Authors: Rob Griffith
I suppose that now might be as good a moment as any for some personal history. My name is Benjamin Blackthorne, late of the XIIth Light Dragoons, although at that point I was on half pay as many fine officers were during those brief months of peace. However, my lack of military employment was not just due to the rather inconvenient lack of a war to fight.
I had decided that soldiering was not for me. I had this startling revelation when I was sat on an ancient Roman wall, the powder smoke beginning to clear, the sun edging above the horizon and catching the towers and minarets of Alexandria in the distance. My best friend Edward Lavery lay dead at my feet. I knew that I couldn’t stomach another battle. His blood had dyed my blue jacket black and my hands red. I wondered how I was going to tell his wife that I had killed him.
The French had attacked at night. The fighting was confused, some regiments fighting to their front and rear simultaneously. I rode back and forth with messages for General Abercromby, fighting the temptation to gallop as far from the fighting as I could. Explosions lit the battleground into a series of tableaux, each lasting less than a second; the French columns advancing up the hill to the beat of their drums, the redcoats firing volleys into the dark from the old Roman fort, the French cavalry sweeping towards me, the horses’ teeth bared while the fires of hell reflected in the dragoons’ brass helmets, a highlander crawling to the rear carrying his own arm.
My mare was shot from under me, her legs crumpled and I was off. I lay dazed. Swirls of smoke surrounded me like wraiths. I was alone. The laboured breaths of my dying horse, the cracks of muskets and the thunder of canon my only evidence that anything else existed, that the world had not yet ended, but for me it was about to. I wiped the blood from my eyes and saw a figure coming towards me, sword in hand, through the smoke.
I fired.
I spent the rest of that tortuous campaign suffering the flies and the heat but thankfully only engaging in one further action, in which I managed to distinguish myself by suicidally charging five enemy dragoons and receiving only a cut on my cheek for my pains. I didn’t care if I lived or died. The drinking began to be noticed by my fellow officers, and by my colonel, but I was past considering what people thought of me, past caring what I thought of myself after the third bottle each night.
To my great discredit I never did tell Edward’s widow the truth. It was months after I had returned that I went to see her, and I had to have a few drinks before I found the courage to go at all. She said she was glad to see me but I think I just reminded her of him. I didn’t go back. Instead I left for Paris, sick of London society, sick of myself. In Paris I did my best to enjoy life, drink, gambling, women – the usual distractions for a man intent on avoiding his problems.
The Salon de la Paix had been my favourite haunt; the drink was cheap, the women friendly and the games mostly honest. Now, it was my only hope of escape. The more I thought about the events of the morning the more worried I became. If Bonaparte had ordered every Englishman arrested then all bets were off. Civilised countries couldn’t behave like that; there were conventions, treaties and just ways of doing things. However, since I had just walked past where the guillotine had once stood in the Place de la Concorde I had to acknowledge that France had long since abandoned civilised behaviour. The other thing that was bothering me was John Wright. I knew nothing of the Alien Office he spoke of, perhaps they had dealings with many of the Royalists sheltering from the Revolution back in England, but how and why were they involved here? God only knew what the packet contained and don’t think I wasn’t tempted to get rid of the damn thing, and even more tempted to read it but it was sealed. At one point I had weighed it in my hand and looked down at the crowded waters of the Seine, but I just couldn’t do it. It could have been worth something to the French and if I had been caught it might have saved my neck.
So there I was outside the Salon, wondering what to do next. I remembered my old colonel had often said “If in doubt, watch and wait.” I hadn’t ever paid much attention to anything he said before but thought that perhaps the time had come to act upon some of the deluge of sage advice with which he favoured his junior officers. So I walked over to the nearest boot cleaner’s, sat on a very uncomfortable raised sofa and pretended to read
Le Moniteur
while a boy got the filth off my boots and I watched the salon through the window, wracking my brains for a plan.
For once I did not immediately turn to the back page and the
spectacles
section to see what was on at the theatre but concentrated on the
exterieur
news on the front page.
Le Moniteur
could be relied upon to give Bonaparte’s view and I was not surprised to read that the renewal of hostilities was all perfidious Albion’s fault. Britain’s insistence at holding on to Malta was a flagrant violation of the Treaty of Amiens whereas France’s invasion of Switzerland, annexation of Elba and continued presence in northern Italy were perfectly justifiable. The paper didn’t tell me much that I couldn’t have guessed but the time had been well spent. I had a plan.
I handed the lad doing his best on my boots a very large tip, winked and said that I was in need of company. Within two minutes a girl came up to me and took my arm and had begun to lead me to her rooms. I stopped her and said I wanted to talk first. She gave me one of those looks that said she thought she had a strange one here and was no doubt calculating how much extra she could charge for whatever debauchery I had in mind. She was well past her prime and I wouldn’t have been tempted even had I not been stone cold sober. I explained what I wanted her to do, gave her as much as she would earn in a night and aimed her at her target.
She wasn’t subtle. The man watching the salon had ceased his nasal excavations and had branched out into aural mining, examining each finger-f of wax with utter concentration for several seconds before sniffing it tentatively and going back for more. He looked bored, or stupid, and hopefully both. The girl walked up to him and grabbed his crotch like she was picking a turnip from a greengrocer’s barrow. He smiled, she smiled and off they went. It was that simple, or so I hoped as I slipped around the back of the salon. Trying the front door would have been pushing my luck.
I had previously needed to make a hasty exit from the salon whilst the Earl-of-somewhere-obscure came looking for me with a pair of pistols and the heartfelt conviction that I had cheated him at cards and cuckolded him in the same night. He was only half right. My departure had been swift but I thought I could find my way to the back stairs again.
In daylight the back of the salon was not pleasant. I trod carefully over a carpet of broken bottles and rotten cabbage until I came to the staircase that led to the kitchens. There were no steaming pots that day, no swearing chef beating an errant pâtissier around the head with a frying pan. There was only a very ugly and very tall lady having her toilette assisted by the man I had come to see.
“We are closed. Go away.” Henri Durand, owner of the Salon, did not turn around to see who was at his door. I put his lack of a civil greeting down to the fact that he didn’t know it was me.
“Henri, it’s me. Ben Blackthorne,” I said.
“We are closed. Go away, Ben.”
I walked into the kitchen anyway. The coppers shone in the shafts of sunlight coming through the high windows, but they were the only things that were clean. By all means enjoy the cuisine of the French, but never, ever, ask to see their kitchens. A thick film of grease covered every surface and my boots crunched on Lord knows what as I approached a jug of water that I’d spied on the table.
“Do you mind?” I asked as I pointed at the jug.
“If I say no will you take as much notice as you did when I told you to go away?” Henri replied.
“Probably.”
“Then help yourself. I will add it to your slate.”
I drained half the jug and immediately felt better, albeit marginally. The throbbing in my head softened from a major artillery bombardment to a light infantry skirmish.
Henri Durand was the type of man that every city needs in order to function. He was a cog, a vital connection between the classes. In his case he was a link between those with money and those without. Or, more accurately, those intent on losing all their money at his gaming tables and those who’d steal it from them if they weren’t throwing it away. However, the criminal classes of Paris weren’t what they once were, or are now; most of them were in the government, thanks to the Revolution. Also, I suppose the moneyed class hadn’t fared well, what with the guillotine and all, but Henri, in the middle, still seemed to know how to make a livre or two. I knew he’d be able to get me out of France if I could pay enough, but that was going to be the problem.
Henri looked at me for the first time. His thinning hair was plastered down to his head, probably with the same grease that covered the walls. His eyes were never still and life was obviously treating him well as his belt had sunk a little further into the mass of his stomach. He had finished fixing the ugly woman’s hair. They exchanged a few words and I remember thinking her voice was very deep. Then I finally caught on and recognised her, or rather him. Lord Dalrymple was another of Henri’s regulars. I knew that he was usually trying to get Henri’s girls out of their clothes but I hadn’t suspected the reason.
“What do you think, Ben?” Dalrymple asked as he plumped his bosom rather too enthusiastically.
“Very nice. Henri, I assume you are helping his Lordship to make his way home?”
“Yes, Ben. I think I can find another dress. If you have the money?”
“If you go to my room at…”
“It will have been confiscated by now. If you do not have the cash on you then there is nothing I can do.”
Henri turned his back on me and bade farewell to Lord Dalrymple. I was not convinced that his plan would work. French women have a certain way of moving, a provocative swaying of the hips. Dalrymple left the kitchen with all the elegance of a drunken camel. Henri began to ignore me once more and went back into the salon.
“Au revoir my friend. I wish you luck,” he called over his shoulder.
He did look genuinely sorry to see me go, but then I did owe him rather a lot of money.
“Henri, please. I have to get back to London,” I pleaded, following him.
The salon was empty. It was eerie. Stale tobacco smoke and cheap perfume lingered in the air. I had spent many hours here at night when the candles lit the hopes of the hopeless and the shadows hid the realities of life. I was well known at the tables but some nights I would just sit and talk with the girls or the regulars, and drink of course. In daylight the salon was tawdry, the wallpaper garish and the carpet stained. The rouge et noir and hazard tables were deserted apart from one man slowly dealing himself cards and smiling wanly as he gently laid each on the green baize. I had the ominous feeling that my fate was being decided as randomly as one of Henri’s games of chance. The house seldom lost and in this case it was Bonaparte who was making the rules.
“Henri, wait. Do you know anyone else who could help me?” I asked.
He stopped, turned around and sighed. I felt a brief tingle of hope; I was one of his most dependable customers after all. I lost almost all the time.
He was about to speak when somebody knocked hard on the front door to the salon. I had heard a knock like that before and it wasn’t a customer impatient for the tables to open. I saw a flicker of fear cross Henri’s face; he looked at me. Perhaps I saw pity but that would have been as unusual as fear for Henri. The knocking grew louder.
“You did not hear this from me. Understand?” Henri said, his eyes glancing back to the door.
“Oui, Henri.”
“Go to the Café Foy, Boulevard Les Italiens, number thirty-eight, at the corner of Chaussé d’Anton, n’est ce pas. Ask for La Rose.”
“God bless you, Henri.”
“I would save your blessings, mon ami. You will need them more than I. Now go, vite! I will keep them talking.”
I didn’t need telling twice. I dashed back through the kitchen and down the stairs. I could hear Henri arguing behind me. Tables were being turned over and glasses smashed. I jumped down the last few steps, slid on some rotten cabbage and ran down the alley. Boulevard Les Italiens and my last hope of getting out of Paris was not far away. There was a shout from the kitchen door but I didn’t look back. I just kept on running.
CHAPTER THREE
Salvation lay across the street, or so I hoped. I leant against the white-washed wall, placing one foot behind me on the stonework, and surveyed the entrance to number thirty-eight. It hadn’t been hard to find; a small wooden sign proclaimed the café’s name and the rich aroma of roasting coffee escaped from a side window into an alley. It had started to rain. Not much, but enough to make me pull my coat tighter and make me wish my cloak wasn’t still in my hotel room. Two fat merchants came out of the café, looked up at the sky, shrugged their shoulders and said farewell. I flicked my watch open, barely looked at the time and flicked it shut again.
Boulevard Les Italiens was much like any other street in Paris. Some of the grander houses were burnt out ruins, some were home to squatters and a few, a very obvious few, were now home to those in government service or trade that had done well from the Revolution. Where once vicomtes and barons had lain with their mistresses now merchants or clerks lay with their fat wives between sessions in the assembly. A dog sniffed at my boots and then urinated against the wall but otherwise no one took any notice of me as I stood and watched, and waited. Carts were winding their way back out to the country, empty but for the odd rotten onion and recumbent peasant. A coach clattered past, the driver swearing at people to get out of the way. All the passers-by had somewhere to go and I again noticed the tension. There was no rejoicing or protesting at the thought of a new war, just a sense of foreboding. How long would the fighting last this time? Ten years? Twenty?