Lords of the Nile

by Jonathan Spencer

  Part of him could still not believe he had found her – and at what cost, he asked himself: a cost to everyone else, the marines, the men lost on their shattered and sunken brig, the Esperanza, Rivelli, and De la Vega, who had risked his all for him.

  And Cook. Marine Sgt Cook, the old oak. Six years together, from India to Africa.

  Jory.

  Hazzard could hardly bear it. He knew it had been selfish and foolhardy to attempt infiltration from the unpredictability of the square, but at the time he could see no other way – like a green lieutenant from the depot in his first action. No excuse. He had run wild with the prospect of close-quarters with Derrien, heaving his way through the crowd in a bloody rage. His memory of the melee with the chasseurs was now but a series of flickering images: Rossy’s startled face, the giant Pigalle, and the older, more experienced Caron, who had shouted at them to take Hazzard en vivant – alive. He had since learned their names and who they were: the famous chasseurs à pied skirmishers of the 75th Invincibles, the Alpha-Oméga – the best.

  He shook with the cold realisation of his actions. After his capture, Derrien or some other authority could have had him shot out of hand, or thrown into a deeper dungeon with the other slaves and forgotten. But he had hoped that gossip about ‘the Englishman’ would have been too heady for soldiers to resist, and Derrien would soon have heard and investigated – especially after their clash in Naples.

  Thereafter his only hope was for that same gossip to rise to the top, as it had. In acting the persecuted gentleman-scholar with Bonaparte, Hazzard had sidestepped further confrontation with Derrien and French security: Bonaparte had been his unwitting saviour. Hazzard wondered whether Bonaparte would call upon him as he had said he would. Then all he needed to do was get Sarah out of Malta, find the marines, and call in Nelson. His answer came within the hour.

  A full Chef d’escadron of cavalry and four iron-shod troopers of the 20th Dragoons led him out of the fort, not in chains this time, but upright like a free man, and escorted him through the streets and squares of fortified Valletta to the Barrakka Gardens. Hazzard squinted in the June sunlight, passing through a blur of blooms, palms and orange trees until they came to a halt. He could hear gulls among the noise of the fleet in the surrounding harbour, and felt the freshness of the sea air like a tonic. The Chef d’escadron murmured to an aide, who spoke to another, then stood aside, graciously ushering Hazzard forward.

  On a folding seat before a tinkling fountain sat Napoleon Bonaparte. Long hair lying over the braided collar of a long, dark blue coat with the sheen of fine cotton and silk, he sat leafing through a small illustrated volume. Five paces behind, a slight young man in civilian dress took a deferential step back when he saw Hazzard, and bowed. Bonaparte looked up, his dark eyes fixing on Hazzard for a moment.

  ‘Leave us,’ he said to the dragoons. The cavalrymen withdrew some way down the path, but not completely. Hazzard noted two others to the right and two to the left – but for a distance of some fifteen yards he was alone with the general and the interpreter. Though Hazzard had been dressed in uniform, he had nothing that could be improvised as a weapon. However, his wrists were unbound – he need take only a few steps and swing the knife-edge of his hand to kill the man before him. He still had the slow-burn within him to do it.

  How would their lordships react to that?

  But he could not. He knew that much of himself. The idea was repugnant to him. It would be murder, pure and simple, not the cut and thrust of a fighting-deck on a ship in battle: it was raw, primeval – dishonourable.

  But something far beyond his morality and chivalry prevented him. Instead of the general, he saw the confused look on Sarah’s face in that echoing chamber of marble and gold when she had seen him and he had seen her, as she had greeted Bonaparte. From that moment, something pale and cautious had stolen into him, and raised in him that most painful desire: hope. Having seen Sarah alive he could no longer be as reckless with his own existence as once he had been – he now had something more precious to lose. Now he wanted to survive. Needed to, for her. Hope had stricken him lame, leaving him as hobbled as if still in fetters.

  ‘I need men like Citizen Derrien,’ said Bonaparte, looking through the engraved plates in the book before him, ‘but I do not like them.’

  The civilian interpreter translated into English. ‘It must be… difficult,’ said Hazzard with a very poor accent.

  Bonaparte snapped a finger and a Berber, possibly a former slave, now a devoted servant, moved to a small table in the shade of a parasol near the guarding dragoons and prepared a tall glass of water for Hazzard. It had slices of lemon and lime and, somehow, was cold. Hazzard sipped at it and felt his throat open with relief.

  ‘I understand you have accepted the terms of parole, Captain?’ asked the general.

  Hazzard had not planned to run. It was important to get inside the machine, at first to get at Derrien to extract Sarah, but now to use Bonaparte as an ally. He had to give the general the upper hand. He must let Bonaparte win. ‘Yes, sir, with gratitude.’

  Bonaparte grunted, satisfied. It was a minor victory – over whom was unclear, but Hazzard suspected it was over Derrien.

  ‘If you have no objections, your sword will be returned to you when we encamp, for your protection. But I do have this…’

  He held out the small figurine of St Jude on its long leather lace. It had been taken from Hazzard on that first day when he had been stripped and beaten.

  ‘The gaolers were advised to return it, by certain of my men. The same men who safeguarded your sword.’ He glanced at Hazzard. ‘I was unaware the English had saints and relics – or Toledo blades. Do you follow the Roman faith?’

  ‘No, sir, none but the Church of England. Though my uncle is a rector – much like a parish priest. It is a… family memento.’ Hazzard looped it round his neck. ‘I thank you.’

  ‘I knew very well it was you who had written that essay,’ said Bonaparte. ‘It was not the Sorbonne, but Grenôble. I do not forget things. I know also that you are a scholar and you have clearly studied in France.’

  The interpreter seemed just as surprised as Hazzard. Hazzard replied in broken French and poor accent, ‘Not since a long time…’ Pas depuis longtemps, then in English to the interpreter, ‘The monograph was translated by a friend, before I returned to university in England.’ It was an old lesson learned well in India: never reveal that you understand their language. Though Derrien might have learned the truth, Bonaparte evidently wished to make up his own mind.

  The general was pleased at the discovery. ‘Then you really are one of those Englishmen who live in draughty stone colleges at Oxford.’

  ‘Cambridge, if at all, sir.’

  ‘L’université de Cambridge, dit-il,’ said the interpreter, with a complimentary bow to Hazzard.

  Bonaparte nodded, pleased that essentially he had been correct. ‘But you are, are you not?’

  ‘No longer, sadly.’ Hazzard thought of his family friends, of Edward Clark, John Cripps and Jesus College. It was strange to summon their spirits in such a place. ‘Once. But now I study alone. An amateur.’ He then thought of De la Vega: ‘A good French word.’

  Bonaparte almost smiled. ‘Is this the English modesty of which I have heard? I have met the Irish, but you are my first English officer in close discussion. Tell me. I am curious.’

  Hazzard had no answer for him. ‘It would be for others to judge, sir.’

  ‘So. Modesty indeed. A scholar. A savant, like our own. We are our very own mobile Institute it seems, the best of France floating at sea, now thrown ashore on this prehistoric rock.’ Bonaparte closed his book and turned to him. ‘I am a student of Caesar. What are your thoughts on his invasion of Britain? Was it his only failed enterprise?’

  Hazzard knew that if his plan were to work, Bonaparte must win, but he must also be intrigued. Therefore, Hazzard argued with him.

  ‘If it were an invasion, then true, sir, it failed.’
>
  ‘How so?’

  The question was a test. It was a common point of debate for novice historians of Caesar and ancient Britain, with no certain answer. ‘He had too few men,’ said Hazzard. ‘Ergo, it was not an invasion – but a raid.’

  Bonaparte gave a thin smile. He picked his way through the comment then replied. ‘Perhaps he intended to recruit a new army from among the Britons he would conquer, swelling his legions.’

  With every word Hazzard was aware of the man before him: a man from a fallen noble Italian family, outcast, feared by both peers and superiors, a self-made officer who had led from the front, and made brigadier-general by his mid-twenties. Worshipped by his men, he had been granted sufficient power to consume nations. Without doubt, thought Hazzard, Bonaparte saw himself as Julius Caesar.

  ‘What then would he do with this new army?’ Hazzard remembered the complacent assertions made by Sir John Acton, the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Naples, and wanted to test them. He watched Bonaparte’s reaction to his next question, ‘Would he stay in Britannia? Or go back to Rome perhaps, where his true enemies lay?’

  Bonaparte raised his chin and looked up with a frown, possibly aware they were playing the game. ‘Did he have enemies in Rome?’

  ‘One such as Caesar always has enemies in Rome,’ said Hazzard, ‘envious of his success, his popularity. Cato, Pompey Magnus, the Senate.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ conceded Bonaparte. ‘Or was conquest itself sufficient for him? A conqueror,’ he said, looking away, into a memory, ‘must conquer. Else he too could be conquered.’

  ‘Both perhaps. To venture further than the Republic had ever gone. And, in so doing, take Rome from afar.’

  Bonaparte looked up at him and compressed a slow smile. ‘We talk at last.’

  Hazzard wanted him to believe he was winning the debate, satisfied that Hazzard was no threat but nonetheless stimulating. ‘I would say you have come as Claudius, not Caesar. The true invader, not the raider.’

  Bonaparte considered this a moment. ‘I prefer Caesar. He was the statesman.’

  ‘Claudius reigned longer. He was the better statesman.’

  ‘But not as great,’ said Bonaparte, a good riposte. ‘And that is how history measures us.’

  Hazzard looked out at the city, the harbour and the fleet. ‘This enterprise,’ he said, ‘is more than enough to take back Rome.’

  Bonaparte looked out over the ships, the spiked masts reaching into the blue of the horizon. ‘I ask myself if he ever questioned whether he should return, having gone so far. Alexander lost his path, falling upon India…’ In the same faraway voice he asked, ‘Do you know the Quran?’

  Hazzard thought of Dr Mohammed at the British Museum, his scrolls and books, the flowing, delicate script. ‘Only what Christians tell me about it.’

  Bonaparte nodded. ‘Quite. We see only through such a filtering gauze, through the glass darkly, hm? At times I find Europe is swaddled in darkness. Ageing, corrupted. Europe is a molehill. It is nothing to me now.’ He looked at the ground, lost, thought Hazzard, in his own manifesto. ‘True power, true glory can be found now only to the east.’ He looked out at the sea again. ‘I have such dreams, Mr Hazzard. For all men. And Fate, like the Quran, is with me.’ He looked back at him. ‘I wish to be free of it all. As perhaps you did once, hiding in those draughty stone colleges. At Cambridge.’

  Hazzard smiled. Not Oxford. He had remembered.

  Bonaparte flapped open his book, glanced at the flyleaf, than clapped it shut and set it down on the bench. ‘Excellent. It is a sad thing that I must come to this blighted place to find scholarly conversation with an enemy.’ Bonaparte rose from the seat and moved away, the escort troopers moving in. He stopped on the path and turned, ‘I trust you now have better quarters as befits your station, Captain. We shall speak again, and dine.’ He nodded at the small volume, left behind. ‘Enjoy the book. I make you a gift of it.’

  Hazzard watched him go. This time, Hazzard’s dragoon escort waited. One stepped forward and handed him the book, bowing his head in sharp salute. Perhaps his gambit had worked, he thought, and he had touched the thoughts of the conqueror. He opened the book. It was a copy of Caesar’s Gallic Wars, in French. Inside was an inscription:

  For practice – Bonaparte.

  * * *

  Jules-Yves Derrien, Bonaparte’s de facto head of security, was also chief collector of the blandly named Bureau d’information – the deadly counter-intelligence arm of the Ministry of the Interior – and had a deep-rooted personal interest in Hazzard. He watched the exchange from the shadows of a palm-lined avenue by a bastion of the palace. He scarcely noticed the heat in his austere black frock coat. His dead, blank stare evinced nothing of the fury boiling within.

  It was now impossible to own Hazzard, to control him as Derrien had so many others. And he had been so close, in his interrogations in the baking cell of Fort St Elmo, his frenzied beatings of the manacled Hazzard leaving him exhausted – a satisfying repayment for Hazzard’s sword-cut in Naples, which still burned on Derrien’s chin. He could have used him, broken him over the days to come.

  But that moment had passed. After this meeting with Bonaparte Hazzard was inviolable. He cursed Caron and the Alpha-Omegas for their interference, telling the general – for that must have been what had happened. Derrien watched as Hazzard shook hands with the dragoons and the interpreter. They chatted, old friends. They gave him more lemon ice-water.

  He would keep the comtesse de Biasi under close surveillance – Masson’s notes had not been as accurate as Derrien would have liked. Fool. But he now had proof they had discussed the ‘soldier in red’, and guessed he was an Englishman, an anglais. Even if there were some strange collusion with Hazzard, he could not be surprised at their discussing such a sight – the general staff had been wittering on at him about it endlessly. ‘A matter of state,’ he had told them, and it had been enough. It usually was.

  And he would keep the celebrated and beauteous Mademoiselle Isabelle Moreau-Lazare to himself. That vision of her at the palace gate, her softness, her sensuality, the taste of her skin as he had kissed her hand, had transcended anything he had ever imagined. And more than that: inhaling from that kiss the delicate scent created by the late parfumier Ablondi of Toulon – the same scent he had detected on an Admiralty cipher from a bloody corpse in Paris, and in a rainswept boudoir in the upper storey of Bartelmi’s Toulon home.

  Spy.

  Mine.

  The citizen general’s mistress.

  For a moment, something jarred in Derrien’s mind. He detected a feeling, an emotional reaction he did not expect. It was unfamiliar.

  Jealousy.

  In the distance Hazzard and his escort strolled through the gardens. Another officer joined them, a pair of hunting dogs at his heels, and they spoke, formal introductions, Hazzard bowing, then patting the animals. As he bent, his step faltered a little, from his wounds no doubt, a hand to his back, one of the dragoons quick to support him, give their commiserations, a brief laugh among old soldiers – a private club to which Derrien could never belong.

  Instead he felt only disgust for their hypocrisy, contempt for their sense of ‘honour’ and movable morality. Given the chance they would have killed Hazzard in the streets of Valletta, and now they bent to minister to him, their gallant foe. What chivalry. How fatuous.

  Derrien watched Hazzard but did not see him, his mind elsewhere.

  She must be kept safe. Yes.

  No, she must be made to feel safe, a difference, yes.

  At the gate, her bodice, open at the throat, her décolletage. Her scent.

  Her scent.

  ‘Maintain surveillance of the comtesse and the Moreau-Lazare woman,’ said Derrien.

  Citizen Masson, his Bureau deputy, nodded beside him. ‘Yes, Citizen.’ He stared out at Hazzard in the distance, his bull neck straining at a plain white collar, beads of sweat forming on his bulging forehead. When he looked at Hazzard he almost growled.


  ‘They have been moved to the flagship,’ said Derrien. ‘To a cabin beneath the officers’ wardroom.’ Previously occupied by three officers of the 9th demi, he recalled, sent to Gozo in the first wave – two of them had not survived. Derrien did not make idle threats. So much for the muddied major of the Orient, he thought with satisfaction. ‘If any of those women prove false, I want them in the lions’ den. Where there is no escape. As to Hazzard,’ he said, ‘I want him to regret every moment of his life.’

  Masson stared out at Hazzard. ‘Yes, Citizen.’

  * * *

  The French fleet was nearly revictualled, ships lining the northern arm of the harbour, squatting at the quaysides. Four thousand troops formed companies on the landings, then battalions, then demi-brigades, conflicting shouts of sergents-chefs and chefs de bataillon echoing across the harbour.

  After rising early, Hazzard met with Bonaparte’s aide, young Captain Jullien. Dark-haired, quick to smile, Jullien reminded Hazzard of Wayland. He found him by a stone archway in the fort, waiting with a group of officers. In his hands was De la Vega’s sword, the Toledo espada ropera.

  ‘Capitaine,’ Jullien began, then hesitant, in broken English, ‘it does me the honour, to present your sword,’ he said, somewhat embarrassed by the import of such an honourable occasion. With a bow he held it out flat in both hands. ‘Je vous en prie, Monsieur le capitaine.’ Please, Captain.

  The gathering came discreetly to attention, heels clicking, and Hazzard took the sword in the same spirit.

  ‘I thank you,’ Hazzard said, just as formally, in bad French, to please him, ‘It was a gift… from a good friend.’

  ‘It was, sauvé, saved, yes? Gardé?’ said Jullien, ‘By, er, the men, you did fight with.’