Valentina (11 page)

‘I can't,' Valentina said, and she was sobbing. ‘I can't forget you and I never will. If you've been hurt, I understand—I'll say goodbye now, and God bless you and bring you safely back, my love.'

He felt her tears on his cheek as she kissed him, and then she had gone. He got up and went back to the table; his glass of brandy was still there untouched. He drank it in one swallow, and then, for no reason he could explain, he threw the glass with all his strength into the fireplace.

‘I hope you slept well, Colonel.'

Alexandra stood unannounced in the doorway of his room; she was dressed in the black riding habit with an old-fashioned tricorn hat under her arm. The dawn was breaking; in half an hour the sun would be up.

‘Very well, thank you, Princess. I didn't expect you to be up so early.'

‘I spent a sleepless night, listening to my sister cry,' she said quietly. ‘What have you done to her, Colonel De Chavel? Hasn't she suffered enough?'

He closed the door. ‘Sit down; we must discuss this properly. And let me assure you, before we begin, that I have done nothing to Valentina. Thank God.'

‘Then why is she unhappy?' Alexandra crossed one booted leg over the other; her skirt was divided so that she could ride astride like a man. ‘She wouldn't tell me anything; she just lay there weeping as if her heart would break. Have you made love to her?'

‘Yes. But not in the way that you mean. Your sister is very beautiful, Princess. When we first met I had entirely the wrong opinion of her and I behaved in a way that makes me bitterly ashamed. Luckily I discovered my mistake in time. I tried to make amends by bringing her home to you. Last night she told me she loved me.'

‘Any fool could see that!' she interrupted curtly. ‘May I ask what you said to that?'

‘I told her the truth,' he said. ‘For her own sake. Believe me, that was my only motive. I told her I didn't love her. Lust is one thing, but not love. I told her to forget the whole affair.'

‘You surprise me,' Alexandra said after a moment. ‘I have detected some tenderness in you towards her—or am I imagining even that?'

‘You are certainly imagining it if you think it means anything more than pity and respect,' he said sharply. ‘I will make myself clear, Princess. I am not Valentina's lover and I am not in love with her. I haven't the slightest desire to become entangled with an inexperienced girl who is dying for a love affair. Your sister is a child in these things. She has been married to a brute, and that's all she knows about men. My only concern is not to turn Valentina into one of the sisterhood by spoiling her innocence or destroying her faith. I should certainly have done both if I hadn't told her the truth last night. She's better to cry a few tears and then forget about it. And she will.'

‘You're very certain, aren't you?' Alexandra said. ‘You know all about us, don't you, Colonel? You said so last night. Cheats and liars, fooling their booby husbands. I am sure you speak from experience. But my sister is a woman as well as a child. She loves you. This is her first love; I am only afraid it may be her last. There are women for whom there is only one man. If it turns out to be the case with Valentina, then she'll never be happy again. For a man who's got such insight into the female mind, you seem to have made a remarkable mess of the whole business. I hope the first Russian that takes aim at you blows your head off, my dear Colonel.'

‘Thank you.' He made her a bow and she laughed and stood up.

‘I like you,' she said. ‘It's a pity the poor little one isn't like me; she's never learnt to take pleasure as it comes and not rely on love.' The bright black eyes grew narrow suddenly. ‘I understand we won't be seeing you again?'

‘I think not, Princess,' De Chavel said. ‘Especially if your wish comes true.'

‘And is my sister really safe from Theodore?' she said. ‘I know enough about him to be sure he'll try and get her back, certainly when your armies have gone into Russia. He's a vindictive swine, and he won't let Valentina escape without a fight.'

‘I have made all the arrangements necessary,' De Chavel said. ‘You and Valentina are on the police protection list. So long as she stays here, on the estate, the Count will be powerless to touch her. The same applies to you. Whatever you do, keep Valentina here till the campaign is over.'

‘And what then?' she said. ‘Supposing you're victorious, of course.'

‘We will be,' he said shortly. ‘I give it six months before we return in triumph. If I'm one of those lucky enough to get back, then I shall kill the gentleman. It's the least I owe him for what he did to your sister, and you have no man in the family to do it for you. If I don't come back, I will see that someone else does it for me.'

‘And if your Emperor loses?' she asked quietly.

‘Then you must fend for yourselves,' he retorted. ‘I have the greatest confidence in your ability to take on any man, Princess. Even Count Grunowski. I must go now; the sun is well up.'

‘I'll ride part of the way with you,' Alexandra said. ‘My sister is sleeping; I shan't wake her.'

‘Better not,' De Chavel said. ‘You can make my farewells. Take care of her. And tell her to forget me.'

‘I shall,' she said. ‘I'll do my damnedest.'

‘I'll be very grateful,' he said gravely. ‘She deserves to be happy.'

The carriage was waiting outside, and he climbed in; a big black stallion was brought up. It fretted and reared, and it took two men to hold it. De Chavel leaned out of the window and watched while the Princess sprang up on it; she held it in like a drawn bow, waiting for him to move. As the coach and the rider gathered speed out of the courtyard and down the long road away from Czartatz, Valentina watched them from her window. She stood there until the flying horse and the coach itself dwindled to specks in the distance and then disappeared; while she watched she prayed that in spite of war and her husband, and the agonizing fact that he was not in love with her, one day he would come back to Czartatz.

‘I appreciate your point of view Count. I have every sympathy with you.' Potocki shook his head at the furious man sitting opposite him. ‘I'm very sorry but there is nothing we can do.'

Grunowski leaned forward in his chair; he had spent twenty-five minutes waiting in the anti-room for his interview with the Count and he was livid with temper. He was angrier still to see the cause of the delay walk out of the Count's room, and recognise the young Major as a member of Murat's staff.

‘Do you mean to say, Count, that a French officer can seduce my wife and run off with her, and I have no redress? I can't get her back, I can't make a complaint? It's intolerable!'

‘I received a call from Major Montesant this morning—you were here when he left, I think—and the version of this incident he gave me is not quite the same as yours. Colonel De Chavel took your wife to her sister at Czartatz and left her there. He also informed me that both ladies were under French police protection. Our plan, my dear Count, has seriously miscarried. If you have lost your wife in the process, I'm sorry. We have lost an opportunity which will never come our way again. And I hate to think what effect it would have if the matter came to Napoleon's attention. The Major assured me it hadn't, so far. It's been very badly bungled.' His eyes were very cold. ‘You should have told me your wife was capable of betraying the whole plot. I would never have trusted her.'

‘I believed in her patriotism. And her attachment to her sister. I had no idea she would turn traitor. And for that,' the Count said, ‘she should be punished. You can ignore the affront to my honour, the fact that her lover threatened me in my own house and removed a servant and my wife's possessions under guard—you can accept these outrages, and tell me to do the same—but what of her treason? Her betrayal of Poland? Is she to hide under French patronage for ever?'

Potocki opened a little gold and enamel snuff-box and took two strong pinches; he waited and after a moment sneezed into his handkerchief.

‘For ever is a long time,' he said. ‘We can be patient. In a week or so Napoleon's army will march into Russia. We can keep the Countess and her sister in our minds.'

Grunowski stood up. ‘Officially we can do nothing. But unofficially, Count—if I were to take some men to Czartatz and ask to see my wife—'

‘You would be arrested when you returned, and I should completely disown you!' Potocki snapped at him. He was not concerned with private vengeance; he was bitterly disappointed at the collapse of their plan to seduce Murat and the unpleasant way in which it had rebounded on his head. The young Major had been polite but very firm. He has explained the intrigue with great courtesy and the assumption that, of course, Count Potocki knew nothing about it, while conveying that French Intelligence held him wholly responsible, and made it very clear that the lady concerned was protected by one of the most powerful men in France, with ready access to the Emperor. Potocki's own impulse was to punish the traitoress at once, but he could afford to counsel patience to the angry husband whose own motives were purely personal. He could wait; he would have to wait. More than likely the Colonel would be killed or wounded in the next few months; most probably official vigilance would relax in Poland during the campaign and it would then be possible to deal with two women on a lonely estate. But not if the vindictive Grunowski made a premature attempt. That would ruin everything.

‘You are to do absolutely nothing!' Potocki said. ‘All you'd accomplish by any action at the moment is to have the two of them sent to France where we would never be able to lay hands on them. You are partly responsible for this failure, Count. You totally misjudged your wife, and I was bound to rely on you for that. You further misjudged her by letting her go to meet Murat that night and so escape. And I'm not blaming you as much as others will, believe me! Now you must keep quiet. Let the scandal die. Lose your wife before the world, and wait until you hear from me.'

‘One thing,' Grunowski said. ‘Promise me that when the time comes to take her you will give that task to me. And to me alone, to do it as I see fit. It's my due, as her husband.'

‘I promise that you will be the one,' Potocki said. ‘When it's safe to punish the Countess's treason I will send for you myself. For the time being, you must be content with that.'

Grunowski stood up and bowed. ‘As you command, I shall do nothing till I hear from you.'

‘Good.' The Count held out his hand. ‘Be patient,' he said quietly, ‘and we will have our revenge.'

Chapter 4

Three pontoon bridges straddled the width of the River Niemen: sappers of the French Army had been sinking the supports and erecting the framework to bear the weight of the heavy wooden flooring. They had taken some weeks to complete the work, and after the pontoons were finished they spent a few days fishing or swimming in the river, and amusing themselves with the local Polish women who came swarming down to their camp. The bridges were magnificently constructed to bear the weight of half a million men, their horses, artillery and supplies over the week-long period it would need to transfer them all to Russia. They waited under the hot June sun on the morning of the 24th, untried and untrodden, like three dark virgins for their soldier bridegrooms. It was a superstition of the Sappers that, before an invasion, nobody crossed the bridges before the advance guard. For weeks the countryside around the rivers where the bridges were had been filling up with soldiers. The camps spread over the fields like a mushroom crop; canvas, wagons, bivouacs, stockaded horses, artillery and mountains of supplies. There were soldiers and quartermasters and artillery men and cooks and orderlies and army surgeons, and the staff officers had been arriving in their carriages and taking the best accommodation in the neighbourhood. Which is the way of staff officers, and why, next to their Generals who seldom see the front, the Army hates them. Women and children were part of that enormous confusion of men and materials, thousands of army whores and common soldiers' wives and families, camped out in the fields with their men, and at night there were fights and singing around the fires, and some deserted with Polish women and were mostly brought back and immediately shot. The Cuirassiers, the Chasseurs, the Polish Lancers, the Imperial Grenadiers, the Seventh, Tenth and Fourteenth Artillery regiments, the Ordinance and Stores, the corps of field surgeons; these were only a few of the regiments of the greatest army of invasion that the world had ever seen. There were men from the south, from the east and west and north and from central France; men whose patois made them impossible to understand, men of all types and ethnic variations within the borders of French domination. There were Italians and Poles and Serbs, exiled Scots and Irish and a few renegade English, and these were joined by twenty thousand hostile Prussians and thirty thousand unreliable Austrians, part of the human levy Napoleon had forced out of his allies. On the morning of the 24th, two hours after dawn, three columns moved in formation towards the bank of the Niemen and drew up before each of the three bridges. A regiment of cavalry, comprising Marshal Gouchy's Cuirassiers, and two infantry regiments from the Corps of Marshal Ney. At a signal from the central column, led by a magnificently mounted officer in the bright breastplate and red plumed helmet of the Cuirassiers, the first horses and men began to cross the pontoons. The army behind them began to cheer. The cheers were uneven and spasmodic at first but as the trickle became a stream they found impetus and co-ordination. The cheers rolled over the advance guard like thunder; the sun rose higher and the men began to sweat in their thick uniforms; the bridges creaked beneath their ever-moving burden and the river flowed on underneath. By the time it was dark twenty thousand men and a thousand horses had crossed into Russia. The invasion had begun.