His hands were again tied behind him and he was bundled into the cart. There was a slight delay while Citizen Prosecutor Corbiel was provided with a horse, then the little cavalcade set off.
Just before Roger had been bundled into the cart he had caught a glimpse of the Town Hall clock and had been amazed to see that it was still a few minutes before eleven. It seemed to him as though many hours had passed since Tardieu had roused him in the farmhouse bedroom that morning. While the trial had been in progress his mind had been so desperately concentrated on its twists and turns, for and against himself, that he had been only vaguely conscious of cold and hunger; but now, as the cart trundled out of the town, he began to shiver and could hear his stomach rumbling. Miserably, while the jolting of the cart again bruised his limbs against the hard floorboards, he longed for food, warmth and comfort, at the same time endeavouring to convince himself that the most dangerous stage in his ordeal was over.
Three-quarters of an hour later he heard a command ring out to halt. The cart pulled up and a soldier poked his head in over the backboard. Withdrawing it, he shouted, ‘You may proceed,’ and the cart moved on through the gates of a big cantonment, which had been set up on the downs when the numbers of troops garrisoning the coast had become too large to be accommodated in the town barracks.
Five minutes later the cart pulled up again in front of a long, low building facing a parade ground, but only Tardieu and Citizen Prosecutor Corbiel entered it. Another quarter of an hour elapsed before the Lieutenant came out and had his men escort Roger into the building, then along to an office at the back that had a view across distant sand-dunes to the sea.
It then transpired that General Desmarets was absent from the camp and would not be free to attend to any business until he had returned and had his dinner. For the moment, Roger’s affair was being dealt with by the General’s adjutant, a pleasant-faced young Major, who was lolling behind a desk. When Roger was brought before him he looked at him with lazy interest and said:
‘So you are the Englishman and spy?’
‘I am neither,’ declared Roger firmly. ‘This whole business is a ghastly mistake. I am Colonel Breuc and an aide-de-camp to General Bonaparte.’
The young Major sat back and roared with laughter.
‘How dare you laugh!’ Roger cried indignantly. ‘This is a very serious matter.’ Yet, could he have seen himself, he would have realised that his statement, coupled with his appearance, gave ample grounds for mirth. His unshaven chin was covered with unsightly stubble, his undressed brown hair looked like a bird’s nest and his clothes, which had not been pressed since their immersion in the sea, hung as they had rough-dried, ugly folds and ridges about him. At that moment he could hardly have looked less like the Staff officer to a General-in-Chief that he claimed to be.
Recovering himself, the Major made him a mocking little bow. ‘I’m sorry—yes, let us call you “Colonel”; although I gather you would find it mighty difficult to substantiate your claim to that rank.’
‘By no means,’ Roger replied firmly. ‘And I am relying on you, Major, to enable me to do so. In this cantonment there must be many men who served with General Bonaparte in the Army of Italy. I most earnestly request that you will have them sought out and confront me with them. I count it certain that a number of them will readily vouch for my identity. I pray you, too, to give heed to the fact that my life hangs upon your doing as I have asked.’
The young man’s face had suddenly become grave. ‘Your request would be pointless did you not expect to vindicate yourself through it. The great majority of the men who fought in General Bonaparte’s victorious campaign are still with the Army of Italy. Few of them have been transferred to us here in the north. But I will at once have enquiries set on foot for such as have come to us from Italy.’
After pausing a moment, he went on, ‘However, it will take some time to collect them. By then General Desmarets should be available and, no doubt, he will wish to adjudicate in this matter in person. Meanwhile, although it seems possible that I may have the pleasure of welcoming you to our Mess later in the day, for the present I am sure you will appreciate that I have no alternative but to have you confined in the guardroom.’
Roger bowed. ‘Major, I am deeply grateful to you for acceding so promptly to my request, and for your courtesy. I have only one more boon to ask. This morning I was given no breakfast; so I am terribly hungry. Could I perhaps be brought something to eat while I am in the guardroom, and a pallet on which to lie, with several blankets, for I am both cold and desperately tired.’
‘Certainly you shall be provided with these things,’ the Major agreed. Turning to an Orderly Sergeant who was standing by the door, he gave him the necessary instructions.
Under a guard of soldiers Roger was marched away to the guardroom. Ten minutes later, his hands untied, he was making a hearty meal of stew, followed by bread-and-cheese. He then lay down on a straw-filled mattress and drew a single blanket over himself. There was no need for more, since the room was heated by a roaring brazier.
At last the awful fears which had harrowed him since morning were lifted from his mind. Although a civilian himself, he had spent so much of his time with military men that he always felt at home with them. Once the young Major had grasped the facts of the case he had treated him with consideration and kindness. Even if there were no great number of men in the cantonment who had served with the Army of Italy there must be a dozen or more. A single one who could identify him would be enough to get him out of all his troubles. Confident that by evening he would be a free man again, he dropped asleep.
It was soon after three o’clock when the Sergeant of the Guard roused him and escorted him between two privates back to the headquarters building. They marched him through the room in which he had been interviewed and into a larger one next door. Standing there were Tardieu, Citizen Prosecutor Corbiel and the young Major. Behind a large desk sat an elderly man with a slightly pockmarked chin and grey hair that fell in lank strands on either side of his face. Obviously he was General Desmarets, and Roger put him down as an N.C.O. of the old Royal Army who had risen, owing to the Revolution, by years of conscientious but unspectacular service, to this minor Command.
Giving a nod in the direction of Tardieu and Corbiel, the General said in a gruff voice to Roger, ‘These Citizens have told me about you. Three worthy Citizen magistrates have heard all you have to say and have decided that you are guilty of charges that merit death. You have advanced a preposterous claim to be one of General Bonaparte’s aides-de-camp, and say that you served with him in the Army of Italy. We shall soon learn how much truth there is in that.’
His tone and attitude were ominous, but Roger remained optimistic. A door to a passage was opened by the Major and nine men filed into the room. Six of them were officers and the other three senior N.C.O.S Eagerly Roger’s glance ran from face to face. Then his heart sank a little; not one of them was familiar to him. But he could still hope that some of them might have noticed him while he was in attendance on their hero, the General-in-Chief.
Briefly Desmarets questioned each of them about his service in Italy. All of them had fought there and had later been granted leave, on one ground or another, to transfer to the Army of the North. Roger had not joined Bonaparte in Italy until three months after the Armistice of Leoben was signed, and all but two of the men had left Italy before he arrived there. Of the remaining two, only one had visited the General-in-Chief’s headquarters at Montebello. He firmly declared that he had never heard of a Colonel Breuc. All of them agreed that Bonaparte’s aides-de-camp during the Italian campaign had been Marmont, Junot, Duroc, Lavalette and Sulkowsky.
General Desmarets shrugged his powerful shoulders. ‘There we are, then. I thought from the beginning this would prove a farce.’ He glanced at the nine veterans of the Italian campaign and said, ‘I am sorry, Citizens, that you should have been brought here for no useful purpose. You may go.’ As they filed out, he pointed t
o Roger and gave an order to the Sergeant of the Guard.
‘Take this man away and have him shot.’
Seized once again with terror at the thought of the fate now rushing upon him, Roger broke into violent speech. He pleaded that other men who had served in Italy should be sought, explained that he had not joined General Bonaparte’s staff until a few months before the General’s return to Paris, and begged for a postponement of sentence until he could communicate with the General. But in vain. Desmarets ignored his outburst, the guards on either side of him seized his arms and hustled him away.
Back at the guardroom, the Sergeant told his Corporal to turn out the reserve guard and take over. Then he selected six of his men to act as a firing party. Just before they left the guardroom he took a spade from a corner, handed it to Roger and said:
‘Here, take a grip o’ that. An’ don’t you dare drop it in a fit of the funks or you’ll get a kick up the backside.’
Roger stared aghast at the spade and stammered, ‘What … what is this for?’
The Sergeant replied with a sneer, ‘Where yer bin all yer life? Don’t expect us ter get ourselves sweaty making an ’ole for an English spy to lie comfortable in, do yer? Before sentence is carried out the likes of you ’as ter dig ’is own grave.’
5
Roger Digs his Grave
Almost overcome with horror at the idea of digging his own grave, Roger gave a gulp; but he took the spade. The six soldiers closed round him, the Sergeant gave an order and the firing party set off.
As they marched through the cantonment, men lounging in the doorways of the huts and others cleaning arms or harness stared at Roger with curiosity. Apparently the fact that he was a civilian carrying a spade and obviously under arrest was enough to tell them that he was going to his death. Evidently, too, a rumour had already run round the camp that he was an English spy, for several of them shook their fists at him, with shouts of ‘A la mort, cochon!’ and ‘Sale Anglais’. He was well aware of the hatred with which the French regarded Britain; so their abuse meant nothing to him, and his whole mind was occupied in an attempt to think of an eleventh-hour ruse by which he might save himself, or at least postpone his execution.
His hot meal and three hours’ sleep had restored him physically, but the shock of finding that none of the men from the Army of Italy had even heard of him, and the abrupt way in which General Desmarets had dealt with his case, had robbed him temporarily of his wits. It was half past three on a chilly but sunny afternoon, and all he could think of was how pleasant it would be to have a good horse between his knees and be cantering across the downs. At the same time he was terribly conscious, as they marched towards the sea, that with every step he took the moments of his life were running out. Yet, try as he would, he could not bring himself to concentrate.
After twenty minutes they came to within half a mile of the shore at a place where, between a break in the cliffs, there was a wide area of sand-dunes in which steep mounds alternated with depressions and shallow valleys. Some of the mounds had coarse grass growing in patches on them; but there was no other vegetation, except at some distance inland, for as far as the eye could see.
When they had laboriously made their way for some two hundred yards across this desolate waste they slithered down into a broader dip than any they had so far crossed. The Sergeant called a halt and grunted, ‘This’ll do’.
The men surrounding Roger fell out and moved a little way away from him. For a moment he was tempted to make a dash for it. But with slopes of loose sand rising to twelve feet or more on every side he realised that it would be hopeless to do so. He would have been riddled with bullets before he could have reached even the top of the nearest crest. Such is the instinct in a healthy man to cling to life until the very last moment that, although he felt certain that within another quarter of an hour his body would in any case have six lumps of lead in it, he could not bring himself to make the bid against the virtual certainty that he would be killed before he took another dozen breaths.
The Sergeant picked one man to stand by Roger with his musket at the ready; the other five piled theirs in a pyramid, with the long, thin bayonets pointing to the sky. They then sat down in a group on a nearby slope to take their ease and began a game of cards. Pointing to the flattish bottom of the hollow, the Sergeant said to Roger:
‘Get to it. And don’t waste time diggin’ a trench more’n what’s big enough to take yer body. Should be a metre deep, though; else the sand’ll blow off and leave bits of yer stickin’ out. We don’t want ter tumble over any nasty stinkin’ English corpses when we’re next out ’ere doin’ our trainin’.’
The mental picture that the old ghoul’s words conjured up in Roger’s mind, of his own body rotting and creeping with maggots, filled him with nausea. Yet there was nothing for it but to begin digging. Although he had found it impossible to concentrate while being marched to the dunes, he had kept looking about him in the wild hope that an officer carrying a reprieve would come galloping up from the cantonment, or that some unforeseen diversion would occur that might give him a chance to escape. But on all sides the landscape had remained empty. By the time they arrived at this hollow where he was about to dig his grave he knew that there could be no living creature within miles, except for the seagulls that wheeled overhead and the men who had been ordered to execute him.
The sand was soft and as soon as he began to dig the trench he found that a good part of each spadeful trickled back into it. That brought him the sudden thought that if he could prolong his gruesome task until darkness fell he would stand a worth-while chance of attempting a breakaway. But it was not yet four o’clock, so there was a long time to go before it became even twilight. Moreover, in this wildly optimistic idea for delaying matters till sundown, he had counted without the Sergeant.
Seeing that he was allowing most of the sand he dug up to slide from his spade before he threw the remainder aside, the N.C.O. said with an oath, ‘Think we want ter stay ’ere all night? Put some guts into it, you English bastard. Shovel quick and toss it as far as you can. That’s the way to make a trench in this soft stuff.’
Roger responded by digging faster, but still at no great speed; so the Sergeant suddenly struck him smartly across the shoulders with a swagger cane he was carrying and cried, ‘Lively, I said! Lively! If yer not sweating within two minutes I’ll cut yer face ter ribbons wiv this cane o’ mine.’
Again Roger had no option but to obey, and within a few minutes he was sweating profusely. But some of the sand continued to trickle back into the trench and before he had dug out more than a third of the amount that had to be shifted he was puffing like a grampus. Thrusting his spade upright in the sand for a moment, he took off his heavy coat and threw it down behind him.
As he resumed his digging, the Sergeant remarked, ‘That’s a real aristo’s coat yer got there. Should sell for a tidy sum, so I’ll take it as my share of yer kit. Be a sin ter bury good clothes like yours. The others can cast lots for the rest of yer duds.’
After a minute he added, ‘I bet yer got a bit o’ money on yer too. I’ll give you a spell from diggin’ if yer’ll hand it over.’
Roger’s heart bounded. A ‘spell’ might mean anything from a few minutes to an indefinite period. The Sergeant’s offer sounded like an overture to him to buy his life. On reaching Paris he had meant to draw his back pay and, should he need more, there were means by which he could draw on British Secret Service funds; so he had not brought a large sum with him. He had only fifty louis d’or to cover immediate expenses and they were in a money-belt round his waist. Yet those fifty louis, which would have done no more than see him to Paris and buy him a new uniform when he got there, would be regarded by the Sergeant as a magnificent windfall. Even if he had to give five louis apiece to his men to keep their mouths shut that would still leave twenty for him, and that was more than the pay he would receive in a whole year.
The Sergeant spoke again. ‘Come on. Yer can’t ta
ke it wiv yer. If yer ’and it over I can split it wiv the boys now. That’ll save us a lot o’ time arguing, about shares when ye’re a gonner, an’ we’ll get back to camp the sooner.’
His words instantly dashed Roger’s hopes. He felt that he must be out of his mind not to have realised that they would search his body for cash and valuables before they filled in his grave. As they would come by the money anyhow, why should they risk condign punishment by letting him buy his life with it?
Yet even in his extremity it went against the grain to make the Sergeant a gratuitous present; and he thought it possible that it might not occur to them that he was wearing a money-belt. If so, they might strip him only to his underclothes and so fail to find his gold. In the hope of depriving them of it he said tersely to the N.C.O.:
‘If you’ve been counting on lining your pockets, Sergeant, you are unlucky. The Coastguards searched me last night and took from me every sou I had.’
‘Then that’s bad luck for yer, too,’ the Sergeant snarled. ‘I’ll give yer no spell, an’ if yer drop while yer work I’ll have the boys jab their bayonets in yer an’ finish yer off that way.’
Once more, under the N.C.O.’s threats and his baleful glare, Roger set about digging. After another ten minutes the sweat was pouring off him and he had managed to scoop out a trench, the middle of which was over two feet deep. But the sides sloped and it still required a lot more work before his body could have been laid in it and well covered.
It was now nearly half an hour since he had started on the job and the hard work had made him uncomfortably hot; but that was far from being the case with the firing party. The sun had gone in and the chill of a February afternoon had descended on the dunes. Of the group of five sitting on the slope nearby playing cards, one or more was now standing up every few minutes to stamp his feet and flail his arms to keep his circulation going.
The Sultan's Daughter Page 8