Evil in a Mask (31 page)

As they walked slowly round, Roger and his breathtakingly lovely companion found that they could converse quite easily in a mixture of Spanish, Portuguese and French. He learned that her name was Lisala and that, three years earlier, her father had taken her from her convent outside Lisbon to accompany him to Persia. Apart from its extremes of climate, she liked the country and admired its people for their pride in their own civilisation and for placing such a high value on all forms of art. But she found life there monotonous owing to the social limitations.

There were many feasts and jollifications with exciting displays of juggling, horse-racing, wrestling, polo and so on; but the European population of Isfahan consisted only of a handful of merchants and occasional travellers. The Portuguese, Dutch and Russians, alone among the Western nations, had Embassies permanently established there, so she was almost
entirely deprived of the pleasures that a young woman of her age and station had, she felt, a right to expect.

Ingenuously she went on to say, ‘One cannot have a love affair with a Persian, a Turk or an Afghan. Alfonso de Queircoz is mad about me, of course, but I do not find him attractive. Skice Prince Galitzin left the Russian Embassy six months ago, there has not been a man in the whole city whom I should be pleased to have my hand, let alone aught else. That is why this is such a happy day for me. I hope I shall see a lot of you.'

Staggered as he was by her frankness, Roger appreciated the reason for it. At the age she had left Lisbon she would normally have been about to be married off; so by now would probably be the mother of one or more babies, queening it in the highest society, with a dozen handsome beaux seeking her favours. He was fully conscious of his own good looks; but not so vain as to suppose that, in Lisala's unusual situation, she would not have regarded any personable man who came into her life as manna in the desert. He could only render his thanks to the Goddess of Fortune that it was he, and not one of the attractive junior officers of the mission, who had had the luck to save her from breaking her beautiful neck. He had been favoured by a splendid start over all those youngsters who were coming up with the caravan and, in due course, would meet Lisala, and he was determined not to lose it.

Resorting quite unscrupulously to the oldest gambit in the game of love, he pressed her arm gently and said, ‘
Senhorita
, our meeting today was pre-ordained. For a long time past I, too, have suffered from a terrible loneliness. My wife died in childbirth'—which was true enough, although that had happened some twelve years before—'and since then I have come upon no-one who I feel could expunge the memory of her from my mind'—which was a thumping lie. ‘But the moment I looked into your lovely face, it was as though a new sun had risen on the horizon of my life.'

‘Can that be true?' she murmured.

‘Indeed it is,' he assured her; and as he said it he really
meant it. ‘Moreover, although I am attached to this mission, I am not strictly of it. I am an
aide-de-camp
and friend of the Emperor whom I have known intimately for many years; and a Commander of the Legion d'Honneur. I tell you this not out of boastfulness, but simply to let you know that General Gardane has no power to send me off, as he might any of the others, on some special assignment. My time is my own, to do with as I will; so, when we return to Isfahan I shall count myself blessed if you will allow me to see you frequently, and place myself entirely at your service.'

By this time the party had spent an hour wandering round the ruins, marvelling that, over two thousand years ago, an Eastern Monarch should have had architects and craftsmen capable of building him a palace with loftier halls and more spacious staircases than those at Versailles. To have fully explored the whole area, with its avenues of strange beasts and innumerable scenes of Court life in the distant past carved on tall walls, would have taken half a day; but it was already well after nine o'clock, and the sun was climbing swiftly in the blue vault of the heavens. As they had yet to see the Royal Tombs, which lay some four kilometres distant, the Ambassador and the General agreed that it would be as well to set off there without further delay.

Mounting their horses, the party rode for a quarter of an hour along a track below the towering mountain barrier, until they reached the tombs. That of Cyrus the Great was in the form of a seven-step pyramid surmounted by a thirty-foot-high burial chamber; but those of Darius the Great, Xerxes and several of their relatives were man-made caves hewn out of the cliff, their entrance being fifty feet above ground level, so inaccessible. They had elaborately-carved doorways, above which were scenes from the lives of their occupants, and much lower down, other scenes: one of outstanding interest, as it portrayed Darius on a very small horse, but with an enormous head-dress, accepting the surrender of the Roman Emperor Valerian, whose legions he had defeated, kneeling before him.

By ten o'clock, both parties were back at the small house among the trees, where they had first seen one another. The
encampment of tents near it had been brought from Isfahan by the Ambassador, for to have made the journey to Persepolis and back in one day would have placed too great a strain on his ladies, and they had slept there the previous night. One was a fair-sized marquee, to feed and relax in, and he invited the French officers to accept his hospitality there. Extra supplies were bought from the family that occupied the little house near by, and they all settled down to enjoy themselves.

Happily for all concerned, de Pombal had brought a dozen bottles of his own wine. It was rose colour and they all declared it to be delicious. He told them then that it was a special
cuvée
made only from grapes grown in a district near Shiraz, and had a romantic association because it was almost certainly the wine which, centuries before, the poet-astronomer, Omar Khayyám, had praised so highly.

Gardane remarked that he had been surprised to find that, although in the Koran wine was forbidden to Mohammedans, nearly all the nobles he had met in Isfahan drank it freely.

At that de Pombal laughed and replied, ‘For any man who is rich, there is no difficulty about that. He has only to give his doctor a sufficiently handsome bribe to receive in exchange a certificate that drinking wine is essential to his health. All the Shahs have habitually enjoyed wine, and some of them have become confirmed drunkards.

‘The Shah Safe, who reigned in the latter part of the seventeenth century, became so besotted every night while drinking in the company of his favourites that he even forced drink on others who had religious scruples. When his Grand Vizier refused to join in a debauch, he flung a cup of wine in the poor man's face, then ordered him to swallow a decoction of opium—which is not forbidden in the Qur'an—and so reduced him to a gibbering idiot for the amusement of the assembled company.

‘These Persian nobles appear to be highly civilised and are models of politeness but, believe me, they are the most treacherous schemers in the world, and cruel beyond belief. On another occasion this same Shah, on hearing that some young men had become tipsy in public and had made a nuisance
of themselves, sent his police out into the city with orders that they should, on the spot, rip open the belly of every man they found drunk. Even today, should a barber's hand slip while he is shaving the head of some grandee, and he nicks the scalp, he is liable to have his hand cut off at the wrist.

‘They are, too, the most inveterate liars. You may have noticed that, to impress you, they invariably take an oath upon a matter. They will swear by their soul, by their parents, by their beards—which they hold in such high regard that a man can be heavily fined for pulling out a few hairs from another's—even by the Imam Hasein; yet not a word of what they have been saying is the truth.'

Out of politeness to his guests, the Ambassador had been speaking in French, and one of the officers asked, ‘Who, Your Excellency, is the Imam Hasein?'

The Marquis smiled. ‘I forgot that you have come only recently to Persia. Hasein is their most venerated saint. He was the heir of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet and founder of the
Shiah
sect. Having married a Sassanian Princess, he was urged to contest the Caliphate and with a small band of followers advanced on “Mecca. He had been promised the support of the Governor of Kufa, who commanded a much larger force; but the Governor betrayed and attacked him on the plain of Kerbela. Although cut off from water, and suffering from terrible thirst, his little band fought to the death, so he is accounted a martyr. Each year a Passion Play based on this tragedy is enacted in every town throughout Persia, and fanatics gashing themselves with knives and with horse-shoes sewn to their bare skins parade the streets wailing, “Hasein our Lord is dead.” '

After they had refreshed themselves, the ladies and the two Portuguese noblemen retired to their respective tents, while the French, using their tunics for pillows, lay down in the marquee to doze through the great heat of the early afternoon. At five o'clock they all partook of another picnic meal. When they had finished it, camp was struck and the whole party set off back to Shiraz.

Lisala and her aunt rode only the first few miles, then transferred
to a form of carriage common in Persia. It was actually a horse litter, having a narrow body borne on two very large wheels and had shafts both back and front, between which horses were harnessed. As the vehicle was hooded, Roger could no longer continue a delightful conversation he had been having with his newly-found divinity; so he cantered up to the front of the column and joined the Ambassador, Gardane and the black-browed Don Alfonso de Queircoz.

They were talking of the war and, after Roger had been with them for a few minutes, de Pombal remarked, ‘To be honest, I had hoped that His Majesty the Czar would succeed in preventing your Emperor from becoming the master of all northern Europe; but it looks now as if his latest victory may force the Russians to sue for terms.'

Gardane gave him a quick glance. ‘What victory is this of which Your Excellency speaks? I have heard of none.'

‘I had news of it shortly before leaving Isfahan. Another great pitched battle took place at Friedland on June 13th, with most appalling slaughter. ‘Tis reported that both armies lost some twenty-five thousand men, but the Russians had by far the worst of it. Your Emperor was advancing with the object of attacking the main Allied bastion of Königsberg. Instead of retreating on that great fortress, which would have supported his rear, General Bennigsen rashly attempted to intercept the French by throwing a large part of his army across the river Alle, with the result that, after many hours of desperate fighting, they were driven back into it. Great numbers were drowned, and by the following day such Russians as survived had become a mass of fugitives.'

For the officers of the mission this was splendid news, but knowing that Portugal's sympathies lay with the Allies, they hid their elation out of courtesy towards de Pombal, as he went on. ‘One must admire your Emperor, Messieurs, as a truly great General; but I fear his ambitions bode ill for the happiness of the peoples in countries he has not yet conquered. This applies particularly to Portugal, as we still adhere to our ancient treaty with England and have refused to come into line with his Continental System by closing our ports to
British shipping. And if it emerges that he has dealt a fatal blow to the Russians, we must anticipate that he will next turn his attention to the Peninsula.'

An awkward silence followed, then Roger tactfully changed the conversation by asking, ‘Am I right in supposing that Your Excellency is a descendant of Portugal's famous Prime Minister in the past century?'

‘Yes, indeed,' replied the Marquis. ‘I am his grandson. Sebastião José was certainly a remarkable man. Having been a diplomat up to the age of fifty-one, with no previous experience of administration it was an extraordinary feat to take over the posts of Secretary of State for both Foreign Affairs and War, and hold them successfully for twenty-seven years. He was fortunate, of course, in enjoying the complete confidence of his master, King Joseph. That enabled him to reorganise Portuguese education and finance, as well as our Army and Navy. It was his misfortune to have brought upon himself the bitter enmity of the Queen Mother and, after King Joseph's death in 1777, he was exiled from Court. But Portugal honours him today.'

On reaching Shiraz the two parties separated, with cordial expressions of goodwill and the intention of pursuing their acquaintance when they got back to Isfahan. Over supper that evening Roger was much chaffed by his companions about his obvious success with the Ambassador's beautiful daughter; but he could well afford to treat their obvious envy with amusement. He went to bed that night in an almost dreamlike state of bliss at the million-to-one chance in this distant land that had brought him into contact with an exquisite European maiden and enabled him to capture her interest immediately.

Next morning the mission set off on its return journey to Isfahan. Hoping that he might find a despatch awaiting him there, Gardane forced the pace, so they reached the capital late on the night of August 9th. A courier had arrived, bringing further details of the victory at Friedland. As usual in his bulletins, the Emperor greatly minimised the French losses and gave scant praise to his Marshals. But it was clear that
Lannes had once more displayed his brilliant leadership and tenacity, by holding forty thousand Russians at bay for the greater part of the day, with only ten thousand French, until the corps of Mortier, Ney and Victor had come up to his assistance and overwhelmed the enemy.

The despatch also contained the news that on May 20th the great Prussian stronghold of Danzig—which Napoleon, with some foolhardiness, had left in his rear still occupied by a considerable enemy army—had, at last capitulated to Lefebvre, who had been rewarded by the title of Duke of Danzig.