Wicked (39 page)

After the maid returned with a tea tray, she busied herself in the room, pouring Serena's tea, unpacking the few of her belongings an orderly had brought from the carriage, placing her books atop a splendid pietre dure table near the sofa in the salon where Serena had decided to sit. As she went about her duties, she scrutinized Serena with an obvious interest, as if placing her in the hierarchy of women privy to the general's life.

"The general's very kind, signorina," the maid said, offering encouragement to the young lady who sat stiff-backed on the sofa like a schoolgirl.

"I'm pleased to hear it," Serena replied, keeping her voice neutral, not sure whether the maid was there to serve her or guard her.

"And he's devoted to his officers."

As they are to him, Serena thought, wondering how many other staff officers brought back captive women for their commanders. "How nice," she said.

"More tea?" The maid hovered at her elbow.

"No, thank you."

"Another cake?"

"Thank you, no."

"Would you like me to find you something more comfortable to wear?" the girl inquired. "The general dines late, you see. You may have to wait some time."

"No, I'm comfortable," Serena said, not yet capable of playing the courtesan with ease, her posture the antithesis of relaxation.

"Very well, signorina." The maid fluffed the last pillow on the settee across from Serena, surveyed the room quickly for any duty left undone, and seeing none, said, "Ring for me if you need anything."

Serena passed three nerve-racking hours anxiously waiting for the general to appear, rehearsing a variety of demands and pleas, courteous and not, wrathful and gracious, debating the best procedures required to expedite the process of her release.

But he didn't come and dinner passed without his appearing. Serena ate alone at a very large dining table in an enormous dining room, the vast interior gilded and mirrored and lighted with hundreds of candles. Massena's chef was of the first rank, the food superb, the service regal.

For a moment before dinner, she considered refusing the food as a form of protest against her capture, but it was impossible after surveying the delectable choices put before her. The table was covered with beautifully prepared dishes: dozens of choices in the opening cours
e
—
s
oups, hors d'oeuvres, removes, and entrées, and before taking her first bite of veal with sorrel sauce she chastised herself briefly for being without firm principles.

After dinner she spent the evening making a pretense of reading, and at ten declined the maid's offer to assist her into bed. She preferred to sit up and read for a time, she told the maid, dismissing her for the night, intending to avoid slee
p
—
t
he thought of being surprised in bed by a strange man too daunting.

She fell asleep in her chair with all the candles burning.

Like a young child afraid of the dark, the general reflected with a faint smile when he went to his chambers near midnight to fetch a document and looked in on Solignac's pretty present. A shame, he thought with a twinge of regret, that he couldn't ignore his pressing correspondence and take pleasure instead in the mademoiselle's delectable body. But he couldn't, he decided with a sigh, and returning to his office, he kept his secretaries up until three. After a short nap in his dressing room, he rose again at dawn to begin another day of demanding administrative duties.

Napoleon had called Massena to Milan shortly after Austria's defeat at Marengo and then immediately left for Paris, where the politics of fluctuating conspiracies required his presence. Massena was left with the onerous tasks of reorganizing and reequipping 70,000 troops of the consolidated Reserve and Army of Italy, none of whom had been paid in six months.

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

The morning activities in the adjacent dressing room woke Serena,
the
sound of bathing, the murmur of voices bringing her nerves on full alert once again. What should she say to the general when he first came in? What
could
she say without fear of reprisal? But the voices remained comfortably distant as Serena slowly came awake, stretching her stiff muscles. The chair, while luxuriously soft, had not offered the amenities of a bed.

As Serena nervously awaited her denouement, Franco, the general's batman, entertained his master with the latest on-
d
its as he dressed him for the day, and the occasional sound of the men's laughter reached Serena through the closed doors. The valet served up all the freshest rumors for Massena's edification, the general's understanding of local affairs always dependent in part on Franco's intelligence reports. Once the elderly servant had run through his repertoire of current gossip, he said with a nod at the doors to the adjoining bedchamber, "Sylvie says the mademoiselle wouldn't go to bed last night no matter how she coaxed her."

"I noticed," Massena murmured. "Send her some bauble from me today."

"The countess liked emeralds."

"She did, didn't she? Well, send this one emeralds; So
l
ignac's young lady does have the look of Natalie, doesn't she?" Massena's memories of the Countess Gonchanka brought a smile to his austere face.

"Solignac has a good eye."

Massena laughed softly. "Now if I can just find time to enjoy my prize."

"It's not your fault the army's in a mess," the orderly grumbled, his loyalty unswerving, his understanding of army politics consummate after fifteen years of serving Massena. "They expect too much of you."

"As usual, Franco. And then the complaints begin when I lash everyone into shape."

"They're ungrateful pigs." He shook out a fresh shirt, displeasure in every snap of his wrists.

"You and I know that," Massena said with a grin, sliding his arms into the crisp shirt his batman held out for him now. "But then we must consider the politics of survival."

"H
m
pf. As if Bonaparte would be First Consul without you to win his wars."

"Or I an efficient soldier without you to take care of me," the general murmured, standing still while his cravat was carefully draped into appropriate folds.

"It's an honor, sir."

"I'll try to dine with the young lady this evening." Massena shook his cuffs down. "Come and remind me at eight."

"Unless another hundred dispatches arrive this afternoon," Franco mumbled, protective of his master, concerned with the heavy schedule Massena kept after so recently suffering at the siege of Genoa. He'd endured the same scant rations as his men and his health wasn't completely restored yet. "You should try to sleep more."

"I'll try," Massena politely agreed, his mind already distracted by the most pressing of his appointments for the day. "Bring coffee to my office," he added, picking up his tunic himself, waving his orderly away. "See that it's very black and very sweet, Franco." He was already halfway to the door. "I have to see the monseigneur first and he always gives me a headache."

"Hang the old sinner." With republican zeal, Franco viewed the papacy as expendable.

"There are times I'd like to when he boldly lies to me," Massena said with a flashing smile, shrugging into his coat. "But then, the French Treasury needs the money he tells me he doesn't have."

The procurement of cash for the pay of the troops was always an exasperating problem, although it wasn't the first time Massena had been faced with it. The French consular government had inherited from its predecessors, the Directory and the Convention, the principle that the French armies had to be fed, clothed, and paid at the expense of the occupied enemy territories. Strictly speaking, though, the provinces of Northern Italy occupied by Massena's army were not enemy territory but neutral states, whose populations the French government wished to conciliate and attract into the French political system as buffer states against Austria. So from the first, it was obvious that any contributions exacted from the local governments would be bitterly resented and would be insufficient to meet the requirements of the French troops.

Napoleon had promised that any shortfalls would be made up by cash payments from the French treasury. They never would be, of course, Massena knew, and his greatest difficulty was imposing contributions on those who, in his opinion, could best afford to pay them.

He spent the morning with local government officials trying to appear fair and reasonable to men who strongly objected to the sums required of them.

His afternoon was given over
-
to tiresome and acrimonious disputes with the Austrian high command over the line of demarcation that was to be established between France and Austria per the Convention of Alessandria that had ended the campaig
n
—
a
n instrument still to be ratified both by the government in Paris and by the Au
l
ic Council in Vienna. And due to the vagueness of the terms laid down in the Convention by Napoleon's representative, Berthier, and the Austrian chief of staff, Zach, the disagreements would take weeks more.

Once the Austrians had taken their leave late that afternoon, a dozen new dispatches were handed to Massena and the next time he looked up, an ADC from Napoleon was being ushered in by Solignac
.
Both men's faces were wreathed in smiles. The envoy from Paris had brought nine million in gold for the army paymaster. It was an occasion for celebration; Solignac had already left instructions with the chef. All further administrative duties should be curtailed for the night, he affably suggested, and at a cheer from the staff, Massena agreed with good grace.

Serena received orders, albeit couched in polite terms, to appear in the dining room at nine.

The emeralds had arrived from the general that afternoon, a magnificent necklace and earrings carried in by Franco, who with a graceful bow handed Serena the gold casket containing them. "Compliments of General Massena," he'd said.

And when the maid arrived to dress Serena, she conveyed a message from General Massena that he "would be pleased if the mademoiselle would wear the emerald jewelry that evening."

What a long way she'd come from her quiet upbringing in Gloucestershire, Serena thought. Wondering what other orders she'd be required to fulfill before the evening ended, she watched servants carry in copper buckets of water for her bath. Tonight she was slated to become the latest of General Massena's paramours. And she didn't know what to do.

What if she were to refuse him? What would happen to her? A small shiver fluttered down her spine. Or did one yield with good grace and pretend it didn't matter that you were reduced to the status of courtesan?

She was mute as she was bathed and dressed, feeling like a prisoner about to be led to the scaffold, her silence apparently unnoticed by the maid who ordered her lowly minions about with the authority of her exalted position. She commanded and they obeyed, bringing soap and towels and more water. The shampoo was discarded twice before the proper scent was accepted by the maid, the fragrance of jasmine apparently preferred by the general, the scent heady in the steam of the bath chamber.

The maid selected appropriate lingerie when Serena said she didn't care what she wore. The delicate silk of a chemise and the gossamer bit of corset slid over her skin with a luxurious whisper as she was laced in and beautified for the general's pleasure.

The abbreviated corset was nothing more than boning covered with lace that served to boost her breasts well above the low décolletage of the filmy bit of white mousseline de soie passing for a gown. There was no question of her purpose in such revealing attire, the undergown of flesh-colored silk blatantly suggestive, clinging to her hips and legs when she moved.

Her hair was dressed a l'antique in a fall of blond curls pinned high on her head, and the emerald necklace lay on her exposed bosom like a sensual invitation to look, to touch.

A lodestar of the first magnitude, a score of men concluded as she entered the dining room. Each one turned to sta
r
e at her standing at the door, the emeralds drawing the eye, her full, plump breasts holding their awed gazes. And each officer envied the general walking over to greet the young lady Solignac had brought from Florence.