The General's Mistress (45 page)

Compact and precise, he rode a coal-black horse, looking straight ahead, his insignia glittering in the sun and his gaze alert and dark as a hawk’s.

I had dismounted when we heard the column coming, so I ducked behind Nestor’s head. Moreau could see my feet and legs, but there was nothing remarkable about them. The column clattered past.

I was surprised to find myself shaking. Whether it was the ghost of the desire I had once felt for him, or the urge to hit him, or sheer terror that he would see me here and punish Michel, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps it was all three.

I looked out as the escort passed, three chasseurs bringing up the rear, the last a lieutenant on a dapple-gray mare who was frisking at the tight rein he held her on. I held on to Nestor’s head. My knees were water.

The lieutenant on the gray mare twisted in the saddle and looked back at me, giving me a sudden, charming grin. I gulped like a fish, and he gave me a knowing, flirtatious look as he turned back to the road.

Was it so obvious? I thought. If the lieutenant had seen straight through me, perhaps my disguise wasn’t as good as I had hoped. Something gave me away. But perhaps it was only my shock at seeing Moreau. Certainly I had never seen the lieutenant before.

T
hat night we stayed near Mühldorf, in a small town in forested country where the farms were few. Moreau and his staff took over the mayor’s house, while Michel and the Hussar general, Richepanse, took the inn. Moreau had the generals and their staffs to dinner and to a long planning meeting, so I was left somewhat at loose ends. After gathering up all Michel’s dirty shirts and explaining to the innkeeper’s wife in my extremely halting German that I needed laundry done for the general and I would pay, my chores were more or less done.

Michel had the best room, since he ranked Richepanse, with a fireplace and a big box bed with cornices that looked like they’d been there since the Thirty Years’ War. The linens were impeccably clean, the floor swept and tidy, the sconces filled with fresh tapers. I hung his coats for a change to let them shake out. Then I went downstairs to find dinner for myself.

The taproom of the inn was full, and I was pleased to see that it was a fairly orderly crowd. The only women sitting on
laps were the ones we had brought with us. The innkeeper and his teenage son were circulating with huge steins of beer. This was a good sign—plentiful beer never hurt anyone, but anything fortified in large quantities was bound to result in fights before the evening was over.

I squeezed into a corner far from the fireplace and managed to get the attention of the teenage son, who understood my gestures and
bittes
enough to bring me a bowl of stew with potatoes and rabbit and some warm bread to go with my beer.

I ate, a sense of contentment stealing over me despite Moreau’s proximity. After all, I’d been in the same town as Moreau for years when he knew what I looked like. The last place he’d be looking for me was a Bavarian inn in the company of Richepanse’s hussars.

A group by the fire had started a song, something about a girl from Aix and a sergeant. Several of our girls who were clearly working had sized up the biggest spenders in the room. And the beer was very good.

“May I sit here?”

I looked up. It took me a moment to recognize the lieutenant from the road. He was of medium height, with an ordinary face framed by elaborate hussar’s braids, each one worked with a gold thread. He was holding a bowl of stew and a stein.

I shrugged and moved over into the corner so he could have a bit of table.

He put his food down and took a bite. “Quite a crowd, isn’t it?”

I nodded, bending over my bowl. If he had already noticed my secret on the road, I didn’t want him to blurt it out in a busy inn. There was too much chance of idle talk getting back to Moreau.

“I’m with the Twentieth Chasseurs à Cheval,” he said with a
friendly smile. It reminded me suddenly of René Gantheaume. He had the same cocky air, the same open charm. “Are you with the General?”

“Yes,” I said, looking away from his face. It took nerve for a lieutenant to come on to a general’s woman.

The lieutenant shrugged elaborately. “My friend, don’t you think he’s a bit old and serious? Wouldn’t you rather have a bit of fun with someone your own age?” His hand stole onto my thigh under the table.

I turned and fixed him with a steely stare, though my voice was still low, glad I wore the epée openly now. “My friend,” I said, “I may be a woman, but if you don’t get your hand off my thigh, I will use this and you won’t like it.”

He moved his hand as if I had burned him. For a moment he gaped, and then he laughed, bowing slightly from the waist, his eyes bright with laughter. “A thousand pardons, Madame! Had I known you were a woman, I should never have taken such liberties!” He gave a self-deprecating shrug. “I thought you were a pretty lad to be a servant to General Ney. They said your name was van Aylde, and that you were a volunteer.”

“I am a volunteer,” I said, “and I am with General Ney. And my name is van Aylde, and I am also a woman.”

He lifted his stein and took a drink. “Good luck to you, then, Madame. You carry off the masquerade as well as any I’ve seen. I hope you will forgive my impudence?”

I found it impossible not to. “You are forgiven,” I said. “And may I have the name of the man I forgive?”

“Lieutenant Jean-Baptiste Corbineau,” he said. “And you are?”

“Charles,” I said. I steepled my fingers around my stein. “Let’s leave it at Charles.”

“What a coincidence!” he said. “I’m sometimes called Charles too. It’s my favorite alias for losing at cards.”

I burst out laughing. “Do you lose often?”

“Continually,” he said. “If it’s a foolish gamble and angels fear to tread, there goes the cavalry.”

“I’ll toast the cavalry,” I said, lifting my stein.

Instead of touching his stein to mine, Corbineau got to his feet, raising his in the air instead. “Gentlemen!” he said loudly. “My friend here proposes a toast to the cavalry!”

Since the inn was full of Richepanse’s men, the roar was thunderous. “The cavalry!” It was a full shout, every glass raised, as I looked at them in bemusement.

Corbineau sank back into his seat beside me as a group by the fire started toasting everyone they had ever met in Auvergne.

“You’re drunk,” I said.

“Not as drunk as I will be, fair lady,” he said, motioning for more beer. “If I’m out of luck tonight, I may as well enjoy the beer.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And what would you have done if I had said yes? Assuming you were correct in your assumptions, that is?”

He laughed. “You can’t think of anything? Perhaps Red Ney is wooden after all!”

“I’d know and you wouldn’t,” I said rather tartly.

Corbineau grinned at me again. “No offense intended. I think the world of him, in truth. I’d follow him straight into the mouth of hell on horseback—he’s that good, and I ought to know, the son of a horse trader that I am. And there’s not a braver man or a better one to serve, even if he’s hard as hell on malingerers. But sometimes his dignity is just a priceless backdrop for a
bon mot
.”

“And you always have one of those, don’t you?” I said. A joker, so that no one would know if his advances were intended or not. Unless they were taken up. Another stranger in this land.

“I do,” Corbineau said. “But the battle will be joined within the next week or two, and you know who will be riding screen tomorrow. Damned if I’ll do that stone sober.”

“Riding screen?”

Corbineau spread his hands. “Light cavalry fans out in front of the line of march, staying just in sight of each other. We scout the terrain and, most importantly, we look for the enemy. Usually we find them. And when we do, we put our spurs to it and get back as fast as we can. If we can. Because
they
send out cavalry skirmishers to do the same thing.” He interlaced his fingers. “And sometimes we cross like that, our screen and theirs.”

“I see,” I said, imagining the cold woods and the tension, waiting for a movement that would mean something.

“It’s been raining on and off for weeks,” Corbineau said. “The mud is almost knee-deep in places. And it hasn’t been cold enough for everything to freeze solid. It’s pleasant, let me tell you.”

“I see,” I said again. There was some part of me that wanted to try it, rather than ride with the baggage train.

“A keen lad?” His eyes twinkled.

“Something like that,” I said. “It’s hardly fair you should get all the fun.”

“If you get bored being a servant, you could be a chasseur,” Corbineau said. “You’d pass as long as no one looked under your tunic. But I suppose your general wouldn’t like that.”

“I suppose he wouldn’t,” I said. But I wondered if I could do it anyway.

M
ichel was late coming in that night, carrying his map case with him and opening it on the table upstairs in the bedchamber. I sat up in bed, wearing one of Charles’s shirts, watching
him. As he leaned over the map, light from the single candle gleamed on his hair, on the braid at his shoulders.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Fixing the positions in my mind.” He looked around at me. “Do you want to see?”

“Isn’t it secret?” I asked, getting out of bed.

“There’s no reason you can’t see what half the army will see before tomorrow.” I looked over his shoulder as Michel smoothed the map out. “There are two roads,” he said, “the one from here to Munich, and the one from Munich to Wasserburg. They both pass through the forest of Hohenlinden, here and here. The Austrians must use the roads to move as many men as they have, with all their guns and equipment. There are footpaths through the forest as well, but none of them are suitable for a wagon or a gun.”

“How many men do they have?” I asked.

Michel looked at me sideways. “Our best estimate is around sixty thousand men. To our total of fifty thousand or so, nine thousand of which are mine. Not such great odds. And they have many more cannon.”

I looked at the map, and it seemed for a moment I had seen it before, stretched out in candlelight like this, an iron candlestick weighting it instead of pewter, forest and roads engraved fine. “But if they must keep the guns on the roads,” I said slowly, “then they can’t use them easily, and not at all except there.”

“Exactly,” Michel said. “And so we must get around behind them while they are in column, advancing, and at the same time hold them here, at the village of Hohenlinden, where the road leaves the woods and crosses the river here.” He pointed. “General Moreau’s plan is for us to move the main body down here to wait, and send Richepanse’s men around to flank.”

“A waiting game?” I asked. “That’s like Moreau.”

“He’s good,” Michel said. “Whatever I think of him privately, he’s as good as they say he is.” He let go of the edge of the map and it rolled up. He carefully rolled it the rest of the way and put it in the case. “The problem is,” he said, as he sat down on the edge of the bed to take his boots off, “we don’t know exactly where the Austrians are.”

I thought of the lieutenant, going off at dawn to screen in front of the army. “I imagine we’ll find them, won’t we?”