With a nod Roger closed the door and, giving a pale smile, turned back to Georgina. Taking her in his arms, he said softly, 'There is no escaping fate, dear love, and it looks as though I have tempted it once too often. But I beg you not to despair. Maybe I'll cheat it once again. And now, before I go to meet whatever is in store for me, I pray you grant me a boon. It is something that beyond all else will inspire me to fight death. Do I succeed in surviving this peril and get safely back to England, will you marry me?'
The tears streaming down her lovely cheeks, she nodded. 'Roger, my own. How could I possibly refuse you? I have been the veriest fool to reject you for so long.
Ten minutes later he had joined the officer who had been sent for him, and was on his way to the Tuileries.
4
Roger Faces the Emperor
La Bells Etoile lay in the Rue de L'Arbre Sec, which was in the oldest part of Paris, to the east of the Louvre. The streets there were narrow, with the wood-framed upper storeys of the houses projecting beyond the gutters. There were no pavements, and the cobbled ways were a seething mass of people, dashing beneath horses' heads or squeezing themselves against the walls to make way for drays and coaches, which could proceed only at a foot pace and were frequently brought to a halt.
It took the carriage in which Roger sat with his escort nearly a quarter of an hour to reach the Place du Louvre; but, having crossed it, they were able to drive at a better pace down the broader thoroughfare that ran alongside the Palace and, not long since, renamed the Rue de Rivoli in honour of Napoleon's victory.
Beyond the Louvre lay the big garden where, on the terrible 10th August 1791, the first scene of the Terror had been enacted by the massacre of Louis XVI's Swiss Guard. Turning left into it, the carriage pulled up in front of the Palais de Tuileries. Two minutes later, Roger was mounting the splendid grand staircase, up which he had often so gaily gone to participate in magnificent fetes and Imperial ceremonies.
The fact that he had not been asked to surrender his sword and so was not actually under arrest, caused him some relief; but he was far from taking that as a sign that he had nothing to fear. At the door of the big antechamber on the first floor, his escort, with whom he had exchanged no more than a courteous greeting, handed him over to the Chamberlain-in-Waiting, and left him.
In the lofty white and gold salon, a number of people, mostly officers, were sitting about or talking in small groups. Roger knew a number of them, but had too much on his mind to wish to enter on idle conversation; so, after nodding to a few acquaintances, he sat down on a fauteuil at the far end of the room.
He had not been there long when Duroc, Marshal of the Emperor's Palaces and Camps, came into the room to speak to the big, black bearded General Montbrun who, with Lasalle, St. Croix and Colbert was, after Murat, one of Napoleon's four finest cavalry leaders.
The Marshal was one of Roger's oldest friends. Getting up, he crossed the room toward him. When Duroc had finished talking to the General, he turned, raised his eyebrows and exclaimed with pleasure:
'How good to see you, mon cher ami. I had no idea that you were in Paris.'
'You surprise me,' Roger replied. 'I got back only yesterday. But the Emperor has sent for me, and I felt certain you would be able to inform me of the reason.'
'No. He has made no mention of you to me.'
'What sort of mood is he in today?'
'There has been nothing so far to put him out of temper. But he is, of course, as busy as usual; so it will probably be an hour or two before he sees you.'
'I suppose he and Berthier are hard at it making plans to put an end to the trouble in Spain?
'Oh, no. He is not worrying himself on that score. He still regards it as no more than risings here and there by ill-armed rabbles, stiffened by an English army of no great size. It now looks as though a peace with Austria will soon be signed. Then he'll be able to withdraw his legions and send an army of a hundred thousand men to clean up the Peninsula, but you must forgive me now, as I have much to do. Unless he sends you off on some mission, we must agree a night to dine together.'
When Roger returned to his chair, he was in two minds whether or not to be pleased that a long wait lay ahead of him. On the one hand he was anxious to get his audience over, and so learn the worst; on the other he had had little time to think out how he could most effectively use the forged letter, and the delay would give him a chance to do so.
He had been pondering the matter for three-quarters of an hour when Marshal Brune came in and took a seat near him. Brune was the son of a lawyer: a well-educated man with literary pretensions, who prided himself particularly on his poetry; but it, was so indifferent that he had had to buy a printing press to get it printed. Like Lannes, Augereau and Bernadotte, he regretted the ending of government by the people, so was not well regarded by Napoleon. Unlike those Marshals, he had little ability as a soldier, and his only claim to military fame had been in 1799 when Bonaparte was in Egypt.
Bonaparte's absence had led to the loss of Italy, and France had been threatened with invasion from both the east and north. Massena had held the bastion of Switzerland and won undying fame by defeating the Russians under the redoubtable Suvarov; while Brune had been dispatched to repulse an English army that had landed in Holland. It had been commanded by the hopelessly inefficient Duke of York, and at Alkmaar Brune had compelled him to surrender. But every General knew that, given sufficient troops, any fool could have done that.
Nevertheless, the public had acclaimed him a hero, so Napoleon had thought it politic to include him in the original creation of Marshals; but there his elevation had stopped short. When the other Marshals, with the exception of Jourdan, Serurier and Perignon, had been made Dukes, Brune had received no title. Many people believed that this omission was due to his having, while Governor of Hamburg, gravely offended Napoleon by referring to himself as a Marshal of France, instead of a Marshal of the Empire. In recent years he had been employed mainly on administrative duties.
Greeting Roger pleasantly, he remarked anxiously, 'I would I could guess why our master has sent for me. I hope to God it is not to dispatch me with a corps into Spain.'
'Indeed,' Roger replied noncommittally, still occupied by his own uneasy forebodings. 'I would have thought that after all this time you would have welcomed a command in the field.'
Brune passed his hand over his tall, bald forehead. 'I would; but not in Spain. The war there is not war as we understand it. Every hand there is against us. Rather than let us buy their food and fodder, the peasants burn them. Even the children are used to carry intelligence to the English, so that General Wellesley is kept informed of our every move, which makes it impossible for us ever to take him by surprise. Our armies are isolated, each hundreds of miles from the others, and separated by countless thousands of murderous brigands. They take no prisoners. Instead, they flay or roast alive any Frenchman they can catch. The women are as bad as the men, and at times pretend friendliness in order to poison our troops. It is certain death for fewer than a score of our men to venture a few miles from their camps. Do you know, if one General wishes to send a message to another, he now has to provide his courier with an escort of two hundred horse to make certain of his reaching his destination?'