Next morning, after having paid a visit of curiosity to the house of Citizen Sauce the grocer, at which the Royal Family had been held captive, Roger rode out with Dan on a reconnaissance of the country to the north of the town. At the village of Châtel he found what he was seeking—a huge old tithe barn. Returning, he told Dumouriez of his find and the use to which he intended to put it. He said that if half a hundred officers accused of having Royalist sympathies were brought into the town, it was certain that attempts to lynch them would be made; so he wished his prisoners to be taken to the barn at Châtel, where he could question them at his leisure without fear of intervention by a mob. Dumouriez praised his perspicacity and gave the necessary orders; so that night forty-two officers were collected from their respective regiments and put in the barn under guard.
The following day Roger spent some hours at the barn questioning a number of his prisoners, while Dan laboriously took notes; but at three o’clock he announced in front of the officer in charge of the guard that he must return to Varennes to dine with the General, then told Dan that he was to carry on with the questioning. Secretly, he had already given Dan instructions that at five o’clock he was to get himself quarters in the village for the night, then buy a small barrel of wine from the local estaminet, and do his utmost to make the guard dead drunk. As the terrible Citizen Representative’s assistant, Dan was regarded with respectful awe by the troops; moreover he could tell most hair-raising stories of the sack of the Tuileries and of the September massacres; so Roger was quite confident that, from the officer down, the guard would be eager to drink with him, and that well before midnight he would have the whole lot reeling.
At midnight Roger rode back to within half a mile of Châtel, tethered his horse to a tree, then walked the remaining distance across a field. No sounds came from the village and no lights were showing in it; evidently the greater part of the guard was sunk in a drunken slumber. Cautiously he tiptoed round the end of the barn. The starlight showed a solitary sentry, but he was sitting on the ground, his back against its doors, his head fallen forward on his chest, snoring. Going round to the rear of the barn again, Roger produced flint and tinder and lit the thatch in four places. Recrossing the field, he stood by his horse until he was certain that the great barn was so well alight that no normal effort could put the fire out, then he returned to Varennes and slept with his usual soundness.
In the morning Dan reported. The great barn had been burnt to the ground. The guard, when roused, had proved incapable of taking any effective action, either to put out the fire or to stop the prisoners escaping from the blazing building.
Everything had gone as Roger had planned. The walls of the barn being made of mud and straw, it had been a foregone conclusion that the prisoners would break a way through them, and risk a bullet from the sentries rather than remain inside to be roasted alive. He had made as certain as he could that there should be no bullets. By this time the forty-two Royalist sympathizers must be beyond pursuit and probably already within the enemy lines. No one could blame him for that; and he smiled to himself at the thought that he had saved his own bacon with Robespierre and the Soldiers’ Council by making the arrests, yet had succeeded in saving honest men from the danger in which they had placed themselves by openly expressing their beliefs; in addition, he had made a most useful present to the forces that had taken up arms against the Revolution.
The weather was exceptionally bad that autumn and there had hardly been a day since mid-September on which it had not rained; so the Prussian army had been severely stricken with illness, and seemed less inclined than ever to put up a fight. Dumouriez’s troops appeared to be hardier and they pushed on up the Meuse, reaching Sedan on the 21st of October, while Kellermann, fifty miles away on the right, had recaptured Verdun and despatched his subordinate, General Custine, with a flying column, on a daring foray into the Principalities of the Rhine. On the 23rd, salvoes of blanks were joyfully fired all along the frontier to announce that the enemy had been driven from the soil of France.
This first great achievement of the armies of the Republic naturally called for celebration; so the civic authorities of Sedan invited Dumouriez and all his principal officers to the Town Hall that night, a number of the prettiest local girls were asked in for dancing, and wines of all kinds were provided in abundance. The little General had a head like a rock; so when Roger came upon him in one of the ante-rooms at about three in the morning he showed no outward signs of the number of toasts he had been called on to drink, but he was nevertheless distinctly mellow. Roger, too, as the guest only second in importance to the General, had been lavishly wined; so there was little to choose between them as they smiled at one another and, almost instinctively, sat down together on a comfortable settee.
During the past month they had spent a considerable amount of time in one another’s company, and although they both continued to maintain a cautious reserve on certain questions, they had fallen into the habit of discussing army matters with complete frankness; so it was quite a natural question for Roger to ask his companion’s intentions now that he had cleared France of the invaders.
The General replied without hesitation, “We must press on into Belgium. Old Brunswick has so many sick on his hands that he is in no state to stop us, and the Austrian Netherlands are ripe for the picking. For years past they have been in semi-revolt against the rule of Vienna, and from every town our agents report that the people are ready to hail us as deliverers.”
Roger nodded. He knew that the Jacobin Club had sent hundreds of agitators into the Belgian cities to incite the workers to revolution; so he had expected some such answer. He remarked now with no ulterior motive, “I judge you right that we have good prospects of overrunning the country; but, if we do, the Government would be well advised to give guarantees to England that we mean to withdraw when the war is over, otherwise we’ll run a grave risk of her being added to our enemies.”
“That may be unavoidable,” Dumouriez said thoughtfully.
“I have a great admiration for the English and no desire at all to fight them; so I think we should endeavour to buy them off with concessions in the West Indies and elsewhere, if that be possible. But if I conquer Belgium nothing will induce me to give it up; and when I was in Paris the Government agreed to back me in that, even if it does mean war with England. All my life I have dreamed of expanding France to her natural frontiers. Now is my chance, and I do not mean to lose it.”
Suddenly, beneath the fumes of alcohol, something clicked in Roger’s brain, and he realised that this conversation, begun so casually, was of the first importance. Without altering his tone he asked, “What do you consider to be the natural frontiers of France?”
Dumouriez lifted a slightly shaky hand, and a little ponderously counted them off on his fingers. “The Alps, the Mediterranean, the Pyrenees, the Western Ocean, and the Rhine from the mouth of the Scheldt to the Alps. In the south our people have taken Nice from those lousy Piedmontese, so let’s hope that it won’t be long before they reach Monaco, which should be our natural frontier down there. Here in the north we’ve far more to do, but we’ll do it. We’ll chase those lousy Austrians out of Belgium and turn the country into French Departments. I was born in Cambrai, you know, and my native town has been the victim of far too many invasions. It is essential that the industrial towns of northern France should be properly protected, and the only way to ensure that is to push our frontier forward to the Scheldt and Rhine.”
They talked on for a while, had a final drink together, then made their way, just a shade unsteadily, to a mansion round the corner in which they had been given comfortable lodgings.
When Roger awoke a few hours later the conversation was still fresh in his mind, and he was more than ever convinced of its importance. Dumouriez had been lucky in many things—at Valmy, in being opposed only to a nervous mediocrity like Brunswick, and even in the weather—but the fact remained that he had saved Paris and driven the invader from t
he soil of France. His stock with the Convention must stand very high, and the zealots who dominated it would undoubtedly back his project for incorporating Belgium into the Republic. Moreover, he was shrewd, capable, immensely energetic, and rapidly converting an armed rabble into a reliable military machine. He was a realist, and although he had been most circumspect in all his conversations with Roger he had not entirely succeeded in concealing the contempt he felt for the revolutionary doctrines. With a powerful army behind him he might easily become another General Monk, marching on Paris and reinstating the King, or even proclaiming himself Dictator. In any case, there was now every reason to suppose that he would exercise an immense influence on the future policy of France; so Mr. Pitt must be informed of his personal views with a minimum of delay.
Dressing as quickly as he could, Roger went downstairs and waited until the General appeared. Having wished him good morning, he said: “I have been thinking of our conversation last night. Since you intend to invade Belgium, I consider it important that steps should be taken to strengthen the morale in the fortress towns between your army and the coast; otherwise there will be a risk of the Austrians up there turning your left flank. Having purged the army in the field, I propose to continue my mission by visiting the garrisons along the frontier right up to Dunkirk.”
“You could not render me a greater service,” replied the General quickly, “and the sooner you set about it, the better. We may not see eye to eye in everything, and I’ll not conceal from you now that on your arrival at my headquarters I feared that your interference in army matters was going to cause me a lot of trouble. But for all your extremist views, you are a sound, sensible fellow; and during the past month you have proved a great help to me. I’ve made that clear in my despatches to Paris, and when you have completed your circuit I’ll be glad to see you back here.”
As Roger thanked the little man he could not help wondering just how much he had contributed to the better morale of the revolutionary army; but he felt that his own part had been a small one compared with the General’s own ubiquitous activities, and the basic fact that from Valmy on it had not sustained a single setback. In any case he believed that in a very difficult situation he had succeeded in doing more good than harm to the cause he secretly served; and it was most satisfactory to know that Dumouriez’s despatches must have still further strengthened his own position with the men who ruled in Paris.
An hour later he and Dan were on the dreary rainswept road to Meziers. They slept at Cambrai that night, and the following day pushed on through Douai and St. Omar to Calais. Before arriving in the port Roger removed his scarf of office, and, having filled in two of Danton’s blank passports, they boarded the packet boat for Dover. At ten o’clock on the evening of the 26th of October they arrived in London; but late as it was, Roger hired a post-chaise to take them on to Richmond.
He found Amanda already in bed. They had been separated for eighteen weeks, and their reunion was rapturous. Later, they put on dressing-gowns and went down to the larder to collect a picnic meal, which they carried up to eat in front of the bright fire in her bedroom. He had been able to write to her from time to time, but only to assure her of his well-being; and he had not dared allow her to write to him at all, in case one of her letters fell into wrong hands and gave him away; so both of them had a thousand questions to ask. But soon all serious enquiries were answered and they became as gay as the bubbles in their glasses of champagne. With the glorious appetite of youth they laughed, loved and drank the night away; so daylight was seeping through the chinks of the drawn curtains before they finally fell asleep in each other’s arms.
The day was Saturday, and Roger knew that Mr. Pitt almost invariably spent the week-end at his country house near Bromley. He could have ridden over to see the Prime Minister there that afternoon, but he dared not stay long in England, from fear that his disappearance from the scene of his mission would be discovered. The news he brought was important, but of no special urgency, and he saw no reason why he should spoil by interruption the very limited time that he could give to being with Amanda; so he decided to remain with her till Monday morning, then see his master, and set out again for France as soon as he had done so.
That evening, for fun, they put on their best silks and satins, powdered their hair, and dined in state. As the last dish of the meal, he had arranged a surprise for her with their cook’s help; it was an ice pudding à la tutti-frutti, but instead of pieces of candied fruit and glacé cherries the rich ice cream was larded with diamonds.
Laughing like children, they sucked the precious stones clean, as though they were coins found in a Christmas pudding, and piled them on a plate; but Amanda’s fair face became clouded with distress when he had to tell her how he had procured them.
He pointed out that there was no possible way of returning the gems to their owners, most of whom were undoubtedly dead; and that in gambling his life, as he did, he felt that they were fully entitled to such perquisites, which, had he not taken them himself, would have gone to some murderous revolutionary. But he added that, if she were agreeable, it had occurred to him that they might give half the value of the stones to the fund which had been raised to help destitute French émigrés in England.
To that she agreed at once; but after a moment she said thoughtfully, “If you have no objection, dearest, I would prefer that the half we give away should go to Lady Atkyns.”
He raised his eyebrows. “And who, my sweet, may Lady Atkyns be, that we should endow her with several thousand pounds?”
Amanda smiled. “She is a new neighbour of ours; I find her most sympathetic and have come to know her intimately while you have been away. She is elderly and quite rich but would, I feel sure, welcome further funds to assist her plans. And we could hardly put the money to better use, as she has vowed to rescue poor Queen Marie Antoinette.”
Roger’s eyes nearly popped out of his head; then he sat back and roared with laughter. “Strap me!” he chuckled. “What a picture! No, my poppet, you cannot be serious.”
“Indeed I am,” replied Amanda a trifle stiffly.
“Come, come,” he admonished her with a mocking smile. “Has this elderly lady ever been within the precincts of the Temple, let alone inside its donjon? How does she propose to set about the business, pray? Perhaps by fishing the Queen out of the tower by a hook on the end of a rope and hauling her up into a balloon?”
“Mr. Brook, I think you are being quite horrid,” said Amanda, tears starting to her eyes.
Immediately Roger was all contrition, and running round the table kissed her back to happiness; but although she assured him that Lady Atkyns was a very intelligent woman and already had several agents working for her in France, he could not be persuaded to finance her schemes with a part of their windfall. Instead, as he had originally intended, he made Amanda choose twelve of the best stones for making up into a necklet, then said he would dispose of the others and that later they could discuss how best to deal with the money they fetched.
Sunday passed all too quickly, and on Monday morning Amanda bravely waved farewell again to him and Dan.
Their first call was at No. 10, Downing Street, where Roger left his name, with a message that he would be at Amesbury House until he learned from the Prime Minister at what hour it would be convenient to wait upon him. They then drove on to the Marquess of Amesbury’s mansion in Arlington Street, where his second son, Roger’s old friend Droopy Ned, lived when in London.
Droopy was at home, although still yawning in his great fourposter bed; but he was delighted to see Roger and, wrapping himself in a Roman toga, ordered breakfast to be brought up to the small dining-room of his private suite. While they ate their way through two Dover soles, a porterhouse steak and a brace of cold grouse, with a quart of claret apiece to wash them down, Roger gave his host the news out of France and listened with interest to his shrewd comments. Then, when the table had been cleared, he produced the fat little packet of diamonds.
“I would I had been at your elbow, Roger, when you had your pick of the Commune’s looted treasure,” he murmured with a smile. “More than half of these are paste, and I doubt if a goldsmith would give you more than two thousand guineas for the lot. But leave it to me, and I’ll squeeze three-five for you out of one of those rogues in Hatton Garden.”
Roger was grievously disappointed, as he had believed his haul to be worth between eight and ten thousand pounds, and had, in any case, decided to settle five hundred of it on Dan as a reward for his loyal service. However, it consoled him a little to think that he was lucky to have a friend like Droopy, who could obtain for him nearly double what he would have had to take himself, and that he was after all under no compulsion to give half the money away to the fund for French émigrés.
Soon after midday a running footman arrived from Downing Street with a message that the Prime Minister would receive Roger at five o’clock, so he sent Dan round to the coach office at the White Bear in Piccadilly to book inside seats on the Dover mail for that night. In the afternoon Droopy fulfilled a longstanding promise by taking him to see the Duke of Richmond’s superb Canalettos. They took a dish of tea with the Duchess, then Roger said good-bye to Droopy on the steps of Richmond House, and walked across Whitehall to keep his appointment with the Prime Minister.
Mr. Pitt gave more than two hours of his time to Roger, listening to all he said with keen interest and asking him many questions. He was greatly perturbed when he heard about Dumouriez’s ambitions and, standing up, began to pace the room as he said angrily:
The Man who Killed the King Page 27