The Wanton Princess

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘Oh, Roger! If I must, come with me.’

  ‘Dearest, I dare not. I have to deliver my despatch to Villeneuve and it is already overdue. Besides, if you were seen in Algeciras with a French officer, since the French are the bitterest enemies of the English the Spaniards might suspect that I was an Englishman in a French uniform. It is, too, essential that you should play the part of a woman alone and in great distress on account of her injured husband.’

  While he was speaking he had undone his tunic so that he could get at his money belt. From it he took a handful of Spanish gold pieces and gave them to Georgina. As she was stowing them away she said:

  ‘Should the Spanish officers not after all prove as gallant as you expect and refuse to let me through, what am I to do?’

  ‘I should have thought of that.’ He paused a moment to consider, then went on. ‘As soon as you have gone I shall set out for Jerez and pass what remains of tonight there. You should be across the frontier tomorrow, but we’ll allow an extra day, and it is no more than a day’s journey up from Algeciras to Jerez. Tomorrow is the 24th. Although it means still further delay in delivering my despatch I’ll bide at the best inn in Jerez until the morning of the 27th. Should you not have joined me by then I’ll take it as certain that you have got through to Gibraltar. And now, most beloved of all beloveds, you must leave me to get a place in the diligence.’

  For a good three minutes they embraced while he kissed her eyes, her neck, her mouth and felt her tears wet on his cheeks; then she tore herself away and walked resolutely towards the coach. He remained under the arch until ten minutes later the diligence clattered past him.

  Immediately it was out of sight he had his horse saddled, paid the livery and bait fee, and set off for Jerez. Just outside the city he passed the diligence at a canter but he did not give it a glance. He dared not, for fear that his resolution would break down and he would, after all, accompany her to Algeciras.

  He reached Jerez soon after one o’clock in the morning, knocked up the inn and went to bed. For a long time he lay awake, his mind filled by the miracle that Georgina was alive and that sometime, somewhere, he would again hold her lovely naked body in his arms. Then he slept soundly until well on in the morning.

  When he awoke the events of the previous evening flooded back to him, but he thought they could have been only a vivid dream. Then the strange room brought home to him that they could not have been. He really was in Jerez and Georgina alive and well and on her way to Gibraltar.

  For a while he lay there in ecstatic happiness. The years seemed to have fallen from him. When he got up he felt a buoyancy that he had not known since the terrible day when she had betrayed him to the tipstaffs. She had made no mention of that, or that she had forgiven him for having killed John Beefy. But the time they had spent together had been so short—apart from their silent trip from ship to shore in the boat—not much more than twenty minutes. And every moment had been occupied by her telling him how she had got back to Europe, the urgency of their leaving Cadiz before Fournier found them and his giving her the information that she must take to Gibraltar.

  Although he had ridden down from Boulogne by easy stages, he had been for thirty-one days almost continuously in the saddle; so the prospect of a few days’ rest was an added joy and, after a hearty breakfast, he strolled round the little town.

  It was a pleasant place in the centre of the sherry industry. As he was aware, several of the principal shippers were Englishmen; but the chivalrous Spaniards had left them at liberty to continue conducting their businesses, except for the restriction that they were no longer allowed to send cargoes to England. As a French officer Roger naturally avoided contact with them, but he met several of the Spanish growers. Members of both the Gonzalez and Domecq families took him round the great bodegas where the wine was stored and entertained him most hospitably.

  Nevertheless, during the three days he spent in Jerez for most of the time his mind was on the miracle of Georgina being alive and wondering if she had succeeded in getting to Gibraltar. By the morning of the 27th he felt confident that all was well so, still in the highest spirits, he took horse for Seville.

  Late in the afternoon he entered the ancient city and dismounted at the great building that housed the Board of the Indies. To his relief he learned that Villeneuve was still in Seville and, half an hour later, he was received by him at the Casa that the Spaniards had placed at the disposal of the Admiral and his staff.

  The evenings were still warm enough to sit out in the sheltered patio of the Casa and there, seated beside a tinkling fountain, they held a long conference, during which Roger learned that Austria had declared war on France some three weeks before and that the Russians and Swedes had soon afterwards proclaimed their intention to join the Third Coalition against France. Villeneuve then said that he had not brought his fleet down to Cadiz for fear of further encounters with the English but because the last direct order he had received from the Emperor had enjoined him, should he meet serious opposition when sailing north, to retire into that port. He then spoke of the difficulties he would have to overcome before again putting to sea.

  The Spaniards were politeness personified but unbelievably dilatory about carrying out their promises. Supply problems, which in France could be dealt with in a week, in Spain took a month. Admiral Gravina, who commanded the Spanish squadron in Cadiz, was a charming man but his ships were in a wretched condition and several, by French standards, unseaworthy. This made them so cumbersome to handle that they became a drag upon the remainder of the fleet and hampered its manoeuvres.

  Another matter that gave Villeneuve grave concern was that both navies had been cooped up in port for so long that many of the Captains had had no opportunity to practise any but the most elementary evolutions. In fact the only one they could be relied on to carry out, without throwing the fleet into disorder, was to form line-of-battle; and that was a terrible disability when going into action against the English, who had been trained at a given signal to change formation with perfect precision.

  He then lamented the fact that they were so far from Paris that time did not permit of his going there and attempting to dissuade the Emperor from staking everything on the autumn campaign; and Roger got the impression that, in spite of Napoleon’s order, he might still not leave the port, later making the excuse that the Spanish fleet was unfit to sail and that without it he would find himself heavily outnumbered.

  In spite of what Talleyrand had said about the Army becoming stale, it was Roger’s view, too, that Napoleon would stand a greater chance of success if he waited until the Spring, because the worst-found ships in the Allied fleet would meet with less trouble in better weather. On the other hand, if they sailed in October rough weather would favour the British and, if caught in a bad storm, Villeneuve’s fleet might well suffer the same fate as had the Spanish Armada.

  It being Roger’s object to do everything he could to bring about the destruction of the Allied Fleet, and the Admiral’s reactions being much as Napoleon had anticipated, he did not scruple to use the spur he had been given. As tactfully as he could, he spoke to Villeneuve about the conversation he was supposed to have overheard and told him that if his fleet lingered in port until the weather became too bad for it to put to sea it was probable that he would be replaced by Admiral Rosily.

  Having thanked him for the warning, the Admiral asked him to remain at the Casa as his guest until his negotiations with the Spaniards were completed; so Roger spent the following two days seeing the sights of Seville. He found the huge Cathedral very impressive, but was much more interested in the fascinating collection in one wing of the House of the Indies consisting of maps, gear and weapons used by Columbus and the great Conquistadors.

  On the 30th Villeneuve told him that he now hoped to be able to sail from Cadiz in about a fortnight, then gave him a despatch for the Emperor containing detailed information upon the state of the fleet. At midday Roger again reluctantly mounted his h
orse and started on his long journey north. Anxious now to get back to Paris he covered longer daily stages than he had while coming south and reached Bayonne on October 9th.

  Having stabled his horse at a good inn and sent his valise up to a room in it, he walked round to the Cavalry Barracks to get the latest military news. The officers there made him welcome in their Mess and, to his astonishment, told him that the whole of the Grande Armée had left the coast towards the end of August; but nobody there yet knew if the Emperor had sent it to the Rhine with the intention of invading Austria or down into Italy where it was believed that the Austrians had taken the offensive.

  Puzzling over the matter later, it seemed to Roger at first sight a crazy business for Napoleon to have sent him with orders for the Allied Fleet to clear the Channel in preparation for an invasion then, within a few days of having despatched him with them, withdrawn the troops who were to make the invasion should Villeneuve prove successful. But he knew the subtle mind of the Corsican far too well to believe that he had acted on impulse. Napoleon always had an alternative plan for every situation but if he did use it, invariably kept it to himself until the last moment.

  That, given a reasonable chance of success, he would have invaded England Roger had no doubt at all. But evidently he had come to the conclusion that he could place no reliance on his Navy and, therefore, was using it only as a factor in a vast deception plan. By setting his Army in motion more than a week before the ill-prepared Austrians had even declared war, he had already stolen a march on them, and it would probably still be several weeks before his enemies learned that the Grande Armée had left the coast. If, before that, Villeneuve put to sea and the fact was reported by watching British frigates it would be assumed that he was about to launch the invasion. Reports of French troop movements towards the Rhine or Italy would be discounted as no more than the despatch of reinforcements. Then, one fine morning, the Austrians in one theatre or another would wake up to find the mightiest army in the world arrayed against them.

  That night, before he went to sleep, Roger felt happier about the European situation than he had done for a long time. It was certain now that Mr. Pitt had succeeded in his great undertaking of welding together a Third Coalition against France. In whichever direction the Grande Armée was marching it could not be in two theatres of war at once. So even if the Austrians were defeated between the Rhine and the Danube they might hope to be victorious in Italy; or vice versa. And behind Austria was ranged Sweden and the might of Russia. Last, but not least, much against his will Villeneuve was being forced to come out of Cadiz. If he could be intercepted and his fleet destroyed that would put an end for years to come of any fear of England being invaded.

  Next day Roger pressed on, covering over a hundred miles, and reached Bordeaux. There nothing more was known than he had learned in Bayonne. Early the following morning he set out for Angoulême. But when he was a little more than half way there, disaster overtook him.

  Shortly after he had passed through the little town of Chalais the road ran through a wood and stretches of the highway were covered with long drifts of fallen autumn leaves. Beneath a drift there lay a deep pothole. The off fore hoof of his horse plunged into it and he was flung from the saddle to crash heavily on the same shoulder he had injured in his fall on the night he had had his vision of Georgina drowning.

  Half dazed, he stumbled to his feet, to find that his mount had broken a leg. There was nothing to be done but take one of his pistols from a holster and shoot the animal; then, in great pain, walk back to Chalais.

  The inn there might have been worse. The local sawbones was called in to set his broken collar bone and the landlady proved to be a kindly body who did her best to make him comfortable. But he was delayed there six days before, having bought another horse, he felt fit enough to continue his journey; and, even then, his injury compelled him to go by easy stages.

  It was not until the 18th that he reached Poitiers, where rumour had it that the Grande Armée had crossed the Rhine and that the Emperor was commanding it in person. At Tours reports were conflicting, but at Orleans on the 21st it was said that he had gained a great victory somewhere in Bavaria.

  As Roger’s shoulder was still paining him it took him two days to cover the last eighty miles to Paris. After a happy reunion with his old friends the Blanchards and an excellent dinner with them in their parlour, he went to bed greatly relieved to think that his seemingly endless ride was over.

  First thing next morning he hurried round to the Tuileries to get authentic news of what had been happening. There, to his surprise, he found Duroc; as it was unusual for Napoleon to set off on a campaign without this faithful friend. But Duroc explained that he had only recently returned from his mission to Berlin, which had been only partially successful. The avaricious but cowardly Frederick William had agreed to accept Hanover from France, not as a fee for becoming an ally, but as the price only of maintaining a benevolent neutrality. Duroc then gave Roger such intelligence as was known about the enemy and an account of the great battle that had taken place between the 12th and 17th of the month.

  From captured despatches and the reports of spies it had emerged that the Emperor Francis had decided to despatch into Italy his largest army, some ninety thousand strong, under his ablest General, the Archduke Charles; while a smaller one of about thirty thousand, under the Archduke Ferdinand, with the veteran General Mack as his adviser, stood on the defensive to cover Austria; on the assumption that, before it could be attacked, it would be reinforced by a Russian army, also thirty thousand strong, that was advancing under Kutusoff.

  Meanwhile the Coalition had in preparation two other offensives. In the north, from Swedish Pomerania, a combined Swedish and Russian army was to strike at Holland with the object of freeing that country from French domination, and a joint expedition of Russians from Corfu and English from Malta was to land in the south of Italy.

  Napoleon had ignored these threats to the extremities of his dominions, left Masséna to do the best he could in northern Italy and decided to concentrate the maximum possible strength against Austria. Only skeleton forces had been left in Holland and on the Channel coast. The rest, by swift night marches, undetected by the enemy, had passed the Rhine and penetrated the Black Forest.

  Although the movement had begun towards the end of August, in order to mask his intentions the Emperor himself had remained in Paris right up to September 23rd and, to publicise his presence there, had issued a decree that had set all Europe talking—no less than the abolition of the Revolutionary calendar and a reversion to the old Gregorian one.

  It appeared that the Austrians, presumably on Mack’s advice, had decided to march through Bavaria and take their stand on the line of the river Iller thereby having the great fortress of Ulm, where the Iller flowed into the Danube, as a buttress to their northern flank and some fifty miles south another considerable fortress, Memmingen, to buttress their southern flank.

  Totally unaware that a great French army was approaching, Mack had advanced from the line of the Iller into the Black Forest, possibly with the idea, if he met no resistance, of invading Alsace. The Emperor, playing for time, had opposed him only with light troops and led him on. Meanwhile, the Corps of Bernadotte, Ney, Soult and Lannes were coming down from the north-west towards the Danube and, on the 6th, the troops of the two last, with the help of Murat’s cavalry, captured Donauwörth, fifty miles down the river from Ulm.

  By the 13th, while the advance guard of the Russian army was only just crossing the river Inn and still a hundred and fifty miles away, the French were already far to the south behind the Austrian lines and Soult had cut off the big garrison in the fortress town of Memmingen. On the same day Ney, by a brilliant dash across the Danube from Elchingen, inflicted a severe defeat on the Austrians outside Ulm. Having encircled both wings of Mack’s army, the Emperor had then ordered his whole force to go in for the kill. Ney, the hero of the campaign, had stormed the Michaelsberg, the key pos
ition in the Ulm defences, and the Austrians had asked for an armistice.

  Having been in Naples when Mack, lent by the Austrians to the Neapolitans, had made a hopeless mess of their campaign and lost their country for them to a mere two divisions of French troops, Roger thought the Emperor Francis must be crazy to have entrusted another army to such an aged and incompetent General. But the damage was now done. While displaying for the benefit of Duroc enthusiastic delight at Napoleon’s triumph, he could only secretly bemoan the fact that the new war on the Continent had opened so badly for the Coalition.

  His next visit was to Decrès; for, although he would have taken Villeneuve’s despatch direct to the Emperor had he been in Paris, it was obviously a matter for the Minister of Marine. After glancing through the document, Decrès said:

  ‘Poor Villeneuve; fortune has been most unkind to him. He is a good and courageous sailor. Through no fault of his, the tools he has been given to work with are only third-rate; but, try as I will, I cannot make the Emperor understand that. And now, unless he left port by the middle of this month, he is finished. Before leaving for the Rhine the Emperor decided to replace him and Admiral Rosily is now on the way south to take over his command.’

  Roger nodded, ‘Even should he have left port before Rosily reaches Cadiz, I do not envy him. He will be terribly hampered by those almost useless Spanish ships, and you may be sure that the English will fight him tooth and nail as he makes his way up Channel.’

  ‘Mon cher Colonel, you are out of date,’ Decrès smiled. ‘The Emperor deceived the enemy brilliantly by his forced march to the Rhine, but before he left Paris he realised that if Villeneuve reached the Channel at all it would be too late for his fleet to play any useful part in the deception. Fresh orders were sent some time after your departure, that when he left Cadiz he was to re-enter the Mediterranean and use his ships to protect our lines of communication between Marseilles and Genoa, so that we can continue to supply our army in Italy.’