Brothers in Arms (14 page)

Steel did his best to suppress a smile. Here then was the proof of his reason for being in the French capital. It was true. The French were split and ripe for surrender. He realized that he must continue the conversation. ‘So who was to blame for the defeat, do you think? Marshal Vendôme or the Duc de Burgundy?’

The man laughed, out loud this time. ‘Are you serious, Captain? Why, naturally the blame must fall on Vendôme. That at least I know to be the King’s opinion.’

‘And you, of course, hold no opinion but that of the King?’

‘Marshal Vendôme caused this catastrophe, and I have no doubt that he will suffer as a consequence. How can you doubt the guilt of a man whose own secretary had to write a letter attempting to exonerate him? Such a tissue of lies. Have you read it? It has been well copied. Every café and brothel in Paris has seen it.’

Steel shook his head. ‘I’ve seen no letter. I only know that if the French horse had not been told that the marsh was impassable then Rantzau’s Hanoverians would not have been given the opportunity to start the destruction on the left wing.’

The man looked askance. ‘The left wing? Surely you mean the right?’

Steel bit his tongue. In trying to be clever he had again outwitted himself. Of course his left at the battle, the Allied left, had been the enemy right wing. He shook his head and smiled. ‘I’m sorry, of course. I meant the right wing. But do you not agree?’

‘Sadly, I am not in a position to pass judgement. I was not on that part of the battlefield.’

Steel stared hard at the mask. ‘You were at Oudenarde too? You served in a regiment?’

‘Not in the field. I was with the staff. Naturally. We quartered at the mill, at Roygem. But where were you, Captain? Where exactly was Clare’s regiment?’

Steel was quite confounded. It was a basic slip in his cover story. He had no idea where Clare’s might have been at Oudenarde. Where in God’s name had he seen Irish red in the enemy ranks? On the left, no, he meant the right. Opposite him, anyway. Or had they been Swiss? Where was the damned Irish Brigade? Had the man been playing with him all this time? Had he seen through his disguise? Was Simpson perhaps a double agent? He hit on a solution. ‘I was attached to another regiment.’

‘Oh, really? To which unit?’

‘Lord Dorrington’s.’

‘Indeed. Yes. They fought on our left, did they not?’

Steel, unsure, decided to agree and pray he was right. ‘Indeed, sir.’

He was finally about to ask the man whom he might be when, perhaps sensing this, the other pre-empted him: ‘Naturally, being where we were, I saw little of the fight, save the glorious charge by the Prussian cavalry which did so much damage to our foot. But how sad and how stupid to use such a brave body of men in that way. Truly, I tell you, Captain, General Marlborough does not care for his soldiers.’

Steel smarted. ‘They were not British soldiers, sir, but Germans.’ He cursed silently. Again he found himself instinctively defending the wrong army, the wrong general.

‘You’re right, Captain. Perhaps I do that general a disservice. I never could work out where his loyalties lay. Whatever the case, he carried the day and then we had to leave the field. Really, Marshal Vendôme was most insolent in tone towards the Duc de Burgundy. He spoke quite out of turn.’

Steel wondered again who this man might be and was suddenly aware of the true vulnerability of his situation in an assembly where anyone might be a high-ranking French general.

The masked man suddenly pointed over his shoulder. ‘Monsieur Duroc. A word.’ He turned to Steel. ‘Here’s a man who can settle your opinion, Captain. He is the King’s chamberlain. We were speaking of Oudenarde and the Marshal’s predicament.’

The newcomer began to look concerned. He took a handkerchief from his waistcoat and dabbed at his head before speaking. ‘The King is fully aware of the gravity of the situation. Six thousand dead and wounded, nine thousand prisoners, including 800 officers, and we appear to have simply lost fifteen thousand men somewhere in Flanders.’

The masked man waved a hand to calm him. ‘There is no need to bluster, sir. We are not invaded.’

‘But we have been, as near as dammit. The Allies are at this moment scouring Artois, laying waste to every town and village, driving off the animals, burning our people from their houses, raping the women, they say, just as they did in Bavaria five years back.’

Steel felt compelled to speak. ‘They do not rape, sir. Of that I can assure you.’

‘How, sir, are you qualified to know?’

‘I was in Bavaria, sir, and there was no rape. Of that I swear to you. No death, save that caused by others in the guise of Marlborough’s men.’

He thought back to a terrible day in that extraordinary and otherwise glorious campaign when he and his men had come upon an atrocity hard to rival: a barn filled with dead civilians, done to discredit the English. They never had found the true authors of the crime, and Steel had sworn then that when they did he himself would avenge the innocent women and children of that charnel house. Remembering where he was, he wondered whether he had said too much and whether his face betrayed his emotions.

However, his companion had been further engaged by the flustered chamberlain. ‘They are barely two days’ march from us, sire. They will be here instantly.’

‘Calm yourself, Duroc. Calm yourself.’

The little man turned to Steel. ‘I tell you, Captain, Paris is on the very verge of panic. It is one thing to lose a battle in Flanders, but it is quite another to have the enemy raping and pillaging in France itself. It’s unthinkable. Why, it’s impertinent!’

‘I assure you, sir, the British will not rape your women. I know these men. They are honourable soldiers. I have fought against them and they have treated all men well, even their enemies. They aren’t barbarians. This is a civilized war.’

The taller man laughed, almost removed his mask and then thought better of it. ‘A civilized war, Captain? How can war be civilized?’

‘We must all work to make it so, sir. What would we do if war were to become a free-for-all?’

‘In any case, you speak as an Irishman. You’re almost one of them, aren’t you?’

Steel thought on his feet, rallied all his wit. ‘I am a Jacobite, sir. I do the true King’s work, and yes, it’s true that I’ve seen my countrymen cut down by Protestant bigots among their ranks. But that is not the rule, sir.’

Steel wondered what possible interest this French nobleman could have in the behaviour of the British army and its attitude to Jacobites.

‘But you must agree, Captain, when a principle is at stake then surely no holds are barred?’

‘No, sir. Even in the greatest cause we need some restraint, some notion of justice and morality in war.’

‘Ah! I perceive that you are a man of learning as well as a fighter. You may have the look of a beau, monsieur, but you are a true savant, is that not so, Duroc?’

The smaller man smiled peevishly, while the other laughed.

Steel was again unsettled, unsure of himself. ‘I make no pretence as to learning, sir, merely what I might have picked up along the way in my life as a travelling soldier.’

‘And where, pray, has that taken you?’

Now Steel knew that he was in imminent peril of becoming unstuck. Of course he could recount his own campaigns of the last twenty years. Every one was etched indelibly on his psyche. But they had been fought with the armies of King William and Queen Anne. Now he must carry forward the pretence and answer as a soldier in the army of King Louis. He racked his brain for his alter ego’s history. But whether it was the wine or the pressure of the moment, he could come up with none. As his fellow guest began to frown, a single word came into his head: ‘Neerwinden. Yes, Neerwinden. We won that day. Won well.’

The man nodded, waiting … Steel decided he would have to play the fool, which did not come naturally to him. He must feign ignorance and hope for the best.

A second later someone gently took hold of his right arm. It was Simpson. Such was Steel’s relief that he almost called him by name.

‘Why, Captain Johnson. There you are.’ Simpson turned to the masked guest. ‘Ah, yes … I do hope that the captain has not been boring you with his tales of life on campaign. He can become so tedious.’

‘Quite the contrary, monsieur …’

‘St Colombe.’

‘Quite the contrary, Monsieur de St Colombe. I fancy that he was only just about to start.’

‘Then I shall whisk him away before he does. You would never forgive me, sir.’ He made a low bow. ‘Come, Captain. There are so many people you must meet this evening.’

Simpson ushered him slowly towards the french windows which gave onto a terrace above the house’s formal garden, opened them and pushed him through with a sigh.

‘Good God, Steel, please. I shall swoon if you behave thus. You must be careful here. You are here for one reason only, to give your disguise a degree of gravity and truth. No one would ever suspect that any enemy officer in his right mind would come to a soirée such as this. Do you have any idea just who is in that room?’

‘As far as I can see, the biggest bunch of fops and fools in France. I’ve never known such hot air. And for what? What interest could such people possibly have in the life of a Jacobite officer?’

‘That’s not for you to reason. There’s a point to your being here tonight. I intend to have you spoken about in Paris in the coming days so that you are adopted into society. Who knows, you might even obtain an audience with the King.’

Steel froze. ‘I never agreed to that. Meet Louis? No. Then I really would be discovered.’

‘Well, perhaps you’re right. But at least allow me my subterfuge. And who knows, back in there I might find one of Louis’s courtiers who speaks for peace. But whatever happens I do not want you to cause a scene. That is not the idea at all. This place is filled with spies and enemies. Know that. Now let us return to the party before we are missed.’

Steel nodded. He knew that Simpson was right. He had gone too far in his argument with the courtier. He turned to Simpson. ‘Who the devil was that tedious man I was arguing with? You bowed and called him “sir”.’

Simpson laughed and shook his head. ‘You really don’t know? That, my dear Jack, was James Francis Edward Stuart. The Pretender to the throne himself. That was the man who would be our King.’

‘Good God. He told me he was at Oudenarde.’

‘And that he was, I believe. On Burgundy’s staff. Although in name he had command of the Irish Brigade. Well, they are his own personal troops.’ He noticed Steel’s ashen face. ‘You must have managed to lie well enough. He seemed convinced. Good. That went as I had planned.’

Steel stared at him. ‘As you planned? You knew he would be here? You planned our meeting?’

‘I guessed as much. The Pretender cannot resist a rout such as this, particularly one where he is sure of being fussed over.’

‘But I might have been discovered. We might both have been taken.’

‘True. But we had to risk it. And now your credentials are assured.’ He pressed an arm around Steel’s shoulder. ‘Come. Let’s go back in and join the party. No point in wasting good food and wine. And this time, do have a care, dear boy.’

Steel began to wonder what else this extraordinary man might be capable of, and for the first time started to think that his mission might not prove quite as straightforward as Hawkins had made out.

Back in the salon the majority of the Duchess’s guests had now arrived. The room was filled with beautiful women and men in clothes similar to his own, plus a few French officers resplendent in full dress. Steel again felt vulnerable. He looked warily for the Pretender and spotted him in a far corner of the room, still masked and attended by a party of sycophants. He turned rather too abruptly in attempting to distance himself from the would-be king, and crashed into another guest, knocking her into a footman who broke her fall. Helped to her feet by another lady, the woman turned to Steel, without bothering to replace her mask.

He bowed and blurted an apology. ‘I’m most dreadfully sorry, ma’am. I didn’t see you.’

He looked at her and found a familiar face: the face of a huntress, the callous, sensual beauty from the forest. The Marquise de Puy Fort Eguille picked up her diamond-encrusted mask and pretended to hold it up in disguise. Again Steel was struck by her beauty, principally by the flashing green eyes, which were now mirrored in the flawless perfection of the huge emerald she wore around her neck on a gold chain. It was those eyes which now again made contact with his own. As they did so he noticed that the bow of her puckered red lips seemed to part in an unspoken word.