Shortly after two o’clock Roger was back in London. Riding straight to Hoare’s Bank in the Strand, he saw the junior partner with whom he usually dealt and, without one word of explanation, paid that miraculous golden draft into his deposit account. Acknowledging the young man’s amazement only with a happy smile, he ran out, remounted his horse and, ten minutes later, had made his way through the crowded streets to Amesbury House.
Thankfully he learned that Droopy had not yet gone out, and was in his library. Crossing the hall in half a dozen strides, Roger entered the room waving his hat, his face aglow.
Peering at him with his short-sighted eyes, Droopy smiled and exclaimed, ‘Hell’s bells, man! What’s to do? Has someone left you a fortune?’
‘Yes, Ned! Yes! A hundred thousand pounds. Believe it or not, ’tis true. A draft on Rothschild’s Bank for that sum, in recognition of the million I enabled him to make after Waterloo.’
Suddenly Roger’s smile faded, and he went on gravely, ‘But I’ve other news. Mary is dead. I was endeavouring to extract from her the money she received from the sale of my goods and chattels, when she gave me the slip, fell down the stairs and broke her neck. And yet more news. At Thatched House Lodge I found a letter from Georgina. It explains why she left London at the height of the season. She is on her way to Vienna to marry the Archduke John. In this I need your help, Ned, and urgently.’
‘Dear Roger, you have but to ask and aught that I can do …’
‘I mean to follow and overtake her if I can. I failed to prise the money for the contents of the house out of Mary; so when she broke her neck I was still as poor as a church mouse. Her death made me again a free man, but I could not possibly have brought myself to beg Georgina to take me as her husband instead of the Archduke. To ask her to give up such high estate and live as a Consul’s wife in some foreign port was unthinkable. Neither could I support the thought of living on her and becoming known to everyone as a parasite. Then, an hour later, I opened Rothschild’s letter. In a second his splendid generosity made me rich again, and no fortune hunter if I asked Georgina’s hand.’
Droopy frowned. ‘ ’Tis all of nine hundred miles ’twixt London and Vienna, but she left here on Saturday and today is Thursday. She must be halfway there by now. I sadly doubt your being able to overtake her before she reaches the Austrian capital, and once she has joined the Archduke she will be fully committed.’
‘I know it, Ned, and do I catch her first ’tis no guarantee I can persuade her to change her mind. This affair of hers with the Archduke John is no new thing and they are much attached to each other. I’ve had her love since we were boy and girl, but many times circumstances have compelled us to spend years apart, and in the meantime ambition to achieve rank and power have played a great part in her life. To ask her to forgo becoming an Imperial Highness is no light matter. As I’ve never ceased to be her lover, all the odds are she’ll expect me to be content to continue in that role on such occasions as we can meet discreetly. But I’ve long wanted her most desperately for my own, so I’ll not leave this slender chance untried. To secure it I’ll have to travel more swiftly than I have ever done before. By tonight I must be in Dover. Will you lend me a light vehicle and your fastest horses?’
‘You shall have of my best, and there are few better in London Town. I think a chaise I recently bought would be best for you. It has the newly-invented form of springs, so is comfortable to travel in even when driven at full speed, and several of my stable boys are trained postillions. You can send them back from Dover, but I pray you have the chaise shipped over with you. ’Tis all Lombard Street to a china orange against your being able to hire a vehicle in Calais as well suited to your purpose.’
‘Bless you, Ned. Now, there is one other matter. Mary’s funeral must take place within the next few days. Despite her villainous conduct towards me this past year, I would that I could pay my last respects to her; but in the circumstances that is impossible. I pray you, go down to Richmond and take charge of things there for me. Have a notice of her death and funeral put in The Chronicle, send flowers and attend the service yourself, for I fear few others than the servants will. Mary had no relatives other than a Canon in the north and his family. ’Twas he who succeeded to the title, and such little money as there was after the death of Mary’s father. Perhaps, too, you will write the Canon a line, telling him that I am abroad. You will find his address in a book in the right-hand drawer of the desk table in my library at Thatched House Lodge.’
Droopy nodded his beaky head. ‘All this shall be done. How stand you for money?’
‘Thanks, I have ample. I drew the equivalent of twelve hundred pounds from Napoleon’s paymaster before leaving Paris; mostly in bills of exchange, and have the greater part of it still. If you’ll forgive me, I’ll go now to my room, change into suitable clothes and pack a few things. Then I’ll be off.’
Twenty minutes later, when Roger came downstairs carrying his valise, he found that Droopy had given all the necessary orders. He was standing behind the table in the library on which stood a dust-encrusted bottle and two glasses. The wine was a dry old Arbois Vin de Faille from the Jura.
‘I chose this as a stirrup cup for you,’ Droopy smiled, ‘because it was the favourite wine of Henri of Navarre, a most wise and courageous king and the most successful of all royal lovers. May its association with him give you strength and success.’
For ten minutes they lingered over the glorious golden wine. Then a footman came in to announce that the chaise was at the door. Raising his second glass, Droopy said, ‘I’ve had a picnic basket packed for you and sent a galloper ahead to have relays of horses ready for you every ten miles or so along the Dover road. Here’s to your fortune in the mad chase you are about to undertake. May you catch her and win her.’
‘A thousand thanks, Ned. You are a friend indeed.’ Roger tossed off the wine remaining in his glass and they hurried out through the hall to the courtyard. A final handshake, and Roger jumped into the chaise. It had a deep back seat, wide enough to sleep on, with ample pillows and rugs. There were windows on either side, another instead of a box in front, and it was drawn by four fine horses. As it rattled over the cobbles and into Arlington Street, Roger waved and just caught Droopy’s shout:
‘God be with you.’
The postillions had been told not to spare the horses. Once clear of the traffic, they put them into a gallop. The Kentish fields of fruit and hop poles flashed by on either side. The relays of horses were standing ready outside the post-houses. For mile after mile the light chaise rocked from side to side. By half past six Roger was in Dover.
He had himself driven straight down to the harbour. The sum he offered to be taken immediately across the Channel soon produced a bearded skipper who owned a fast craft. Roger tipped the two exhausted postillions with the lavishness of the proverbial lord, and, at the sight of a fistful of crowns, willing hands loaded the carriage on to the deck and secured it there. The sky was overcast, but the wind not unfavourable, and in the early hours of the morning he was set ashore at Calais.
The bearded skipper sent his men to collect some down-and-outs, who were sleeping rough in wharfside sheds, to help unload the chaise. Meanwhile, Roger walked quickly to the best hostelry in the town, at which he had several times spent a night or two, and roused the landlord. A bargain was soon struck, which secured the best post horses available, and two reliable postillions. The landlord came out and bellowed to his stable hands, who were sleeping up in a loft. Putting on their clothes, some set about getting the horses ready, while others went, to get the carriage from the quay. As the sun came up on Friday, the 30th, Roger was on his way to St. Omar.
At the hostelry in Calais, he had had no more than a mug of coffee led with brandy, as during the crossing he had supped well off the contents of the picnic basket provided by Droopy. While doing so, he had spread out a map on the cabin table, and made some calculations.
As Georgina had left London on the previous Saturday, it was as good as certain that she would have spent the night at Dover, and not crossed until Sunday, so he had gained a day on her. From Calais to Vienna was some eight hundred miles. She and the St. Ermins would be sure to travel in a large, comfortable berlin drawn by four horses. Such vehicles when used by Napoleon with six horses and stopping only for relays, could cover great distances in twenty-four hours. But Georgina’s party would not sleep in theirs. They would spend the nights at good hostelries in the big cities through which they passed and, as such travel was fatiguing, the odds were that they would not cover more than seventy miles a day.
If Roger’s assumption was correct, that meant she would be at least eleven days on the road, and reach Vienna on July 6th or 7th. But this was the fifth or perhaps sixth day since she had left Calais, so she must already have accomplished half her journey. That was unless, as the young people with her would pass through cities they had never before visited, the party might stop off here and there for a day to see the sights. On the other hand, Georgina might take advantage of the long summer days to drive greater distances. If so, she could reach Vienna by July 4th. Once there, she would be publicly received by the Archduke as his bride-to-be, and Roger’s slender chance of persuading her to forgo this illustrious marriage would be reduced to next to nil.
For him also to reach Vienna by the 4th meant that he would have to cover one hundred and forty miles a day. As he intended to sleep in his carriage and drive through the nights, he thought he could manage that; and even have a good chance of catching up with Georgina while she was still a hundred miles or more from the Austrian capital. But five or six days in almost constant movement would prove terribly exhausting, and travelling fast meant, risking accidents. Grimly he realised that only an iron determination, coupled with good luck, would enable him to achieve his objective.
Long experience of travel across Europe had taught him the wisdom of keeping to main highways, for to take short cuts along by-roads often resulted in infuriating hold-ups owing to unreported avalanches or swollen rivers that local ferries were unable to cross. So, when he reached St. Omar and the road veered north-east to Cassel, he had to go some ten miles out of his way until it turned south-east to Lille. There, while his horses were being changed for the second time, he bought some cold food and bottles of wine. At the hostelry he enquired if Georgina and her party had halted there on the previous Monday or Tuesday, but none of the stable hands recalled their having done so.
From Lille the way led on to Tournai and shortly before they entered that city it began to rain. To Roger’s fury he had to have the hood of the chaise put up, with a resultant loss of speed, and he had to shelter miserably under the shiny leather apron. It was still raining when they reached Namur, where he warmed himself up with a hot grog, and the rain continued all through the night until, early in the morning of Saturday, they entered Liège. He had spent a miserable night crouching under the covers on half-soaked cushions, but at least he had the satisfaction of knowing that, in the twenty-four hours since he had left Calais, they had covered one hundred and ninety-two miles—a considerably greater distance than he had hoped for.
Again on the Saturday, Droopy’s light chaise performed wonders. The main road took them thirty miles north-east of Aachen, but from there ran eastwards to Düren, then south-east to Coblenz on the Rhine. On and off it continued to rain, and the river was in spate, but they made splendid going on the level road that wound along the bank of the river and later along that beside the Maine. When Roger awoke from a doze, by the early light of Sunday morning he knew that, when they reached Frankfurt, they would have done over two hundred miles in the previous twenty-four hours.
But, alas, his delight at this splendid progress was suddenly dashed. On coming round a corner, the chaise narrowly escaped running straight into the back of a slow-moving market cart. Swerving their horses violently, the postillions prevented a serious smash-up but the wheels of the two vehicles scraped harshly together.
A moment later Roger realised to his fury that one of the chaise wheels was wobbling, so was liable to come off at any moment. He was forced to tell his men to reduce the pace to a walk and could console himself only with the fact that they were already in the outskirts of Frankfurt, so it would not be long before they came upon a wheelwright.
A few people were already on their way to early Mass, and a citizen in his best broadcloth directed them to the house of a wheelwright, who willingly opened his shop for them; but it took well over an hour to repair the damage. In the meantime Roger walked on to one of the best inns, ordered breakfast for himself and made his usual enquiry, whenever he changed horses, about Georgina. For the first time he got a satisfactory answer. The landlord remembered her party well; two lovely ladies and a handsome young gentleman, English and of the highest rank, also a maid. They had slept there on Thursday night and left on the Friday morning about nine o’clock, in a great, yellow coach.
This news perturbed Roger greatly. In spite of the good milage he had made, Georgina was still a full three days ahead of him, and there were fewer than four hundred miles now to Vienna. Her nine o’clock start showed that she was travelling for longer hours than he expected, and covering nearer one hundred miles a day than seventy—no doubt because the weather was so miserable that there could be no pleasure in strolling about the cities, and she was anxious to get her journey over as quickly as possible.
As soon as he was told that his carriage was outside, the horses changed and ready to start, he settled his score and walked out of the inn. As he did so, an officer wearing the uniform of a Saxon Hussar was dismounting from a steaming horse, which suggested that he was riding all-out with despatches. At the second glance, Roger recognised him as a Captain who had been attached to Napoleon’s staff at Dresden, before the battle of Leipzig, when he had been with the Emperor as an A.D.C. Recognition was mutual, and greeting him politely Roger said in French:
‘It looks as if you have come from the front. How goes the campaign?’
Having known him as Colonel Comte de Breuc, the Captain eyed him dubiously for a moment, until Roger added, ‘Like many others, after Napoleon’s abdication I went over to the Bourbons.’
The Captain then smiled and replied, ‘Very well for us. It may not be over for a month or two yet, though. The Prussians are nearing Paris. On the 29th they reached Argenteuil, and ’tis said that Prince Blücher sent a flying column ahead to seize a bridge over the Seine near Malmaison, in the hope of capturing the Emperor, who had been living in retirement there since the Chambers deposed him. But Blücher’s plan was foiled by Marshal Davout. What a stout-hearted man that is! He had the bridges across the Seine destroyed and swears that he will defend Paris to the last man unless the Allies agree to spare the city. We have many friends in it who let us know what is going on. Davout has summoned every garrison in west, central and southern France to concentrate on the Loire. He reckons that he can still put one hundred thousand men into the field, and, as a General, he is second only to Napoleon. He will prove a tough nut to crack unless we give him reasonable terms.’
‘And what of the Emperor?’
‘He has gone. It is now Fouché who rules in Paris. On the night of the 29th he sent Napoleon an order to leave the capital, and he went. It is not known whither, but ’Tis said he hopes to be granted asylum in either England or the United States. If he is caught by the Prussians, though, he will receive no mercy. Blücher has sworn to hang him.’
Roger would greatly have liked to discuss the situation further; but the knowledge that Georgina was travelling much faster than he had expected filled him with dismay. He now felt that unless he was to lose his chance of catching up with her, he must not waste a second; so, with a wave of his hand, he jumped into his carriage and the postillions at once put the horses into a trot.
As he drove toward Würzburg, his thoughts were still on the news he had received. Much as he disliked Davout personally, he had a great admiration for him. The previous year, when Napoleon’s Empire had crumbled about him and he had been compelled to abdicate, Davout, Marshal Prince d’Eckmühl, Duc d’Aurstädt, had still been holding out in Hamburg; and now, although his master had fled, he was still defying France’s enemies.
How intriguing it was, too, to think that both Napoleon’s greatest servants—without whose help it is unlikely that he could ever have been able to create his Empire, extending from the Baltic to the toe of Italy—should have turned against him when they felt he was putting his personal ambition before the welfare of France and, each in turn, brought him down. Men so utterly different in every way—first the exquisite, epicurean, licentious aristocrat, Prince Maurice de Talleyrand, and now the corpse-like, slovenly, murderous, puritanical revolutionary, Joseph Fouché.
Although Roger knew that he should rejoice at the ex-Emperor’s final defeat, he could not help feeling a little sad for him. He had always admired Napoleon’s courage, humour, great generosity and loyalty to old friends, and he had spent so long in his company that he had become really intimate with him. With nostalgic thoughts of his own youth, Roger recalled those evenings long ago at Malmaison, when General Bonaparte, as he was then, had been wonderful company, joined in playing blind-man’s-buff, or had all but one of the candles put out and told ghost stories to frighten the ladies.
But there was his other side. He was foul-mouthed, an habitual liar, utterly unscrupulous, so greedy for glory that he always claimed battles really won by his Marshals as victories of his own; and above all, for his personal aggrandisement, he had caused greater numbers of his fellow beings to die before their time, or suffer in a hundred ways, than any other man in recorded history.
The fact that, after the Revolution, he had brought order out of chaos to France, his regal patronage of the sciences and arts and the great Code of Law that he had created, could not compensate for a fraction of the misery he had caused.
Roger did not think that Britain would give him asylum, and that if he did succeed in reaching the United States, the Allies would demand that he be handed over to them. This time he would be given no miniature kingdom from which he might escape and yet again bring about the futile slaughter of countless unfortunate soldiers. Unless old Blücher caught and hanged him, he would spend the remainder of his life as a prisoner, probably in the Azores or, perhaps, on St. Helena, which had also been suggested.
It rained again nearly all day, although not so heavily, and by offering most lavish sums for milage covered to each pair of postillions who took over with every relay of horses, Roger made very satisfactory progress through Würzburg to Nürnburg. That evening, at the inn where he pulled up, he learned that Georgina’s party had spent the whole of Saturday there, on account of a weakened axle, and left on the Sunday morning, so he felt wonderfully elated, as they were now only a day and a night ahead of him. In high spirits he drove on towards Regensburg.
But his elation was not destined to last. Some eighteen miles short of the city misfortune struck him a savage blow. Without warning, the mended wheel gave way. The chaise lurched, and Roger was woken by being thrown violently sideways, then forward. By thrusting out his hands, he managed to save his face, and the postillions succeeded in halting the horses quickly. But it was about four o’clock in the morning, and they were passing through forest country, where dwellings were few and far between.
Roger learned from the postillions that they had driven through a good-sized village about three miles back, and that some two miles ahead of them lay another; but that was only a hamlet, so there was a much better chance of there being a man competent to mend the wheel in the former than in the latter. Cursing, Roger set off back along the road between the dripping trees, with one postillion, leaving the other to look after the horses and his valise.
When they reached the village after a three-mile tramp through the mud, the dwellings were still in darkness, but they succeeded in finding the local blacksmith’s and roused the smith from his sleep. A generous offer from Roger induced the man to agree to come out and mend the wheel, and a quarter of an hour drifted by while he dressed and collected his tools. He was an uncouth fellow, and possessed neither a trap nor a horse, adding that no-one in the village owned any vehicle other than farm carts; so the three of them had to trudge the three miles back to the carriage. For the best part of half an hour the blacksmith tinkered with the wheel; then, to Roger’s fury, sullenly declared that he could not refix it so that it would be really safe.
By then it was seven o’clock and raining again. Tired, wet and bitterly frustrated, Roger strove to control his anger, for he could not leave Droopy’s fine carriage abandoned there in the ditch. Much as he begrudged the money, he had to pay the surly blacksmith handsomely to have it collected and stored until someone could be sent to mend it properly and arrange for its return to London.
With his two postillions he then set off for the hamlet. There, enquiries soon disclosed that there also no transport was available other than farm wagons and cart-horses. Neither was there for miles round a big-house where something speedier might have been procured. So a wagon it had to be.
In spite of Roger’s urging, the peasant who drove them could not get his big cart-horse into more than an amble now and again, so it was getting on for one o’clock before they reached the centre of Regensburg. In nearly thirty hours, Roger had covered only one hundred and seventeen miles, so the odds were that, instead of gaining on Georgina, she was still further ahead of him than she had been the previous morning.
For several hours past he had been hoping that, once in Regensburg, he would quickly be able to secure a good vehicle and fast horses with which to make up this lost time. But he again met with infuriating disappointment. It transpired that a wedding of importance was being celebrated in the city that day, and the landlord of the inn at which Roger had been set down had hired out both the carriages and a coach that he owned. An ostler was sent out to try the other inns, in search of a speedy vehicle, either for hire or sale. Roger took the opportunity to have his cloak dried and ate a hearty hot meal, but after an hour he began to fume with impatience at the ostler’s failure to return. At length the man came back, but he had been able to secure only a small coach drawn by a single horse. Seething with rage, Roger was torn between delaying further in the hope of finding something better, or continuing his pursuit of Georgina at a pace that would probably be less than that of her coach. Deciding that any progress toward Vienna was better than none at all, he urged the coachman to do his utmost, and jumped into the coach, but it was close on three o’clock by the time he was clear of Regensburg.
N
With only one horse and a heavier vehicle, he could now travel at only a third of the speed he had attained when in Droopy’s chaise; and, as they followed the road on the south side of the Danube, he suffered agonies as the horse had to be walked up every hill and often far from steep slopes. During the afternoon and evening, every time the horse was changed he enquired about quicker means of transport, but none was available. It was midnight before he had covered the sixty-eight miles to Passau, and from there it was only one hundred and fifty miles to Vienna.
He had driven the six hundred and fifty miles from Calais, because he could not possibly have got as far as he had in the time had he ridden, for he would have been compelled to break his journey several times and lose precious hours in sleep; but now he decided that his only chance lay in taking to horse. Paying off the coachman, he picked the best mount among those in the stable of the inn where the coach had pulled up, had his valise strapped to the back of the saddle, and headed for Linz. Having ridden the forty-five miles during the night, he dismounted in the stable yard of the post-house there, to change his horse, at five o’clock on the Wednesday morning.
After rousing an ostler, he made his usual enquiry about Georgina’s party, and learned that they had eaten there at about four o’clock on the previous afternoon, then driven on. These tidings filled him with a surge of new hope. There were still over one hundred miles to go to Vienna, and it was certain that Georgina would put up somewhere on the way for the night; so he might catch her yet. Eagerly he asked the man the most likely town in which she would next break her journey, and he replied, ‘Probably Amstetten, as that is about three hours drive from here.’
Beaming with delight, Roger realised that he could easily reach Amstetten in a couple of hours, and so be there when they came down to breakfast. It so happened that at that moment a sleepy stable lad, making his way to the privy, passed near them, and caught what they were saying. Halting, he said, ‘The party in the yellow coach won’t be going that far, mein Herr. The coachman asked me how far Enns castle was up the river, so they must be biding there this night.’
‘Enns?’ Roger repeated quickly. ‘How far is that?’
‘Twenty-five kilometres, or thereabouts,’ the lad replied. ‘Place takes its name from a small river running, into the Danube. Town’s some three kilometres up it, an’ the Archduke’s castle a kilometre or so further on.’
‘The Archduke’s castle!’ Roger repeated, aghast. It had instantly recurred to him that, on Georgina’s previous visit to Vienna, the Archduke had planned to ride out to meet her. Evidently that is what he had now done, and received her at the castle the previous evening as his future bride.
In an agony of distress, Roger absorbed the full implications of the turn—so disastrous for him—that events had taken. All those hundreds of miles swaying in unending discomfort while being driven at high speed in Droopy’s chaise, gold and silver coins by the score given to postillions, ostlers and others to hasten the pace at which he could cross Europe, close on a week without a single hour of proper sleep—only in the end to prove a waste of money and endurance.
Only two minutes earlier he had exulted in the belief that within another few hours he would have Georgina in his arms and might persuade her to become his wife. Suddenly a few words from a stable boy had destroyed that hope utterly. Georgina was already with her Archduke. She would have been formally received by him, with royal pomp and ceremony as his fianceé, so was now fully committed to become his wife.