by Nita Abrams
Rodrigo thought this a very safe bet. It was time for a change of subject. “Speaking of Master Anthony—he seems much better,” he offered tentatively.
“Yes.” Meyer said. “He also despises me, of course. But since he didn’t kiss me first his scorn is not quite as damning.”
18
The journey to Grenoble was accomplished in the most luxurious manner imaginable. Abigail, Diana, and Roth were first conveyed in a gig from the farm out to the main road. There a large barouche awaited them, fitted with every convenience: rugs, lanterns, heated footrests, cushions, a basketful of things to eat and drink, even a small bottle of cologne. The vehicle had two coachmen and a footman, all in livery, and was escorted by a troop of twenty men. Abigail gathered that the entire ensemble—coach, servants, and fittings—had been appropriated from a local count by Doucet and sequestered for their use. Diana had looked around wide-eyed after they had been settled in the carriage and whispered to her mother, “What do you suppose people will think when they see us go by?” Abigail knew perfectly well what they would think. They would think the women inside were the mistresses of some high-ranking officers. As a result, Abigail decreed that Diana was to sit in the middle, between Roth and herself. At least that way the speculation would be directed at her rather than at her innocent daughter. At every village crossroads, it seemed, there were people gathered to watch them pass, many waving tricouleurs, and Abigail felt as though all the females over the age of sixteen were eyeing her with the same disapproving, speculative stare. It was ironic that after nine years of conducting herself with rigid propriety, now, within a space of forty-eight hours, she had first been taken for the mistress of a British spy and then a French general.
Among the soldiers accompanying them was a very handsome version of her friend Marcel from Pont-Haut, a Lieutenant Franconnin, who rode up to the carriage every so often to announce some new cause for the ladies not to be alarmed. Diana thought he was amusing and flirted with him outrageously. Abigail, who found the bulletins increasingly ominous (“the ladies should not be alarmed if they hear cannon fire”), was not entertained. The carriage stopped frequently for no apparent reason, and although Franconnin explained this as due to the slow progress of the foot soldiers in front of them, Abigail could see that he was growing more and more nervous as the day went on.
At around two in the afternoon, they stopped for the sixth or seventh time—Abigail had lost count—and she waited impatiently for the lieutenant to appear and offer his usual excuses. This time she would tell him that she knew perfectly well how fast Napoleon’s troops could march; she had been traveling ahead of them for nearly a week. And if she, a female, could be walking twice as fast as this carriage was traveling right now, then surely troops who had marched over the Col Bayard in one day could not be the cause of the delay. After ten minutes, she decided that she would also insist that Franconnin permit the three passengers to leave the carriage and walk around. So far that had been expressly forbidden at all the stops save one. After twenty minutes, she opened the door herself, in spite of the lieutenant’s prohibition. A young trooper stationed outside quickly closed it again, with a hoarse request for the ladies to wait patiently inside, where they would be safe. Safe from what? She looked out her window. All she could see were trees.
“Mr. Roth?”
He turned away from his own window. He, too, was growing impatient and worried, she saw.
“Would you mind seeing if you can discover why we have stopped?”
“Not at all,” he said courteously. He opened the door on his side and stepped out quickly before one of the guards could close it. A heated argument immediately ensued; three or four soldiers converged on Roth and did everything short of lifting him bodily back into the carriage. She could not follow the beginning of the exchange, but Roth’s voice grew louder and sharper as the discussion continued. When he shouted, “I demand to see Monsieur Meyer!” she had no trouble hearing him at all. A minute later he climbed back into the carriage, looking very angry.
“What is it?” asked Diana, scrambling hastily away from the window back into the center of the seat.
“They won’t tell me a thing,” said Roth. “And when I tried to move to the side so that I could see what was in front of us, they blocked my path. All I can tell you is that we are quite alone here; there are no soldiers at all nearby save those who are guarding our carriage. The rest of the column seems to have disappeared entirely.”
Earlier Abigail had seen the troops formed up ahead of them, on the one occasion when they had been allowed to leave the vehicle. They were marching in ranks of four in deference to the narrow width of the road, and the line of men stretched out for at least half a mile.
“I sent for my uncle,” Roth added after a minute. He looked uncomfortable.
“Yes, I heard you.” Her voice sounded very far away in her own ears.
“I asked for the lieutenant first, of course, but he did not seem to be available.”
Diana was anxiously looking back and forth from Roth to Abigail. Having failed to persuade her mother to confide in her last night, she had made several attempts to get answers from Roth this morning. But for once even Diana’s persuasive charm had failed. Roth had merely turned red and stammered something about a misunderstanding.
Now Abigail saw a familiar tall figure striding through the trees. To her disgust, the troopers seemed in awe of Meyer; one approached timidly and after a brief exchange escorted him over to the carriage. At Meyer’s gesture, the door was opened and Roth was permitted to get out. The two men moved away; Abigail could not see their faces or hear anything that was said, but she saw Roth stiffen. After a few minutes he returned to the carriage.
“You may get out, if you wish,” he said.
Diana was scrambling over to the door as he spoke. Abigail followed more slowly, glancing nervously at the troopers. But they seemed to be taking their cue from Meyer. She felt a surge of bitter resentment at the sight of the cowed soldiers. She and Diana had been virtual prisoners in their carriage for eight hours, while Meyer, an enemy spy, was giving orders to men who should have been his captors.
“Why have we stopped here? What did you learn?” Abigail asked anxiously as Roth handed her out.
“There are royalist troops blocking the road about a mile ahead,” he answered. “But my uncle says there is no cause for alarm.” He added this last very hastily when he saw Abigail’s horrified expression.
“No cause for alarm,” she repeated in a flat voice. It seemed lately that everyone in France was eager to assure her there was no cause for alarm.
Diana, who knew that particular tone very well, seized her arm. “Mother!” she cried. “Don’t! Just wait here!”
Abigail shook her off. “Where is Mr. Meyer?” She walked away from the coach and turned, scanning her surroundings. They were on a large hill, she saw. The carriage had been driven slightly off the road, at a level spot shaded by pines. Just ahead, the road sloped down through the thinning trees and disappeared, and at the very edge of the trees a group of soldiers was standing. She thought she recognized several members of the patrol that had been escorting the carriage. She definitely recognized the figure standing to one side. He was holding a field glass and scanning something farther down the hill.
She started running down the road; when one of the soldiers hurried after her, protesting, he shrank back at the fierce expression on her face. The sound of trumpets echoed faintly upwards from the valley below, and she ran even faster. By the time she reached Meyer she was panting and had one hand pressed to her side.
He turned slightly as she came up beside him. “Mrs. Hart.” He touched his hat and then went back to studying the scene below. After a minute, as though he had only then understood why she might be there, he said, “You need not be frightened. You are perfectly safe.” His voice was oddly distant and impersonal, like the trumpets.
She looked down into the valley. Where the road passed into a narr
ow plain between a hill and a lake, two masses of men were confronting each other. One group stood across the road facing south, their ranks forming a solid wall between the hillside and the water’s edge. The other group, Napoleon’s men, was marching forward in their groups of four and forming up into new lines of twenty. After three lines of twenty had formed, they would shift to the side, moving so precisely that it looked as though the square was a single organism. Mounted men rode up and down in front of both armies, calling out orders.
“How can you tell me not to be frightened?” she demanded wildly. “They are about to fight!”
“No.” He smiled briefly, as though something had amused him. “There will be no battle. You and Miss Hart need not worry.”
Pointing down at the valley, she asked, still breathing hard, “What is that, then?”
“Theater,” he said, adding after a moment, “I am not sure whether it is tragedy or comedy.”
“Who are the soldiers across the road, then? Are they not the king’s troops?”
“In theory, yes. That is a battalion from an old and distinguished infantry regiment, however. They are very different from the royalist volunteers Masséna is bringing up from the south. At least half of the men down there—and virtually all of their sergeants and corporals—are veterans.”
“You mean that they fought previously under Napoleon,” she said slowly. “That they are loyal to him rather than to their present commander.”
“Watch,” he said, handing her the glass.
But she did not need the glass. There was no doubt who the small figure was who had detached himself from the neatly formed squares of the advancing army. There was no doubt what it meant when he marched forward alone and stood facing his enemies with arms spread wide, inviting them to fire straight at his chest.
“My God,” Meyer breathed beside her. “He is magnificent. A magnificent monster.”
A great roar swelled up from the plain below; the opposing troops had fallen to their knees, stretching out their hands to their former general. The roar solidified into a chant, the chant of thousands of men, beating rhythmically against the hillside. Now both armies were chanting, and men were breaking ranks and embracing each other in the middle of the plain.
“What are they shouting?” she asked.
“Vive l’Empereur.”
“Surely it is somewhat premature to hail him once again as emperor?”
“Is it?” He gestured towards the mingled armies. “Your escort has just doubled in size. There is another royalist battalion waiting for us closer to Grenoble. They, too, will defect and join him. By the time we reach the city his army will be four thousand strong. When news of this encounter spreads, more regiments will defect. Six days ago he had fifteen hundred men. By tomorrow night he may have fifteen thousand. By the end of the month, one hundred fifty thousand.”
No wonder Meyer had been willing to risk so much to destroy the bridge at Pont-Haut. For the first time she wondered uneasily whether there might not in fact be two sides to the story of Nathan Meyer, ruthless betrayer of innocent females.
The tiny human figures below were beginning to reassemble themselves into marching units. With an imperious lift of his hand Meyer summoned one of the French troopers still hovering nearby. “We will be getting under way again any moment,” he said to her. “You should return to the carriage.” He did not offer to accompany her himself.
“Will I see you in Grenoble?” she found herself asking.
“I think not.”
She nodded slowly, then turned and left. She looked back only once. He was still standing in the same spot, staring down at the valley and the long line of men that had been, only a few minutes ago, two opposing armies.
For the next six hours, as they bumped towards Grenoble, she looked out the window at the boisterous soldiers and cheering crowds of villagers and saw instead the solitary figure on the hillside. How he must hate me, she thought.
Meyer left Grenoble that same night, but not without exercising his authority as a part owner of the Roth-Meyer Bank to drag the head of their affiliated office out of his house at eleven at night to take care of certain practical matters. Then he summoned Rodrigo. “I am dismissing you,” he said curtly.
The Spaniard did not seem surprised.
“You will go immediately and find Mr. Roth. Inform him that you have left my service. You will accompany him—and any companions—to London.” He handed Rodrigo a purse and a sealed packet. “A draft on the bank; two sets of false papers, plus your real papers.”
“Master Anthony will be very suspicious,” his servant objected.
“If you do not remember to call him Mr. Roth, he will sack you immediately,” Meyer pointed out. He tossed the two clean shirts he had commandeered from his fellow banker an hour earlier into his saddlebags. “He might be suspicious, but he will be too grateful to ask many questions. If he refuses to employ you—although I doubt that he will—you will follow him unobtrusively and make certain that all goes smoothly.”
“And where will you be?”
“Riding as fast as I can towards the coast.” He checked his pistols and slipped them into his coat pocket. “Every hour I am in France is another hour’s worth of information I am not allowed to pass on to Whitehall.”
Rodrigo raised his eyebrows. “Another one of Doucet’s ideas? Ransoming Señora Hart seems to have been very expensive. Although I am sure she was very grateful to be rescued.”
“She slapped me across the face and called me a coward,” Meyer said. Oddly, it did not trouble him to remember that. What still made him wince was the next part, where she had collapsed in tears. He felt as though he had inadvertently seen her naked.
“As you know, the señora has been very friendly to me,” Rodrigo said cautiously. “Perhaps I could ask her whether she still finds you—”
“If you say one word to her about me, you will regret it,” Meyer promised savagely. “Leave Mrs. Hart in peace. I’ve interfered quite enough in her affairs.”
“And this is not interference?” Rodrigo asked scornfully, indicating the purse and the packet of papers. “Do you think I really believe that you are sending me to help Master Anthony? You know perfectly well he had promised the señora he would stay with her and her daughter until they reached England.”
“Interference,” said Meyer, “was when I tricked her into doing what I wanted. Choosing the northern route from Digne-les-Bains. Staying in a farmhouse near the bridge at Pont-Haut. This”—he waved at the papers—“is compensation.”
“She has not asked for compensation,” the servant told him, exasperated. “And if she had asked, she would not wish for it in this form. This is simply another round of deception and manipulation. Only now your goal is to make yourself feel better rather than to blow up a bridge.”
Meyer had not been very successful with the bridge. He suspected he was not going to do much better with this attempt to salve his conscience. But at least if he foisted Rodrigo onto Abigail Hart he would not have to listen to moralizing lectures in Spanish all the way back to London.
19
London, May 1815
Louisa Roth looked up in surprise as her husband tapped lightly on the open door of her sitting room. It was the middle of the afternoon, the heart of the working day. In fact, because of the chaotic state of things in Europe since Bonaparte’s return to France, everyone at the bank had been working longer hours than usual for the past few weeks. She had not expected to see him for hours.
“May I come in?”
She put her sewing back in the drawer of her worktable. “Of course.”
“Are you expecting any callers?”
“No, but if you like I shall ring for Sweelinck and tell him we are not to be disturbed.”
Roth performed this office himself, and closed the door firmly behind the retreating figure of their butler. “I have just had a most interesting conversation,” he told her as he pulled up a chair next to her. “A conversat
ion I was enjoined to hold in strictest confidence. Since it concerned Nathan, I requested permission to consult you, and that permission was granted. But you must speak of this to no one else.”
She was intrigued. “Who was it who came to see you?”
“Colonel White.”
“Nathan’s colonel?”
“Indeed.”
Her brother-in-law had no official standing in the British army. Unofficially, however, he reported to the irascible White, and for all intents and purposes was the most senior of the colonel’s intelligence officers. Meyer and White had been working together for over ten years, and never before, to Louisa’s knowledge, had the colonel sought a private interview with her husband.
“What did he want?”
Roth gave her a wry look. “He wanted to know if we had noticed anything peculiar about Nathan since his return from France.”
She gave an exasperated sigh. “Anything peculiar? I could give him a list. A long list. And that in spite of Nathan’s determined and largely successful efforts to confine his presence in this house to hours when I am either out or asleep.”
“He is not avoiding you, my dear,” Roth reminded her. “Or even me. He is avoiding Anthony.”
That was the first peculiar thing. Even though they had originally been traveling together, Nathan and her nephew had arrived separately from France. The second peculiar thing was that Rodrigo had been with Anthony instead of with his own employer. The third was that the servant and Anthony had clearly been very angry with Meyer. Louisa had been unable to persuade any of them to explain the cause of the hostility. After a few weeks Rodrigo had seemed more like his normal self, but just as Louisa was scheming to make a second attempt to suborn him, he had disappeared. Which was the fourth peculiar thing, because usually her brother-in-law and his servant were inseparable. Thus, Rodrigo was away and Nathan was here in London—yet another oddity. She would have expected Meyer to be abroad at a time like this. Her nephew James, for example—Meyer’s son—was the most junior courier in White’s service and he had barely been in England three days out of the last sixty. And then there was Nathan’s strange, abstracted mood. As expected, he had thrown himself into a frenzy of activity, reading reports and papers, conferring repeatedly with her husband, sending queries out through the bank’s messenger service. But there was something almost mechanical about his actions. He would ask a question and ignore the answer, or comment twice on the same story in the newspaper. He seemed withdrawn and tense.