Evil in a Mask (38 page)

‘You were right,
mon cher Colonel
. This is not the hour to indulge in a lengthy conversation, as I have much to do before leaving for Aranjuez, where the Court is now in residence. But I shall greatly look forward to hearing about your travels when I return tomorrow or the day after. Meanwhile you must, of course, be my guest. Return now to your inn and have your belongings sent here. I will tell my First Secretary, Jules Baudin, to look after you during my absence. I will, too, give you the address of a good tailor who will quickly make for you a new uniform appropriate to your rank.'

Roger gladly accepted these offers, then took his leave. As he went out into the autumn sunshine he was thinking of his previous visit to the Spanish capital. That had been seventeen years earlier. He had then been desperately in love with Isabella d'Aranda, the daughter of a former Spanish Prime Minister. He recalled their secret meetings in a garden pavilion in the grounds of her husband's house out at Aranjuez—the Versailles of Madrid—and how Manuel Godoy had aided their plan to get her husband sent to Paris, as a Special Envoy.

In those days Godoy had been only a Lieutenant of the Flemish Guard; but he was already powerful through the influence he exerted as the lover of Queen Maria Luisa. Roger had thought her the ugliest woman he had ever seen, and she had the reputation of being the most lecherous in Europe. Her husband, King Carlos IV, had then been on the throne only for two years. He was a strange individual; his only interests lay in hunting and playing the violin. He never drank wine or coffee, abhorred tobacco, had never had a mistress, and resolutely closed his eyes to his Queen's flagrant infidelities.
For many years he had regarded Godoy as his closest friend, placed absolute trust in his judgment and showered him with honours. In ‘92 he had created him Duke of Alcudia and in ‘95, when Godoy had ignominiously brought to a conclusion the war with France which he had started so reluctantly, given him the title of the Prince of Peace.

As it was Roger's business to be well informed about all the Courts in Europe, he marvelled that Godoy had succeeded in maintaining his influence for so long over the nymphomaniac Queen; since she had summoned scores of other lovers to her bed, and he had been equally unfaithful to her. Quite early in their association he had openly boasted to her of his
affaire
with the beautiful Duchess of Alba; then, when she heaped furious reproaches on him, had given her a beating. He had had two children by the Queen, and taken as his wife the King's young cousin, Maria Thérèsa of Bourbon. Yet, he kept installed in their palace his principal mistress ‘Pepa' Tudo. To his greed and ambition there were no limits. He collected highly-paid offices as other men collected bric-à-brac, and, greatly as he hated the thought of war, he had even suggested to Napoleon that they should dismember Portugal into three parts, one of which should be made into a kingdom for himself. Such was the man who for so many years had held the fate of the Peninsula in his hands.

After the siesta, Roger settled his bill at the inn and had his valise sent to the Embassy, where he made the acquaintance of Jules Baudin, a plump and pleasant man. He then repaired to the tailor. Having chosen the material, he was able, being something of an artist, to draw the type of uniform he wished it to be made up into. He also ordered a smart civilian suit and cloak. The man promised that his assistants should work all night, so that Roger could be fitted the next day, and receive delivery the day after that.

Roger then visited a mercer's, a haberdasher's and a hatter's, in order to replenish his sadly-depleted wardrobe and, finally, bought two stout valises in which to transport his new garments.

That evening at the Embassy he was made aware of the
power the French wielded in Madrid. It seemed that half the nobility in the city had come to pay court to de Beauharnais; as he was absent, they fawned upon Jules Baudin. Napoleon, having looted half Europe of her treasure, could well afford lavish entertainment in his Embassies, so open house was kept, and nearly forty of the callers stayed on to dinner.

Many of them spoke French and Roger had enough Spanish to converse fairly freely with others who did not. He soon found that they showed no restraint in airing their opinions. All of them hated Godoy, yet shared his reluctance to send an army to coerce the Portuguese into breaking off relations with England. They had had their lesson when Spain had last challenged the mighty sea-power. The British Navy had promptly stopped the treasure ships arriving from South America, and it was upon them that the life of Spain depended. The country had suffered acutely, and thousands of people had gone bankrupt. Should the English again take up the cudgels on behalf of Portugal, those terrible times would be repeated.

Several of them mentioned Prince Ferdinand, the Heir Apparent. His loathing for Godoy was so great that, as a means of bringing about the favourite's downfall, he had gone to the length of conspiring against his own father. Godoy had discovered the plot in time, so had saved the throne for King Carlos. The Prince had been arrested and, mean creature that he was, to save himself from permanent imprisonment, had denounced all his associates. Yet, even so, these discontented nobles would have happily accepted his rule rather than have Godoy continue in power.

The general consensus of opinion was that there would be no war; because Godoy, for all his villainy and extortions, had twice saved them from it. By one treaty he had bought non-belligerency for Spain by agreeing to furnish two million francs a month towards Napoleon's war chest. Later, in another treaty, he had agreed to raise the contribution to six million. Therefore, the nobles argued, even if it cost Spain still more, he would somehow wriggle out of sending troops into Portugal.

With few exceptions, Roger thought them a stiff-necked,
bigoted lot, so blinded by their hatred for Godoy that they had lost all sense of reality.

Three days elapsed before the Ambassador returned from Aranjuez, but Roger was not troubled by the delay. Having nearly completed his journey, he now felt that he had a good margin of time in hand before arriving in Lisbon; because de Pombal's party had gone round Arabia and up the Red Sea, so were not likely to reach the Portuguese capital much before mid-November. Meanwhile, he enjoyed strolling about Madrid, and put up with the inanities of the small-minded
hidalgos
who frequented the Embassy.

On the evening of the day that de Beauharnais did get back to Madrid, he and Roger enjoyed a long, private talk. Roger gave a skilfully-edited account of his travels, then they discussed at length the pros and cons of the threat to Portugal. To wind up, the Ambassador said:

‘In spite of all this banging of drums, I think it very unlikely that it will come to war in the Peninsula. If former occasions of a similar nature are anything to go by, it certainly will not. On one such, the Emperor wrote to a predecessor of mine here: “Tell King Carlos that, unless he complies with my demands, he will be the last Bourbon to occupy a throne.” But nothing came of it. Godoy bought him off by offering a greatly-increased subsidy, and the odds are that is what will happen again.'

Roger was not fully convinced. On those previous occasions Napoleon had had bigger fish to fry; so it had suited him to let Spain off the hook, at a price. But now he was not engaged in any great campaign, not a musket was being fired throughout all Europe, and he had a very powerful army at his disposal. Moreover, for the past year and more, he had been concentrating on perfecting his ‘Continental System'. Now that the ports of Denmark and Sweden were closed to British shipping, those of Portugal remained the only leak. It was argued that he would think more than once about sending an army into the desolate and mountainous wastes of Spain, where it would find little to live on. But he had not hesitated to send one into the equally barren snow-covered
lands of Poland. As he went to bed, Roger could only pray, for Lisala's sake that the Ambassador's appreciation of the situation was right.

Resplendent now in the brilliant new uniform the tailor had made for him, he spent another day in Madrid, intending next morning to set out on the road for Lisbon. That evening, on his note of hand as one of the Emperor's people, he drew from Baudin as large a sum in gold as he could without discomfort carry in his money-belt, and shortly afterwards went to bed.

It was an hour after midnight when de Beauharnais suddenly appeared in Roger's bedroom, clad in a chamber robe and clutching a paper in his hand. Roger was just drifting off to sleep. Rousing himself, he exclaimed:

‘What is it, Excellency? What brings you here?'

‘
Mon Colonel
, as you are proceeding to Lisbon, I thought you should know of this without delay,' the Ambassador replied tersely. ‘I have just received a despatch by fast courier. On the 27th of last month a treaty was signed at Fontainebleau. Spain is to join France in a war against Portugal. That country is to be divided into three parts. France takes the central section, the Emperor's puppet the King of Etruria is to receive the north in exchange for his Italian lands, so that they may be merged with the greater territories already under the direct rule of France, and Godoy is to be given the southern section as a kingdom for himself. But more. The Emperor has secretly massed an army of thirty thousand men in the neighbourhood of Bayonne. General Junot is in command. He has already crossed the Pyrenees and his orders are to drive with all possible speed on Lisbon.'

At dawn next morning Roger was to horse. Now that the die had been cast, he felt that he ought to lose no time in getting to Lisbon and finding out the situation there. He knew that Junot would move as fast as the terrain permitted. For him this was not only a matter of pleasing his master. It was a personal affair.

Andoroche Junot, now Duc d'Abrantes, had been one of Napoleon's sergeants when he had been a junior officer of Artillery at the seige of Toulon; then when promoted, Bonaparte had made him his first A.D.C. Later, when the Corsican was living on a shoe-string in Paris, Junot had frequently given him bed and board and lent him money. In view of Napoleon's well-known attribute of never forgetting, and always rewarding old friends, it had surprised everyone that, when he had announced the names of the Generals he had selected to become Marshals of the Empire, he had not included that of Junot. But, when choosing the men he had made Marshals, Napoleon had been influenced by three things. Either, like Bernadotte, they must be kept sweet because they were politically dangerous; or, like Masséna, be rewarded because they had led their troops to victory in great campaigns; or—at least like Davoust and Bessières—shown that they had the qualities needed to command an army in the field.

Poor Junot had none of these qualifications. He was just a brave but not very intelligent soldier; so he had been given the sop of being made a Duke and the Military Governor of Paris. But now, as Roger saw it, in this new campaign, where there could be no opposition from a formidable enemy army,
the Emperor was giving his old friend a chance to win his Marshal's baton. That meant that Junot would drive his troops to the limit, in order to reach Lisbon at the earliest possible moment.

Three days after leaving Madrid, Roger reached Alencan-tares, a few miles short of the Portuguese frontier. At the inn there he again studied his face in a mirror. Side-whiskers, ending in line ‘mutton-chops' graced both cheeks, and a short moustache brushed up at each end gave him the look of a man in the latest fashion; but he was not entirely satisfied that this had sufficiently changed his appearance.

While in Madrid he had bought from an apothecary a bottle of hair dye which, had he used it indiscriminately, could have turned his hair ginger. Adding only a few drops to a basin of water, he proceeded to rinse his hair. To his satisfaction, this resulted in giving his normally brown hair, with its white wings above the ears, just sufficient tint to suggest that either his mother or father had been a red-head.

He then changed into his civilian suit, and went downstairs to eat a dinner, the main course of which was so highly flavoured with garlic that, after a few mouthfuls, he had to abandon it and make do on fruit.

At the frontier next day he presented himself as Mr. Roger Brook, an English gentleman of means travelling for pleasure; and explained his being unattended by saying that a few days earlier his servant had met with an accident, and would rejoin him as soon as he was well enough to leave hospital. At that period many wealthy English ‘milor's' spent a month or more in Portugal during the winter, and were always welcome; so no difficulties were made about Roger's proceeding. On the 10th November, he reached Lisbon and took a room at the
Leão d'ouro
.

That evening, feeling certain that the Foreign Office would know if such a distinguished diplomat as the Marquis de Pombal had returned to Portugal, Roger had himself taken there in a sedan chair, and asked to see someone in the Eastern department. After a prolonged wait, he was taken upstairs and a junior official dealt with his enquiry. De Pombal
had not arrived, and no news of him had been received for several months.

Momentarily Roger was shaken by the awful thought that the ship in which the beautiful Lisala was sailing might have been wrecked or captured by pirates. But he swiftly reassured himself. After all, he had not expected that she would reach Lisbon before him, and during their long voyage her father would have had no means of communicating with the Foreign Minister.

Roger's next visit was to the British Legation. There he learned that the Minister
en poste
was Viscount Strangford. Roger had never met him, but knew him by repute. While still a young man he had made quite a name for himself in the literary world, through translating the poems of Luis de Camoens from the Portuguese. They were of a sentimental nature, well calculated to appeal to the romantic-minded young ladies of that day, so enjoyed a great vogue.