Scandal and Secrets

by Christopher Hoare

  He decided to explore for other roads out of the village. The road he had been on was the shortest route north, and as far as he knew, north was the only place where cannons were firing. The south roads were empty, he decided, but then saw horsemen galloping toward him on the lesser. He pulled back to the church and found a grassy spot with some tree cover to watch from.

  The horsemen were definitely Russians. They drew rein near the church and started arguing. One of them split the little party into two with a great deal of shouting in Russian and sent one of them up the road he had arrived on. Bond rode out from his concealment and called out in the only Russian that came to mind. “General Sacken,” and pointed up the road.

  They all turned and regarded him suspiciously.

  “The Tsar,” he said, pointing down the road they had galloped up and patting his dispatch case to show them he was a staff officer.

  The senior one shook his head. “No. Napoleon!”

  Bond pointed to the other south road.

  The same answer. “No. Napoleon!”

  Damn, the French must be advancing and it seemed they were coming his way. He saluted the Russians and turned his horse toward the lesser of the roads leading north. If Napoleon was moving north to reinforce MacDonald―he had better get off the roads they were using.

  After many hours, the road Bond followed ran through a forest, and as it grew dark he knew he needed to find a refuge for the night. Nighttime was when a nervous sentry might be expected to shoot first.

  There had been a few farms before the forest grew thicker, but now he might expect nothing. Foresters lived in villages and what he remembered about this area was that it had none until he reached the Paris road. The Paris road would be equally dangerous. He should have gone east to reach the rest of Sacken’s positions, but except for the one the dragoons took, all roads could have led to Napoleon.

  He slowed his mount’s pace as the light faded. If he could find a track leading off the road—any track—he should take it. Even if he had to sleep under a bush.

  He almost missed one, so insignificant it seemed. He reined in the horse and turned around to peer down at the ruts. He saw one recent track. In all probability it led nowhere, but nowhere might suit him well tonight.

  He rode even more slowly as he negotiated the track, dodging low branches that might knock him out of the saddle at a faster pace. It probably led to a clearing where the foresters had cut trees. Yes, definitely a clearing. The sky brightened ahead.

  He turned a corner and gaped in surprise. Yes, there was a clearing, and a house stood in it―a stone built house with the remains of a ruined circular tower beside it. He reined in the horse while he looked things over. This place was almost a small chateau, and the owners may well be armed and hostile to vagrants in the night.

  He dismounted and walked the horse closer while he looked at the building―it could be a ruin, like the tower. No, there was a faint glimmer of candle-light in one window. Even so, he might be wiser to find a bed in the tower and not disturb the occupants until morning.

  He led the horse over to the tower, which had once had a walkway joining the house, halfway up. The house had been built beside this very old tower, but that did not mean he could not use it for the night. He pushed open the wooden door to look in. Half the ceiling and one wall had fallen, letting the last of the evening light in. As he might have guessed from the smell, it had been in use as a stable quite recently. He led the horse in and tied him to an iron hook.

  He stood looking around while he still had some light. A very rickety staircase led up to a straw rack. It looked as if there was enough dry straw to sleep on. He found enough beside the stair to tie into a bundle for his horse to chew on. “Sorry fellow, I’ll find you some grass in the morning.”

  He debated getting some of his food out of the saddlebag but decided it would be better kept until morning. He gingerly climbed the staircase and tiptoed across to the straw.

  The whole damned floor caved in.

  “Ahhgh!”

  He almost landed on the animal’s head, and very naturally it reared and kicked out. “Ouch, you stupid beast. You’ve broken my damned leg.”

  The horse still tried to back away, reared and snorted. He crawled away on hands and knees, reached the stairs and hung onto them. A pain lanced up his injured leg. He tried to stand. The leg would not take his weight. Now what was he going to do? How could he ride anywhere in the morning?

  The tower door opened. Someone stood in the opening, a lantern in one hand and a very large horse pistol in the other.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  The Owner of the Chateau

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?” The voice was a woman’s, the language French, and the horse pistol pointed at his head with nary a tremor.

  “I was looking for a place to sleep,” Bond said. “Your straw rack collapsed, and I think I have broken my leg.”

  “Let me see. Move the leg.” She came no closer but pointed the lantern lower.

  He winced as he tried to raise the leg. It would not move more than six inches.

  “It is not broken if you can move it. A man is like a horse, in that.”

  Bond did not like her comparing him to a horse. “Will you help me up, then? I cannot lay here all night.”

  “I do not see why not. You are less trouble on your backside.” She took three steps closer. “Are there more of you in the vicinity?”

  “I am alone. That is why I looked for a place distant from the soldiers.”

  “Whose soldiers?”

  Bond hesitated. This might be where trouble started. If he owned to hiding from French soldiers she would know him for an enemy. On the other hand, if he pretended he did not know whose soldiers he hid from he would present himself as an idiot.

  “Whose soldiers do you fear, Madame?”

  She laughed. “I am not hiding from soldiers. You are.”

  “Are you sure? Why are you in this chateau so far from civilisation?”

  “This is a hunting lodge, not a chateau. It used to belong to my father. Now I use it so that the police may forget me.”

  “Fouché’s police and spies are everywhere. I too have had dealings with him. But how do you know I am not one of them?”

  “Your voice betrays you. You speak French well, but it sounds very English. Tell me whose soldiers are moving this night, Mr. Englishman.”

  “The Russians I met warned me that Napoleon was marching north. He goes to rescue the corps of Marshal MacDonald from Field Marshal Blücher. You are interested in military matters, Madame?”

  “Who is not, when three nations come to visit?”

  “A good point. And on the topic of points, would you mind turning that pistol away from my head?”

  She came three steps closer and seated herself on the second riser of the staircase. The pistol was now aimed at his belly. “Since you have come to visit, would you have a name?”

  “Bond. Lord Julian Bond, the heir to the Marquess of Tiverton. Do you have some familiarity with England, Madame?”

  “My parents took me there as émigrés when I was a young girl.”

  “But you did not stay.”

  “My husband thought he had a very good introduction to someone who might help him recover some of our French property.”

  “And did he?”

  “It turned out that he only had an introduction to the guillotine.”

  “Ah, an introduction too many fine men have had. Please accept my most sincere condolences, Madame.”

  “It is not madame, it is countess. The Countess Marie-Sophie de Esternay.”

  Bond made a gallant attempt to bow while sitting down. “Very pleased to meet you, My Lady. I assume you are not alone here.”

  “With my children’s nanny―who once was mine―and a man-servant who has not returned from a journey to Sézanne to buy food.”

  “And your children?”

  “My daughter Sophia and my son Hugh-Frederick.
I suppose I had better invite you to join us in the hunting lodge, My Lord, but we are down to our last pot of gruel, and I will have to call Agnes to help us assist you across the courtyard.”

  “It is much more than I was expecting for the night, My Lady. I believe I can assist with the food. I have a fresh loaf and cheese in my saddlebags. I was on my way to find Marshal Schwarzenberg’s army near Troyes this evening.”

  Bond awoke in the lodge’s drawing room in the morning with four young eyes assessing him. Their mother had thought it best that he sleep on a chaise longue on the ground floor, since he was both a stranger and crippled enough that he was unable to climb stairs.

  “Are you a soldier?” the boy asked. “Where is your sabre?”

  “I am a staff officer, not a Chasseur, Sir. Where is yours?”

  The boy’s eyes narrowed. “My father’s sabre and pistol are upstairs. Agnes says I am too small to use them, but when I see Napoleon I will use them to kill him.”

  The girl, perhaps eight, regarded her brother disdainfully. “Napoleon killed our father,” she said. “My brother is too young to avenge our father but I will take the pistol and shoot him.”

  Their mother appeared in the doorway. “Children, out. Report to Agnes in the kitchen. I am sorry for that,” she said as they scurried off. “They do not often see a stranger these days.”

  “Oh, I do not mind them. I like to see children about the place.”

  “You have children?”

  “Hmm.” Something impelled him to take her into his confidence. “I’m not sure I have a wife these days.”

  Her eyes widened but she waited for him to explain.

  “I married a commoner, almost a year ago, a very clever young woman whose father is an industrialist,” he said. “My father disapproved of the marriage from the start.” The image of the Old Man and his actions stuck in his craw. “The last letter I received from him told me that he had found an irregularity in our marriage and was applying that the bishop annul it.”

  “Oh, how terrible―for the young woman more than you.”

  “Yes, this last year has been a terrible trial for Roberta. I wrote suggesting we repeat our vows when I get back to Britain, and she answered that she was not in favour of that.” If only he had been able to speak with her this summer. “She regards our marriage as a mistake.”

  “Were you engaged long?”

  “Not at all. We married so that she might accompany me on a duty, one that she had more knowledge of than me.”

  “It certainly sounds a mistake. What sort of duty?”

  “I cannot speak more of it . . . Yes, I was blind not to see what I was doing to her. Even Elise gave me a good tongue lashing the last time she had the opportunity.”

  “Elise?”

  “Another agent of mine.”

  “It sounds as if you collect women agents. Does that make you feel powerful?”

  “It makes me feel like some sort of cad right now.” He did not mean that, but how else would it sound to this clever woman? Damn, but he had blown everything he had tried in this marriage. “I do not know how to make amends to Roberta.”

  “I would suggest that both you and your father need to do that.”

  The manservant, Armand, arrived that afternoon with the dilapidated pony and cart carrying a very meagre load of flour and vegetables. The man was practically an invalid with swollen finger joints and legs twisted from the knees down so he leaned upon a stick to walk. He regarded Bond with intense suspicion.

  When he arrived in the drawing room, he related what he had seen on his journey.

  “Soldats everywhere. Horsemen riding up and down the Paris highway like it was a parade ground. Napoleon has gone north, everyone says.”

  “Oui,” the Countess said. “Lord Bond told me that last night. We feared for your return. Were there many soldiers on our road?”

  “A few. Mostly scavengers cutting firewood. I did have a nasty word or two from the Sézanne Sub-prefect. He wanted to know if you were still here and when you intended to leave. I did hear he wants to offer the lodge as a place for generals to gather . . .”

  “A headquarters?” Bond said. “I would doubt that. More likely he looks to requisition it for himself.”

  The Countess clenched her fists. “So he is finding an excuse to steal my last home.” She looked at Bond. “He worked for my father as a young man―he wants revenge for some imagined slight.”

  “Oui,” Armand said. “That’s the truth, but he plans to send a gendarme to inspect the place.”

  “When?” the Countess said.

  “Could be today.”

  “I will have to leave you,” Bond said. “He cannot find an English officer here.”

  “But you are not fit to ride,” the Countess said.

  “Then I will take my horse and we will hide in the forest.”

  The Countess shook her head. “I have a better idea. Agnes, would you say that Lord Bond and my husband were very close in physique?”

  “Like twins, My Lady.”

  “You can be our protector in a French uniform, My Lord. We will say you are a cousin of mine.”

  “Oui, but Sub-prefect will just try again when His Lordship has gone,” Agnes said.

  By evening, Lord Bond was dressed in the uniform of an officer of the 20th Regiment de Chasseurs-a-Cheval, comprising a shako, green coat with laced facings, and campaign trousers of Marengo-grey with crimson stripes along each outside seam. He did not try out the sabre, a weapon he found too clumsy to walk with and suitable only for whittling away on a mounted opponent similarly trying to whittle away on him. He tucked the Jover and Belton into the waist-band of his trousers.

  The boy watched with an eager expression. “Not a horse pistol.”

  “No, a pistol that carries four loads. Designed by an American and made by an English gunsmith off Curzon Street.”

  The Countess watched them with laughing eyes. “A weapon for a desperado, or perhaps a spy.”

  Bond looked at her; dashed pretty when she lost that widow’s stoop. He had been worried that the sight of him in her husband’s uniform might depress her, but she seemed rejuvenated by the sight. “I might consider, spy, if it were appropriate to present circumstances, but I am serving as an observer of the allies for the government in Whitehall.”

  “The English do not trust them?” she asked with a mischievous smile.

  He returned the smile. “I am sure they do . . . as long as they are advancing west. I was riding south because I had been asked to sound out the opinions of one of the monarchs. I doubt if he will tell me.”

  “But you are a diplomat?”

  “I’m not sure what I am. I was a convenient body to slot into a waiting job. I have been escorting diplomats around the Continent for six months.”

  “Without your wife?”

  “Yes, for several reasons, actually.”

  “No wonder she is discontented. You marry and then leave her behind.”

  “Perhaps a relief for her. We made a clandestine entry into the Low Countries the day after we married.”

  She shook her head. “Then you are a desperado and a cad. What woman would want to marry you?”

  “Oui, I have been told that by others, but when this war is over I will return to the family estates and become the most settled landlord in England. I will busy myself with pigs and dairy cattle, and only go to London when my wife needs new clothes and a ball or two.”

  “You are a dreamer too, I see.”

  He had no answer to that one.

  “What will happen in this war, My Lord?”

  “Napoleon is outnumbered more than three to one. He has done a remarkable effort so far, but it is inevitable that the allies will take Paris, and the country will not be saved until Napoleon abdicates.”

  “How will this come about? Napoleon is a scoundrel who will bargain with the devil.”

  “The only devils he will bargain with are the three monarchs who travel with Schwarze
nberg’s army. There have been diplomats haggling for the end of this war since before the armies crossed the Rhine. The government in London wants me to listen at the doors of these people.”

  “So you will ride south . . . to Troyes, you said.”

  “That is where the headquarters of the army was when I set out from Épernay.” He would have said more but the sparkle in her eyes told him she had a plan and would not divulge it until she had extracted some concession from him. What that might be he did not know.

  “What would you advise me to do about this hunting lodge, My Lord?”

  “If one of Fouché’s thieves wants it, you might consider it gone. One day it may be recovered if a King Louis reigns again.”

  “I should write out a lease for that Sub-prefect to sign. He might use it for a hundred francs a year.”

  “And where will you go?”

  “We will stay here until he finds us another lodging.”

  Bond did not offer an opinion on this. He did not know this fellow but some scoundrels would find them a lodging in a grave hidden in the forest. He would need to see this gendarme in the morning before deciding what to advise.

  In the morning he found he could walk reasonably well leaning on a stick. He should get back to his own uniform and leave for Troyes. Duty called. But he had promised to help the Countess deal with the gendarme and the fate of the lodge.

  When he looked out of the window, he saw her at the end of the clearing playing with her children as if she had no care in the world.

  Three gendarmes arrived in a horse-drawn chariot in the middle of the morning. The Countess and Bond went to them immediately.

  The senior man would say nothing but the instructions on the paper he held. “We have orders for you to leave, My Lady. This building and all the property ’round about has been requisitioned for the Army.”

  “Who has signed the order?” Bond demanded.

  “That cannot be divulged.”

  “Nonsense. When I return to my regiment, I will have the requisition countermanded,” Bond said with a grim expression close into the other’s face.