The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware (15 page)

Bourrienne laughed. ‘My dear fellow, perhaps in prison you did not learn of it, but Hanover is now part of France. I am no longer Ambassador here, but Civil Administrator. No-one dare touch you, and whenever you wish I can send you back to Paris.'

Roger had not realised that this would be one of the effects of the changed state of Hanover; and, while he had been confident that his old friend would not give him up, he had felt that for him, as an Ambassador, to agree to compromise himself by getting a wanted criminal out of north Germany was quite another matter. After a moment, he said:

‘Of course, I should have known that. But 'tis not to France though that I wish to go. You have yourself experienced the Emperor's ingratitude to those who have served him. In my case he could not be bothered to save me from a firing squad, and in any event I am sickened unto death of his eternal wars; so I do not mean to return to him. As you know, I was born in Strasbourg; but my mother was English and I have numerous English relations. When I have been over there secretly on the Emperor's business, little suspecting my perfidy, they have treated me most kindly. If I can possibly get there I have decided to forswear war for the future and make England my home.' In making that statement he knew that
he was maligning Napoleon but it was essential for him to win Bourrienne's sympathy.

His friend considered for a moment, then smiled. ‘To get you across should not be difficult. I have many contacts with merchant Captains who keep me supplied with coffee and other luxuries. I am certain that, in the course of a few days, I can arrange matters. But, my poor friend, you look sadly worn.'

Fingering the stubble on his chin, Roger replied, ‘I am indeed. I rode desperate hard from Berlin and am in great need of sleep. If you can, as you think, get me to England, I'll be for ever grateful, but at the moment I'd bless you for a bed.'

One side of the room was lined with book-shelves. Bourrienne pressed a secret spring and a section of them swung forward, revealing a narrow passage. Beckoning to Roger, he led the way along it, up a flight of stairs to his private apartments. Showing Roger into a bedroom, he said:

‘No-one will disturb you here. Later I will call you in time to shave and wash before we sup together. I have a dinner engagement that I cannot break; but I shall be back by nine o'clock.'

With a nod of thanks, Roger began to pull his clothes off. In no time he had tumbled into bed and was sound asleep. Five hours later he was still sleeping when Bourrienne's valet woke him. The man had already brushed his clothes and lit a fire in the room. In front of it Roger was soon lathering himself in a hip bath. Greatly refreshed, and infinitely relieved to know that he had nothing more to fear, he joined Bourrienne in a room along the corridor where, before setting out for Berlin, he had dined with him.

Over the meal Roger gave an account of his trial, the miserable months he had spent in prison, his escape and how he had avenged himself on de Brinevillers. At the
thought of the haughty,
ci-devant
Marquis in the position in which Roger had left him, Bourrienne laughed uproariously; then he said:

‘And all this while I believed you dead. No doubt about that crossed my mind, because I saw an account of your execution in a Berlin news sheet. At least, one which appeared on the day it should have taken place. The affair had created such a stir that three whole columns were devoted to it, and the article ended with the gleeful statement that the fiendish French murderer, Breuc, had met a death too good for him in front of a firing squad that morning.'

Roger nodded. ‘The article must have been written the previous day and printed during my night in the condemned cell. But tell me, did you receive the two letters I sent you, and forward them to England?'

‘Yes; and by a safe hand. The captain who took them has since returned and reported to me having despatched them in Harwich. They reached me on the same morning as the article, so I enclosed it in the letter for the Lord Edward Fitz-Deverel.'

Bourrienne then gave Roger an interesting piece of news. Toward the end of August, Marshal Jean Baptiste Bernadotte had been invited by the Swedish Diet to become their Crown Prince.

Roger had at one time been sent by Mr. Pitt on a mission to Sweden, so he knew the history of its royal dynasty. The Vasas had, at one time, ruled over a great part of the Baltic lands, including Finland in the north and German Pomerania to the east. The able and warlike King, Gustavus III, had fought Catherine the Great of Russia and, being fanatically opposed to the French Revolution, had enthusiastically joined the First Coalition, in the hope of crushing this new People's State. But, in March '92, he had been assassinated by masked intruders
at a ball, and that had brought to an end Sweden's era as a great power.

He had been succeeded by young Gustavas Adolphus IV, another fanatical champion of legitimacy, but having an unbalanced mind. After launching a disastrous assault on Bernadotte, who was then commanding in northern Germany, he had, against the advice of his generals and nobility, sent his army against that of Russia in Finland, whilst himself remaining in Stockholm and directing it in such a crazy fashion that it had been defeated piecemeal. By March 1809, his people had become so angered that they had supported his leading men in deposing him.

The autocratic powers of the Crown had then been greatly reduced, so that Sweden had become a constitutional Monarchy, with a Diet to be re-elected every five years, and Gustavus' uncle had ascended the throne as Charles XIII. Having no son, he had recognised as his heir a Danish connection, Prince Christian Augustus, and made peace with Russia by ceding Finland. But in the following year, which was the present one, Prince Christian had died as a result of a fit of apoplexy.

That much Roger knew, and from there Bourrienne took up the story. Charles XIII being old and feeble, and it having become apparent that inbreeding had brought madness into the Vasa strain, the Swedish magnates had decided to invite some healthy and vigorous man to become heir to the throne.

For several years past Napoleon had been gobbling up Europe, so what better insurance could there be against his deciding to swallow Sweden than to ask one of his Marshals to become their Prince Royal? Their choice had fallen upon Bernadotte for the following reasons:

He was not only a general of the first rank. When, as Napoleon's Viceroy, he had governed north Germany, he had shown himself to be a brilliant, humane and just ruler. Moreover, during the later stages of the Franco-Prussian
war, when he had driven a Swedish army from Pomerania, he had captured one of their crack cavalry regiments in Lübeck, invited its officers to dinner and given them some very sound advice on the policy that should be pursued in the best interests of their country.

When approached, Napoleon, who had always been jealous of Bernadotte, had been loath to agree to his aggrandisement, and endeavoured to fob off the Swedes with one of his lesser Marshals. But they would not have it. They had sent direct to Bernadotte a deputation consisting of their veteran Field Marshal, Count Hans Henrik von Essen, and several of the officers with whom Bernadotte had talked in Lübeck. And he had accepted.

To the Emperor's fury, when summoned by him Bernadotte had arrived in the uniform of a Swedish Field Marshal, and a most acrimonious discussion had followed. Bernadotte had asked to be relieved of his Princedom of Ponte Corvo, his rank as a Marshal of the Empire and, above all, his French citizenship. Napoleon could not believe his ears. He had made three of his brothers and his brother-in-law Kings of foreign countries; but they had all remained Frenchmen and subservient to him. He expected Bernadotte, like Murat, to remain a Marshal, govern as he, Napoleon, directed and, whenever called upon, leave his Kingdom to command an army in his wars.

But Bernadotte remained adamant. Courageously he insisted that, if he was to be Prince Royal of Sweden, he must become a Swede. At length, Napoleon gave way but demanded that Sweden should become his ally and place her army at his disposal in any future war. To that, too, Bernadotte refused to agree, maintaining that peace or war was a matter to be decided solely by the will of the Swedish people. Angry, bewildered and not knowing what to reply, the Emperor had succumbed and, in September, Bernadotte had left France to become not, like Napoleon's
brothers, a puppet King forced upon a hostile people, but a Royal Prince elected by the will of a nation.

Roger wondered how Bernadotte's wife, Desirée, would like being Princess Royal among a haughty, ancient aristocracy. She and her sister Julie were the daughters of a Marseilles silk merchant named Clary; and Julie, having married Napoleon's elder brother, Joseph, was now technically Queen of Spain.

He knew Desirée much better than he did her husband, as he had been acquainted with the Clarys for many years. When Bonaparte had been a down-at-heels artillery officer, the wealthy Clarys had welcomed him and Joseph into their family circle. As both the girls had large dowries, the brothers had asked for their hands in marriage. Their father was dead, and their brother had reluctantly consented. Joseph had married Julie, but Napoleon, although Desirée was his first love, had jilted her to marry the aristocratic Josephine de Beauharnais. But the Emperor had always retained a soft spot for Desirée; and it was he who, as he happened to be reading a book with a hero named Oscar at the time of her son's birth, had insisted that she should give the child that name.

As things had turned out, it could not have been more appropriate, and Roger wondered how much Napoleon's affection for his old love had contributed to his letting Bernadotte have his way, instead of having him arrested as a potential danger. But he could not think that, having been brought up in the sunshine of the South of France, pretty, retroussé-nosed, little Desirée was going to enjoy much the bitter cold of a northern Kingdom.

When he asked Bourrienne how Bernadotte had been doing during his first months as Prince Regent, his friend shook his head.

‘Owing to her wars of the past seventeen years, Sweden has become a miserably poor country. Ponte Corvo was,
of course, extremely wealthy. While a Marshal of the Empire he had amassed the fortune of a multi-millionaire, and my spies tell me that he is using it all to pay Sweden's debts. But his position is very precarious. The Emperor has demanded that he should subscribe to the Continental System and prohibit all commerce with England. If he does so, Sweden will face final ruin. If he does not, his old enemy, Davoust, has orders to use his army here to invade Sweden. From Denmark that could be done with ease. Our allies, the Danes, would be delighted, and Sweden has no army worth the name with which to defend herself.'

Roger nodded. ‘So that's how things stand. Well, Bernadotte is undoubtedly a courageous man and, by the standard of the times, an upright one; so one can only hope that he pulls through.'

Three days later Roger said good-bye to his old friend and went aboard an American ship that plied regularly between Hull and Hamburg, bringing English woollens over to the Continent. The weather proved fair and the voyage uneventful. On the evening of October 18th, he landed in England, and the following night he arrived in London; now home for good, all his adventures and perils behind him, and about to start a new life with his divine Georgina.

As was his custom, he went straight to the Earl of Amesbury's mansion in Arlington Street, as his Lordship's son, Lord Edward Fitz-Deverel lived there, and whenever Roger came to London, was delighted to have him as a guests.

When the front door was opened by a footman, it chanced that Droopy Ned was just crossing the hall. Turning to see who the visitor was, he peered at Roger with his short-sighted eyes. Suddenly, he dropped the book he was carrying and cried:

‘God stap me! I'm seeing a ghost.'

Advancing, Roger laughed, ‘No, dear Ned. I am no ghost, although I know you believed me dead. 'Tis my very self, home again at last, and overjoyed to see you.'

The two old friends hugged each other, then Roger asked, ‘What of Georgina; is she well?'

‘She was, as ever, in bounteous health when I saw her not long since.'

‘Where is she, Ned? Down at Stillwaters? I cannot wait to see her.'

‘Nay, she is not at Stillwaters, but down at Newbury,' Droopy replied.

Roger grinned. ‘And what, pray, is she doing there? What e'er it be, I'll fetch her back within twenty-four hours. For, know you, before we parted seven months ago, she at last promised to marry me.'

A look of consternation suddenly appeared on Droopy's face and he blurted out, ‘Oh, Roger, my dear! How can I tell you? But she married again, only recently. She is now Her Grace the Duchess of Kew.'

During the long years since Roger had run away from home to escape having to become a midshipman, Fate had dealt him many savage blows; but never one so shattering as this. His eyes wide with surprise and shock, he stared at his friend and whispered:

‘It can't be true!'

Droopy Ned shook his head. ‘Alas, dear Roger, it is. Like myself, she believed you dead. We both received your letters written in a cell for the condemned, and with mine there was a cutting from a Berlin news sheet. It stated that you had been executed that morning.'

‘The article had been printed overnight, before it was known that Marshal Davout had succeeded in getting my sentence commuted to ten years' imprisonment.'

‘Thank God for that. But we never learned of it. Georgina and I both mourned you as dead. She was so stricken that she shut herself up for ten days and refused to see anyone. Then she wore black for you for three months, as though you had been her husband.'

‘But, dam'me Ned, to marry again! Before she wed von Haugwitz she had remained a widow for years. Why, in God's name, should she again rush into matrimony so swiftly?'

With a shrug of his narrow shoulders, Droopy replied, ‘Several factors I think contributed to that. She told me
that with your death all that was best in her life had ended. Her youth was over, and all zest for pleasure gone. She must resign herself to middle age. Her father's death, coming shortly after we received news of yours, was also a big blow to her.'