The French Emperor's Woman

by David Bissenden

  Copyright © 2021 David Bissenden

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Matador

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  ISBN 978 1800468 672

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

  To my wife Jane, for her forbearance

  Contents

  Part 1

  In the Shadow of Waterloo

  One

  Crimea

  Two

  My Mission

  Three

  Settling into Gravesend

  Four

  Searching

  Five

  The Meeting

  Six

  Meetings with Men of Importance

  Seven

  The Emperor’s Woman

  Eight

  The Mud Larkers

  Nine

  Lynch

  Ten

  The Brewery Boys

  Eleven

  Chislehurst

  Twelve

  Things Get Darker

  Thirteen

  Another Visitor

  Fourteen

  The Town and Country

  Fifteen

  Back to Marie-Anne

  Sixteen

  Bonfires for Waterloo

  Part 2

  The Emperor’s Woman

  Seventeen

  Another Day

  Eighteen

  The Boat Ride

  Nineteen

  Bennett

  Twenty

  Night Work

  Twenty-One

  Gordon

  Twenty-Two

  Marie Comes Back

  Twenty-Three

  Mr Bussell

  Twenty-Four

  On the Train

  Twenty-Five

  Back to Chislehurst

  Part 3

  Dark places for dark deeds

  Twenty-Six

  The Fort

  Twenty-Seven

  Into the Valley of Death

  Twenty-Eight

  Deadman’s Creek

  Twenty-Nine

  The Mortuary

  Thirty

  The Next Move

  Thirty-One

  Riverside Sightings

  Thirty-Two

  Dark Places for Dark Deeds

  Thirty-Three

  The Aftermath

  Thirty-Four

  New Starts

  Part 4

  Journey Home

  Thirty-Five

  The Hospital

  Thirty-Six

  The Journey Home

  Thirty-Seven

  The Raging Sea

  Thirty-Eight

  The Funeral

  Thirty-Nine

  Farewell to Dover

  Part 1

  In the Shadow

  of Waterloo

  One

  Crimea

  It was June 18th, 1855. I remember that day well, as it was exactly forty years on from the glorious victory at Waterloo. As a child I had been brought up on stories of the bravery of our troops in the Napoleonic Wars, the battle plans, victories, and triumphs. Now, aged twenty-four, I was here in person, fighting for Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. I, William Arthur Reeves – a Royal Engineer, in a far distant land.

  I had joined the sappers back in 1852, just days after the death of the Duke of Wellington, with dreams of emulating his success. I was sure that a military career was for me; now I was in Crimea facing Russian troops in a bloody conflict.

  We were positioned just outside Sevastopol, a town we had laid siege to for several months. Today was to have been the big push to take the town and give the Russians a bloody nose. Sadly, at this moment in time all was not going to plan. Our advances were being met by a hail of gunfire, with grapeshot from their cannon exploding all around us; tearing chunks out of grown men, making them cry like babies and weep for their mothers. Shrapnel goes everywhere, in your belly, your legs, ripping half of your face off – if it caught you right. You almost longed for a clean bullet through the heart or head. A clean end to all this.

  I was hurting, something had hit my upper leg; hard, right down in the thighbone. I did not want to look, hopefully just a musket ball had glanced off it. Lucky really, it could just as easily have hit my head, but I could not move my leg anymore, so I knew that my presence on the battlefield was now pointless. I had become a liability, but retreat was not an option. So, I just lay in the mud, literally keeping my head down.

  Time passed but my predicament was not improving, the pain in my leg was worsening as the initial shock wore off. Then as fear and pain tired me, one of our own, Charlie Gordon, appeared to my right and crouched down beside me.

  ‘Everything alright Reeves?’

  ‘Thigh looks like it’s caught something – bloody useless,’ I replied. Gordon was unfazed.

  ‘No problem, just crawl back to our first position, get it dressed. I’ll vouc
h for you if there’s any trouble.’

  I looked back at him gratefully. Gordon was a cool customer, never seemed upset by anything, very brave in the face of fire. Some thought he was too brave, almost as if he had a death wish. But he was my saviour that day.

  ‘Alright,’ I said through clenched teeth, and started crawling back.

  After a while, the crawl became a limping walk and within minutes, I was back at the wagons, where there might be a chance of receiving medical help. At that point, the reality of the day hit me. The few medical orderlies were totally overwhelmed by casualties. Men with limbs hanging off, and open stomach wounds. A scene of carnage. It was obvious that they would not have time for me. Almost embarrassed by my petty wound, I slunk away, using my rifle as a crutch. I found a dry area by an ammunition cart and positioned myself with my back against the wheels. I just sat there, with my bloodied leg straight in front of me, staring into space and hoping the pain would go away.

  It was not long before I could hear a soft moaning from inside the cart itself. With difficulty I pulled myself up and using both hands to support my weight grasped the top of the timber side and peered over to look into it. The sight that greeted me made my hair stand on end. Lying in an almost foetal position on the timber planking of the cart was a wounded British drummer boy. Perhaps no more than fifteen. He was in full uniform with bright madder red jacket and white trousers, but from his chest down, his body was covered in his own blood and gore. I could see at a glance he would not make it. The grapeshot, or whatever, had torn his stomach open from his heart to below the navel. It was an odious sight and I could see the unbearable pain he was in. I think he was calling for his mother, his ma, but I could not be sure. Slowly his head moved, and his eyes caught mine. A look of total disbelief, pain, and incredulity was written all over his face. He stared for a few moments, mouthed the words ‘Kill me’, then his eyes closed momentarily. I looked back at him. There was absolutely no way he was going to live. So, I did my duty. I picked up my discarded rifle; took off the long bayonet, then pointed it at the drummer boy’s head. I knew my fate was to dispatch him in one clean shot, and I did this. Just before I pulled the trigger, his eyes met mine and for a brief instant – he stared at me. Then he gave the gentlest of nods. I fired; the bullet smashed through his forehead and he was gone.

  At that point I realised how awful and pointless it all was. I understood for the first time just how bloody disgusting war is. In the textbooks you read battles are glorious intellectual exercises, your troops against theirs, strategy, positioning, cunning – all would help you get the upper hand. Here, though, on the ground today, was the reality. Blood, smell, cries for mother, flies everywhere – all happening in a war we barely understood. A war badly organised and prepared for, where your army clothes were not designed for the weather, your rations insufficient for your needs, and even your weaponry and ammunition were not fit for purpose.

  I decided there and then that if I were ever to get out of this Russian hell and back to England, I would leave the army and go into politics to try and stop wars, and if that were not possible, to make sure our armies were properly equipped, fed, watered and looked after, if sick or injured in battle.

  Finally, at day’s end, with the light fading, our orderlies had time to sort out my injury. Nobody asked what had happened to the drummer boy. They might have guessed. I watched as his body was taken away for a rudimentary burial in a freshly dug communal trench. How I would have liked to get his details and contacted his mother to tell her how brave he was, but I did not.

  The leg was not too bad. It got bandaged, so the bleeding stopped. I was now one of the walking wounded and was led down to the port of Balaclava in a column of other wounded and sick men; I would have been happy to have been evacuated back to England, but no ships were available, so I stayed, the wound healed enough for me to resume my duties. I was in Crimea for another year, braving the horrendous winter, and the mud of the thaw in spring. Finally, our regiment sailed back to England and not long after that I left the Royal Engineers and returned to live in my brother’s rooms in London. Like so many other veterans, I was now looking for a new life.

  Two

  My Mission

  I had dreamed of politics but soon found out that was a rich man’s profession. You had to be wealthy or well connected, or ideally both. So instead I became a journalist, often investigating stories of the maimed and broken men who had come back from the war in Crimea and were now penniless. Often these men had become separated from their families and were living on the streets.

  Strangely it was this philanthropic activity that ended up as my major source of income. I discovered that there were thousands of missing people in London and almost as many relatives and friends looking for them. With my knowledge of this world, I was able to secure some income from tracking down these lost people, as a kind of unofficial private detective. I never advertised this fact but by word of mouth I had any number of clients seeking their lost ones. I also secured a regular column in a weekly newspaper, so all in all, I was not doing too badly. My only sadness was that I had never felt financially secure enough to marry, so at forty was still a bachelor. Essentially, I lived a modest life, on modest income, still living with my brother George, who worked in the printing industry at Fleet Street. We shared small rooms on the Whitechapel Road, just east of the city.

  It came as some surprise to me then, when on a Saturday morning in the summer of 1871, a letter came through my door from Charles Gordon. He was now famous for his role in the Chinese rebellions of the late 1850s and had the nickname ‘Chinese Gordon’. The letter came from Gravesend, which is where he was stationed as the commissioner for rebuilding the Thames forts. He had also earned a reputation as a philanthropist, helping the poor, underfed children of Gravesend through the church and schools.

  I was even more surprised to see from the letter that he remembered me from Crimea and wanted to meet to discuss a confidential matter, at his office in New Tavern Fort, Gravesend on the Monday.

  I was delighted to know he had not forgotten me. On the Monday I duly caught the train from Fenchurch Street to Tilbury and got the ferry over to Gravesend. It was a fine summer day and the river was full of traffic making its way along the river to and from London. Many of the ships were colliers, and other cargo carriers, taking their goods to the capital city. There were also heavily loaded barges, with large blood-red sails stretched in the wind, taking hay to feed the working horses of the city, and then bringing the manure back out to the farms along the estuary.

  Gravesend itself was a busy port and the main point of Customs and Excise clearance on the River Thames for London.

  It was a few minutes’ walk from the ferry stage to the fort. I passed the Three Daws public house and the Clarendon Hotel, before reaching the gatehouse of New Tavern Fort. I introduced myself to the guard on duty and was escorted through the building to Gordon’s office. All around me it was obvious that the fort was being rebuilt, with building materials, scaffolding, and stone masons everywhere.

  Rounding a bend in the fort walls, I could see Gordon straight ahead of me – standing in the doorway. He had not changed that much since I had last seen him fifteen years ago. Though not tall, perhaps five feet and a half, he had a presence about him. There was still the crisp moustache and tight curly hair, piercing blue eyes, a steely gaze, and a stern military posture, all finished off with a Royal Engineer’s uniform. He spoke first.

  ‘Good to see you again Reeves. Come on in.’

  Without any more chitchat he summoned me into what I presume was his office. Typically for Gordon it was an austere affair. No pictures of his military triumphs, no awards, or medals, just a desk and two seats.

  ‘Come, take a seat Reeves. Good journey?’

  I smiled. ‘Very good sir, and I’m most impressed by the works here.’

  He took this compliment in his stride.
r />   ‘Indeed, I’d rather be abroad myself but needs must.’

  He sat down, I did likewise. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I believe it is sixteen years since we last met. It was at the battle of Sevastopol, June 18th, 1855 – if my memory serves me well.’ He smiled slightly but I sensed that he was not one for idle conversation.

  ‘It is indeed, and you have become a true British hero since then – Chinese Gordon the press call you, whilst I have just been keeping my head above water by writing and finding lost persons.’

  Gordon adjusted his posture slightly.

  ‘Indeed. Now, as you know Reeves, I am not one for small talk, never have been. I have called you because a problem has been presented to me, one that I cannot solve alone. Obviously, everything I tell you about this problem must remain strictly confidential?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good, I wouldn’t expect anything other than that.’ He drummed the table with his fingernails, then continued.

  ‘I had a visit last week from an envoy, working on behalf of Louis Napoleon – or Napoleon III as he likes to be called, who is living in exile at Camden Place in Chislehurst – about ten miles from here. Obviously, this was awkward for me as you are probably aware that the reconstruction of these forts was instigated by fears of French expansionism in the first place. As luck would have it, we are halfway through the works and France is no longer a threat to anyone, as they were thoroughly beaten in their war against Prussia. However, one issue that came out of that war was the potential for French refugees fleeing the conflict coming to England, particularly those caught up in the siege of Paris. Are you still with me?’