The Danbury Scandals (29 page)

The Comte de
Challac was almost as reluctant a traveller as Maryanne. He insisted on driving
slowly, and whenever they found themselves at the top of a rise he stopped the
horses and climbed on to the roof of his coach to look back through his
spyglass. Sometimes they met troops marching southwards and had to pull to one
side to let them pass. ‘They will turn him back,’ the Count said. ‘Then we can
go home.’

At Lyons, he
called another halt, declaring his intention of staying in the town until he
heard news one way or another. Maryanne was happy to agree; every mile was
taking her further from Adam and if the Count was right the nearer they were to
home when all was resolved, the sooner they could be back there. They found a
small hotel, and while the ladies settled in for the evening the Count went out
to discover what he could. He returned in great agitation.

‘Colonel de la
Bédoyere has turned the whole of the Seventh Regiment over to the Emperor and
they are all marching north.’

‘The Seventh?’
queried Maryanne. ‘Isn’t that the regiment Adam was with?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have they all
gone over?’

‘Every last
man. Your husband,
madame
, is riding with Napoleon.’

She did not
want to believe it, but she was afraid he might be right; she had never been
sure where Adam’s allegiance lay. ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked.

‘Go on,’ the
Count said. ‘I do not relish the idea of being in the path of an army,
especially one so hungry for victory as this one.’

They set off
again at dawn. Maryanne, following the Count’s coach in her own lighter
vehicle, found it difficult to keep up with him. They were approaching
Chalon-sur-Saone when they heard that the King’s troop had changed sides at
Lyons. It was all the more humiliating for the Royalists because they were
being reviewed by the King’s brother at the time.

‘Is nothing
being done?’ Maryanne asked, when they stopped at an inn for the night; because
they were travelling in separate vehicles, it was the only opportunity they had
for discussion and making decisions. ‘Surely the Allies will do something.’

‘My guess is
that they are waiting to see if the French can solve their own problems,’ the
Count said. ‘And they may do so yet. Marshal Ney has undertaken to arrest the
Emperor and bring him to Paris in a cage.’

‘But Marshal
Ney was one of the most able and loyal of the Emperor’s commanders,’ the
Countess said. ‘They would be unwise to rely on him.’

She was right.
By the time they entered Paris on the fifteenth of March, the news was
everywhere; Marshal Ney had been won over by one of Bonaparte’s proclamations
that he had come to save the French people, and now it seemed nothing could
stop him. Maryanne,
Madame
Saint-Pierre and the Count and Countess found
a small hotel and sat round the supper table discussing what they would do
next.

‘The Countess
and I have decided to go straight on to England,’ the Count said. ‘I advise you
to do the same.’

‘I shall wait
for Adam,’ Maryanne insisted.

‘But how can
you be sure he will come?’

‘He is with the
Emperor, is he not?’

‘Yes, but what
about
madame
? Is it fair to subject her to more upheaval?’

‘It seems to me
there has been no upheaval,’ Maryanne said tartly. ‘The advance has been
entirely unopposed. And I know
Maman
would rather be near Adam.’

He could not
move her and they agreed to part. She watched them leave for Calais the
following morning and then set off to see Adam’s bankers. He had made generous
provision for her, but what was more surprising was that there was a letter for
her. It was dated several weeks before and showed he had anticipated events.

‘If you are
reading this, it means we are apart. And you must be my brave little duchess...
If war comes, and I pray that it does not, then go to England at once. Robert
Rudge will know what to do. Hold your head up, my darling wife, and know your
husband, who adores you, is thinking of you and longing for you every hour of
every day. If you should hear ill of me, do not judge me too harshly, and
forgive me my secrets. One day, God willing, you will learn everything. Take
care of
Maman
for me; next to you, she is the most precious thing I
have.’

She looked up
from reading it with tear-blurred eyes to find the kindly man who had given it
to her regarding her in some concern.

‘Not bad news,
I hope?’

She smiled.
‘No, not bad at all.’

‘You will be
returning to England? I have instructions...’

‘No,’ she said
quickly. ‘I shall stay here.’

‘Very well,
madame,
but please do not leave it too late.’ Like everyone else, he expected the
worst.

On the
nineteenth, the King and his entourage fled to Belgium, and the next day
Napoleon was carried shoulder-high into the Tuileries without a shot being
fired to stop him. The timing of his coup had been immaculate.

But if Maryanne
thought that was the end of it she was wrong, and if she thought the Emperor’s
arrival presaged the arrival of Adam, she was wrong again. She heard no word
from her husband, and the political news was not good either. Before another
week had passed, the European Powers had formally announced an alliance to
recapture the eagle and put him back in his cage, and the Duke of Wellington
had been made Commander-in-Chief in Flanders. War was inevitable and imminent.

In spite of her
bravado about wanting to face the world, returning to England without Adam by
her side to give her the strength to defy not only their accusers, but
gossiping Society, was something she preferred not to think about. She needed
no great persuasion to accede to
Maman
’s daily request to stay ‘just one
more day’ in case Adam arrived. They had parted in anger and that preyed on her
mind most of all. Would he come back to her at all, or had her shrewishness
made him throw in his lot with the French army to escape her? When, at last,
she woke up to the fact that Bonaparte was gathering all his forces to resist
the Allies, it was almost too late. The ports had been closed; not even the
smallest fishing boat could put to sea, and the only way out of France was
through Belgium. But by this time there was another, very strong reason for
leaving: she wanted her child to be born in England.

Chapter Eleven

The heat was so
oppressive that they could hardly breathe. The air was still as a quiet pool;
not a leaf stirred, no living thing moved, except Maryanne and
Madame
Saint-Pierre, plodding wearily across the fields of Flanders. Even the dog,
chained to a farm gate, lifted no more than an eyelid at their passing.

‘There’s going
to be a storm,’ Eleanor said, pausing to look up at the sky. ‘I heard thunder.’

‘It’s the guns
again,’ Maryanne told her.

All the
previous afternoon they had heard the sounds of heavy guns away to their right
as they stumbled across the fields. The ground beneath their ill-shod feet had
seemed to throb as if unable to bear the weight of so much concentrated
machinery and so many galloping horses. What she could not see Maryanne
imagined and, terrified that the battle would come their way, she had hurried
Eleanor into the shelter of a church, where they had huddled down between the
pews, expecting to be blown to pieces at any moment. The noise had stopped when
darkness fell and next morning they had set off again to cover the remaining
twelve miles or so to Brussels and, they hoped, to safety.

Maryanne blamed
herself bitterly for the predicament they were in; she should have left Paris
weeks before she had, or not moved at all. Her timing, unlike the Emperor’s,
had been abysmal. She smiled wryly to herself as they skirted a field of
shoulder-high corn. If Adam knew the trouble her delaying tactics had caused,
he would be even more furious.

It had seemed a
simple matter to harness their horses to the landaulet and set off for the
Belgian frontier, but when they arrived at Beaumont they had found the border
closed and the only way they could pass through was to tag on the end of the
baggage train following Napoleon’s army, pretending to be camp followers. The
marching army had been an awe-inspiring and colourful sight, setting out to war
as if going on parade. From the back, their plumed head-dresses reminded
Maryanne of a huge exotic bird stepping delicately forward, head nodding. She
had spotted the marching columns of the Seventh and, leaving Eleanor driving
the carriage, had hurried forward on foot to ask about her husband. ‘If he’s not
dead, he very soon will be,’ one of them had said, drawing his forefinger
across his throat.

She dared not
stop to ask him what he meant by that threatening gesture; others were eyeing
her with more than idle curiosity. She had hurried back to Eleanor and taken
the next turning off the main road. At the entrance to the next town she had
been directed to the commissariat, who had promptly requisitioned the horses.
Pleading with him had been a waste of breath and they had packed what they
could into bundles and set off on foot, leaving the useless carriage at the inn
where they had stayed the night.

The ground was
hard and dry and they walked briskly, chatting cheerfully to each other.
Maryanne was continually surprised by Eleanor’s resilience; she was far more
lucid and sensible than she had ever known her; it was as if the excitement and
danger had re-awakened a lost something in her which had restored her
self-respect, her love of life.

‘We ought to
find shelter,’ she said now. ‘We will be soaked if we don’t.’

Maryanne, who
had been indulging in a daydream in which Adam appeared from nowhere with a
carriage and horses, brought herself back to the present with an effort and
surveyed the ink-black sky, just as it was rent with lightning, followed almost
immediately by an enormous clap of thunder. A great wind tore across the fields
and the heavens opened. In seconds they were drenched and the hard ground was
covered in miniature ponds and rivulets.

‘There! What
did I tell you?’ Eleanor said, standing with her face tilted to the sky,
laughing delightedly. ‘At least it’s cool.’

Maryanne
smiled, tugging on her arm. ‘Come,
Maman
, we must find shelter. There’s
a road beyond that field.’

But when they
arrived at the road, their laughter stopped abruptly. The
pavé
was
choked with civilian refugees, wounded soldiers still able to walk, runaway
horses with stirrups swinging emptily, men who had become detached from their
regiments, deserters who had thrown away their weapons, and carts loaded with
wounded. ‘We got good and licked,’ they were told by a red-coated British
soldier who limped along leaning on his musket. ‘Boney stole a march on us.’

In the little
village of Genappe they found an inn. ‘There!’ Maryanne said, pointing. ‘The
Roi
d’Espagne
awaits us.’

She was surprised
that no more than a handful of those on the road were prepared to stop and
chance being taken by the French, but it made it easier for them to obtain a
room and refreshment and they were soon sitting before a roaring fire in their
undergarments while their dresses gently steamed on the fender. The rain still
poured down outside, but the exodus of refugees had slowed to a trickle and the
road was almost empty again.

‘How long
before Bonaparte’s troops march in, do you suppose?’ Eleanor ventured. ‘What do
you think they will do with us?’

‘Nothing. Why
should they be interested in a couple of bedraggled women? We are French. At
least, you can pass yourself off as French and my husband is marching with the
French Army...’

‘I doubt that.’
Eleanor seemed so sure, but she had never really known what Adam had done in
the years she was in prison. No one knew but Adam himself;

Maryanne
certainly didn’t. She stopped her wayward thoughts; now was not the time to
renew her doubts. ‘No, but we can say we are, and you speak French like a
native.’

‘After
thirty-five years I should think so!’ Eleanor exclaimed.

Maryanne could
not eat the simple food that had been brought to their room. She felt sick and
faint, but it was not so much her pregnancy, but despair which had suddenly
swamped her. Her disappointment at not finding Adam with the Seventh, all the
days of walking, all the effort to keep cheerful, the rain, those poor wounded
men, all heaped themselves up in her head until she wanted to do nothing more
than lie down and howl her misery. She pushed her plate away and stared into
the leaping flames, her thoughts with a husband who thought so little of her
that he could allow her to attempt such a journey alone. She chose to ignore
the fact that if she had not delayed her departure she would have been safely
in England.

‘Maryanne, are
you ill?’ Eleanor was leaning forward, peering into her face. ‘Have you caught
a chill?’

‘No,
Maman
,
I am not ill.’ She smiled; it seemed an appropriate moment to tell her
mother-in-law of her pregnancy. ‘I am
enceinte
.’