Roger mutely shook his head and, as befitted the bearer of bad news, fell on one knee as he replied: ‘Alas, Sire, I fear that I bring you ill-tidings. In fact they could scarce be worse.’
‘No matter,’ the King’s voice was firm. ‘God knows, fortune has dealt us blows enough these past few months; yet, despite all calamities our shoulders are not become so weak that we cannot bear more, and still face the future with becoming fortitude.’
‘Sire,’ Roger said sadly, ‘in a treaty made some years back, by which the Empress surrendered the Holstein territories to the Danes in exchange for two small duchies, there was a secret clause. By it the Danes bound themselves to aid Russia should she ever be attacked by Sweden. They have agreed to honour it, and are at this moment arming with intent to stab your Majesty in the back.’
Gustavus leapt to his feet. ‘Is this the truth? Are you certain of it?’
‘I had it, Sire, not more than sixty hours ago, from an impeccable source.’
Then God be praised!’ The King ran forward, raised Roger to his feet, and embraced him. ‘ ’Tis the best news we have had since we landed in this accursed province. And for the bringing of it we will make you a Chevalier of our Order of the Sword of Sweden.’
Roger stared at him in dumbfounded amazement as he began to pace up and down, and breaking into the first person went on excitedly: ‘Do you not see how this apparently disastrous development may be turned to my advantage? All the world knows that I led my army into Finland. What they do not know is that it is three parts composed of poltroons and traitors. Owing to the disaster sustained by my fleet the army is cut off here; and even could my personal eloquence persuade the men to a renewed sense of their duty their efforts would be rendered abortive through an acute shortage of warlike stores. My forces are completely moribund and can effect nothing, so their state must go from bad to worse. The only hope for them lies in my own return to Stockholm, where I could raise a new fleet, challenge Admiral Greig’s temporary supremacy in the Gulf, and bring them succour. Yet how could I abandon my own troops in their present plight without being branded as a coward in their eyes and those of all Europe alike? This news you bring me provides the one excuse by which the army’s situation and my personal honour may be saved. Since our homeland is to be attacked the Monarch’s proper place is in his capital. To gain it I needs must run the hazard of the blockade; yet even capture in the attempt would be better than to remain here until things reach such a pass that I may risk the indignity of being arrested by my own officers. Mr. Brook, you have brought me new life, and I am your eternal debtor for it.’
For Roger this outburst threw an entirely new light on the situation, and from having anticipated an ill-reception on account of the gloomy duty he had undertaken, he found himself instead a welcome and honoured guest. He spent over an hour with Gustavus, giving him the latest particulars of affairs at the Russian Court, and left the marquee with the star of his first Order of Chivalry glittering upon his chest.
That night he supped with the King and slept in reasonable comfort in the camp.
Next morning he set off back to St. Petersburg, reaching Viibõrg that night; and on the Friday he completed his journey, arriving at his lodging soon after four in the afternoon.
He had taken the last stage slowly, and during it, thought out the line of conduct he should adopt if Count Yagerhorn had laid a complaint against him with the police. It seemed best to state frankly that, on account of a love-affair that he had had while in Stockholm, the Count had waylaid him and given him a beating; and that on learning that the Count had come to St. Petersburg he had availed himself of the opportunity to lure him to his lodging and repay the compliment. The Russian mentality was such as to consider his act fully justified. He hoped that the Count would not drag Natalia Andreovna into the matter, as she might incur the Empress’s displeasure for the part she had played; but if that did occur it could not be helped,
The only point that bothered him a little was how to explain away his having stolen Yagerhorn’s laisser-passer but he decided that here a lie would serve him best. He could say that after the affray in Stockholm the Count had taken the papers from his pocket and maliciously destroyed them with the object of causing him inconvenience; and that he had returned tid-for-tat without even noticing that the laisser-passer was among them.
On arriving at his lodging he met Ostermann in the hallway. The Courlander gave him good-day with a somewhat shifty, surprised look, but refrained from saying anything further. Running upstairs to his apartment Roger threw open the door; grouped round the table there were three men playing a game of dice. They were wearing the uniform of the Russian police.
At his entrance they all jumped to their feet. The tallest of the three stepped forward, gave a curt bow and said in German: ‘You are the Chevalier de Breuc are you not? Since you left all your money here we were in hopes that you might return for it before attempting to leave the country, and our patience is well rewarded.’
Roger returned the bow politely. ‘I had no intention of leaving the country, Sir. I have been absent on a fishing-expedition for the past few days; but this being my lodging I naturally intended to return to it. May I inquire the reason for your desiring to see me?’
The officer coughed, brushed up his flowing moustache and said firmly: ‘It is my duty to arrest you, Chevalier, for the murder of Count Erik Yagerhorn.’
17
Penalty for Murder
‘Murder!’ gasped Roger, his blue eyes opening wide with shock and sudden apprehension. ‘Is the Count then dead? I left him …’
He broke off half-way through his sentence from a swift realisation that, for the moment, the less he said the better. He had already committed himself to one lie, by saying that he had been on a fishing-expedition, and if found out in that it might throw discredit on all else he said. What had gone wrong in his absence he could not even remotely guess; but it was clear that some fatal accident had now placed his own life in the direst peril.
The officer relieved him of his sword; one of the men left the room for a few minutes, and on his return, Roger was taken downstairs. Outside in the street there now stood a plain carriage with iron shutters instead of windows. They all got in and drove off.
Suddenly Roger’s benumbed wits began to work again and he had an inspiration. His companions were not police-officers at all but men hired and disguised in police uniforms by Yagerhorn. The Count evidently meant to make a vendetta of their quarrel and had thought up this clever ruse for a double purpose; firstly to inflict a terrible fright upon him and secondly in order that he might be conveyed unresisting to some lonely spot where full vengeance could be exacted.
Five minutes later this illusion was abruptly dissipated. The carriage halted, and as Roger got out he recognised the police-office of his district. He was led inside and immediately taken before the local police-president.
The official asked him his name, rank and nationality. Roger gave them as ‘Rojé Christorovitch de Breuc; Major-General, and Chevalier; native of Strasbourg, France.’
When these had been noted down, and his age, his address and the date of his arrival in Russia had been taken, the next question was: ‘When did you last see Count Erik Yagerhorn?’
To this Roger refused to reply, and added that he would make no statement of any kind until he was given full particulars as to why they should suppose that he had killed the Count; and had also been allowed to see the French Ambassador.
The police-president shrugged, and said that given a little time in a dungeon to think matters over the prisoner would, no doubt, see the advisability of answering straightforward questions. In view of his rank he could not be put into the ordinary criminal prison, so would be taken to the Fortress of Schlüsselburg.
Roger had never seen the fortress but knew that it lay some twenty miles to the east of St. Petersburg, on a small island in the mouth of the Neva where it enters Lake Ladoga; and he had heard of it in connection with
the tragic life and death of the Czar Ivan IV.
This unfortunate prince, although the legitimate heir to the throne, had been deposed while still a babe in arms in favour of his aunt Elizabeth. From fear of his being used as the focus of a conspiracy against her she had kept him a solitary prisoner during the whole of his childhood and youth. At the time of her death he was twenty-two, and, report had it, a personable young man of agreeable manners, who, considering that he had spent his whole life behind prison-walls, showed every sign of good mental abilities. For a few months his prospects had then brightened as Peter III, owing to his hatred of his wife Catherine, had during his short reign, contemplated putting aside both Catherine and his son by her and making the poor captive his heir. He had even visited the prisoner at Schlüsselburg and given orders for more comfortable accommodation to be provided for him. But the coup d’état had put an end to any hopes of poor Ivan ever knowing the joys of freedom. Worse, after Peter’s death all those who had a grudge against the new Empress began to contemplate another coup d’état which would place Ivan on the throne. The conspiracy misfired and during an abortive attempt to rescue him he had been brutally murdered by his guards. Some people whispered that Catherine had known of the conspiracy and deliberately allowed it to develop to a point at which she could use it as an excuse to rid herself of this inoffensive yet potentially dangerous rival to her power.
While Roger was on the way to Schlüsselburg, in the closed carriage, he recalled all that he had heard of this melancholy tragedy, and particularly the rumours, though they were no more, which inferred the complicity of the Empress in young Ivan’s untimely death. With fresh trepidation he remembered that no more than rumour accused her of having ordered her husband’s death, yet he carried the written proof of her guilt upon him.
That damning piece of evidence against the autocrat was carefully sewn up in the stiff buckram lining to the collar of his coat; but he knew that when he reached the fortress his clothes as well as his person might possibly be searched. Alexis Orlof had, apparently, never missed the document and still believed it to be where it had lain untouched for years, safely in his secretaire; but Roger knew that, whether it could be proved that he was responsible for Yagerhorn’s death or not, he could expect no mercy if the paper was discovered.
His fears for himself were further augmented by the fact that he still had both Yagerhorn’s laisser-passer and King Gustavus’s gift, the Order of the Sword of Sweden, in his pocket. If they were found upon him it should not be difficult to put two and two together and, since Russia was in a state of war with Sweden, he would be shot as a spy. Yet he could not possibly rid himself of the laisser-passer or the Star and its yellow ribbon while in an iron-shuttered carriage with his guards watching him.
With such concrete grounds for apprehension on three separate counts, any one of which might result in his speedy death, Roger felt that his chances of leaving the fortress alive were almost non-existent; and by the time they reached it his very natural fears had caused him to break out in a muck sweat.
On arrival, his particulars were entered by a sour-faced clerk into a heavy ledger, and the police then handed him over to two hefty, ill-favoured gaolers. They lit their lamps, took him to a gloomy stone-floored room, and waited there with him for some twenty minutes until a senior warder joined them. The newcomer beckoned, and Roger was taken along seemingly endless, low-vaulted corridors. At length they halted in front of a heavy iron-studded door. It was unbolted; Roger was thrust in and it clanged dismally behind him.
There was no light or heat and the place smelt dank and foul. His heart sinking to his boots Roger stood still for a moment, listening to the eerie echo of the warders’ retreating footsteps. Then there fell complete and utter silence.
Nerving himself against the unexpected, he shuffled forward a few paces, his hands outstretched before him. His feet made a softly-padding sound, so he judged the floor to be covered with a layer of sodden straw. At about twelve paces from the door his fingers suddenly came in contact with damp, rough-hewn stone. Feeling about with his hands, in places he touched slime, and as he continued his investigation, he discovered that he was in an underground cell which measured about four paces by three, and had at one side of it a solid stone slab raised some eighteen inches from the floor which could be used as a seat or for lying down.
Seating himself upon it he cupped his chin in his hands and began afresh to contemplate his hopeless situation. After a few moments a faint sound from the far corner of the cell caught his attention. A second later he jumped to his feet and cowered back against the wall. He could not see them but he knew that there were rats there, perhaps swarms of them; and he had heard stories of the feet of living prisoners, in just such circumstances as he now found himself, being gnawed away by packs of rodents made desperate by hunger.
Roger was no coward. Before he reached the age of twenty he had challenged, fought and killed one of the finest swordsmen in all France; with a weapon in his hands he was prepared, if need be, to prove his mettle against heavy odds; but the thought of his clothes and flesh being torn from him in small pieces by scores of sharp little teeth utterly unnerved him. The sweat of terror broke out upon his face and he began to shout for help with all the power of his lungs.
No answer came to his frantic cries, and after a while, he fell silent. The sounds from the corner of the cell told him that there was a number of rats there, but they came no nearer. Gradually calmness returned to him, and with the perspiration now cold upon his forehead, he sat down again.
For some time his mind was too numb with misery for him to think coherently; then he remembered that in one thing at least he had been granted a reprieve; he had not so far been searched.
Taking the papers from his inner pocket he fumbled among them in the darkness until, by his sense of touch he had decided which of them must be the laisser-passer. He then got out out his tinder-box, and with some difficulty succeeded in igniting it. When at last the paper burst into a flame, he heaved a sigh of relief. At least he had succeeded in destroying one damning piece of evidence against him.
Yet, as he looked up he cowered back again. The flame was reflected in the corner of the cell by a galaxy of little starlike lights, the eyes of the rats who were watching him, and there could not be less than a score of them.
When he had recovered from that unnerving turn he took from his pocket the Swedish Order. Since it was his first decoration, and a great honour for so young a man, he was most loath to part with it, but he knew that it would cost him his life if it was found upon him. The sodden straw was a good six inches deep, since one layer had been thrown down upon another and it seemed improbable that the cell had been cleaned out for years. Digging the toe of his boot into the soggy mess, he scooped a hole until he reached the floor, laid the much prized jewel and ribbon on the exposed stone, and trampled the decaying straw well down over it.
He heaved another sigh; partly of regret but partly also of relief. He had enjoyed the possession of it for barely forty-eight hours, but it could not now convict him of being in league with Russia’s enemies; since it was most unlikely that it would be found for months to come, and, even if it were, no proof could be brought that it was he who had hidden it there.
With a little gleam of humour it occurred to him how admirable it would be if only he could lay Count Yagerhorn’s ghost as easily as he had disposed of the other two more material objects which had threatened to bring him to an untimely grave.
There remained, too, Orlof’s letter; but, lacking a knife or scissors, he knew that it would be extremely difficult to get it from its hiding-place, and influenced partly by the unlikelihood of its being discovered there and partly by his belief in its immense potential value, he decided not to attempt its destruction.
Puzzle his wits as he would he could not even hazard a theory as to how the Count had met his death. It could not possibly have been a heart-attack, as had he been liable to such a seizure it would hav
e taken him while he was being flogged into insensibility. It could not have been suffocation either, since he distinctly recalled giving Zaria implicit instructions to ease the Count’s gag if that became necessary; and he did not believe for an instant that Zaria would have failed to carry out his orders. The flogging with a riding switch across the head and shoulders could not possibly have been the cause of his death, seeing that he had survived for the best part of three hours afterwards.
At length Roger gave up the riddle and his thoughts drifted to the strange fate which had carried him so far from home. He thought of his dear, wicked Georgina, and wondered if she had returned yet to her beloved Stillwaters or was somewhere in the distant Mediterranean, travelling with her father. He thought, too, of his sweet-faced mother with her circumscribed yet active existence, bounded by her charities and her Hampshire garden; and of his father, that rampaging, forthright, jolly sea-dog of an Admiral. His small but stately home in Lymington was in fact several hundred miles away, but in mental distance it seemed a million.
Roger began to feel very tired, but he knew that he dared not sleep. As long as he kept awake the rats would keep their distance, but if he once allowed himself to drop off, the foul creatures would sneak up and begin to nibble at his extremities.
Now and again he stood up and, for a little, paced the narrow cell to keep himself awake and warm; yet, despite these periods of exercise, towards morning the deathly chill of the place began to make him shiver.
Time stood still. It was a place of eternal night where months might pass without its occupant ever being aware that the sun he once had known had passed across the sky. The stomach of the prisoner was his only clock, and but for the lack of craving in his, Roger would have thought that several days had passed, before at last, he caught faint footfalls coming down the corridor.
The Shadow of Tyburn Tree Page 39