The Emperor (86 page)

‘
Oh, I don't wish to go into society,' Lucy said hastily.
‘I've no wish to masquerade — just to enjoy the freedom. I
thought perhaps we could go away somewhere really quiet
and remote, where no-one knows us. I could be your
nephew perhaps, or your younger brother, and if we kept
our distance from everyone, I should pass well enough.'

‘
Where no-one knows us? Not Westerham, then,' he
mused. 'Wait — I have it — Great Wakering!'

‘I've never heard of it,' Lucy said, wrinkling her nose.

‘
It's a village in the Essex marshes, close to the sea. It has
a church, one or two houses, a few cottages, and the rest is
farmland. It also happens to be where my family comes
from.'

‘I didn't know you had any family.'

‘
I haven't now. There's no-one left there to recognize me.
But it's as quiet and remote as you could wish. We can go
riding, and there's good shooting on the marshes, and — yes,
I'll teach you to fish, and to handle a small boat! I couldn't
do that if you were in skirts. I must say, this notion of yours
looks better and better. I'm only afraid that if I see you in
breeches, I shall never want you to wear dresses again.’

*

It was a glorious summer. Weston and his 'nephew' rented a
cottage outside the village on the edge of one of the numerous reedy inlets which joined the marshland to the sea, and there they lived in great harmony out of sight of the world,
served by their faithful and only mutely critical servants.
Lucy, bare-headed and bare-legged in breeches and a shirt,
won praise from Weston in her handling of the small sailing-
boat they hired. They spent many hours in it, tooling about the inlets and on fine days taking it out to sea. They fished
from it, ate many a picnic meal in it, swam from it when they found a private enough stretch of the coastline, and
once or twice, returning home late on moonlight nights,
even made love in it.

When they weren't boating, they went walking or riding,
or took guns out after duck, snipe, pigeon or rabbit, taking
great delight in eating the result of their labours. Lucy had a
good eye, and with practice soon became a fair shot. Her
skin grew very brown, which she knew would be a nuisance
when she returned to Town, and her hair was bleached pale
by the sunshine.

‘
You look more like a boy every day,' Weston told her. 'I
think you might even pass for a freckle-faced lad before an
uncritical eye.’

Lucy was quite happy not to put it to the test. She
wanted no contact with the outside world, needing nothing
more than to be with Weston every hour of the day, and
freed at last from the restraints society had placed upon her
from her birth. A deep and satisfying companionship built
up between them, which she felt owed its particular strength
and rich complexity to their being on equal terms, and sharing their pursuits. It could not have happened, she
firmly believed, had she worn a dress these last weeks.

He took her, one day, to look at the village. 'The old
house used to stand here,' he told her as they halted their horses before a row of four farm-labourers' cottages. 'My
grandfather, Sir Edwin Rivers — my mother's father — was Member of Parliament for the constituency, and owned half the land hereabouts. The other half was owned by Burchett,
the squire, who lived in that long red house we passed
earlier. When Sir Edwin died, he left everything to my uncle
Edgar, who I'm afraid was a shocking loose screw, and
gambled it all away. Burchett bought the land piece by piece as uncle Edgar was forced to sell to pay his debts, until there
was only the house left. Then one night it burnt down — it
was an old timber-framed house, largely Tudor, and it burnt
like a torch, taking uncle Edgar with it.'

‘
How terrible!' Lucy said. 'Did he, have a wife and
children?'

‘
No, he never had time to marry, between hands of cards.
At any rate, there was nothing left for my mother to inherit.
She had to sell the land the house was built on to settle his
outstanding debts. Squire Burchett bought it, of course, and
built these cottages for his employees; and that's that. A sadand cautionary tale, don't you think?'

‘
So if your uncle Edgar hadn't been a gamester, you'd
have been lord of the manor?'

‘
Would you have loved me more?' Weston enquired with
 
interest.

‘Don't be silly,' Lucy said.

‘
Come and look at the church, and see the tombs of my
forefathers,' he said. They hitched the horses to the gate,
and wandered about the churchyard, examining the grave
stones of all the Rivers and Westons of former ages, and
then looked inside the church, and signed their names in the
visitors' book which stood on a lectern just inside the door.
Weston signed it 'Captain Jas Weston, grandson of Sir
Edwin Rivers MP', and Lucy signed underneath 'L.
Morland, nephew of the above', and the date, ‘13th August,
1802'.

‘
One day, when we're old and sere, we can come back
and look at this book, and remember the summer we spent
here in our green days,' Weston said, closing the book with satisfaction.

Lucy shivered. 'It's cold in here after the sunshine,' she
said. 'Let's go now.’

*

October came, and they went back to Town, the servants
with some relief, Lucy and Weston with the greatest reluc
tance. To savour the very last of their freedom, they decided
to travel by boat from Southend, the nearest town to Great
Wakering, from where a regular service would take them
right to the Westminster steps.

Lucy dressed again in woman's clothes, and felt very
strange and confined in them. The day was sunny, but cool,
which made it easier for her to wear gloves to hide her
brown, calloused hands, and a veil over her face, to conceal
her sunburn. The boat was crowded and both of them felt
uneasy suddenly to be in contact with so many people. They
were very quiet, and pressed close together like nervous
horses smelling thunder.

The man beside Weston, a decent-looking citizen, prob
ably a well-to-do tradesman by his clothes, glanced at them
curiously from time to time, wondering perhaps about their
air of preoccupation, and eventually offered Weston his
newspaper with a civil bow and deprecatory cough.

‘
Would you care to take a glance, sir, at the
Post?
Bad
business, this, about Swisserland, don't you think, sir? That Buonaparte's a restless cove.'

‘
I beg your pardon, sir,' Weston replied. 'I have been
away, and have not heard any news for a long time.'

‘
Ah,' said the citizen, encouraged, 'I thought perhaps –
you being a little weathered, if you'll pardon my noticing.
You haven't heard about the French invading Swisserland,
then?'

‘
No, sir, I've heard nothing all summer,' Weston said. On
the side away from the helpful man, Lucy's hand crept
anxiously into his, and he held it firmly, as much for his
comfort as hers.

‘
That Buonaparte – invaded Swisserland, conquered it, made himself king there – not that they call it king, being foreigners – Mediator of the Republic, or some such. And last month it was Italy – the Cisalpine Republic – and the
month before it was Elba. And he's never withdrawn his
troops from Holland, which it was stipulated in the Treaty he was supposed to. Ah, he's a restless cove, all right, and
what next, I ask you? Means to make himself Emperor,
that's what I've heard.'

‘
Emperor?' Weston said, sounding dazed. How could so
much have happened in so short a time? 'Surely not?'

‘
Well, it's a wonder, when the Frogs was so anxious to
get rid of their king, but he made himself Consul for life
back in August, and not a vote was cast against it, and
what's that but a king under a different name, I ask you?
And the talk is that he means to declare himself Emperor of
the French before very long, and the way he's been going
on, I wouldn't be at all surprised.’

Weston took the newspaper and read the article pointed
out to him, and looked up in amazement to meet the
citizen's satisfied gaze.

‘
If you ask me, sir, and I'm not a book-learned man, but
I've my wits about me, as anyone who knows me would tell
you, and there's not a few folk at London Wall, which is
where I live, sir, as ask my advice about a great number of
things – if you ask me, sir, we're going to have to fight him
again, sooner or later. Ah, that's what it'll come to, all right,
and this time, we'll have to lick him good and proper.’

*

When they arrived at Westminster, they took a hack to
Upper Grosvenor Street, and pausing only to change his
clothes, Weston went straight off to Fladong's. He returned
in time for dinner, which he and Lucy ate at home alone
together, though the desk in the business-room had been
covered in invitations, several of them for that evening.

‘
Fladong's was full of officers,' Weston said. 'Lots of
them had come up from the country for much the same
reason as I went there. It's all true, as the cit told us. The
Peace has been nothing to the French but a breathing space,
a chance to consolidate their gains and prepare their next
move. Buonaparte's got troops in Belguim and Holland, he's taken over Switzerland and northern Italy, and he's threatening Egypt. He's bought back Louisiana from the
Spanish, and sent an expedition to Haiti. He's retaken the
French coastal bases in India and South Australia. And he's
operating an embargo on our goods in all the ports he
controls.’

Lucy listened in silence, the food untouched on her plate.
'Does nobody oppose him?' she asked in a small voice.

‘
He is the most popular man in France,' Weston said
grimly. 'He's brought order to a state sinking into anarchy,
and won battles all over the world. They are calling him the
new Charlemagne.' He picked up his glass, and put it down
again untouched. 'It's clear that we will have to fight him. With his troops swarming all over the Low Countries, we
cannot be safe, even if it were possible to allow him to
conquer where he liked in Europe and America. No, we'll
have to fight. It's just a question of when.'

‘
You'll go back to sea,' Lucy said. It was not a question.
He looked at her tenderly.

‘
England will need every fighting captain she has. Everything that floats will be put into commission. The fleet will
be built up to its former levels, and – '

‘
You needn't sound so glad!' Lucy cried out. 'You
needn't sound as though you were longing to go.’

He got up and went round the table, despite the presence
of the servants, and put his arm round her, and kissed her
averted cheek. 'I don't want to leave you, not for a moment,
not ever,' he said. 'But you know that I will have to. And,'
he added, because they were honest with each other, 'that
part of me wants to.’

He felt her sigh, and lean against him for a moment, and
then she straightened up and pushed him gently away. He
released her and went back to his place.

‘
Of course, you're quite right,' she said, picking up her
fork again. ‘We can't allow that little brigand to call himself
Emperor. And I imagine there were plenty of smiling faces
at Fladong's, at the thought of going to sea again. I wish I
could come with you — you'll have the best of it, you know.
It's harder to be the one left behind with nothing to do.'

‘
Yes, I know,' he said. She looked up at him, but her eyes were far too bright, and she looked hastily down at her plate
again.

‘
Perhaps they'll give you a seventy-four this time,' she
said.