The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware (49 page)

The soldiers had made Mary as comfortable as possible in a corner on some empty corn sacks that had been left there, and were now huddled round a fire on which an evil-smelling stew was simmering. Roger learned that they belonged to a regiment from Dijon; hardy fellows whose homes were in the Jura mountains. They liked and respected their young officer, so had agreed to remain together under his leadership, although they now treated him as one of themselves.

Trembling with anxiety, Roger knelt down beside Mary. As her uninjured eye was open, he saw that she had come round, but she was breathing in little, short gasps, and when he laid his hand on her forehead he found it to be burning. In a whisper, she said:

‘I … I killed one. I shot him. Then … then another of them … struck me down.'

‘I know …' He was just about to add ‘darling', but checked himself in time, and substituted, ‘Hipé. Yes, I know. You were splendid.'

‘My eye hurts,' she murmured. ‘Oh, it hurts terribly.'

Rummaging in one of his saddle-bags, Roger produced a small pot of opium ointment that he had carried all the way from St Petersburg. Removing the bandage, he gently massaged some of the ointment on to the big bruise on Mary's forehead and all round the injured eye. The eye was a terrible sight, and he feared she would never see with it again. Having replaced the bandage, he got her into their sleeping bag and said:

‘You must try to sleep, Hipé. Go to sleep if you possibly can. I know your eye must be very painful, but you have escaped any other injury and you'll soon get back your strength. You're quite safe here.'

She gave a slight nod, and obediently closed her good eye.

He now had a chance to find out what had been stolen from the panniers and, with his back turned to the soldiers, went through them. The remainder of the vegetables that he had hoarded for the horses was gone, so were a small bag of flour and a piece of salt pork that he had been given for rations, one of his cones of sugar and the last of the preserved fruit. There remained three packets of tea, two cones of sugar, the marzipan which they had hardly touched, most of the side of bacon that he had got hold of in Smolensk and six potatoes. They had used up six bottles of the brandy and two had been smashed when the horse had fallen on the pannier; but two remained unbroken and he had two more in his pistol holsters. There was also the bottle of blood that he had taken from the mule. Keeping out one packet of tea and about a quarter of a pound of sugar to give to the soldiers, he packed the rest of the things back into the panniers.

The Lieutenant and his men invited Roger to share in their stew and afterwards talked to him for a while in low voices, while the wind whistled outside; and, presently a wolf began to howl dismally. For a moment Roger feared
it would attack his horse, but reassured himself with the thought that there must be the dead bodies of plenty of humans within the pack's range.

The Dijon men spoke bitterly of their sufferings during the past seven weeks; but they were still hypnotised by the personality of Napoleon and, apparently, it did not occur to them to blame him. Roger told them some stories about the Emperor and his brilliant Court, then they all settled down for the night.

Early in the morning they roused up, ate a frugal meal from supplies they had obtained while in Orcha, then made ready to set out again on their terrible journey. By seven o'clock, although it was still dark, they wished Roger and his wounded servant well, and went on their way.

In the early part of the night Mary had become delirious, but later dropped asleep. Now she was again delirious and evidently in a high fever. For her to be moved that day was clearly out of the question. Roger bathed her eye, massaged some more of the opium ointment into the flesh round it, and put a cold compress round her head. Then he went out to see to his horse.

As daylight began to filter through the big hole in the roof of the woodshed, he was able to take stock of its contents. A big pile of logs, sufficient to last for the rest of the winter, filled one end of it. He was already deeply concerned about how he and Mary could remain at the farm in safety for at least two days. It was certain that another group of men would seek shelter there for the coming night, and they might not prove friendly as had the men from Dijon. Even more to be dreaded was the following day, when the last of the Grand Army would have passed and the pursuing Cossacks enter the area. Somehow he had to hide his horse and stores before nightfall; and, the day after, Mary and himself as well.

It then occurred to him that the logs might serve his purpose. Soon, he was hard at work carrying them from
the end of the shed where they were stacked to build a four-foot-thick wall across the other end, leaving a good space behind it in which he could conceal the horse and, later, also Mary and himself.

Three times during the morning he went in to see how Mary was, and found her much the same. For the rest of the time he laboured on the logs and, half-way through his task, he met with a most welcome surprise. The owner of the farm had evidently had the same idea of using his stack of logs to conceal a cavity. Behind the pile, Roger found a space and, in it, two bales of hay and a sack of oats. There was enough fodder there to last for a fortnight, with care. At midday he was happily able to give his charger a luxury meal.

By this time his wall of logs was completed and the horse stalled, so he was able to return to and remain with Mary. She was still in a fever, but conscious. As he bent over her, she asked in a low voice:

‘My eye, Roger. Will it recover its sight?'

He had not the heart to tell her that he doubted it, so he said, ‘It is impossible to say as yet. We can only hope so.' Then, as there was no-one else present he was able to kiss her gently, hold her hand and use endearments as he talked to her; but he would not let her tire herself by talking much.

The embers of the fire the soldiers had made were still glowing, so he put more fuel on them and some of the bacon to boil in an iron pot that he had found in the burnt-out stable. Knowing that Mary would not be able to get down anything solid, he poured half the bottle of mule's blood into another bottle, filled them both up with brandy and fed her some of the mixture, a few sips at a time.

To his great relief, in the afternoon Mary's fever abated and she slept; so, for a long time, he sat looking out through a rent in the wall at the marchers on the road,
which was no more than fifty yards distant. For once it was not snowing and the light was good enough for him to see the endless stream of men clearly.

Now they looked much more like a whole nation of gipsies on the move than an army. When they had had to abandon most of their loot, many of them had kept richly-embroidered silk and satin robes which they had intended to take home to their wives and sweethearts, and now wore them round their shoulders for extra warmth. Many wore furs that were either too large and trailed along the ground, or too small. Others wore sheepskin kaftans or the padded jackets of peasants. Under this strange assortment of garments it was no longer possible to distinguish infantry from dismounted cavalry or gunners from sappers, let alone tell whether individual men came from the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, the rugged cantons of the Alps, the forests of the upper Rhine or the flat, windy plains of Poland.

Here and there a group of them had harnessed themselves to a gun or limber and were pulling it with the aid of a single horse. Now and then an officer passed, still mounted on an apology for a charger, consisting of little more than skin and bone. Hands buried deep in their pockets or muffs, and heads thrust forward at an unnatural angle, the marchers tramped soundlessly onward through the last fall of snow. To conserve their strength they looked neither to right nor left, and maintained complete silence, not uttering so much as a word to their companions. Under fur hats or shapeless busbies, their faces were swathed in wraps of wool, cloth or silk. Occasionally Roger caught a glimpse of long noses sticking out from pinched features above matted beards. They had been reduced to from three-quarters to half their normal weight and were little more than living skeletons. Many of them had bandaged heads, arms in slings or were limping
along, supported by sticks or crutches. Only the inherent urge to survive kept them moving.

Yet even that could not impel many of them on indefinitely. Every quarter of an hour or so one of them would stumble and fall down in the snow, never to rise again, or just give up and sit down at the roadside on his knapsack, waiting for death to end his misery. Half a dozen times Roger saw a man halt, drop his musket, unfasten the bandolier carrying his ammunition and, with a sobbing curse, throw that down beside it. These arms and other objects that the men no longer had the strength to carry constantly added to the litter on the road. Along it, every fifty yards or so, there were mounds of snow covering the dead of yesterday or of the day before. And he knew that the road was like that for the whole of the four hundred and fifty miles back to Moscow.

In mid-afternoon it began to snow again. Soon the heads and shoulders of the slowly-moving figures on the road were powdered with it. Then the fall increased to a blizzard and they were hidden from view. Suddenly apprehensive that the big, driven flakes would not provide a permanent and sufficiently thick curtain to conceal the farmhouse from the road, and that a group of men might seek refuge there, Roger hastily began to make preparations against that possibility.

First he took the panniers and saddle-bags out to the woodshed, then he carried Mary there. In his wall of logs he had left a hole low down, large enough to wriggle her through, and he settled her behind it with the saddlebags beside her, and the panniers for a pillow. He then watered and fed his horse, and fed Mary for the third time on the warmed-up mixture of mule's blood and brandy. If had been his intention to remain there, but he feared that to have got into the sleeping bag with her would have prevented her from sleeping. After sitting with her for an hour, he became so cold that he was taken
with bouts of shivering and his teeth began to chatter. Having decided that he must return to the fire that he had left burning in the farmhouse, he told Mary why he was leaving her and promised to return once or twice during the night to see that she was all right.

It then occurred to him that if a group of men came to the farm and brought a horse with them, his own horse might neigh and give away the hiding place, so he tied a strip of sacking round his horse's muzzle. After crawling out through the hole, he camouflaged it with some loose logs and more sacking that he had left there for the purpose, then hurried into the house.

He had let the fire there die down, as he had not wanted the light from it to attract possibly unwelcome visitors; but he felt that he must now take that risk, for he judged that the temperature was in the neighbourhood of twenty below and, with no sleeping bag, he feared he might otherwise freeze to death in the night.

Having made up the fire and warmed his chapped hands at it, he pounded up some of the oats he had found in the woodshed and cooked himself a meal of porridge, washing it down with a swig of brandy. Then, for a long time, he sat over the fire wondering for how long he would be able to keep Mary and himself alive. When it became dark outside, he decided to try to get some sleep under the sacking on which Mary had lain while in the house; but first went out to see her. The weather had worsened and on his way to the woodshed he was almost blown off his feet by the driving snow that was piling up in a drift against one side of it. He was thankful to find that Mary was asleep, so remained in the shed for only a few minutes, then fought his way back to his fireside.

He was still arranging the sacking when he caught the sound of voices. The door of the room was hanging on one hinge. A great hand forced it back, and an enormously fat man pushed his way in. Roger judged that before this
human barrel started on the march he must have weighed at least twenty stone, and would still turn the scale at fifteen. The man's features were hardly distinguishable in the firelight, as his heavy eyebrows and beard were so thickly rimed by the frost; but his face was round and looked as if it would normally be cheerful. Stamping his feet to shake the snow off his wraps, he addressed Roger politely in Italian:

‘
Signor
, for the past three hours, my companions and I have been lost and walking round this accursed white wilderness in circles. I know it, for we have passed this place before. Can you tell me, please, where is the road?'

Roger smiled and replied in the same language, ‘It is no more than fifty yards in front of this building.'

The fat man considered for a moment, his eyes on the fire. Then he said, ‘That is good, but all the same I think I and my men will stay here for the night. I am Sergeant Giuseppe Balderino, of the Second Mantua Regiment.'

Giving a nod of agreement, Roger replied, ‘You are welcome, Sergeant.' Then he put into operation a plan that he had formed to win the goodwill of any soldiers who might arrive and take the place over, by adding, ‘I am in the fortunate situation of being able to offer you a meal.'

Balderino's dark eyebrows shot up, ‘But,
Signor
, this is most unexpected, most generous. You are a Prince. My men and I are your servants.' Then he turned and shouted through the half-open doorway, ‘Come in! Come in! The good St. Anthony of Padua has led us here. Be not deceived by the looks of this place. In reality it is a palace. We are invited to dine here, and our host can be no lesser person than the magician Cagliostro, for he conjured up food in a land where there is none.'

Roger had realised that his single horse could not possibly carry Mary, the sack of oats, a bale of hay and all
their other things, so he had decided to give half the sack of oats to any soldiers who might come to the farm.

The Italians stumbled in. They were grateful and garrulous, politely shaking Roger by the hand before crowding round the fire to thaw out their clothes, which were frozen stiff. With them they had some onions, a piece of pork and four pig's trotters. Adding these to the pounded oats they made a savoury stew that they sucked down with delight, followed by much belching.