The General's Mistress

by Jo Graham

  Not for us, the ancient sleep in quiet tombs. It would be decay or fire. I looked up at him. His profile was hard and still as a bronze somewhere, distant.

  Michel turned to me, his eyes blazing, and took me by the shoulders. “Hang Moreau! You’re coming with me. We’re not for the grave yet,” he said, and kissed me hard.

  “I will go anywhere you go,” I said. “Let me live every moment that I am living.” My heart lifted, a curious kind of ecstasy, as though we were twinned birds of prey lifting onto the wind. This was what I yearned for. This was where I belonged.

  “Amen,” he said, as though it had been a prayer. And maybe it was. His God might answer these things, if all we asked was to face whatever it was together. Michel believed in that sort of mercy.

  “I’ll just stay out of Moreau’s way,” I said. “If he doesn’t see me, he won’t know I’m there. And he’s never seen Charles.”

  “Charles?”

  “Me in men’s clothes. He has a name,” I said, a little flustered. “I mean, I have a name. I use my brother’s name. Charles van Aylde.”

  “Oh.” Michel’s brow furrowed again. “Do you have papers for him, or do I need to arrange them?”

  “I don’t actually have papers,” I said, swallowing my surprise. “You’re taking this all in stride.”

  He shrugged. “You don’t want to be riding all over Germany as Charles with papers that say you’re Ida St. Elme, do you? That’s going to involve a lot of confusion.”

  “No,” I said. “I can see that it would.” Michel had gone straight to the practical. Whatever he thought about Charles was now buried under a pile of logistics.

  He took my arm again, and we kept walking home. I thought it was getting colder. “And it’s better if Moreau never hears the name Ida St. Elme anywhere,” Michel said. “Not on papers, not on any list, not from anybody. Just Charles van Aylde and Elza.”

  “He knows my real name,” I said, “but he never called me Elza. How are you going to arrange legitimate papers?”

  “I can have a servant,” Michel said. “Most officers above a certain rank do. I’ve got a military orderly, but there’s no reason I can’t have a civilian servant too.”

  “And who pays attention to servants?” I asked cynically. “Certainly not Victor Moreau. He might not notice even if he were looking straight at me.”

  “Let’s not try that,” Michel said fervently. “God, we’re crazy to do this!” He saw me open my mouth and ran straight on. “Don’t say we can’t. I’m not leaving you in Paris, and we’re going to get by with it. You want to, don’t you?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “I can’t think of anything better than being Charles all the time on a winter campaign with you.” And it was true. I couldn’t.

  We spent the next two days madly putting together a kit for me. Fortunately, I had practical clothes for Charles as well as drawing room finery, so I needed to add some things, not start over entirely.

  Michel approved of Nestor as a mount, solid and not flashy, the kind of horse that a young man who wanted to get some military experience would ride. I was allowed to take only what would fit in my saddlebags: two pairs of pants besides the ones I stood up in, three shirts, a waistcoat and coat besides the ones I wore, a baggy flannel tunic to go under my shirts, a couple of plain stocks, a scarf, two pairs of gloves, and a new hat. Also a new cloak, as Michel pronounced my dark wool one to be of too thin a material for the campaign. The new one was black wool lined in silk, with a double layer of wool batting between. It was quite warm, and as nice as his.

  The rest of my things consisted of a rolled bag with a few toiletries, a couple of books, my cards wrapped in oilcloth and silk, and a new leather flask of brandy. I should have no more than any young man would, no forbidden dresses or fripperies. Michel would have nothing held up on my account, and neither for my part would I.

  His luggage was a bit more extensive, though nothing to what Moreau had traveled with—two cases and a long wooden map case moroccoed and sealed with leather. I smiled when I saw, in the last stages of the packing, that he had slipped one of my dresses in with his things, a sapphire-blue wool that was practical and not too fine, but was also the color of my eyes. I didn’t tell him that I knew it was there.

  The other thing I did was cut my hair. While Michel was out arranging his last business with his agent, I went as Charles to a fashionable barber. When Michel came back, he stopped dead in the doorway.

  “Do you like it?” I asked. “I thought it would be better. Moreau is used to my long hair, and this is more stylish now.”

  It was the Brutus cut, trimmed in layers a finger long from my crown to the nape of my neck, falling to my collar in the back with a certain fullness, like a Roman captain’s. Everyone was wearing it now, abandoning the ubiquitous queue. It felt very strange to have such short hair. Looking in the mirror, it suited Charles.

  Michel came over and looked at me, a somewhat bemused expression on his face. “It’s very . . .”

  “Short?” I supplied.

  “Disturbing,” he said. “You look more like a boy than ever.”

  “That’s the idea,” I said, brushing back a piece or two in the mirror. The way it was cut on the sides implied sideburns without actually requiring me to grow any facial hair.

  “I can see your neck now,” Michel said, standing behind me and looking down.

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s always back there.”

  He bent and kissed it, just a brush of lips. “There’s something . . .”

  “There is, isn’t there?” I said, turning into his arms. And so we spent our last night in Paris.

  Moreau had always traveled by carriage, his work desk on his lap. Ney rode, with his baggage following behind, and he set a grueling pace. The first night, I could hardly sleep despite the comfortable inn, because of the aches and pains. I was a good rider, but I wasn’t used to ten or twelve hours a day in the saddle. In the morning I had locked up so stiffly that Michel had to pull me out of bed, laughing.

  I was less amused. “Don’t you hurt?” I said. “You’ve been resting for a few months. Surely you’re out of form too.”

  “Of course I am,” he said, relenting and sharing his coffee with me by way of amends. “But what’s a little pain?”

  “Right.” I sipped at the scalding coffee. It was terrible. “You like pain. My legs hurt like hell.”

  “And it’s a good thing that I do,” Michel said, dressing quickly because of the chill in the room. “If we weren’t short of time, I’d stop and massage your thighs.” He raised an eyebrow at me as he pulled his shirt over his head.

  “And that would take all day,” I said, grinning. “You can come massage my thighs anytime you want.”

  “Not and get to Munich in six days,” he said, tucking his shirt in with one hand. “Come on, lag-abed!”

  He hurried downstairs shouting for the stableboy, leaving me to ruminate on why military men always wanted to get up at five in the morning.

  On Campaign

  It finally stopped raining, and frost clung to the trees in the mornings, my breath coming in white clouds as we rode into Bavarian winter. Michel took command of his division, and I soon found that traveling with him was very different from the time I had spent in camp with Moreau. For one thing, I had actual work to do. Michel needed a competent orderly more than he needed a mistress, and the orderly he had was hopeless. Private Barend was barely twenty, and his eyesight was so poor that he posed a clear and present danger to any man in range who wasn’t sitting atop an elephant and waving French colors. His supposed saving grace was that he had been a footman before patriotism had brought him stepping to the drum. This, in the eyes of the sergeant, qualified him as body servant to a general. Michel had no idea what a body servant was supposed to do anyway, so he overlooked the fact that his shirts were always dirty and that meals were irregular at best.

  “Michel,” I said, on the fourth or fifth day of this, “you are not supp
osed to have to think about supper. You are supposed to think about the enemy, and your orderly is supposed to think about supper. That’s why you’re a general and he’s a private.”

  Michel muttered something or other over his map. It was spread out on a trestle table, the edges held down by an ink pot, a filthy glass from the day before yesterday, half a loaf of stale bread, and the compass he was getting ready to lose again. Dispatches were stacked haphazardly, the candle on top of them at an angle that ensured that one good puff of wind would set the entire mass alight.

  So I set about pushing Barend about and trying to turn him into a proper body servant. This involved details such as laundry that had been above his station as a footman. When I made it clear that these considerations reflected his improved status, he was pathetically grateful and began to follow me about, asking about table settings and bed making.

  I was concerned solely that there should be food on the table, thinking that the setting was probably beyond Michel’s interest, and that as long as there was a bed, Michel would sleep in it. If there wasn’t, he would roll up in a blanket in the corner and be asleep in five minutes anyway.

  Which he was, every night. For that matter, so was I. Even after we joined his division and our mad dash across Europe slowed to the pace of the caissons and the cannon, every day was exhausting, beginning before dawn and ending long after sunset. That the days were short this time of year didn’t help.

  We would strike camp just after sunrise, which meant that I had been up an hour and a half before, preparing breakfast in the darkness. We had a store of coffee, which I ground with a hand grinder that one of the aides had brought, then heated the water over the fire that we built up, poured it over the grounds, and pressed it out, adding a full spoon of sugar for Michel’s cup so that it was almost an espresso syrup, very hot and very sweet. Sometimes there was day-old bread for toast. There was no jam, because Michel had said we wouldn’t need it. Occasionally there was butter, if we had been able to buy some from a farmer the previous day. It was the wrong season for eggs, and nothing else would cook fast enough in the morning, if the camp was to be entirely struck in an hour. Often Michel still had his coffee in his hand when he swung up on Eleazar.

  After two hours on the march, we would halt for a few minutes so that everyone could smoke and trot out into the woods to do the necessary. That was the hardest part for me. Every tree had a squatting soldier behind it, and finding any place private enough to do my business alone required stomping off into the woods a considerable distance.

  I traveled in the rear, in the baggage train, while Michel was at the head of the column as usual. Because each division followed another on the road, the back of one division was the front of the next. Other troops of the Army of the Rhine followed us.

  One fine, clear day as we swung along after the morning halt, I heard a cavalry column coming up behind us. All of us with the baggage moved to the side of the road to let them pass through, as was customary. As they drew nearer, I saw that it was simply an escort of light cavalry, chasseurs from a brigade I didn’t recognize, escorting staff. Right in front was Moreau.

  I hadn’t seen him in nearly three years. Not since the morning he had slammed the door on my clawing fingers, throwing me out of the house he had given me. I couldn’t look at him and feel nothing.

  Compact and precise, he rode a coal-black horse, looking straight ahead, his insignia glittering in the sun and his gaze alert and dark as a hawk’s.

  I had dismounted when we heard the column coming, so I ducked behind Nestor’s head. Moreau could see my feet and legs, but there was nothing remarkable about them. The column clattered past.

  I was surprised to find myself shaking. Whether it was the ghost of the desire I had once felt for him, or the urge to hit him, or sheer terror that he would see me here and punish Michel, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps it was all three.

  I looked out as the escort passed, three chasseurs bringing up the rear, the last a lieutenant on a dapple-gray mare who was frisking at the tight rein he held her on. I held on to Nestor’s head. My knees were water.

  The lieutenant on the gray mare twisted in the saddle and looked back at me, giving me a sudden, charming grin. I gulped like a fish, and he gave me a knowing, flirtatious look as he turned back to the road.

  Was it so obvious? I thought. If the lieutenant had seen straight through me, perhaps my disguise wasn’t as good as I had hoped. Something gave me away. But perhaps it was only my shock at seeing Moreau. Certainly I had never seen the lieutenant before.

  That night we stayed near Mühldorf, in a small town in forested country where the farms were few. Moreau and his staff took over the mayor’s house, while Michel and the Hussar general, Richepanse, took the inn. Moreau had the generals and their staffs to dinner and to a long planning meeting, so I was left somewhat at loose ends. After gathering up all Michel’s dirty shirts and explaining to the innkeeper’s wife in my extremely halting German that I needed laundry done for the general and I would pay, my chores were more or less done.

  Michel had the best room, since he ranked Richepanse, with a fireplace and a big box bed with cornices that looked like they’d been there since the Thirty Years’ War. The linens were impeccably clean, the floor swept and tidy, the sconces filled with fresh tapers. I hung his coats for a change to let them shake out. Then I went downstairs to find dinner for myself.

  The taproom of the inn was full, and I was pleased to see that it was a fairly orderly crowd. The only women sitting on laps were the ones we had brought with us. The innkeeper and his teenage son were circulating with huge steins of beer. This was a good sign—plentiful beer never hurt anyone, but anything fortified in large quantities was bound to result in fights before the evening was over.

  I squeezed into a corner far from the fireplace and managed to get the attention of the teenage son, who understood my gestures and bittes enough to bring me a bowl of stew with potatoes and rabbit and some warm bread to go with my beer.

  I ate, a sense of contentment stealing over me despite Moreau’s proximity. After all, I’d been in the same town as Moreau for years when he knew what I looked like. The last place he’d be looking for me was a Bavarian inn in the company of Richepanse’s hussars.

  A group by the fire had started a song, something about a girl from Aix and a sergeant. Several of our girls who were clearly working had sized up the biggest spenders in the room. And the beer was very good.

  “May I sit here?”

  I looked up. It took me a moment to recognize the lieutenant from the road. He was of medium height, with an ordinary face framed by elaborate hussar’s braids, each one worked with a gold thread. He was holding a bowl of stew and a stein.

  I shrugged and moved over into the corner so he could have a bit of table.

  He put his food down and took a bite. “Quite a crowd, isn’t it?”

  I nodded, bending over my bowl. If he had already noticed my secret on the road, I didn’t want him to blurt it out in a busy inn. There was too much chance of idle talk getting back to Moreau.

  “I’m with the Twentieth Chasseurs à Cheval,” he said with a friendly smile. It reminded me suddenly of René Gantheaume. He had the same cocky air, the same open charm. “Are you with the General?”

  “Yes,” I said, looking away from his face. It took nerve for a lieutenant to come on to a general’s woman.

  The lieutenant shrugged elaborately. “My friend, don’t you think he’s a bit old and serious? Wouldn’t you rather have a bit of fun with someone your own age?” His hand stole onto my thigh under the table.

  I turned and fixed him with a steely stare, though my voice was still low, glad I wore the epée openly now. “My friend,” I said, “I may be a woman, but if you don’t get your hand off my thigh, I will use this and you won’t like it.”

  He moved his hand as if I had burned him. For a moment he gaped, and then he laughed, bowing slightly from the waist, his eyes bright with laughter. “A
thousand pardons, Madame! Had I known you were a woman, I should never have taken such liberties!” He gave a self-deprecating shrug. “I thought you were a pretty lad to be a servant to General Ney. They said your name was van Aylde, and that you were a volunteer.”

  “I am a volunteer,” I said, “and I am with General Ney. And my name is van Aylde, and I am also a woman.”

  He lifted his stein and took a drink. “Good luck to you, then, Madame. You carry off the masquerade as well as any I’ve seen. I hope you will forgive my impudence?”

  I found it impossible not to. “You are forgiven,” I said. “And may I have the name of the man I forgive?”

  “Lieutenant Jean-Baptiste Corbineau,” he said. “And you are?”

  “Charles,” I said. I steepled my fingers around my stein. “Let’s leave it at Charles.”

  “What a coincidence!” he said. “I’m sometimes called Charles too. It’s my favorite alias for losing at cards.”

  I burst out laughing. “Do you lose often?”

  “Continually,” he said. “If it’s a foolish gamble and angels fear to tread, there goes the cavalry.”

  “I’ll toast the cavalry,” I said, lifting my stein.

  Instead of touching his stein to mine, Corbineau got to his feet, raising his in the air instead. “Gentlemen!” he said loudly. “My friend here proposes a toast to the cavalry!”

  Since the inn was full of Richepanse’s men, the roar was thunderous. “The cavalry!” It was a full shout, every glass raised, as I looked at them in bemusement.

  Corbineau sank back into his seat beside me as a group by the fire started toasting everyone they had ever met in Auvergne.

  “You’re drunk,” I said.

  “Not as drunk as I will be, fair lady,” he said, motioning for more beer. “If I’m out of luck tonight, I may as well enjoy the beer.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “And what would you have done if I had said yes? Assuming you were correct in your assumptions, that is?”