Having promised to do his utmost to obtain this information, Roger was provided with a horse and one of the General's A.D.C.S who would see him through the lines and accompany him for the first few miles of his journey.
Well before dawn they were outside the lines. In a village not far distant the A.D.C. took him to a half ruined church, in the crypt of which the priest, Father Joao, had concealed himself to act as one of the intelligence post-boxes. Two miles further on, they stopped at a small wood, in the centre of which a farmer named Leandro had dug himself a hide-out for the same purpose. After a third visit, this time to a cave occupied by several men, the A.D.C left him.
For what remained of the morning Roger rode on through the desolate countryside, and it was not until he was nearing Santarem that he encountered a troop of French Chasseurs. On his hailing them in French, they galloped up to him and he asked their officer to be taken to the Marshal Prince d'Essling. His accent being perfect, the officer had no doubts about his nationality, and sent him with a sergeant and two troopers to Massena's headquarters.
When he arrived it was getting on well into the afternoon. In a mansion in the centre of the town, he found the Marshal and his staff about to sit down to dinner. Massena was then fifty-five; but evidently the strain of conducting his present campaign had aged him considerably, as Roger thought he looked very much older than when he had last seen him some two years earlier. His appearance was not improved by a black eye-patch he had to wear owing to an accident while on a shoot at Fontainebleau, in which Napoleon had shot him in one eye.
He was greatly surprised to see Roger and the more so because he was in civilian clothes, as he had assumed that Roger had brought him a dispatch from the Emperor; but he at once invited him to join them at dinner and, sitting next to him while eating a meagre meal, Roger gave a slightly edited account of how he came to be in Santarem.
He described how the Emperor had sent him on a mission to Davout in north Germany, how he had been accused of a murder that he had not committed, and his only means of getting away had been to board an American vessel that was sailing for England. He then reverted to his old story, already known to several of the officers present, about his mother having been English, although he had been born in Strasbourg; how, on her death, he had been sent to be brought up by an aunt in Hampshire until, fired by the news of the Revolution, he had returned to France to enlist and how he had since revisited England several times on Napoleon's secret business, without anyone there realising that he had become a Colonel in the French Army. His English relatives believed that he spent a great part of his time travelling in the East, so had welcomed his recent return, but to maintain that fiction he had had to spend several months there. Then, when he felt that no one would be surprised at his going abroad again, he had secured a passage to Lisbon as the easiest way of getting back to the Continent and his master.
Told with all Roger's flair as a raconteur, the story was highly plausible, so accepted by all those present without question.
After the meal, Massena carried him off to his office and, as soon as they were seated, asked:
'How long were you in Lisbon?'
'It was the best part of a month,' Roger replied, 'before I felt that I had been there long enough for my stay to be accounted an ordinary visit; and, before leaving, I laid a false trail by taking passage in a Portuguese ship bound for Madeira.'
'Then you had ample time to assess the present strength there of the English?'
'I did indeed, mon Prince. You may be sure I kept my eyes well open.'
'Tell me, then, all you can about them.'
Roger obliged and spent the next half-hour giving particulars of the very considerable army Wellington had under him.
When he had done, the Marshal said, 'Tell me now about milord Wellington. What sort of a man is he, and how do his troops regard him?'
'He is a tall man with blue eyes and a thin, very high-bridged nose. When he speaks it is with a very slight lisp. But he is not a great talker, although he can be convivial at times. At least, he used to be. When I first met him in India, we had a mutual friend one William Hickey and at his house, with several others, we were wont to punish the Bordeaux pretty heavily.
'Milord Wellington, the Emperor and myself are of the same age: all born in '69. He comes of an Irish family, or rather an English one that has long been settled in Ireland. Such families form the aristocracy there. Not one such as we had in France before the Revolution, but, I am told, similar to that in the Southern States of America. They have big houses and are boundlessly hospitable, but lack elegance, being greatly given to country pursuits. They regard the native Irish much as the Americans do their Negro slaves; and, indeed, the poor wretches are little better off.
'The Irish milord’s are also, by English standards, poor. The General was the sixth child of the Earl of Mornington. The Earl's passion was music, and he squandered his small fortune giving and financing concerts. His whole family thought of little else. Milord Wellington was devoted to his violin; but not long after he entered the Army he decided that his love of playing, absorbed much too much of his time, so he burned his fiddle.
'The eldest son, Richard, now the Marquess Wellesley, was the bright child of the family. Their father died when Arthur, that is the General, was twelve, and left his widow very badly off. Richard scraped enough money together to send Arthur to Eton, but only for about two years.’ Eton? What is that?' Massena enquired.
'It is England's most famous public school, and for many generations a large part of the nobility have been educated there. On leaving Eton, Arthur's mother took him with her to Brussels. While there, I gather, the tutoring he received was patchy and indifferent. He was then sent on his own to an academy at Angers, where little was taught except riding, fencing and dancing. But the young nobles who studied there were made free of the great houses, such as those of the Dues de Brissac and de Praslin. It was in such society that he acquired his polish and unfailing good manners.'
'Bah!' Massena exclaimed, and turned to spit into a spittoon. 'And that while youngsters like myself were leading a dog's life, half-starved and beaten, as cabin boys. But proceed.'
Roger smiled. 'Your Highness will have even more cause to disapprove of the next few years in milord's career. At eighteen, his brother bought him a commission in the 73rd; a Highland regiment. But he did not remain in it for long. Through influence he got himself transferred from regiment to regiment, with a step up each time. He rose from Ensign to Lieutenant Colonel in seven years, and during the whole of this time neither saw active service nor spent more than a week or two on a barrack square. He lived in Dublin, as an A.D.C. to the Lord Lieutenant and sat in the Irish Parliament.'
The frown on Massena's sallow face deepened. 'Such a system is iniquitous. But how, after such a poor education and those years of idleness did he ever become a successful General?'
'It was, I think, the campaign of '94 that made him. You will recall that the English invaded the Low Countries. Milord took his regiment on that expedition.
I've no need to remind Your Highness how hopelessly incompetent as a General is their Duke of York. Ill-directed, administered by idle nitwits, constantly short of supplies and with the troops totally uncared for, the army floundered about for a while, then retreated into Holland. The winter there that year was terrible. The troops were in rags, starving and dying from intense cold.'