The General's Mistress

by Jo Graham

  Private Barend had redeemed himself by managing dinner, potatoes fried with a bit of ham with mustard on the side, Maille’s finest seasoned with tarragon. It was the kind Moreau liked best, that I used to order for him on campaign. I didn’t need to ask to know that Barend had traded for it with someone at Moreau’s headquarters.

  We ate in silence, and then Michel went back out to go round the sentries. It had gotten very cold. I heard the snow crunching under his boots as he left, the ice on top forming a fine crust. I got out all the blankets, which between us were four, and spread them on the slung camp bed. It was technically wide enough for only one person, but we could both squeeze in if we were close. I left the lamp alight, because it did give off some warmth that the tent trapped, took off only my boots, and rolled up in the blankets.

  I must have dozed. The sounds of the camp softened. Michel came back, and I woke when the light changed as he blew out the lamp. He lay down beside me in the dark, curling gratefully into the warm place beside me. His hands were like ice. His face was cold.

  His arms went around me and he sighed. “All right?”

  “Yes,” I said. And we slept.

  We expected the Austrians to attack the next day. Before dawn a fresh cavalry screen went out, careful on the snow, spreading out through the woods. All day riders came and went.

  And still there was no attack. The temperature rose enough for the snow to begin to melt where the sun touched it, leaving patches of bare ground here and there. Riders came and went. Soon everyone knew what the scouts had said. The Austrians hadn’t moved at all.

  When Michel came back to his tent before dinner, I asked him what was happening.

  He shrugged, gathering up his map case. “Archduke Johann is young. A more experienced commander would have attacked today. Instead, he’s given us time to prepare for him, and time for General Moreau to think of a thing or two. I’m off to a staff meeting.” He leaned over and kissed my brow. “Don’t wait for me. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

  “I won’t,” I said. It was the first time in days that he had looked at me as though I weren’t Charles. We hadn’t spoken of the skirmish. There was nothing we needed to say that we had the words for.

  Michel ruffled my cropped hair, a half smile on his face. “You know, it’s still disturbing.”

  “I imagine so,” I said, smiling back. “More a squire than a maiden fair.”

  “You do a fine job of arming me,” he said. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that I’m not hungry and frozen.”

  “More useful than bedroom arts right now.”

  “More to your taste?” He rested his hands lightly on my arms, looking at me.

  I shook my head. “Both, Michel. I’m both.” I didn’t know how to say it, so I leaned forward and rested my head against his shoulder. “Squire and courtesan both. They used to be the same word, you know. Hetaira and hetairos, courtesan and knight companion.”

  “Did they?” he said bemusedly. His arms went around me, holding me tight.

  “Someone told me that once,” I said, trying to remember who.

  I didn’t remember until after he’d left for the staff meeting, his map case in his hand and his cloak pulled close against the wind. It had been Bonaparte.

  All the next day we waited. Still the Austrians didn’t move. The day was a bit warmer, and the snow melted in the sun, leaving patches under the trees and on shaded slopes, turning the road to mud. Our provisions didn’t arrive. We hoped it was the mud that had delayed them. Otherwise, the Austrians had cut our supply line.

  We made do on boiled potatoes that night.

  Moreau ordered that watch fires should be built in advance of our actual lines, outside the camp to the north, all along the perimeter toward the edge of the woods. It gave us light, since the sky had clouded over again and the temperature had dropped. I thought it would snow again.

  Michel had added to the plan. He had posted sentries out in the woods in a sweeping circle, well ahead of the fires where the light would not affect their night vision, with the river at our backs beyond the camp.

  I curled up in the blankets and slept, only to awaken in the middle of the night. There was a movement in the tent, and even in the darkness I knew it was Michel putting his boots on. “Michel?” I whispered.

  He leaned toward me. “No need for you to get up. It’s four in the morning. I’m just going round the sentries again.”

  “Can’t sleep?” Now that I sat up, I felt completely clearheaded.

  “No,” he said. “Something’s happening.” He looked out to the north, like a hunting dog scenting after quarry. “Can’t you feel it?”

  “Yes,” I whispered. “The temperature’s dropped again. And it’s getting ready to snow. It’s darker in here than it was. The clouds have come in.”

  Michel nodded. “They’ll come with the snow. Elza, I don’t want you on the front line. You don’t know a damned thing about infantry tactics, and you can’t fake them.” He touched my face with one forefinger. “And I would say exactly the same thing if you were Charles. Promise me you’ll stay back.”

  “I promise,” I said. And I meant it. Life was too sweet to have a death wish.

  He kissed me lightly. “Good.” And then he pulled his cloak around him and went out.

  I sat up in bed, fully dressed. It was too cold to undress. I didn’t think I had for about five days. I had not actually made love to him in three weeks, since we joined his division. I missed it, and I didn’t.

  I wondered if Bonaparte was the same in the field.

  A strange and fey mood was on me, and I couldn’t sleep. I put my boots and cloak on and went out.

  The sky had completely clouded over. The lights of our watch fires were the only bright things in sight. It was dead silent. The river did not even whisper, frozen over between its banks. Not a bough stirred among the massive fir trees. The first flakes of snow began to fall, beautiful and ethereal in the darkness.

  Michel stood a short distance away, far enough from the fires to see into the dark. He was alone. I walked up beside him.

  “It’s strange,” he began, but we heard the sound of hooves coming up. Three men on horseback were coming along the length of our lines, cloaked figures dark against the falling snow. I knew the first, even shrouded. Moreau.

  I had no time to leave. I stepped back into a shadow, hoping that my hooded cloak hid my features.

  “Citizen General?” he called, his voice low and calm.

  Michel stepped forward. “Here, General Moreau. Everything is quiet. It lacks two hours to first dawn.”

  Moreau nodded, still in the saddle. He did not glance in my direction. His eyes were bright, even in the dim light. “Too quiet.”

  “I agree,” Michel said. “We’ll stand to colors at dawn.”

  What Moreau would have said, I did not know. His horse took a step toward me, and I saw his head began to turn. He had seen my movement, but not my face.

  A shot rang out in the woods.

  Moreau and Michel both jerked about. There was a shout, and then another shot.

  “Bugler!” Michel shouted, his voice carrying about the camp.

  A man was running out of the woods, his cloak cast away in his haste. He pounded up at the same moment as the bugler began. “General! The Austrians are moving through the woods en masse. They’re wearing white, but we saw them anyway. Probably about three or four thousand men, my best guess.”

  Behind me, the camp was mustering, shouts and swears intermingling as the units formed up.

  “They can’t mount an effective charge,” Michel said to Moreau. “The ground is too broken. Underbrush, little streams, banks.”

  “They’ll be crack infantry,” Moreau said, “on a night attack like this.” His horse shied at a shot close by, one of the sentries firing down into the woods. He held on effortlessly, his light body molded to the horse. “Shall I move in Richepanse to help hold them?”

  “Why?” Eleazar had be
en led out, and Michel swung into the saddle. “I’m just about to launch a counterattack.”

  “Your call,” Moreau said. A full volley fired, the first of our units firing into the woods together. I hoped the sentries posted in the woods had gotten out of there or gotten down. “Let me know what you need. I’ve got to get back to my troops.”

  The tent was at my back, and I slipped inside, out of his sight. I could still hear his voice, but couldn’t make out what he said, with all the running and confusion. And then there was another crashing volley. Right behind it was a louder explosion, one of the field guns coming into action.

  I stood in the tent, holding the flap shut. I had promised Michel I would stay back. And in truth, there was nothing useful I could do. I didn’t have a musket, and as Michel had pointed out, I knew nothing about infantry drill. The only thing I could do in those dark woods was make myself a target for our own men.

  I listened. After a few moments, I parted the flap and looked out again. Moreau was gone. I could see his silhouette on horseback moving down the lines, toward his own troops. On that end, the muzzle flashes were sporadic. I thought that the main attack was this way, but in the darkness it could simply be that the right side of the line had not yet engaged.

  Before me, our lines spouted fire in perfect unison, volley after volley crashing into the darkness.

  The return fire was dense off on the far left. Our guns silenced suddenly there, and a cheer went up. With a shriek, our men charged forward on foot, engaging bayonet on bayonet as the Austrians reached close quarters. I could hear, but not see. The snow was coming down densely now.

  More crashes. The fire to the right was less. Shouts.

  To the left the fight had moved into the woods, and I could see nothing. I went back inside and rearranged things, put on my sword just in case. Then I couldn’t stand it and went back out.

  The firing off to the right had fallen silent. I could see people moving in the woods, dark uniforms against the snow, our men who were not camouflaged. To the left, I could tell nothing of what happened.

  Dawn came. We had captured more than four hundred prisoners. Another hundred or so lay dead in the woods. We had lost a handful, mostly the original sentries.

  In the pale light I made coffee and found Michel. He was talking to two infantry noncoms, his hat crusted with an inch of snow. It was coming down so thickly that already it covered my boots in some places. The sky was dead white.

  Wordlessly, I put the cup in his hand. He glanced at me and drank, never pausing, but I saw the gratitude in his eyes. When they had finished talking, he turned to me. “The coffee’s good,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “I want you to go to the village,” Michel said. “I’m sending all the nonessentials over there.”

  “Moreau. . . .” I began.

  “Will be with his men,” Michel said. “We’re striking the camp. The scouts have told us that the Austrians are still advancing. We threw back the night attack, but there are more coming. That wasn’t really so many. The village is safer, and that’s where our supplies need to be.”

  I nodded. “I’ll do whatever you need me to.”

  At noon they rolled in, striking again most heavily on the left end of the line, on Michel’s troops and the left section of Moreau’s. I watched from the village, from a second-floor room of a house that was now division headquarters.

  The real division headquarters was with Michel, wherever he and his aide Ruffin were on the field between the river and the wood, but this was where I had the maps laid out on the table and found some food for when they would need it. There’s never such a thing as an unwelcome potato soup. With some onions and dried herbs in it, it was pretty good and would keep as long as it needed to over the fire. They would be hungry, wounded and unwounded alike.

  By late afternoon the snow was more than knee-deep, and it showed no signs of stopping. It was too much. The Austrians withdrew.

  Michel came in at nightfall, Ruffin and his senior officers with him, stamping the snow off his boots, his coat steaming before the fire. There was blood all over his cloak, and no way to clean it just now. His buff pants were almost brown.

  He ate some soup, and I got him to change clothes and lie down for a few hours. He had been going since before four in the morning in the cold. He lay down on a bed upstairs, where I had a fire going, and slept until midnight.

  I didn’t sleep. I stayed downstairs, getting soup for the others who came in, serving it out with Barend and a couple of others. When I ran out, I went into the cellars to see what I could find. More potatoes, more onions, the householder’s winter stores. Enough to make another big pot of soup, because the hungry men just kept coming. I wanted bread, and there was flour, but I had never learned to make bread. Fortunately, there was a private from the Somme whose father was a baker, and I set him to making bread in as large a quantity as possible. With cheese and apples from the cellars, it would manage a substantial dinner and breakfast. I left the sausages. We would get to them later.

  I wasn’t sure how many of the men had figured out that I was a woman, and how many thought that I was simply the general’s body servant. It didn’t seem to matter. Barend did what I told him, and the rest seemed to assume that I had the authority to arrange the provisions and quartering, whether as the general’s woman or as an orderly duly deputized. Or perhaps nobody cared, as long as there was food.

  At midnight Michel came down and ate some bread and an apple and some soup with a cup of very hot coffee. He had a clean shirt and pants, though I had been able to do nothing about his coat or cloak. He went straight back out to the lines.

  The room quieted. There was no sound but the snores of sleeping men and the crackling of the fire. I sat on a stool beside the fireplace, nodding.

  Something brushed against my ankles, a big gray cat with green eyes that reflected the flames. She purred, and brushed past me again. The household’s cat, I thought, hiding somewhere all day and now come out when the house was quiet. I petted her and gave her some scraps of cheese. She ate them delicately, as though she wasn’t very hungry, stopping to watch me with her enormous eyes. I ran my hands along her back, sweeping over her soft fur. She purred.

  The Egyptians thought cats were magic, I thought. Perhaps they were right. This one looked as though she had something to tell me. She leapt into my lap, kneading and purring. I pressed my face against her soft fur. “I’m sorry, dear,” I whispered into her pointed ears, “your people will be back soon, when the battle’s over. They’re probably safer somewhere else right now, you know.” The cat in my lap, I watched through the small hours of the night.

  In the morning, the great battle began.

  Hohenlinden

  In the night, Moreau had sent off about half his force, nearly twenty-five thousand men under Richepanse. They pulled back quietly and marched away to the east, cavalry to the fore and guns last, the cavalry taking one of the footpaths through the forest. Ney, Moreau, and General Grouchy formed a bastion about the town of Hohenlinden, with General Legrand, whom I did not know, in reserve. Given the talk of flanking maneuvers, I assumed that this was the plan—to somehow get around behind the Austrians using the poor trails through the forest. By morning the snow was fourteen inches deep, and still coming down in occasional flurries. I didn’t think this would make it easy.

  Michel came in right after dawn and ate some soup. The potatoes had cooked to bits by now, but it tasted wonderful. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

  I nodded. “It’s a good thing I learned to cook,” I said. I wondered if he would say any of the things I hoped he wouldn’t, things about if something happens or just in case.

  He didn’t. “Very useful,” he said. He didn’t touch me, and there was nothing affectionate in his manner, nothing inappropriate for a servant, except his expression, the warmth in his eyes when he looked at me. If any man in the room didn’t guess, they certainly thought it was an interesting relationship w
ith Charles. If they cared, which at the moment I doubted anyone did.

  And so I did not say good luck, good-bye, or any of those other things that women in stories say on the cusp of a battle. What could I say that I hadn’t said in soup?

  He went out as though it were a bit of business he meant to attend to, a battle of a hundred thousand men on which might rest the Republic. In an hour they were all gone, all the men who had crowded in overnight and through breakfast. There was no one left except nearsighted Barend, whom I set to washing up. I sat by the fire and had a bowl of soup myself.

  Three years ago, I would not have cared if the Republic fell or flourished. Governments come and go, kings and princes, committees and consuls, up and down on Fortune’s Wheel, with no real difference between. But there was. Here I had liberty, the freedom to be who I truly was with no censure, no fear. I could have my own money in the bank. I could rent rooms without fear that a man could take them away. I did not belong to Jan. I was more than a vessel for wealth, more than an ornament whose education was to the glory of her husband and sons.

  Should Michel have been a cooper? Should he have been a sergeant all his life, doomed to the lot of his forefathers because he was born a peasant with no hope of advancement? I knew now that the stiltedness of his letters was because he had ended school when he was twelve. What use would the son of a peasant have of more knowledge? Everything he knew, everything he was, he had won himself out of pure desire.

  The same was true of every man here. Their dreams were different—glory or money or the esteem of a girl—but everyone wanted something that would have been denied, and now saw it within their grasp. Dreams are a thing worth fighting for. Worth dying for. A good many of them would die today, their dreams still unfulfilled.

  Not Michel.

  I bent my head over my soup.

  I had never really prayed, never really understood the form and the need to recite elaborate passages or to spend hours on one’s knees; but now I felt my whole self yearning, concentrating in two words: Not Michel. Anyone else. Just not Michel. Let him be right. Let it be true that he leads a charmed life, that he is protected by angels.