Evil in a Mask (59 page)

During their second dance, he twitted her. ‘You always vowed that you would be a Duchess before your hair turned grey. But now you have taken a step down, from Countess of St. Ermins to be a German Baroness.'

She winked a naughty eye and whispered, ‘For your ear alone, dear heart, I at least recently achieved an Archduke as a lover.' Throwing back their heads, they both laughed uproariously.

Before the dance finished, she said earnestly, ‘ 'Tis all too long since we have seen anything of each other. And I am confronted with a problem that I need to talk to you about. As soon as the conference ends, please bring your wife to stay at my new home, Schloss Langenstien, near Bingen. This is important to me, my love, very important. So you must come. You must.'

‘Of course I will come,' he assured her immediately. ‘And I would that I could come alone. But that is not possible. As things are I'd be grateful if you would give Lisala and me separate rooms.'

She made a little grimace. ‘So things are already come to such a sorry pass with you. ‘Tis so also with myself. Ulrich and I now sleep apart.'

Giving her a wicked grin, Roger murmured, ‘That being so, most beloved of beloveds, perhaps …'

Georgina made a movement of her full red lips, as though blowing him a kiss, and whispered, ‘The vintage will be over, but for you I shall ever be as a ripe grape ready to fall.'

The ball went on until three o'clock in the morning. Captains and Kings, Russian Grand Duchesses and beautiful prostitutes
who had become the wives of the gallant warriors of the French Empire, Germans, Poles and Danes, mingled together, laughed, flirted outrageously and quaffed glass after glass of champagne. At length, many of them far from steady on their feet, they began to drift away. Lisala had naturally refrained from dancing; but had enjoyed herself enormously, having spent the evening surrounded with a succession of handsome officers eager to talk to her. And Josephine had beckoned her over, and had spoken to her with great kindness.

When Roger escorted her home, he felt a new man. His depression and gloom about the future had been banished as by the wave of a fairy's wand. His brief encounter with the love of his life had restored him, as nothing else could have done, to his old optimistic, confident self.

A few days later he went out to see Josefa. He told her that he had arranged for her to travel back to Paris at the end of the month with one of the last convoys conveying the Gobelin tapestries and other rich embellishments the Emperor had sent to add lustre to his presence at the conference. He then gave her gold and a letter to his old and trusted friend Maître Blanchard at
La Belle Etoile
, in the Rue St. Honoré, telling her that the innkeeper and his wife would take good care of her and the infant until she received further instructions from him.

The conference continued for a further ten days. During this time the two couples met again nearly every evening, either at receptions, the theatre or at balls; but it was only at the latter that Roger was able to hold brief private conversations with Georgina. Ulrich von Haugwitz did not attempt to conceal the fact that he found Lisala most attractive, and he had heartily endorsed Georgina's invitation that the de Breucs should spend some days at Schloss Langenstein when the conference was over. But there was one aspect of the visit which had given Roger cause for thought, and during a dance he raised it with Georgina.

‘I have been thinking,' he said, ‘about young Charles. Your husband and everyone here believe me to be a Frenchman; but the boy can have no suspicion of the double life I lead. When I arrive at the Schloss, all the odds are that he will rush
to embrace me, and that would put the fat in the fire with a vengeance.'

Georgina thought for a moment, then said, ‘You are right, so you must not travel with us, but arrive a day or two later, so that I shall have time to warn him. He is now twelve, a sensible lad and entirely to be trusted. It could be said, too, that while you were in England on your mission for Napoleon in ‘99, I invited you, as I often did foreign Ambassadors, down to stay at Stillwaters. Then, should Charles make some slip, that would explain away your knowing the house and his having as a child seen you there.'

It was on the last day of the conference that the Czar sent for Roger. He was seated at ease in a small room with his friend and adviser, Prince Adam Czartoryski. When the equerry who had presented Roger had withdrawn, Alexander smiled and said:

‘
Monsieur le Colonel
… or should I say Mr. Brook, when last we met Russia was at war with France, and it was understood that, if I arranged your exchange, you would do your utmost to supply me with useful information.'

Roger bowed. ‘I was eager to do so, Sire; but was deprived of the opportunity.'

‘So I have been informed. You were sent with General Gardane's mission to Turkey and Persia, were you not? So I do not hold against you your failure to keep your word. However, I should like to hear your views on the present situation.'

For some five minutes Roger held forth on the war being waged in the Peninsula and the unrest in Germany. Finally, he said:

‘The Emperor is still wielding immense power and resources. Does he turn his will to it, I believe him capable of subduing Spain and throwing the English out of Portugal. In Germany, as long as he holds the principal fortresses, little can be done against him. But of his eventual fall I am convinced. It will be brought about by the leading men among his own people. They have come to realise that his wars are no longer in defence of France, but to satisfy his own insane ambitions. He is bleeding France to death, and at the first favourable opportunity,
to save their country, many of those whom he has raised up will turn upon him.'

The Czar and Prince Adam exchanged a smile, then the latter said:

‘This we have learned, and from a very high authority. One such said to His Imperial Majesty only the other day, “Sire, what are you coming here for? It is for you to save Europe, and you will only succeed in that by resisting Napoleon. The French are civilised, their sovereign is not. The Sovereign of Russia is civilised, her people are not. Therefore the Sovereign of Russia must be the ally of the French people.” '

Roger smiled. ‘I would stake my life that I could name the man who said that. It was the Prince de Benevento.'

‘Why should you suppose so?' Alexander asked coldly.

‘Because, Sire, every word has the ring of Talleyrand. He has been my close friend for over twenty years. He knows as you do that I am, in fact, an Englishman. We have worked together ceaselessly, although so far without avail, to bring about peace between our two countries, so that this bloodshed may end and the nations of Europe again enjoy security and prosperity.'

Alexander raised his eyebrows. ‘Then, Mr. Brook, you are an even more remarkable man than I had supposed, and can be of great service to us. Policy dictates that we should renew our treaty with the Emperor, but we shall not pay more than lip service to it. Talleyrand has seen to that, and Napoleon must indeed have become insane to have put him in charge of negotiations here, instead of relying on his Foreign Minister.'

‘I was not aware that he had, Sire,' Roger admitted, ‘as I have had no private conversation with the Prince since we arrived in Erfurt. But ‘tis said, “those whom the gods seek to destroy they first make mad”, and that is the case with Napoleon.'

Rising to terminate the interview, the Czar extended his hand for Roger to kiss and said, ‘Mr. Brook, we know you to be our friend, and any service you can render us will not go unrewarded.'

Next day, October 12th, the new treaty was signed. An
hour later, Roger sought an interview with the Emperor and asked for leave.

Before he could say more, Napoleon rounded on him and snapped, ‘What! And after you have been back in my service for no more than three months? I suppose on account of your weak chest you wish again to idle the winter away in sunshine at that little chateau of yours in the South of France? But I will provide you with ample sunshine. I intend to go to Spain and teach those Spanish curs a lesson they will not soon forget. You speak many languages, have travelled far, and possess a knowledge of affairs greatly exceeding that of the majority of my
beaux sabreurs
. I can find many uses for you, so I mean to take you to Spain with me.'

Roger smiled. ‘Sire, you flatter me; but you did not hear me out. I meant only to ask permission to spend a few days with Baron von Haugwitz and his wife at their castle on the Rhine.'

‘Ah! That is another matter. Go then; but rejoin me in Paris before the end of the month.'

Next day the conference began to break up, with more salvoes of cannon and fanfares of trumpets. Roger was present when Queen Louisa went out to her coach. At a private dinner with her husband, Josephine and Napoleon, she had pleaded eloquently with the latter to return Magdeburg to Prussia. Having made her an evasive answer, he had taken a rose from a vase on the table and handed it to her. Those who knew him realised that the gesture had been inspired only by his invariable gentleness towards women; but she had taken it as a deliberate indication that he did not regard women as qualified to discuss affairs of State.

Immersed as ever in his own urgent business he did not pay her the courtesy of coming to see her off. It was Talleyrand who limped forward and offered her his arm, condoled with her for a while on her failure to help her country, then handed her into her coach. Afterwards she recorded:

‘I was astonished beyond belief that this renegade priest, whom I had always thought of as the most evil, depraved and treacherous man of his time, should have been the only one to
show me sympathy and understanding during the conference at Erfurt.'

The Haugwitzes left on the same day. Having noticed that Gunther's study had only a small bookcase and that several score of law books were in piles on the floor, Roger went out and bought for him the finest bookcase he could find in the town, and expensive presents for Frau Gunther and the doctor who had delivered Lisala. These simple, kindly Germans received them with surprise and gratitude; but he assured them that he could not sufficiently repay the care they had given to his wife. Next morning he and Lisala set out for Schloss Langenstein.

The journey was something under two hundred miles, so could be done comfortably by coach in four days. Lisala took with her in the coach a young girl named Gretchen, whom Frau Gunther had procured for her as a maid, after Josefa had moved out to the farm with the Negro baby. Roger rode beside the coach, and his soldier-servant, François, behind him.

During the conference, husband and wife had exchanged barely a word, except during the evenings when they were with other people. But now that they were alone, he had to make up his mind how he should treat her. Although he was determined to reject any overtures she might make towards resuming their former intimacy, he decided that it would cause great awkwardness at the inns if they did not at least appear to be on good terms; so, when they halted at the wayside for their first picnic lunch, he said:

‘Lisala, what has happened cannot be undone. During the times we spent together in Isfahan, Lisbon, Rio and Madrid, I was many times perturbed by the violence of your temper and your extreme selfishness; but my passion for you was such that I made allowances for the unattractive side of your mind, believing it to be beyond the power of your will to control.

‘But the day after we reached Erfurt you revealed to me your true nature, even glorying in the fact that you are governed entirely by your baser instincts. That destroyed my love and any latent affection I might feel for you. However, since we are to remain together, it would only be a continual
harassment to us both did we do so in a state of enmity. Therefore, I propose henceforth to treat you as I would a sister or cousin, with whom circumstances had made it necessary for me to share a home.'

She shrugged her fine shoulders. ‘That suits me well enough. It was your personality that made you more attractive to me than other men, and I greatly enjoyed our early intimacy. But since you returned to the service of the Emperor, your work has absorbed you to a degree that makes you a poor husband. My only interest now is to retain the status that being your wife gives me, and my position as one of the Empress' ladies. I have only to lift my finger, and I could secure more lovers than I would have the time to pleasure.'

‘That I do not doubt,' he retorted tartly. ‘And, your nature being what it is, I am not fool enough to expect you to remain chaste. But I now give you fair warning. Not only must you be discreet about your
affaires
, you must also impress the necessity of discretion upon any lover you may take. Should one of them be rash enough to boast that he has had you, I'll call him out and kill him. I will then kill you.'

He knew he would never carry out the last part of his threat, but it had its effect. She paled, cast down her eyes and murmured, ‘It has not escaped me that you, too, have a ruthless streak, and are an ill man to cross. So be it then. I will take great care not to provoke a scandal.'

Neither of them had ever lacked subjects of interest to talk about; so, at the inns where they took their evening meals, any casual observer would have put them “down as a long-married couple upon good terms with each other. But Roger always asked for a separate room, on the pretext that he suffered from insomnia, spent half the night reading, and was loath to keep his wife awake. On the afternoon of Wednesday, October 20th, they reached Schloss Langenstein.

It dated from medieval times: a rambling, irregular pile, surmounted by a tall tower and perched upon a rocky eminence overlooking a bend in the broad river. The coach had been sighted while slowly climbing the zigzag road that led up to it, so the von Haugwitzes were at the great wooden,
iron-studded door to welcome their visitors. Young Charles, now a handsome, well-grown lad, with his mother's dark, curly hair and his father's blue eyes, stood beside them.