Evil in a Mask rb-9 Read online

  At length he had accepted that; so, on their return to Eng­land after Trafalgar, he had not again pressed her. But he had expected to be a frequent warmly-welcomed visitor at her lovely home, Stillwaters, near Ripley, where they had so often known great happiness together.

  Alas for his expectations. The unpredictable and impetu­ous Georgina had suddenly become serious. Just as at one time she had declared herself to be utterly weary of balls, routs and a score of beaux constantly begging her to sleep with them—and, overnight, had metamorphosed herself into a model wife interested only in country pursuits—so now she announced that everyone owed a debt to the Navy that had saved England from the horrors of invasion, and that she in­tended to pay hers.

  Her plan was to buy a big house near Portsmouth and con­vert it into a convalescent home to accommodate from fifty to a hundred seamen. She would engage a doctor and a staff of nurses and herself become the matron. Under her super­vision relays of these poor, wounded heroes should be nursed back to health and strength and taught some trade that would later enable them to earn a wage in civil life sufficient to sup­port them.

  Roger had heartily applauded her idea, for in those days Britain's treatment of men invalided from the Services on account of serious wounds was a scandal that cried to heaven. No sooner were they able to walk on crutches or, still half-blind, able to make their way about, than they were put out of the hospitals near-penniless, to fend for themselves. Thou­sands of them now roamed the streets of the cities, begging their bread.

  Georgina's great wealth enabled her without delay to carry out her project. Roger helped her find a suitable mansion, assisted in furnishing it suitably and engaging staff. By Feb­ruary, the first inmates were installed and Georgina, relin­quishing the fortune in jewels, unadorned by which she was normally never to be seen abroad, and exchanging her gay furbelows for more sober attire, had entered enthusiastically on her new role as ministering angel.

  So far, so good. But, as far as Roger was concerned, not for long. Gone were the happy days at Stillwaters when Georgina had entertained, big house parties and Roger had delighted in conversing with her other guests: statesmen, am­bassadors, painters and playwrights; the dinners for fifty with dancing or gambling afterwards until the small hours. Gone, too, were those halcyon midweeks that they had spent alone, dallying in her great bed until nearly midday, and later pic­nicking in a boat on the lovely lake.

  At the convalescent home, life was earnest; the state of its inmates depressing. In vain Roger had endeavoured to recon­cile himself to the role of comforter and adviser as he listened patiently to the stories of the stricken seamen. And Georgina had thrown herself into her part so determinedly that often when night came she was too tired to make love.

  To break the monotony of his wearisome round Roger had made several trips to London. But they, too, proved unsatis­factory. He was a member of White's, but he had lived for so long abroad that he had few friends. More and more he had begun to long for the companionship of those gay paladins with whom he had shared many dangers in Italy, Egypt and across the Rhine.

  In England he was a nobody: just the son of the late Admiral Sir Christopher Brook. In France he was 'le brave Breuc', and A.D.C. to the Emperor, an intimate friend of the Empress Josephine and of all the members of the Bonaparte family. He was one of the very few Colonels to whom, for personal services, Napoleon had given the second rank in his new order of chivalry. Roger ranked as a Commander of the Legion of Honour, and, as a Knight in the new Napoleonic aristocracy, again ranked as le Chevalier de Breuc.

  By May, acute boredom with Georgina's Home and a Lon­don that offered no advancement to him had decided him to return to France.

  In 1800 Roger, sent by Talleyrand as Plenipotentiary Ex­traordinary to England with an offer of peace, had quarrelled bitterly with his master, Pitt, for refusing it. Thenceforth, he had no longer been employed by the British Government, although he had undertaken certain missions for the Prime Minister and aided Britain's cause whenever possible.

  In May 1806 he would have at least gone to Pitt and en­quired if there was any special information about the plans of Britain's enemy that he might secure for him. But in Janu­ary of that year, broken-hearted by the news of Austerlitz and the collapse of the Third Coalition, the great and courage­ous man who, for over twenty years had been the mainstay of resistance to the terrorists of the French Revolution be­coming dominant over all Europe, had died.

  His regime had been succeeded by a so-called 'Ministry of All the Talents'—a coalition led by Charles Fox. The great Whig was one of Georgina's friends, so Roger had often met him at Stillwaters, and found it difficult to resist his personal charm. But the fact remained that Fox had shown ardent sympathy with the French Revolution, and actively advocated England, too, becoming a Republic. For many years he had consistently thwarted and endeavoured to sabotage Pitt's plans for the defeat of Napoleon and, during the brief Peace of 1803, had received and lionised in France. Such treachery Roger could not forgive, and nothing would have induced him to serve under such a master.

  In consequence, with no brief, but believing that he could do neither good nor harm to Britain in Napoleon's Continen­tal wars, Roger had reported back for duty, to be warmly received by the Emperor and his many friends in France.

  Yet now, a prisoner beneath his horse, the cold steadily creeping upon him, he realised how stupid he had been to risk death in one of Napoleon's battles, instead of settling for a safe, if humdrum, life in England.

  His chances of survival were very slender. It was just pos­sible that French stretcher-bearers might come upon him; but they were comparatively few and the casualties in the battle ran to many thousands. There was an equally slender chance that he might be picked up by the Russians; yet it was more probable than either that the vultures of the battlefield would find and kill him.

  All armies in those days were dogged by swarms of camp-followers : women who made a precarious living as whores to the troops, and men who, after every engagement, went out by night to rob the wounded of all they possessed, and even stripped them of their clothes. The still greater likelihood was that he would remain lying there in the snow until he slowly froze to death.

  He seemed to have been hunched beside his mare for many hours, yet it was only a little after midnight when, muffled by the fur hood over his head, he caught the sound of voices. Pushing away one side of the hood, he heard a gruff voice say in French:

  'Here's another. From his fine mount and fur-edged cloak he must be an officer, so he should yield good pickings.'

  In the money belt that he always wore about him Roger had over one hundred louis in gold. To offer it in exchange for his life he knew would be useless. These human vultures would only laugh, kill him and take the money from his dead body. Squirming over, he pulled a pistol from the upper holster of his horse.

  As he moved, he heard the voice exclaim, 'Quick, Jean! This one is still alive. Bash him over the head with your iron bar and send him to join the others we have done well from.'

  His heart beating madly in his chest, Roger turned over. Above him there loomed two tall figures, made grotesquely bulky by furs they had stolen from several dead men on the battlefield. Raising his pistol, he levelled it at the nearer. Offering up a prayer that the powder had not become damp, he pulled the trigger. There came a flash and a loud report that shattered the silence of the night. The man at whom he had aimed gave a choking gasp, sagged at the knees and fell dead in the snow.

  With a furious curse, the other flung himself upon Roger. The pistol was single-barrelled, so he could not fire it again. In spite of his imprisoned leg, he still had the full use of his muscular arms and torso; so he grappled desperately with his attacker, pulling him down upon him.

  The man was strong and ruthless. Seizing Roger by the throat, he endeavoured to strangle him. In such a situation Roger would normally have kneed him in the groin, but he was in no position to do so. Gasping for breath, he used
his hands. Stiffening his fingers, he thrust them violently at his would-be murderer's face. One finger pierced his antagonist's left eye. With a howl of pain, he released his hold on Roger's neck and jerked himself up. Knowing that his life hung in the balance, Roger seized his momentary advantage. His hands fastened on the man's throat. There ensued a ghastly struggle. Thrashing at Roger's face with clenched fists, the human vul­ture strove to free himself. As in a nightmare, Roger knew that his eyes had been blacked, his mouth smashed so that his lips were swelling, and he could taste the salt blood run­ning down from his nose. But, ignoring the pain, he hung on.

  Gradually, the blows he was receiving grew weaker, then ceased. In the dim light reflected from the snow, he could see his attacker's face becoming contused and blackened. His eyes bulged from his head, his tongue jutted out from between his uneven teeth. After what seemed an age, he collapsed, strangled, across Roger's body.

  Groaning and exhausted, Roger feebly pushed his victim from him. Panting from his exertions, he lay there, still a prisoner of the horse that pinned down his leg. By a miracle he had fought off this brutal attempt to murder him. Tem­porarily the violent struggle had warmed him up, but it was as yet early in the night and, with the increasing cold, he had little hope of surviving until morning.

  The Bill is Presented

  One benefit at least that Roger derived from having been attacked by these human vultures was that both were clad in thick furs which they had evidently looted earlier from other casualties on the battlefield. Handicapped though he was by his trapped foot, he managed to wiggle a big, coarse, bear­skin coat off the man he had strangled. The one he had shot lay beyond his reach, but he was able to use the bearskin as extra cover for his body and free leg which, until his desperate fight for life, had gradually been becoming numb with cold.

  After a while his thoughts turned again to Georgina. It was, no doubt, the gipsy blood she had inherited from her mother which enabled her to foretell the future with some accuracy, and form with Roger a strange psychic link which, for his part, he attributed to their complete understanding of each other's mind and mutual life-long devotion. There had been occasions when he had been in acute danger and she many hundred miles away, yet he had clearly heard her voice warn­ing him and telling him how to save himself; and once, when she was nearly drowning in the Caribbean he, in Paris, had fainted and fallen from his horse, later to learn that his spirit had gone to her and imbued her with the strength to swim ashore.

  He wondered now if she was aware of his present desperate plight and would, in some way, aid him. But he did not see how she could, as he had left no means untried to free him­self; and no warning of the approach of human vultures was necessary as long as he could remain awake.

  From Georgina his mind drifted to another lovely woman: the Countess Marie Walewska, Napoleon's latest mistress.

  When Napoleon married Josephine, he had loved her most desperately, whereas she was indifferent to him, and only per­suaded to the match by her ex-lover, the then all-powerful Director, Barras. So indifferent to him was she that she had been flagrantly unfaithful to him with a handsome army con­tractor named Hippolyte Charles, during Napoleon's ab­sence on the Italian campaign. Her husband found out, but was still so much under her spell that he forgave her. No sooner had he set sail for Egypt than Josephine began openly to indulge in further amours. His family loathed her; so, on his return, provided him with chapter and verse about her infidelities, hoping that he would get rid of her. Having, while in Egypt, had a hectic affair with a most charming young woman known as La Bellelotte, he was inclined to do so; but Josephine's children by her first marriage, Eugene and Hor-tense Beauharnais, whom Napoleon loved as though they were his own children, interceded with tears for their mother so effectively that she was again forgiven.

  But thenceforth Napoleon did not scruple to take any woman he desired, and Josephine's tragedy was that, all too late, her indifference to him had turned to love. At intervals, between dozens of the beauties from the Opera and the Comedie Francaise spending a night or two in his bed, there had been more lengthy affairs with Grassini, the Italian singer; Mile Georges, the Nell Gwyn of his seraglio, who truly loved him for himself and kept him in fits of laughter; a gold-digging tragedienne named Therese Bourgoin; the autocratic and in­veterate gambler Madame de Vaudey who was one of Joseph­ine's ladies-in-waiting; then Madame Duchatel, a ravishing blonde with cornflower-blue eyes, who was another of Joseph­ine's ladies.

  By then, the knowledge of Napoleon's infidelities had been causing Josephine to have bouts of weeping and, half-mad with jealousy, she invaded the room where her husband and la Duchatel were disporting themselves. Furiously declaring that he was not as other men, and above petty marital con­ventions, he had driven Josephine from the room.

  Yet he continued to regard her with great affection. He still frequently slept with her and, when he was worried, it was she who read him to sleep. During the Prussian campaign he had missed her dreadfully and frequently wrote to her in the warmest terms, urging her, for his sake, to face the rigours of the northern winter and join him.

  But soon after his arrival in Warsaw the- tune of his letters to Josephine had altered; the gist of them being that the climate would prove too severe for her, so she must remain in Paris.

  The reason for this sudden change of heart was known to all who were in frequent attendance on him. On January ist, when on his way to Warsaw, his coach had been surrounded by an excited crowd, cheering this legendary paladin who, rumour said, was about to restore Poland to her ancient glory. At an inn at which the coach had pulled up, two ladies had begged Duroc, Napoleon's A.D.C.-in-Chief and Marshal of his Camps and Palaces, to permit them to pay homage to the hero. Duroc had courteously agreed, and one of the ladies was the flaxen-haired, blue-eyed, eighteen-year-old Countess Walewska.

  Napoleon, much taken with her, instantly recognised her again when she appeared at a grand ball given in his honour a few nights after he had established himself in the ancient Palace of the Polish Kings. But, from shyness, the young girl had asked to be excused when he invited her to dance. No doubt this had made him more eager to pursue her, which for some days he did, with growing annoyance at her ignoring his letters and refusing him a rendezvous.

  The fact was that Marie Walewska was, although married to a seventy-year-old nobleman, chaste, of a retiring disposi­tion and deeply religious. The thought of taking a lover was abhorrent to her and, although normally Napoleon never took 'No' for an answer, in this case help had to be called in.

  Prince Poniatowski, the head of the movement for Polish liberation, pointed out to her how valuable she could be to her country's cause by becoming the all-powerful Emperor's mistress. Moved to tears as she was by this appeal to her known patriotism, she still refused to succumb.

  The affair became the talk of the town; men and women, friends and relations all joined in to badger poor little Marie into giving way for the good of the cause. Driven half out of her wits, she at last agreed to allow Duroc to escort her to Napoleon's apartments. Duroc, who was one of Roger's closest friends, told him afterwards that, although the couple had been closeted together for three hours, Marie had been in tears the whole time and left the room as chaste as she had entered it.

  Utterly exasperated, Napoleon played his last card and sent his brilliant Foreign Minister, Talleyrand, to talk to her. That elegant aristocrat, a bishop under the ancient regime. a Liberal leader during the first Revolution, an exile during the Terror, after Napoleon one of the two most powerful men in France for the past eight years, and not long since created by his master Prince de Benevento, was not only as subtle as a serpent in negotiating treaties, but also a past-master in the art of seducing women. Where all others had failed, he had per­suaded Marie that the gods had blessed her above all other women by enabling her to serve her country and, at the same time, endowing her with the love of the most powerful man on earth.

  Napoleon was invariably kind an
d courteous to women, and extravagantly generous to his mistresses. His gentleness and charm soon won Marie's heart. Their happy association lasted for many years. She was one of the few women that he ever truly loved and, in due course, she gave him a son.

  Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Perigord, a grandson of the Princess dc Chalais, debarred from succeeding his father as Marquis because an ill-cared-for broken ankle, causing him to be lame for life, had disqualified him for the Army, had played a key role in Roger's life.

  At the age of nineteen, Roger had been knocked out and carried unconscious into Talleyrand's house. During his sub­sequent ravings, Talleyrand had learned that his guest was not, as he purported to be, a Frenchman born in Strasbourg who, on his mother's death, had been brought up by her sister in England; but was in fact the son of Lady Marie Brook and a British Admiral. He had kept Roger's secret and, for many years, believed that, as was quite common in those days, Roger was a foreigner who had decided to make his career in an­other country and was completely loyal to it.