‘Hear! Hear!’ exclaimed Harris heartily.
‘ ’Tis for that reason,’ Carmarthen continued, ‘that I am most anxious to regain Russia’s friendship, and that of Austria as well. England was Russia’s first friend when she emerged from her own borders, and until quite recent times we enjoyed the traditional good-will of the Court of Vienna. Yet, during the late war we lost both, and instead they now look to France as the protector of their interests in Western Europe. By the new Triple Alliance we have bound Prussia and the United Provinces to us, and are in a fair way to add Sweden and the Turk to our bloc. Yet I would willingly sacrifice the two latter, could we but regain Russia and Austria, and thus isolate France.’
I too would welcome a rapprochement with the two Imperial powers,’ declared Pitt, ‘but not from the project of isolating France, and thus driving her into renewed suspicion and enmity. Rather we should strive to win the goodwill of all. ’Tis not by secret pacts aimed at individual nations that we shall ever secure a lasting peace, but by sound commercial treaties which need cause fear to none.’
‘You agree though, Billy, that Mr. Brook should send us such data as he can which might assist in our gaining Russia as an ally?’
‘I do. Yet seeing that James Harris, here, and Alleyne Fitzherbert have both failed in that, I see little hope that Mr. Brook will be able to furnish us with anything to act upon. ‘I would be unreasonable to ask him to seek for a goodwill in the existence of which none of us have the least cause to believe. His function, rather, as I see it, will be to inform us as far as possible regarding Russia’s intentions in the north, in order that we may take such steps as we can to put a check on her further aggrandisement.’
Carmarthen then took the opportunity to press Pitt into agreeing that, as a gesture of goodwill to Russia, her fleet, which was fitting out in the Gulf of Finland, should again be allowed the freedom of the British ports on its voyage round to the Ionian Sea; and this led to a discussion on the role of Austria, as Russia’s ally in her war against the Turks. Dundas joined in with his usual vigour, leaving Harris and Roger, who were seated side by side, temporarily out of the conversation.
The thoughts of both the latter were still on St. Petersburg and, after a few minutes, the ex-ambassador said: ‘I wish you better fortune in your mission to the Venice of the North, than I had in mine. ’Tis a fine city and the Russians, although crafty and unreliable, are a gay and hospitable folk. I soon took their measure and would I think, in time, have succeeded in pinning them down; but I confess that the Czarina bested me. She is as slippery as an eel, and never seemed to tire of lending a favourable ear to my arguments, while all the time she was secretly planning to embarrass us in our war with the French, by forming the League of Armed Neutrality and leading it against us. I take it you are acquainted with her history?’
Roger shook his head. ‘I fear I know very little about her except that she was the daughter of a petty German Prince, and, having married the heir apparent to the Russian throne, deposed him by a successful conspiracy some six months after he had ascended it as Peter III. That was before I was born, and for the past quarter of a century she has continued to occupy the throne herself, apparently illegally, as her son is long past his majority and should be seated on it as the Emperor Paul.’
That is so. She was the daughter of Prince Christian of Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg; and her husband was also a German Princeling. His father was only a Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, but his mother, Anne, was the elder daughter of Peter the Great. It was her younger sister who became the Empress Elizabeth. She had many lovers but never married, so in due course, she selected her nephew, the little Holstein-Gottorp, as her heir, and had him brought to Petersburg at the age of fourteen. Three years later she picked Catherine, who was then sixteen, for him as a wife. He had the ill-luck to contract the smallpox just before the wedding, and it left him hideously disfigured. Added to which his parts were tied, and since he funked a small operation it was several years before he was able to consummate the marriage.’
‘How prodigious strange,’ remarked Roger, ‘that Marie Antoinette should have found herself in exactly the same case with Louis XVI. ’Twas eight years, I’m told, before he would bring himself to face a nick with a knife so that they could lie together.’
‘ ’Twas a year or so more, than that for Katinka.’
‘Such a situation must have been a sore trial for both Princesses.’
‘Mightily so,’ Harris agreed, ‘since through no fault of their own they became the mock of their courts from failing to produce heirs; and one could scarce blame either for consoling themselves with a lover. ’Tis averred that the fair Austrian kept her virtue; but the beautiful little German succumbed to the blandishments of her husband’s Chamberlain, a fellow named Soltikof, about a year before her spouse succeeded in cohabiting with her. By that time she had long since lost any affection she may ever have had for the boorish, pock-marked Peter, but his having shared her bed at least saved her from any question being raised as to the legitimacy of her only son, Paul Petrovitch, who was born in October ‘54.’
‘The man who should be Czar is now thirty-four, then?’
‘He is. But I’d give long odds against his ever ascending the throne while his mother is alive.’
‘How old is she now?’
‘Nearly sixty; and for the past twenty-six years she has been the most powerful woman in the world. The Empress Elizabeth, after a long illness during which she was drunk the greater part of the time, died early in ‘62. Peter succeeded her but reigned only six months, then Catherine deposed him and he died in mysterious circumstances a week or so later. Technically she assumed power as regent for her infant son, but she soon forgot that convenient fiction. Meanwhile, Soltikof had become only a memory of the past. Poniatowski, whom she afterwards made King of Poland, succeeded him in her affections; then Gregory Orlof, who arrested her husband for her during the coup d’étát. Since then she has taken scores of lovers, so she is well named the Semiramis of the North. In her youth and prime she was a great beauty and of a most lively disposition, so must have proved a fine bedfellow for many a lusty young gallant, but I pity the poor devils whose duty it is to tumble her now.’
‘What! She has lovers still!’
‘Aye,’ Harris nodded. ‘Though she be fat, grey and toothless, I’m told she shows no decline in that respect. And an invitation from the Empress is a command.’
‘ ’Tis unnatural,’ Roger declared.
‘Unusual, would be the more suitable word,’ commented Harris quietly. ‘And, believe me, little Katinka is an unusual—nay, a remarkable—woman. So arbitrary, violent and licentious has been her private life that she may well go down to history as a second Messalina; yet she is far more highly cultured and intelligent than any other monarch of our age. She is not merely absolute in theory but makes her autocratic power felt in every department of the State. In her own hand she recodified and modernised the whole of Russia’s laws. She has colonised great empty spaces of her Empire with poor but hardworking Teutons, and has founded innumerable schools. She selects her own military commanders and lays down their objectives for each campaign. Her foreign Minister is merely a cipher, for ’tis she who furnishes all her diplomats with their instructions. Despite these herculean labours she finds ample time to indulge her love of pleasure, and to carry on a vast correspondence concerning art and literature with such men as Voltaire, Diderot and d’Alembert. In her private relationships she is as capricious as a flighty minx of eighteen; yet her mind is so well balanced when it turns to affairs of State that she never allows her personal prejudices to interfere with her judgment. In her love for Russia she has become more Russian than the Russians; and at her order the most powerful army in the world will march east, south or west as she may choose to direct it.’
Harris paused for a moment, then added: ‘I trust that what I have said may have given you some conception of the real greatness of the wicked little old woman whose h
and you may soon be privileged to kiss.’
‘It has indeed,’ Roger said thoughtfully. ‘And you would make me still further your debtor if, before I leave, I might consult you on various aspects of my mission.’
‘I had been about to suggest placing my small experience of life at the Court of Petersburg at your disposal. Would it suit you to dine with me at Brook’s on Tuesday?’
‘I’d be honoured, Sir; and more than grateful to you for your guidance.’
Seeing that they had finished their semi-private conversation. Pitt leaned forward and said to Roger: ‘Have you spoken to Sir James with regard to some method of sending me your despatches privately?’
Before Roger could reply Harris did so for him. ‘We are meeting again next week, Sir, and I already have in mind a sound channel for that. There is, however, the, er—question of funds. My mission to Russia cost me twenty thousand pounds of my private fortune over and above my emoluments as Ambassador, and I should not like to think that Mr. Brook is to be out of pocket to even a twentieth of that amount’
‘Nor I,’ laughed Pitt, and Carmarthen smiled affably across the table, as he said: ‘If you will be good enough to wait upon me at the Foreign Office, Mr. Brook, I will arrange both funds and passage for you.’
The conversation then again became general until, at half-past eight, they left the table and the guests prepared to go back to London.
As Roger, now full of good port and inward excitement at the new prospects which the day had opened, to him, was about to mount his horse, Pitt and Dundas warmly wished him every good fortune. Carmarthen and Harris he was to see again, so as they got into their carriage they only waved him a cheerful ‘good-night.’
The carriage bowled swiftly down the drive, and as it passed out of the gates with Roger a hundred yards ahead, Carmarthen asked his friend: ‘What think you are the prospects of that young man’s mission having profitable results?’
‘None,’ answered Harris bluntly.
‘Why so, Jimmy?’ yawned his Lordship. ‘I thought him a likeable fellow; modest yet not slow to answer when addressed, and of good intelligence.’
‘He is all of that, and a man to mark; for he will, I believe, go far. But not in this.’
‘What reason have you for your pessimism?’
‘The venue of the mission he has been given; and Billy Pitt is at fault in that. Having ever lived aloof from the world himself he still remains completely oblivious to the fact that other human beings are made of flesh and blood. Had it been otherwise he would have had more sense than to send this lad to Petersburg. We must afford him all the help we can, but he will fail there for a certainty.’
‘Why should he have a greater chance of success in any other capital?’
Harris gave a short, hard laugh. ‘Because, my friend, I will eat my Order of the Bath if, after one look at his fine figure and bonny blue eyes, that old bitch of an Empress does not order him to her bed. And I do not think young Mr. Brook will stand for that.’
8
The Bal-Masqué
On April the 17th Roger landed at Copenhagen. It had been Sir James Harris’s idea that an oblique approach to St. Petersburg would offer advantages not to be obtained by a direct descent upon it. The wily diplomat had pointed out that while Roger’s plan of passing himself off as a Frenchman in the Russian capital was basically sound, he would be greatly handicapped if he arrived there with neither background nor introductions; whereas if he spent a few weeks in Denmark and Sweden on his way, he should be able to establish his new personality while in those countries, and later enter Russia adequately sponsored by friends that he had made while in the Scandinavian capitals.
It had transpired that the first available ship was sailing from Edinburgh about the 20th of the month, so Roger had had ample time to go down to Lymington and spend a few days with his mother before taking coach for the north. This visit to his home had also enabled him to have several additional conferences with Sir James, as the diplomat was about to be elevated to the peerage under the title of Baron Malmesbury for his part in bringing about the Triple Alliance; and, as member for Christchurch, he wished to secure the support of his constituents in the coming by-election for his party’s nominee. In consequence, two days after their dinner at Brook’s, they travelled down into Hampshire together, and Roger had benefitted by much sage advice about his mission.
Quite apart from Sir James’s great prestige in his own service he had most valuable personal relationships with other leading figures in it. His wife had been a Miss Amyand, and her sister had married Sir Gilbert Elliot, whose youngest sister was the wife of William Eden, the negotiator of the recent commercial treaty with France, and whose younger brother, Hugh, was now minister at Copenhagen. It had therefore been decided that no one could be better fitted to launch Roger into the Baltic scene than Mr. Hugh Elliot, and Sir James had furnished him with a letter for that purpose. He had also given him a letter for the Reverend William Tooke, the chaplain to the trading factory in St. Petersburg, where all cargoes of British goods shipped to the port were warehoused before being distributed. Sir James had described the clergyman as a shrewd, discreet fellow, long resident in Russia and possessing an encyclopaedic knowledge of Russian affairs. It was to him that Roger was to give his despatches, as he was admirably situated to pass them on to Mr. Alleyne Fitzherbert for transmission by Embassy bag to London.
While sailing up the Sound towards Copenhagen, through waters alive with shipping, Roger had been pleasantly impressed with the fertile, undulating country, studded with fine private houses set in well-wooded picturesque parks; and on landing he was similarly impressed by the Danish capital. Sixty years before it had been almost totally destroyed by a great fire, so all its principal buildings were comparatively modern, and it had a much more spacious air than any other city that he had so far visited.
Roger had travelled from Edinburgh as Monsieur le Chevalier de Breuc, and The Silver Hart having been recommended to him as the best inn at which to put up, he went straight to it and took rooms there in that name. As soon as he was settled into them he wrote a note in French to Mr. Elliot, simply saying that he had a letter for him from Sir James Harris and would be glad to know when it would be convenient to deliver it. The same evening a reply came back that the Minister would be happy to receive him at eleven o’clock the following morning.
Next day therefore he hired a horse and rode out to Christiansholm, the residential suburb in which the British Legation was situated, and found it to be a small but very beautiful villa. Immediately he was alone with Mr. Elliot he disclosed the fact that he was an Englishman and presented his credentials. Then, as the Minister gave him a quiet smile and settled down to peruse them, Roger had ample opporunity to study him at leisure and think over the outline of his history, which had been supplied by Sir James.
Hugh Elliot hailed from Minto in Roxburghshire and was the second son of a Scottish Baronet. He was educated for the Army but, owing to his father’s friendship with Lord Suffolk, the Foreign Secretary of the day, had, without being consulted by either, been appointed His Brittanic Majesty’s Minister to the Elector of Bavaria, at the age of twenty-one. After a tour of duty in the charming and easy-going city of Munich he had been transferred at twenty-five to the much less agreeable but far more important post of Berlin. Here he fell in love with and married the beautiful Fraulein von Krauth, only to learn a few years later that she was deceiving him. At this juncture he had just been transferred to Copenhagen, and his romance ended by his secretly returning to Berlin to kidnap his own little daughter in the middle of the night, fighting a successful duel with his young wife’s lover, and then divorcing her.
He was a rather frail-looking, fair-haired, blue-eyed Scot, now thirty-six years of age. Roger thought he looked considerably older, but attributed that to the tragic failure of his marriage.
Having finished reading the letter Hugh Elliot said: ‘I will willingly serve you in any way I can, Mr. Brook,
but your having appeared here in the guise of a Frenchman makes it somewhat difficult for me to do so openly. For example, it would not be de rigueur for me to present anyone not having British nationality, at the Danish Court.’
Roger bowed. ‘I am aware of that, Sir, and the last thing I would wish to do is to prove an embarrassment to you. However, Sir James suggested that you might perhaps be able to arrange an occasion when I could meet the French Minister here, casually. My story is that I am a native of Strasbourg, but have been living with relatives in England for the past six months; so that while I am lacking in introductions from my own countrymen, friends in London were good enough to give me a letter of introduction to yourself.’
‘That sounds like a typical James Harris ruse,’ smiled Elliot. ‘He would reason that once I have brought you into contact with Monsieur le Baron la Houze, you will only have to make yourself pleasant to him, for him to offer, quite spontaneously, to present you himself; then you will be launched every bit as much under the French aegis in Denmark as though you had arrived here with your pockets stuffed full of letters from Versailles.’
‘That was the idea, Sir,’ Roger grinned back.
‘Regard the matter as arranged then. I’ll not ask Monsieur le Baron here to meet you, as that might appear a shade too pointed. But he is certain to be at Count Bernstorff’s soirée next Tuesday so you shall accompany me to that. Now, in what other way can I be of assistance to you?’
‘If I did not fear to trespass on your good nature I would ask if you could spare an evening to put me au courant with the politics of the Scandinavian Kingdoms vis-à-vis Russia.’
‘I will do so with pleasure. As I lead a bachelor existence ’tis my custom to spend most Sundays with my good friends the Reventlows; but I can easily excuse myself tomorrow, and if you will dine with me we can have a long talk afterwards.’
The Shadow of Tyburn Tree Page 18