by Gerald Kersh
‘The Englishman is gone. And the valet?’ Klaes asked.
Cornelys said: ‘I think the valet won’t be needing the dapple-grey tonight.’ I almost felt the darkness contract and expand as he winked unseen.
‘Good,’ said Klaes. ‘To horse and away, hell for leather! Be off!’
But now Cornelys became insolent and, quoting some clownish proverb, ‘Patience, fleas, the night is long!’ he then said: ‘Those two sots have left the best part of half a bowl of punch, eh?’
‘Hurry,’ said Klaes.
But Cornelys insisted: ‘A stirrup-cup first, and then we’re off!’ – and splashed back to the house.
Crouching in the hay with my hands on my pistols, I was almost sorry then for the man Klaes, squatting on his truss of straw; for I perceived the weary misery of him when (believing himself to be alone in the dark) he moaned ‘… Oh Lord, Lord, Lord! … Is it for me to choose Your instruments? … I can no more, I have done my best….’ Wow, but that man was tired!
Then the oaf Cornelys came back chuckling, saying: ‘May the Lord forgive all the sins of the man who mixed that punch! It goes down well on a night like this. I finished it to keep out the damp….’
So Cornelys had drunk the rest of my punch, then! Good.
‘Away with you!’ cried Klaes. The blacksmith swung himself into Cocotte’s saddle, said au revoir, and was off.
I kept still in the hay, working over in my mind the tremendous significance of the message which Klaes had conveyed to Cornelys, and which Cornelys was to carry to Wellington. The weight of this message crushed the breath out of me, because the fate of an Empire depended upon it! I knew that this messenger Cornelys must, at all costs, be intercepted and his message diverted. But, I ask you – how? Violence is not in my line – I live or die by my wits. He was a powerful and resolute man, mounted on a strong, fresh horse. I was a shrimp of a man with nothing to put between my thighs but an exhausted scrub. True, I had a pair of pistols in my pockets; so, without doubt, had Cornelys.
But the odds, as I counted them, were evened by the laudanum in the punch Cornelys had drunk. He had told Klaes that he had drunk half a bowl of the mixture; so he had (the shallower half of the bowl, which was, therefore, only a third of the total volume); still, that should be sufficient, in a literal sense, to tip the balance – Cornelys’s equilibrium – in my favour.
In a flash, you realise, I had seen my duty. I did not like Napoleon; indeed, in my time I had plotted against him. But in this moment I saw him not as the renegade Republican, not as the ingrate, not as the ambitious little deserter of Egypt and of Russia; I saw him as the old eagle hatched again. I saw in him something symbolic of the Spirit of the Man that goeth Upwards. In this extraordinarily indomitable little rogue returned from Elba to confront the gathered might of the Allies I saw – for give the comparison – something of myself. I recaptured a little of the old enthusiasm. Yes, old comrade, I saw again the red dawn of Egypt. I knew then that I must, by hook or by crook, warn Napoleon of the menace at his elbow.
Ah, if only I had had with me then you, or any one of half a dozen other stout fellows I could name! Then I should have let Cornelys carry his message to Collaert, while you carried to Napoleon the intelligence of that message well in advance. Thus forewarned, having allowed the English infantry to form, Napoleon would have fallen upon their left flank and carried the plateau of Mont St Jean!
But I was alone, and only one course was open to me: I must intercept Cornelys, before he reached Collaert, and cut him down. This, as a first move, was the wisest for me, situated as I was. I had something like a dog’s chance of overtaking Cornelys, and then, mounted on the mare Cocotte, making my way to the French lines. And this I resolved to do.
Hence, when the tired man Klaes dragged himself back to the inn, I mounted that weary horse of his, and, using my pen-knife as a spur, made after the blacksmith. That horse had heart. He drew a long breath, and hit the road.
And do you know what, old comrade-in-arms? Then it was as if I had shed the weight of a quarter of a century. I felt as I had felt on a certain dawn in the spring of 1795, when, seeing sunlight through the powder-smoke, I first realised that I was a grown man, and therefore too old to be afraid…. Then my heart, which had been flapping and fluttering somewhere below my belt, found its wings and soared, singing to high heaven; Fear of Death was a shadow in the valley far below and far behind me; and I laughed and cried, delighting in my new-found freedom from that fear….
So I felt, then, when I nudged and goaded Klaes’s weary horse back into the mud and the darkness. Ah, but that was an enchanted moment – how good it was to feel that rain, and to see so far away that struggling, watery moonlight!
The horse seemed to catch my exhilaration. He was winded, so that I might have been sitting astride Cornelys’s own heaving, wheezing bellows; but still he galloped. All the same, exaltation apart, my reason had not deserted me. The blacksmith was mounted on Cocotte, who was strong and fresh, and had the start of my poor nag. But I had not forgotten that, within the hour, Cornelys should be most insecure in that little hunting saddle, if he were seated at all. By the time I overtook him, he must in any case be too befuddled to aim a pistol; and then I should have him.
I planned to put a ball in his thick head, take his mount, and ride belly-to-earth north-east to the first French outpost where I would pass the word: The so-called Lacoste, the Emperor’s guide, is an enemy agent – beware the sunken road between Ohain and Braine le Leud, between the French front and the plateau of Mont St Jean!
… So, I rode, only God knows how, for that road was rutted inches deep under a layer of red clay whipped by the rain and mashed by a million wheels and hoofs into a most dangerous mire. And then, that rain! The Deluge was come again. I believe that summer of 1815 was the wettest summer in the history of the world. It was as if Fate, in a sporting mood, seeing two tremendous adversaries coming to hand-grips had said: ‘You shall wrestle in the Indian style, my children – in a pit of slippery mud, just to make the game a little more difficult….’
A storm broke, and at every clap of thunder the whole black sky splintered like a window struck by a bullet – starred and cracked in ten thousand directions letting in flashes of dazzling light, so that I was stunned and bewildered. Dr Mesmer (he, also, dressed all in black) used to daze his subjects with little mirrors revolving before their eyes in order to put them to sleep. So the elements under the black cloak of the night seemed resolved to mesmerise me.
But my brave horse carried me on until, at a bend in the road, he stumbled and shuddered; went down on his knees, and rolled over on his side. I sprang clear just in time … tugged at the reins, shouting encouraging words; then let go his head. He was dead. He had burst his heart.
I stood by my dead horse, sick with hopelessness. But then the lightning flashed again, and I saw, not a hundred paces in front of me, the big grey mare Cocotte, walking very slowly, riderless, in the rain. I made my way to her, and you may rest assured that I had my hands on my pistols under my cloak. When I reached her, I saw in the light of another flash why she was walking slowly: the blacksmith Cornelys had tumbled out of the saddle, his left foot had caught in the stirrup, and she was dragging his enormous bulk in the clinging mud.
Hope flamed high again. I was sure then that Fate was on my side. Cornelys was not dead, only drugged and stunned. In a little while he would recover and continue on his errand as best he could. But first he would have to find another horse; he would be seriously delayed. Before he could be well on the road again to carry his message to Collaert at Braine le Comte I should be half-way to Genappe, where Napoleon was!
I disengaged his boot from the stirrup. His ankle was broken. So much the better! I sprang into the little hunting saddle on the back of the grey mare, turned her head, cried: Hue! – Hue! – Hue, Cocotte! and galloped back down the road over which I had travelled … away, away, past that accursed inn, through Fontaine l’Evêque, and so in the direction
of our French outposts … past Drapceau, through St Estelle-sur-Ruth; and, as I rode, I dreamed fine dreams and even – could I have mixed that punch too strong even for my own head? – made up little songs which I sang inside myself to Cocotte’s hoof-beats …
Rataplan, rataplan,
Napoléon
Éveille, éveille,
Tessier
Au tron, au tron,
Napoléon …
And then, not far from Trois Ruisseaux – you know my luck – the rhythm halted and changed. The mare Cocotte had gone lame, and was limping on her off hindleg.
I assumed that she had picked up a flint, or, perhaps, a bit of a broken spike, from those deplorable roads. So, saying: ‘Patience, Cocotte, my darling; we will put you right in no time at all, and you shall yet help Tessier to save France’ – I dismounted, took out my pocket-knife, and, lifting up the mare’s lame hoof, explored it with my finger-tips, since there was no light to see by. I could feel nothing amiss. Then I remembered how Cocotte had started and kicked while Cornelys the blacksmith, driving home a nail, was making eyes at the inn-keeper’s wife, and my heart sank. He had lamed her through his inattention, the accursed idiot! I realised then that I would have done better to let Cornelys go unpursued to find myself stuck in the mud with a lame mare, while I took my chance in the direction of the French lines…. But I ask you, how was I to have foreseen this?
Full of bitterness, I let go Cocotte’s hoof.
She shook her leg, and kicked me in the face.
I do not know, my friend, how long I lay unconscious in the ditch. I know that when I came to myself I was lying on my back, blinking at a dirty sky from which the rain was no longer falling, and that for the moment I thought that I was again in Spain, when the English stormed the battery and an infantryman knocked me down with the butt of his musket. I was in the most atrocious pain, and my throat was full of blood. It was this very blood, this very pain, that brought me back to consciousness; for the blood made me cough, and the cough shook my head, and my lower jaw was badly broken. Several of my teeth were embedded in my tongue, which was half bitten through.
I have, in my time, been wounded in almost every conceivable way. I have survived grape-shot in my ribs, a musket-ball in the stomach, a pistol-ball in the shoulder and, most miraculous of all, a biscaïen ball in the hip (I say nothing of the bayonet-thrust, or a sabre-cut, here and there) and I have had most of the fluxes, dysenteries and agues that our frail flesh is heir to; together with a rheumatic fever which, I believed, was the ultima Thule of punishment. But the gathered might of all my enemies, my friend, never inflicted upon me one-half of the anguish I suffered under the hoof of that white-eyed devil of a dapple-grey mare! The pain of the broken bones in my face was terrible. The agony of my bitten tongue was worse. But worst of all was the pain of a shattered nerve on the left-hand side of my face. It was as if some fiend had delicately pushed a wire into my left nostril, up through some fine passage at the back of the eyeball, and out at the ear – and then applied a powerful current of electricity. My face twitched and jerked like Galvani’s frog….
However, never mind that. I took off my cravat and tied up my jaws, and then staggered away in search of my horse. Puzzle: find her! She had bolted, God knows where, sore foot and all. Blind with misery and the night, I walked, I cannot tell you how far or for how long, until at last I saw the lights of a wayside inn.
With my muddy, bloody, smashed face, and my sodden black cloak, I must have looked like the Angel of Death himself, for the inn-keeper fell back a pace when he saw me. I tried to speak, but I could not, so I pushed past him, seated myself, put down a gold napoleon and, taking out tablet and pencil, wrote the word: Cognac.
He shook his head: he could not read. Then, as best I could, I drew the outline of a bottle and a glass. I am no draughtsman, but he understood, and brought me eau-de-vie and a glass. Heavens above, but the raw spirit stung like a swarm of bees! Yet it stung me alert. I beckoned the man to my side, and drew the outline of something like a horse, saddled; and put down on the table a handful of Morkens’s gold.
He said: ‘Monsieur wants a horse? Monsieur is in luck, then. I have one only, a beautiful grey mare. She belonged to a Belgian colonel of cavalry. I could not part with her for less than a hundred louis d’or – but, seeing it’s you, I’ll throw in the saddle, a beautiful light saddle, the property of Milord Wellington himself. He brought it over from England when he hunted the fox in a blue coat to pass the time away, at the time of the Spanish blockades. The mare has been eating her head off in my stable for the past six months – God strike me dead if I lie! Well?’
I counted the rascal out his hundred gold pieces, and followed him to the stable.
‘I had her shoed only this morning,’ said he, holding high his lantern.
And what did I see? You have guessed. Cocotte, hook-nosed and supercilious as a camel, rolling her eyes at me in the dim yellow light.
There was nothing to be gained by argument: there was no time to lose, and I was growing weaker and weaker. Cursing the inn-keeper in my heart, I mounted, thinking: Filthy Cocotte! If I get off your back between this and Genappe, it will be to fall dead into the road. And, curse you, if you cannot take me there on four legs, by God you must carry me on three!
So, I rode again, still mounted on Cocotte. The rain was falling again, and now every drop of cold water on my sore head was like a blow with a hammer. Somewhere between my eyes, something was revolving like one of those children’s rattles composed of a springy strip of wood and a cogged wheel….
Brother, when you were a boy at school you learned the nature of the ancient Roman catapult? It was a system of stiff, springy beams mounted on a ponderous base. With ropes and winches the ancient artillerymen dragged down the topmost end of the upright beam until it was bent almost to breaking point. To this beam was fastened a cup. In this cup they played a great net bag filled with loose stones to the weight of about sixty pounds. The catapulter pulled a trigger. The agonised, bent beam snapped upright, struck the crossbeam with a horrible jolt, thus sending the bag of stones whirling away in a giddy parabola…. You remember? Believe me, I remembered! My spine was the strained upright, my shoulders were the crossbeam; my skull was the cup, my brains were the rattling stones; and every step Cocotte took pulled a trigger…. I was too wretched even to cry out, because when I cried my tongue vibrated, and I could not bear that.
Yet, agonised as I was, I continued to think, asking myself: Dumb, wounded beast that I am, how shall I pass the sentries? How shall I deliver my message to the Emperor?
I answered myself: How, but in writing? … I must write a series of messages on little pieces of paper; keep these messages in separate pockets of my waistcoat, and present them in their proper order.
I stopped again at a wretched farmhouse. Staying in the saddle – I should not have had the strength to remount – by the light of a lantern I wrote my notes, and put them into their respective pockets. After that, I bullied Cocotte back to the road, and so we struggled, splashing, on our way.
What was the name of that Greek who was doomed to push a great boulder up a steep hill for ever and for ever? I think his name was Sisyphus. I drink, comrade-in-arms, to Sisyphus; I think I know something of what he went through. It seemed to me – pain of bitten tongue and broken jaw apart – that I was condemned to ride eternally, through blinding rain and endless night, upon a lame mare, on a mission of honour, slipping back two paces for every pace that I covered. Soon I felt Cocotte weakening under me. Ah well, poor beast, she too had her troubles!
I remembered that my great cloak, sodden with the rain, must weigh heavy, so I unclasped it at the throat and let it fall behind me…. Everything was spinning, and spitting sparks. There were fireworks in my head, I tell you! Still, I remembered that it is the odd, superfluous pound of weight that tries you at the last mile … and I was carrying in my pockets something like thirty thousand livres in gold, and forty thousand in good paper. My fri
end, it was not entirely delirium that inspired me to put my hands in my pockets and scatter to the mud and the rain more gold than I had ever touched in my life. The tail-pockets of my coat were heavy with the stuff, after I had emptied the side and breast-pockets; these same coat-tails were slapping heavily against Cocotte’s belly. My mind was set now on my objective. I unbuttoned my coat, and let that fall, too, and felt lighter for the loss of it. Gold and banknotes were in that coat, and my pistols too…. I tore off my watch and chain, which also I tossed into the ditch. I would have kicked off my boots, only I dared not take my feet from the stirrups.
Now, then, I was riding in my shirt, trousers, and waistcoat; there was no more to jettison. All the time, notwithstanding, Cocotte went slower and slower.
At last – it was dawn, I think – to my infinite relief, I heard a hoarse voice cry: ‘Qui va là?’
I could not speak, of course, so I pulled out my first written message. It said:
I have intelligence of the utmost importance to the Emperor. Conduct me to him immediately.
Tessier,
Colonel, Artillery.
A mounted trooper took the paper, and handed it to another man. Seen through the curtain of the road, through my tired eyes, he looked like one of those terra-cotta soldiers on terra-cotta horses that we used to play with when we were children; he was so plastered with mud. But he spoke very civilly in the French of Paris, saying: ‘What is your message, Colonel Tessier?’
I felt myself fainting, fading away. I had done all that I could do. I tapped my right-hand waistcoat pocket. It seems, then, that I slid out of the saddle; because I know that I had a sensation of falling, as it were, down the side of a mountain, and uppermost in my mind was a dread of what I should feel when my cracked face hit the road.
The terra-cotta man caught me. I heard him cry: ‘Hold up there, sir!’
I became senseless, as much from horror as from pain and exhaustion.