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 …