Winds of Folly (36 page)

He noted that two of the troopers were stationed on either side of the coach, either to protect him from having his throat cut or to stop him from escaping. He suspected the latter. The rest of them were standing about outside the inn, smoking and drinking while their own mounts were watered at the troughs. He noted that both men and mounts appeared to be in remarkably good condition for an army that was said to be starving and in rags only a few months earlier, when they had crossed the border into Italy. The men wore green uniforms with hussar-style braided coats and helmets, and though Nathan was no military expert he took them for
chasseurs à cheval
– light cavalry. He could no longer see the officer but presumably he was inside the inn, eating something rather more substantial than bread and cheese.

It seemed to be a regular staging-post – another coach came in from the opposite direction shortly after their arrival – and there were plenty of people about, even in the early hours of the morning. But no one appeared to question the presence of a troop of French cavalry on Venetian territory. He found himself wondering what would happen if a troop of French horse had ridden boldly through the English shires, and
concluded they would probably get away with it there, too. Certainly he could see them trotting through Lewes without much more than a nod and a wink from the local Constable, much the same as if they were smugglers. There was a strong tradition of looking the other way in Sussex.
Turn your face to the wall, my dear, while the gentlemen go by
.

The officer emerged from the tavern, the sergeant began to shout orders, and they were off again, on their madcap dash across the Veneto. And within a few minutes, replete with food and drink and in his new suit of dry clothing, Nathan was asleep.

He woke with sunlight pouring through the windows; they had come to a halt again and there was a figure standing at the open door. Nathan shaded his eyes against the glare. The face appeared familiar to him but it was a moment before he knew why.

‘Good God,' he said. ‘Sergeant Junot!'

‘
Colonel
Junot,' the apparition informed him. ‘I've been promoted. Move over.'

Junot. The first time Nathan had met him was in Paris, outside White's Philadelphia Hotel in the Street of the Little Fathers. He had thought he was a tramp or a police spy. But he turned out to be aide de camp to General Buonaparte, who then still used the Italian version of his name, and he had come on his Commander's behalf to challenge Nathan to a duel. Nathan had insulted the Citizen General, he said, by making disparaging remarks about him to a woman whom he held in the highest esteem.

The woman was Rose Beauharnais and Nathan
had
made disparaging remarks, though not deliberately, being under the impression at the time, thanks largely to Rose, that Citizen General Buonaparte was a street entertainer and circus performer who made his living by being shot out of a cannon. Nathan had
wriggled out of the situation by humbly apologising and buying the General dinner at the Procope in the Cour de Commerce, where Danton and Desmoulins used to eat. Buonaparte was in need of a good dinner at the time, being penniless and unemployed – he had been promoted Brigadier General, or
Chef de Brigade
, for his services as an artillery officer at the Siege of Toulon, but he had never been given a brigade to command and he was generally regarded in Paris as a bit of a joke: Captain Cannon. Hence Nathan's unfortunate error.

The meal had been a success and Junot had turned up at the end of the meal to carry the General home. The next time Nathan met them both was during the Royalist uprising of Vendémiaire when, purely out of desperation, Bonaparte had been given the job of commanding the troops who remained loyal to the government. Even after his success he was still widely sneered at in the Army as the General who had fired on the mob. General Vendémiaire. Not any more. And Junot had obviously shared in his good fortune. He wore the uniform of a Colonel of the horse artillery with half a ton of gold lace and a large plume in his hat. He took it off when he climbed in the coach and put it on his lap, smoothing the feathers. A trooper shut the door after him and they were off again. Nathan looked out of the window. They were following the walls of a city with the French tricolour flying from the battlements.

‘Where are we?' he asked.

‘Vicenza,' replied Junot shortly. Now he was banging the dust off his thighs. There was a lot of it. Nathan flapped his hand in front of his face.

‘And where are we going?'

‘Verona. Then Roverbella.'

‘What's at Roverbella?'

‘You ask a lot of questions for a fucking prisoner.'

‘Am I a prisoner? No one told me.'

‘Well, let's say for the sake of argument you're in protective custody. It amounts to the same fucking thing.'

Nathan observed him mordantly. He still spoke with the trace of a rural accent – he came from a village in Burgundy, Nathan recalled – but there was something of the schoolmaster or the lawyer's clerk about him, even in his smart new uniform. Certainly he was an educated man: he had been Bonaparte's secretary in Paris as well as his boot-cleaner. Nathan had an idea he had once trained for the priesthood. He tried to remember if he had sworn as much in Paris and thought not; there was something rather showy about it, as if it came with rank. He had filled out a bit and grown florid since his days on the scrounge with his unemployed General, but he had the same sharp, ferrety eyes and thin nose, the red mark of the glasses he usually wore across the bridge. He was about twenty-four or twenty-five years old. Colonel Jean-Ardèche Junot. It had a ring. Better than sergeant, anyway. ‘I'm glad success hasn't changed you,' Nathan said.

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘That you haven't lost your natural affability.'

‘I've just saved your fucking life, isn't that affable enough for you? From what I hear the Venetians were about to feed you to the fish.'

‘Really? I thought they were just trying to put the wind up my sails. But thank you, if it was you who saved me. How did you know?'

‘How did I know what?'

‘That I was trussed up in a boat with an anchor up my arse.'

‘Well, I didn't, to be honest. If I had I might have left you there – far be it from me to interfere with the way a man pleasures himself. But I knew you were in the
Pozzi
– we get regular reports from our agents in Venice – and I asked myself, “Hello, what is our American friend who left us so suddenly in
Paris without so much as a goodbye, good riddance, now doing in the Serene Knocking Shop?” And knowing what a fine upstanding citizen you are, I knew it couldn't be for the sex. So what
were
you doing there? If you don't mind answering a few questions yourself for a change.'

‘Not at all. I was on holiday, as a matter of fact.'

‘The hell you were. Was that why Cristolfi threw you in prison? Were you having too good a time?'

‘You know Cristolfi, do you?'

‘Look, you just don't get this, do you? I am here to interrogate you, not the other way around. That is why I rode up from Lake Garda where I was having quite a pleasant time, since you ask. I thought it would be quite civilised to question you in the coach, but if you'd rather we did it the usual way in a cellar with whips and nut grinders, it can be arranged.'

Nathan grinned at him. ‘Thank you,' Nathan smiled agreeably, ‘but I'm quite comfortable where we are. I don't know why the bastard threw me in prison. I'd like to ask him, with my hands round his throat. Perhaps he thought I was a spy – for the French.'

‘Or the British. That's wiped the smile off your face, hasn't it? I read the reports. You've been asking questions about the Venetian Navy.'

‘It's an interest of mine,' Nathan told him. ‘I'm a Navy man, remember? All right.' He saw he had pushed him far enough. ‘I was doing a favour for the government.'

‘What government?'

‘My government, of course. The government of the United States.'

Junot frowned and wrinkled his nose, greatly increasing his resemblance to a ferret that's had a bit too much rabbit for its dinner. ‘What kind of favour?'

Nathan told him the same story he had told Cristolfi, with
minor embellishments – and rather more success, apparently. Certainly Junot did not react with the same level of sarcasm, or shout for the guards to throw him back in the
Pozzi
.

‘Interesting. So the Americans want the Venetian fleet.'

‘Well, a couple of frigates would do.'

‘Even so. I think you will have to talk to Bonaparte about that.'

Nathan regarded him curiously. ‘Am I going to talk to Bonaparte?'

Junot thought about it. ‘He wants to see you,' he admitted.

‘Really? I would have thought he had more on his mind at the moment, with the Austrians at his throat.'

‘Stuff the Austrians. They're nowhere near his throat, nor ever likely to be. His wife gives him more problems than the Austrians. You saved his life in Paris. He will never forget that. Even if you did try to fuck his wife.'

Nathan thought of pointing out that this was a gross exaggeration, and that in any case she was not married to him then, but he could not summon the energy.

They were both silent for a moment. Nathan looked out of the window. They had left the river and were climbing between steep hillsides covered with vines. Workers tending them in straw hats, women mostly, stopped to watch as they passed by. They did not wave. One of them shook her fist. Nathan remembered the streets of Paris in October, the smell of gunpowder and the smoke hanging in the air. The National Guard cut to pieces with grapeshot on the Pont de la Révolution. He was in a little street off the Rue Saint-Honoré, a cul-de-sac with a church at the far end. The Church of Saint-Roch: all the saints' names had come back in France since the end of the Terror. There were a couple of hundred Royalist rebels on the church steps, some in the uniform of the National Guard, others in their shirtsleeves, hurling defiance at the so-called
Patriot Brigade of People's Deputies who had come out of the Convention to fight them and changed their minds when they saw that it might involve dying.

Then Bonaparte came riding up on a white horse someone had found for him. All night long he'd been on his feet, dashing about from gun to gun in the pouring rain with Nathan and Junot running after him, taking turns to bend over so he could use them as a table for his street map. ‘Now he has to go poncing around on a horse,' Junot had just said, worrying about him being shot at. Next minute, the horse was rolling on the cobbles and Bonaparte with it. The mount was up before anyone could get to it, its eyeballs rolling, bolting down the street dragging the little man with it, his boot caught up in the stirrup, straight towards the rebels on the steps of the church. Nathan ran after it and caught hold of the bridle before he could think what he was doing. A musket round took off his hat and another took the horse in the head and put it down for good, and then Junot was there with a squad of infantry and Bonaparte was on his feet calling for them to bring up cannon.

‘All I did was hold his horse,' he told Junot.

‘Yes, well, you know that and I know that, but His Holiness thinks you're his lucky star.'

This was true, though he had thought little of it at the time. Bonaparte took a particular interest in stars, not quite as scientific as Nathan liked to think his own interest was, but no less passionate. ‘Every man has a star, you know,' he had assured Nathan when they had dined together at the Procope. His had been depressed at the time; he thought it had abandoned him for good. He had given up all hope of a career and was writing a novel.

‘I thought his star was in the heavens,' Nathan said to Junot.

‘It is complicated,' Junot agreed. ‘Maybe he thinks you are its personification on earth, Christ knows why. Or it might have something to do with magnetism.'

‘Excuse me?'

‘He thinks every single body in the universe has an effect on everything else. Like magnetism. You'll have to ask him about it, I'm damned if I know what it's about. Anyway, he's nervous at the moment. He thinks the stars are pissing him about. Pulling the wrong way or something. So when I told him that a certain American ponce was in Venice he said, “Get him out, bring him over here.” He wants his lucky star. Either that or he wants to know why you left Paris in such a hurry. He was asking for you, you know, as soon as the dust settled. He wanted to invite you to the wedding.'

‘The wedding?'

‘To Rose. Joséphine as he calls her now. Madame Bonaparte.' ‘Oh.' It was all he could say, really. Rose. An enchanting image sprang to mind of her standing stark naked at her own dinner-table and trying to cover herself with a napkin while her lover, Paul Barras, stood in the doorway in a blue uniform and a plumed hat and told her to put her clothes on. And now she was married to Bonaparte. Nathan had an immense fondness for Rose. She looked gorgeous naked. He wondered what her wedding had been like. Glamorous, no doubt.

‘So where
did
you scurry off to, then, you rogue, if it's not an awkward question?'

It
was
an awkward question. Nathan tried to think of a good answer besides the true one, which was that he had gone to London to report back to the Admiralty, but for once his imagination failed him. Fortunately Junot was distracted. They were coming to a halt again. ‘What's the matter now?' he grumbled. He thrust his head out of the window and shouted something at the escort; then swore an oath and jumped down
from the coach. Nathan peered after him. There appeared to be a convoy on the road, coming in the opposite direction. Junot was talking to the officer in charge of the escort. Nathan could see him properly now: a young man with a drooping moustache and a long braid of hair hanging over his shoulder, like the Paris dandies. And doubtless it would have looked fine in Paris, but on a dusty road in the Veneto it looked like he had a rat on his head and its tail was hanging down from under his hat. His uniform was caked in dust and so was his face except where the sweat had caused tiny rivulets to run through it, like cracks in a clay sculpture. A sergeant came running up with a map and Junot put a thin pair of spectacles on his nose and peered at it, jabbing down from time to time with his finger. Then he came back to the coach.