The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware (7 page)

BOOK: The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware
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‘I protest, Sire! I have ever served you well, and in this matter have done so yet again. Since you rightly pride yourself upon your sense of justice, you must hear me out.'

‘Speak then, but be brief.'

‘Your Majesty may recall that, while at Erfurt, you gave me leave so that I might pay a visit to Schloss Langenstein. While I was there, Prince Metternich came one day to luncheon. Afterwards, I chanced to overhear a brief conversation between the Prince and the Baron, which led me to believe that the latter was secretly an enemy of France. With the intention of endeavouring to verify my suspicions, I went on another visit to the Schloss in mid-September. On my second night there, when everyone had retired, I stole along to the Baron's cabinet and
went through his papers. Among them I found a letter incriminating him up to the hilt.

‘I must now reveal to you the truth about my wife. She turned out to be a most evil woman. The black infant she gave birth to while we were at Erfurt was not the result of rape, but of her having given herself willingly while in Brazil to a Negro slave. Although I would admit this to no-one but yourself, on her return to Europe she
trompéd
me with numerous men, among them von Haugwitz.

‘The Baron's cabinet was adjacent to his bedroom. She had been in there with him, but came out to return to her own room just as I was abstracting this incriminating letter from his files. I attempted to stifle her cries before she could bring her lover on the scene, but failed. Among her crimes was the appalling one that, in my presence, she had knifed her own father in the back and killed him. Knowing her ferocity, and that I stood little chance of overcoming both her and von Haugwitz, if they attacked me together, I struck her senseless. Next moment, the Baron was upon me. Fortunately, he had been drinking heavily. One blow to the jaw and he fell senseless to the floor.'

‘What then was I to do with their two unconscious bodies? By ancient right, the Baron maintained in the Schloss a small bodyguard under the orders of his steward, Big Karl. When they learned what I had done, they would certainly have killed me. The only possible course was to hide the bodies and tell Big Karl in the morning that the two of them had gone out early to see the vintagers at work, then make off as swiftly as I could, with the Baroness.

‘For that they had to be kept quiet until we had got well away. Had I gagged them they might have suffocated; so I found some laudanum in a medicine cupboard and drugged them both. Then I carried their bodies
down to the
weinstube
and lowered them to the bottom of one of the big wine presses, feeling confident that they would not be found there, but regain consciousness by midday.

‘The Baroness and I succeeded in escaping to Coblenz. It was not until forty-eight hours later that we learned that I had drugged them too heavily, and they had been crushed to death under a load of grapes.'

With set face the Emperor had listened to Roger's account. Now he burst out, ‘Liar! Liar! Liar! I know of old your ability to invent specious excuses for your doings. 'Tis a tissue of lies from start to finish. I'd wager a million francs that you could not produce that letter.'

‘Then you would lose your wager, Sire,' Roger retorted sharply, and he took the letter from his pocket, adding, ‘It is from the
Freiherr
von Stein.'

‘What! That recalcitrant German cur!' Napoleon ex-claimed. ‘Give it me! Give it me!' And he snatched the parchment.

Swiftly he ran his eye over it. Seeing it was in German, he read it through twice, until he had fully grasped its contents. Then he threw it on the floor and stamped upon it, cursing furiously.

‘May hell take these
Deutschlanders
. The trouble the swine give me is endless. I make a treaty with their King and
crapauds
like Stein have the insolence to set the people against it. Von Haugwitz's friends will raise two thousand men, will they? This is conspiracy. It will not be war but rebellion. I'll hang every one of them. I'll line the banks of the Rhine with their dangling corpses.'

Roger gave an inward sigh of relief. Unless matters now took some unforeseen twist, Talleyrand's trick had worked. Two minutes later, his new optimism was confirmed. Recovering his temper, Napoleon said:

‘Clearly, it was your life or that of this scum. Since he was a traitor, he had already forfeited it. By your action
you did no more than anticipate the sentence of a Court. As for your wife, she was a most ravishing creature; but, from what you tell me, a positive demon in human form. In attacking you as she did, she brought her death upon herself. You are well rid of her.'

Roger bowed. ‘I thank Your Majesty for your renewed confidence in me. I am, however, still troubled by one possibility. Seeing that Baron Ulrich was own brother to the Chief Minister of Prussia, the Prussians may make an issue of it, and request you to hand me over to them. Even should they not, I'd still be in danger should you at some future time send me on a mission into Germany.'

‘Have no fears on that score. I will send an instruction to the Prussian Ambassador, Baron von Brockhausen. I'll say that he is to inform his Government that I am averse to any further investigation into the Schloss Langenstein affair; and that any proceedings being taken against you are to be quashed.'

‘I thank you, Sire. And now I have a request to make. This last business has placed a considerable strain upon me, and you know of old that my weak chest requires that I spend as much as possible of the winter in the sunshine. I pray you allow me leave to proceed to the South of France.'

The Emperor stared at him in surprise. ‘But ‘tis scarce yet October. And you have already been away from me for too long. Unlike the majority of my
beaux sabreurs
, you are a well-educated man and have brains in your head. I've found you useful to me in a thousand ways. No, no! A week or so before Christmas will be time enough for you to go nurse your health. Now that a peace with Austria is as good as concluded, I'll be sending an army south to put an end to this Spanish nonsense. You have often assisted the Prince of Neuchâtel to work out troop movements. Report to him tomorrow morning. And now,
au revoir
.'

It had been worth trying for immediate leave, although Roger had thought it unlikely that he would get it. And there could be no arguing about the matter. Drawing himself to attention, he made his three bows and backed out of the room, only too thankful to be still a free man.

As an A.D.C. of the Emperor, he was entitled at any time to take a horse, and mounts were always being walked up and down outside the Palace, in case one was required by a courier carrying an urgent despatch. As the swiftest means of rejoining Georgina, Roger took a chestnut from the nearest groom, then imperilled the lives of several pedestrians on his way back to
La Belle Etoile
.

Georgina's joy knew no bounds when she learned that they no longer had anything to fear, except the not very likely possibility of her being recognised and denounced as formerly English. But it was a danger that had to be guarded against, and Roger said to her:

‘As you know, Napoleon believes me to suffer from a weak chest, so grants me leave to spend a part of most winters at my little château at St. Maxime. It is while I am supposed to be there that I have often made my secret trips to England; and, for a moment, I hoped that by again practising this deception I could get you home. But as it is still autumn, the Emperor would have none of it. I must remain here on duty, but I am anxious to have you out of Paris, and I think I have hit on a means of doing so. Now I must wait on Talleyrand, and thank him for what he has done for me.'

‘Oh, Roger,' she protested. ‘Must we part so soon? I would as lief remain here with you; and the chances of my being recognised would be virtually nil if I spent all my time up here in one room. That I will do most willingly for the joy of our being able to spend our nights together.'

He smiled down on her. ‘I pray you be patient, dear
love. Give me an hour or two and maybe I'll have a way by which we may both eat our cake yet keep it.'

Hastening to the Rue du Bac, he enquired for the Prince. Talleyrand was at home and, after a short delay, received him. Greeting Roger with a happy smile, he said:

‘
Mon vieux
, congratulations. The fact that you are still free tells me that our ruse succeeded.'

‘Indeed it did,' Roger laughed, ‘and I am once more eternally your debtor.' Then he gave an account of his audience with Napoleon. When he had done, he added:

‘And now I have to ask Your Highness yet another favour. That is, if you still have your
petite maison
out at Passy. Should my fair lady remain in Paris, there is the risk that she may run into someone who knew her as the Countess of St. Ermins. But, could we for a while make that charming house our refuge, out there she would be in no danger.'

Talleyrand waved a beruffled hand. ‘
Cher ami
, you are most welcome to do so. By occupying it for me during a great part of the Terror, you prevented the house from being confiscated and its contents looted by some mob. Ever since I have regarded the place as being as much yours as mine. I wish you and your charmer a very happy sojourn there.'

A quarter of an hour later, Roger was again on his way back to Georgina. When he told her of this solution to their problem, and that they could look forward to several weeks in a charming love-nest, she could hardly contain her delight.

As Georgina's predictions had previously always proved well founded, they were puzzled that, in this case, her vision seen in the crystal was no longer a cause for apprehension. Having talked it over, they came to the conclusion that, in this case, she must have gone backward, instead of forward, in time, and seen him when,
some years previously, he had been imprisoned in England and the prison chaplain had, at times, visited him in his cell.

That evening, after a last glass of wine with the Blanchards, they drove out in a hired coach to Passy: an outlying suburb of Paris that lay in the direction of St. Cloud.

Passy was a pretty village of farms and attractive little houses in which, in pre-Revolution days, nobles used to keep ballerinas and the ladies of the Comédie Française. In those times Talleyrand had been far from rich and had made one of the houses his home. There, at his buffet parties, Roger had met many men who were later to become famous: Mirabeau, Louis de Narbonne, Mathieu de Montmorency, among them, and heard them talk enthusiastically of the Liberal Revolution by which they planned to bring democracy to the French people.

The little house was looked after by a couple named Velot. During the Terror, Roger had paid their wages and, in those dark days when food was scarce and expensive, seen to it that they lacked for nothing. In consequence, they had become devoted to him, and looked after his welfare as though he were a cherished son.

The Velots were old now, but they received Roger and Georgina with surprise and joy. Madame Velot killed a chicken, and got out her most treasured preserves for their supper; while her husband lit a fire in the best bedroom and filled warming pans for the big bed. An hour and a half later, the two life-long lovers lay in it, naked, embraced and without a care in the world.

5
The Imperial Divorce

Next morning Roger duly reported to Marshal Berthier, Prince de Neuchâtel. The only virtue of this ugly little man, whose head was too big for his body, and who made himself ridiculous by wearing fantastic uniforms of his own design, was that, in all history, no soldier had ever equalled him as an efficient Chief of Staff. His great, top-heavy head was packed with facts and figures. He could, from day to day, give the effective strength of every division in the Army, and the position of every unit. He could plan the movement of vast masses of troops across hundreds of miles of country, without their jamming the roads or running short of food and ammunition. At the criticial stage of a campaign, he was capable of going without sleep for several days on end. As he was habitually rude and dictatorial to the other Marshals, all of whom were junior to him, he was far from popular. But, knowing Roger to be a level-headed and competent assistant, he greeted him with a fair show of politeness.

The following day the Emperor set off for Vienna, as usual travelling at great speed, with frequent relays of picked horses. As he was not going on a campaign, he left Berthier behind him, to plan the transfer from Austria of the divisions that had been earmarked for Spain. This meant for Roger many hours spent working out endless calculations; but he managed to find time to pay his respects
to such members of the Imperial Family as were in Paris.

First he waited on Josephine. On one occasion she had saved his life, and on another saved him from imprisonment; while on two occasions he had saved her marriage, so they were very close friends and, in private, she always treated him without ceremony. As he felt certain that by now she must know that she was to be divorced, he had dreaded her raising the subject, but she made no mention of it. On the other hand, as Lisala had been one of Josephine's ladies-in-waiting, before his departure Napoleon had told her about the affair at Schloss Langenstein, so she made him give her a full account of it. When he had done so, she said:

‘What ill fortune for you that you should have married such a terrible woman. Of course, I greatly admired her beauty; but there was something about those big, widely-spaced eyes she had that made me vaguely distrustful of her. I am so glad that you are now free, and hope that you may soon find another wife more worthy of you.'

His next call was on
Madame Mère
. Napoleon's mother was a tall, gaunt, once-handsome woman, deeply religious, and parsimonious from the belief that her great son's Empire might not last; so that one day he and her other children would need the money she saved out of the huge income he gave her. She had great courage, despised all pomp, was very shrewd, but of limited intelligence and lived only for her family. Many people dreaded her sharp tongue, but she had always treated Roger pleasantly.

BOOK: The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware
12.86Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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