Empires of Sand

by Empires of Sand (retail) (epub)

  Instead, she fumed, she was relegated to the second tier. Instead of a noble wife she was a military wife, forced to spend her time in circles that glittered less than those to which she aspired. Therein lay yet another injustice, a bitter fact of her perpetual orbit at the second level: as the wife of a colonel she could dominate the other wives, the lesser wives, and mold their opinions for them and tend to their attitudes and actions. But as the wife of a colonel she would be forever subservient to the wife of any general, however second-rate or undeserving. That thought was simply too dreadful to bear. So one of her primary missions in life was to promote Jules, to help him think, and to do what she could to keep others out of his way as she pushed and goaded him into becoming all that she needed him to be. He had become a lieutenant colonel at the age of thirty-one, a colonel a few short years later. She required more, much more. She required it faster. Marshal of France by forty would suit her perfectly.

  Now her guests filled the great house and affirmed her standing. The party was a huge success, the drive lined with gorgeous carriages and horses, the rooms full of gorgeous people, officers in elegant uniforms, ladies with deep décolletages and elaborate coiffures and jewels, and gentlemen in their knee breeches and silk stockings and evening jackets. The whole house was alive with color and gaiety. If there was fear of the war it did not show here. Here there was only optimism and the sublime glow of self-confidence.

  Elisabeth had panicked earlier in the evening, for Henri had not yet arrived, and it was the promise of his presence that had lured some of the guests to her party. She had cut it very close, knowing how far Henri had to travel, and in fact she wasn’t at all sure he would arrive tonight. She stood greeting guests with Jules beside her, and kept looking nervously at the door and making excuses to those who inquired after him. But at last there he was, amid great commotion in the entryway as Moussa flew into his arms. There was a quieter, whispered greeting from Serena that produced a wonderful smile on his face, and then he worked through a succession of guests with Serena at his side. Count and Countess deVries passed easily through the crowd. Henri was a lean, handsome man with strong hands and thick black hair and deep blue eyes alive with intelligence and curiosity and wit. His boots were dusty, and he carried his cape on his arm, but even in traveling clothes he had a presence, a force of personality that dominated the room. At last he stood before Elisabeth, a wry smile on his face. He made a gesture that took in everything: the party and the people, the resurrected furnishings and her defiance of his customs in his absence.

  “Well, Elisabeth, I see you’ve managed to stay occupied while I’ve been away.”

  “Henri!” She smiled grandly and kissed him on the cheek, “I’m so glad you’ve arrived! I do hope you’re not too exhausted from your trip. There are so many people who can’t wait to see you!” She knew from his look that he was not really angry, that he would tolerate her tonight, and tomorrow promptly restore the house to the wretched medieval state he preferred. But no matter. This night was hers.

  “I marvel at the way you make me feel like such a welcome guest in my own home,” Henri said with a laugh.

  “But you are a welcome guest, dear Brother! Come now,” she said, taking him by the hand. “You shall have something to eat and drink, and then there are some people with whom you simply must speak.”

  “A moment, Elisabeth.” He turned toward his brother. “Hello, Jules.”

  “Henri.” Jules shook hands stiffly. His voice boomed and his handshake was like iron. He was a heavyset, muscular man. He had a square jaw and bushy mustache and heavy eyebrows over eyes that were dark and forbidding. He never relaxed, not for a moment. He stood erect as though supported by a steel rod, and walked as though in a parade. There was tension and formality and a certain pomposity in his manner, leaving his junior officers joking among themselves that “the colonel even craps standing up.”

  The military meant everything to him. He lived it, breathed it, dreamed it. He was always in deadly earnest, his every action directed toward the fulfillment of his command responsibilities. He was narrow-minded and believed absolutely in the superiority of all things French. He had been born with no sense of humor and smiled only rarely. This often put him at odds with his brother, whose admiration of things French had been tempered by his travels and whose sense of humor was intact.

  “How was Berlin?” Jules asked.

  “Indeed, Count, we are all curious!” It was General Delacroix, who emerged through the crowd with General Raspail. They were the senior officers present but dissimilar in every other way: Delacroix a big extrovert, Raspail short, slight, and frosty. Delacroix was relaxed and jovial, Raspail tightly coiled and intense. Delacroix’s hair was bushy and thick, Raspail’s parted in the middle and slicked back. Delacroix had a walrus mustache; Raspail’s was pencil-thin, highly waxed, and pointed at the tips. Jules saluted his commanding officer first and then Raspail. The eyes of Delacroix were upon the women. He returned the salute with a perfunctory wave and handed Jules his coat. Raspail quickly followed suit, adding his hat to the top of the pile. A barely perceptible frown crossed the colonel’s face. It was a brief moment of humiliation, being treated like an aide, but there was nothing to be done. He found a passing lieutenant and handed the stack to him. At the same time he diverted a butler with a tray of champagne toward the group.

  The generals made their greetings. Delacroix bowed deeply to Serena and kissed her hand. “Madame la comtesse, as always I am honored in the presence of the Saharan jewel.”

  “General.”

  Delacroix turned to Elisabeth, who blushed as their eyes met. She hoped no one noticed, and extended her hand. “I’m so glad you could come, mon général.”

  “It could hardly be otherwise, madame,” said the general with a smile. “My aide informed me of your summons. It was quite unnecessary. I would not have missed it.”

  Raspail shook hands with Henri and gave him a vacant smile. Raspail didn’t like the count. He considered Henri a frivolous vagabond without a proper sense of the obligations of nobility, a man who as a count should represent authority and order, yet seemed to disregard both. Raspail had served in the Crimea with Henri’s father, and found little similarity between the two.

  Now Raspail’s mind was on Bismarck. “You were going to tell us of Prussia.”

  Henri’s face went grim. He’d spent six weeks traveling from Moscow and on the way had passed through Prussia and finally France itself. It was clear both countries were preparing for war, and the contrasts he had seen disturbed him deeply. “Of course, General, but understand my observations were limited. I spent only two nights in Berlin. I have old friends there, but Prussian enthusiasm for French visitors is limited. I looked around as best I could. What I saw was a country urgently preparing itself for war. There were troops and munitions everywhere.”

  “There are troops and munitions everywhere in France,” said Jules.

  “Of course. I have seen them myself. But there’s a difference.”

  “And that is?”

  “The Prussians seem quite prepared. They are serious, deadly serious, while Paris seems to be having one of her parties.” Henri took in the room of revelers. “Like this one.”

  Raspail dismissed the comment with a frown and a wave of contempt. “Perhaps we can afford our parties more readily than the Hun. We are always ready for war. Just this morning the minister himself assured the emperor that we are prepared to the last gaiter button.”

  “Perhaps the minister should have another look. We are not armed like the Prussians. We are not ready like the Prussians. In Berlin, I saw the troops drilling. Their artillery was polished. Their barracks were painted. Ours are run-down, and our men are drunk.”

  “Their barracks?” The general’s voice was laced with sarcasm. “You judge them by their barracks? Their barracks will not bear arms against France! Their barracks will not fire a shot, or protect them from our infantry. Their barracks will not plan strategy or save
them from the finest army on earth.”

  “Pride will not win a war, General,” Henri said, “not against the Prussians. Or have you forgotten Sadowa?”

  It was an unpleasant reminder for anyone in the military. Half a million men, more than a thousand artillery pieces. Only eighteen days. Eighteen days for the illusion of Austrian military power to be shattered by the steel spike atop Bismarck’s helmet. France, the only power strong enough to do anything about it, had done nothing. And now Prussia was knocking at France’s door.

  One simply didn’t acknowledge such unpleasantries. A proper Frenchman mustered little but disdain for the notion that the Prussians were anything to be feared.

  “You make a grave error comparing the Austrians to the French,” said Raspail.

  “There is no error about the German armies and their armaments,” said Henri. “In Essen the factories of Krupp are working around the clock. They are not making strudel, General. They are making breech-loading cannons, thousands of them. The railroads are full to overflowing with them.”

  “I have seen their cannons,” said Raspail with a dismissive wave. “They had the arrogance to bring them to the Paris Exposition and show them off.”

  “Well, then you know they are heavier than anything we use and are quite as deadly as anything on the Continent.”

  “Like their wit?” asked Elisabeth, desperately wishing to lighten the atmosphere.

  “No, madame, like their food,” replied General Delacroix, and they all laughed.

  “Then I fear Bismarck’s table is well set,” said Henri.

  “If so, our army shall eat well, Brother,” said Jules. “We are hungry for the glory of the battlefield. We are ready to shed the blood of the regiment for the honor of France.”

  Henri stiffened. It was an old argument between them. “It is an honor you seek for yourself and for which you would pay with the lives of boys, Jules. There is no honor in this cause. There is not even a cause in this cause. We need no war with Prussia over the Spanish throne. And even if a war served a purpose here, France is not ready.”

  General Raspail replied with all the derision his voice could summon. “It is extraordinary to hear such military wisdom out of the mouth of a man who has never worn the uniform of his country.”

  Henri smiled slightly. “I do not need to wear the uniform of France, General, to see that it is made of gold and stuffed with straw.”

  Raspail turned purple with rage. The tips of his mustache quivered. With visible effort he sought to quell his fury. “You insult me, Count,” he hissed. “You insult the honor of France with your treason. If it were not for your father…”

  General Delacroix put a soothing hand on the little general’s shoulder. “I’m sure the count means nothing of the sort by his remarks, General,” he said, smiling. “It is clear he has no idea of the true balances here. But let us not fight among ourselves. Let us save it for the Hun.”

  “You asked for my observations, General,” said Henri, unruffled by the general’s outburst. “I gave them to you. I regret they do not fit with your own.”

  “The field of battle will prove you wrong,” insisted Jules. “For centuries others have doubted France’s will or her readiness. For centuries France has shown them wrong. For centuries France has shown the world she knows the art of war.”

  “That is your mistake, Jules. You practice the art. The Prussians are making it a science.”

  “Then we shall humble the Prussian with art,” said Elisabeth brightly. “And now that we have slain Bismarck and won the war, let us dispose of this topic and speak of something else.”

  * * *

  Above the party, two small voyeurs were having the time of their lives. From one end of the house to the other they crawled, slithering along a dirty wooden floor underneath the rafters, spying on the adults below. Over the years, the hidden passageways that connected the upstairs bedrooms in the Château deVries had yielded new and ever more exciting secrets to the enterprising and endlessly curious boys. Among the surprises was a series of peepholes into some of the downstairs rooms. Even the count, who had spent his own youth crawling through the spaces, had no idea some of the holes existed. They had been cleverly built to blend into the plaster molding that ran around the circumference of every ceiling in the house, and from within any room appeared to be part of the design. The ceilings were quite high throughout the house, so a person standing below them couldn’t make them out very well anyway. Painters who saw them assumed they had something to do with ventilation. But they were not part of the design, nor did they have anything to do with ventilation, for one had to lift a piece of wood from the passageway flooring above to expose them. Small finger-pulls were notched into the ends of the boards to allow them to be lifted. The holes were quite deliberate, installed by some forgotten ancestor for some unknown purpose.

  They now delighted and amused the boys, who were directly above some of the guests standing by one of the buffet tables in the dining room. They were peering at something that had held their rapt attention for a few long moments: the immense snowy white breasts of Baroness Celestine de Chabrillan, whose décolletage was so low that she seemed brazen to the other women and practically naked to the boys. The tight bodice of her dress squeezed her breasts upward and together, making them appear like two soft melons separated by a deep canyon, into which flowed a river of pearls. The baroness was engaged in conversation with a minor diplomat from the Austrian embassy, who had drunk too much champagne and could not tear his gaze from her chest.

  “What do you suppose they’re for?” whispered Moussa.

  “Jacques says you squeeze them,” said Paul. Jacques was a classmate, ten years old like they were, who seemed to know a lot more about the world than they did.

  “Yecch.” Moussa made a face in the darkness. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “I don’t know.” He thought for a moment. “They look like they’ll pop if you do.”

  “Merde,” said Moussa.

  “Jacques says you kiss them too.”

  “Jacques would kiss anything.”

  “I know. I saw him eat a locust once. He looked it straight in the eye and kissed it before he popped it down.”

  “Merde,” said Moussa again, not quite sure which prospect was less appealing, the lady or the locust. He sat up and took a small sip of champagne from the bottle they’d stolen from the kitchen. He grimaced at the taste and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. His head felt light. He passed the bottle to Paul, who remained transfixed at the hole.

  “Here,” he said. “Take another drink.” Without looking, Paul reached for the bottle. He hit it by the neck and it tipped over. He sat up so quickly that he banged his head on one of the rafters, loosing a shower of dirt into his eyes. Frantically both boys grabbed for the bottle. Together they managed to capture it, but not before it had rolled along the floor and spewed forth a great gush of foam and liquid. A small stream of champagne ran straight for the open board over the peephole. Moussa’s eyes grew wide as the liquid disappeared over the edge.

  “Quick! Stop it!” Paul stomped on the stream, and giggled. His boot splattered the champagne all around.

  “Shhhh!!!” Moussa started laughing too, but stripped off his shirt and plopped it onto the escaping stream to make a dam.

  “Got it!”

  In quiet unison the boys crouched over the hole to see what had become of their champagne. It had filled the low point in the plaster molding and spilled through one hole, and then another, making two tiny and short-lived waterfalls that plunged to the room below. One fell onto the shoe of the diplomat, who didn’t notice, the other onto the breast of the baroness, who did. A look of horror crossed her face. With a gasp she stepped back and looked up. The stream died as suddenly as it began.

  “Disgusting,” she said, and stormed off, dabbing at herself with a handkerchief and leaving the confused diplomat to his glass of champagne.

  * * *

  General Del
acroix had at last maneuvered himself into a corner of the foyer with Elisabeth. It had taken time and patience, for everyone had wanted to question him about the Prussians, and Elisabeth was the charming and gracious hostess. But at last they found themselves together, and alone.

  “You look exquisite this evening, Elisabeth,” he said.

  “Thank you.” She smiled, discreetly looking past him as she did to make certain no one was paying attention.

  “I need you,” he said.

  Elisabeth blushed. “Bernard, really, not now.”

  “Yes, now. I can’t wait. Let’s go somewhere.”

  “Please, be reasonable. There’s a party! I must attend to the guests!”

  “I’m a guest, Elisabeth.”

  “You know what I mean. My husband is here! We can meet tomorrow.”

  “I may be gone tomorrow. The emperor will declare war. There is no time, Elisabeth.” Delacroix was a head taller than Elisabeth, and as he looked down upon her he felt the irresistible stirrings of lust. She was a beautiful woman. He could smell the perfume in her long blond hair, which was piled high in elaborate curls. Her cheeks were soft and flushed, her eyes alluring and her lips full and red. She wore a tight silk dress. She was overpowering.

  “We may all be gone tomorrow, Elisabeth,” he pressed, “including Jules. You know I can help him. I want to keep helping him.” Delacroix looked over his shoulder, into the dining room, which was still packed with people. “Besides, he’s not paying any attention.”

  It was true. Jules was engrossed in conversation with another colonel. He clutched a large glass of champagne, of which he’d had too many. He would not notice anything amiss in this crush.

  It was so dangerous, so outrageous, so tempting. Elisabeth felt no sexual attraction to Delacroix, at least not in the strictest sense of the word. Yes, there was an attraction, but it was more complete than mere lust: it was the promise of power, of advancement of her cause, of the possibility of attaining all that meant anything to her in the world. Delacroix was powerful, and she was aroused by proximity to power, and that excited her sexually; and she looked at the general and her heart beat faster and she began to decide not when, but where.