The Sultan's Daughter (38 page)

Roger drew his pay to date, had Marbois pack his few belongings, arranged for an escort and at four o'clock went to Bourrienne's office. The
Chief de Cabinet
greeted him with a smile, then said enviously:

‘My compliments,
mon vieux
. After such outrageous behaviour you should by now be Trooper Breuc and sweating in some fatigue party. Instead you've won the boon of leaving
this devilish country. In a few weeks you'll be back in our beloved France.'

Roger grinned at him. ‘Better to be born lucky than rich.'

‘Luck alone is not enough. One must have the brains to use it. And you are as clever a devil as ever wore a pair of field-boots.'

‘Nay. It's our little man who is clever. He saw on the instant that to dismiss me would be only cutting off his nose to spite his face. Have you any personal commissions that I can carry out for you?'

Bourrienne nodded and produced three letters. ‘Here are the despatches for Talleyrand and Brother Joseph. The third is for my wife, if you would be so kind.'

‘With pleasure.' Roger pocketed the three flimsies. He had asked for the letters to be on thin paper only because it would look well to do so, for he had no intention of going to France and delivering, them. But he was determined to have Bour-rienne's letter forwarded somehow. He then took leave of his friend, left the building and set out on his journey.

The first stage was uneventful and he reached Alexandria early on the morning of November 2nd. Leaving his escort there, with orders to start back to Cairo on the following day, he rode straight on to Sarodopulous's villa, arriving in time to join the banker and his nephew for breakfast.

Over the meal Roger told them that he had been ordered to return to France and intended to pass the blockade by posing as an Englishman. He then asked their help in securing a passage in any merchant ship shortly sailing westward and in acquiring an outfit of civilian clothes. The banker willingly promised to arrange matters and said how pleased he would be to have Roger as his guest while he was waiting for a ship.

Roger spent a lazy day at the villa recovering from the fatigue of his journey. After the siesta hour handsome young Achilles Sarodopulous returned, accompanied by a trader with a collection of European clothes. Only second-hand garments were available and it was an odd assortment. However, there were items among them good enough for a passenger who did not wish to appear ostentatious and Madame
Sarodopulous said she would have those selected by Roger disinfected by baking them in the fierce sunshine.

That evening when the banker got home he told Roger that, as the war had seriously interfered with merchant shipping, he had provisionally booked a passage for him in a local grain boat which was leaving for Crete in four days' time. It was in this way that Roger had sailed from Egypt the previous year on his return from India, and he felt confident that he would have no difficulty at Candia in picking up a neutral ship sailing for one of the Italian ports; so he asked his host to confirm the booking.

After dinner they had a long talk about international affairs. The big news, that had not yet filtered through to Cairo, was that the Sultan had declared war on France over a month ago. This caused Roger to smile wryly, for, had Bonaparte known of it, he would certainly never have sacrificed one of his aides-de-camp to the Turkish Pasha. But, on balance, Roger felt he had no cause for regret that the news had not reached Cairo earlier. Although he had lost his beautiful Zanthé, he was finished with deserts, sunburn, snakes, mosquitoes and the danger of being knifed in the street one night on his way home.

Continuing, Sarodopulous told him that, at long last, towards the end of August, a French force under General Humbert had landed in Ireland to give the malcontents there a stiffening of regular troops. Believing the French to be in much greater numbers than they were, the United Irish had again risen. But Humbert had barely a thousand men; so the Marquis of Cornwallis, who had been sent to take command in Ireland, had soon routed the rebels and forced the small French contingent to surrender.

The French had now gained control over all but the more mountainous parts of Switzerland. In those districts bands of peasants were still fighting to the death to defend their liberties and religion. The terrorist Director Rewbell had sent his brother-in-law, Rapinat, as Chief Commissioner to the newly formed Helvetic Republic and, by massacres, rapine and burning churches filled with men, women and children, this unspeakable brute was endeavouring to crush all resistance.

The same ghastly scenes were being enacted in Piedmont.
Backed by the French, a rabble from Genoa had invaded the king of Sardinia's mainland territories. Behind them as they advanced they left a chain of village churches in flames, with their pastors and congregations locked inside them.

In Bonaparte's pet creation, the Cisalpine Republic, everything had fallen into hopeless disorder. Owing to his wholesale looting of the treasuries of the cities the finances were in a state of chaos. General Brune had succeeded Berthier there and could keep the people down only by overawing them with displays of force. The pay of his troops was months in arrears; so he had to turn a blind eye to the beating, torturing and murdering of Italians by his officers and men, in an effort to extract money from them. Throughout all Italy everything connected with France had become a symbol for hatred and it was reported that the masses were only awaiting a signal from some bold hand to rise and slit the throat of every French robber in the peninsula.

On November 6th, having enjoyed four days of blissful relaxation, Roger took leave of his good Greek friends. After clearing the port of Alexandria the grain ship, by arrangement between Sarodopulous and her Captain, dropped round into the bay and Roger went off to her in a dhow. An hour later she was challenged by a British sloop-of-war and boarded by a small party, commanded by a Midshipman.

As the grain ship traded regularly to Crete, returning with cargoes of olive oil, the vessel was searched only perfunctorily. Roger, when questioned, said his name was Robert MacElfic, that he had represented a firm of Scottish merchants in Alexandria and that the French occupation had ruined his firm's trade with Egypt; so he had decided to return home. His mother had been a MacElfic and had always retained something of her Highland accent; so he had never had difficulty in imitating it. He soon convinced the ‘Middy' of his
bona fides
.

Roger knew, from his previous voyage, that the food and accommodation in a grain ship would be very primitive; so he had brought with him a supply of provisions. Philosophically, he resigned himself to possibly a week or more of considerable discomfort; but the weather and winds proved
favourable, the crossing took only five days and he landed at Candia on the 11th.

He had decided on Naples as the next stage in his journey, as it had now become the principal British naval base in the Mediterranean. He was certain that there he would be able to find a ship to carry him home, and it was home that he meant to go. Even Admiral Nelson, he felt, could not now consider him unpatriotic for deciding to give up his dangerous role as a secret agent. It would have been pointless to remain in Egypt as a cavalry officer. As it was he had come away with two further despatches from Bonaparte which, having read them within a few hours of receiving them, he knew would prove of considerable value. Moreover, he was in a position to give a far more detailed account of the French Army's situation and resources in Egypt than the British Government could possibly receive from other agents.

In the squalid little Turkish-ruled town of Candia he had to wait six days before he could get a passage to Naples, and then it was on a Turkish brigantine manned by Greek sailors. Again he took aboard a store of provisions, but they ran out long before he reached his destination. After leaving Crete the ship sailed smoothly up the Greek coast for four days, but on the fifth she was hit by one of the fierce storms that are apt to arise suddenly in the Mediterranean during winter. The Greeks, being good sailors, handled the brigantine well in the circumstances, but she lost her foremast and, despite all their efforts, was driven right off her course far up into the Adriatic.

Roger, as usual in bad weather, was wretchedly ill and spent three days of utter misery, unable to keep down even a few mouthfuls of biscuit. The thought of returning to England via Gibraltar, and probably having to endure another such prolonged nightmare while crossing the Bay of Biscay in December, caused him to alter his plans. He decided that he would instead travel up Italy and go home by way of France. With this in view, he asked the Captain to land him at Bari.

To his intense annoyance, the Captain refused to oblige him. Neither could he be bribed by a sum which Roger felt was as large as he was prepared to offer, since he could go
home overland from Naples as easily as from Bari. He would now be losing only a little time, and time was now of no great importance to him.

Better weather came again, enabling the brigantine to beat round the heel of Italy and up through the Straits of Messina to Naples, where Roger landed on Monday, December 3rd.

In September, '95, he had been sent by Mr. Pitt on a mission to the Prince de Condé, who commanded the Royalist Army, and to General Pichegru, who commanded the Republican Army, both of which were on the Rhine. It was then that he had decided to assume a third identity as a nonexistent nephew of his mother's, for which he took the name of Robert MacElfic; for he feared that, if he went to de Condé as Roger Brook and to Pichegru as Citizen Representative Breuc, his two identities might become linked. Previous to that mission, while crossing the Atlantic, he had let his beard grow; so to fit himself for the part he had retained, this slight alteration to his appearance.

The situation in Naples would, he knew, be very different from what it was when he had last visited the city early in the autumn of '89. Then, the doctrines of the French Revolution and Bonaparte's descent on a land of peace and plenty had not disrupted life throughout the peninsula. Now, although the Court of Naples was fanatically anti-French, many of the nobility and a large part of the bourgeoisie were said to hold strongly Republican views. Numbers of them would have travelled in France; besides which it was certain that the French Embassy would be employing scores of secret agents in the city. Thus Naples had become another no man's land in which Brook might be linked with Breuc, and it was this which had decided Roger again to become MacElfic. Since leaving Egypt he had, therefore, again allowed his beard to grow; so after four weeks his cheeks and chin were now covered with short, crisp, slightly curly, brown hair.

On landing, he secured a
carozza
and told the driver to take him to Crocielle's Hotel. They had hardly set off along the waterfront before he saw that all the buildings were decorated with flags; so he called up to the man, asking the reason for this gay display. Turning on his box the driver replied cheerfully:

‘Have you not heard, signor? We are celebrating our victory over those pigs the French. Tidings arrived yesterday that our good King Ferdinand entered Rome in triumph four days ago.'

This was surprising news indeed to Roger and he was even more surprised when he learned that the Neapolitan Army had invaded the Roman States only six days before it had captured Rome. Either the Italians must have shown most unusual dash or the French had suddenly gone to pieces.

At the hotel Roger learned further particulars of this new war that had broken out only while he was being desperately seasick in the Adriatic. Britain was said to be supporting it enthusiastically and Nelson was the hero of the hour. He had sailed on November 22nd—the day before war had been declared—for Leghorn, with five thousand Neapolitan troops on board, to support the Grand Duke of Tuscany, a nephew of the Queen of Naples, in an attempt to throw the French out of his dominions. Austria, on the other hand, having only a defensive alliance with the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies—of which Naples was the capital—had not yet come in, although the Emperor—another nephew and also son-in-law of the Queen—had sent on loan his veteran General Mack to command the Neapolitan Army.

While eating the first enjoyable meal he had had for a month, Roger considered this entirely new situation which suddenly appeared to threaten the dominance of the French in Italy. He would have been delighted by it had he not had distinct misgivings about the outcome.

Admittedly the French forces were stretched to the limit, garrisoning Holland, Belgium, the ex-German provinces west of the Rhine, Switzerland, all northern and central Italy, Corsica, Corfu, Majorca and Malta, in addition to which their greatest General and finest regiments were marooned in Egypt. But, even so, how could a second-class Power like the Two Sicilies possibly hope, unsupported by any other nation, to defeat the mighty Republic?

It was, too, only in recent years that the Sicilies had ranked even as a second-class Power. The kingdom was theoretically a fief of Spain. The Bourbon King of Spain, Philip V, had given it to his second son, Carlos, and had won the goodwill
of the Neapolitans by a promise that the two crowns should never be united. In 1759. Carlos had succeeded his father as King of Spain, so had resigned Naples and Sicily to his son, the present King Ferdinand, who was then only eight years of age.

During the boy's minority a Tuscan Minister, Bernardo Tenucci, had ruled in his name at the dictation of the Court of Spain; but at the age of seventeen Ferdinand was married to Caroline, the eldest daughter of the Empress Maria-Theresa of Austria, and from that moment the influence of Spain had begun to wane.

The young couple could hardly have been more ill-matched. Ferdinand was a boisterous, easy-going fellow, with no interests other than outdoor pursuits. What very little brain he possessed had been criminally restricted in its development by Tenucci, who had seen to it that his education should be rudimentary so that when he grew up he would be incapable of interfering in politics. Caroline, on the other hand, had an ungovernable temper, was well educated, religious and inordinately ambitious.