The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware Page 9
‘No doubt you’ll enjoy this. It’s a true Frenchie brew made of acorns, as prescribed for us all now by your pig of an Emperor.’
Roger made no reply, and he knew it would be futile to report the man, as it was quite certain no action would be taken against him for insulting the sovereign of France. He thought it probable that the warder’s attitude incficated the way in which most Germans now regarded Napoleon; and it boded no good for him as a Frenchman in one of their prisons.
Next morning he was taken to an office and formally charged with the wilful murder of his wife and Hen Baron Ulrich von Haugwitz. Afterwards he was searched. He had already surrendered his sword; now a small dagger he always carried, his money belt and the jewels he was wearing were taken from him. Back in his cell, he congratulated himself on having had the forethought the previous night to conceal between his stockings and the soles of his feet six gold pieces; but, in the worst event, they were nowhere near the sum needed to bribe anyone to help him to escape.
The twelve days that followed seemed interminable to him. The food was edible, but of poor quality. The malicious warder evidently put a little salt into the water he brought, which rendered it impossible to drink, so Roger was reduced to falling back on the filthy acorn coffee; which caused him in turn to curse the Emperor and his Continental System. He asked for books and news sheets and was brought a few, but found the German script so difficult to read that he soon gave up the attempt. In vain he tried to persuade himself that Napoleon could not fail to bring about his release. But Paris was a long way off and the Emperor might have suddenly set off on one of his long journeys to Spain, Italy or Austria. Again, some accident might befall the courier who had been sent to Paris, or von Haugwitz be so set on vengeance as to risk his own future by refusing the Emperor’s request for the warrant to be withdrawn.
His fears proved only too well founded. On June 13th, a young man named Menou, who was on the staff of the French Embassy, came to see him. Having expressed the Ambassador’s regrets, he reported that no message regarding Roger had been received from the Emperor, although ample time had now elapsed for one to do so; and that Roger’s trial had been fixed for two days hence.
To outward appearances, Roger took this bad news calmly, but, although he had been endeavouring to prepare himself for such a blow, his heart lurched and seemed to sink to his boots. Having thanked the young man, he asked that a good lawyer should be provided to defend him; to which Menou replied that one had already been instructed and would come to see him on the following day. There being no more to be said, he then bowed himself away.
Next morning the lawyer arrived. He proved to be a tired-faced, elderly man, named Johan Peffer. The fact that he was a German filled Roger with fury and further dismay. As a distinguished French officer he felt that he was entitled to some consideration. He had expected de Brinevillers to enquire after his well-being while in prison, perhaps send him a gift of books and wine; and, at the very least, come in person to break the bad news of the Emperor’s failure to respond. But the Ambassador had done none of thse things. And now, by failing to send a French advocate to undertake the defence, he had shown a callous indifference to Roger’s fate that was hard to credit.
But time was short, for the trial was to take place the next day, so there was no longer time left to secure another lawyer. All Roger could do was to repeat to the crop-headed Prussian what he had said about the tragedy at Schloss Langenstein when he had declared his innocence at the French Embassy. Herr Peffer made copious notes, asked a few pointless questions, gloomily advised pleading ‘guilty’—which Roger flatly refused to do—then glumly took his departure.
At the trial the next day, no senior representative of the French Embassy was present, only young Monsieur Menou. But the trial having been postponed for a fortnight, in order that a courier could be sent to Paris, had cut two ways. It had given ample time for the prosecution to bring a number of witnesses from the Rhineland; so there were several other faces that Roger recognised—among them the Baron’s steward, Big Karl, and the coachman whom Roger had forced into driving himself and Georgina to Coblenz.
The evidence by the servants that Roger had been the lover of their mistress and, despite their attempts to prevent him, carried her off, was incontestible. And it would have been useless for him to defend his action by stating that he had learned of a plot to murder them both, which was being hatched by his own wife and the Baron, since he had not a tittle of evidence to support it.
But worse was to come. It emerged that, on the discovery of the bodies, the Baron’s doctor had been sent for. He now gave evidence that, having examined them, he was of the opinion that they had both had a powerful drug administered to them. That, Roger needed no telling, was a fact. His object in going to Schloss Langenstein had been to save Georgina from the threat of being murdered by her husband. Knowing that it would prove difficult to get her away, he had bought the drug before leaving Vienna, against the possibility that he might have to drug a powerful watch-dog.
The Baron’s valet followed the doctor and testified to having found the empty bottle that had contained the drug, on the floor of his master’s room. The bottle was then produced.
Next, a quietly-dressed, elderly man, whose face Roger vaguely recognised, went into the box. When he gave his name before taking the oath, he also stated that he was an Austrian subject. To Roger’s utter consternation, he suddenly realised that the man was the apothecary from whom he had bought the drug. Evidence was then given that, the name of the apothecary being on the bottle, he had been questioned in Vienna. Now he identified Roger as the man to whom he had sold it.
That proved the coup de grâce. No-one in the court any longer had the least doubt about Roger’s guilt. He was sentenced to be executed one week from that day.
8
Resurgent Germany
Back in his cell, Roger endeavoured to accept calmly the evil fate that had befallen him. Rack his brains as he would, he could think of no way by which he might attempt to save himself. The factor which rendered him so helpless was his complete isolation. Had he been in a similar situation in Paris or London there would have been a score of influential friends on whom he could have called for aid. By belatedly admitting the truth—that he had drugged his wife and the Baron, but had expected them to regain consciousness within a few hours—he might have secured a revision of sentence to a term of imprisonment for culpable homicide. But here, in Berlin, he had not a single friend he could call upon to have his case reviewed by a high legal authority. On the contrary, as a Frenchman, every hand was against him.
Yet a lifetime in which he had many times feared his death to be imminent had conditioned Roger never to leave any step untaken that, however slender the chance, might place him in a more favourable situation. So that evening, he asked for paper, ink, a pen, and sand and wrote letters to both de Brinevillers and Davout.
In both letters he confessed that he had been responsible for the deaths of which he had been accused, but maintained that the thought of murder had never even entered his head. He then swallowed his pride, wrote of his many years’ service to the Emperor, which His Imperial Majesty had recognised by making him a Colonel, one of his A.D.C.s, a Count and a Commander of the Legion of Honour, and pleaded that, as fellow Frenchmen, they should exert themselves at least to save his life.
But, having secured a promise from one of the senior warders that the letters would reach their destinations, he had little hope that his desperate appeal would move either the haughty, ci-devant Marquis, who had already displayed his indifference, or the hard-hearted Marshal, who had long resented having failed to have Roger brought to book as a deserter.
He could assume that his letters would reach de Brinevillers within a few hours, and Davout in Hamburg in two days’ time. So an acknowledgment of that to the Ambassador might reach him the next day, and that to the Marshal well before the end of the week. But the terrible days dragged slowly by without his recei
ving a reply from either.
On June 21st, his week would be up. On the morning of the 20th he was taken from the cell he had occupied for three weeks to the condemned cell. At midday, the prison chaplain, a Lutheran pastor, came to see him, and asked if he could assist him to make his peace with God. Roger politely declined the offer, upon which the German, assuming Roger to be a Roman Catholic, said that he would endeavour to get for him the services of a priest. That offer Roger also declined, so, after expressing his sympathy for the prisoner and urging him to face death with fortitude, the chaplain withdrew.
In the afternoon Roger again asked for writing materials and wrote a letter to Georgina, in which he declared their lifelong love to be the greatest blessing ever granted to him. He went on to say how distressed he was that, now she had at long last promised to marry him, that could not come to pass. But that since, from their youth onward, such a close bond had been established between their spirits and as they had always agreed when talking of reincarnation, in which they both believed, he had no shadow of doubt that, in future lives, they would again become devoted lovers.
Before ending his letter with blessings upon her, her son Charles and his daughter Susan, whom he knew she would continue to mother as though she were her own child, he inserted a paragraph which ran:
I pray you do not again ever have doubts about the occult powers with which you have been endowed. You will recall that in Paris, when you gazed into your crystal, we decided that the vision you saw was a step back in time, and that you were seeing me during the months I was a prisoner at Guildford. But that was not so. You saw me here in this cell for the condemned, talking with the Lutheran pastor, who came to see me at midday.
When he had finished his letter to Georgina, he wrote another to his oldest friend, Lord Edward Fitz-Deverel, who was known to his friends as ‘Droopy Ned’. Having recounted to Droopy how he had at last come to the end of his tether, he asked that, should anything befall Georgina, he would take care of Susan, and gave him a power of attorney to administer the estate she would inherit.
He addressed the two letters, then enclosed them in an outer envelope that contained a note to Bourrienne. Feeling sure that his old friend must know a great deal about the smuggling activities that took place in Hamburg, he asked that his letters to Georgina and Droopy should be sent to England by a safe hand; and he had no doubt that his request would be granted.
When the warder came with Roger’s evening meal, he took the letters and, now showing some compassion for a man who was about to die, readily agreed to pass them on to the Governor of the prison for despatch.
To occupy his mind during this last evening of his life, Roger, lying in his narrow bed, set about recalling many of the perils he had survived and the enjoyment he had derived from the love of a number of beautiful women of most diverse character.
At length his thoughts diverted from the grim fact that at dawn he was to be led out and shot, he dozed off. But soon after midnight he was roused by the opening of his cell door and the light from a lantern carried by his warder.
Behind the warder was the prison Governor. Smiling at Roger he said, ‘Monsieur le Comte, it is my pleasant duty to inform you that you have been reprieved. Here is a letter that, I understand, will inform you of the reason for your good fortune.’
Thunderstruck, and hardly able to believe that he was not dreaming, Roger stammered his thanks, took the letter and, when the Governor had withdrawn, opened and read it. It was from Davout; a hasty note scrawled without prefix, and ran:
On my return from an inspection, I received your letter, and was greatly surprised to learn that His Imperial Majesty had not responded to your appeal which, I understood, de Brinevillers was sending to him. As a Frenchman dedicated to the service of our great Emperor, and knowing that you once, when in Venice, saved his life, I could not find it in me to allow matters to take their course. I therefore took it upon myself to exert great pressure upon King Frederick William. In consequence, His Majesty has agreed to commute your sentence to ten years’ imprisonment.
Ten years! From sudden wild elation, Roger’s spirits swiftly sank. Such a sentence was appalling to contemplate. He would be over fifty before he was released and by then such zest for life as remained to him would be for ever gone. The thought of the discomfort and poor prison fare were bad enough, but the prospect of month after month dragging by, without change of scene or activity, was even worse.
From his boyhood on he had led a fuller life than any of his contemporaries he could think of. He had travelled in nearly every country in Europe, visited Egypt, Persia, the West Indies, Zanzibar, India and Brazil; crossed the Channel clandestinely a score of times, ridden many thousands of miles, been present at the battles of the Nile, Marengo, Eylau, Austerlitz and numerous other conflicts, and had personally transacted affairs of state with Kings and Ministers. Moreover, while he was too fastidious to be promiscuous, several of the most beautiful women he had ever set eyes on had become his mistresses.
A future in which he was confined by the grey walls of a prison would, he knew, be for him a living death; and he almost wished that instead he was to face a firing squad within a few hours. But, after a while, his old resilience to misfortune returned. He had escaped from prison on several previous occasions; so, given patience, he might succeed in doing so again.
On re-reading Davout’s letter, he saw that it provided a possible explanation for a thing that had greatly puzzled him. He had never for one moment believed that, if informed of his situation, the Emperor would abandon him to his enemies; particularly to the Prussians, whom he loathed and had often contemptuously referred to as ‘a miserable, semi-barbarian people’. It was evident that Davout had expected de Brinevillers to send a courier to Napoleon and, indeed, it was the Ambassador’s, not the Marshal’s business, to have done so. It now looked as though, either from spite or idleness, de Brinevillers had failed to carry out his promise; and Roger determined if he could regain his freedom, to call the haughty, ci-devant Marquis to account.
Next morning he was required to part with his uniform and put on a suit of convict’s clothes. He was then taken in a prison van to another prison on the outskirts of Berlin. There, after being entered on the register, he was given a somewhat better cell than that he had been occupying, and his dreary round as a long-term prisoner began.
The food was sufficient, but monotonous and unpalatable. As a noble, he was not made to work, and allowed paper, writing materials and a limited number of books, with which to while away the hours. Twice a day he was taken down to an inner courtyard for exercise with a number of the prisoners. While they marched round and round in single file, they talked to one another in whispers; but they had soon learned through the prison ‘grapevine’ that Roger was a Frenchman, so they promply sent him to Coventry, condemning him to an isolation that he found hard to bear.
Even so, by overhearing their low-voiced exchanges, he was able to pick up a certain amount of information; and in July was saddened by a piece of news that distressed them all. Queen Louisa of Prussia had died.
She had been a beautiful and gallant lady, and the idol of her nation, filling the need of her subjects for a truly patriotic figurehead, in which her cowardly husband had so lamentably failed. Roger had been presented to her at the Conference of Erfurt, and recalled how bravely, but vainly, she had striven to persuade Napoleon to return the great fortress of Magdeburg to Prussia, and lighten the terrible burden of taxation under which her people groaned.
Early in August he heard of another event, that filled his German fellow prisoners with fury and apprehension In a brilliantly-executed coup, Davout had taken over Hanover without a shot being fired, and that country had become part of the French Empire. As Davout commanded not only in Hanover, but also the French garrisons in all the major fortresses in north Germany, the Prussians naturally feared that Napoleon’s next move would be to dethrone their King, and that they, too, would be deprived of even the shadow
of independence.
During these weeks, Roger had studied with the utmost care the prison routine and the precautions taken to prevent prisoners from escaping. To his great disappointment he found that in this respect the Prussians were much more thorough than the people of most other nations, so that, apart from the remote possibility of some unexpected happening, there seemed no likelihood of his regaining his freedom. He was still further depressed by his belief that, given the co-operation of a group of his fellow prisoners, he might possibly have organised a mass break-out; but their antagonism toward him put that out of the question.
However, Hanover having become a French province overnight had resulted in a new wave of unrest in Prussia. In every town, crowds singing patriotic songs marched through the streets and demonstrated outside the town halls. In several places troops mutinied and manifestos were reaching the King and his Ministers daily, urging them to throw off the French yoke.
Although Frederick William was the most unwarlike of Kings, he was an intelligent and liberal-minded man. Before the French invasion, the common people had groaned under a serfdom similar to that in Russia; but defeat had brought to the nations benefits previously undreamed of. Stein, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Shon, von Hardenberg and others of the King’s advisers had urged upon him that the only way to put fresh heart into the nation was by sweeping reforms; and he had agreed.
Serfdom had been abolished, the ownership of land—previously restricted to the upper classes—was made available to all, centralisation was replaced by local government, and a great programme for increasing education entered upon.
For the first time a university was established in Berlin, and others were given large grants which enabled them to increase their student bodies greatly. And now it was the students who were the mainspring of the anti-French agitation. Incited by the writings of Stein, Fichte, Steffens, von Humboldt and many more, they were demanding with patriotic frenzy that their country should no longer remain subservient to the hated Emperor. Since his victory he had milked Prussia of over six hundred million francs, and his Continental System was leading to the bankruptcy of hundreds of merchants. A secret society for the liberation of Prussia, named the Tugenbund, had been formed, and was joined enthusiastically by members of all classes.