The Commandant had seemed a decent old fellow; but the officer in charge of the contingent of prisoners might prove a very different type. Roger’s vivid imagination conjured up visions of Cossacks using their knouts to drive flagging stragglers on to the last gasp until they dropped. The officers might escape such brutal treatment, but his ill-mended broken ankle had left him lame and still pained him if he put his full weight on it. He greatly doubted if he could manage to walk more than three miles without collapsing. And what then? The Russians had no cause to love the French, and a Frenchman abandoned here and there along the road, to die, would not cause them the loss of one wink of sleep.
He knew, too, the sort of country they would have to march through; for he had traversed it once in the opposite derection; not actually through Tilsit, but from St. Petersburg by way of Paskov, Dvinsk, Vilna, Grodno, Warsaw and Breslau right down to Dresden—eight hundred miles of plains as flat as an ocean until one reached the Saxon capital. He had then been travelling day and night at the utmost speed that a private coach and relays of the best horses available could carry him; and, after a further five hundred miles to Paris, he had arrived half-dead from exhaustion. But at least he had been sheltered from the weather by the coach, and able to keep himself warm under a pile of furs; whereas plodding along those interminable roads, he and his companions would be exposed to icy winds and driving blizzards.
At last dusk fell; but still he waited in vain for the Commandant either to return or send for him. As usual, at eight o’clock, an N.C.O. came to lock them in for the night. In desperation, Roger asked to be taken to the Commandant’s office, but the man told him that the Commandant always slept put at his own datcha a mile or more away, so would not be available until the next morning.
During the years, Roger had been in many tight corners and had spent many anxious nights, but he could not recall one in which he had not at least managed to doze for an hour or two. Strive as he might to make his mind a blank, he could not sleep a wink. To fall asleep from gradually creeping cold was said to be one of the easiest deaths, and it was not fear of that which kept him tossing and turning. It was intense resentment at the injustice of his having escaped such a fate on the field of Eylau, and the still worse one of being shot at Znamensk, only now, when all had seemed set fair for him, to be condemned by his lameness as one of the many who must inevitably fall by the wayside on the terrible march to the north.
When morning came, the bugle call roused the prisoners at the usual hour. Having freshened themselves up as well as they could and been given a hot meal, they got their things together expecting shortly to be ordered out to the parade ground; but they were kept uneasily hanging about until past ten o’clock.
At length the order came, and they lined up outside, to answer the daily roll call. The Commandant than appeared and walked straight towards Roger. More haggard than ever from his sleepless night, Roger took a pace forward and saluted, then held his breath, hope surging up in him that at this eleventh hour he was to be reprieved. Brushing up his fine moustache, the elderly officer said:
‘I thought there was a chance that by this morning General Bagration might have returned from his tour of inspection, so I did not go to his headquarters until half an hour ago. I am sorry to tell you that he is not yet back, and the principal officers of his staff went with him. So no one knows anything of this proposed exchange you told me about; and I have no alternative but to send you north with the others.’
With an effort Roger rallied himself from this final dashing of his hopes, to thank the Commandant for the trouble he had taken; then fell back in line with his companions.
Led and flanked by a mounted guard of Cossacks, the long column of prisoners left by the main gate of the cantonment, the seventy-odd officers leading. Marching erect and in step to demonstrate their good discipline, they were taken through the principal street of the city, watched by a curious crowd. As they approached the central square, they realised why their departure had been delayed until mid-morning. A cluster of officers in brilliant uniforms were sitting their horses there, to watch them pass. Evidently the General commanding in Bagration’s absence had decided to inspect them at that hour.
As the head of the column came level with the group of mounted officers, a command rang out, ‘Eyes right.’ Roger automatically obeyed the order. Suddenly his lacklustre glance became alive with astonishment. Two yards in front of the main group, sitting a fine bay horse, was a man who looked to be about thirty, wearing a plain uniform with a single star on his chest. It was the Czar Alexander.
For a moment Roger was completely nonplussed. He had been presented to the Czar in 1801. But that was six years ago. Could a monarch be expected to remember one of the many hundred people whom he had received at his Court? Was it even possible to get to and speak to him without being killed by one of the Cossacks riding alongside the column? But death lay waiting on the frozen road to the north.
As one of the senior prisoners, Roger was in the leading rank of the march past. The eyes of both his companions and the Cossacks were turned away from him, as they rigidly carried out the salute. Thrusting aside the officer next to him, he dived under the neck of the nearest Cossack’s mount and hurled himself across the dozen yards that separated him from the Czar.
Aware that the Russian sovereigns were accustomed to a god-like veneration from their people, he seized the Czar’s boot with both hands and kissed its toe. Stooping to do so saved his life. The nearest Cossack had swerved his pony and stabbed downwards with his lance. Instead of driving right through Roger’s body, it only grazed the skin of his left shoulder. Before the Cossack could drag it free for another stroke, Roger yelled:
‘Imperial Majesty, hear me I beg! I was among those who cried “Alexander Pavlovich, live for ever” on the morning of March 12th, 1801. I was a friend of Count Pahlen and came to your Court with diplomatic credentials. Lame as I am, the march to the north is certain to bring about my death. I entreat you to have mercy on me.’
Raising his hand in a swift gesture, the Czar checked the Cossack, who was about to drive his lance through Roger’s back. Looking down at him, he said, ‘Your face is vaguely familiar to me, but not with that beard. Who are you?’
The question put Roger in a quandary he had had no time even to consider when he had been seized by the impulse to risk his life on the chance of saving it. After only a moment’s hesitation he replied, ‘May it please Your Imperial Majesty. I have enjoyed the confidence of both Monsieur de Talleyrand and the late Mr. Pitt. Be so gracious as to afford me a brief private audience, and I vow that you will find me capable of rendering you more valuable service, than could another battalion of Grenadiers.’
Alexander gave a chilly smile. ‘Then I’ll give you a chance to see if you can make good your boast.’ Turning in his saddle, he signed to one of his aides-de-camp and added, ‘Take this gentleman to the Palace. See to it that he is provided with the means to make himself presentable and given decent clothes, then guard him until you receive my further orders.’
The commotion caused by Roger’s having broken ranks had brought the column to only a momentary halt. As he now saw it marching on, pity for his recent companions was mingled with elation that his daring bid to save himself had succeeded. The fact that when he had last seen the Czar it had been as Mr. Roger Brook, the secretly-accredited plenipotentiary of Britain’s Prime Minister, and for some time past he had been a prisoner of the Russians as Colonel le Chevalier de Breuc, was going to require some far from easy explaining. But at least he no longer had to fear being left to freeze to death in the snow. With a considerably more buoyant limp, he accompanied the A.D.C., into whose charge he had been given, the short distance to the Palace.
There he enjoyed the luxury of a bath, a valet attended to the slight wound in his shoulder, deloused his hair and dressed it in accordance with the prevailing fashion; then he was given a shirt and cravat of good quality, stockings, a pair of buckled shoes and a su
it of blue cloth which was almost as good as new. Where these clothes came from he did not enquire, but as he was much of a height with the Czar, he thought they were probably some of the Sovereign’s cast-offs, as it was quite usual for royalties to travel with upwards of two hundred suits and, having been intimate with the lovely Pauline, now Princess Borghese, he knew her to have owned the best part of a thousand pairs of shoes.
Late in the afternoon, having fared ill for many weeks he did full justice to an excellent dinner in a private apartment, with the A.D.C. whose name was Count Anton Chernicheff, a handsome young man of no great brain, but pleasant manners. Over the meal they discussed the campaign and other matters of mutual interest. That night, although decidedly worried that in his desperate urge to gain the protection of the Czar he had impulsively promised services that he might not be able to perform, for the first time since he had left Warsaw he was able to relax and sleep in a comfortable bed. Before he dropped off, he thanked all his gods that he was not lying in straw on the hard floor of a barn or in the stinking hut of some wretched peasant, which must be the lot of his recent companions on their march into Russia.
But soon after dawn he woke and his mind became a prey to renewed anxieties. When he had been known to the Czar in St. Petersburg, it had been as an English gentleman. Normally it was against the principles of gentlemen to act as spies. Even if lack of money, or a fervent patriotism so strong as to override convention had induced him to become a secret agent, would it be considered plausible that he had, within a few years, established himself so convincingly with the French that he had been appointed one of Napoleon’s aides-de-camp, and so achieved a position in which he would be entrusted with many of the Emperor’s secret intentions?
Eventually he decided that his best hope lay in telling the truth and shaming the devil—or at least keeping near enough to the truth to make his story credible. But a further eighteen hours elapsed before he was called on to face this interview on which his future, and possibly his life, depended.
He had spent a pleasant day beside a roaring porcelain stove, alternately chatting with Chernicheff and browsing through some Russian and German news-sheets that the A.D.C. had brought him; then, at ten o’clock, gone to bed. Two hours later, Chernicheff roused him, to say that his Imperial master was at that moment supping and, when he had finished, required Roger to present himself.
Recalling that it was a curious custom of the Russians frequently to transact business in the middle of the night, Roger hastily dressed, then accompanied the A.D.C. through a series of passages to a small, empty library. They waited there for some twenty minutes, then the Czar walked in.
Alexander was a good-looking man, with fairish, curly hair, side-whiskers, a straight nose and well-modelled mouth. He was again wearing a plain uniform, but a four-inch-deep gold embroidered collar came at the sides right up to his ears and beneath it, rather like a bandage, a thick silk scarf supported his chin.
Apart from Napoleon, Alexander possessed a more interesting and original character than any other monarch of his day. He had been brought up at the liberal Court of his grandmother, the great Catherine, and as a tutor she had given him a Swiss named Laharpe. From him Alexander had imbibed the fundamental principle of the French Revolution—that all men had rights—and, had not the united opposition of his nobles been too strong for him to overcome, he would, on ascending the throne, have freed from bondage the millions of serfs who constituted the greater part of his subjects.
Catherine had so hated and despised her son Paul that she had decided to make the youthful Alexander her heir; but had died before signing the new will she had had drawn up. She had, however, secured for him as a wife, the charming Princess Maria Luisa of Baden, and the young couple had fallen in love at first sight, with the result that their Court was the most respectable in Europe.
Paul, previously an eccentric who, during his mother’s reign, took pleasure only in drilling and harshly disciplining a brigade of troops allotted to him to keep him out of mischief, after coming to the throne had developed increasing signs of madness. Seized with uncontrollable rages, without the least justification he exiled scores of his nobles to Siberia; and, becoming obsessed with the idea that his assassination was being plotted, he was considering doing away with his principal Ministers and even his wife and son, although both the latter were completely loyal to him. But his Ministers were not; and their fears for themselves had led to his murder.
Considering those eight years of Paul’s reign, during which his heir had been under constant apprehension that he might be thrown into a dungeon from which he would never emerge, it was remarkable that Alexander should not at length have mounted the throne a suspicious and vengeful tyrant. On the contrary, he had remained a man with high ideals and while, for some time, he had retained his father’s Ministers, he had gathered about him a group of friends: Victor Kochubey, Nicolai Novasiltsov, Paul Strogonov and Adam Czartoryski, who were eager to introduce sweeping reforms for the betterment of the lot of the Russian people. Yet, despite his leanings towards democracy, Alexander continued to think of himself as an autocrat whose opinion was final and not to be contested.
With a brief nod, he acknowledged the deep bows made by Chernicheff and Roger, then dismissed the A.D.C. Sitting down behind a beautiful Louis Quinze desk, he studied Roger for a full minute before speaking.
Roger stood at attention. He thought it probable that anyone being so regarded by an autocratic sovereign would be expected to have his eyes cast down. But he had always found that boldness paid; so he kept his eyes fixed on those of the Czar, while assuming an expression which he hoped would be taken for fascinated admiration.
At length, Alexander said stonily, ‘I have had particulars regarding you looked into. It appears that you are a Colonel, a Commander of the Légion d’Honneur, and a member of the Emperor Napoleon’s personal staff. Now that you have shaved off your beard, I recognise you without doubt as an Englishman who was in St. Petersburg in the spring of 1801, and involved in my father’s death. Such a contrast in personalities is beyond all reason. Explain it if you can.’
Roger knew that Alexander had had no hand in his father’s assassination, had wept when he had been told of it and, only reluctantly, been dissuaded from having the assassins executed; so the first fence he had to clear was having been one of them.
‘Sire,’ he said earnestly. ‘You will recall that Your Imperial Majesty’s father had, out of hatred for your illustrious grandmother, reversed all her policies. Whereas she had been about to join the Powers of the First Coalition to assist in destroying the murderous gang of terrorists who were then all-powerful in France, the Czar Paul had entered into a pact with them. This was so serious a menace to British interests that I was sent by Prime Minister Pitt to encourage the Czar’s Ministers, and others who feared to be deprived of their positions and fortunes, to take action against him. Not, I swear, to assassinate him, but to force him to abdicate or, at least, make you Regent—as we, in England, had made our Prince of Wales, when our own King, George III, became afflicted with madness. It is true that I was among the half hundred other conspirators who met at Count Pahlen’s mansion on that fateful night; that I later entered the Palace with General Bennigsen and the Zuboff brothers; but neither the General nor I had any hand in your father’s murder. It took place in complete darkness, unknown to us, after Your Imperial Majesty’s father had refused to sign the deed of abdication.’
Alexander nodded. ‘That I accept, as I did in the case of General Bennigsen. But it does not explain why you, accredited only a few years ago as the secret emissary of Britain’s Prime Minister, should now emerge as a member of the Emperor Napoleon’s staff.’
With a shrug, Roger spread out his hands and replied, ‘May it please Your Imperial Majesty, I have been the plaything of unusual circumstances. I am, in fact, an Englishman, the son of Admiral Sir Christopher Brook, but my mother’s sister had married a gentleman of Strasbourg and they had a so
n of about my age. In my teens I became betwitched by the new ideals of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity”, which had at that time brought about the first, liberal, revolution in France. I ran away from home to my aunt in Strasbourg and, with her family, learned to speak fluent French. I longed to be in Paris and do what little I could to help bring about the original objects of the revolution. It so happened that my cousin was killed in an accident, and by then Britain was at war with France; so I went to the capital as a Frenchman, changed my name to Breuc and assumed his identity.’
As Roger paused, the Czar nodded. ‘This is most interesting. Continue.’
Roger bowed. ‘I lived there through the Terror, and realised that the revolution had become a murderous anarchy. Disillusioned and disgusted by what I had seen, I returned to England. My father sent me to the Prime Minister, so that I could give him an eyewitness account of what was happening in Paris. Mr. Pitt then proposed to me that I should return as his agent and keep him informed about events in France.’
The Czar’s brows knitted. Sitting back, he asked with severe disapproval, ‘Do you mean that you, a gentleman, agreed to become a spy?’
‘Sire,’ Roger shrugged. ‘I admit it. I was persuaded that it was the most valuable service I could render my country. And I am not ashamed of the part I have played during these past sixteen years. I had the good fortune to become acquainted with General Bonaparte when he was an unknown Artillery officer at the siege of Toulon. I have since executed many missions either in my real identity as Roger Brook, or as the ci-devant Chevalier de Breuc, which have enabled Britain to thwart Napoleon’s designs. Not least the part I played in helping to bring about your succession, which resulted in Russia breaking with France and becoming the ally of England. That from time to time I must betray the Emperor, who counts me his friend and has through the years bestowed rank and honour upon me, is often against my inclination, since in many ways I have a great admiration for him. But my duty to my country comes first, and I can only ask your Imperial Majesty’s understanding of the strange fate that brings me before you as a French prisoner who has in fact served Britain for many years as a secret agent.’
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