The Adventurers Read online

  The main stairs this time, and old Agnes, the housekeeper, lying in a curiously small black heap, clutching the newel post, very still. Then the main hall, a shambles, where Cossacks had cut down Frenchmen as they drank and looted. Everything topsy-turvy and everywhere blood. A sigh of relief at the open door, turning to a little gasp at the remembered state of the courtyard. Don’t look at Father and Miss Barrymore. Someone has moved her body a little. Don’t look: you have enough to remember. The French sergeant’s body lies right across the main gate. Step over it, and wonder what would have happened if Father had kept his temper. What’s the use of wondering?

  Outside, Hans, the gatekeeper, lay where he had fallen. And that was all. Otherwise, everything was, incredibly, as usual. The dark woods around the castle, the rising ranges of mountains beyond, should they not have changed to match the change in her? Absurd! She turned and hurried down the path that led to the plateau behind the castle. No sign of horses’ hooves here on the muddy path. It looked as if the Cossacks had ridden off the way they had come, down the valley. Double lucky if they had done so for it would mean that they had missed not only her pony but the village higher up the valley.

  Marmion was grazing peacefully on the banks of the stream and Frederic’s old saddle was still hidden under the straw at the back of the shed. She shrugged away an uncomfortable memory. If Father had not been so bad-tempered, it would not have been necessary to deceive him. But then, if he had not been so bad-tempered, he might still be alive. Poor Father, poor Miss Barrymore… It was still no time to be thinking of them. She picked up the saddle and went out into the evening sunshine to call Marmion.

  ‘Ridiculous English name,’ Father had shouted, and, ‘But I am English,’ she had answered, courting the inevitable explosion of his rage.

  Saddling Marmion, she felt the memories jostle through her brain. Was this how it felt to drown? Had she died a little, with the others, today? And yet it was good to be alive, riding up the valley, feeling the cool wind in her face, watching cloud shadows on the mountains. Shameful to feel this; and suddenly, with shame, came a memory she had so far contrived to suppress, the memory of Gretchen’s face as she ran from her pursuers, and the sounds she had made, in the stable below, when they caught her. Sonia gritted her teeth. Death had been too good for those Frenchmen.

  The village lay quiet as usual in late sunshine. She had been right. Neither Frenchmen nor Cossacks had found their way here. The familiar village noises, of dogs, and hens, and clamorous children seemed to call to her from a remote past. She had ridden here yesterday, with her father; that was in a different life. She jumped quickly down from her pony, defying memory, and rapped loudly on the door of the cottage—it was little more than a hovel—where lived the head man of the village and his wife, who had been her foster mother.

  Greeted with rapturous astonishment, she told her story in the fewest possible words and realised, as she did so, that she sounded almost callous. Well, better that than tears, uncontrollable tears, as they would be if she let them flow. ‘You must go up there,’ she said, ‘at once, and do—what has to be done.’ She bit off the words. What need, after all, for speed?

  ‘But you will come in, and rest yourself, and eat?’ Old Urse sounded doubtful as she spoke. Dearly though she loved her, she thought her cottage no place for the young lady from the castle.

  ‘No.’ Sonia was surprised at the clear decision of her own voice. ‘I must ride over the mountains, at once, to my aunt.’

  ‘Of course: the gracious lady your aunt.’ The old woman sounded at once relieved and surprised that Sonia had come to so proper a decision. ‘But it is not safe for you to be riding about the mountains alone.’

  ‘Who could go with me?’ The question was unanswerable. Long years of war had taken their toll and there was not a young man nor a horse in the village. ‘I shall travel faster alone.’

  It was obvious truth. The old woman made her eat some coarse brown bread and drink a mug of milk, all she had in the house, then bade her a reluctant—or was it a relieved—farewell? All the time, easy tears had been pouring down her brown old face, and at last, helping Sonia to mount, she looked up at her. ‘You do not cry?’

  ‘There is no time for tears.’ Sonia looked down at her from a stretched face, white-grey under the tan. ‘Goodbye, Urse. Make your husband go up—quickly.’

  ‘Never fear, Baroness, I will go and find him at once.’ And the old woman turned, once again with the smallest suggestion of relief, and ran off down the village street.

  Baroness! Sonia turned the unexpected title over in her mind as she rode up the mountain track. Of course, old Urse, ignorant as she was, would assume that with Father’s death the castle must be hers. She shivered, remembering how Father’s mourning for Frederic had been embittered by thoughts of Cousin Franz who must now succeed to title and estate alike. He had been—yes, he had actually been angry with Frederic for dying, and had taken pleasure in taunting his daughter with her lack of expectations. ‘A pauper, that’s what you’ll be when I die. Best make up to your Aunt Gertrude while there’s time. Miser that she is, she’ll be your only hope. No use expecting anything from those English relatives you set such store by. Never did anything for your mother: why should they for you?’

  The thought of Aunt Gertrude, unpleasant enough in itself, was, for once, almost a welcome distraction from darker memory. A harsh, black widow, she lived a life of near-Trappist solitude, her Calvinism so fierce that anything she found herself enjoying was, automatically, bad. Father had always maintained that her threadbare black gowns were the miser’s badge and that death would reveal her as a rich woman, but Sonia did her the justice of thinking her stringent life the result of a charity as genuine as it was unlovely. The idea of sharing, indefinitely, in this silent, angular woman’s life of prayer and thin broth was not a happy one. But why should she expect happiness? After today, she thought she would never hope for anything again.

  It was getting colder. Surely she had been riding for a long time along the twisting little path up the valley? She had never come this way alone before, having visited Aunt Gertrude only reluctantly, when her father made her accompany him. But the ride from the village had never taken more than an hour or so. Could she have taken a wrong turning? The path had only forked once, that she remembered, and that had been very soon after leaving the village. At the time, deep in thought, she had taken the right-hand branch, almost without thinking. Now, remembering, she realised that it had been the better marked of the two. Could she have been wrong in choosing it? The path to Aunt Gertrude’s isolated house led nowhere else; the other led up the next valley and over a spur of the hills to a village she had seldom visited. She paused and looked about her. Nothing but thick pinewoods and, somewhere below, the sound of the invisible stream. It might be either valley, but if it was Aunt Gertrude’s she should reach the little plateau on which the house stood any minute now. Instead, as she rode on, the path began to climb steeply. She stopped again. Fool that she was, she had indeed taken the wrong turning. And it would soon be dark. No time to rage at herself for her mistake, nor yet for the excuses that rushed into her mind. Rage and excuses were equally useless. She must decide what to do. Apparently, she had already decided, for Marmion moved forward again. If she turned back, it would be black dark before she reached Aunt Gertrude’s house. A wolf, howling somewhere behind her in the forest, settled the question for her. Another twenty minutes or so, surely, should bring her to the village, where, as she remembered, there was a little inn. Most important of all, she had now put two ranges of hills between herself and the line of the French retreat. The chances of encountering more fugitives—or more Cossacks—were infinitely less if she went on than if she went back. So debating, she had been riding steadily onward all the time, and sighed with relief when at last the path turned downwards and grew wider. Now, too, she began to hear village noises; a cow lowed, a dog barked at her approach and its voice roused others, further away. No scre
ams, no glow of fire. The French had not been here, nor the Cossacks. She reined in Marmion for a moment while she settled the fur cap over her ragged hair. She knew no one in this village, since all her family’s dealings had been in the other direction, where the main road lay. It had been bad enough telling her story to old Urse; to strangers, she would not. For tonight, she would be the boy she seemed. Safer so, and fewer questions to answer. She thought rapidly, concocting a story that would account for her belated arrival. For it was almost dark now. She was glad to ride in among the first cottages and see the flicker of firelight and the glow of smoke rising from rudimentary chimneys. The inn, which stood at the crossroads in the centre of the village, was merely a cottage a little larger than the rest. A rough shed to one side served as stables and Sonia, taking Marmion there, was disconcerted to see a handsome black horse already installed. She had hoped to find the inn empty, but even in the half-light she could see that this was no peasant’s mount. Well, at least she was prepared. She settled Marmion as best she could and crossed to the inn door, which opened directly into one fairly large room serving as kitchen, taproom, everything. To her relief, there was no one there but the landlady, busy over black pots on her primitive cooking-stove.

  She looked up as Sonia entered, revealing a kindly, anxious, weather-beaten face. ‘Another one!’ She came forward, wiping her hands on the ragged cloth that served as an apron, then exclaimed again as she got a clearer view of Sonia by the dim illumination of a tallow dip. ‘All alone?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sonia had been afraid that she did not look very old, and plunged straight into the story she had invented of being separated from her father as they rode home from visiting a sick relative. It did not sound very convincing, even to her, but the woman had other things on her mind. ‘Madness to be out today at all,’ she said. ‘I have been hearing such tales. Did you not meet them? The French, or worse still, those murdering Cossacks? But come in, you must be perished with cold.’ She did not wait for an answer to her questions. ‘Sit down by the stove. Yes, there’s a room you can have, though it’s not much of a one, our best one being already taken by a gentleman who rode in half an hour ago. My husband’s out scouring the village for something for his supper. You look as if you could do with a bit of something yourself. Here, let me take your bag; I’ll put it in your room for you; it’s just through there.’ She dropped Sonia’s little bag through a door in the corner of the room. ‘There, I must get back to my cooking; the other gentleman’s starving, he says. He’s been riding all about keeping out of the way of those——French.’ She used an adjective Sonia had never heard before. ‘I was afraid, when he first came in, that he was one of them. Speaks funny, he does, not a bit like you and me. Comes from the North somewhere, he explained. Well, it takes all kinds to make a world, they say, but why the good God thought fit to create Frenchmen and Cossacks is more than I can understand.’ And she retired, muttering, to her stove, from which an admirable smell of soup was beginning to spread through the room. It was odd to be hungry. Sonia sat drooped forward, her head in her hands, gazing into the fire and trying not to think.

  The landlady’s voice roused her. ‘There you are, sir! Come and warm yourself.’ And then, with a respect she had not shown Sonia, ‘You will not mind sharing the fire with this young gentleman?’

  As she spoke, the stranger had advanced into the room. ‘Of course not.’ His figure, in the dim light, was unmistakably a gentleman’s, and so was his voice. He sounded young, too, about the age Frederic had been when he rode away to the wars. Sonia breathed a little sigh of relief. Nothing very formidable here.

  Or—was there? He was surveying her with very clear, very steady grey eyes that looked older than the thin brown face. He was slight, almost willowy—Frederic would have made two of him—but just the same she felt, as they exchanged silent, inquiring glances in the half-light, something of strength, of steel about him. Now, he seemed to come to a decision. ‘My name is Vincent, Charles Vincent, at your service.’ It was a relief when he looked away from her to pull a stool towards the stove, dust it with a very white handkerchief and settle astride it.

  ‘You are English, then?’ His name had confirmed something his accent had already suggested to Sonia, and she spoke, without thinking, in English.

  ‘My father was.’ He answered in the same language, but with, surely, the hint, now, of a French accent. ‘And you?’

  ‘My mother.’ She should follow his lead and introduce herself but had not thought, when concocting her story, to provide herself with a name.

  He seemed not to notice the omission. ‘A remarkable meeting,’ he said, still in English. ‘I am glad to find a compatriot, or half of one’—did his tone mock her, or himself?—‘with whom I can practice my phrases. I am grown, I fear, lamentably rusty. But you—you speak like a native.’

  ‘My mother spoke nothing else.’

  ‘Spoke?’ He was quick, this stranger, uncomfortably quick. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘It is a long time ago.’ Aware of his sharp eyes on her face, she was glad that, despite the fierce consoling heat of the stove, she had not removed her huge, all-enveloping sheepskin jacket.

  ‘I am still sorry.’ He sounded it. ‘But, surely, you must have some family. What are they thinking of to let you—excuse me—young as you are, be wandering about the countryside at this, of all times?’

  ‘It happened by accident.’ Once again she plunged into her story which sounded even thinner, now, than it had the first time. It was almost a relief to be interrupted by a loud knocking on the door. The landlord, who had returned some time before, hurried to open it and admit two Austrian officers, who swaggered to the fire, demanding food, wine and beds for the night in tones that admitted of no denial. The elder, and spokesman of the two, interrupted the landlord’s obsequious promise of the best his house could offer, by turning sharply on Vincent. ‘And who are you? You’ve got a damned Frenchified look to me!’

  ‘No wonder for that.’ Vincent’s voice was calm. ‘I had a French mother—an émigré,’ he added, as the man’s hand went to his sword. ‘You would like, perhaps, to see my papers?’ He reached into an inside pocket and produced them.

  The man looked them over rapidly. ‘Hmm.’ Suspiciously. ‘Worked for the King of Saxony, did you? And what does that make you but an enemy? A spy perhaps?’

  ‘Look a little further.’ Vincent was cool as ever. ‘And you will see that I have a laissez-passer from Schwartzenberg himself. You will hardly wish better authority than his?’

  ‘Schwartzenberg, eh?’ The man’s tone changed. ‘Charles Vincent,’ he pronounced the name abominably, ‘…interpreter… pass freely to Allied Headquarters… Speak a lot of languages, do you? Jabber, jabber, parlez-vous…Russki and all. Well, I suppose the old man knows what he’s about. But, what are you doing here, hey?’

  ‘Looking for Allied Headquarters. Perhaps you can tell me where they are to be established?’

  ‘If you will tell me when the French will stop running. Not this side of the Rhine, if you ask me. Never hoped to see them panic so. Ruled the world for twenty years, and now, look at ’em. Running like hares. You should have seen them at Leipzig when the bridge blew up. Drowned themselves in their terror; thousands of them.’

  ‘I know. I was there. I’d never have believed Napoleon could make so obvious a mistake as to chance all on one bridge. It must be true, what they say, that he’s not the man he was, since the retreat from Moscow.’

  ‘Moscow? Were you there?’ Sonia, watching and listening, noted the new respect in his tone. This Charles Vincent might be young, but he was evidently a man to be reckoned with.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered casually. ‘Conscripted, like so many others, into the French army. I never want to see service like that again.’

  ‘Took French leave, did you? Plenty did.’

  ‘No; invalided out; frostbite.’

  ‘Oh. So now you’re an interpreter—and the boy?’ His tone sharpened.

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sp; ‘Lives in these parts. Lost his way in the mountains, dodging the French. He was just telling me about it.’ It was a much better story than Sonia’s and she breathed a sigh of silent gratitude. ‘No papers, of course.’

  ‘I suppose not. Speak German, do you?’ His tone, as he turned to Sonia was not unfriendly.

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘And you live—’ He interrupted his own question: ‘Ah, at last,’ as the landlord appeared with a great flagon of the local wine and four heavy mugs. ‘That’s better! And how about food?’

  ‘Presently, presently, your excellency.’

  ‘And beds?’

  ‘Well, there lies a difficulty, your honour.’ Nervously. ‘These two gentlemen had already bespoken our only two rooms.’

  ‘No difficulty about that. They’ll have to share. No objections, I suppose?’ He spoke impartially to them both.

  ‘Not the least in the world,’ said Charles Vincent. And ‘No,’ said Sonia. What else could she say?

  Chapter Two

  Sonia watched in silent, stoic despair as the landlord moved her little cloakbag into Charles Vincent’s room and dumped a straw mattress in the corner for her, but the two Austrians, on being shown her room, were loud in their complaints and argued that Vincent should change with them.