by Katy Moran
‘Wait,’ Crow said, even though he was supposed to be destroying her reputation so that she could never marry Volkonsky: he hoped he would never have been the sort of father to push a daughter into an unwanted marriage, but he’d never know now. ‘Your drawing mistress’s brother might be a musician in the court of the Shah of Persia for all anyone cares,’ he said, ‘but that doesn’t make him a suitable husband for you.’
She laughed, entirely unexpectedly. ‘Oh, you’re just the same as all the rest. Of all people, I thought you might be different, Lord Lamorna, considering you’re so spectacularly badly behaved.’ She looked up with a guilty flash of conscience. ‘According to my mama, of course. I’m sure I’ve never seen you conduct yourself with anything other than the strictest propriety and good manners. I don’t know why my mama is so furious with me for walking with you across the ballroom at the Anichkov Palace. I’m sure I don’t give two straws if the empress herself did remark on it.’
She had almost made him smile. ‘I’m glad to hear it. But what’s so different about this? You’re not the first young woman to fall in love with someone unsuited to her station in life, and you won’t be the last.’
‘That’s it,’ Jane said, impatient, screwing the handkerchief up in one hand. ‘That’s what none of you understand. I don’t want to be married. Not to anyone. I just want to live in Venice with Miss Paolozzi as my – my companion. All we want is to play music all day, and to sketch, and visit churches; we each have a small independence and would want for nothing more, I can assure you – neither of us dice, or have a taste for extravagant gowns, and we both hate parties. Her brother will escort us there on his way to Madrid. He arrives in Petersburg tomorrow, and what could be more exceptional than his taking us to Venice?’
‘Nothing,’ said Crow, ‘only that your parents have forbidden it, which makes the thing entirely ineligible, doesn’t it? Lord and Lady Cathcart won’t allow you to cry off and you’d better believe that Volkonsky can’t – I’m not going to insult your intelligence by pretending that there is anything other than a diplomatic motive behind his proposal, and the tsar will have his reasons.’
‘Unless I do something so dreadful,’ Jane said, ‘that everyone would have to let me release Prince Volkonsky from the engagement, because the tsar wouldn’t want him to marry me then, anyway. But look at me. You just think I’m the least likely person to get swept away in a scandal, and you’re right. Men simply don’t commit indiscretions with girls like me.’
‘Men don’t commit indiscretions with sensible girls,’ Crow said, getting up to leave her, ‘and I’m persuaded that you’re one of the most sensible girls of my acquaintance.’
‘Wait.’ Jane stood, too, facing him across an ottoman scattered with fashion plates and a grandiose, half-finished sketch of the palace of Tsarkoe Selo. ‘I don’t care what everyone says, and I’m most dreadfully sorry about your wife and your little girl, even though no one ever seems to mention it, as if the fact that they drowned is some kind of awful unspeakable secret, quite as though you’d actually ravished a debutante instead of everyone just pretending that you walking with me across a ballroom was as bad as you, you – kissing me behind a fountain, or something. You’re a kind man, Lord Lamorna, and you probably think I don’t notice but I can tell you’re still extraordinarily drunk, or you wouldn’t have listened to me for so long. Surely you don’t want me to be married to Prince Volkonsky? Can’t we be just mildly indiscreet again – you and I – at another ball or something?’
‘Miss Cathcart, trust me, you would not wish that to happen.’ So there was steel within this quivering mass of weeping social disaster, after all. Crow had to credit her courage, even if on some deep-buried level he was appalled that she had it within her to suggest such a thing. He left Jane by the fireplace before the girl bore witness to the devastation she’d unwittingly rendered him incapable of hiding, with her bald, brutal honesty.
*
A short while later, Crow leaned back in his seat at the Cathcarts’ table. Thanks to four granules of opium taken with a glass of champagne before leading Lady Cathcart in to dine, he was watching the candle-flames pulsate and change colour – green one moment, cerulean blue the next: reality was best endured in a state of semi-dreaming.
‘Are you quite well, Lord Lamorna?’ Lady Cathcart said, repressively watching the footman spoon beef olives on to her plate beside a gelatinous slice of creamed spinach tart. ‘I’m sure you haven’t eaten a single mouthful.’
‘Don’t fuss the boy, Elizabeth,’ Cathcart said with false joviality. Crow knew quite well that he still must face complete excoriation for walking across a ballroom with not only Jane, but his own French great-aunt, not that he cared about any of it. Surely on one level it was quite impressive to have attained the sort of reputation that would ruin a girl just because you’d spoken to her about oil paintings?
‘Doubtless he’s wondering what Papa has to say to him,’ George said, slipping a forkful of sliced veal between his pale pink lips. ‘I know I should be quaking in my boots.’
‘That,’ Crow said, ‘is because you’re a coward and an idiot, George, and you always have been.’ He set down his glass, signalling to the footman to fill it again. Across the table, Jane sat wide-eyed and silent, fork halfway to her mouth.
‘It’s so wonderful how the cherry blossom is out at last,’ Lady Cathcart said, ‘it’s been such a lingering winter.’
‘How dare you,’ George said, setting down his fork. ‘If you were not so appallingly drunk, I’d call you out for that.’
Crow laughed.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, boy,’ Lord Cathcart said. ‘You can’t call Lamorna out, or anyone else. Jack, in the absence of anyone else who might have the slightest chance of being listened to by you, I really must call you to order. I simply won’t have this sort of behaviour.’
Crow just smiled at him, letting the half-full glass swing from between his fingertips, claret splashing wildly.
‘It’s the outside of enough,’ George said. ‘Look at the state of him. Is there nothing he can’t get away with? Wellington’s golden boy – I ask you.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Crow replied – unwisely. ‘Do you object to me talking to an old woman at a ball, George? Almost the last of my family. Surely you don’t begrudge a sentimental soldier such a thing?’
‘Thérèse de la Saint-Maure is French,’ George said. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, we’re at war with France. Although perhaps a French alliance suits your much-rumoured purposes in Cornwall, Lamorna?’
‘Oh for goodness’ sake, be quiet, George,’ Lord Cathcart said. ‘Jack, you’ve had far too much to drink. Have a care for my wife and daughter, at least.’
Crow just smiled at him again and, lifting the glass, tipped the last of his claret on to his untouched plate of food, and the starched white tablecloth, and he watched the wine spread like blood.
36
On the following morning, Crow left the embassy when only the servants were up, after breakfasting alone on cold beef, ale and coffee with a sickening headache that sent his stomach into spasms. Leaving behind the maritime chaos and architectural splendour of the English Embankment, he walked alone to the Assignation Bank. A rotting stink of primordial mud rose from the Griboyedev Canal as he crossed the bridge, and a north-eastern wind chilled him even through his greatcoat. Reaching the bank, a vast, semi-circular neoclassical riot of elegant windows and Doric columns, he went up the front steps at a run, walking straight to the nearest available desk, letting the letter from Coutts fall on to polished walnut.
‘Four hundred in silver and notes.’
Bowing, the clerk disappeared. He was gone so long that Crow had to suppress rising annoyance. Reaching for his tinderbox, he struck the flint and lit a cigarillo, but even the throat-raking smoke was little comfort.
‘My lord?’ The clerk returned from the bowels of the bank, appearing through a heavy mahogany door behind the counter, and removed his specta
cles, polishing them with the tip of his handkerchief. ‘I’m extremely sorry, but that account is embargoed.’
‘What in the devil is that supposed to mean?’ Crow already knew, but even so he felt a bolt of fury, and the sheer, half-forgotten thrill of the hunt. So England was his enemy: navy, army, aide-de-camp to Wellington himself and now outlaw.
The clerk replaced his spectacles, putting up one hand to adjust his old-fashioned wig. ‘It means that I can’t give you four hundred roubles, my lord.’ He coughed. ‘Or anything at all.’
Without thinking about it, Crow shortened the distance between them, stepping closer to the desk, forcing his features into an expression of polite enquiry, and speaking so quietly that the clerk was forced to lean forwards to listen. ‘By whose order?’ Unable to afford a moment’s hesitation, Crow was already holding his unsheathed hunting knife to the clerk’s quivering throat, and was reminded inexplicably of the time he’d found a fledgling starling beside a dusty hedgerow one summer at Nansmornow, and held quivering, terrified life in the palm of his hand. To an outside observer, he knew it would look as though he and the clerk were in head-to-head combat over a ream of paper – not unusual, even within the hallowed halls of the Assignation.
‘I cannot say who gave the order, my lord, all I can say is that the account is embargoed until such time as we—’ A thick, dark drop of blood landed on the polished surface of the desk. ‘The order was signed by Lord Castlereagh himself,’ the clerk went on in a hoarse, terrified whisper. Crow turned and walked out without looking back. Who knew what arrangements Castlereagh might have made with the Russian court? England was now his opponent, but who else? Russia too, perhaps. It would be more than possible.
Running down the steps, Crow hailed a kalasha, demanding in his limited but still entirely imperious Russian to be taken to the one address he had faithfully promised Lord Cathcart never to visit. Half an hour later, Crow sank into an ancient chaise longue in a dim, shuttered drawing-room, and looked up at his great-aunt Thérèse de la Saint-Maure, who was standing over him with an amused expression, pouring tea from a steaming silver samovar resting on the side-table.
‘You do realise I’ll stand trial for treason if I’m seen here today? Not that it matters – it seems very likely to happen regardless of what I might do.’ Crow accepted a glass of tea and closed his eyes. In Castlereagh’s eyes, he was already a dead man.
‘Oh, don’t enact tragedies for me,’ Thérèse said. ‘It was really extraordinarily stupid of you not to anticipate that Castlereagh had only really one motive for sending you to Russia, Lord Lamorna. Fortunately for you, with age comes foresight, and so given that you’re no use to me dead, and you’ve been too busy disporting yourself in drunken misery across Petersburg to do anything either of use or sense, I took action myself. There’s someone here I particularly wish you to see.’
Crow let his head tip back on to the heap of cushions. He heard a side-door open and close, the soft creak of a floorboard. Whoever it was, the visitor was unannounced, ensconced in the house before he arrived. He felt all the out-of-control rush of galloping full tilt on a horse he knew might refuse the hedge, leaving him with a broken neck. It was one thing for England to act against him, quite another to deliberately play the traitor himself. Was he really going to do this?
‘In my day,’ Thérèse went on conversationally, ‘a well-bred man would stand in the presence of a lady, and particularly one so very much his superior.’
‘Good morning, Lord Lamorna.’
Crow opened his eyes and sheer force of habit drove him to his feet. He stood up to face a diminutive vision in plain grey muslin, grey-streaked chestnut curls cropped short and arranged with simple éclat, an Indian shawl draped around the narrow shoulders. For a moment he could not speak; even had he been able to find his voice he would not have known what to say. Again, habit alone propelled him into a curt bow as he ignored the slow, considering smile of the woman standing before him – Joséphine Bonaparte, divorced former wife and now the mistress of Napoleon.
‘Forgive my impertinence,’ he said at last, ‘but I haven’t the smallest notion how to address you these days.’
‘Oh, Jack,’ she said, casting a quick glance at Thérèse, who was watching without comment, and Crow flinched at the use of his name. ‘Don’t put yourself into such a passion – you needn’t worry. We’re such old friends, are we not? Just call me Joséphine, as you always have. I’m here to help you.’
‘And how precisely do you mean to do that?’
‘I suppose it might be of assistance to a man in your unenviable position to know where Napoleon is?’ Joséphine asked, quite gently, and Crow almost choked on his tea.
‘Austria?’ he said with acerbic impatience. ‘Tell me what manner of game I’m supposed to play for you this time, Joséphine. Truth be told, anyone with any sense would be vastly more interested in the whereabouts of Davout and his eight fucking regiments of French cavalry.’
She picked up her own glass of tea, cast an appreciative glance over the spice biscuits arrayed on a gilded plate beside the samovar and took one, taking a small, neat bite. Her teeth were as bad as ever. By rights, she ought to be two years in her grave, killed by a London mob. And here she was, yet again.
‘Unfortunately for both Russia and Britain, you’ve been a little outmanoeuvred.’ Joséphine smiled at him. ‘Don’t be angry. Thérèse and I are trying to help you, Jack. Now listen, I’m perfectly willing to tell you where Napoleon actually is – in Russia – which means you’d know more than Tsar Alexander and all of England’s spies combined, and with a word to Wellington and a word to Westminster, you might swiftly despatch Lord Castlereagh and his apparent vendetta against you directly into the realm of irrelevance. A place which, I assure you, is usually fatal.’
‘In Russia?’ Crow stared at her, trying to ignore creeping horror. ‘Napoleon is here in Russia?’ Wellington and most of the British army were waiting for Napoleon and the First Army in Austria: one almost – almost – had to admire the man’s genius for manoeuvre. After two years of extracting information from Joséphine during the French Occupation of England, Crow knew her well enough to be reasonably sure she was telling the truth, but didn’t presume to even guess at her motivation for doing so. If Napoleon was truly in Russia, England and Russia each faced an all-out rout: French soldiers fought for Napoleon in a way they had fought for no one since Charlemagne. Crow had weathered enough battles in the Peninsula before Waterloo to know only too well that Napoleon’s presence alone was easily enough to double the effectiveness of his men. There was every chance he would take Petersburg, and from there the North Sea. ‘And so?’ Crow went on, determined to conceal a maelstrom of nauseating emotion, knowing that if he looked up, he would see crows circling as they had waited for him to die in the mud after Waterloo, regardless of the fact he was sitting in his great-aunt’s drawing-room. ‘Why on earth would you compromise your own loyalty to Napoleon by telling me where he is? I hear you’re living together again even though he’s still married, like a pair of damned down-at-heel poets.’
Joséphine sipped her tea, watching him. ‘Listen, my darling, judgemental, so-conventional boy. I love Napoleon dearly, and the poor man must have someone to comfort him now that his cold-blooded Austrian tartar of a wife has taken herself off back to Vienna with her brat, but all the same he won’t listen to reason. He simply won’t be content to go back to Paris and get on with the job of ruling the French nation. He spreads himself too thinly – I think he can and he will win in Russia, but at what cost? What next?’
‘And what has this got to do with me?’ Crow said. He got up and walked over to the tall window; leaning his forehead on the glass he looked down at the painted mansions, and the rag-clad girl traversing the straw-strewn walkway with a basket of barley-sugar twists for sale.
Joséphine smiled, reaching up to tidy his hair with a gesture at once disturbingly motherly and erotic, with that verbena-oil scent rising from the deli
cate skin at the inside of her wrist. ‘You’re going to tell Napoleon that Alexander plans to secretly swear his final and unshakeable allegiance to the British, that Wellington will cross the Alps and march on Paris with Russian troops behind him, trapping the French First Army between them. It makes no difference whether or not this is actually true,’ Joséphine went on with placid calm. ‘Because if Napoleon becomes convinced that the Russo-British alliance is truly impregnable, he will know there’s no choice except retreat. The vast majority of the British army is with Wellington, and now in Austria. Lord Lamorna, think how many lives might be saved by averting this conquering of Russia, and perhaps then England once more, too.’
Crow leaned back in the chaise, watching her and wondering how much if any of what she had just said was true.
‘It’s not treachery to England exactly, even if you would be consorting with the French without Wellington’s consent,’ Thérèse said. ‘It’s just going to look like it, regardless of whether or not the end result will be to England’s benefit. Joséphine?’
‘You’re both making the mistake of thinking that I care about any of this,’ Crow said. ‘I don’t care if Napoleon takes the imperial throne of Russia for himself. I don’t even care if he does rampage across the North Sea straight from the Gulf of Finland and invades England again.’
‘Oh, we’re quite sure that you’ve lost all interest in the world stage,’ Thérèse said, opening her fan. ‘Aren’t we, Joséphine? But I take it you do have an interest in your brother’s welfare.’
He smiled, savage. Tatyana had tried just the same move. ‘I do wonder when people will tire of appealing to a better nature that I don’t possess.’ Crow ignored Thérèse and directly addressed Joséphine, Joséphine who knew that long ago he had once stayed up all night playing dice for the child’s life. And if he were killed in this city then what would happen to Kitto?