The Spy's Reward (4 page)

By this time Meyer's own carriage had come up. “My vehicle is at your disposal,” he said, indicating the shabby barouche drawn up behind him. “It would easily hold you, your daughter, and your maids; there is no reason for you to wait in the snow while repairs are made. They may take longer than your coachman supposes, and this spot is rather exposed.”

It was a raw day, and the wind was cold. He could see her hesitate, but then she shook her head. “I would not wish to inconvenience you.”

“Hardly an inconvenience. I am not using it at the moment.”

He saw her flush in embarrassment as she realized that the carriage had in fact been hired for herself and her daughter. “Some fresh air will do us all good. Please do not let me keep you, Mr. Meyer.”

That was a dismissal if he had ever heard one. He touched his hat and rode on.

Rodrigo, who had remained behind to help move the second carriage out of the road, caught up to Meyer about ten minutes later. They were just beyond the summit, and both men reined in for a moment, looking down the steep, winding road that led into the cloud-covered valley.

“I checked the brakes, señor.”

“On our carriage?” asked Meyer, surprised. “I thought you did that this morning.”

“On the ladies' carriage.”

“No business of ours.”

Rodrigo opened his mouth to object and then wisely shut it again.

“I don't suppose you also made sure that they had a proper strap to use as a replacement,” Meyer said after a moment.

“They do. And tools. And even a spare wheel rim.”

Meyer grunted. “So that French lieutenant, or captain, or whatever he is, is less of a fool than he looks.”

“Oh no, señor. Your impression was quite accurate. He is a fool. The coachman told me that Mrs. Hart arranges everything.”

“I see.” He nudged his horse back into motion. “Well, they certainly have no need of us.”

“As you say, señor.”

“Mrs. Hart has made that abundantly clear.”

Rodrigo coughed. “The señora did tell me to thank you again.”

They rode on in silence for another five minutes.

“How many rooms are there at the Cheval Blanc?” Meyer asked finally.

“Five, sir. A parlor and four bedchambers.”

“Go on ahead. Book those rooms for Miss Hart and her party, and then find us somewhere else to stay.”

 

 

There was only one other decent hostelry in Barrême, a tiny posting station right on the main road. It had mediocre food, no private parlor, and only one bedroom. The wine was good, but Meyer did not get to enjoy much of it, because the host announced at ten o'clock that he was closing up for the night. When Meyer asked for a bottle to take up to his bedchamber the man looked at him as though he had proposed to host an orgy. Barrême, it was clear, was not a place for those who kept late hours. Meyer, a light sleeper, was therefore somewhat surprised to be awakened in the middle of the night by the unmistakable sound of hoofbeats cantering up to the inn. He wrenched open the casement and looked out onto the road. It was still well before dawn, perhaps an hour or more. There was very little light, certainly not enough for ordinary travelers to feel comfortable riding these mountain roads. And yet here were five riders, approaching the inn at a dangerously fast pace. In the next minute three of the riders had flashed by, still heading north on the road, although their horses were laboring. The other two were beneath his own window, pounding on the door and calling the tavern keeper by name. They sounded drunk. They must be drunk. Surely what they were saying was a jest, a prank. Meyer pulled on his breeches and boots and ran down the stairs, just in time to see the half-dressed innkeeper snatch up a lantern and run headlong out the door, leaving it wide open.

Meyer stood in the doorway for twenty minutes, watching lights gradually go on all over the village, listening to the shouts and catcalls, the anxious female voices, the sound of wagons rumbling onto the street. More riders went by, and one group of men on foot, arguing ferociously with each other as they walked. Rodrigo had come down some time ago with two loaded pistols and was standing next to him. The sky grew lighter and lighter, and still Meyer leaned against the door frame, stunned and horrified. There was another emotion buried beneath the disbelief and the revulsion, but he refused to acknowledge it right then.

The passing groups became less frequent, and the sun was nearly up. Meyer was hazily thinking that he should move, go inside, finish getting dressed, when a lone rider pulled up his horse suddenly and jumped off nearly on top of him. Even half-frozen with shock Meyer had his pistol up instantly, but in the next moment he saw who it was: a short young man with strands of sweat-soaked hair plastered to his forehead and the marks of a pince-nez on each side of his nose. He was breathing hard, and he staggered slightly as he stepped away from the horse.

“Uncle Nathan,” he croaked. “Thank God I spotted you. I've been riding all night, hoping to find you. You've heard the news?”

Meyer nodded. He was so numb that he didn't even think to ask how his nephew Anthony had come to be in France.

“Is there no ostler?” the younger man asked, looking around impatiently.

“He ran off.” Meyer gestured to Rodrigo, who took the horse and led it away.

Anthony limped inside and collapsed into the first chair.

“Something to drink?”

His nephew nodded. “No innkeeper either, I take it?”

Meyer strode over to the low door that led down to the cellar. “He ran off before the ostler did. I'm afraid we'll have to serve ourselves. Just a moment.” He cocked his pistol and blew the lock off the door.

Anthony flinched at the noise. “I thought you could pick locks.”

“I felt like shooting something.” An understatement. He grabbed a lantern and returned a minute later, slightly dusty but triumphant.

“That's not wine,” said his nephew, peering at the bottle. “That's brandy.”

“Not just any brandy, my boy.” He went behind the bar and found two glasses. “A 1785 Armagnac. It isn't every day Napoleon escapes from Elba.”

Anthony took a healthy swig out of the glass Meyer handed him. “What have you heard?”

“Not much. Most people have been running by shouting,
‘Vive l'Empereur!'
He landed yesterday evening?”

“Yes. About an hour before sunset. Landed on the beach, not at Antibes.”

“There's a royal garrison at Antibes, of course he didn't land there. Go on. How many men did he have with him?”

Anthony shook his head. “I've heard every number from fifty to five thousand. More every minute, that's clear enough. That fat Bourbon fool we put on the throne last year is not very popular with his subjects.”

“Rabble joining up will only slow Napoleon down,” muttered Meyer. “He had his personal troops on Elba, over a thousand men, many of them from the Old Guard—they will be with him.” He paced up and down, unable to stand still. Now that the shock and anger were wearing off he felt almost elated. Some part of him had been asleep since Bonaparte's abdication last April. It was coming back to life, and it was starved for action. There was an enemy again; there would be troop movements and supply trains and weapons distributions—numbers, names, places. He itched to collect them and pass them on. Supposing, just supposing, Bonaparte chose to come into the mountains? To come this way? It was not impossible. In fact, it was very likely. “Has he sent out any advance parties? Given any indication of where he is headed?”

Anthony drained his glass and set it carefully on the table. “If he has, they're still well behind me. Never ridden so fast in my life.” He was looking even paler than usual and Meyer suddenly recalled that Anthony was not one of Wellington's young intelligence officers, but the pampered, sedentary heir to a banking fortune.

“When did you last eat?” he demanded.

His nephew's smile had an odd sideways tilt. “Yesterday morning.”

“Go on upstairs and try to get some sleep. I'll see what I can find in the way of food.”

Anthony nodded and limped towards the stairs. “Which room upstairs?”

“There's only one,” Meyer told him. “Not up to the bank's usual standards of accommodation, I apologize.”

“Well, if I owned a cellar full of that brandy, I wouldn't bother about bedchambers either,” Anthony said sleepily. “That stuff is, what, ten guineas a bottle in London? Perhaps we should buy some to take with us.”

He frowned as his nephew disappeared. Eli had mentioned something about Anthony coming to England, and that final comment seemed to confirm it. The last thing Meyer wanted at the moment was a traveling companion, but he might have no choice. At least he was not saddled with Miss Hart and her mother.

4

The first council of war, as Anthony would later call it, was convened at half-past seven on the second of March 1815, in the best (and only) bedchamber of the Auberge de Barrême. It consisted of Anthony Roth, banker, reclining; Rodrigo Santos, manservant, seated; and Nathan Meyer, retired spy, standing. Or rather, not standing. He was pacing back and forth so quickly the floor vibrated beneath his feet.

“Would you mind sitting down?” Anthony was propped up in bed, somewhat cleaner than he had been two hours earlier, eating a poached egg that his uncle had managed to produce in the inn's kitchen. “You're making me dizzy.”

“That's the brandy,” said Meyer callously. “And there is only one chair. Which I have given to Rodrigo, since he has already ridden out twice this morning to see what he could discover.”

“Is there any more news?” Anthony had been asleep during both of Rodrigo's expeditions.

“Yes. No.” His uncle waved towards a piece of paper on the table, which called on all brave Frenchmen to rise against the puppet king installed by the tyrannical British. “A handwritten copy of the proclamation issued last night after Napoleon's landing. They had it at the bakery. What they did not have was bread, and that is a very bad sign. When the bakers of France are not baking, the entire fabric of the nation has collapsed.” He stalked over to the window again. “Obviously, I should do
something.
But what? Wellington is in Vienna, should I head east? Or west, to the royalist troops stationed near Avignon? Perhaps I should get down to the coast and sail back to England. I need more information, and all I have is this damned proclamation.”

“Nearest bank courier is in Nice,” muttered Anthony. “A day's ride there, and a day's ride back. What about the French military semaphore stations? Isn't there one at Toulon?”

“They cannot use the semaphores at night,” Meyer reminded him. “Or when there is fog.” He nodded towards the gray mizzle outside the window.

Rodrigo pushed himself up out of the chair. “I will ride south, señor, at least as far as Senez. The news is all coming from the south; the closer we are to events the more likely we are to have an accurate report.”

“No, I'll go.” Meyer was shrugging on his coat. “You've been out enough. Get yourself something to eat, lie down.”

“It is much safer for a Spanish servant to make enquiries right now than for an English master,” Rodrigo objected. “The royalists and the Bonapartists are agreed on only one thing: if something bad is happening, it is England's fault.”

“Good point.” He took off his coat again, but when Rodrigo started for the door he stopped him. “Sit back down. I don't need you, I need your clothing.”

Anthony watched, fascinated, as his uncle exchanged boots, shirts, and jackets with his servant. Meyer was whistling as he left.

“I've known you for years and never noticed: you're nearly the same height and build as my uncle,” Anthony said, staring at the olive-skinned servant. “Is that why he won't go anywhere without you?”

“He just did go somewhere without me,” the Spaniard pointed out. He grimaced. “Did you hear him? Happy as a lark, as you say in English. When he first heard that Napoleon had landed, he was shocked, angry. But now he has a chance to pretend to be a Spanish servant, and he is like a child with a new toy. He will speak French with a Spanish accent, he will use Spanish gestures—even that song he was whistling is an old folk song from Andalusia. And the possibility that some mob of drunken Provençal villagers may beat him to death for asking the wrong question makes him enjoy it all the more.” He stomped over to the door. “What is more, I must now go out in
his
clothing, and I look perfectly ridiculous.”

Anthony did not think Rodrigo looked ridiculous, but Rodrigo did not seem to have his master's knack of taking on the personality along with the costume. He looked like a Spaniard who had switched jackets with an Englishman. “Why must you go out?”

“We need to buy food. Barrême is on the verge of full-scale panic, and the first thing a fearful populace hoards is food. Also, there is one little matter I forgot to take care of when I went out earlier.”

“Can it not wait?” Anthony was (not unreasonably, in his opinion) a trifle uneasy at the thought of remaining alone in a deserted inn while the south of France erupted outside the unlocked door.

“Perhaps,” was the enigmatic reply. “Perhaps not, however.” Confirming Anthony's fears, he tossed him a pistol as he left.

“Do you know how to use it?” he asked, seeing Anthony's horrified expression.

“No.”

“Point it and look grim, then,” Rodrigo advised. “And don't speak French if you can help it. You have a pronounced English accent.”

Anthony spent five minutes pointing the pistol, very carefully, and practicing a grim stare. Then he gave up and went back to sleep.

He woke up to the sound of feet pounding up the stairs and voices in the room below. Sitting up with a jerk, he flailed around under the bedclothes looking in vain for the pistol. Luckily, the feet belonged to Rodrigo.

“What is it?” Anthony asked, alarmed at the servant's tense expression.

“Complications. I've told them you will be down immediately. Shall I help you get dressed?”

“Told whom?” He swung his legs down to the floor and nearly screamed at the pain in his thighs.

“Two Englishwomen, who were abandoned this morning by their French servants. The maid at least had the courtesy to tell them she was leaving. The others just vanished. Their courier, a retired army captain, had most of their money in his possession.”

“Captain in which army?”

“Napoleon's, of course.”

“Then he is no longer retired, is he?” Wincing, Anthony staggered across the floor to the basin and rinsed his face and teeth. “Is one of these abandoned ladies by any chance Miss Hart?”

Rodrigo looked surprised. “You know about Miss Hart?”

“My mother,” explained Anthony apologetically. “She is, um, very devoted to the family interests.” He grabbed a hairbrush, presumably his uncle's, and swiped it over the top of his head. Then he attempted his stockings and boots. “Perhaps it would be best to bring the ladies up here,” he said when he was finally dressed. “More privacy.” And he was honestly not sure if his aching muscles would make it down the narrow stairs.

“I suppose you are right,” said Rodrigo. He straightened the bedclothes, threw the wash water out the window, and disappeared. A moment later he was back, holding the door open. “Mrs. Hart and Miss Hart, sir.”

Luckily, Anthony was standing with his hand on the back of the chair. Otherwise, when Diana Hart walked into the room, his already strained legs would have given way. She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.

 

 

Abigail was normally a light sleeper, but she was very tired, and the Cheval Blanc was quieter and more secluded than the Auberge de Barrême. Consequently, she did not realize there was anything wrong until she woke up and discovered that it was eight o'clock. Lisette had been instructed to wake her at six. Not only that, but no one had been in to make up the fire, and there was no water in her washbasin.

Frowning, she rang the bell and waited. Two minutes passed, then three, then five. Nothing happened. She opened her door and peered out into the hall. Agitated voices could be heard arguing down in the public rooms below. With her shawl thrown over her nightgown, she darted out and tapped softly at the door of Diana's room. There was no response, but her daughter was often difficult to wake in the morning. By now Abigail was beginning to be puzzled. Whatever her other faults, Lisette had always been cheerful and reliable in the mornings. Glancing quickly around to make sure no else was upstairs, she marched down to the other end of the small corridor and banged on the door of the room Mlle. Esmond and Lisette were sharing. It swung open, with a sad creaking noise.

The room was empty. Crumpled bedclothes, open drawers, and a still-burning lamp bore mute witness to an early, hurried departure. Propped on the night table was a folded piece of paper. More and more bewildered, she took it up. It had no superscription, but there was no doubt it was meant for her. Printed in smudged pencil, it read:

Her first thought was
Good riddance
, and she immediately felt guilty. She knew all too well how difficult the life of an unmarried, middle-class female could be. And Miss Esmond, unlike Abigail, did not have a substantial personal fortune to ease those difficulties. Her only saleable assets were her rigid aura of propriety and a talent for intimidating servants at the various superior inns the Harts had patronized during their stay in France. Abigail had been very thankful, at least at first, to have an ally in the battle to keep her daughter's wilder impulses in check. She sighed and refolded the note. Only then did she notice the scrawled postscript, on the outside:
Lisette will accompany me to Castellane, where her brother resides.
Abigail raised her eyebrows. She had not thought there was any love lost between Lisette and the prim older woman, but obviously somehow Mlle. Esmond had persuaded Lisette that her own need of a companion outweighed Lisette's obligation to her employers.

Thinking dark thoughts about unreliable foreign servants, she headed back to her daughter's bedchamber. A second tap on the door produced the same response as her first attempt. Waking Diana sometimes required prolonged, loud knocking, as she knew from experience, and she was not prepared to stand here in her nightgown. She retreated to her own room and got dressed as best she could with no wash water and no one to help put up her hair. She was very annoyed. Even if Mlle. Esmond and Lisette had, for some unaccountable reason, suddenly gone off early this morning, surely the inn had its own serving girls? She marched downstairs determined to give the innkeeper a piece of her mind.

The agitated voices were louder now, coming from the front room of the inn. She opened the door and stepped in. Six people were clustered by the window that overlooked the street. She recognized Munot—the innkeeper—and two of the maidservants; the others, all male, looked to be townsmen. One of them was wearing stockings of two different colors and had what looked very much like a nightshirt stuffed into his breeches. They fell silent as she entered—a cold, wary silence. Munot would not meet her eyes. Last night he had hovered over their table at supper, pressing his best wines on them and joking with Captain Hervé about his good fortune in obtaining such lovely clients.

“I rang several times,” she announced. “My own maid has been called away by a family emergency.”

At this two of the men coughed.

Ignoring them, she turned to the nearer of the two maidservants, trying to sound firm and composed. “I require hot water and fresh towels, at once. Also, the fires in our rooms are out. Is Captain Hervé still abed?”

The maid glanced nervously at the door leading to the back rooms: the parlor and downstairs bedchamber.

Abigail did not wait for a reply. “Please ask him to wait on me at his earliest convenience.”

She turned and left the room, but not without hearing the innkeeper say in a low voice, “That is her—the Englishwoman.”

Five minutes later, the maidservant appeared. She had no hot water and no towels, and she was clearly very frightened. “My regrets, madame, but Monsieur Munot says that you must leave at once. It is not safe for you here; there is strong feeling against the English now.”

“But we have Captain Hervé, and our coachman. Surely there is no real cause for alarm?”

“Both men are gone, madame. Very early this morning.” Bobbing a curtsey, the woman scuttled away.

“What is it, Mama?” Diana, in a lace-edged wrapper, had emerged into the hall.

“I don't know,” Abigail said, worried. “Our servants have all vanished, and the innkeeper seems to have taken us in aversion.” She was trying to remember how much money she had given Hervé last night. Quite a bit—there were the charges here at the inn, and two sets of horses, and the new, larger carriage she had bespoken for this morning. Perhaps he had left the purse with Munot.

The maidservant reappeared. “A gentleman to see you, madame.” Booted feet were coming up the stairs, and Diana fled with a small shriek into her chamber.

It was Meyer's manservant. She recognized him at once, although he was dressed rather oddly, in an elegant shirt and jacket quite unlike the usual garb of a valet.

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Hart, for venturing to come up uninvited, but I—” He cleared his throat. “Perhaps you recall me from yesterday. I am Rodrigo, Mr. Meyer's man. He is extremely concerned for your safety. He proposes that you and Miss Hart and your maids join him at the post house immediately.”

“My maids have left,” said Abigail in a voice that did not sound like her own. “Everyone has left.” She took in a shaky breath. “Something has happened, but no one will tell me what it is.” Diana had opened her door again, just a little.

He was taken aback. “You have not heard the news?”

“
What
news?”

“Napoleon landed near Antibes last night with a force of unknown size. He has pledged to reclaim France from its enemies. The first reports arrived here some hours ago, and the entire region is in chaos.”