This was love, unalloyed and without reservations. There was an ecstasy in giving, and no amazement in receiving. It had come to him at last, after all these years and tribulations. Cynically it might be thought that it was merely one more example of Hornblower’s yearning for the thing he could not have, but if that was the case Hornblower for once was not conscious of it. There was some line from the prayer-book that ran in Hornblower’s head during those days – ‘Whose service is perfect freedom’. That described his servitude to Marie.
The Loire was still in flood; the cataract where once he had nearly drowned – the cataract which was the cause of his first meeting with Marie – was a rushing slope of green water, foam-bordered. Hornblower could hear the sound of it as he lay in Marie’s arms in her room in the turret; often they walked beside it, and Hornblower could contemplate it without a tremor or a thrill. That was all over. His reason told him that he was the same man as boarded the Castilla, the same man who faced El Supremo’s wrath, the man who fought to the death at Rosas Bay, the man who had walked decks awash with blood, and yet oddly he felt as if those things had happened to someone else. Now he was a man of peace, a man of indolence, and the cataract was not a thing that had nearly killed him.
It seemed perfectly natural when the Count came in with good news.
‘The Count d’Artois has defeated Bonaparte in a battle in the south,’ he said. ‘Bonaparte is a fugitive, and will soon be a prisoner. The news is from Paris.’
That was as it should be; the wars were over.
‘I think we can light a bonfire tonight,’ said the Count, and the bonfire blazed and toasts were drunk to the King.
But it was no later than next morning that Brown, as he put the breakfast tray beside Hornblower’s bed, announced that the Count wished to speak to him as early as convenient, and he had hardly uttered the words when the Count came in, haggard and dishevelled in his dressing-gown.
‘Pardon this intrusion,’ said the Count – even at that moment he could not forget his good manners – ‘but I could not wait. There is bad news. The very worst.’
Hornblower could only stare and wait, while the Count gathered his strength to tell his news. It took an effort to say the words.
‘Bonaparte is in Paris,’ said the Count. ‘The King has fled and Bonaparte is Emperor again. All France has fallen to him.’
‘But the battle he had lost?’
‘Rumour – lies – all lies. Bonaparte is Emperor again.’
It took time to understand all that this implied. It meant war again, that was certain. Whatever the other Great Powers might do, England could never tolerate the presence of that treacherous and mighty enemy across the Channel. England and France would be at each other’s throats once more. Twenty-two years ago the wars had started; it seemed likely that it would be another twenty-two years before Bonaparte could be pulled from his throne again. There would be another twenty-two years of misery and slaughter. The prospect was utterly hideous.
‘How did it happen?’ asked Hornblower, more to gain time than because he wanted to know.
The Count spread his delicate hands in a hopeless gesture.
‘Not a shot was fired,’ he said. ‘The army went over to him en masse. Ney, Labédoyère, Soult – they all betrayed the King. In two weeks Bonaparte marched from the Mediterranean to Paris. That would be fast travelling in a coach and six.’
‘But the people do not want him,’ protested Hornblower. ‘We all know that.’
‘The people’s wishes do not weigh against the army’s,’ said the Count. ‘The news has come with the usurper’s first decrees. The classes of 1815 and 1816 are to be called out. The Household troops are disbanded, the Imperial Guard is to be reconstituted. Bonaparte is ready to fight Europe again.’
Hornblower vaguely saw himself once more on the deck of a ship, weighed down with responsibility, encompassed by danger, isolated and friendless. It was a bleak prospect.
A tap on the door heralded Marie’s entrance, in her dressing-gown, with her magnificent hair over her shoulders.
‘You have heard the news, my dear?’ asked the Count. He made no comment either on her presence or on her appearance.
‘Yes,’ said Marie. ‘We are in danger.’
‘We are indeed,’ said the Count. ‘All of us.’
So appalling had been the news that Hornblower had not yet had leisure to contemplate its immediate personal implications. As an officer of the British Navy, he would be seized and imprisoned immediately. Not only that, but Bonaparte had intended years ago to try him and shoot him on charges of piracy. He would carry that intention into effect – tyrants have long memories. And the Count, and Marie?
‘Bonaparte knows now that you helped me escape,’ said Hornblower. ‘He will never forgive that.’
‘He will shoot me if he can catch me,’ said the Count; he made no reference to Marie, but he glanced towards her. Bonaparte would shoot her too.
‘We must get away,’ said Hornblower. ‘The country cannot be settled under Bonaparte yet. With fast horses we can reach the coast—’
He took his bedclothes in his hand to cast them off, restraining himself in the nick of time out of deference to Marie’s presence.
‘I shall be dressed in ten minutes,’ said Marie.
As the door closed behind her and the Count, Hornblower hurled himself out of bed shouting for Brown. The transition from the sybarite to the man of action took a few moments, but only a few. As he tore off his nightshirt he conjured up before his mind’s eye the map of France, visualising the roads and ports. They could reach La Rochelle over the mountains in two days of hard riding. He hauled up his trousers. The Count had a great name – no one would venture to arrest him or his party without direct orders from Paris; with bluff and self-confidence they could get through. There were two hundred golden napoleons in the secret compartment of his portmanteau – maybe the Count had more. It was enough for bribery. They could bribe a fisherman to take them out to sea – they could steal a boat, for that matter.
It was humiliating thus to run like rabbits at Bonaparte’s first reappearance; it was hardly consonant with the dignity of a peer and a commodore, but his first duty was to preserve his life and his usefulness. A dull rage against Bonaparte, the wrecker of the peace, was growing within him, but was still far from mastering him as yet. It was resentment as yet, rather than rage; and his sullen resignation regarding the change in conditions was slowly giving way to tentative wonderings regarding whether he could not play a more active part in the opening of the struggle than merely running away to fight another day. Here he was in France, in the heart of his enemy’s country. Surely he could strike a blow here that could be felt. As he hauled on his riding-boots he spoke to Brown.
‘What about your wife?’ he asked.
‘I hoped she could come with us, my lord,’ said Brown, soberly.
If he left her behind he would not see her again until the end of the war twenty years off; if he stayed with her he would be cast into prison.
‘Can she ride?’
‘She will, my lord.’
‘Go and see that she gets ready. We can carry nothing more than saddle-bags. She can attend Mme la Vicomtesse.’
‘Thank you, my lord.’
Two hundred gold napoleons made a heavy mass to carry, but it was essential to have them with him. Hornblower thumped down the stairs in his riding-boots; Marie was already in the main hall wearing a black habit and a saucy tricorne hat with a feather. He ran his eyes keenly over her; there was nothing about her appearance to excite attention – she was merely a lady of fashion soberly dressed.
‘Shall we take any of the men with us?’ she asked.
‘They are all old. It would be better not to. The Count, you, myself, Brown and Annette. We shall need five horses.’
‘That is what I expected,’ answered Marie. She was a fine woman in a crisis.
‘We can cross the bridge at Nevers, and head for Bourges and La Ro
chelle. In the Vendée we shall have our best chance.’
‘It might be better to make for a little fishing village rather than a great port,’ commented Marie.
‘That’s very likely true. We can make up our minds about it, though, when we are near the coast.’
‘Very well.’
She appreciated the importance of unity of command even though she was ready with advice.
‘What about your valuables?’ asked Hornblower.
‘I have my diamonds in my saddle-bag here.’
As she spoke the Count came in, booted and spurred. He carried a small leather sack which clinked as he put it down.
‘Two hundred napoleons,’ he said.
‘The same as I have. It will be ample.’
‘It would be better if it did not clink, though,’ said Marie. ‘I’ll pack it with a cloth.’
Felix entered with the Count’s saddle-bags and the announcement that the horses were ready – Brown and Annette awaited them in the courtyard.
‘Let us go,’ said Hornblower.
It was a sorry business saying goodbye. There were tears from the women – Annette’s pretty face was all beslobbered with grief – even though the men, trained in the stoical school of gentlemen’s service, kept silence.
‘Goodbye, my friend,’ said the Count, holding out his hand to Felix. They were both old men, and the chances were that they would never meet again.
They rode out of the courtyard, and down to the road along the river; it was ironical that it should be a lovely spring day, with the fruit blossom raining down on them and the Loire sparkling joyously. At the first turn in the road the spires and towers of Nevers came into sight; at the next they could clearly see the ornate Gonzaga palace. Hornblower spared it a casual glance, blinked, and looked again. Marie was beside him and the Count beyond her, and he glanced at them for confirmation.
‘That is a white flag,’ said Marie.
‘I thought so too,’ wondered Hornblower.
‘My eyes are such that I can see no flag at all,’ said the Count ruefully.
Hornblower turned in his saddle to Brown, riding along encouraging Annette.
‘That’s a white flag over the palace, my lord.’
‘It hardly seems possible,’ said the Count. ‘My news this morning came from Nevers. Beauregard, the Prefect there, had declared at once for Bonaparte.’
It was certainly odd – even if the white flag had been hoisted inadvertently it was odd.
‘We shall know soon enough,’ said Hornblower, restraining his natural instinct to push his horse from a trot into a canter.
The white flag still flew as they approached. At the octroi gate stood half a dozen soldiers in smart grey uniforms, their grey horses tethered behind them.
‘Those are Grey Musketeers of the Household,’ said Marie. Hornblower recognised the uniforms. He had seen those troops in attendance on the King both at the Tuileries and at Versailles.
‘Grey Musketeers cannot hurt us,’ said the Count.
The sergeant of the picket looked at them keenly as they approached, and stepped into the road to ask them their names.
‘Louis-Antoine-Hector-Savinien de Ladon, Comte de Graçay, and his suite,’ said the Count.
‘You may pass, M. le Comte,’ said the sergeant. ‘Her Royal Highness is at the Prefecture.’
‘Which Royal Highness?’ marvelled the Count.
In the Grand Square a score of troopers of the Grey Musketeers sat their horses. A few white banners flew here and there, and as they entered the square a man emerged from the Prefecture and began to stick up a printed poster. They rode up to look at it – the first word was easily read – ‘Frenchmen!’ it said.
‘Her Royal Highness is the Duchess of Angoulême,’ said the Count.
The proclamation called on all Frenchmen to fight against the usurping tyrant, to be loyal to the ancient House of Bourbon. According to the poster, the King was still in arms around Lille, the south had risen under the Duc d’Angoulême, and all Europe was marching armies to enchain the man-eating ogre and restore the Father of his People to the throne of his ancestors.
In the Prefecture the Duchess received them eagerly. Her beautiful face was drawn with fatigue, and she still wore a mud-splashed riding habit – she had ridden through the night with her squadron of musketeers, entering Nevers by another road on the heels of Bonaparte’s proclamation.
‘They changed sides quickly enough again,’ said the Duchess.
Nevers was not a garrison town and contained no troops; her hundred disciplined musketeers made her mistress of the little place without a blow struck.
‘I was about to send for you, M. le Comte,’ went on the Duchess. ‘I was not aware of our extraordinary good fortune in Lord ’Ornblower’s being present here. I want to appoint you Lieutenant-General of the King in the Nivernais.’
‘You think a rising can succeed, Your Royal Highness?’ asked Hornblower.
‘A rising?’ said the Duchess, with the faintest of interrogative inflections.
To Hornblower that was the note of doom. The Duchess was the most intelligent and spirited of all the Bourbons, but not even she could think of the movement she was trying to head as a ‘rising’. Bonaparte was the rebel; she was engaged in suppressing rebellion, even if Bonaparte reigned in the Tuileries and the army obeyed him. But this was war; this was life or death, and he was in no mood to quibble with amateurs.
‘Let us not waste time over definitions, madame,’ he said. ‘Do you think there is in France strength enough to drive out Bonaparte?’
‘He is the most hated man in this country.’
‘But that does not answer the question,’ persisted Hornblower.
‘The Vendée will fight,’ said the Duchess. ‘Laroche-Jacquelin is there, and they will follow him. My husband is raising the Midi. The King and the Household are holding out in Lille. Gascony will resist the usurper – remember how Bordeaux cast off allegiance to him last year.’
The Vendée might rise; probably would. But Hornblower could not imagine the Duc d’Angoulême rousing much spirit of devotion in the south, nor the fat and gouty old King in the north. As for Bordeaux casting off her allegiance, Hornblower remembered Rouen and Le Havre, the apathetic citizens, the refractory conscripts whose sole wish was to fight no one at all. For a year they had now enjoyed the blessings of peace and liberal government, and they might perhaps fight for them. Perhaps.
‘All France knows now that Bonaparte can be beaten and dethroned,’ said the Duchess acutely. ‘That makes a great difference.’
‘A powder magazine of discontent and disunion,’ said the Count. ‘A spark may explode it.’
Hornblower had dreamed the same dream when he had entered Le Havre, and used the same metaphor to himself, which was unfortunate.
‘Bonaparte has an army,’ he said. ‘It takes an army to defeat an army. Where is one to be found? The old soldiers are devoted to Bonaparte. Will the civilians fight, and if so, can they be armed and trained in time?’
‘You are in a pessimistic mood, milord,’ said the Duchess.
‘Bonaparte is the most able, the most active, the fiercest and the most cunning soldier the world has ever seen,’ said Hornblower. ‘To parry his strokes I ask for a shield of steel, not a paper hoop from a circus.’
Hornblower looked round at the faces; the Duchess, the Count, Marie, the silent courtier-general who had stood behind the Duchess since the debate began. They were sombre, but they showed no signs of wavering.
‘So you suggest that M. le Comte here, for example, should submit tamely to the usurper and wait until the armies of Europe reconquer France?’ asked the Duchess with only faint irony. She could keep her temper better than most Bourbons.
‘M. le Comte has to fly for his life on account of his late kindness to me,’ said Hornblower, but that was begging the question, he knew.
Any movement against Bonaparte in the interior of France might be better than none, however
easily suppressed and whatever blood it cost. It might succeed, although he had no hope of it. But at least it would embarrass Bonaparte in his claim to represent all France, at least it would hamper him in the inevitable clash on the north-eastern frontier by forcing him to keep troops here. Hornblower could not look for victory, but he supposed there was a chance, the faintest chance, of beginning a slight guerrilla war, maintained by a few partisans in forests and mountains, which might spread in the end. He was a servant of King George; if he could encompass the death of even one of Bonaparte’s soldiers, even at the cost of a hundred peasant lives, it was his duty to do so. A momentary doubt flashed through his mind; was it mere humanitarian motives that had been influencing him? Or were his powers of decision becoming enfeebled? He had sent men on forlorn hopes before this; he had taken part in some himself; but this was, in his opinion, an utterly hopeless venture – and the Count would be involved in it.
‘But still,’ persisted the Duchess, ‘you recommend supine acquiescence, milord?’
Hornblower felt like a man on a scaffold taking one last look at the sunlit world before being thrust off. The grim inevitabilities of war were all round him.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I recommend resistance.’
The sombre faces round him brightened, and he knew now that peace or war had lain in his choice. Had he continued to argue against rebellion, he would have persuaded them against it. The knowledge increased his unhappiness, even though he tried to assure himself – which was the truth – that fate had put him in a position where he could argue no longer. The die was cast, and he hastened to speak again.
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