The Wanton Princess

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘Damn you!’ roared Napoleon before he had finished. ‘I have heard all this before, and I don’t give a hoot for it. This is no affair of yours but a matter of State, and to preserve the peace the Prince must die.’

  ‘A few hours back Monsieur de Talleyrand said the same to me,’ Roger retorted. ‘Yet if it is not my affair it certainly is yours. Do you permit this to happen ’twill be murder! Murder! Murder! And your name will stink in the nostrils of all Europe as a result of it. For your own sake you have got to give me a reprieve that I can carry to Vincennes before it is too late. You must. If you refuse you will never live this down For the rest of your life you will regret it.’

  For a moment Napoleon considered; then, his mood completely changed, he shook his head and said quickly, ‘No, Breuc. You have ever advised me soundly and I appreciate that you have broken in on me only on account of what you believe to be my best interests. But it cannot be. I am determined to make an example of this Bourbon Prince as a deterrent to others.’

  From the way he spoke Roger knew that further argument was useless; so he replied, ‘Very well then. I will return to Vincennes, tell Savary that I have seen you and that by word of mouth you have sent me to order a stay of the Prince’s execution There is still a chance that by doing so I may save you from your own folly.’ Then he turned on his heel and left the room.

  Outside the Palace he wearily mounted his tired horse and again set out on the ten-mile ride through the southern suburbs of Paris to Vincennes, which lay right on the other side of the city. He had covered no more than a quarter of the distance and was already reeling with fatigue in the saddle when, while trotting along a dark, tree-lined road, the faint light that lit the scene grew dimmer until he found himself staring ahead into impenetrable darkness.

  For a moment he thought that, for the first time in his life, he must have fainted. But almost immediately a new light dawned about him. It was not bright but clear and he found himself looking down on a wide expanse of sea upon which the sun was setting. He knew immediately that it was in the tropics for, in the distance, he could see a palm-fringed island. Close in to it there was a ship from which a cloud of smoke was ascending. She was on fire and sinking. Nearer, but some way off, there was a longboat in which the seamen were rowing desperately. Still nearer several men were swimming and one man held a slender sword clenched between his teeth.

  Suddenly, immediately beneath him he saw Georgina struggling in the water. As clearly as if she had in fact been only a few feet from him he heard her shout, ‘Save me Roger! Oh, save me!’

  The strange psychic link that several times before, when one or other of them was faced with an emergency, had enabled them to communicate although hundreds of miles apart, had functioned once again. He felt as certain as he had ever felt of anything that the intangible spirit that gave him being and purpose had been transported to the West Indies and that at that moment Georgina was actually on the point of drowning.

  In his deep consciousness he knew that physically he could not aid her, but that by joining the power of his will to hers he might give her the additional strength to keep herself afloat until she was rescued. No thought of their quarrel or her betrayal of him entered his mind. He was conscious only of his life-long love for her. Calling silently on God to help him, he threw out the very essence of himself to buoy her up in her struggle to survive.

  Next moment he found himself diving right on to her. He felt no impact but in some miraculous way they seemed to have become one. She had gone under but swiftly surfaced. Her arms flailed the water with new strength. Turning, she struck out vigorously for the shore. While still some distance from it his sight began to blur. Swiftly the vision faded. In earthly time it had lasted only for a few seconds. During that time he had lost control of his horse and plunged headlong from the saddle. In rapid succession he felt blows on his head, shoulder and ankle. The horse trotted on leaving him lying in the road unconscious.

  23

  Overwhelmed

  When Roger came to, he dimly realised that he was in bed and that strangers were grouped round him. As his mind cleared his gaze focused on the face of a youngish man who was hurting him abominably by doing something to his head, then on a portly woman holding a basin of water. At the end of the bed stood an older man and with him a rather plain young woman.

  Several hours later he learned that he had lain in the road unconscious for a long time, been found by two workmen in the dawn and carried into the house of a couple named Boutheron. They had called in their doctor to dress his wounds and the girl was their daughter Héloise. Still later he learned the full extent of his injuries. The back of his skull had been cracked, it was thought by a blow from a rear hoof of his horse as he fell from it; he had dislocated his left shoulder and sprained his left ankle.

  The doctor declared that he ought not to be moved for some time and the Boutherons, who were prosperous bourgeois, said they were perfectly willing to look after him until he was out of danger. In due course, when he was able to tell them about himself, they declared themselves delighted and honoured to have as their guest an A.D.C. of the idolised First Consul.

  His memory of the vision he had had of Georgina returned to him in his first spell of full consciousness, and as he lay there through the following days he spent many hours thinking about it, hoping that she had survived but tortured by the thought that she might be dead and that he would never see her again.

  At first his head pained him too much for him to think coherently for long, but as he grew stronger he spent an hour each night attempting to solve the question by the only means which offered a chance that he might do so. Long since, they had solemnly promised one another that if one of them died he or she would appear to the other. Although fearing the result he forced himself to concentrate on willing her to come to him if she was dead; and when, after a week, his efforts proved abortive, he felt more hope that she was still alive. But he could feel no real certainty that she was as, although he was a convinced believer in survival, he could not dismiss the possibility that others, who did not believe in it, might be right.

  Either Madame Boutheron or Héloise sat with him for a good part of each day and, when he grew strong enough, either talked or read to him, often from the news sheets. From them he learned that Savary had had d’Enghien executed in the moat at Vincennes at half past two on that fatal morning, and also learned the results of this terrible affair.

  In spite of the Government’s attempts to suppress the facts the truth had leaked out and all Europe had denounced Napoleon as a murderer. Even several of Roger’s friends who, when they learned where he was, came to see him, spoke of the affair with horror and said that it had stained the First Consul’s reputation in a way that would long be remembered.

  Then in mid-April Pichegru was found one morning strangled in his cell. It was given out that he had committed suicide but, after the d’Enghien affair, many people were of the opinion that Napoleon had given orders that the General, too, should be murdered.

  Nevertheless Napoleon did not intend such adverse speculations to interfere with the designs he had formed for making use of the conspiracy, as Fouché told Roger when paying him a visit.

  Keeping his fish-like eyes well away from Roger’s, the cadaverous ex-Minister sniffed and said, ‘Although Napoleon has been made Consul for life, as long as he remains an elected ruler his death would mean a struggle for power between half a dozen people ambitious to step into his shoes, and in the resulting turmoil the Monarchists would stand a very good chance of putting a Bourbon on the throne. In consequence, as soon as they have recovered from their recent setback they’ll start planning another attempt to assassinate him. But if he became an hereditary monarch, whoever he had appointed as his successor would take over at once. Knowing that would put a real damper on Royalist hopes. None of them would then be willing to risk his neck on the chance of being rewarded with a dukedom.’

  Roger nodded, ‘That, I remember, was
the argument used after the attempt to blow him up on his way to the Opera in December 1800. But he was not then firm enough in the saddle to risk the violent opposition of the Old Guard Republicans, like yourself.’

  ‘Oh. I…’ Fouché snuffled into his handkerchief. ‘I have always been in favour of his wearing a crown. As long as the régime started by him continues I shall retain my modest fortune and have nothing to fear; whereas a return of the Bourbons would be the end of me. But it’s true that many of my old colleagues who are in the same boat would then have been fools enough to cut off their noses to spite their faces by raising the mobs against him. Now though, matters are very different. There is not a Jacobin left with enough stomach to raise a pea-shooter, and this recent conspiracy has given him just the chance he was seeking to get himself made a monarch. He has as good as given an order to everyone dependent on him to canvass the project at every opportunity, and any day now you will see the measures he is taking in secret produce results.’

  As usual in such matters Fouché proved right. On April 23rd an obscure member of the Tribunate named Curée proposed the adoption of the ‘hereditary principle’, and so well had most of the members been primed that Carnot, who had saved the Republic from being overwhelmed in its infancy by his brilliant organisation of the Armies, alone had the courage to speak against it. A commission was appointed to debate the proposal and obsequiously reported in its favour. On May 18th the Senate decreed that Napoleon should henceforth be styled ‘Emperor of the French’.

  A spate of resounding titles then gushed forth from the Napoleonic cornucopia. The two junior Consuls became the Arch-Chancellor and the Arch-Treasurer of the Empire, Talleyrand Grand Chamberlain, Duroc Grand Marshal of the Palace, Berthier Grand Master of the Hounds, Caulaincourt Grand Master of the Horse. The most loyal among the Generals—Mortier, Berthier, Murat, Davoust, Ney, Soult, Moncey and Bessières—were all made Marshals of the Empire; but so, too, in order to reconcile them to the new state of things, were the potential trouble-makers—Bernadotte, Augereau, Masséna, Jourdan, Brune and Lannes—and four old heroes of the Republican wars were also brought to heel by being given the honour of this supreme rank.

  Best of all fared the Bonapartes. Honest old Letizia flatly refused to accept any title, so Napoleon had to content himself by having her styled ‘Madame Mère’; but Fesch, already ‘His Eminence the Cardinal’, became Grand Almoner, the brothers Joseph and Louis Their Imperial Highnesses the Grand Elector and the Constable of the Empire. The three sisters were also given the rank of Imperial Highnesses. Thus, to heights equalled only by the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs, was raised a poor Corsican family that ten short years before had been dependent on the charity of the Republic so ironically termed, ‘One and Indivisible.’

  Roger could well imagine the unfeigned delight with which Pauline would display the second coronet which, in her own right, she was now entitled to have embroidered on her lingerie. That was, if she had the chance to do so to any man other than her semi-impotent husband.

  Since she had been forced to leave Paris he had received occasional scrawled and ill-spelt letters from her; in each she had described her situation as ever more deplorable. Roman society was rigidly conventional as far as women were concerned and both her own mother, who had gone to join Lucien in his voluntary exile, and her horrid old mother-in-law kept an eagle eye on her to ensure that she remained, like Caesar’s wife, a paragon of virtue.

  Added to that, an unidentified infection she had contracted while in San Domingo had recurred. It caused sores to break out on her hands and arms and, so far, no doctor had been able to produce a cure. In vain she had taken courses of the waters at Pisa and Florence, but without their doing her any good, and she complained bitterly at the frustration she felt at being the wife of a millionaire, yet unable to enjoy life owing to ill health and being denied the excitement of continuing to have lovers.

  Roger felt deeply sorry for her, but it now amused him to speculate upon what glorified appointment he would have received had they married. Murat, although he knew nothing whatever about war at sea, had been made High Admiral, so Roger, as another of Napoleon’s brothers-in-law, could have counted on becoming Grand Something or Other of the Empire, with a huge income to support the dignity. Even so, now he was no longer subject to Pauline’s extraordinary sexual attraction he felt that he had had a lucky escape; for no honours, however great, could have compensated him for enduring an empty-minded, nymphomaniac wife.

  Meanwhile, towards the end of April he had been able to get up for an hour or two each day and by mid-May to come downstairs for gentle exercise and fresh air in the garden. At the end of that month, although the kindly Boutherons pressed him to stay on, he insisted that he no longer had any excuse for accepting their generous hospitality. To show his gratitude for their care of him he spent a considerable sum in buying mother, father and daughter extravagant presents that amazed and delighted them; then he returned to his old quarters at La Belle Etoile.

  As he continued to suffer now and then from splitting headaches he still felt unequal to resuming his duties, so he whiled away the best part of June, whenever he felt up to it, by dining with many of his numerous friends and attending the most famous salons to hear the news and rumours of the day.

  The chief topic was Moreau who, with the other conspirators, had been put on trial on May 28th. A special law had been passed depriving all persons of trial by jury who had plotted against the First Consul’s life; so the accused were subjected to a form of court martial which meant that pressure could be exerted on the judges to secure convictions.

  As the victor of Hohenlinden, Moreau still enjoyed a considerable degree of popularity with the masses; so his trial had to be conducted with ostensible fairness. In consequence, Napoleon could not prevent it from emerging that, although Moreau had met Pichegru in secret, he had persistently refused to lend himself to the plot and could be convicted of no more than desiring Napoleon’s overthrow.

  The result was that, on June 20th, the judges sentenced him only to two years’ imprisonment. Napoleon was furious at this, as he had wished Moreau to be condemned to death, so that he could receive credit for the gracious act of pardoning him. As things were, all he could do was to grant Moreau his release on condition that he emigrated to the United States.

  Of the real conspirators who had been tried with him, twenty were sentenced to death. Owing to the intercession of Josephine and Madame Mère, Napoleon commuted the sentence of the Polignacs and de Rivère to a term of imprisonment; but Georges Cadoudal, his brave Bretons and the other commoners suffered the extreme penalty.

  A few days after the conclusion of the trial Roger reported for duty to his master. Napoleon was the last man ever to admit having made a mistake but, with a sharp glance at Roger, he said, In Fouché’s opinion, my having ordered the execution of d’Enghien was not a crime but worse, a blunder. No doubt you think that too, but I have no regrets that your accident prevented you from interfering with my plans. I always know what I am doing and the Duke’s death served its purpose.’

  Nothing now was to be gained by arguing the matter, so Roger said suavely, ‘The fact that I may now address you as “Sire” is proof of it; and now that I am well again I hope once more to be of service to Your Majesty. May I take it that you are still contemplating the invasion of England?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Napoleon replied abruptly. ‘But I have suffered certain most annoying setbacks. My building programme for big ships is a long way behind schedule and the smaller ones are far from satisfactory. In April some forty of them were caught in a storm while on an exercise off Boulogne and driven on to the coast at Etaples mostly as wrecks.’

  After a moment he went on. ‘However, I have good hopes for this summer. In the Spring Latouche-Tréville succeeded Gantheaume as Commander of our Mediterranean Fleet. I have ordered him to put to sea from Toulon and elude Admiral Nelson’s squadron by heading for Egypt, then to turn back in the night and pass the
Straits of Gibraltar. He is next to drive off in turn the English squadrons blockading Cadiz and Rochefort, thus freeing our ships lying in those ports. With these reinforcements he will sail far out into the Atlantic, as though making for the West Indies, turn back again, elude Cornwallis by a dash up the Channel and join our fleet in Cherbourg. Should he succeed in this we’ll have a fleet massed there large enough to take on the English at any time the weather becomes favourable for transporting an army to the coast of Kent.’

  Apart from the fact that the plan under-rated British alertness, it was sound strategy and Roger showed no hesitatation in congratulating his master upon it.

  Recently he had learned that, in the middle of the previous month, Mr. Pitt had again become Prime Minister. How that had come about, and of the composition of the new Cabinet he as yet knew nothing; but he recalled Mr. Pitt’s saying when they were last together at Walmer that he thought Britain had little to fear as long as the French fleet could be prevented from dominating the Channel. Roger wished now that he had some way of conveying Napoleon’s intentions to Downing Street; but for a long time past he had had no channels by which he could send secret information back to England and, having again only just reported for duty, he saw no prospect of getting across himself for some time to come.

  Napoleon then added, ‘I am setting out on another inspection of the Army of the Coast early in July. You will come with me.’

  Realising that the interview was over, Roger made a deeper than usual bow to the newly-created Emperor, said ‘As ever, it will be a privilege to accompany Your Majesty,’ and withdrew.