by Iain Gale
At the foot of the stairs he waved away an offer of help from the officious butler and took his time in opening the front doors of Simpson’s house. Then, gritting his teeth, he stepped out. He had been prepared for all manner of catcalls and insults, but none came. Instead, within a few moments of setting off he felt almost at ease and found that, although his attire still seemed bizarre and must surely mark him out, hardly anyone seemed to be staring at him. Simpson had suggested, almost insisted, that he should take a carriage. Nobility and gentry did not sully their stockings with the ordure of the streets. But Steel had decided against it. He had had enough of carriages and wanted to get the lie of the land. Besides it was only a short walk from Simpson’s house to his destination. He crossed the river for the second time that day and, as he rounded the turning from the rue de Birague and entered the place Royale, he knew that he would have no trouble finding the address that Simpson had given to him.
The great square shone as bright as day with the light of four score flaming torches placed at intervals around its façades. Steel stood for a moment beneath the arcade on the south side of the square and took in the scene. Around the four faces gilded and painted carriages were depositing their contents: richly dressed members of the noblesse de robe, the cream of Parisian society. In the grand hotels which made up Paris’s most exclusive address, candlelight flickered in the windows, but one house was bathed in unparalleled light. The Hotel Camus, built originally by the secretary to Louis XIII and officially number 24 of the houses in the square, had since 1623 been occupied by successive Marshals of France. So much Steel had been told by Simpson with a wry smile before he had left. The tall building stood at the northeast corner of the square on the rue Pas de la Mule and it was to there that the crowds were now making their way across the cobbles. More burning torches had been placed directly outside the doors, and a score of liveried and bewigged servants were helping guests from their carriages.
There was a certain irony that this house should be his destination, thought Steel, for in accordance with its military tradition number 24 was currently the house of the Maréchal Duc de Boufflers. Tonight, though, Boufflers would not be their host; Steel knew that he was far from home – in Lille, to be precise, besieged by the Allied army under the man whom others knew as the Duke of Marlborough but who would for Boufflers always be plain John Churchill, his old friend and comrade-in-arms from the days when the two men had been at Maestricht fighting in another siege against the Dutch in the pay of the Sun King. Bizarre, thought Steel, how wars made strange bedfellows. No, he would not encounter the Marshal in this place tonight. But God only knew what else lay in store for him.
Bouffler’s residence had been hired for the evening to another aristocrat, a duchess of the royal line whose own house, a château, lay outside the city. Simpson, who apparently enjoyed her confidences as he did so many of the ladies of the court, had naturally been invited, and it seemed only right that he should bring along his Irish friend, returned from the wars. It occurred to Steel that he did not look quite the picture of a brave Irish mercenary, but he was sure that Simpson must have advised him correctly in his dress. Certainly, as he joined the throng of people outside the Boufflers house he did not feel out of place; indeed, his dress was positively understated compared with many of the creations on view among the men. One of them now came towards him. He recognized Simpson, powdered and bejewelled like the rest of them, clad in an exquisitely cut coat of palest blue silk. Simpson neared him, and before Steel could stop him had placed his right hand on his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek.
Steel drew back. Simpson smiled and shook his head. ‘Why, Captain Johnson. D’ye not kiss, dear boy? It is all we men do here in Paris, whatever our persuasion. Be assured.’
Sure enough, thought Steel, around him he could see men greeting each other in such a fashion. The ladies too, of course.
Simpson went on: ‘How well you improve with a bath and a change of clothes! You did take a bath?’
‘Naturally. Do you not recall our conversation?’
‘Every word, dear boy. But still, I sense that from head to toe you are still at heart a campaigning soldier. Your ballroom is the battlefield. You thrive in the mud and mire. D’you suppose that I was once thus? I imagine that I must have been. I can only conclude that I have grown soft living among civilians. Sometimes I truly wonder whether my alter ego has taken over. I am sure that I would not know what to do now at the head of a company of redcoats.’
Steel smiled. ‘Perhaps one day you’ll find out.’
‘I pray not, Captain. I am more than happy doing what I do here.’
Steel, wondering exactly what that was, stared at him. ‘Why have you had me dress like this? In these absurd clothes. To what purpose?’
Simpson stood back and smiled. ‘Yes. I say, dear boy, I have done well, haven’t I? You do look quite the beau. A beau, you know, is a Narcissus of sorts who has fallen in love with his own shadow. Look around and you will see enough of them this evening. Look at them. They hate all who do not flatter them. They scorn to condescend so low as to speak of any person beneath the dignity of a nobleman. Dukes are their cronies, from whom they derive all the secrets of the court. That, my dear captain, is why I frequent their company. And I’m very much afraid that over the years a little of it has rubbed off. I’m almost one of them. You chose well. The gold suits you. But perhaps that hat is a little de trop.’ He giggled, annoyingly.
‘You disapprove of all this?’
‘Oh no. Oh no, dear boy. You will most certainly “do”.’
‘But you haven’t answered my question. Why?’
Simpson’s face grew suddenly serious. ‘I have my methods, Captain, and my reasons. All I ask of you is that you trust me, and follow my words to the letter. This is my country. You are a stranger here. Now come.’
They walked from the main hall up a sweeping double staircase carved in pale stone and onto a landing off which rooms led to the left and right in a long enfilade lined with gilded mirrors and paintings.
Simpson took his arm. ‘Come, Captain Johnson. We’ll fortify ourselves before we make our entrance. Some wine and something to eat.’
They entered the room to the right, and Steel gasped. It was testimony to the time over the last decade he had spent in the field that he was unable to remember the last time he had seen such a display of wealth and entertainment. Beneath walls lined with gilded mirrors and paintings, table upon table lay heaped with all manner of food: a ragout of turkey, a fried head of lamb, roasted capons and partridge, salads, pork tongues, a duck with oysters, mussels, pies, artichokes, fresh peas – the variety was endless. Steel thought for a moment of his men and what they wouldn’t have given for such a spread as this, and became aware of a woman standing beside them.
‘Chéri. My dear St Colombe, you must advise me on the colour of this silk. Do you think I have made a dreadful mistake? Is it too insipid for words? Come and tell Madame de Soubise. She’s being quite contrary. She will insist that it should be crimson.’ She looked at Steel with vacuous eyes. ‘Oh, excuse me, sir. I must borrow your friend for a moment. He is the epitome of style, the only fount of advice to tout Paris.’
Simpson raised his eyebrows and looked at Steel as if to ask what he could do. ‘Duty calls. Two moments, Captain Johnson. Stay exactly where you are and talk to no one, unless you must.’
Steel watched him go and turned back to the room, before looking back towards the wall against which he had been standing which was hung with an exquisite oil painting of nymphs and shepherds at play around a statue of a calf. Steel was staring at it, luxuriating in the depth of the colour, when there was a cough from behind him.
‘I do not think that I have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance.’
It was a man’s voice, and Steel turned to see a slim face set atop a well-built frame almost his equal in height. Its features, though, were obscured behind a papier-mâché mask cast in the character of a de
vil with a hooked nose and a bursting sun above and below the eyes.
The man spoke again. ‘I am sorry, sir. As I said, I do not believe that we have been introduced.’
Steel nodded his head. ‘Captain Johnson, sir. Of Clare’s regiment of dragoons in the service of France.’
The man looked surprised and stood back to take in Steel’s dress. ‘You are a soldier?’
‘I am.’
The man gazed at him long and hard. ‘You will excuse me for saying so, but you do not look very much like a soldier, sir. Your dress, for example –’
Steel cut him short. ‘What I choose to wear while on leave is my own business, sir. And that of no one else.’
‘Indeed. But you will admit that it is hardly a soldier’s dress.’
Steel spoke without thinking and instantly regretted it. ‘Do you attempt to insult me, sir?’
‘Not in the least. I am the last person to pick a quarrel. I merely observe.’
‘Then do not observe me, sir. Or you will pay the same price as those officers who took little care to observe the reality of their situation in the late battle.’
The man froze. ‘You were at Oudenarde?’
‘I had that honour, sir.’ Hardly had the words left him than, with an awful frisson, Steel realized that his too-clever comment on observing must have made him sound like one who had been on the winning side. He attempted to compensate. ‘What I meant to say was that Marshal Vendôme did his best in an insufferable situation.’
The man smiled through his mask and Steel wondered whether he had bought the story. ‘Indeed. If only he could have done more, he might have saved so many of France’s sons.’
‘You are against this war, monsieur?’
The man shook his head. ‘I would not say that. I am against all things which cause unnecessary suffering. But be assured, monsieur, that I am in favour of all things which are right and just, and if the King declares that this is a just war then I must agree. N’est-ce pas?’
‘Quite so.’
The man continued. ‘The battle was no more than a setback, am I right? The Paris Gazette says that it was most indecisive, that not all of our forces were engaged. I think that the British attempt to make more of this than it merits. Sadly, however, for such a small affair, it has split the high command, to our peril. If Marlborough and his allies only knew into what disarray this business has plunged Louis and his generals they would march directly on Paris, that’s for sure. And that would be an end to it.’
Steel did his best to suppress a smile. Here then was the proof of his reason for being in the French capital. It was true. The French were split and ripe for surrender. He realized that he must continue the conversation. ‘So who was to blame for the defeat, do you think? Marshal Vendôme or the Duc de Burgundy?’
The man laughed, out loud this time. ‘Are you serious, Captain? Why, naturally the blame must fall on Vendôme. That at least I know to be the King’s opinion.’
‘And you, of course, hold no opinion but that of the King?’
‘Marshal Vendôme caused this catastrophe, and I have no doubt that he will suffer as a consequence. How can you doubt the guilt of a man whose own secretary had to write a letter attempting to exonerate him? Such a tissue of lies. Have you read it? It has been well copied. Every café and brothel in Paris has seen it.’
Steel shook his head. ‘I’ve seen no letter. I only know that if the French horse had not been told that the marsh was impassable then Rantzau’s Hanoverians would not have been given the opportunity to start the destruction on the left wing.’
The man looked askance. ‘The left wing? Surely you mean the right?’
Steel bit his tongue. In trying to be clever he had again outwitted himself. Of course his left at the battle, the Allied left, had been the enemy right wing. He shook his head and smiled. ‘I’m sorry, of course. I meant the right wing. But do you not agree?’
‘Sadly, I am not in a position to pass judgement. I was not on that part of the battlefield.’
Steel stared hard at the mask. ‘You were at Oudenarde too? You served in a regiment?’
‘Not in the field. I was with the staff. Naturally. We quartered at the mill, at Roygem. But where were you, Captain? Where exactly was Clare’s regiment?’
Steel was quite confounded. It was a basic slip in his cover story. He had no idea where Clare’s might have been at Oudenarde. Where in God’s name had he seen Irish red in the enemy ranks? On the left, no, he meant the right. Opposite him, anyway. Or had they been Swiss? Where was the damned Irish Brigade? Had the man been playing with him all this time? Had he seen through his disguise? Was Simpson perhaps a double agent? He hit on a solution. ‘I was attached to another regiment.’
‘Oh, really? To which unit?’
‘Lord Dorrington’s.’
‘Indeed. Yes. They fought on our left, did they not?’
Steel, unsure, decided to agree and pray he was right. ‘Indeed, sir.’
He was finally about to ask the man whom he might be when, perhaps sensing this, the other pre-empted him: ‘Naturally, being where we were, I saw little of the fight, save the glorious charge by the Prussian cavalry which did so much damage to our foot. But how sad and how stupid to use such a brave body of men in that way. Truly, I tell you, Captain, General Marlborough does not care for his soldiers.’
Steel smarted. ‘They were not British soldiers, sir, but Germans.’ He cursed silently. Again he found himself instinctively defending the wrong army, the wrong general.
‘You’re right, Captain. Perhaps I do that general a disservice. I never could work out where his loyalties lay. Whatever the case, he carried the day and then we had to leave the field. Really, Marshal Vendôme was most insolent in tone towards the Duc de Burgundy. He spoke quite out of turn.’
Steel wondered again who this man might be and was suddenly aware of the true vulnerability of his situation in an assembly where anyone might be a high-ranking French general.
The masked man suddenly pointed over his shoulder. ‘Monsieur Duroc. A word.’ He turned to Steel. ‘Here’s a man who can settle your opinion, Captain. He is the King’s chamberlain. We were speaking of Oudenarde and the Marshal’s predicament.’
The newcomer began to look concerned. He took a handkerchief from his waistcoat and dabbed at his head before speaking. ‘The King is fully aware of the gravity of the situation. Six thousand dead and wounded, nine thousand prisoners, including 800 officers, and we appear to have simply lost fifteen thousand men somewhere in Flanders.’
The masked man waved a hand to calm him. ‘There is no need to bluster, sir. We are not invaded.’
‘But we have been, as near as dammit. The Allies are at this moment scouring Artois, laying waste to every town and village, driving off the animals, burning our people from their houses, raping the women, they say, just as they did in Bavaria five years back.’
Steel felt compelled to speak. ‘They do not rape, sir. Of that I can assure you.’
‘How, sir, are you qualified to know?’
‘I was in Bavaria, sir, and there was no rape. Of that I swear to you. No death, save that caused by others in the guise of Marlborough’s men.’
He thought back to a terrible day in that extraordinary and otherwise glorious campaign when he and his men had come upon an atrocity hard to rival: a barn filled with dead civilians, done to discredit the English. They never had found the true authors of the crime, and Steel had sworn then that when they did he himself would avenge the innocent women and children of that charnel house. Remembering where he was, he wondered whether he had said too much and whether his face betrayed his emotions.
However, his companion had been further engaged by the flustered chamberlain. ‘They are barely two days’ march from us, sire. They will be here instantly.’
‘Calm yourself, Duroc. Calm yourself.’
The little man turned to Steel. ‘I tell you, Captain, Paris is on the very verge of panic. It is one thing
to lose a battle in Flanders, but it is quite another to have the enemy raping and pillaging in France itself. It’s unthinkable. Why, it’s impertinent!’
‘I assure you, sir, the British will not rape your women. I know these men. They are honourable soldiers. I have fought against them and they have treated all men well, even their enemies. They aren’t barbarians. This is a civilized war.’
The taller man laughed, almost removed his mask and then thought better of it. ‘A civilized war, Captain? How can war be civilized?’
‘We must all work to make it so, sir. What would we do if war were to become a free-for-all?’
‘In any case, you speak as an Irishman. You’re almost one of them, aren’t you?’
Steel thought on his feet, rallied all his wit. ‘I am a Jacobite, sir. I do the true King’s work, and yes, it’s true that I’ve seen my countrymen cut down by Protestant bigots among their ranks. But that is not the rule, sir.’
Steel wondered what possible interest this French nobleman could have in the behaviour of the British army and its attitude to Jacobites.
‘But you must agree, Captain, when a principle is at stake then surely no holds are barred?’
‘No, sir. Even in the greatest cause we need some restraint, some notion of justice and morality in war.’
‘Ah! I perceive that you are a man of learning as well as a fighter. You may have the look of a beau, monsieur, but you are a true savant, is that not so, Duroc?’
The smaller man smiled peevishly, while the other laughed.
