Chapter Thirty-nine
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” The voice was a woman’s, the language French, and the horse pistol pointed at his head with nary a tremor.
“I was looking for a place to sleep,” Bond said. “Your straw rack collapsed, and I think I have broken my leg.”
“Let me see. Move the leg.” She came no closer but pointed the lantern lower.
He winced as he tried to raise the leg. It would not move more than six inches.
“It is not broken if you can move it. A man is like a horse, in that.”
Bond did not like her comparing him to a horse. “Will you help me up, then? I cannot lay here all night.”
“I do not see why not. You are less trouble on your backside.” She took three steps closer. “Are there more of you in the vicinity?”
“I am alone. That is why I looked for a place distant from the soldiers.”
“Whose soldiers?”
Bond hesitated. This might be where trouble started. If he owned to hiding from French soldiers she would know him for an enemy. On the other hand, if he pretended he did not know whose soldiers he hid from he would present himself as an idiot.
“Whose soldiers do you fear, Madame?”
She laughed. “I am not hiding from soldiers. You are.”
“Are you sure? Why are you in this chateau so far from civilisation?”
“This is a hunting lodge, not a chateau. It used to belong to my father. Now I use it so that the police may forget me.”
“Fouché’s police and spies are everywhere. I too have had dealings with him. But how do you know I am not one of them?”
“Your voice betrays you. You speak French well, but it sounds very English. Tell me whose soldiers are moving this night, Mr. Englishman.”
“The Russians I met warned me that Napoleon was marching north. He goes to rescue the corps of Marshal MacDonald from Field Marshal Blücher. You are interested in military matters, Madame?”
“Who is not, when three nations come to visit?”
“A good point. And on the topic of points, would you mind turning that pistol away from my head?”
She came three steps closer and seated herself on the second riser of the staircase. The pistol was now aimed at his belly. “Since you have come to visit, would you have a name?”
“Bond. Lord Julian Bond, the heir to the Marquess of Tiverton. Do you have some familiarity with England, Madame?”
“My parents took me there as émigrés when I was a young girl.”
“But you did not stay.”
“My husband thought he had a very good introduction to someone who might help him recover some of our French property.”
“And did he?”
“It turned out that he only had an introduction to the guillotine.”
“Ah, an introduction too many fine men have had. Please accept my most sincere condolences, Madame.”
“It is not madame, it is countess. The Countess Marie-Sophie de Esternay.”
Bond made a gallant attempt to bow while sitting down. “Very pleased to meet you, My Lady. I assume you are not alone here.”
“With my children’s nanny―who once was mine―and a man-servant who has not returned from a journey to Sézanne to buy food.”
“And your children?”
“My daughter Sophia and my son Hugh-Frederick. I suppose I had better invite you to join us in the hunting lodge, My Lord, but we are down to our last pot of gruel, and I will have to call Agnes to help us assist you across the courtyard.”
“It is much more than I was expecting for the night, My Lady. I believe I can assist with the food. I have a fresh loaf and cheese in my saddlebags. I was on my way to find Marshal Schwarzenberg’s army near Troyes this evening.”
Bond awoke in the lodge’s drawing room in the morning with four young eyes assessing him. Their mother had thought it best that he sleep on a chaise longue on the ground floor, since he was both a stranger and crippled enough that he was unable to climb stairs.
“Are you a soldier?” the boy asked. “Where is your sabre?”
“I am a staff officer, not a Chasseur, Sir. Where is yours?”
The boy’s eyes narrowed. “My father’s sabre and pistol are upstairs. Agnes says I am too small to use them, but when I see Napoleon I will use them to kill him.”
The girl, perhaps eight, regarded her brother disdainfully. “Napoleon killed our father,” she said. “My brother is too young to avenge our father but I will take the pistol and shoot him.”
Their mother appeared in the doorway. “Children, out. Report to Agnes in the kitchen. I am sorry for that,” she said as they scurried off. “They do not often see a stranger these days.”
“Oh, I do not mind them. I like to see children about the place.”
“You have children?”
“Hmm.” Something impelled him to take her into his confidence. “I’m not sure I have a wife these days.”
Her eyes widened but she waited for him to explain.
“I married a commoner, almost a year ago, a very clever young woman whose father is an industrialist,” he said. “My father disapproved of the marriage from the start.” The image of the Old Man and his actions stuck in his craw. “The last letter I received from him told me that he had found an irregularity in our marriage and was applying that the bishop annul it.”
“Oh, how terrible―for the young woman more than you.”
“Yes, this last year has been a terrible trial for Roberta. I wrote suggesting we repeat our vows when I get back to Britain, and she answered that she was not in favour of that.” If only he had been able to speak with her this summer. “She regards our marriage as a mistake.”
“Were you engaged long?”
“Not at all. We married so that she might accompany me on a duty, one that she had more knowledge of than me.”
“It certainly sounds a mistake. What sort of duty?”
“I cannot speak more of it . . . Yes, I was blind not to see what I was doing to her. Even Elise gave me a good tongue lashing the last time she had the opportunity.”
“Elise?”
“Another agent of mine.”
“It sounds as if you collect women agents. Does that make you feel powerful?”
“It makes me feel like some sort of cad right now.” He did not mean that, but how else would it sound to this clever woman? Damn, but he had blown everything he had tried in this marriage. “I do not know how to make amends to Roberta.”
“I would suggest that both you and your father need to do that.”
The manservant, Armand, arrived that afternoon with the dilapidated pony and cart carrying a very meagre load of flour and vegetables. The man was practically an invalid with swollen finger joints and legs twisted from the knees down so he leaned upon a stick to walk. He regarded Bond with intense suspicion.
When he arrived in the drawing room, he related what he had seen on his journey.
“Soldats everywhere. Horsemen riding up and down the Paris highway like it was a parade ground. Napoleon has gone north, everyone says.”
“Oui,” the Countess said. “Lord Bond told me that last night. We feared for your return. Were there many soldiers on our road?”
“A few. Mostly scavengers cutting firewood. I did have a nasty word or two from the Sézanne Sub-prefect. He wanted to know if you were still here and when you intended to leave. I did hear he wants to offer the lodge as a place for generals to gather . . .”
“A headquarters?” Bond said. “I would doubt that. More likely he looks to requisition it for himself.”
The Countess clenched her fists. “So he is finding an excuse to steal my last home.” She looked at Bond. “He worked for my father as a young man―he wants revenge for some imagined slight.”
“Oui,” Armand said. “That’s the truth, but he plans to send a gendarme to inspect the place.”
“When?” the Countess said.
“Could be today.”
“I will have to leave you,” Bond said. “He cannot find an English officer here.”
“But you are not fit to ride,” the Countess said.
“Then I will take my horse and we will hide in the forest.”
The Countess shook her head. “I have a better idea. Agnes, would you say that Lord Bond and my husband were very close in physique?”
“Like twins, My Lady.”
“You can be our protector in a French uniform, My Lord. We will say you are a cousin of mine.”
“Oui, but Sub-prefect will just try again when His Lordship has gone,” Agnes said.
By evening, Lord Bond was dressed in the uniform of an officer of the 20th Regiment de Chasseurs-a-Cheval, comprising a shako, green coat with laced facings, and campaign trousers of Marengo-grey with crimson stripes along each outside seam. He did not try out the sabre, a weapon he found too clumsy to walk with and suitable only for whittling away on a mounted opponent similarly trying to whittle away on him. He tucked the Jover and Belton into the waist-band of his trousers.
The boy watched with an eager expression. “Not a horse pistol.”
“No, a pistol that carries four loads. Designed by an American and made by an English gunsmith off Curzon Street.”
The Countess watched them with laughing eyes. “A weapon for a desperado, or perhaps a spy.”
Bond looked at her; dashed pretty when she lost that widow’s stoop. He had been worried that the sight of him in her husband’s uniform might depress her, but she seemed rejuvenated by the sight. “I might consider, spy, if it were appropriate to present circumstances, but I am serving as an observer of the allies for the government in Whitehall.”
“The English do not trust them?” she asked with a mischievous smile.
He returned the smile. “I am sure they do . . . as long as they are advancing west. I was riding south because I had been asked to sound out the opinions of one of the monarchs. I doubt if he will tell me.”
“But you are a diplomat?”
“I’m not sure what I am. I was a convenient body to slot into a waiting job. I have been escorting diplomats around the Continent for six months.”
“Without your wife?”
“Yes, for several reasons, actually.”
“No wonder she is discontented. You marry and then leave her behind.”
“Perhaps a relief for her. We made a clandestine entry into the Low Countries the day after we married.”
She shook her head. “Then you are a desperado and a cad. What woman would want to marry you?”
“Oui, I have been told that by others, but when this war is over I will return to the family estates and become the most settled landlord in England. I will busy myself with pigs and dairy cattle, and only go to London when my wife needs new clothes and a ball or two.”
“You are a dreamer too, I see.”
He had no answer to that one.
“What will happen in this war, My Lord?”
“Napoleon is outnumbered more than three to one. He has done a remarkable effort so far, but it is inevitable that the allies will take Paris, and the country will not be saved until Napoleon abdicates.”
“How will this come about? Napoleon is a scoundrel who will bargain with the devil.”
“The only devils he will bargain with are the three monarchs who travel with Schwarzenberg’s army. There have been diplomats haggling for the end of this war since before the armies crossed the Rhine. The government in London wants me to listen at the doors of these people.”
“So you will ride south . . . to Troyes, you said.”
“That is where the headquarters of the army was when I set out from Épernay.” He would have said more but the sparkle in her eyes told him she had a plan and would not divulge it until she had extracted some concession from him. What that might be he did not know.
“What would you advise me to do about this hunting lodge, My Lord?”
“If one of Fouché’s thieves wants it, you might consider it gone. One day it may be recovered if a King Louis reigns again.”
“I should write out a lease for that Sub-prefect to sign. He might use it for a hundred francs a year.”
“And where will you go?”
“We will stay here until he finds us another lodging.”
Bond did not offer an opinion on this. He did not know this fellow but some scoundrels would find them a lodging in a grave hidden in the forest. He would need to see this gendarme in the morning before deciding what to advise.
In the morning he found he could walk reasonably well leaning on a stick. He should get back to his own uniform and leave for Troyes. Duty called. But he had promised to help the Countess deal with the gendarme and the fate of the lodge.
When he looked out of the window, he saw her at the end of the clearing playing with her children as if she had no care in the world.
Three gendarmes arrived in a horse-drawn chariot in the middle of the morning. The Countess and Bond went to them immediately.
The senior man would say nothing but the instructions on the paper he held. “We have orders for you to leave, My Lady. This building and all the property ’round about has been requisitioned for the Army.”
“Who has signed the order?” Bond demanded.
“That cannot be divulged.”
“Nonsense. When I return to my regiment, I will have the requisition countermanded,” Bond said with a grim expression close into the other’s face.
The Countess put out a hand to take the paper from the gendarme but he snatched it away again. “This is my cousin, Edoard de Esternay of the 20th Regiment de Chasseurs-a-Cheval,” she said angrily. “He is personally acquainted with Marshal Mortier.”
The gendarmes looked at one another impassively and shrugged. The senior man repeated the words of the instructions. Bond looked toward the muskets in the back of the chariot, older than any of the people here, he suspected, and probably improperly loaded at that. But he would get nowhere chasing them off the property at pistol point.
“We will only accept your order if you will sign copies of the Countess’ lease agreements and take one to the Sub-prefect in Sézanne.”
She held out a copy of the paper she had written the previous evening.
They stepped back. “We have no authority to sign such a thing.”
“You have no authority for anything here,” the Countess countered. “I want you off my property, now. Take one of these lease agreements to the Sub-prefect and tell him to come here himself with a signed copy.” She pushed a copy into the senior man’s hands and shepherded them back to their conveyance. They climbed in and started off.
The senior man turned to them just before reaching the corner. “You had better be gone when the Sub-prefect gets here.”
Agnes and the children came to them from the house. Both Agnes and little Sophia were crying, “What will we do?” Hugh-Frederik strutted about, “Why did you not shoot them? I would have shot them.”
“What are we going to do?” the Countess said. “We must load whatever we have room for in the cart and hope for better fortune in Paris.”
Bond shook his head. “Not Paris. It is not certain that there will be an agreement before the city is attacked. It would not be safe for you there. Thousands could be killed.”
She looked at him but said nothing. Old Armand came hobbling out of the tower stable with the pony.
Bond looked at them. He had no choice. “I must leave here for Troyes today, but I can travel with you and the cart. When we get to Schwarzenberg’s headquarters, I will see what I can do to find you a billet in the town.”
“The cart will not get to Troyes in one day,” the Countess said. “If we reach Romilly and the bridge over the Seine we will have done well. I have a few francs to find us beds along the way . . . I would sign a note, My Lord, for a loan, but I do not know how to honour it before we recover my father’s and my husband’s property.”
“I would not presume to make you a pauper to me, My Lady. I will pay whatever is needed until we can find you a safe refuge with the Army of Bohemia. There will likely be French Royalists there, waiting to make plans with the monarchs for Napoleon’s successor.”
She took his hand and kissed it, her face lowered so he could not see her eyes. “We will always be in your debt. I will never forget your kindness.”
Now he knew what the concession was.