Jo Graham - [Numinous World 05]

by The Emperor's Agent (epub)

  And he was fast. I almost missed the disengage, the quick thrust that should have hit my left shoulder. Instead it hit the back of my hand, stinging and leaving a welt along my thumb.

  "Hand touches don't count," Corbineau reminded everyone loudly. "Come on, Charles."

  Gamely I put my best into it. He was not used to a left-handed opponent, and that gave me something to play with. A quick riposte, a step back giving ground to lead him, and I almost had it. A quick disengage, and I pinked the elbow of his sword arm.

  "Body touches only!" Corbineau said, but I heard the exhalation run around the room. It was something to have hit Reille at all.

  His lips compressed, and the blades touched again, scraping and flying like fire. He was fast, fast as a much smaller man, though he stood over six feet, tall and thin and all lanky muscle. Still he hung back, not pressing me though he could. He had the reach. I had to get in close and he didn't need to, so he could afford to play me at the point, waiting for me to make a mistake.

  I could try to hold him off. The victory condition was that he had to hit me. Most of these men were aggressive fencers, and his stand back and wait style would be very effective against them, men who would rush to close and tire themselves out in attack while he simply defended until they were exhausted. But this victory condition made it my game. He had to touch me. I just had to not be touched.

  At that I began to fly from his blade, backing quickly around the room, circling out of reach, not even trying to connect but only to defend.

  I saw Reille's eyes narrow. He knew what I was doing, and that he would need to change strategies accordingly. Riposte, riposte, beat and beat and beat. Now he was chasing me, circling with his longer stride. Only the tips of our blades connected, parry and parry and parry.

  I saw the movement in his eyes first, before in his limbs, and he flew into a beat attack that could only end in a thrust. My blade came up, dropped below his beat and caught his disengage awkwardly. He beat….

  "Time!" Subervie shouted. "Five minutes is up!"

  …beat again, and slipped under my guard for a beautiful touch on my right shoulder, solid as anyone could want.

  Corbineau cheered. "It was after the time! It doesn't count! Pay up, my friends! I told you my friend Charles was good!"

  Reille saluted solemnly, and I returned it, my shoulder aching all to hell. It was a tipped foil, but it hurt all the same. He shoved his sodden hair out of his face and came over to me. "Are you all right, Madame?" he asked quietly. "I didn’t mean to hit quite that hard."

  "I'm fine," I said. "And I'm amazed I held you off long enough. You're good."

  "You're fast," he said. "And the left handedness throws me a little. I don't have too many sinister friends."

  "Of both sorts?" I smiled. "Are your friends right-handed, or simply upstanding fellows?"

  "Both," he said. He had a disarming smile, pulling the right side of his mouth more than the left, which gave him a charmingly lopsided look. "We're good boys really."

  "Are you? I hope you're not too good. Virtue can be terribly boring."

  "I try not to be dull." Reille said, and I thought he blushed a little. "But I have the reputation of being a bookworm."

  "Because you finish your homework?" I asked.

  "And everyone else's. But that's what it's about, isn't it? Learning to be a team. It's good to be competitive, but when we get in the field we need to be able to put that down." He shrugged. "We'll be there soon enough, I suppose."

  "I expect you will," I said. I felt eyes upon me, and glanced about to see Michel in the doorway watching, his hat in his hand. Before I could say anything, he spun around and left.

  And what if he did? We were done with each other. There was no reason in the world I couldn't talk with a handsome young man my own age who happened to be an excellent swordsman and a bachelor besides. If it sent Michel scurrying out of the room, it was really his problem.

  Reille was waiting for me to answer something.

  "I'm sorry," I said, "I didn't hear you. What?"

  "I asked if you'd like to join me and Subervie and Corbineau for dinner. After we all have a chance to clean up, of course. The senior staff meeting will go late because Marshal Berthier is here, and unless someone sends for us, we're free."

  He meant the Lodge of course, but I doubted Lannes would come straight out of a meeting and want to go into ritual, even if the meeting ended by six o'clock. He'd probably want some dinner of his own, and possibly a quiet room!

  "That would be wonderful," I said.

  Like any army town, Boulogne had sprouted a fine crop of taverns and restaurants. They had their favorite, and I joined them at a tavern in a narrow street off the citadel, where actual tablecloths marked it one of the better ones. I had gone back to the cottage and cleaned up, but I put on Charles' good clothes, a dove grey coat, well cut, with a taupe waistcoat and snowy linen. Fashionable, but I needed to keep up with the company.

  "The boys," as Reille called them, were all well turned out too. It is the pride of our men to look fine, and all of them did in their undress uniforms, a superfluous amount of gold braid present. Subervie had a short blue pelisse trimmed with fur, which must be hot as hell in the summertime. Corbineau's collar was embroidered with enough gold lace to hurt his neck, and Reille had epaulets the size of well-grown pigeons on each shoulder. All of them wore white trousers tight enough that one would have thought sitting uncomfortable. On the other hand, it did suit them.

  "What a handsome group," I murmured as I sat down at the table.

  Subervie stood, as though uncertain what to do about my feminine status, but the others plopped directly into their chairs and then stared at him, at which he took his seat abruptly.

  Corbineau give me a brilliant smile as if to say, here we are as your chaperones, now go after Honoré!

  I shook my head at him ever so slightly. If I were bent on seduction, I would have worn women's clothes and not had Corbineau along. Sometimes, I thought, I did actually want to talk to someone without getting them straight into bed. Michel's subordinate under Michel's very nose would be poetic justice, for he would be determined to not be Moreau. He would bend over backwards not to blame Reille and to show no lack of preferment because of it. If I were looking for a way to hurt him, that would be it.

  But I wasn't. Being entirely candid with myself, I didn't want to revenge myself upon Michel. I wanted him back.

  I flashed Subervie a brilliant smile. "So how did you gentlemen all come to know one another?"

  Subervie fussed with his napkin. "Honoré and I have known each other for a long time," he said. "We were both in the Army of Italy on the First Italian Campaign. I was Lannes' aide, and he was Massena's. We were both lieutenants then." He gave Reille a quick glance. "It's been a long strange road, hasn't it?"

  "It has indeed." Reille settled into his chair with a bit more grace.

  "I know Jean-Baptiste's older brother, Claude," Subervie continued, "So when I was posted here with the Marshal last year I ran into Jean-Baptiste. Now I'm Lannes' ADC and he's Ney's, so we deal with each other a lot. And then Honoré came to join the party at the School of War, and like I said we go way back."

  "And the other…gentlemen in your company?" I asked. I was curious as to how the Lodge had recruited.

  "Max is Ney's pick," Subervie said. "He's one of VI Corps surgeons and none of us knew him before. Most of the others are Marshal Lannes' Masonic brothers, or else they were with us in Italy."

  "A lot of us are from the Army of Italy," Reille said, helping himself liberally to the pâté and fresh bread the waiter had set before us. "Though I missed most of the Second Italian Campaign because I was wounded at Genoa just before the surrender. I'd brought a message from the Emperor to Massena," he said.

  "You are too modest," Corbineau said, eager to impress me with his friend. "He makes it sound as though he were the postman! No, he swam ashore through a British blockade! He got a fishing boat to take him o
ut and then slipped over the side in the dark and swam through the blockade by stealth into the besieged city. It was quite the feat!"

  "Really? It sounds like something out of the most thrilling novel," I said.

  Honoré had the modesty to look embarrassed. "I was very fortunate," he said. "And also very fortunate not to be killed in Genoa. We were fairly hungry before the end. And then I got shot. But it all came right. We held long enough, and the Emperor defeated the Austrians."

  "And now we've trouble with the Austrians again," Subervie said. "Another round of threats, another round of alliances." He shook his head.

  "They won't rest until the Bourbons are back on the throne of France," Corbineau snorted. "Until all of us are sent back to our places in the kitchen. We do not belong at the table, the likes of us! If we'd known our place and not gotten uppity, we'd still have the Austrian Queen ruling over us, with a pack of bishops and dukes to keep us there."

  Subervie nodded. "My father thought I might turn out well to be a gentleman's valet instead of a busboy. I don't suppose he ever thought I'd be the gentleman." He glanced down at his immaculate fur collar with an ironic smile. "He's happy enough now."

  "I was a groom," Corbineau said as the waiter arrived with a tureen of carrot soup. "All of sixteen when I talked my older brother into letting me come with him when he went back to the army. Never had a pistol in my hand before. Didn't know anything more about swords than that the pointy end went in the other fellow. They said, child, what can you do? I said, sirs, I can ride."

  Reille paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth, grinning. "I bet they got a surprise when they saw you!"

  "They did," Corbineau said. "Little skinny kid, looking about thirteen. But I could stick on any horse ever foaled. I could get down on his neck and ride through anything! So they made me a message rider. I could go through the worst of it and never injure the horse, and always bring the message in. So in good time they made me a chasseur, the lightest of the light scouts. And from there it's been one good thing after another."

  I looked at Reille. "And you? What's your story?'

  "I was in school," he said a bit sheepishly. "It seemed awfully dull to have a revolution going on and to be stuck declining Latin nouns instead. So I sent my father a long letter to be delivered after I was gone, and ran away to join the army. I had a horse, so they said I was cavalry."

  "This was the Year II," Subervie said. "When that was about the only qualification!"

  "It was the only one I had," Honoré acknowledged. "I'd had a few fencing lessons, how to duel like a gentleman, not much use in a real fight. But it kept me alive until I learned better. And you?"

  "I traded my husband for the Army of the Rhine," I said. "And a good trade it was."

  "So you see we've everything to lose," Subervie said. "All of us, and thousands more like us. Max is Protestant, and you know what the history of that looks like, massacres of Huguenots whenever Church and King decide. He wants freedom of religion. And most of the rest of us don't want to go back in the kitchen just because our blood's not blue."

  Honoré looked down in his soup plate. "You watch them and you say, why do they get everything for nothing, when there is no way I can earn it? I wasn't born poor, like some other fellows. But it rankles just as much to watch boys your age with less talent and brains go on past you because you're a filthy bourgeois and they have a pedigree. If there is to be an aristocracy at all, let it be an aristocracy of merit. Let each man earn his laurels based on what he can do."

  "In whatever field," Subervie added. "How can we study astronomy when the Church still says that the sun goes around the earth? If we can't get our damned universities to teach real science, then we may as well give up and hand the world to the British!"

  "Well, now we can," Corbineau said. "Let us make Paris a second Alexandria, where the best of all arts and sciences are met."

  "I'll toast that," I said.

  We did, raising our glasses together.

  "Another toast!" Corbineau said. "To love!"

  I rolled my eyes. "Really, Jean-Baptiste?"

  "What is love?" Honoré said, waving his glass with the air. "A symposium on the subject."

  "Love is overrated," I said.

  "Love is as inevitable as digestion," Jean-Baptiste said. "Don't you agree, Gervais?"

  "I think that's a perfectly disgusting metaphor," Gervais Subervie said. "And are we talking about love, or conquests?"

  "Love," Honoré said. "The nature thereof. The quids and quos. It's an ancient and suitable topic for discourse."

  "Not until the dessert course," I said, smiling. "In a proper symposium."

  "Not so," Honoré said, his eyes twinkling. "It comes in with the wine, and as we've already got the wine we can go ahead."

  "If Elza agrees," Jean-Baptiste said. "Love. Is it real?"

  Subervie snorted. "That's like asking if air is real. You'll have to do better than that."

  "All right," I said. "Is adultery justified by love?"

  "Or fornication," Jean-Baptiste put in. "I think we've all been guilty of that one." He glanced at Honoré. "Some of us more than most."

  Honoré ducked his head. "Women like me," he muttered.

  Subervie cleared his throat. "To my mind, fornication is worse than adultery, because it's more likely to leave a young woman in trouble with a fatherless child. If she's pregnant she may have nowhere to go and no one who will take her in and care for her. That's worse. If she's married, there may be talk that the baby's not her husband's but no one can prove it. She's still got her name and her livelihood. I think it's a lot worse to risk a young woman's life that way than it is a married woman's. It's more irresponsible."

  "I think you have a good point," I said. "And many couples come to quite an amiable arrangement after a few years, where each pursue their own interests. Certainly my husband wanted to."

  "And you were not happy with that?" Jean-Baptiste asked, refilling my glass.

  "I wanted him to love me," I said.

  "I've saved a lot of trouble by marrying a woman I loved in the first place," Subervie said. "We grew up together, but you might say I was well beneath her since her father was a factor at the Chateau de Parenchere. When I was made an officer she married me." He helped himself to the chicken with lemon and thyme offered, a shy smile on his face. "We’ve been very happy. Our son, Jean, is four and we've a new baby. Aimeé is five months old."

  "He's the settled and happy one," Honoré said. "The one who is truly lucky in love."

  "Is your wife in town?" I asked.

  "We've rented a cottage on the Paris road a few kilometers out," he said. "Everything is ungodly expensive in Boulogne, and with two little ones and her sister come to help we can't manage in town in just a room or two, and we can't afford a house in town. I don't make that much!"

  Jean-Baptiste looked at him. "And how about adultery? Do you cheat on your wife?"

  Gervais didn't look offended. "No. Because it would hurt her. And I'm a terrible liar. She'd find out. I've never wanted to enough to be worth the pain it would cause."

  "And if the wife doesn't care?" I asked.

  He shrugged. "Better than fornication. Like I said. I think it depends on the harm done, or the lack of it."

  "Like sodomy," Honoré said, studiously not looking at Jean-Baptiste. "As long as it's not in the chain of command, it's like adultery with a woman who has an understanding. No harm, no foul. We all have our vices and it's really no one's business."

  "I would agree with that," I said. "And a very sensible conclusion for a symposium. Plato would be proud."

  "Would he?" Gervais asked.

  "Plato held that true love could only exist between equals, and since a man and a woman can never be equal, the purest love can only be between men, between brothers in arms," I said.

  "That's a different kind of love," Gervais said, also carefully not looking at Jean-Baptiste. "It's not sexual."

  "Is it not?" I asked. "I hav
e found that it can be."

  "But you are a woman."

  "And therefore can never be a man's equal?" I said, raising an eyebrow.

  "I don't think it makes a damned bit of difference," Jean-Baptiste said, downing the rest of his glass in one gulp, not looking at any of us.

  Honoré shrugged, glancing from one to another. "I think it's all shades. We know what brothers in arms are like, and we all know that things happen when feelings run strong and so does drink. It's all shades of love, different colors and intensities, but all the same thing, like refracted light. And when you walk with death as we do, those shades are very precious." He lifted his glass. "Let us give Love his due, rather than Death."

  "I'll drink to that," I said, and touched my glass to his.

  "Love and friendship," Honoré said, looking at Jean-Baptiste, who at last lifted his eyes and glass at once, a sideways smile on his face.

  "Love and friendship," he said.

  Wargames

  It was a few days later that Lannes sent for me. I sat down with him and Subervie in the stuffy office, which was far too hot for the wool coats they were wearing. Presumably the window was closed for the sake of confidentiality, and as soon as we were done Lannes could get some relief.

  "Watching the spot on the cliffs isn't working," he said bluntly. "Nobody has seen anyone."

  "Or rather," Subervie said, "We've all seen everyone. There must have been five hundred people past there with lanterns in the last week, everyone from Marshal Ney to fifteen-year-old serving girls going home from work. There has to be a better way." He looked at me significantly. "And we've just had word that the Emperor is coming to Boulogne week after next."

  I let out a long breath. The Emperor's presence in the camps of the Army of Coasts of Ocean might be the final prelude to invasion. If it were, then it was imperative that we find our man quickly. "A new strategy?" I asked.

  "Yes," Lannes said. "There are twenty men who have access to the most sensitive material, whose deliberate treason would be most costly." He raised a finger. "I say deliberate for this reason -- I do not mean that someone else has access to their papers -- I mean that they, themselves, are the spy."