Читать книгу Almond, Wild Almond - D. K. Broster - Страница 4

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Seven o’clock of the dark, furious March evening, seven o’clock on the second day of the second storm. “Unless,” thought the young French officer standing with one hand upon the high, yellowing mantelpiece, “unless we should reckon this week’s tornado as but a prolongation of last week’s. God, what weather!”

A fiercer blast than before pounded at the windows of the Intendance de la Marine at Dunkirk, and a vicious puff of black smoke came volleying out between the impassive caryatids of the fireplace. “Forty thousand devils!” exclaimed Lieutenant the Vicomte Marie-Cyprien d’Ornières de Lancize, as he sprang back, amid some derisive laughter from the other end of the room, and, whipping forth his pocket-handkerchief, clapped it for a second or so to his nose. Out of range of the odious discharge from the chimney, he next made a movement as if to flick his boots, those long cavalry boots which came halfway up his thighs, but cut the action short, remembering that the boots in question, usually so immaculate, were already spattered with mud, and sticky with sea-water nearly to their tops. Sea-water had stained and discoloured the wide full skirts of his brilliant uniform coat as well. Dandy though he was, officer in Dauphin-Dragons, and acting aide-de-camp to the Comte de Saxe, M. de Lancize’s attire, like that of many another soldier and sailor in Dunkirk to-day, bore speaking traces of the two closely succeeding tempests, the second of which was raging there now.

They were peculiarly disastrous tempests—save from the point of view of Hanoverian England—because they had wrecked and driven on shore about one quarter of the large flotilla of transports assembled at Dunkirk in this year of 1744 for the purpose of landing ten thousand Frenchmen upon English soil, in support of the claims of the House of Stuart—in support also of King Louis XV’s desire to pay out George II for the defeat inflicted last June on old Maréchal de Noailles at Dettingen. It had seemed to His Most Christian Majesty and his advisers that even if they did not succeed in bringing about an actual revolution in England, they might at least stir up civil war, and in either case the English and Hanoverian troops would have to be withdrawn from the Continent and their inconvenient succour of the cause of the Empress Maria Theresa in this present war over the Austrian succession.

The orders for the concentration of merchant and fishing vessels at this port of French Flanders had been given as early as the previous November, but there had been delays of various kinds, not a few of them caused by the difficulty of wresting definite information about support from the English Jacobites; and even of getting any information at all. Pilots, for instance, were promised by them, but never sent, and it was intimated from across the Channel that January was too cold a month in which to expect English noblemen and country squires to assist in a revolution. By February, indeed, much of the enthusiasm of the French for the project had waned, but preparations had gone too far to be dropped. On the 28th of the month, after delays and misfortunes at sea, appeared the convoying squadron, under M. de Barreilh; next day (it was leap year) arrived that famous soldier Maurice, Comte de Saxe, who was in supreme command of the expedition; outgoing vessels were forbidden to leave and the work of embarkation began.

Meanwhile, sixteen miles away at Gravelines, there waited an ardent young man of four-and-twenty, who had made a romantic incognito dash from Rome to join it. But since it was given out, in the hopes of deluding the English, that the expedition was intended for the Low Countries, Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s presence in the neighbourhood was so sedulously concealed that though correspondence had passed, no personal meeting had taken place between him and the Comte de Saxe. Yet, particularly as a number of Jacobites had flocked to Dunkirk, the news of his being at Gravelines was no longer in reality a secret, indeed the Vicomte de Lancize, during some hours of leisure at the beginning of the previous week, had ridden over to see if he could get a glimpse of the princely adventurer for whom his own sovereign was nominally doing so much. But he had not succeeded.

And then, during the night of Friday, the 6th of March, there had arisen a tremendous equinoctial gale from the north and north-east. Of the unfortunate transports, crammed with troops, out in the unsheltered open road of Dunkirk, no less than eleven were driven on shore, and two of them, the St. Raymond and the Barentin, packed with soldiers, were in considerable danger of becoming total losses, since they had grounded too far from low-water mark for assistance to reach them from the shore, and the breakers were too furious to permit of any boat putting out.

Vivid, indeed, were M. Marie-Cyprien de Lancize’s recollections of last Saturday morning, from which his boots would probably never recover. Summoned at seven o’clock to attend the Comte de Saxe to the scene of disaster, he had ridden with him to that wild, flat, surf-beset shore, and also, like his leader, had ridden into the angry sea, then beginning to ebb. And he had personally grabbed by hair or uniform a couple of half drowning wretches who were trying to swim ashore. In that grey and white sea, against that livid grey sky, he had caught glimpses of other transports in like distress, and learnt that for a vessel to be called the Reine des Anges or the Victorieux was no safeguard against a lee shore in a gale. By low tide, however, nearly all the troops had been saved, many of them probably to fall ill from having to endure long periods of waiting in the bitter wind after being drenched to the skin. But all the tents, arms and baggage were lost.

Next day, when the wind was somewhat abated, it transpired that the vessels in the road which had been fortunate enough to ride out the storm were entirely destitute of provisions, though they should have been victualled for a considerable period. Even the bread which they had was uneatable through being soaked with sea-water. Nor would it be possible to refloat the stranded vessels before the next spring-tide, a week hence.

All this was bad enough, but almost as bad was to follow. Hardly had the great gale of Friday and Saturday blown itself out, and the reckoning of damages and licking of wounds begun in earnest, when there arose another tempest of almost equal violence, coming up this time from the west and south-west. This was the storm which, having begun about one o’clock the previous morning, Tuesday, was now raging round the Intendance, where the Comte de Saxe had his headquarters. It had already done enough damage to render it a serious rival to the first hurricane. Of the thirteen vessels which, in accordance with orders, should have come from the road into harbour, only one had succeeded in doing so, and she had left her anchors and cables behind. At ten o’clock to-day a transport had gone ashore with four companies of Royal-Corse on board, though in the event only two lives were lost. When the contrary wind permitted, could be heard this afternoon the melancholy booming of signal guns from three more vessels who were in difficulties off the coast. Marie-Cyprien de Lancize, who had a friend in the Régiment de Diesbach, embarked in the Hareng Couronné, felt however that he had some grounds for hope that a vessel with such a name might have remained afloat.

But what was going to happen to the twice-maimed expedition? That was what everyone connected with it was asking; it was the question now engaging the group of subaltern officers at the other end of the long room, where, if they had no fire to warm them, they were at any rate not menaced by smoke. The young dragoon, who could at least congratulate himself that his regiment, the only cavalry going with the flotilla, was still safe on shore, strolled towards them. A naval officer from M. de Barreilh’s own vessel, the Dauphin Royal, who had come ashore with a despatch to go off to M. de Maurepas, the Minister of Marine, was holding forth in an annoyed voice about the conditions on board.

“Quite a third of the crew are ill, and the rest are worn out with work. As for the ship herself, everything rattles and bangs about as if it would carry away. Moreover,” he sank his voice a little, “M. de Barreilh is apprehensive that Admiral Norris may suddenly appear and burn all the ships in the road.”

(“Added to which,” said the young aide-de-camp to himself, “I have heard M. de Saxe give it as his opinion of the sailors of the convoy that they would be more at home in a farm-cart than in a boat.”) But as it would not have been prudent to announce this fact he merely observed cheerfully, “I hazard a guess, monsieur, that what your commodore is really praying for now is the receipt of orders for the transports to go back to the various ports whence they came, and for himself to return with his own ships to Brest?”

“Monsieur le dragon,” said the sailor, “I think you are not far wrong.”

“I have heard,” remarked a lieutenant in the black and white of Royal-Corse, who had suffered shipwreck in the first storm, “that the Jacobites gathered here in Dunkirk would on the contrary have M. de Barreilh seek out and attack Admiral Norris.”

“When he has only five ships and Admiral Norris is said to have twenty!”

“These Jacobites!” exclaimed the naval officer. “They ask the impossible from us and stir not a finger themselves! What are they doing to prepare for us in England? And, messieurs, do you realise, that when we reach the mouth of the river of Thames—if we ever do—even though there be not a force sufficiently strong to prevent our sailing up it, the English have only to remove the beacons which mark the channel, and every pilot we have will be useless!”

“I do not think we need trouble our heads about that,” said the subaltern of Royal-Corse. “We shall certes never reach the river of Thames. Listen to that!”

A fresh blast shook the windows; again the smoke bellied forth between the marble nymphs, but this time there was no one in front of them.

“Congratulations, Vicomte,” observed someone, “on not receiving that discharge!”

“Sad, however, that a dragoon cannot stand fire!”

“At any rate he is not afraid of water! Did he not save two men of the Régiment de Monaco from the St. Raymond on Saturday?”

“Yes, but only by nearly scalping them!”

But the Vicomte de Lancize, with a wave of the hand, was removing himself from these pleasantries. An officer in the scarlet and blue of Cour au Chantre had just come through one of the doors which faced each other in the sides of the long room, and was crossing in haste to the other, as one going upon an errand. But he was looking about him for someone as he did so. He was the aide-de-camp previously on duty; the someone was M. de Lancize, who would now take his place outside M. de Saxe’s apartment, to be ready for the next order.

And that young gentleman, as he went briskly along the corridor towards his post at no great distance, saw to his surprise that the Comte de Saxe’s door had been left half open—presumably but unaccountably by the just-departed aide-de-camp. Light streamed out from it, and voices were audible in the passage, though a great stamped leather screen, which stood just inside, concealed the speakers, and indeed the whole room—concealed too from those speakers the fact that their deliberations were no longer as private as they probably imagined. Yet, reflected M. de Lancize, as he approached the portal, it was no business of his to shut it. For all he knew the Comte de Saxe might have commanded it to be opened for some reason or other, to let out, for instance, some such horrible onslaught of smoke as he himself had recently experienced. So, with a shrug of the shoulders, he took up his post at precisely the distance from the doorway which he would have selected in any case. Since his eavesdropping was unavoidable he might as well take what heaven sent him; it would while away the time of waiting.

Whose, he wondered, was that deep voice now resounding in the room? Not, certainly, that of M. de Saxe himself, nor of M. de Ségent, the commissaire des guerres, who was said to be closeted with him there. It sounded more like that of M. Bart, the commandant of the port of Dunkirk.

“. . . hard at work from six o’clock yesterday morning, Monseigneur, furnishing different captains with such things as anchors and cables, and necessities for the unfortunate troops who have suffered so much. I could not undertake——”

“Monsieur Bart,” interrupted the voice which the Vicomte de Lancize knew best, clear, rapid and forceful, “I will relieve your anxieties. There is no need for you to undertake anything further. I cannot interpret M. d’Argenson’s letter to me as anything but a formal order to abandon the expedition entirely and without further delay.”

If Marie-Cyprien de Lancize had had the faculty of moving his ears he would certainly have pricked them forward at this. Yet he did not advance his person a step nearer.

“To abandon it entirely!” exclaimed another voice—presumably M. de Ségent’s.

“In truth,” growled out M. Bart, “I am glad to hear it—even though hostility with England comes natural to a man of my name. But—with a second tempest! Is it permitted to ask for M. d’Argenson’s reasons? The bad weather, I presume.”

“Here is the actual letter from the Minister of War,” said the Comte de Saxe. M. de Lancize heard the rustle of paper, and a moment later the deep voice began to read something over. Alert though he was and straining every nerve to hear, the listening aide-de-camp could not catch every word.

“ ‘. . . bad weather . . . Admiral Norris . . . precautions which the English have had time . . . lack of news . . . promised to support . . . reasons more than sufficient . . . meet with more success . . . led His Majesty to order me’ (here the voice became louder) ‘to send you instructions that on receipt of my letter you should give the necessary orders for the disembarkation of our troops’—Ah! this, then, Monseigneur, is the real reason of the orders to that effect which you have already given! But I myself received a letter from M. de Maurepas informing me that though the troops were to disembark the vessels were to remain where they were!”

“Not the first time, perhaps,” said the voice of M. de Ségent, with some acridity, “that the Minister of Marine and the Minister of War have not understood their orders in quite the same sense!”

“It’s a pity, though,” said the commandant of the port as though to himself. “All those men embarked, all those preparations——”

“It is clear that the winds are not Jacobite,” observed Maurice de Saxe. “Count Alberoni learnt the same thing in 1719. And at court I think the weathervane has been turned in a fresh direction by some breeze or other of intrigue. The expedition, as you know, has always had its enemies. One good purpose, however, will be served by these two storms. They make it much easier for me to convince that poor prince without a kingdom of the impossibility of setting out. I wrote to him three days ago to tell him that M. de Roquefeuil had not succeeded in blockading Admiral Norris in Portsmouth, and that the latter had slipped away into the Downs.—Girardot, is that door by any chance open? There is a damnable cold air from somewhere!”

In all history no door was probably more swiftly and silently closed than was then M. de Saxe’s in the Intendance de la Marine at Dunkirk. And the closer knew that it must have been well and truly shut by the time that M. Girardot, the Comte’s secretary, got round the screen, otherwise he would certainly have made investigations.

So, quite definitely, the great expedition was knocked on the head! M. de Lancize was not really surprised. But those poor, disappointed devils of Jacobites—and the Prince Charles Edouard himself! Well, in his situation he had probably learnt philosophy by now.

Standing there, cut off from hearing any more interesting and as yet unpublished news, yawning, rather tired, Marie-Cyprien de Lancize invoked philosophy to his own assistance. He did not know when he was likely to be dismissed; not for hours, perhaps, and his desires were just now turning strongly to a certain wine-shop on the quays, though indeed it was not for the sake of the less than passable Bordeaux to be had there that he proposed, if he could, to fight his way to the sign of the Trois Navires. It was he who had discovered the fillette . . . that fair Flemish type, when it was not too heavy, possessed its attractions . . . he had always inclined to fair hair in a woman. But the Trois Navires might have been blown down in the night for all he knew.

After all, he was not to go to England! Well, more glory was probably to be won by following the Comte de Saxe to the Low Countries and Germany—for it was believed that he was to command the army of the Moselle. He, Marie-Cyprien de Lancize, would be able to fight against the English in some pitched battle, which would really be preferable to scrambling encounters on beaches after a seasick voyage across the Channel in some craft not much bigger than a herring-boat. All was for the best.

All was certainly for the best! The door was opening already. Girardot looked out, saw him standing there at attention and beckoned to him. He was going to get his orders sooner than he had hoped—perhaps his dismissal for the night also. He went past the leather screen, saluted and stood waiting.

Behind the vast, shabby table, whose mother-of-pearl inlay was stained with ink from the labours of many intendants, the son of Augustus of Saxony and Poland and of Aurora von Königsmarck sat writing. Tall and imposing, the victor of Prague (who was not yet the victor of Fontenoy and Raucoux) was now in his forty-eighth year; his eyes under his beetling brows were very blue, but his complexion was swarthy and his hair dark; he seldom wore powder. Fate, in denying Maurice de Saxe his great ambition, a territory to rule (since the ducal throne of Courland to which, at thirty, he was elected, remained his for only nine months), and in allowing him only an intermittent display of his brilliant military gifts, had driven him, always impatient of inactivity, to occupations much less austere. Adrienne Lecouvreur had now been dead for fourteen years, but upon how many ladies of the stage or the opera had he not fixed his fancy since then? Prospects of dazzling marriages had not been wanting in his younger days; he was semi-royal and very attractive. There had been question of two princesses of Peter the Great’s family, each of whom afterwards ascended the imperial throne of Russia in her own right. One of them reigned there at this moment. But he had not married either, and his Lutheranism, purely nominal though it was, debarred him from being created a marshal of France, for all that he had rendered his adopted country such signal services. To Marie-Cyprien de Lancize, who admired him enormously, this seemed a crying scandal—since he could not know that in less than a month the coveted baton was nevertheless to be placed in that strong and elegant hand.

The young man stood respectfully waiting, his eyes upon his commander, yet not unaware that Monsieur François Cornil Bart, looking as a man would look who bore that name of which Dunkirk was so proud—and indeed the famous corsair Jean Bart was no other than his father—was standing with his back turned on the commissaire des guerres. He seemed to be studying the painting of the furious naval battle over the hearth, wherein the sea was scarcely visible for the quantity of floating spars and drowning but attitudinising sailors which it contained. Perhaps, as a naval officer of distinction, he was thinking resentfully of that uneatable bread of M. de Ségent’s providing.

At last the Comte de Saxe dusted over his letter, whose recipient would probably have difficulty with his fantastically bad spelling, folded, sealed and addressed it. Then the blue eyes were lifted and looked straight at the aide-de-camp. The latter at once came forward.

“Take this letter, if you please, Monsieur de Lancize, to the Bailli de Givry at the Gouvernement. After that I shall not require your services further to-night.” And with those last words there was a glimpse of the smile which was reputed irresistible.

A moment later Lieutenant the Vicomte de Lancize had closed the door of Monsieur de Saxe’s room for the second time. He could guess at the information which he was conveying to the Governor of the town of Dunkirk in this letter sealed with the arms of the House of Wettin traversed by the bend sinister; it was to tell him that the enterprise was as dead as a doornail. But for himself, he was more concerned with the knowledge that his evening’s pleasure was now secured.

Although there were occasional lulls, it was still blowing very hard in the Parc de la Marine, where the Intendance was situated, and when the young dragoon, bearing to his right, crossed the bridge over the Canal de Furnes into the town, he staggered for a second against the parapet, bent nearly double as he was, and clutching his hat with one hand, his wildly beating cloak with the other. In the Place Royale, which he then skirted, there was not a soul to be seen, but as he passed along between the parish church of St. Eloi and its separate-standing tower he met a couple of priests with unruly cassocks, and after that a small squad of soldiers of the Régiment d’Eu. High above the roof-tops a pale, astonished ghost of a moon struggled to fend off the masses of scudding blackness. She looked, he thought, like a drowned face among seaweed. It was marvellous that there had not been more drowned faces out there in the rade. How unfortunate was the House of Stuart; that poor young prince at Gravelines, all ignorant of the orders recently received from Versailles, must be almost out of his mind with anxiety! With this sympathetic reflection M. de Lancize arrived at the building known as the Gouvernement.

By the time that he had discharged his mission rain had been added to the discomforts of the night. Undismayed, he set his face now in the direction of the water-side. The sight of Nicolle’s golden hair would compensate for much, and that the Trois Navires lay in such close proximity to those masts which even in harbour were to-night swaying and straining wildly, to those creaking hulls, would only make its interior the more attractive. Even though he would be wet as well as muddy, he did not anticipate the wench objecting on that score to sit upon his knee. Since the expedition was not now to sail, he would be unable to pursue any studies with regard to Nicolle’s counterparts in England. Well, the Low Countries were full of girls with fair skins and golden hair; he would probably be sick of them before long.

The rain-lashed streets seemed even more deserted than when he had left the Intendance. The young dragoon found himself plunging into one of whose name he was not sure, though he believed it to be the Rue des Minimes. It led, at any rate, in the right direction, and he pursued it whistling a little air which the wind slew on his lips. Borne in snatches on the blast came the tinkle and clang of various bells ringing for compline from the numerous religious houses of Dunkirk, the Conceptionnistes in his immediate vicinity or the Clarisses, the Pénitentes or the Dames Anglaises—or even the Minimes ahead of him. In this ruelle—for it was hardly more, so narrow was it and short—two lights only were visible; one at the further end, affixed for the guidance of the public to the wall of a house, and one of a different nature which streamed out from the uncurtained ground-floor window of some dwelling at the nearer. By the more distant light, which leapt violently at every fresh gust, something like the arm of a semaphore could be seen, though indistinctly, to swing to and fro.

The young officer’s immediate attention, however, was caught by this low, lighted window on his right hand, and as he neared it a quite purposeless curiosity prompted him to glance in. For the window was open—an unusual phenomenon on so wet and boisterous a night—and a man was standing at it, a tall man and a young, as far as could be guessed. Looking for the arrival of someone, perhaps. . . .

“She will not come, monsieur, in such weather,” remarked M. de Lancize, slackening his pace as he passed. “You would do better to go to bed!”

There was no answer, or none that reached his ears, and with this piece of impertinence the Comte de Saxe’s aide-de-camp passed on to what was awaiting him at the end of the street. It leapt down upon him, the smile still round his lips, with a noise like the clatter of several iron pots, with an astonishing souse of water and a simultaneous blow on head and shoulder that sent him reeling, astounded and indignant, into the rain-filled gutter in the middle of the ruelle, where, slipping in the slime of it, he fell his length.

Not without cause had the retired notary who dwelt in the corner house with the lantern feared that the whole of his already rickety gutter would carry away one of these nights if the gale continued.