The General's Mistress (37 page)

Nestor shied, and the bandit missed his rein by a finger’s length.

Absolute, cold clarity. Somewhere Elza might be frightened, but the part of me that was Charles was not. He had done it all before. The bandit was on my right side, but I wore the second man’s pistol on my left.

Swearing. The sounds of a scuffle. Our second man was lying on the ground in front of the wagon, the cart horse restive at the smell of blood.

“Get down now, boy,” the other man said.

I heard the smack as a blow caught Isabella on the side of the head, tumbling her backward onto the chests and the understudy.

I raised the pistol in my left hand and brought it across me as Nestor backed a step. “No,” I said, and fired it point-blank in the bandit’s face.

Blood and brains exploded across me, part of his jawbone catching on the lace of my cuffs, teeth still in it. I shook my wrist and it flew. Nestor backed away from the falling body, the acrid powder smoke.

The other bandit snarled and made a lunge for me, but Nestor backed again. I felt the sudden rush of warmth between
my legs as irrelevantly my bladder gave way. Not important right now. I had one shot and no sword, and now they were after me, except for the two still struggling with Isabella, the understudy, and the soubrette in the wagon.

Two of them, crowding in close ahead.

The horse. I had the weight of the horse. Like movement underwater, every moment seemed to take forever, like movements of a dance I knew, a dance Charles had known forever. And Nestor had been a cavalry mount. They rushed in, and I pulled back sharply on the reins. Nestor rose on his hind legs, flailing at them with his sharp, heavy hooves. A squeeze and he plunged forward, striking one of them sharply. I brought the pistol butt down hard on the back of the man’s head as we lunged past, saw him fall insensible.

I pulled Nestor around, and he had the bit in his teeth now. We charged back in as though I had a saber in my hand, Nestor’s weight bowling another over into the mud, though I don’t think he was hurt. “Back!” I said, hauling him around.

And now they were converging, all four of them. I backed away. I could escape into the woods or down the road toward the column. But that would mean leaving Isabella and the others. I could not reload—the second man had the powder. And I had no sword.

“Come and get me then!” I yelled. “Pissant sons of bitches!” They would have to try to corner me without getting close to Nestor’s forelegs. Nestor stamped for emphasis.

And then there was a thunder of hooves. Auguste Thibault and two of his officers charged into it like daylight into snow, a flurry of swords and Thibault’s white warhorse. Auguste’s hat was off and his glasses clung to the tip of his nose, an expression of grim fury on his face, his epée in his hand.

It was over very quickly. Two of the bandits went down in
the first rush. One ran, and in the confusion escaped into the gulley. The last one, his right arm clenched bleeding at his side, sank to his knees in surrender. A lieutenant I knew by sight alone dismounted and tied him up.

The other lieutenant rode up to me. He must have been no more than seventeen or eighteen, with wide hazel eyes. “Are you all right?” he asked. My clothes were a mess of blood and powder and bone.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m fine. I don’t know about anyone else.”

The understudy was moving. She had a bruise along the side of her face and her nose was bleeding, but she was climbing out of the wagon and kneeling down beside the second man. I saw her checking him, talking softly. His unfired pistol lay on the road beside him, the mate of mine.

Auguste swung from the saddle to the wagon box, reaching down for Isabella.

She got up gingerly. Her dress gaped open to the hips, her breast streaked with blood where someone had clawed at her, and she clutched at Auguste’s hands as though he were her savior.

“I heard the shot,” he said. “God, Isabella, I’ll never forgive myself. You could have been killed. Without you, I’d have no reason for living.” His glasses had been lost in the fight, and in the expression on his round face I suddenly saw what Isabella had seen in him. “You are everything to me. Everything, my dearest love. . . .” His last words were muffled as Isabella stepped into his arms, holding on to him and bursting into wild tears. Auguste rained kisses on her hair, murmuring incoherently.

I slid off Nestor. My knees shook a little, but I could control them. The brains on my hands were sticky. For a moment my stomach turned over.

No,
I thought savagely.
No.

I put my hand against Nestor’s warm side. He turned his head to me and butted me softly. “You were perfect,” I said to him. “You’re the best horse.”

He nickered and put his head against my shoulder. I rested there, leaning on him. Then I carefully put the pistol back in its holster on the saddle, and reached for my saddlebags, suddenly acutely aware of the dampness of my trousers. I had a spare pair in my bags. I would change before anyone noticed. And no one would remark on my changing clothes, given the blood everywhere.

I changed behind Nestor. When I came out again, the second man was sitting up in the wagon with the soubrette and the understudy holding cloths to his head. He had a large purple lump rising and it had bled a little, but he seemed to be talking coherently to them.

Auguste swung back onto his horse, Isabella before him, her draggled skirts spreading over his stirrups. It was getting dark.

“Lenotre, will you bring the wagon along and escort the ladies? Paul, can you take the rear? Let’s get everyone into camp. I am taking Mademoiselle Felix ahead with me.”

The one he had called Lenotre looked up. “What about the bandits, sir?”

“Leave them where they fell,” he said. Auguste glanced at me for the first time. “Madame St. Elme seems to have accounted for two of them. Perhaps you will ride with the boys there and bring the wagon in?”

I nodded as smartly as I could.

Auguste held out his epée. “I think you’ve earned this.” He put it into my hand. “I’ve another.”

“Thank you,” I said.

He touched his heels to his horse’s sides and trotted away into the gathering darkness, Isabella clasped tightly before him, the white horse shining in the last light.

I rode behind with the two young officers, bringing the wagon in, the epée naked in my hand. Auguste had forgotten to give me the scabbard.

T
he rest of the trip to Paris passed without incident. I got the scabbard from Auguste the next day, and wore the epée with Charles’s clothes for the rest of the journey. It was not too heavy for me. With a straight blade and a narrow blood channel, it was unadorned and none too fancy, but it was light and cold and very, very sharp. I made sure it was very, very sharp from then on.

Nestor seemed inordinately pleased with himself, as well he might. He practically frisked his way up and down the passes. I spoiled him a bit. He deserved it.

We reached Paris as autumn began. I used the First Consul’s gold to rent an apartment on the third floor of a respectable house—one large salon with a Franklin stove at one end so that I could cook, and a bedroom. I would have no roommate this time.

Isabella would hardly be available. She and Auguste set up housekeeping together in Rue de Turin immediately. Which of course meant that they needed furniture. Isabella and I spent a happy day in the flea markets getting a few things that would make it possible to live in some comfort. She spent Auguste’s money. I spent Bonaparte’s.

A pair of Louis XV armchairs, the pale-blue upholstery softened by time, would grace the salon, along with a modern table with sphinx claw feet à la Égyptienne. I bought some pots and china, a nice tea set that had three cups and a saucer broken and could consequently only serve five, and scarlet velvet curtains in a vast lot, which turned out to be enough curtains for the salon and the bedchamber, plus an extra pair that I hung over the door from
the salon to the bedroom, looped back with the gold tasseled ties. I bought a somewhat battered four-poster, but then sprang for a new feather bed, white linen sheets, and a set of gold satin curtains and a gold brocade cover for a feather duvet. I stopped then. The money needed to last. And I had spent more than half.

There was also the expense of Nestor’s stabling. Isabella suggested that I should sell him.

“I don’t think so,” I said, balancing packages one on another. Isabella wanted to go look at crystal.

She looked back at me over the top of a huge box, her bonnet feathers nodding from a fashionable brim. “It seems contradictory to me to build a nest and keep your horse for the open road.”

“It may be,” I said. Isabella had had quite a bit to say about staying in Paris from now on. “But I don’t know what I’ll do next. There’s Ida and Charles both, both my lives.”

“I think you take Charles too seriously,” she said. “Sometimes it scares me. You know, you’re not really him.” Her dark eyes were worried.

“I am,” I said. “Charles is every bit as real as Ida. It’s not as simple as a masquerade.”

“I wish it were,” Isabella said. “I wonder about you sometimes.”

“So do I,” I said. Surely if anything was a symptom of madness, it was Charles. And yet I had spent some of my happiest days as Charles, freed from everything a woman should be and should do, invulnerable in a waistcoat. Men did not feel as women did, did not suffer. But truly, what did it matter if I was mad? Who in all the world truly cared, if I did not?

And we bought crystal. She bought a great deal. I bought a pair of wineglasses, long and graceful, with knobbed stems, the rims touched with gold.

When I got home, a boy was waiting with a message for me. I gave him a coin and read it, waiting for my purchases to be brought up from the wagon Isabella had hired.

17 Vendémiaire, Year VIII

Dear Ida,

I am returned to Paris after a fortnight in the Saar with my family. I know that you are also traveling, and perhaps this is the reason I have had no letter from you. I hope that you are well and that the weather has held fine.

I have just this day arrived in Paris, and I asked about until I heard that you were here from a friend of mine who heard from an artillery colonel with whom you had traveled from Italy. In short, we’re both here now.

I should like to call on you, if I may.

Michel

I
t took some time to find ink and a quill and paper, my heart beating fast all the while. I hadn’t bought any when I was shopping with Isabella.

Dear Michel,

I would be pleased if you could come for dinner tomorrow night. It would give me the greatest pleasure if you would present yourself at eight o’clock.

I hope that you are well, and that your leg is much better.

Ida

Queen of Swords

S
ince I had just moved in, I spent the next day running around madly preparing for dinner. I bought table linens, and then spent most of the afternoon buying food. I decided not to get overcomplicated. A good mushroom soup was not beyond my skills as a first course, and could be made on the Franklin stove without difficulty. A roasted chicken could be purchased ahead of time and served cold, dressed up a little bit. A salad was easy, and there was nothing in it that needed cooking. Bread, naturally. A Spanish Manchego to go with Madeira and fresh plums as a last course would round it out nicely. Not a formal meal, but then formality would be hard to manage with no cook and no servants.

Trying to impress the peasant general with your housewifely skills?
my Inner Moreau asked sarcastically. I wasn’t much interested in my Inner Moreau’s opinions anymore. I knew exactly what Moreau thought of Ney, and exactly what he would think of my dinner efforts.

Ney was punctual, knocking on the door exactly at eight. Patting my hair into place, I went to open it.

He was taller than I remembered, and fairer. A summer in the sun had bleached his hair more red than bronze; it was caught behind him in a long, old-fashioned tail that went halfway down his back. The same sun that had bleached his hair had left his face sunburned and freckled, and his eyes looked very blue against his skin. His hat was under his arm.