The Adventurers

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  ‘And then what? Do you expect Sonia and me to play the part of camp followers for the rest of our lives?’

  ‘Nothing of the kind. For one thing, I expect to be rich in a few months. For another—I do not think you quite understand the significance of the battle that has just been fought. Barring a miracle, Napoleon is beat, ma’am. And—I think he has had his share of miracles. I was with him at Moscow—and after; and I can tell you, he’s not the man he was. He makes mistakes, now, and he can’t afford to. And worse still, they know it in France. I’m half French, and I have my sources of information. If he retreats to the Rhine—and I don’t see what else he can do—he is likely to find revolution waiting for him at home. No, I’ve no doubt about it, his days are numbered. I see no reason why the Allies should not be in Paris by Christmas, if they can only unite their counsels instead of fighting each other as hard as they do the enemy. And from there, think how much easier it will be for you to return to England.’

  ‘I see,’ she said thoughtfully. And then, with a little laugh that made her look, suddenly, much younger, ‘You are a very persuasive man, Mr Vincent’

  ‘You mean, you agree?’

  ‘Well,’ she temporised. ‘At least to this point. I will pack up Sonia’s things and my own and come with you to this inn—she has been too long alone already. It will be time enough to think again when we are safely at Allied Headquarters.’

  ‘I agree with you entirely. But—I beg you will pack as little as possible, and—how about a horse for you?’

  ‘Good gracious!’ Once again she was the wise elder. ‘Do you really expect me to come gallivanting about the country with you on horseback? The family carriage is quite unharmed in the stables, and I have already persuaded the coachman that it is our duty to go looking for Sonia. I had meant of course to go to her aunt’s, but he has had such a fright, poor man, that I don’t think he will care where he goes, so long as it’s away. Besides, he does not like Sonia’s cousin overmuch.’

  ‘I suppose the carriage actually belongs to the heir?’

  ‘I expect it does, and the horses too.’

  He laughed. ‘I can see we will deal admirably together. I am very far from being the only adventurer.’

  The night’s bad dreams had prolonged themselves into a daytime nightmare of memory, and Sonia was sitting huddled wretchedly over the inn stove when she heard a carriage draw up outside. She jumped up at once, to hide in her room—‘You’ll never get away with it in the daytime, and at close quarters,’ Vincent had warned her before he left. Then, her hand on the door, she paused, peering out through the leaded window. Surely, she knew that carriage? Vincent jumped out and turned to hand someone down. Then she was running, disguise, everything forgotten: ‘Barry! Barry!’ She threw herself into her governess’s arms. ‘You’re not dead!’ Tears, easy, relieving tears ran freely down her cheeks.

  ‘Not in the least.’ Miss Barrymore returned her embrace heartily, then held her at arm’s length to look at her. ‘Though I might well die of shock, here and now, at the spectacle you present. Back indoors with you, child, and let’s see if we can make a lady of you.’

  Charles Vincent, his arms full of boxes, shook his head gravely: ‘It will surprise me if you can,’ he said. ‘And—sadden me too. I shall miss my courageous urchin. But—before you effect your transformation, our Austrian friends are gone, I trust, Rapunzel?’

  ‘Yes, hours ago. A dispatch rider came for them. I hope it was right: I listened at the door. They have orders to report at once to Allied Headquarters at Weimar.’

  ‘Admirable urchin. You see’—to Miss Barrymore—‘my first prophecy has proved correct. The Allies are advancing already.’

  ‘And so you expect us to throw our bonnet over the windmill and follow you to Weimar.’

  ‘Well, what else can you do? You surely do not propose to wander about the countryside unescorted?’

  Sonia was looking at Miss Barrymore with huge bright eyes. ‘You mean you are not going to make me go to Aunt Gertrude?’

  ‘Do you want to?’

  ‘I’d as soon be buried alive. But I was afraid you would think it the proper thing for me to do.’

  ‘Perhaps it is, but, do you know, I cannot bring myself to like your aunt any better than you do. No, my idea, if you agree, is that we should make every effort to get to England.’

  ‘To England!’ Sonia’s eyes were larger than ever. ‘But Grandfather Delverton has never had anything to do with us.’

  ‘I know. It’s a chance to take, but I do not see how he can disown you entirely, circumstanced as you are. And—if he does, at least I shall be on my home ground. If your family fail us, I suppose we shall have to have recourse to mine.’

  ‘Have you family? You have never spoken of them.’

  ‘And you thought me sprung, fully armed, from the head of Jove? Yes, I have family from whom, it is true, I parted in anger, but that was many years ago. Who knows, they might be quite glad to see me back? And if not, we shall just have to find ourselves some genteel occupation or other.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Charles Vincent had just returned from depositing the second load of boxes in the bedroom. ‘I am a true prophet, and I tell you that by the time you reach England, you will be rich enough to snap your fingers at both your families.’

  Sonia gave a sudden little crow of pleasure. ‘You mean our plan still holds? We are to be brother and sister and make our fortune at cards? You do not object, Barry?’

  ‘I am entirely composed of objections, and you are most certainly not going to be brother and sister; I never heard of such a crackbrained scheme.’

  ‘No, no, we settled all that,’ said Vincent pacifically. ‘We are to be cousins, but we shall make our fortune just the same. I, Charles Vincent, have spoken. And by the way, I have been thinking about you, Miss Barrymore. Would you very much mind if we invented a husband for you?’

  ‘A husband?’

  ‘Yes. The more I see of you, the less convincing you strike me as likely to be in character of a chaperoning spinster aunt. And—respectability is to be our watchword, you know. Would you very much object to passing as Mrs Barrymore—a widow, I suppose.’

  ‘Taking brevet rank, like a housekeeper?’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t care…if you think it advisable…it is all madness together.’

  ‘I think it essential.’

  ‘Very well, then. You, with your fertile imagination, will doubtless be able to invent a convincing end for my late husband.’

  ‘No trouble at all. Gloriously killed, poor Mr Barrymore—I imagine you would rather not change your name—? Let’s see; you’ve been with Sonia several years, have you not? You must have married very young: a runaway match, perhaps, from the schoolroom. What’s the matter?’

  She had gone very white. ‘Nothing. Nothing at all. And then, I take it, he left me, rejoined his regiment and was killed?’

  ‘Exactly. Most gallantly, of course—you insist on the army? I had thought of Trafalgar.’

  She shrugged. ‘Oh, very well. I really think we have all run raving mad. Come along, Sonia. I can’t bear to see you looking like that for another moment. And as for your hair!’

  ‘Skirts again!’ Sonia sighed. ‘I enjoyed being a boy.’ Over her head, Miss Barrymore’s eyes met Vincent’s in a look of shared satisfaction. Convalescence had set in.

  But the journey on which they started, next morning, was enough to shake even Elizabeth Barrymore’s strong nerves. Inevitably, in their search for Allied Headquarters, they were following the line of the French retreat. It was nearly a week since the battle of Leipzig, but it would be years before this once fertile countryside recovered from its scars. Whole villages had been burned to the ground and every bridge destroyed so that they had to make several long detours to find bridges of boats. The sites where the demoralised French troops had bivouacked were marked by every possible kind of horror, and the two women soon learned to respect Charles Vincent’s orders when he rode back to the carri
age and told them not to look out of the windows. They had grown almost used to the sight of dead men and dead horses lying by the roadside, but there were others, worse, horrors from which it was best to turn away.

  The journey seemed to go on forever. There was, of course, no hope of obtaining post horses, so their own must be favoured as much as the appalling condition of the roads would allow. They met no one except a few Cossacks and other troops marching to join the Allied army, and an occasional group of French deserters or, perhaps, stragglers. In the whole countryside, life seemed to stand still, and it was with great difficulty, each night, that they contrived to persuade peasants who still had houses to allow them the use of a room. Again and again, Elizabeth Barrymore had cause to appreciate Charles Vincent’s foresight. When she had been packing up her and Sonia’s things, back at the castle, he had insisted that she devote a large portion of the available space in the carriage to supplies for the journey. Thanks to him, they could pay for a night’s shelter with what was infinitely more precious than money—food. For the looters at the castle had missed one storeroom full of half-cured hams and smoked cheeses.

  ‘I don’t care if I never see another bit of ham as long as I live,’ said Sonia petulantly as they left the half-destroyed cottage where they had spent the second night of their journey. ‘And as for the smell of camphor!’ She gave an angry shake to the handkerchief she carried.

  ‘There are worse smells.’ Charles Vincent was holding the carriage door for them, but looked over her head as he spoke and away down the burned and blackened village street to a corner where, arriving the night before, they had seen a pile of bodies, those of horses and those of men, all mixed hugger-mugger.

  ‘How can you!’ Sonia shuddered angrily and jumped into the coach. Elizabeth followed with a reproachful backward glance at Vincent. And yet, in a way, she had to confess herself relieved at the almost hostile relationship that seemed to have developed between her pupil and their protector. Well, a quick glance took in Sonia as she drooped listlessly in her corner of the carriage, it was not surprising. Their first meeting had been so romantic, melodramatically so; further association was almost bound to bring disillusionment. Sonia in her brother’s clothes might have had a certain glamor. In her own utilitarian stuff gown, with short hair straggling around her pale little face, she looked at the moment, merely pitiful. No wonder if Vincent treated her with an older brother’s casualness.

  She seemed to lose no opportunity of grumbling at him. He bore it admirably, as he did all the miseries of that grim journey, and Elizabeth, searching her heart as to her wisdom in so rashly throwing in their lot with his, had to admit to herself that everything he had done so far justified her decision. His laissez-passer from Schwartzenberg saw them safely through any encounters with Allied troops; his presence, riding beside the coach, seemed enough to scare away the demoralised groups of French stragglers they encountered. These poor creatures, without discipline, food or money were reduced to trying to sell their golden earrings for food—but mostly the peasants refused the bargain. The French army had lived off its conquests too long. The days were gone when they were hailed as liberators; now the country people’s hatred for them was such that they even risked disease by refusing to bury their dead.

  Watching one of Vincent’s encounters with a wretched little group of wounded Frenchmen, Elizabeth thought she saw money change hands. She could hardly blame Vincent for his sympathy for these rags of men, whose countryman, on the mother’s side at least, he was, but she could not help feeling a little anxious. They had pooled their slender resources before starting out on what seemed, more and more, their desperate venture and the total result had been very far from cheering. After a slight battle with herself, she raised the subject when they stopped an hour or so later to eat cold ham and rest the horses.

  ‘How much did you give those Frenchmen?’ There seemed no way of wrapping up the question.

  ‘Only a couple of dollars.’ He grinned at her ruefully, and she found herself liking him better than ever for taking the inquisition so well. ‘I know I had no right to, without consulting you, but—I served with one of them on the retreat from Moscow. I could not let them go with nothing.’

  ‘Of course not—’ But Sonia interrupted her.

  ‘You mean to tell us you gave our money to some of those murderers? What right had you!’

  ‘The right of humanity, urchin.’ His voice was gentle. Like Elizabeth, he must be remembering what she had gone through.

  ‘Humanity! What humanity do they show? I tell you, when I see them dying by the roadside, I’m glad. “There’s one less of you at least,” I tell myself.’

  ‘I think you must be forgetting, Miss von Hugel, that I am French myself.’

  The formal address, which he so seldom used, pulled her up short. ‘I—I’m sorry. I forgot. Anyway, you don’t act like a Frenchman.’

  He smiled wryly. ‘I suppose I am to take that as a compliment.’ And then, to Elizabeth: ‘Just the same, you have every right to be angry with me. It was unpardonable to make so free with our common resources. Here’—he pulled out his purse and handed it to her—‘take this and look after it for me, in case I am tempted again. And now, it is high time we were on our way. The sooner we get to Weimar and you and I start earning our keep, urchin, the better for all of us.’

  ‘But—’ Elizabeth checked herself. It would be time enough, when they got to Allied Headquarters, to raise her doubts about Vincent’s plans. She had gone along with them so far because it seemed the only thing to do, but surely, at Headquarters, some other solution of the problem would present itself. If they could sell the carriage, for instance, might it not provide funds for the journey back to England?

  That night the rain that had fallen steadily since they started turned to snow and the air became bitterly cold. Vincent, riding on ahead to a half-destroyed village, had found them one room in a cottage where, they learned, Napoleon had lodged only the week before. They slept, all three of them, fully clothed on the carriage rugs around the stove, and Sonia, waking with chattering teeth at first light, summed up the feelings of all three. ‘We can’t get to Weimar too soon for me,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll be there tonight.’ As usual, Vincent was already up and now left them alone to make what toilet they could.

  ‘Lord, I look a fright.’ Sonia was combing her hair with the help of her pocket looking glass. ‘How do you stay so tidy, Barry?’

  ‘Long hair’s a great advantage.’ Elizabeth was rebraiding her plaits, preparatory to winding them around her head in her neat coronet. ‘Never mind, darling, perhaps there will even be a hairdresser in Weimar.’

  ‘And we will rest and rest and rest, and you shall go and call on that Goethe you talk so much about, while I pay my respects to the Grand Duke. Perhaps he will ask us to dinner. After all, Father…’ She stopped and bit back tears. ‘How could I forget? Poor Father…’

  ‘Never mind, my lamb.’ Elizabeth crossed the room to put her arms around her. ‘I am glad you can forget, sometimes. And I think it is an excellent notion that you should pay your respects to the Grand Duke, even if you are in mourning. So long as you feel up to telling him about your father.’

  ‘Oh. Yes; I suppose I must.’ And then, ‘Oh, Barry, I do hope we don’t meet Cousin Franz in Weimar.’

  ‘So do I.’ Inevitably, Elizabeth remembered the carriage and Vincent’s remarks about adventurers.

  But when they reached Weimar that evening, the empty silence of its narrow winding streets told them they were too late. Vincent, who had gone to make inquiries at the main inn, came back with a rueful face to confirm this impression. ‘Headquarters moved on yesterday,’ he said. ‘To Gotha, it seems. The only good thing about it is that there is plenty of room in the inn.’

  ‘And no one to play cards with.’ You could trust Sonia in her present state to look on the dark side of things.

  ‘You could hardly expect to do so anyway, in the public rooms of an
inn.’ Once again Elizabeth felt it best to postpone the inevitable argument about Vincent’s plans.

  ‘What! You mean that I am to be cooped up in a private room!’

  ‘Of course you are, my dear child. Nor, I am sure, would Mr Vincent suggest anything else.’

  ‘I wish you would call me Charles.’ He had been following the exchange with close attention. ‘Of course you are quite right, Miss Barrymore, as always. And no need to make such faces at me, either, Rapunzel. When we establish ourselves, reputation will be our strongest card. No one must be ashamed to be seen at our house. You will have to be above gossip, my poor Rapunzel, like Caesar’s wife.’

  ‘We are to have a house?’ Sonia asked.

  ‘We shall have to. And give delicious little dinners to which the card table will be a logical conclusion. I promise you, they will pay for themselves soon enough.’

  ‘That is all very well.’ Elizabeth interposed what she thought an insuperable objection. ‘But what is to pay for the house?’

  He laughed. ‘How I wish I knew! But don’t look so gloomy, Rapunzel. Who knows what successes I may not have while you two ladies are cooped respectably up in your private room.’

  ‘It’s not fair,’ Sonia began, but he had already turned away to make their arrangements with the landlord of the inn and she had to vent her irritation on Elizabeth, who bore it as patiently as she had done all her charge’s explosions of nerves on this trying journey. It would be a long time, she thought, before Sonia recovered her normally equable temper. And no wonder.