The Spy's Reward (16 page)

He watched her disappear back into the house. Then he walked slowly back to the barn. The candle still burned in its rocky holder; he left it there. In another hour it would be nothing but a melted puddle of wax, a puzzle for Durry or one of his sons the next time they repaired the wall.

17

What was the proper behavior the next day for a sensible woman of high moral standards who had disgraced herself the night before? She had no idea. The travelers were, for all intents and purposes, confined to the farmhouse. It would have been far less awkward had they been able to continue on their way. Abigail and Diana would have been in a carriage again, isolated from Meyer except for the brief halts, and the journey would have offered some distraction from her situation. But everyone except the patient himself had agreed that Roth should rest for at least another day.

She tried for Diana's sake to pretend that nothing had happened, but she understood now what Anthony Roth must have felt like the day after the beating. Her bruises were not physical, but they were numerous and painful, and the effect was very similar. She moved stiffly; she had no appetite; she could not focus on anything for more than a few minutes at a time. For someone who liked pretending and disguises Meyer did not seem to be making much of an effort either. He barely spoke to anyone and when he smiled in response to something the younger Durry boy said there was a bleak twist at the side of his mouth. By the end of the day Diana was giving Abigail constant, worried glances; and when Abigail and Meyer were in the same room Diana and Anthony took on the frightened, too-cheerful manner of children whose parents have been quarreling.

To his credit, Meyer did his best to avoid Abigail, and she was grateful. Every time she caught even a glimpse of him (which, admittedly, was as infrequently as both could manage it) she would feel her heart begin to pound, and a jellylike quiver would lodge itself in her stomach. She was not sure whether these were symptoms of embarrassment, or terror, or desire. Or all of them combined.

Even in his absence she found it difficult to maintain her equilibrium. The smallest incident would precipitate another round of memory and self-recrimination. In the morning, for example, she had put on her cap as usual. But when she glanced in the mirror her face had looked so wistful and vulnerable that she had hastily tucked every single strand of hair out of sight. A minute later she had pulled them out again, furious at herself. At the midday meal Madame Durry triumphantly produced a plate of the same pungent, leaf-wrapped cheeses Abigail had been offered in Pont-Haut. Evidently they were a local specialty. The smell immediately took her back to the terrifying wait in the guard station; she managed one taste, then choked out some feeble excuse and fled. Two hours later she ventured outdoors for some fresh air only to see Meyer over by the infamous stone wall, releasing two pigeons. She hastily retreated before he could see her.

Towards sunset she was beginning to feel a little calmer, but then Meyer came in and asked his nephew if he could have a word with him in private. Roth had been so much better by lunchtime that he had been allowed to get up, and as he went off with Meyer he smiled cheerfully. When he came back, he looked sick again, and he avoided Abigail's eye all during supper. She could guess what had happened: Meyer had decided Roth was finally well enough to be told about the events of last night. Meyer himself did not reappear. Since the house was not very large, she could only conclude that he had once again taken refuge in the barn.

Very late in the evening, Rodrigo brought her a note—or rather two notes: a terse one from Meyer and a much longer one from Raoul Doucet. The Frenchman sent his most profound respects to M. Meyer and his eternal devotion to Mme. Hart. In view of the illness of M. Roth he had been obliged to forego the pleasure of escorting them to Grenoble himself this morning. Instead he had made arrangements for them to travel tomorrow with the rear guard of the emperor's army. They should be prepared to leave at a very early hour. Meyer's note was one sentence:
I forward the enclosed from M. Doucet.

Was this Meyer's idea of a joke? She thrust the note into Rodrigo's hands. “Have you read this?” she demanded.

“No, señora.”

“Please do so. And tell me whether he is serious.”

Expressionless, he scanned it, then handed it back. “I believe he is quite in earnest.”

“Is he in the barn?”

He looked alarmed. “Yes, but—”

Without even bothering to fetch her cloak, she strode out of the house and burst into the barn.

He was sitting on a bench, his dark head bowed, studying his clasped hands. On the floor by his feet sat the empty crate which had held the pigeons; there were a few feathers caught in the slats on one side.
“¿Lo ha leído? ¿Qué dijo?”
he asked without looking up.

“I do not speak Spanish,” she said.

He straightened up, shocked, and slowly got to his feet. His eyes were very dark, and for a minute she thought he had been drinking. But no, they were clear. At least she was not the only one still feeling awkward about what had happened last night; he was obviously ill at ease.

She held up Doucet's letter. “What is the meaning of this?”

“I am afraid that it means exactly what it says.”

“You are seriously proposing that Diana and I should travel with Napoleon's army? The very army we have been fleeing for the past five days? Or rather,” she amended bitterly, “the army I
believed
we were fleeing, while you, in fact, did everything in your power to keep us nearby.”

“I am not proposing anything,” he said. “Monsieur Doucet is proposing. It is only for one day; once you reach Grenoble, you will be at liberty to continue on in any direction you please.”

“This is because of you,” she said, her voice shaking. “Because of you and that bridge. Isn't it?”

“Yes,” he said. He looked away.

“And if I refuse?”

His voice was very quiet. “I do not advise it. You will, in fact, be safer under the army's protection than you would be on your own. Masséna is racing up from the south with a corps of royalist volunteers. They will be here by tomorrow afternoon.”

She sank down onto the bench. “So we are trapped between Napoleon's army and an opposing army?”

“No,” he corrected. “You are trapped between Napoleon's army and a loosely organized gang of Bonaparte-haters. The former are disciplined veterans under the command of men like Cambronne—who, by the way, has personally guaranteed your safety. The latter are little better than an armed mob.”

“We could not stay here for a few days? In the farmhouse?” She heard a pleading note in her own voice and forced herself back to a cold tone. “By we, of course, I mean Diana and myself. You and Mr. Roth are welcome to do as you see fit.”

“I have no options. I gave Doucet my word that I would remain under military supervision until we reach Grenoble. You and Miss Hart, however, could choose to ignore that letter. As could my nephew.”

“But you do not advise it.” She mimicked his phrasing savagely.

“No.”

“You will forgive me if I am inclined to seek another opinion.”

She stalked off to find Madame Durry. But her hostess only endorsed Meyer's recommendation emphatically. Abigail could not tell whether her expressions of confidence in Napoleon's officers were genuine or whether the Frenchwoman spoke from fear of what might happen to her farm if Abigail failed to cooperate with the soldiers.

Roth was equally unhelpful, although from a different point of view. Anthony raged against his uncle; the man was a ruthless, cold-blooded plotter, no more to be trusted than a snake. He would lie to his own mother. Family loyalty, chivalry, responsibility meant nothing to him. Whatever Meyer proposed was sure to be the worst possible course of action. When she hesitantly mentioned the advancing royalist volunteers, he brushed his uncle's warning aside. He did, however, promise to accompany Diana and Abigail, no matter what Abigail decided to do. It was the least he could do to make up for Meyer's villainy.

In the end, she went back to Rodrigo. She found him cleaning and loading two pairs of pistols. The sight of four guns next to the pan of bread dough on Madame Durry's enormous kitchen table did not seem a good omen.

“Mr. Santos?” He looked up, frowning, and she remembered that he did not use his surname. This flustered her so much that she stammered as she continued. “May I—may I—could I ask you a question?”

He rose, setting down the gun he was holding. “Certainly, señora.”

But she could not even put into words what she wanted to say.
Why did you betray me? Why did
he
betray me? How can I tell my daughter that the man I believed to be her protector has handed her over to fifteen hundred soldiers?

He understood at least part of what she wanted to ask. “It is only one day,” he said. His olive-skinned face held an expression that looked suspiciously like pity. “You and your daughter will be safe; I am sure of it. By tomorrow night we will be in Grenoble. The Roth-Meyer Bank has an exchange office there; they will provide everything we need.”

“The Hart brokerage has an agent in Grenoble as well,” she said. “And you may tell Mr. Meyer that I will be seeking their assistance in returning to England the minute we arrive in the city.”

“You will accept the offer of Señor Doucet, then?”

She hesitated, then nodded, watching his face in spite of herself to see what his reaction to her decision would be. He seemed relieved.

“Please do not worry, señora. You will be under the protection of General Cambronne. He is an honorable man.”

She gave a bitter smile. “That will be a pleasant change from my current circumstances,” she said.

 

 

Rodrigo watched her leave. She was holding herself so stiffly he wondered how she could breathe properly. He went back to cleaning one of the pistols, but after a few minutes he sighed, put it down, and went out to the barn. It was empty. So was the farmyard. But as he was scanning the other outbuildings, he caught a flash of light from the trees at the foot of the slope behind the barn. It bobbed gently up and down inter-mittantly, and as Rodrigo drew closer he saw that the light came from a lantern that had been suspended from a low-hanging tree branch next to a stream.

Beneath the lantern Meyer was kneeling, scooping white crystals from a heap on a piece of oilcloth into a burlap sack. At the edges of the heap, where the damp had reached the crystals, large sections were crusted together in sharp-edged chunks. His hands were bleeding slightly.

“Saltpeter?” Rodrigo asked.

Meyer did not answer or even look up.

“Señora Hart has agreed to accept the escort of Napoleon's guard.”

That elicited a slight nod.

Rodrigo edged nervously around the side of the oilcloth. “I could have done this, señor.”

Meyer turned then. “Sometimes a man has to tidy up after himself. Even a wealthy man with loyal and well-trained servants.” He went back to shoveling the saltpeter into the bag. When the heap was nothing more than scattered flecks on the oilcloth, he carefully swept the last remnants into the center of the cloth and then folded it into a neat square. “You can take the lantern. And the butter paddle and mallet,” he told Rodrigo as he picked up the sack and cloth. Rodrigo saw the wooden implements propped against a nearby tree. They were damp, and the flat blade of the paddle looked as though it had been scoured with something abrasive.

They walked back up the hill in silence.

Meyer stowed the oilcloth in the saddlebag of his horse and set the sack in the corner of the barn. He grimaced when he looked at the stained paddle in Rodrigo's hands. “Best leave a silver coin with it when you put it back in the churn. Madame Durry may require a new one.”

“Yes, some things are not so easy to clean,” Rodrigo said, eyeing the yellow and black grime in the cracks of the wood.

“True of more than that paddle.” Meyer hung the lantern back on its hook. “Do you remember what you told me last night? That because I was unable to choose between the bridge and Mrs. Hart I would likely end up with neither?”

Rodrigo remembered. He had hoped Meyer would not. “Perhaps the situation is not hopeless, señor,” he said. “At the moment Señora Hart is very upset, of course, but in time—”

Meyer cut him off. “She came out to speak with me last night,” he said. “She let me kiss her. More than let me, in fact. Then she told me she despised me.”

“Well then,” Rodrigo said, brightening, “if she kissed you—”

He was interrupted again. “Wrong order,” his employer informed him. “Denunciation first, embrace second is the one you want. Embrace followed by denunciation is a very bad sign. I will wager a large sum that Mrs. Hart will not even speak to me tomorrow. And that the minute we reach Grenoble she will seek out some means of returning to England that does not involve me or anyone remotely connected to me. Unless, like my nephew, they have renounced me and all my evil works.”

Rodrigo thought this a very safe bet. It was time for a change of subject. “Speaking of Master Anthony—he seems much better,” he offered tentatively.

“Yes.” Meyer said. “He also despises me, of course. But since he didn't kiss me first his scorn is not quite as damning.”

18

The journey to Grenoble was accomplished in the most luxurious manner imaginable. Abigail, Diana, and Roth were first conveyed in a gig from the farm out to the main road. There a large barouche awaited them, fitted with every convenience: rugs, lanterns, heated footrests, cushions, a basketful of things to eat and drink, even a small bottle of cologne. The vehicle had two coachmen and a footman, all in livery, and was escorted by a troop of twenty men. Abigail gathered that the entire ensemble—coach, servants, and fittings—had been appropriated from a local count by Doucet and sequestered for their use. Diana had looked around wide-eyed after they had been settled in the carriage and whispered to her mother, “What do you suppose people will think when they see us go by?” Abigail knew perfectly well what they would think. They would think the women inside were the mistresses of some high-ranking officers. As a result, Abigail decreed that Diana was to sit in the middle, between Roth and herself. At least that way the speculation would be directed at her rather than at her innocent daughter. At every village crossroads, it seemed, there were people gathered to watch them pass, many waving
tricouleurs
, and Abigail felt as though all the females over the age of sixteen were eyeing her with the same disapproving, speculative stare. It was ironic that after nine years of conducting herself with rigid propriety, now, within a space of forty-eight hours, she had first been taken for the mistress of a British spy and then a French general.

Among the soldiers accompanying them was a very handsome version of her friend Marcel from Pont-Haut, a Lieutenant Franconnin, who rode up to the carriage every so often to announce some new cause for the ladies not to be alarmed. Diana thought he was amusing and flirted with him outrageously. Abigail, who found the bulletins increasingly ominous (“the ladies should not be alarmed if they hear cannon fire”), was not entertained. The carriage stopped frequently for no apparent reason, and although Franconnin explained this as due to the slow progress of the foot soldiers in front of them, Abigail could see that he was growing more and more nervous as the day went on.

At around two in the afternoon, they stopped for the sixth or seventh time—Abigail had lost count—and she waited impatiently for the lieutenant to appear and offer his usual excuses. This time she would tell him that she knew perfectly well how fast Napoleon's troops could march; she had been traveling ahead of them for nearly a week. And if she, a female, could be walking twice as fast as this carriage was traveling right now, then surely troops who had marched over the Col Bayard in one day could not be the cause of the delay. After ten minutes, she decided that she would also insist that Franconnin permit the three passengers to leave the carriage and walk around. So far that had been expressly forbidden at all the stops save one. After twenty minutes, she opened the door herself, in spite of the lieutenant's prohibition. A young trooper stationed outside quickly closed it again, with a hoarse request for the ladies to wait patiently inside, where they would be safe. Safe from what? She looked out her window. All she could see were trees.

“Mr. Roth?”

He turned away from his own window. He, too, was growing impatient and worried, she saw.

“Would you mind seeing if you can discover why we have stopped?”

“Not at all,” he said courteously. He opened the door on his side and stepped out quickly before one of the guards could close it. A heated argument immediately ensued; three or four soldiers converged on Roth and did everything short of lifting him bodily back into the carriage. She could not follow the beginning of the exchange, but Roth's voice grew louder and sharper as the discussion continued. When he shouted, “I demand to see Monsieur Meyer!” she had no trouble hearing him at all. A minute later he climbed back into the carriage, looking very angry.

“What is it?” asked Diana, scrambling hastily away from the window back into the center of the seat.

“They won't tell me a thing,” said Roth. “And when I tried to move to the side so that I could see what was in front of us, they blocked my path. All I can tell you is that we are quite alone here; there are no soldiers at all nearby save those who are guarding our carriage. The rest of the column seems to have disappeared entirely.”

Earlier Abigail had seen the troops formed up ahead of them, on the one occasion when they had been allowed to leave the vehicle. They were marching in ranks of four in deference to the narrow width of the road, and the line of men stretched out for at least half a mile.

“I sent for my uncle,” Roth added after a minute. He looked uncomfortable.

“Yes, I heard you.” Her voice sounded very far away in her own ears.

“I asked for the lieutenant first, of course, but he did not seem to be available.”

Diana was anxiously looking back and forth from Roth to Abigail. Having failed to persuade her mother to confide in her last night, she had made several attempts to get answers from Roth this morning. But for once even Diana's persuasive charm had failed. Roth had merely turned red and stammered something about a misunderstanding.

Now Abigail saw a familiar tall figure striding through the trees. To her disgust, the troopers seemed in awe of Meyer; one approached timidly and after a brief exchange escorted him over to the carriage. At Meyer's gesture, the door was opened and Roth was permitted to get out. The two men moved away; Abigail could not see their faces or hear anything that was said, but she saw Roth stiffen. After a few minutes he returned to the carriage.

“You may get out, if you wish,” he said.

Diana was scrambling over to the door as he spoke. Abigail followed more slowly, glancing nervously at the troopers. But they seemed to be taking their cue from Meyer. She felt a surge of bitter resentment at the sight of the cowed soldiers. She and Diana had been virtual prisoners in their carriage for eight hours, while Meyer, an enemy spy, was giving orders to men who should have been his captors.

“Why have we stopped here? What did you learn?” Abigail asked anxiously as Roth handed her out.

“There are royalist troops blocking the road about a mile ahead,” he answered. “But my uncle says there is no cause for alarm.” He added this last very hastily when he saw Abigail's horrified expression.

“No cause for alarm,” she repeated in a flat voice. It seemed lately that everyone in France was eager to assure her there was no cause for alarm.

Diana, who knew that particular tone very well, seized her arm. “Mother!” she cried. “Don't! Just wait here!”

Abigail shook her off. “Where is Mr. Meyer?” She walked away from the coach and turned, scanning her surroundings. They were on a large hill, she saw. The carriage had been driven slightly off the road, at a level spot shaded by pines. Just ahead, the road sloped down through the thinning trees and disappeared, and at the very edge of the trees a group of soldiers was standing. She thought she recognized several members of the patrol that had been escorting the carriage. She definitely recognized the figure standing to one side. He was holding a field glass and scanning something farther down the hill.

She started running down the road; when one of the soldiers hurried after her, protesting, he shrank back at the fierce expression on her face. The sound of trumpets echoed faintly upwards from the valley below, and she ran even faster. By the time she reached Meyer she was panting and had one hand pressed to her side.

He turned slightly as she came up beside him. “Mrs. Hart.” He touched his hat and then went back to studying the scene below. After a minute, as though he had only then understood why she might be there, he said, “You need not be frightened. You are perfectly safe.” His voice was oddly distant and impersonal, like the trumpets.

She looked down into the valley. Where the road passed into a narrow plain between a hill and a lake, two masses of men were confronting each other. One group stood across the road facing south, their ranks forming a solid wall between the hillside and the water's edge. The other group, Napoleon's men, was marching forward in their groups of four and forming up into new lines of twenty. After three lines of twenty had formed, they would shift to the side, moving so precisely that it looked as though the square was a single organism. Mounted men rode up and down in front of both armies, calling out orders.

“How can you tell me not to be frightened?” she demanded wildly. “They are about to fight!”

“No.” He smiled briefly, as though something had amused him. “There will be no battle. You and Miss Hart need not worry.”

Pointing down at the valley, she asked, still breathing hard, “What is that, then?”

“Theater,” he said, adding after a moment, “I am not sure whether it is tragedy or comedy.”

“Who are the soldiers across the road, then? Are they not the king's troops?”

“In theory, yes. That is a battalion from an old and distinguished infantry regiment, however. They are very different from the royalist volunteers Masséna is bringing up from the south. At least half of the men down there—and virtually all of their sergeants and corporals—are veterans.”

“You mean that they fought previously under Napoleon,” she said slowly. “That they are loyal to him rather than to their present commander.”

“Watch,” he said, handing her the glass.

But she did not need the glass. There was no doubt who the small figure was who had detached himself from the neatly formed squares of the advancing army. There was no doubt what it meant when he marched forward alone and stood facing his enemies with arms spread wide, inviting them to fire straight at his chest.

“My God,” Meyer breathed beside her. “He is magnificent. A magnificent monster.”

A great roar swelled up from the plain below; the opposing troops had fallen to their knees, stretching out their hands to their former general. The roar solidified into a chant, the chant of thousands of men, beating rhythmically against the hillside. Now both armies were chanting, and men were breaking ranks and embracing each other in the middle of the plain.

“What are they shouting?” she asked.

“Surely it is somewhat premature to hail him once again as emperor?”

“Is it?” He gestured towards the mingled armies. “Your escort has just doubled in size. There is another royalist battalion waiting for us closer to Grenoble. They, too, will defect and join him. By the time we reach the city his army will be four thousand strong. When news of this encounter spreads, more regiments will defect. Six days ago he had fifteen hundred men. By tomorrow night he may have fifteen thousand. By the end of the month, one hundred fifty thousand.”

No wonder Meyer had been willing to risk so much to destroy the bridge at Pont-Haut. For the first time she wondered uneasily whether there might not in fact be two sides to the story of Nathan Meyer, ruthless betrayer of innocent females.

The tiny human figures below were beginning to reassemble themselves into marching units. With an imperious lift of his hand Meyer summoned one of the French troopers still hovering nearby. “We will be getting under way again any moment,” he said to her. “You should return to the carriage.” He did not offer to accompany her himself.

“Will I see you in Grenoble?” she found herself asking.

“I think not.”

She nodded slowly, then turned and left. She looked back only once. He was still standing in the same spot, staring down at the valley and the long line of men that had been, only a few minutes ago, two opposing armies.

For the next six hours, as they bumped towards Grenoble, she looked out the window at the boisterous soldiers and cheering crowds of villagers and saw instead the solitary figure on the hillside.
How he must hate me,
she thought.

 

 

Meyer left Grenoble that same night, but not without exercising his authority as a part owner of the Roth-Meyer Bank to drag the head of their affiliated office out of his house at eleven at night to take care of certain practical matters. Then he summoned Rodrigo. “I am dismissing you,” he said curtly.

The Spaniard did not seem surprised.

“You will go immediately and find Mr. Roth. Inform him that you have left my service. You will accompany him—and any companions—to London.” He handed Rodrigo a purse and a sealed packet. “A draft on the bank; two sets of false papers, plus your real papers.”

“Master Anthony will be very suspicious,” his servant objected.

“If you do not remember to call him Mr. Roth, he will sack you immediately,” Meyer pointed out. He tossed the two clean shirts he had commandeered from his fellow banker an hour earlier into his saddlebags. “He might be suspicious, but he will be too grateful to ask many questions. If he refuses to employ you—although I doubt that he will—you will follow him unobtrusively and make certain that all goes smoothly.”

“And where will you be?”

“Riding as fast as I can towards the coast.” He checked his pistols and slipped them into his coat pocket. “Every hour I am in France is another hour's worth of information I am not allowed to pass on to Whitehall.”

Rodrigo raised his eyebrows. “Another one of Doucet's ideas? Ransoming Señora Hart seems to have been very expensive. Although I am sure she was very grateful to be rescued.”

“She slapped me across the face and called me a coward,” Meyer said. Oddly, it did not trouble him to remember that. What still made him wince was the next part, where she had collapsed in tears. He felt as though he had inadvertently seen her naked.

“As you know, the señora has been very friendly to me,” Rodrigo said cautiously. “Perhaps I could ask her whether she still finds you—”