Napoleon's Police

by Michele McGrath

  So we began the long and dangerous walk home. We went down the lane I had been driven up before and, at the crossroads, turned south towards our own country.

  Chapter 11

  All we could think of and hope for now was survival. As we walked, I wondered what madness had possessed me after Lefebvre’s death, to make me join the army again after all those years. I hoped that the old Colonel had survived and Mourier and the rest. Darvy had no memory of where he had been. The man with the cart found him lying at the side of a lane underneath some trees and brought him to the convent. By pure chance I had walked past him near enough to be recognised. He had seen none of the others and both of us doubted whether they still lived. The regiment advanced too far before the cavalry charge and there had been too many men killed. It never occurred to either of us to look at the faces of the dead on the battlefield. Perhaps we did not want to find out. Just to be alive seemed a miracle. These thoughts accompanied us along the way.

  The first night Darvy said, “If we stick to the direct route, we’re bound to meet the English or the Germans. Then we’ll be captured.”

  “What do you suggest?” I asked.

  “Head for the coast.”

  “Why?”

  “It won’t be as heavily guarded and fewer soldiers will go that way.”

  “Even if that’s true, it doesn’t get me nearer home,” I objected.

  “We can find a ship. My father is well known all along the Manche. We used to sail both north and south, wherever we could find fish. He’s friends with lots of people and I haven’t forgotten how to handle a boat. Sailing’s far easier than walking, especially in our present condition. At Boulogne, I can ask someone to take you as far as the mouth of the Seine. Then you can take travel in one of the barges that go up the river. What do you think?”

  I thought it was a long way to walk to Paris, especially if the main roads would soon be watched, as they might be already. Perhaps heading for the coast would be the best option. In the end, that is where we decided to go.

  We travelled by the lanes and back ways. One of the farmers told us that the British and the Prussians had organised themselves at last. They were hunting down any of our men who had escaped. Sticking to the lanes made the journey longer and it was harder to find our way. Fortunately, many years ago, an old sergeant made us learn how to tell our direction from the sun or the stars. He was a crusty old man, who died in Germany but he’d done us a favour and we’d never needed his teaching more than we did at this moment.

  We can’t have walked more than a dozen kilometres that first day. We were sore and stiff so our strength soon gave out. We slept under a hedge and ate some of the food we brought away from the convent. We heard some rustling and muttering but no one came near us. We were glad, because neither of us was in any fit state to beat off an attacker if one arrived. We hoped our luck would hold and we could stay hidden from unfriendly eyes.

  We felt worse the next morning. All that forenoon I ached with ever step I took. I never knew I possessed so many muscles. I was sure they all hurt at the same time. It would take us weeks even to cross the border like this, never mind reaching the coast. I began to despair, and then we found the horse.

  He grazed peacefully under a stand of trees. A saddle had slipped some way round his belly and his reins trailed on the ground. He had obviously been in the battle for there was a gash across his hindquarters, long but not deep, which had stopped bleeding.

  Darvy and I looked at each other. This beast might be our salvation if only we could catch it.

  “You or me?” he whispered to me.

  “You. You’re a better horseman.”

  I held my breath as he circled round to approach the animal from downwind. He moved quietly, but the horse turned his head to look at him. Darvy held out one of our dried apples. The horse stretched his neck and reached for the wizened thing, grinding it with his big teeth. Darvy stroked him gently, gathered up the reins and led him back to me.

  “We’re going to have to get rid of this saddlecloth,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “It’s a French horse. Look at it. He pointed to where a regimental crest had been embroidered onto the corner. “If anyone sees us riding, they’ll know we’ve been in the battle. When we were walking we could hide under a bush. If we ride a horse, we’ll be seen.”

  My wits must have gone begging because I hadn’t realised the implications. I only thought of covering the ground more quickly and with less painful effort, but what he said made sense. We would certainly be noticed.

  “What do you suggest?” I asked.

  “Get rid of the saddle and bridle. Use a bit of rope for a headstall when we can find one and muddy the beast up. Then it’s a horse like any other and we can say we’re farm workers bringing it back from the blacksmith.”

  “Not like this, we can’t.” Both of us still wore the remnants of our uniforms and, although our breeches were filthy, they had once been white.

  “No, we’ll have to find something else to wear. There’ll be a cottage or two around here. Fancy a spot of burglary?”

  At the word my mind leaped to Lefebvre, the once famous burglar. I must have staggered because Darvy asked,

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Perhaps we could exchange the tack for clothes and some rope.”

  “And give the people the chance to betray us? Don’t be soft.”

  In the end, we hid the saddle and the saddlecloth in some bushes. Then we removed the pieces of our clothing which marked us as soldiers. We did not yet dare ride, but we led the horse for a couple of kilometres until we were under the shelter of some woods. I found a fallen tree and helped Darvy to climb up. He swung his leg over the horse with a groan, but he did not do any further damage to his broken ribs. I scrambled up behind him and we rode off quietly, watching out for anyone who might be around. We came to a small stream unchallenged and all three of us drank our fill. At the end of the copse of trees we saw some swirls of smoke against the sunset sky.

  “A cottage. No one around that I can see.”

  “Do we ask for help or just take what we want?”

  “Ask I think but be ready for trouble.”

  Accordingly we tied the horse to a tree and I went and pounded on the door.

  “Go away,” a rough voice answered me. I took no notice and continued to knock.

  The door was pulled away with an oath and I found myself looking into the barrel of a musket.

  I fell back a step, with my hands in the air. “I mean you no harm,” I said. By this time, Darvy had circled round the back of the cottage. He knocked up the musket, which stuck out of the doorway, using a large stick. The man’s finger must have been on the trigger because the musket went off with a roar, fortunately over my head. Darvy hit down hard on the man’s hand and the gun dropped to the floor. Now it was the turn of the man to back away, shaking, into the room. We followed and discovered he was not alone. An old woman cowered in a corner and a young lad stood in front of her, brandishing a poker. I had only an instant before he swooped on me but it was enough. He was too young and untrained to know what to do and he was soon gasping on the ground, his weapon in my hand.

  “We mean you no harm,” I repeated.

  It was the old woman who suddenly came out of her corner and flew at me. “You’ve near broken my man’s arm and the young ’un’s head. That’s harm enough. What do you want from us?”

  “Some clothes and a bit of rope. Food if you have it. Then we’ll go away and leave you alone.”

  “Well, you’re too late. We’ve been robbed already. They took almost all we own, even the kettle of soup I’d made for our meal.”

  “You’ve got rope at least.” Darvy pulled a loop of it down from a nail. “We need breeches and shirts or an old coat as well. Don’t make me search for them.”

  I suddenly saw the fear in the old woman’s face and it shook me. They’d spoken French to us. These were our own people, not st
rangers in a foreign country.

  “Mother,” I said, “these things are all we want and then we will go I promise you.” I fumbled under my clothes and found what I wanted. Being an old campaigner, I’d kept my purse strapped against my skin. For a wonder, no one had robbed me either on the battlefield or at the convent. The purse was still there. I pulled out a coin and held it out to her.

  “Take this, so you can replace what you give us.”

  She drew a deep breath and looked at her husband, who still stood under Darvy’s watchful eye.

  “Give them what they want and we can be rid of them,” he grumbled.

  The old woman took the coin to the fire to see it better, then she put it away inside her clothes. She went into the furthest corner of the room and opened a wooden box. She rummaged around in it and then came back with some clothes over her arm.

  “These belonged to my son. He’s gone now and the boy’s too small to wear them yet.”

  I nodded. “Buy him better with the coin I’ve given you.”

  We got two pairs of breeches with holes in them where the moths had eaten the wool. Darvy put on a smock which almost drowned him and they gave me a large stained shirt. Fortunately my shoes would not betray me. They showed signs of their hard usage, cracks and splits appearing fast, which suited my invented character but they still protected my feet. I hoped they would last until I got to Boulogne where I could get some more, or else I would have to go barefoot. Darvy grumbled about exchanging his boots for a pair of wooden clogs. The boy leapt on the boots as soon as they were off his feet, holding them to his chest. His own feet were bare and black with dirt.

  “Don’t wear those until the foreign soldiers have gone. Otherwise they’ll take them off you,” I warned him. “Hide them until it’s safe…”

  “…And you’ve grown a bit,” Darvy said with a grin. We always teased him about his big feet.

  As soon as we were changed, we left the cottage as we had promised to do. I didn’t have any animosity towards these people. We were travelling away from the fighting; they had to stay where they were, at the mercy of foreign armies. They were likely to lose what little they owned unless they hid their possessions carefully.

  Now we looked like farmers. Some dirt rubbed into our hair completed the picture. We found a patch of mud which we applied to the horse. He didn’t approve of the proceeding, snorting and prancing as far as he could. I fashioned a headstall from the rope and we left the bridle under a bush. Then we mounted the same way as we had before and trotted off down the lane. As we went, we rehearsed the story we would tell if we were questioned.

  “We’re brothers, I’m Pierre, you’re…”

  “Paul.” Darvy laughed and then held onto his ribs. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Our father is a labourer on a farm outside…Where are we?”

  “No idea.”

  “We’ll ask at the next village or the one after that. Anyway we’re taking the horse to the blacksmith. One of the shoes is loose…”

  “Let’s hope we have time to loosen it then,” Darvy said.

  “No – we’re coming back from the blacksmith’s – that’s better.”

  “I also think we’d better take a look at any villages before we go near them. God knows where the bloody English are by now.”

  We saw nothing of them for a few days, as we rode along the lanes in the Netherlands. We travelled in the fleeting hours of darkness and hid if anyone was near. We slept until late afternoon in barns or woodland and continued our journey in the evening. When it became very dark, one of us led the horse while the other rode. We begged our dinner from farms or ‘liberated’ some vegetables from the fields when evening was falling. Very occasionally we paid a coin or two and received information. The English were spreading out across the region. An army of occupation was ready to pounce on people like us.

  We bathed our injuries in the streams we crossed, being careful not to wash away our protective layer of dirt in other places. By now it had become streaked from the occasional shower of rain and looked authentic. My mother would have had a fit if she could have seen me and so would Eugénie. We hoped our disguise would pass a challenge but, as yet, it had not been tested.

  We still travelled slowly at first, despite using the horse. He was a stayer, even with a double load on his back. We headed almost due west and we crossed the frontier somewhere between Tournai and Lille. The weather stayed kind and the peace of the countryside was soothing. We could not avoid the occasional refugee, but parted from them as soon as possible. One or two cast envious eyes on the horse, but we both had sticks and no one was brave enough to challenge our possession of him. We did not see any of the enemy. If they were searching for us, they searched elsewhere and we went on our way unhindered.

  I, for one, existed in a dreamlike state, where the only reality was the dust of the road and the quietness of the country. It soothed my spirits as well as my body. Gradually our speed increased and we made better progress, as our injuries healed. We started to travel earlier and continued later and that led to our undoing.

  We camped for the day in the lee of some bushes. I went to sleep, for Darvy had the first watch. Suddenly thunder rumbled. I opened my eyes to see the sky had darkened. Rain began to come down in torrents. Within seconds we were both soaked. Darvy scrambled over to hold onto the horse, who did not like this sudden change in the weather. If he hadn’t been trained to put up with the sound of the artillery, I don’t think we could have held on to him. He nearly twisted the reins out of my hand when lightening hit a tree not very far away. We clung together, wishing for the storm to end.

  Fortunately it was not long in duration. The thunder rolled away and the rain became lighter. By now we were in a sorry state and neither of us fancied sleeping on the sodden ground. Movement would be warmer. So we came out of the bushes and climbed a small rise. A valley lay before us and I knew where I was for the first time since the battle started. Béthune – I’d been stationed there once, many years ago, on my way to Germany. I’d spent enough time there to recognise it and the place hadn’t changed much. We must have travelled further south than we intended and we would have to turn north-west to reach Boulogne. It would be necessary to skirt the town, because there were soldiers camped there. We were too far away to see who they were, but the bustle was unmistakable. I turned to Darvy.

  “If they’re ours, do you want to join them again?”

  “What for? The Emperor’s gone, or so they say. Our armies will be dispersed soon enough. Louis won’t keep the units who deserted him intact. All I would do is prolong the agony. No, I’ll take my chance and go home. What about you?”

  Even when I asked the question, I knew the madness had left me forever somewhere on the battlefield. I had no wish ever to fight again, no wish to be made a prisoner. My one thought was to get back to Eugénie as soon as I could.

  “I agree with you.”

  We rode on, carefully as I thought. Perhaps we had become a lulled by the days that had passed so peacefully. At any rate, we didn’t see them but they saw us. We were crossing the corner of a field, from one stand of trees to the next. Suddenly, they were all round us and we had no chance to run. There were five men with a youngster in charge of them. I did not recognise the uniforms.

  Chapter 12

  “Halt!” the officer said in good French but with the strange accent I recognised from the time when Lefebvre and I hunted for the ‘Missing Englishman’. Darvy pulled up the horse and we both sat waiting for whatever would happen next.

  “Who are you?” the Englishman asked. Now we would have to see whether they believed our story.

  “I am Pierre Duval and this is my brother, Paul,” I replied. Duval is a common enough name and we’d never bothered to invent another. “Our father farms some land, over there.” I pointed in the direction we wanted to go.

  My heart thudded as I spoke and the officer, for all his youth, had a look in his eye I didn’t like.
<
br />   “Where are you going?”

  “Home.”

  “That is a fine horse you are riding for a farmer’s son.”

  “He was a fine horse once, before he tried to jump a fence that was too high for him. He injured his hock and we never know when it’ll collapse under him. That’s why Monsieur Augier gave him to my father. He does well enough on the farm, but he’s not fit to go a long way any more,” I lied.

  “He doesn’t appear to be in distress, even carrying two.” The officer made a gesture to one of his men. He got off his horse and ran his hand over our horse’s legs. He straightened up and said something to the officer. I learned a little English once but this was too fast for me to understand.

  “My man says he can’t feel any injury on the leg. Your animal has a slash on his croup that looks as if it was made by a sword.” I cursed inwardly. We had washed the wound and only lightly muddied it, so that it would not become infected and heal.

  “No, it was…”

  “Stop. You’ve talked enough.” He pointed to Darvy. “Let your brother answer, unless he hasn’t got a tongue in his head.”

  I hoped his ear wasn’t good enough to pick out the differences in our accents. Darvy was from the coast and I came from the other end of the country. There is a world of difference between the speech of Boulogne and Grenoble.

  Darvy muttered something about a wire and some brambles. The officer had a cynical expression as if he didn’t believe a word he said.

  “Dismount,” he said, when Darvy finished. I hesitated and one of the soldiers swung his musket up to cover me. At that distance, he did not need to be a fine shot to kill me, so I had no choice but to obey. I slipped to the ground and then turned to help Darvy.

  “What’s wrong with him?” the officer asked.

  “He fell off the roof onto a cart, when we were mending the thatch.”