son of a lawyer: a well educated man with literary pretensions, who prided himself particularly on his poetry; but it was so indifferent that he had had to buy a printing press to get it printed. Like Lannes, Augereau and Bernadotte, he regretted the ending of government by the people, so was not well regarded by Napoleon. Unlike those Marshals, he had little ability as a soldier, and his only claim to military fame had been in 1799 when Bonaparte was in Egypt.

Bonaparte's absence had led to the loss of Italy, and France had been threatened with invasion from both the east and north. Masséna had held the bastion of Switzerland and won undying fame by defeating the Russians under the redoubtable Suvarov; while Brune had been despatched to repulse an English army that had landed in Holland. It had been commanded by the hopelessly inefficient Duke of York, and at Alkmaar Brune had compelled him to surrender. But every General knew that, given sufficient troops, any fool could have done that.

Nevertheless, the public had acclaimed him a hero, so Napoleon had thought it politic to include him in the original creation of Marshals; but there his elevation
had stopped short. When the other Marshals, with the exception of Jourdan, Serurier and Perignon, had been made Dukes, Brune had received no title. Many people believed that this omission was due to his having, while Governor of Hamburg, gravely offended Napoleon by referring to himself as a Marshal of France, instead of a Marshal of the Empire. In recent years he had been employed mainly on administrative duties.

Greeting Roger pleasantly, he remarked anxiously, ‘I would I could guess why our master has sent for me. I hope to God it is not to despatch me with a corps into Spain.'

‘Indeed,' Roger replied noncommittally, still occupied by his own uneasy forebodings. ‘I would have thought that after all this time you would have welcomed a command in the field.'

Brune passed his hand over his tall, bald forehead. ‘I would; but not in Spain. The war there is not war as we understand it. Every hand there is against us. Rather than let us buy their food and fodder, the peasants burn them. Even the children are used to carry intelligence to the English, so that General Wellesley is kept informed of our every move, which makes it impossible for us ever to take him by surprise. Our armies are isolated, each hundreds of miles from the others, and separated by countless thousands of murderous brigands. They take no prisoners. Instead, they flay or roast alive any Frenchman they can catch. The women are as bad as the men, and at times pretend friendliness in order to poison our troops. It is certain death for fewer than a score of our men to venture a few miles from their camps. Do you know, if one General wishes to send a message to another, he now has to provide his courier with an escort of two hundred horse to make certain of his reaching his destination?'

Roger nodded. ‘How awful for our people. I had not realised that things were quite so bad as that. But I gather
that Austria is on the verge of agreeing a peace. Once that is signed, the Emperor will be able to send a great army into Spain and subdue it.'

‘You think so? Well, perhaps you are right, but I doubt it. No-one would dispute his genius. I tell you, though, the war there is utterly unlike those he has been accustomed to waging. He has always relied for his victories on skilful combinations with each unit reaching its appointed place on time before the opening of a battle. To do so in Spain is an impossibility. That clever little devil, Berthier, can pore over his maps and get out schedules of march till his great head bursts like a pricked balloon; but it will be all to no purpose, because Spain is cut up by a dozen ranges of high mountains, and there are no roads by which guns and baggage trains can cross them.'

Having been in Spain himself on several occasions, Roger knew that the tall, gloomy Marshal was right, and that even Napoleon would have to surpass himself to subdue all resistance in the Peninsula. They talked on for a while about the state of Europe generally, until Brune was summoned to the presence. Roger sat on for another hour; then, at last, he in turn was called on to face the unpredictable Corsican.

A corporal of the Old Guard stood rigidly on either side of the tall, gilded, double doors. The Chamberlain-in-Waiting tapped sharply on the parquet with his white wand of office; two footmen in liveries bespangled with golden bees and eagles threw the doors open and, as Roger was announced, he advanced into the great room, his head held high, his befeathered hat under his arm.

At the far end, the Emperor was pacing slowly to and fro, his hands clasped behind his back, his big head thrust a little forward. He was dressed, as usual, in the white and green uniform of the Guides, and presented a very different figure from that when Roger had first met him at the
siege of Toulon. Then, he had been a lean-faced scraggy fellow, with long, untidy hair, wearing a shabby uniform, who appeared hardly more than a youth and was remarkable only for his aggressive jaw and dark, flashing eyes. Now he looked much older than his age. He was scrupulously clean, and his hair was cut short. Both his unnaturally pallid face and his body had filled out. He had become corpulent and stooped a little when he was not consciously holding himself erect in public. His powerful jaw remained his most prominent feature, and his fine eyes held their old intensity, as he suddenly turned his head and snapped at Roger:

‘Well, Monsieur Casanova Breuc! What have you to say for yourself?'

Roger had already bowed three times as he crossed the room. Smiling, he bowed again. ‘Nothing, Your Imperial Majesty, except that I am happy to have been received again into your august presence.'

‘Ha! As smooth-tongued as ever, eh! But this time your honeyed words will not save you. You have indulged in your eternal pursuit of women once too often.'

For years past Napoleon's constant infidelities to Josephine had been notorious; so Roger said amiably, ‘It is a pleasure, Sire, in which I have endeavoured to emulate you.'

Napoleon's broad forehead creased in a frown. ‘You impudent rascal! How dare you compare your licentiousness with my occasional peccadilloes? I am a man apart, and carrying the burden of Empire, have every right to seek such relaxation.'

‘By “endeavour”, Sire, I meant only to pay you a compliment. I have to exert myself mightily to succeed with women; where it needs only a glance from Your Majesty for them to swoon with delight and fall into your arms.'

‘Enough of this! To obtain your ends by murder places you beyond the pale.'

‘Murder!' Roger exclaimed in feigned surprise. ‘What mean you, Sire? I have done no murder.'

‘Liar! Augereau was here this forenoon and told me all. In order that you could make off with the Baron von Haugwitz's wife, you killed him; and your own wife into the bargain.'

‘They met their deaths by accident, Sire, although I'll admit that I was responsible for bringing that about. As for the Baron's wife, she is an old friend of mine, and the least I could do was to escort her away from the scene of the tragedy, lest she be accused of having had a hand in it.'

‘You admit then that you brought about their deaths?'

‘I do. But you must know me well enough to be certain that never would I have done such a thing had it not been in your service.'

‘Ha! The same old plea that you have so often made to excuse your wild escapades and neglect of your duties. I'll hear no more.'