His divine Georgina in bed with him, bidding him nibble her ears, which she adored; himself angrily telling Pitt who, in 1799, had refused the peace terms offered by Bonaparte, to keep the money due to him and instead give it to the charity for soldiers and sailors wounded in the war; the evening when, on an island in the lagoon of Venice, he had singlehanded defended Napoleon from a gang of conspirators come there to assassinate him; the Emperor’s sister, the beautiful Princess Pauline, standing naked in his Paris lodging while she implored him to risk her brother’s wrath by demanding her hand in marriage; his horror and fury on that dark night in India when he had come upon Clarissa dying of exposure as a result of a Satanic ceremony performed by the fiendish Malderini; the sunshine and flowers of the Caribbean, which he had so loved while married to his second wife, Amanda, and had, for a while, been Governor of Martinique, Georgina again, happily playing with her son, Charles, and his own daughter, Susan, who shared the nursery of the little Earl. Then for a moment he was again a little boy himself, feeding a saucer of milk to a hedgehog in the garden of his home at Lymington. The pictures faded from his mind, and he slept.
He was awakened by being roughly shaken and gave a cry. A voice said something in a strange tongue. Roger had a flair for languages. He had learned to speak Russian from his first wife, that beautiful tiger-cat Natalia Andreovna, whom Catherine the Great had forced him into marrying; and, during the past two months, he had picked up a little Polish. This was neither, but seemed like a bastard form of German. He sensed that the man had said:
‘Here’s one who is still alive.’
Three other men crowded round him. Between them they dragged the dead mare off his leg, then hauled him to his feet and ran their hands over his limbs, evidently to find out if he was wounded. As they released him, his weight came on his injured foot. It gave under him and, with a gasp of pain, he fell across the horse.
All his rescuers were muffled up to the eyes in furs. One towered above the others and must have been at least six foot five. Stooping, he thrust a flask into Roger’s mouth and poured vodka down his throat. The fiery spirit made him choke, but his heart began to hammer wildly, restoring his circulation.
Straightening up, the giant spoke to the others in clear but heavily accented German, ‘His ankle is broken. But he’ll be all right. Get him to the wagon.’
Looking round, Roger realised that it had stopped snowing; but instead of the battlefield being dotted with the dark forms of fallen men and horses, it was now, as far as he could see in the dim light, an endless sheet of white. It was only as he was half carried, half dragged forward that mounds here and there showed the places where Frenchmen and Russians had breathed their last.
On the edge of the wood there stood a covered wagon. With callous indifference for his broken ankle, the men lifted and bundled him into it. Inside, it was pitch dark, but the sound of movement told him that he was not its only occupant. After a moment, a gruff voice said in French: ‘Welcome to our bive, camarade. You’re the third of us they’ve picked up. What’s your rank and regiment?’
Cautious from long experience of dangerous situations, Roger did not immediately reply. Then he decided that nothing was to be gained by concealing his identity and that revealing it might even secure him better treatment; so he answered:
‘Colonel de Breuc, aide-de-camp to the Emperor.’
‘Ventre du diable!’ exclaimed the other in an awed voice. ‘Not le brave Breuc?’
Roger managed a half-hearted laugh. ‘That’s what they call me. Who are you?’
‘Sergeant Jules Fournier, Sixth Battalion Imperial Guard.’
‘I’m glad to have an old soldier with me. Who is our companion?’
Another, younger voice came feebly out of the darkness, speaking French but with a German accent. ‘I’m Hans Hoffman, Colonel, a Private in the 2nd Nassau Regiment of Foot.’
In the next few minutes Roger learned that the Sergeant had a shattered knee-cap and the Private a bullet wound in the thigh. Both were in considerable pain, but thought themselves lucky to have been saved from freezing to death. Roger did, too, and greatly as he disliked the idea of having become a prisoner of war, felt that he had been fortunate to be picked up by Prussians rather than Russians.
A few minutes later a fourth body was bundled into the wagon. He turned out to be a French Corporal of Chasseurs. In one of Murat’s charges, he had had the big toe of his right foot shot away and been thrown from his horse. He, too, was in considerable pain, and had no sooner settled himself than he began to mutter an unending flow of curses on his ill-fortune. His name, they learned, was François Vitu and he came from Marseilles.
Two of the bear-like figures who had rescued them clambered into the back of the wagon, then it set off. The journey seemed interminable and every jolt of the unwieldy vehicle caused the wounded men to give groans of pain.
At last the pale light of dawn enabled them vaguely to see one another and, half an hour later, the wagon came to a halt. The four prisoners were unceremoniously pulled out of it and promptly collapsed in the snow.
Looking round they saw that they were in a clearing of the forest, at one end of which there reared up a small, grim-looking castle. From both sides of it there ran out tall, thatched barns and stables. Roger was a little surprised not to find himself in the usual type of prisoner-of-war camp, but he supposed that the castle had been taken over for that purpose.
Pulled and pushed, the wounded men were dragged not to the castle, but to one of the barns. In the centre of its earth floor there was a circular depression in which large, red-hot stones were glowing. At either end of the barn, cattle were stalled. Above one end there was a loft stacked with bales of hay.
At an order from the giant leader, one of his men threw an armful of branches on the glowing stones, and the new wood swiftly flared up. Grateful for the warmth it gave out, the four wounded men huddled round it.
Two women then appeared. One was a big, coarse-featured blonde, with huge, jutting breasts; the other a wrinkled harridan. With them they brought basins of water and a supply of coarse bandages. Between them they washed and bound up the wounds of Roger and his companions. The giant’s men then carried them one after the other up to the loft, broke open some bales of sweet-smelling hay, and laid them on couches of it.
Roger was greatly puzzled. During the terrible battle, many others of Napoleon’s troops must have been captured; but there were none here. And when, on entering the barn, the tall leader of their rescuers and his men had thrown open their voluminous furs, beneath them they wore no sort of uniform. Still wondering vaguely and with some apprehension about what the future held for him, he fell asleep.
He, and those with him, did not wake until late in the afternoon. They were aroused by the big man and the fair woman with the huge breasts coming up the ladder to the loft.
The man no longer wore furs, and was dressed in a kaftan. He was broad-shouldered as well as tall. His head was crowned by an unruly mop of flaxen hair, and he had a smooth, aggressive chin. Looking down on them, he gave a laugh, slapped the woman on the backside and said in his heavy German:
‘I am Baron Herman von Znamensk, and this is my wife Freda. She will look to your wounds, so that in time you will be able men again. That may take a few weeks; but no matter. By then either your army will be deep in the heart of Russia, or the Czar will have driven it back in confusion. Either way, it will be too distant for there to be any chance of your being rescued by one of its columns.’
For a moment he paused, then, his steel-blue eyes flashing hatred, he snarled, ‘You French swine and your self-styled Emperor have torn my country apart. Without cause or justification you have descended like a swarm of locusts to devour our means of livelihood. Every head of cattle, every quintal of wheat has been stolen by you from my outlying farms. But the four of you shall pay me for that. Henceforth you are my serfs, and shall labour for the rest of your lives, under the whip of my overseer, making good the d
amage that your upstart Emperor has done me and mine.’
3
An Appalling Future
It was a sentence too terrible to contemplate. To have become a prisoner of war, however unfortunate, was one thing; to have become the chattel of this blond giant for an indefinite period quite another.
For a moment Roger remained silent. To show angry resentment would, he knew, prove futile; so, in a quiet voice he began:
‘Herr Baron, I appreciate your feelings at the losses you have suffered during this campaign; but there is a better way to recoup them than by detaining us here to labour on your land. I am an officer, and …’
‘You were,’ sneered the woman. ‘But now you are no better than any other man and, when your ankle is mended, you shall plough and hoe for us.’
‘Gnädige Frau.’ Roger forced a smile. ‘I am not only an officer. I am an aide-de-camp, and the personal friend of the Emperor. I pray you, send word to him that I am here. I have no doubt at all that he will ransom me, and the three men you have taken prisoner with me, for a much greater sum than you could make from ten years of our labour.’
The Baron gave a harsh laugh. ‘Send a message to your bloody-minded, war-mongering Emperor? And what then? A squadron of Hussars would arrive here overnight, rape the women, drive off the cattle, hang me and burn the castle to the ground. Is it likely? No, my fine cock sparrow, you are staying here and when your ankle is mended we’ll measure out the amount of turnip soup you are given each night in proportion to the sweat you have exuded during the day.’
Obviously for the moment there was no more to be said. While the Baron looked on, Freda of the wobbling breasts redressed their wounds. As she finished with the last of them, one of the Baron’s men came up the ladder with a big basin of the vegetable soup. When he had ladled it out into tin pannikins, all four of the prisoners ate of it ravenously despite its indifferent flavour.
Looking on at them, the Baron smacked his man cheerfully on the back and said with a smile, ‘This is Kutzie, my overseer. You will obey him as you would myself, or it will be the worse for you.’
Kutzie was a small, thickset man. He had an oafish grin which displayed a gap in his front teeth where two of them had been knocked out in a brawl. In his belt he carried a knout with a long leather thong. Drawing it, he playfully flicked each of the prisoners in turn. Roger felt the sting of the lash on his calf and could hardly suppress a cry. The Sergeant took it stoically. Young Hans Hoffman let out a groan, Corporal Vitu responded with a spate of curses.
The Baron and Baroness laughed heartily; then, accompanied by Kutzie, they descended the ladder and made their way back to the castle.
German was Hoffman’s native tongue and, during the campaign, Fournier and Vitu had picked up enough of it to have got the gist of what the Baron had said. When their captors had disappeared, the Sergeant rumbled, ‘May all the devils in hell take them. What are we to do, Colonel?’
‘Plan a way to escape,’ replied Roger grimly.
‘It’s all very well for Your High and Mightiness to say that,’ sneered Vitu. ‘Hopelessly lamed by our wounds as we are, how can we?’
‘Shut your trap!’ bellowed the Sergeant. ‘Or when we get back, I’ll crime you for disrespect to an officer.’
Temporarily Roger ignored the Corporal’s insolence and said, ‘We shall have to be patient; wait until our wounds are healed. Meanwhile our best policy will be to give these people no trouble and allow them to believe that we are resigned to our fate. It is getting dark again, and the more sleep we get, the sooner we’ll recover. We’ll talk things over in the morning.’
With no more said, but mostly gloomy thoughts, they wriggled down into the hay and made themselves as comfortable as they could for the night.
They all woke early. For the first time Roger took careful stock of his companions, and asked them about themselves.
Sergeant Fournier was a typical old soldier, with one ear shot away and a thick, drooping moustache. As a ragged sans culotte he had been with Kellermann at Valmay, that most extraordinary turning point in history, where the French, merely by standing fast and firing their cannon, had broken the Austrian attack, caused consternation in their aged commander and led him to abandon the attempt to invade France. Fournier had then served under Lannes in the glorious campaign in Italy in ’96, been transferred to the Army of the Rhine, distinguished himself in General Moreau’s great victory at Hohenlinden, later been promoted to the Consular—now the Imperial—Guard and had since been present at all Napoleon’s battles. He was forty-two, but his lined face made him look much older. He had been wounded seven times and been decorated with the Légion d’Honneur. He was a Revolutionary of the old school, yet regarded the Emperor as his God, and his own Commander of the Imperial Guard, young Marshal Bessieres, with admiring awe. Roger knew that in him at least he had one man he could rely on.
Hans Hoffman was a nonentity. He was one of the many thousands of teenagers from the Rhineland whom Napoleon had forced the minor sovereigns, who had perforce become his allies, to conscript and send to aid him in his campaign. Secretly Hoffman loathed the French and, given the opportunity, would have deserted; but lacked the courage.
Corporal Vitu was a very different type. The son of a lawyer who had been prominent in the early days of the Revolution, he was a well-educated man in his late twenties; married and with one son. Even so, he had not been able to escape the call-up by which, now ahead of schedule, the Emperor was compelled to recruit fresh levies to make good the losses of his armies. Vitu had a thin, bitter mouth and a long nose. He was fluent, knowledgeable and aggressive; and Roger soon sized him up as a born trouble-maker.
When they talked over their situation, Vitu said, ‘I’ll take a chance and attempt to escape when the time is ripe. But I’ll not return to the Army.’
‘You will,’ Fournier declared hotly. ‘It’s your duty, and I’ll see to it that you do it.’
‘Duty be damned,’ the Corporal declared. ‘If it were to defend France, I’d fight again, as you did at Jemappes and Wattignies. But here, in this outlandish place, why the hell should I?’
‘Them Prussians would be across the Rhine again if we hadn’t given them a licking at Jena; and the Russians with them. Only a fool would rather wait till he had to fight battles in his own country, instead of in the enemy’s.’
‘Nonsense! Neither of them would have attacked us. What had they to gain by going to war? Nothing! Not since ’99 has France been in the least danger. We have been the victims of Bonaparte’s crazy ambitions ever since. He’s dragged us from our homes to march, starve and fight all over Europe, solely for his own glory, and I’ve had enough of it.’
Roger knew that the Corporal was expressing the views of a great part of the rank and file of the Army; but, as a senior officer, he could not let such remarks pass, so he said, ‘That’s quite enough, Corporal. Prussia and Russia are both monarchies. They would impose a King on us again if they could. If we are to retain our liberties, they have got to be defeated.’
‘Liberties!’ sneered Vitu. ‘You must have been asleep for the past ten years, Colonel. The days of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” are as far behind us as the Dark Ages. Every law the Convention made has been annulled or altered, and the new Constitution of the Year XII, that Bonaparte gave us soon after he crowned himself in Notre Dame, has turned us into a race of slaves. As for Equality, if the men who won it for us in ’93 could see things as they are now, they’d turn in their graves. The people’s representative has made himself an Emperor and his brothers Kings. His hangers-on are grand dignitaries, Princes, Dukes and the like. They doll themselves up in gold braid, jewels and feathers, eat off the fat of the land, and get themselves fortunes by looting every country they invade; while we poor devils are paid only a few francs a day and driven to risk our lives so that they can further enrich themselves.’
‘You’ve got something there,’ the Sergeant acknowledged. ‘Nevertheless, I’m for the
Emperor body and soul. He knows what’s best for France, and never lets his men down.’
‘All the same,’ young Hoffman put in, ‘I don’t think it’s fair that he should force men from other countries to fight his battles. Where I come from we had no quarrel with anyone; neither had the Dutch, the Italians and the Bavarians, yet there are thousands of us here who have been marching and fighting for years, when we might have been working happily in our farms or vineyards, with a good wife and bringing up a family.’
‘Yes, that’s hard luck,’ Roger agreed. ‘But remember, France has liberated you from the old feudal system by which all but your nobility were virtually chattels of your hereditary Princes. France has paid dearly for that in the loss, for over fifteen years, of a great part of her young manpower. To make good these losses, the Emperor has no alternative but to draw upon his allies.’
‘That was fair enough in the old days,’ Vitu argued. ‘Then we needed every man we could get to fight in Italy and on the Moselle. But that is so no longer. What has the Rhineland or the Netherlands to gain by helping to conquer Poland? And what a campaign it’s been! Staggering about in the mud, our uniforms worn to tatters, losing our way in blizzards. It’s all very well for you, Colonel, and the rest of the gilded staff. You billet yourselves in the best houses in the towns, keep for yourselves the pick of every convoy of food and wine that comes up from the rear, attend splendid balls, then play chase me round the bed-posts with all the prettiest women. But meantime we have to act like fiends to the wretched peasants to get enough food to stop our bellies from rumbling and sleep in barns so cold that it is not unusual to find that by morning some of our comrades have frozen to death.’
Evil in a Mask Page 4