‘Yet, I doubt not that in most cases it was a man designedly made hideous who performed upon them. In any case, willing submission to a repulsive being was the price they had to pay if they wished to achieve occult power. And that is why I selected Father Damien to play the part of Satan.’
Jemima sighed, ‘Eager as I am to become a witch, I find him so disgusting that I fear I could never bring myself to let him have me.’
‘That, child, is unfortunate, as I know that ever since he first set eyes on you he has desired you. In fact, more than once, he has begged me to let you be initiated with that in view. You know my reasons for having refused. I’d not risk it even becoming rumoured in London society that you had become a member of the Club. But the Club is now finished, so when you come to Ireland that will not apply. I am in hopes that you will think again upon it and overcome your repugnance to him, at least for once, in order that you may attain occult power.’
‘I’il consider it,’ Jemima agreed reluctantly, ‘although the idea of having that old goat naked upon me fills me with disgust. And did you really mean that you would force Susan to let him take her virginity?’
‘I might if it suited my purpose. The thing is do you think you could persuade her to accompany you to Ireland?’
‘Yes. I’m confident that I could, without much trouble.’
‘Then you need no longer worry your pretty head about the future. I will so handle matters that, soon after Charles returns from war, he will make you Countess of St. Ermins.’
* * *
It was not until the last week in November that Roger was able to leave his bed. While confined there everything possible was done for him. Dopet was sent for from Herrenhausen to act as his soldier servant. His old friend, Colonel Grandmaison, visited him daily and, although food throughout the whole countryside was terribly scarce, saw to it that the invalid had the best of everything that could be procured. Now that Charles was officially Roger’s prisoner, he was no longer confined with his German fellow captives, and was allowed out for walks on parole, but he spent a good part of his time at Roger’s bedside, either reading to him or bringing such news as there was.
No-one knew for certain what was happening in the south, but it was said that the survivors of Napoleon’s army had straggled back to the Rhine, and at that river, on which there were many fortresses strongly garrisoned by the French, the retreat had been checked. The Emperor, it was rumoured, had reached Paris on the 9th and was frantically at work there raising yet another army. Meanwhile, the Austrians and Russians were cautiously infiltrating into the Rhine Provinces, delaying to advance further before reducing French-held cities in them.
After Roger had been able to get up for a few days Colonel Grandmaison placed at his disposal a carriage in which to go for drives with Charles. Twice they drove into Hamburg and were shocked by the woebegone appearance of the remaining, half-starved inhabitants.
These drives along the shore also filled them with an infuriating frustration. Ever since Sweden had joined the Allies, the Baltic had again been open to British shipping, and the Skaggerak swarmed with British warships. Almost daily they bombarded the Danish ports and the fortresses of Hamburg. Often they sailed impudently up and down the mouth of the Elbe, within easy swimming distance of the land. If only Roger and Charles could have got aboard one of them, that would have been an end to their troubles. But Davout kept his shore patrols extremely alert, to prevent Hamburgers getting out to the ships with useful information; so, even had Roger been his old self, any attempt to swim off one night would have entailed great danger. As it was, still crippled and very weak, such a project was out of the question.
Never before had Roger and Charles spent so long constantly together, and both derived great pleasure from getting to know each other really well. Charles had always admired his ‘Uncle Roger’, but had been a little awed by him, while Roger had previously looked on Charles as no more than a promising youth. But now they were able to appreciate each other’s real qualities and talked together as equals. As Roger’s health improved, they discussed more frequently what they should do when he was well enough to leave Hamburg, and they came to the conclusion that their best plan would be to endeavour to reach France as, with Roger’s long experience of that country’s northern ports, they offered the best prospect of contacting a smuggler who would run them over to England.
To have again used the Mess cart that had brought Roger to Hamburg would have meant travelling very slowly, so Colonel Grandmaison agreed that Roger might take the smallest of three coaches that the owner of the castle had left in the coach-house before taking to flight, and their departure was fixed for November 30th.
As the state of the country was so unsettled, it was decided that they should travel in civilian clothes; so, on the day before they left, they went into Hamburg where Roger bought a suit for Charles, another, better-fitting one than that in which he had left Leipzig for himself, and a suitable costume for Dopet who was to act as coachman. Then all three of them packed their uniforms in a valise.
On the 30th, with the good wishes of Colonel Grandmaison, the surgeon who had looked after Roger, and numerous other people, they set off. By this time Roger had only enough money left to see them back to France, and to bribe a smuggler to put them across the Channel would require a considerable sum, so he decided to make first for Paris, as there he could draw from the Paymaster at the Ministry of War as much as he required.
The most direct route to Paris lay by way of Bremen, Osnabrück, Münster, Dortmund, Cologne and Rheims, but such scant intelligence as they had implied that the Prussians had already reached the lower Rhine and the frontier of Holland. In consequence Reger decided that in order not to run the risks of crossing a battle area it would be wiser, instead of heading for Cologne, to make a considerable detour and head for the Frankfurt-Mainz area which had for years been so strongly held by the French that it would almost certainly still be in their hands. So, from Dortmund, they turned south-west and took by-roads through the Westerwald and Tannus on their way to Mainz.
Two afternoons after leaving Dortmund they were approaching Wiesbaden. On rounding a bend in the road, to Roger’s surprise they suddenly came on an outpost of Prussian infantry. A Captain called on them to halt. The coach pulled up and Roger put his head out of the window. The officer asked where they had come from. Roger replied ‘Dortmund’. There followed other questions, to all of which Roger glibly gave answers which he had already thought up in case of such a challenge. The Captain seemed satisfied, until he asked them to produce proofs of their identity. That they could not do. His face then took on a stern look and he said:
‘I regret, Herrschaft, but there are many adherents of the arch-fiend Bonaparte still at large on this side of the Rhine, and some of them are spies. I must search your luggage.’
At that Roger went slightly pale, for he knew that they were now in a very tight corner. With apparent calm he shrugged and agreed. Anxiously he watched as their portmanteaux were unstrapped and taken down by some of the soldiers from the coach roof. The first to be opened was that which held the uniforms and there, neatly folded, right on top, was Roger’s dark-blue tail coat with its gold epaulettes and the cross of a Commander of the Legion of Honour on the breast.
Too late he cursed himself as a fool for not having left it behind. But he had expected to change into it after crossing the Rhine, as once in France, it would have assured him a coach with four horses and priority at the Post-houses for the remainder of their journey to Paris.
‘Donnerwetter!’ exclaimed the Prussian officer. ‘What have we here?’
‘A souvenir, Herr Kapitan,’ Roger asserted swiftly. ‘I acquired it for twenty marks from a hospital orderly in Münster.’
‘Ach so!’ the Captain scowled. ‘That we shall see.’ Picking up the coat with one hand, he drew a pistol from his belt with the other, pointed it at Roger and added:
‘Get out of the coach. Hand the pistol in your belt t
o my sergeant, then take your coat off and put this one on.’
There was nothing for it but to obey, so Roger stepped down into the road and put on his uniform coat. It fitted like a glove.
‘As I thought,’ sneered the Prussian. ‘You are a dog of a Frenchman, trying to get across the river to your swinish countrymen.’
While he had been speaking a sergeant had taken from the portmanteau the soiled but still bright scarlet uniform of the Cold-stream Guards, in which Charles had been captured. The Captain stared at it for a moment, then said, ‘That is not a French uniform. Surely it is English. How comes it here?’
‘It is mine,’ declared Charles in his excellent German. ‘I am a British officer.’
‘If that be so, what are you doing in the company of this French spawn of hell?’
Charles smiled. ‘I am his prisoner, Herr Kapitan, or was until you appeared on the scene and rescued me. I am travelling with him only because he had captured me and, in exchange for my life, I gave him my parole.’
For a moment Roger was quite shocked that Charles should have so brazenly gone over to the enemy. But then he saw the sense of it. Not to have claimed immunity as an ally of the Prussians would have been absurd, and had their positions been reversed it was what he would have done himself.
The third uniform was obviously Dopet’s and, as he could speak only a few words of German, he was swiftly identified as Roger’s servant. A soldier mounted the box in his place and he was ordered into the coach. Roger was told to change back into his civilian coat and the three uniforms were repacked in the portmanteaux. The Captain then put his Lieutenant in charge of the prisoners and despatched them in the coach with a small escort up the road.
After about a mile it emerged from the pine woods to some open farmlands, on the far side of which was a fair-sized farmhouse. The coach pulled up in front of it. The prisoners were ordered out and marched inside. In a room on the right of the entrance an adjutant was sitting at a table on which there was a litter of papers. The Lieutenant reported to him and the prisoners were brought it.
Roger now had a choice. He could swear that he was in fact a British secret agent, and hope that Charles’s testimony would convince them that he was speaking the truth; or admit that he was a French officer. But he feared that if he took the former course it was more likely that Charles’s testimony in his favour would make the Prussians believe that Charles was a liar and also a Frenchman in disguise. In consequence, when questioned by the adjutant, he decided that it would be better to ensure at least Charles’s continued freedom by maintaining his own supposed rôle and by giving his high rank in hope of good treatment.
To have been caught like this when so nearly out of the wood was utterly infuriating, but he endeavoured to console himself with the thought that it was unlikely that he would remain a prisoner for very long. The Emperor’s army had been shattered. It would prove impossible for even him to raise another of even a third the size of the forces now arrayed against him. North, south, east and west, he was menaced and surrounded by bitter enemies who were determined to put an end his career as a wholesale murderer. Either he must save all that remained to him of his Empire by agreeing to an humiliating peace in the near future, or be completely crushed soon after the New Year. So, in either case, Roger felt that he could count on being restored to liberty within a few months at most.
He had only just given particulars of himself to the adjutant when a babble of guttural German voices sounded in the narrow hall of the farmhouse. A Colonel put his head round the door and looked in. The adjutant cried to him joyfully.
‘Herr Oberst, we have just taken an important prisoner. No less than Colonel Comte de Breuc, a Commander of the Legion of Honour and one of Napoleon’s A.D.C.s.’
The Colonel turned and spoke to his companions outside. Next moment they came pressing into the room, led by a burly figure with a grey, walrus moustache, dressed in a plain, ill-fitting jacket, wearing a floppy, peaked cap and smoking a meerschaum pipe. Roger recognised him at once from descriptions he had had, as Blücher.
At that date the veteran was seventy-one. He was a rough, illiterate man who had the sense to realise his shortcomings as a strategist and rely for planning on his brilliant Chief-of-Staff, Gneisenau; but he was a fearless, ferocious leader and, in spite of his age, still seething with fiery energy. The previous May he had put up a magnificent resistance against great odds at the battle of Lützen. Later at Katezbach, he had defeated Marshal Macdonald, captured eighteen thousand prisoners and over one hundred guns. It was he who had delivered the most telling assault on Leipzig and had been made a Field Marshal for it.
For a moment he regarded Roger with interest. Then the excited voice of a young Uhlan officer in the background suddenly cut the silence, ‘Breuc, did you say? The Comte de Breuc?’
The adjutant looked in his direction and replied, ‘Yes, von Zeiten, this is the Comte de Breuc.’
‘Gott im Himmel,’ cried the Uhlan. ‘It is the murderer! It was he who foully did to death his wife and my uncle, von Haugwitz, at Schloss Langenstein in 1810.’
Roger swung round to face him and retorted hotly. ‘That is a lie. I was accused of their deaths, but was innocent.’
Young von Zeiten pushed his way to the front of the group and thrust out an accusing arm. ‘I recognise you now. I was in court when you were tried and condemned to death.’
‘Why, then, is he still alive?’ asked Blücher gruffly.
‘His sentence, Herr Feldmarschall, was commuted to ten years’ imprisonment. But he escaped after a few months.’
Roger had not yet recovered from the shock of once more being identified as the man found guilty of the double death at Schloss Langenstein. His brain was whirling, but not so confused that he could not guess the awful fate that now threatened him. Next moment the doom he dreaded was pronounced by Blücher.
‘Then send him back to Berlin to complete his sentence.’
As the Fieldmarshal turned away, Roger stared at the ring of hostile faces, rendered speechless by this terrible blow that Fate had dealt him. Whether, in a few months’ time Napoleon agreed to an humiliating peace or was utterly crushed and dethroned could now make no difference to him. Instead of regaining his freedom, his lot was to suffer imprisonment among enemy criminals for all that remained of the best years of his life.
19
The House with the Red Shield
Blücher and his staff left the room. The guard was summoned to take charge of Roger and Dopet. As the former was led away he was careful not to look at Charles. He knew how distressed the boy must be, and for him to have shown sympathy for his supposed enemy might have aroused the Prussians’ suspicions that he was not, after all, a British officer. To Roger it was at least some compensation that he had saved the life of his beloved Georgina’s son, and that Charles was still free to rejoin her as soon as he was able to do so.
From the hallway Dopet was pushed out of the farmhouse toward some tents in a nearby field; but Roger was taken downstairs and locked up in a cellar which still contained two flitches of bacon hanging from the ceiling and a few sacks of meal in a corner.
The cellar was lit only by a small, iron grille near the ceiling. In the dim light Roger sat down on one of the sacks and ruefully contemplated his misfortune. To have to face years in prison without hope of remission was in itself one of the most terrible things that could befall a man; but in his case it would prove even more insufferable than simply confinement and being debarred from all life’s pleasures. This he knew only too well after having spent three months in a prison outside Berlin. There he had been in the position of a solitary Frenchman among Germans. Such had been the hatred of the Prussians of all classes for the French as despoilers of their country that the other convicts had done everything they could to make his lot more miserable. Although regulations decreed silence when exercising in the yards, they always exchanged the news that came through the prison grapevine, and talked in whispers. But
Roger had been denied even this small relaxation, because they had sent him to Coventry That had also prevented him securing assistance to attempt an escape which might have been arranged with careful planning by a group, but was impossible for him unaided. And he had no doubt at all that, once he was back in a Prussian state prison, he would be treated by his fellow convicts as he had been before.
After about two hours a sergeant and two troopers came for him. They then escorted him upstairs and out of the farmhouse to the coach in which he had arrived, which was waiting outside the door. The sergeant, a big man with a walrus moustache, a mane of yellow hair and bright blue eyes, produced a length of cord, tied one end of it round his left wrist and the other round Roger’s right. They then got into the coach. The two troopers mounted on to the box. One took the reins, shook them and the coach moved off.
When they had covered a mile or so they came to a signpost and Roger saw from it that they were taking the road to Frankfurt. That surprised him, as he had imagined that stronghold of the French to be still in their hands and that they would have strong outposts ringing the city for some miles round. But as the coach rolled on, the only soldiers to be seen were occasional troops of Uhlans, Prussian grenadiers and convoys supplying Blücher’s army.
The December afternoon had been drawing in when they started, and by the time they had covered the fifteen miles to the city it was fully dusk. The coach pulled up at an indifferent-looking inn a few hundred yards past the splendid Gothic Staathaus. With Roger still tied to him the sergeant showed the landlord a billeting order and parleyed with him for a few minutes, then Roger was taken upstairs to a room on the second floor.
The Irish Witch Page 27