Wicked (36 page)

That bit of information had absolved Beau's sense of chivalry from any serious penance and he rode off in high good spirits.

The past month had mitigated the worst of his desire for Serena and he could almost convince himself that with time he'd forget her completely. He had no wish to seriously consider marriage and he couldn't offer her less in a permanent relationship. Or could he? a wicked voice suggested; even a viscount's daughter might be persuaded to the status of mistress. But, he decided in the next pulse beat, he didn't know
i
f he
  
could
 
actually
  
relinquish
 
his
  
bachelor
 
ways,
  
and recalling her temper he knew Serena wouldn't agree to any amorous license for him.

And it was all moot anyway because even the merest intimation of permanence unnerved him.

"Why did you never marry?" he asked Berry, mulling over his disparate thoughts.

Berry turned slightly in the saddle, wondering at Beau's inference.

"Just a general question," Beau dissimulated.

"Never found a woman I loved that much," Berry said.

"My thinking too," Beau murmured.

******************

On reaching Palermo, Beau went to call on Charles Lock, the British consul-general deputizing until the new envoy replacing Hamilton arrived. The Hamiltons and Nelson were off on a pleasure cruise to Malta and Syracuse before beginning the long journey back to England, the embassy butler said when Beau inquired. All talk was of Cardinal
R
uffo's success on his advance toward Naples, the major do
m
o volunteered on their passage to the first floor offices.

There were indications the French were withdrawing from Naples, the deputy-consul explained when the courtesies and greetings had been discharged.

"On orders, no doubt," Beau said, seating himself in a comfortable chair.

"With Genoa under siege and in desperate straits, Massena needs reinforcements, I expect." Charles Lock nervously tapped his watch fob. "But there's been utter silence from Napoleon. Our usual sources seem to have dried up."

"Certainly Bonaparte's campaign should begin soon, especially with Massena and his troops bottled up."

"Moreau struck at
K
ray in Prussia just last week."

"Do you think Bonaparte's considering a German campaign then? Will he leave Massena turning in the wind?"

The consul shrugged. "No one know
s
—
c
ertainly not the prime minister's damned council . . . nor do they know how to run a war."

"And you can't trust the Austrians. Thugut has his own territorial agenda."

Lock heaved a sigh. "Since the beginning."

"I was thinking of going up to Genoa and talk to some ADC's I know on the Austrian staff. Berry and I might ride north from there and see what we can discover."

"Everyone would be grateful, Rochefort," Charles Lock said, a worried frown creasing his forehead. "We're completely in the dark. With Lord Hamilton gone and Sir John Acton on his honeymoon, most of our sources are uncertain of their new loyalties."

"Did Sir John actually
marry
his thirteen-year-old niece?" Beau's eyebrows rose marginally.

"A fait accompli, sordid as it is."

"How costly was the papal dispensation?"

"Affordable apparently. The young thing tried to run away, dressed herself like a boy in breeches and bolted. But they caught her and now the
happy couple,"
Lock sarcastically noted, "is aboard the
Fo
u
droyant
with
Nelson et al."
¹³

"Sir John's damned old."

"Sixty-four."

Beau grimaced. "Can't see myself doing that to a child."

"The Actons are keeping the inheritance in the family."

"Seems to me a barrister or some political maneuvering in parliament would have accomplished as much."

"But then we're neither of us sixty-four," Lock gently said. "More brandy?"

"No." Beau held his hand up to check the consul's movement. "I'm on the cure. Berry tells me I'm going to need everything working in prime condition for our jaunt north."

"If anyone can do it, Rochefort, you can," the consul-general said with a benign smile. "And not wishing to put any undue burden on you, but we're all counting on you."

Smiling, Beau rose from his chair. "On that oppressive note," he lazily said, "I'll bid you good day. We'll send ou
r
reports ba
c
k to the blockading squadron to relay to you. At that point, I wish the prime minister good fortune convincing the Austrians to work with him."

"We should have our own army in the Mediterranean. I couldn't have agreed more with Commander-in-Chief Stuart. The campaign in Holland was a disaster, as anyone with half a brain could have told them."

"I'll see what I can find to convince Pitt to send land troops to Italy."

"And I'll relay your information in the strongest possible language."

******************

In the meantime in Paris that same night, May 6, at four in the morning, Bonaparte, accompanied by his secretary Bourrienne, rapidly descended the great staircase of the Tui-leries leading from his rooms to the inner courtyard and stepped into a black berlin drawn by a team of post horses. The gates opened and the carriage dashed off at a gallop. He would not be long awa
y
—
i
t was just a routine inspection, everyone was told.

They traveled at breakneck speed. Two days before, Duroc had left to prepare the relays; the postmasters were at their stations with their best horses harnessed and waiting; the unharnessing and reharnessing were carried out without changing postilions. The secretary inquired as to the name of the village and they galloped off again.

They reached Avallon at 7:30 in the evenin
g
—
1
50 miles in fifteen hour
s
—
t
en miles per hour, including relays. On May 7 Napoleon reached Dijon and very late on the eighth he was in Geneva, where Berthier was working at full pressure so the movement of the Reserve Army could begin on the tenth in accordance with the First Consul's plan. There was a three-day delay while waiting for the artillery to complete its preliminary marches, during which time Napoleon inspected the troops and made speeches designed to delude Austrian agents concerning the destination of the Reserve Army.

And then the ascent of the Alps at the Great St. Bernard Pass began.

At that time of year the pass was a huge mass of ice; a rough mule track, covered in snow for ten months of the year, gave access to the pass, which linked the Swiss valley of the Rhone with the Lombardy plains. Fifty-three thousand men, 5,000 horses, 60 cannon, and 300 wagons, were to move into the Aosta valley, at the threshold of Piedmont, by covering twenty-five miles of sterile valleys, defiles, rocks, and snows, in a season when the cold and the wind were still terrible and avalanches were of daily occurrence. In preparation for this journey each soldier had been issued nine days
'
rations and forty cartridges. From Martigny, the road, wide enough to allow the passage of a small carriage, climbed alongside the wild, seething Drance, running close to precipices without parapets, crossing frail, ramshackle bridges, and finally reaching Bourg St. Pierre. The road didn't go beyond this point. It gave place to a mere path by which one could reach St. Re
m
y, the first village on the Italian slope.

The higher the army went, the rougher and narrower the road became. At Bourg St. Pierre mechanics dismantled the guns; gun carriages and wheels were numbered; the provisions were packed into small boxes and loaded on mules, the gun barrels were lashed on to ho
ll
owed-out tree trunks and sledges.
W
atrin's and Loison's men hauled them along, 100 men harnessed to each gun, ten men apiece for the mountings carried on stretchers. When they came to the snow line, the ice cut through their shoes and they had to change them every three to four miles.

It took two days to move the artillery from St.-Pierre to the Hospice of St. Bernard at the top of the pass. After ten hours' march through regions of wild desolation, hurricanes and snow, wreckage and wooden crosses, the soldiers came to the monastery buildings where the monks had set up tables laden with food arranged for by Bonaparte, who'd sent money and wine ahead. On May 16, the harsh, bare plateau presented a picturesque sight with all the paraphernalia of war hauled up to 8,120 feet and the soldiers dining on boiled salt beef, mutton stew, dry vegetables, goat's cheese, Gruyere, and an old white Aosta wine.

Then the Reserve Army began the downward journey, even more difficult than the ascent.

******************

On May 14, Beau was at General Ott's forward headquarters at Rivarolo di Sopra. He was renewing his acquaintances with the Austrian staff officers he'd met at Vienna last fall during negotiations for a Second Coalition against France. No one expected Massena to hold out much longer. The Austrians had cut the Due Fratelli aqueduct, which supplied waterpower for the flour mills in the city the end of April. Admiral Keith's ships stood in every night and bombarded Genoa at close range.

In desperation, Massena had attempted a breakout on May
11
, but his troops were too physically exhausted to fight, and with Massena himself covering their retreat, they'd been forced back into the besieged city.

The Austrians had no word of Napoleon, but they were of the opinion the French would move to defend Provence against a threat of invasion, once Genoa fel
l
. . . which surely it would. In the meantime, the Austrians were distracted by the siege.

Leaving Rivarolo the following day, Beau and Berry rode north to reconnoiter around Alessandria with plans to move on to Pavia and Milan next. If no rumors of French troops were heard and no indication of their presence could be found in the environs of the Alpine passes into France, perhaps Germany would be the site of Napoleon's summer campaign after all.

******************

On the sixteenth, Napoleon's Reserve Army's advance guard descending the pass reached Aosta and captured it; the following day Lannes routed 1,500 more Austrians at Chatillon. But he ran into trouble on the nineteenth when he reached the Fort of Bard, a formidable obstacle in their path. A small fortress perched on top of a precipitous rock controlled the single road through the narrow valley.

By the twenty-first, the Austrians had been driven out of the village of Bard but the 400 soldiers in the fort garrison with their twenty-six cannon had been able to hold o
f
t' Lannes
'
s desperate assaults.

The fort commander had immediately sent word to General Me
l
as in Turin of the French invasion; if the general acted quickly, he could block the French advance.

******************

Beau and Berry met Commander Bernkopf s messenger from Bard riding hell-bent for Austrian headquarters with news of the French invasion. Napoleon had done the impossible if he'd brought his entire army over the snow-covered pass, and attaching a note of his own relaying the startling information to Admiral Keith, Beau and his captain made for Bard. They'd need numbers to assess the strength of Napoleon's advance. Was this a feint through the St. Bernard or was an entire army advancing on Genoa? Melas would need to know.

As they approached the fort two days later, the sound of cannons rumbled in the distance and when they came within visual range, they could see the entire village was invested with French troops. But estimating the strength of the enemy after more calculation, they realized the assault wasn't manned by an army of any magnitude.

They spent the remainder of the day scouting the surrounding countryside and late that afternoon, they discovered two footpaths that bypassed the fort farther to the west. Sitting silently on their mounts they gazed at the stark evidence of a large force having passed through the narrow def
i
le.

"They're heading east," Berry said.

"He's fallen like a thunderbolt," Beau murmured, frowning at the trampled ground over which thousands of soldiers had passed. "How many and where are they bound?" he quietly went on, half musing, his mind already sifting through possibilities.

"No
t
to Genoa I'd bet," Berry said. "And where's his artillery?"

"On the far side of the fort, I'd say. Those footpaths wouldn't allow them to bring the artillery. But we need to find the army before we report back to Me
l
as."

By evening, they were overlooking
I
vrea, which had the look of a center of operations. They didn't know that Napoleon was in bed at the time, sleeping peacefully with the knowledge that the enemy was still completely baffled as to his whereabouts.