Blood of Tyrants (48 page)

Vosyem was of their number; Temeraire had tried to speak with her, and propose helping her remove it. She had snarled at him around the bit, and fiercely said, “You would like it, that I should be shamed, and refused a chance to do battle and win my share; one less to divide the plunder with, is that it?”

“That is a very quarrelsome beast,” Temeraire said in some irritation, withdrawing, “and if anyone could be said to deserve to wear a muzzle, I suppose she does; but no-one
can
be said to deserve it, Laurence. What are they about?”

“I cannot tell you.” Laurence watched the line of Russian dragons: the snarling, savage twists of head giving them a look of restive cavalry-horses; the crews gripping hard upon the lines with their faces as set as men facing down artillery, as men looking into the maw of death, though they stood upon no battlefield: they were afraid of their own beasts. “I have always heard the Russian aerial corps mentioned as one to fear,” he said, low. “The dragons, it is reputed, will not cease fighting if their captains are taken and cannot be seized by boarding; they have often been seen to fight wholly unmanned.”

He had thought, by that reputation, that they might expect to find some greater degree of enlightenment here in the treatment of dragons, perhaps some influence from the East; instead it was plain the dragons would fight on in such circumstances because they had no affection for their officers, or their crews, at all. They cared nothing for the cause of battle, and only for the reward which might be theirs at its conclusion.

“I cannot deny,” Temeraire said, “that their treasure is magnificent beyond anything; but it is not enough for any sensible dragon to put up with
this
. No wonder they did not think any of their ferals would fight for them. Laurence, I must say, if only he were not such a tyrant, and always beginning wars, and invading people’s countries—”

“Yes.” It was hard indeed, for anyone who had affection for a dragon, to look upon this field and not feel the keenest sympathy with the French and their emperor’s more enlightened regime, in that regard at least. And yet behind the noble ranks of that army lay a track of near ten thousand miles of wasteland, of death and ruin for man and dragon alike, and if Bonaparte were not stopped, it would march across another ten thousand. There would never be an end to his ambition. “It is time,” Laurence said.

From the northern end of the field, the French dragons had made way for a small company to come out: three courier-weight dragons, bearing the flag of France and the standard of the Imperial Guard; a company of the Imperial Guard on foot watchful behind them, polished and brilliant in their red cloaks. And sitting on the center dragon, a man in a grey coat, with his bicorn hat worn athwart.

“Pray do be careful,” Temeraire said to Laurence. “Even if Lien is
not
here, I dare say Napoleon will think of something dreadful to do, if only you give him the least chance.”

“Recall that for once, this is our trap, not his,” Laurence said, “and we can only be grateful that he seems to be walking into it.” The grass of the field was yet wet with dew and left streaks upon his Hessian boots as he strode across it towards the gathering Russian party.

Napoleon was altered still further from the last occasion Laurence had seen him, in the Incan capital city of Cusco: older, fatter, and more tired; his voice was thick with a bad cold, and he pressed a handkerchief often to his face, coughing. He showed all the ill-effects of the strain which he had placed upon himself, by flying at such frequency from one part of his army to the next. Standing to
greet him, Tsar Alexander was the taller by a head, his face set in stern lines and handsome, though his curling hair drew back a little already from his high brow; young and vital and with an intensity in his looks, romantic in flavor, and a flush on his pale cheeks that stood stark against the high black collar which he wore. The contrast they offered to the eye only increased the impression, looking upon the French Emperor, of fatigue, of a man past the days of his youth, and perhaps his prime.

And yet somehow when Napoleon entered the pavilion he diminished his company, rather than the reverse: a subtle and yet sensible movement traveled around him, a shifting of weight, eyes turning towards him, which made him somehow the center of the stage.

He discarded formality: reached out his arms and embraced the Tsar and kissed him upon both cheeks, though Alexander received the gesture only stiffly, and with a set mouth.
“Mon cher,”
Napoleon said to him, and keeping a hand upon his arm spoke to him directly of his regret, disregarding quite all other men in the room: all sorrowful familiarity, nearly paternal. “You have desired this war, I think,” he said, “as little as I have. I know the love you have for your people and your country; no less than mine for France, and so dreadfully have both suffered from our disagreements, and to what end? To whose satisfaction?”

He turned and beckoned forward one of his young aides-decamp, who carried a long, thin draped package forward. “I have the honor,” Napoleon said, “to return this to you: a token, if you will take it as such, that we would gladly be not your enemies, trespassers and thieves in your land, but your guests, cherishing your possessions as dearly as those of any well-loved host.”

It was indeed the icon of Smolensk, the frame a little blackened with smoke, carefully laid on a bed of white velvet. “It was saved from the fire by Murat himself,” Napoleon said, “who ran into the cathedral to snatch it from the smoke and amidst the falling timbers: a scene of such destruction I yet am anguished to recall, and had no power to prevent; God forbid another such occasion.”

The threat, standing as they did not a hundred miles from Moscow, could not have been more pointedly delivered nor received, and Alexander, though handling the icon reverently, gave only short thanks; he had it swiftly removed from the tent, when an aide had been sent out to bring a Russian priest to carry it away. “I think you know Mikhail Illarionovich,” the Tsar then said, meaning Marshal Kutuzov, and made punctilious introductions to every other officer of the general staff present, even through the ranks of brigadiers: at once serving to make a greater delay, and to deflect Napoleon’s attentions from himself.

Napoleon addressed Kutuzov with a jovial note, congratulating him on his recent appointment to the command, and a little slyly saying, “It is a long while since we met, you and I, on the field outside Austerlitz,” an unnecessary reminder of that devastating victory, which had first established him as the master of Europe.

He had for nearly every man there a word of recognition, most without any malicious flavor behind them. He knew their battles and their decorations, and when a brigadier general named Tzvilenev was presented to him, he said thoughtfully, “Ah! I hope you will permit me to congratulate you, young man,” and kissing him added, “You have a son. Your wife was in St. Petersburg when it fell to us, for her time came upon her and she could not flee; I am happy to be able to tell you they were both in excellent health, and under the protection of Marshal Oudinot there.”

That poor young man, who had labored under a preoccupied and anxious look which Laurence now could well understand, stood dazed by the intelligence and the low congratulations of his fellows, who looked a little wary at venturing to make them in the present circumstances. But Kutuzov made his own loudly, clapping the young man upon the shoulder, and calling at once for a toast, which necessitated glasses and bottles and camp-tables; so through Russian machinations and Napoleon’s vanity in turn, the introductions alone were so prolonged as to devour nearly two hours of time.

Napoleon paused during the long proceedings, on seeing Laurence
standing behind the ranks of the senior officers, and called him forward to be embraced. “My gratitude,” he said solemnly, “does not fail. I have not forgotten what I and perhaps all the world owe to you, Captain Laurence, though I must yet deplore your presence here and the influence of your masters, who sit upon their island fomenting these quarrels amongst nations, and destroying from their fastness the peace and security of Europe. Would that you were now a subject of France! You know well,” he added to Alexander, with a hint of reproach, “how the efforts of England have been bent to divide us from one another, and how I have spent myself and France, to try and remove their power to do so.”

Laurence could hardly receive Napoleon’s sentiments with satisfaction: well might the Emperor regret having failed, in his invasion of Britain; Laurence could only rejoice at it, and the wound which it had inflicted on Napoleon’s dominion. And yet with all the cause in the world to hate the man before him, Laurence could not deny the power of his presence. If there had been any smaller advantage to be won by this conference than a force of three hundred dragons, if they had played for lesser stakes, anything not so sure to bring them victory, he thought this encounter might have been as destructive to the morale of the officers as if Napoleon had brought poison to put into their cups.

Alexander himself was not unaffected; evilly so, while the meeting proceeded through drawn-out paces. Impossible not to see that he felt even now a kind of instinctive yearning towards the conqueror as Napoleon concentrated all his attentions, all his intent focus, towards him, not unlike the direction of batteries of artillery; and yet he was resentful of his own feelings, a resentment silenced but diminished not at all by the necessity of deceit.

He played his rôle thoroughly and well, speaking at length and only of intangibles—of the honor of Russia, of his duty to his patrimony, of philosophy and of religion—so that all the while the conversation was kept carefully inconclusive. Napoleon, it was evident to see, saw himself a seducer; and to oblige him Alexander
made himself out a maiden to be courted, and as coy as any skillful courtesan played off his suitor’s ardent attempts to reach a consummation.

He deferred any explicit offers, which should have to be rejected; he made none himself; and yet he conveyed appealingly all the willingness to make peace which Napoleon, at the head of a tired army thousands of miles from their homes, might hope for. His reward was the success of their aim. When the sun began to sink, nothing had been resolved upon, and they agreed to meet again: Napoleon departed, and they had won the first day.

But Alexander afterwards was in a rage of humiliation, so overcome that he sat silently and unmoving, saying not a word, until the word came that Napoleon was well away with all his escort. Then Alexander flung the camp-table with a savage jerk of his hand upwards and over, startled men scattering away before the toppling dishes and the smoking candles, and rose to pace the opened space like a tiger upon a leash.

His ministers hastily made efforts to clear the pavilion, ushering out the aides and junior officers; Laurence half wished to leave himself, but there was no easy way to do so, standing as he was with the senior officers.

“As though,” Alexander said low, “as though Holy Russia were to be bought like a girl, for the price of a few compliments—as though we were to come like the cringing dog to heel, servile beneath him, and allow him to march forward this vile philosophy, this blasphemy, across all Europe—to overthrow all Christianity, and set a—”

The men who remained were all silent before the tirade, their heads nearly bowed; only one of the diplomats, a Greek nobleman named Kapodistrias, at last ventured to step forward and speak to the Tsar quietly, reminding him the goal had been achieved. “Buonaparte’s vanity and contempt will soon receive their just reward,” he said.

But Napoleon was not to be deferred so easily for a second day.
As though he felt he had paid sufficient lip service to his courting, the next morning he grew swiftly more insistent, and Alexander’s patience was by no means equal to fending off his approaches. They had not yet made noon when Napoleon cut short the diplomatic dance, thrusting aside with a sweep of his arm the carefully wrought speech which Kapodistrias and several of Alexander’s other diplomats had engineered, outlining without commitment the nearly innumerable small points of conflict and how these might perhaps be resolved—a catalogue which, if permitted to continue, might have consumed another day all on their own.

But Napoleon interrupted with a brusque, “Enough; enough of this,” and leaning forward to Alexander said bluntly, “Come, Your Majesty: these matters are for other men. Oudinot governs in St. Petersburg, and we speak here less than one hundred miles from the great city of the Moskova. Must the very throne of your ancestors fall into the hands of my army before you will cease to listen to warmongers? Shall we not again be friends? Give me only your oath that you will uphold again the Continental System, that you will recognize the Kingdom of Poland, and we will proclaim peace to these brave assembled soldiers. Then let the diplomats argue what they will!”

“In the sight of the Holy Mother,” Alexander said, springing from his chair, “I will chop the throne into kindling with my own hands before you sit upon it, and for the rest, you may take what you can. But before I give you peace while you stand with an army on my soil, I will grow my beard to my belt and go and eat potatoes with my serfs!”

The conference was shattered. The diplomats on both parts made small abortive attempts to bring their monarchs back to the table, for their several causes; but Alexander could scarcely make apology now without becoming a liar, and Napoleon, at first only surprised, grew swiftly choleric when he understood Alexander’s intransigence had not been a mere flourishing of temper but an expression of true feeling, and an outright rejection of the most
central terms which should have formed naturally the core of any serious negotiation.

Napoleon’s face colored; he looked as though he would have liked to upbraid the Tsar like a junior officer, and nearly took a step towards him; Berthier put a hand upon his arm, prudently. Still hot with anger and breathing quickly, Napoleon said to Alexander’s back, “When you have thought better of your choice, I will not let this harden my heart against you,” and turning stormed from the pavilion.