The Adventurers

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  The Adventurers

  Jane Aiken Hodge

  About the Author

  Jane Aiken Hodge was born in Massachusetts but moved with her family to East Sussex in Britain when she was three years old. After reading English in Somerville College, Oxford, she moved to the US to undertake a second degree at Radcliffe College. While she was there, she spent time as a civil servant and worked for Time Magazine before returning to the UK to focus on her career as a novelist. In 1972, she became a British citizen. She is the daughter of the Pulitzer prize-winning poet, Conrad Aiken.

  Aiken Hodge is known for her works of historical romance. In a career spanning nearly fifty years, she published over thirty novels, exploring contemporary settings and the detective genre in her later life. She died in 2009, aged ninety-two.

  Also By Jane Aiken Hodge

  Maulever Hall

  The Adventurers

  Watch the Wall, My Darling

  Here Comes a Candle

  The Winding Stair

  Marry in Haste

  Greek Wedding

  Strangers in Company

  Shadow of a Lady

  Rebel Heiress

  Red Sky at Night Lovers’ Delight

  Last Act

  Polonaise

  First Night

  Leading Lady

  Windover

  Escapade

  Whispering

  Bride of Dreams

  Caterina

  The Purchas Family Series

  All for Love

  Judas Flowering

  Runaway Bride

  Wide is the Water

  The Lost Garden

  Fiction

  One Way to Venice

  Secret Island

  Unsafe Hands

  Susan in America

  A Death in Two Parts

  Deathline

  Non-Fiction

  Only a Novel: The Double Life of Jane Austen

  The Private World of Georgette Heyer

  Passion & Principle: Loves and Live of Regency Women

  The Adventurers

  Jane Aiken Hodge

  This edition published in 2019 by Agora Books

  First published in Great Britain in 1966 by Hodder and Stoughton Ltd

  First published in the United States in 1965 by Doubleday

  Agora Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd

  55 New Oxford Street, London WC1A 1BS

  Copyright © Jane Aiken Hodge, 1965

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Chapter One

  ‘Sonia! Sonia!’ Miss Barrymore’s voice came faintly from somewhere inside the castle. Then, nearer, ‘It’s time for your music lesson.’

  Sonia von Hugel took no notice. She had found where the castle cat had hidden her kittens, and now, sitting on the floor of a turret above the stables, she was stroking one on her lap while the other purred into her ear. She was tired of music lessons, tired of being cooped up indoors. The sun was shining, the first time for weeks, and her father had forbidden her to leave the castle. A battle had been fought, a few days ago, somewhere beyond the mountains, at Leipzig. They had heard the guns for two days and then the rumours had begun to trickle in. At first, Father had been incredulous. That Napoleon might have been beaten at last was surely too good to be true. Father had double cause to hate the French Emperor. The loss of his estates in Hanover had been bad enough, and then, on top of that, had come his son’s death. Compelled to join Napoleon’s army, Frederic had set off gaily to help him add Russia to his conquests. There had been one letter, from Moscow, then—nothing.

  Sonia shivered and then caught the kitten as it fell off her shoulder. That had been almost a year ago now. Poor Frederic—and poor Father. Frederic had been just like him, a sportsman, unromantic, short-tempered, and often impatient with what he called her crotchets. Only he called them launen since, like his father, he thought English a ridiculous language. Only Sonia, faithful to her mother’s memory, spoke it by preference. ‘One thinks so much more tidily in English,’ Miss Barrymore had said once, and she found it true.

  ‘Sonia! Sonia!’ Her governess’s voice chimed in with her thoughts, and she moved forward to peer down through the turret’s narrow windows into the castle courtyard. Barry was standing at the main doorway, autumn sunshine glinting in her red-brown hair. Looking down at her, Sonia experienced a little shock of surprise. Dear old Barry looked actually handsome today, despite that ridiculous coronet of plaits. Old? Well, thirty at least, and to Sonia, at seventeen, anyone over twenty-one was old. And yet, as Barry stood there, her neat figure immaculate as usual in grey alpaca, Sonia felt a sudden qualm of—could it be envy?—and found her hand instinctively smoothing out her own crumpled dress.

  ‘Sonia, where are you?’ Miss Barrymore called again, and then, ‘I can’t find her anywhere, Baron.’ Speaking to Sonia’s father, who had just emerged from the saddle room, she dropped naturally into her fluent German.

  He shrugged broad, leather-clad shoulders. ‘Fine-lady airs again. Thinks herself too old for lessons, I suppose, now she’s seventeen. But she’s not left the castle. I told the gatekeeper to see she didn’t. If the French are really in retreat, this is no time for her to be roaming about the countryside.’

  ‘You think there is danger?’

  ‘No, no; nonsense. Nothing of the kind. They’ve never come up this high before. Why should they now?’

  ‘But if the French are in full retreat—and as disorganised as rumour says—may not anything happen? You will think me foolish, but I really believe I should feel happier if you were to post one of the men in the pass to warn us of any danger.’

  ‘Afraid, Miss Barrymore?’

  ‘Sometimes, it is sensible to be afraid, Baron.’

  ‘For women, perhaps. As for me, I only wish some of the murdering ruffians would come this way. I have a score to settle with them.’ His hand lingered for a moment on the butt of the gun in his belt.

  Her cool grey eyes took him in, from leather jacket to shabby boots. ‘That is precisely what I am afraid of. There are three men in the castle, and half a dozen women. You have no scouts out, no preparations for defence, and you talk of settling a score with the French.’ She turned away from him. ‘But as you say, there is no reason why they should come this way. I just wish I knew where that child was.’ And raising her voice she called once more, in English. ‘Sonia, where are you, child? You are making me anxious.’

  Sonia put down the kittens. Her father could shout and bully forever, but she was too fond of Barry to let her worry. She bent forward to call down from the little window, then hesitated. Its entrance masked by hay in the stable below, this was too good a hiding place to be given away so lightly. She was shaking dust from her skirts before climbing down the tiny, twisting stair when a new noise brought her hurrying back to the window. Something was happening outside the closed main gate of the castle. There were shouts and then, sudden and horrifying in the still autumn air, a shot. She could see nothing, and neither could Miss Barrymore or Father who stood, as if petrified, gazing at each other on the steps below the castle door.

  Now there came a loud knocking on the main gate, and shouts from outside, in French and then in halting German: ‘Open up! Open up in there!’

  Father and Miss Barrymore still stood immobile, starin
g at each other. Then, ‘Best open to them,’ said Barry.

  ‘Never!’ Father was looking to the priming of his gun.

  ‘Madness!’ She saw what he was doing. ‘Your only chance, now, is to temporise with them.’

  ‘I! Temporise! With the French! You do not know what you are saying. My son—’ The rest of it was drowned by a fresh outburst of knocking and shouts from outside.

  ‘Open up!’ German again. ‘Or we will break the gate down, and it will be the worse for you. Hurry, there. Your gatekeeper is in need of—attention.’

  And then a little, horrid pause. ‘There must be a great many of them,’ said Miss Barrymore. ‘For the child’s sake, open! Do all they ask; it is the only way.’

  Father’s face was red with rage. ‘I’d rather die.’ And then, as she made a sudden dart toward the gate: ‘No you don’t.’

  Caught in his furious grip, she raised her head and shouted at the top of her voice: ‘Sonia, if you can hear me. Hide!’

  Now there was a new noise from beyond the gate. Confused shouting, some words of command that Sonia did not understand, and then, heavy and unmistakable, the crash of a heavy object against the gate. The huge bolt shuddered in its socket; the hinges creaked, but the gate held firm.

  ‘You see.’ Father had to shout against the tumult outside. ‘What did I tell you?’

  ‘You’re mad. Think of the child! There’s still time—’ Once more her words were lost in the clamour from outside.

  This time, Sonia could hear a voice counting in French: ‘One, two, three!’ And then a tremendous crash. The huge bolt had held, but the hinges of the gate, rusty with age, had yielded to the pressure from outside, and a group of French soldiers almost fell into the courtyard. Sonia caught her breath at sight of them. She had seen French infantrymen often enough during her country’s long vassalage, but never any who looked like this. Their uniforms hung in tatters; some had lost their shakos, others had wounds wrapped in blood-drenched rags, but worst of all were their faces, grimed black with powder, grizzly with unkempt hair and drawn with the fatigue of their long retreat. They seemed, as they stood for a moment, panting, on the fragments of the gate, more like animals than men.

  But discipline still prevailed among them. A sergeant pushed forward. The three chevrons on the sleeve of his shabby grey overcoat betokened good conduct. ‘You’re the owner?’ Father had never been spoken to in that tone before. ‘We need food; quickly. All the clothes you have; bandages; wine. Hurry, and we’ll forget what’s past.’

  Sonia’s hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. She had seen Father in these rages before. Once, he had killed a servant. Now he fired, as she had often seen him practice doing, from his hip. A look of astonishment transformed the sergeant’s face. He looked, in his amazement, like the child it was hard to believe he had ever been. Then, almost in slow motion, he bent double and fell to the ground.

  Sonia had heard wolves often enough, on winter nights when the snow lay thick around the castle, but the noise the French soldiers made now was, somehow, worse. Their sergeant had led them, bullied them, comforted them since the debacle of Leipzig. He had been their hope, their promise of home. Now he lay still, face down in the mud. They hardly bothered to avoid him as they moved forward, still growling that savage, incomprehensible cry, towards Father and Miss Barrymore. Barry was trying to shout something, but Father was reloading his gun. He shot once more before they overwhelmed him. Sonia buried her face in her hands and sank, shuddering, to the dusty floor of the turret.

  There were cries, then screams. Once, Sonia raised her head from her hands and gazed down to where Father and Miss Barrymore lay, very still, on the steps. As she did so, one of the youngest of the kitchenmaids ran screaming out of the main door of the castle. Three Frenchmen were following her. They caught her in the middle of the yard and dragged her into the stable below Sonia’s turret. The sounds that followed would echo in her head, she thought, till she died. At last there was quiet. The three soldiers emerged into the yard, straightening their ragged uniforms as they went. And from below, nothing. Not a sob, not a quick-drawn breath. Just silence.

  There were no more screams, either, from the castle itself, but a confused noise of shouting and singing suggested that the Frenchmen had found their way to the wine cellar. The sun still shone. It seemed incredible. The cat, one of whose kittens Sonia was convulsively clutching, emerged from the stable entrance and prowled across the courtyard to sniff indifferently at Father’s body, and then, more lengthily, at Miss Barrymore’s. How long had it been? Sonia had no idea. She was stiff and cold: tears followed each other silently down her cheeks. From time to time she bent, almost automatically, to wipe her face in the kitten’s soft and springy fur. She did not seem to be thinking at all.

  Then she stiffened, straightened up and gazed towards the castle gate. Surely that was the sound of horses’ hooves? Yes, it was louder now, and she heard a strange cry, hoarse like that of ravens: ‘Hourra! Hourra!’

  She had never seen Cossacks before, but she recognised them at once as they crowded into the castle yard over the fragments of the gate. There was no mistaking those wild figures in their loose grey cloaks and fur caps, riding small, active-looking horses and brandishing lances as they crowded round an officer, distinguished only by his small cap and green cloak. Instinctively, Sonia drew a little further back from the slit window. The French were bad enough, but mothers in the village frightened their children with stories of Cossack atrocities. Still, nothing could make any difference now to Father or Miss Barrymore or, judging by the silence, to the other inhabitants of the castle.

  The Cossack officer had seen the bodies in the corner of the courtyard and shouted an order to his men, half of whom dismounted, handed their ponies to their comrades and advanced on the castle entrance. At this moment a burst of noise echoed from the main hall. The Frenchmen were singing the ‘Marseillaise.’ Another order, and the Cossacks disappeared into the castle. A confused noise of shouting and shots followed; then two of the Frenchmen emerged into the yard, fiercely pursued by a group of Cossacks. Appalled, fascinated, unable to look away, Sonia watched them cut to pieces, there in the castle yard. She half thought that one of them had been among the three who had followed poor Gretchen, the maid, into the stable below her. But it made no difference to Gretchen.

  The rest of the dismounted Cossacks emerged from the castle door, wiping their lances on their cloaks. What now? Suppose they searched? Suppose they found her? She clutched the kitten more tightly in her lap, for comfort, and as she did so, saw its mother emerge once more from the small doorway that led to the kitchen, and sniff cautiously at her father’s body. The Cossack officer said something to one of his men, then rose in his stirrups and hurled his lance. A horrible howl, a convulsive movement, and the cat was still, pinned against the wooden door. It was the last straw. Sonia bent forward over the kitten, trying to stifle great uncontrollable sobs in its fur.

  She was lucky. In the courtyard below, the bustle of imminent departure drowned the noise she made. When she looked up at last, the bloodstained courtyard was silent and empty, save for the bodies that lay so still. Afternoon sunshine, striking across the courtyard now, made them seem if possible more horrible. Slowly, shakily, she got to her feet, tucking the kitten half consciously under her arm. Deliberately, she turned away from the window. She had seen too much already. Hard to believe that this morning she had been a girl, a child, running away from her lessons. What was she now?

  And what was she going to do? She moved like a sleepwalker across the little dusty room to the stair and climbed slowly down it. Gretchen’s body lay tumbled in the hay at the bottom. She looked away. She had been right. Nothing mattered to Gretchen any more. Avoiding the courtyard, she climbed up to her own room through the tangle of side passages and back stairs down which she had run, in mischief, this morning.

  Opening her door, she breathed a sigh of relief. Neither Frenchmen nor Cossacks had got this far in t
heir looting. The cold little room lay bare and tidy as she had left it—a lifetime ago. She moved across to open the heavy wooden wardrobe. Somewhere between here and the stables, almost without knowing it, she had come to a decision. She could not stay here. Her father’s sister, Aunt Gertrude, was the only alternative. It meant a long, cold and dangerous ride over the mountains. What else could she do? Ah, there they were. She reached to the back of the wardrobe and pulled out the suit of her brother’s clothes that she had rescued from her father’s furious holocaust after his death.

  Fortunate that Frederic had preferred the modern, loose-fitting trousers to old-fashioned, form-clinging net inexpressibles. She pulled them on, tightening them at the waist—Frederic had been a robust young man—then added his enormous sheepskin jacket and turned to the looking glass. How furious Father had been when she carried it off from Mother’s room. This was no time to be thinking of Father. The reflection in the glass was reassuring. Except for her hair. The long golden braids Father had insisted on would have to go. She fetched scissors from her workbasket. One, two! That was better. Now the tanned little face could easily have been a boy’s. Wide-set brown eyes looked back at her from the glass, remembering horror. No time for that. She found an old fur cap of Frederic’s, tucked the ragged ends of hair into it and prised up the loose board under which she kept her treasures. Not very much money, but it would have to do. She would not think about the Frenchman she had seen pull the purse from Father’s belt. Her mother’s pearls would be her independence from Aunt Gertrude. And beside them, dusty under the floorboards, lay the little gun with which Frederic had taught her to shoot before he left, laughing, for the wars. She picked it up, made sure that it was loaded and in working order, and slipped it into the big pocket of the jacket. There. A few immediate necessities in a small bag that would hang behind her saddle, and she was ready. And high time too. The light outside had changed again. It would be evening soon, and she had far enough to go. Suppose the Cossacks had found her pony, out to graze in the field behind the castle. Cross that bridge when you come to it. Worse and more immediate was the fact that now she had to cross the castle courtyard and go out the main gate. Thinking about it would only make it harder. She looked around the room. Would she ever come back? Frederic’s gauntlet gloves hid cold hands too small for the figure she intended to present. It was time to go.