The Best of Gerald Kersh

Teeth and Nails

‘MADAME, I have the honour of wishing you a very good night,’ said Ratapoil, kissing his wife’s fingers. She curtsied graciously. Tessier started then, for a three-branched candlestick seemed to detach itself, of its own accord, from the shadows in a far corner of the dining-room. It was only a slave lighting Madame Ratapoil upstairs, but he was dark and silent as smoke out of a magical Arabian bottle.

The lady having been bowed out, Ratapoil threw off his gold-buttoned blue coat, and loosened his waistcoat, and the waist-band of his trousers, too. Tessier said dryly: ‘Aie, Ratapoil, old wolf! You stand on ceremony nowadays!’

Ratapoil said, half apologetically: ‘Tessier, old comrade, in a savage country it is a gentleman’s duty to preserve the Decencies.’

‘You have done well for yourself,’ said Tessier, draining his glass. ‘You have come a long way, Ratapoil, since you and I dined off dried dates and crawling green water under the Pyramids … not that it is much cooler here in New Orleans——’ A great black hand came down over his shoulder, and filled his glass from a crystal decanter. ‘– Eh, Ratapoil! Is that a man, or a ghost? Send him to bed, for God’s sake! I hate people coming up behind me like that.’

Ratapoil dismissed the slave with a jerk of the head. ‘Not a bad boy, that one,’ he said. ‘He is worth five dollars a pound, and weighs a hundred and ninety-five; but I won him at piquet, as against three hogshead of rum.’

‘What, so now he deals in rum and slaves! Molière gave us the Bourgeois Gentilhomme; Ratapoil gives us the Gentilhomme Bourgeois! Ratapoil turns tradesman. Aie, but times have changed indeed!’

Ratapoil said: ‘So they have, old fellow. And one must move with them; although, of course, if anyone but you called me a tradesman he should feel a few inches of my sword in his tripes within ten minutes ….’ He sighed. ‘But nobody would dare. Here, as heretofore, I am still Ratapoil, the Jack of Swords. Nobody dares to challenge me in New Orleans, any more than they did in Paris in the old days; unless they happen to be very drunk. Then, I pink them in the arm to teach them better manners; or, if they are very young, simply disarm them. Oho, I assure you, Tessier, the Creoles treat me with the respect to which I am accustomed. But among themselves they fight like the very devil, either with the colchemarde or else the sword-cane …. Not your line, eh, old comrade?’

Tessier shook his head, and said: ‘No, I used to have a tolerably light hand with a rapier, fifteen or twenty years ago. Your colchemarde, however, you can keep – it is nothing but a triangular pig-sticker. I am an artilleryman, when all is said and done. Well … I take it that you have not made your fortune exclusively as Master of Arms in New Orleans? … For example, this fine house, “three hogshead of rum” for a slave in livery, etcetera——’

‘– Oh, one thing leads to another,’ said Ratapoil. ‘In this country one finds oneself becoming a tradesman in spite of oneself. If you want to twist the play titles of Molière, you can call me Le Bourgeois Malgré Lui…. Clever, eh? I opened my little Académie in the Vieux Carré, in the spring of 1813. It was not done, I may say, without a little bloodshed. The Master of Fence at that time was a Swiss named Harter. One word led to another, we measured swords, he was buried the following day (nothing keeps long in this humidity), and I took over. I challenged a Spanish Fencing Master and, on his decease, accommodated his pupils also. By way of advertisement, I then challenged the entire Army of His Majesty, the King of Spain, to come on, one at a time, with sabre, rapier or colchemarde, for the honour of France. Only half a dozen Spaniards took up the challenge; if that child’s play had gone on, His Catholic Majesty would have had to abdicate for lack of soldiers. Meanwhile, I played a little at cards and dice. Nobody dared to cheat me. I won. The stakes were money, or money’s worth – rum, molasses, cane-sugar, coffee, or what not. What do you do with a storehouse-full of such truck?’

‘Sell it,’ said Tessier.

‘Exactly; thereby becoming a kind of merchant. For example, I bought this house with tobacco. I may also mention that at this time we were living at the Saint Timothy Hotel, at a cost of thirty dollars a month. You may remember that my dear wife Louise was brought up by a most respectable aunt, who used to let elegant furnished apartments to unmarried gentlemen in one of the best quarters of Paris——’

‘– I remember your attic room,’ said Tessier.

‘To cut a long story short,’ said Ratapoil. ‘Louise said: “They are robbing us, my dear. I could provide accommodation twice as good for twenty dollars a month. The steamboats are on the river now; elegant ladies and gentlemen are coming into New Orleans in place of the Kaintoucks, the flat-boat men. Let us build a fine hotel, stylishly furnished.” “To provide good food and lodging, twice as good as at the Saint Timothy, for twenty dollars a month?” I asked. She said: “No; for forty dollars a month…. And, since you must gamble, why not do it under your own roof? We could set apart a nicely-appointed room for cards and so forth, strictly for the nobility, and with you to keep order….” In brief, old comrade: I am merchant, hotelier, and anything you like. I am rotten rich. And I take this opportunity of telling you that, with the exception of my wife and my toothbrush, everything I have is yours to command.’

‘I do not want a wife,’ said Tessier, ‘and I have no need for a toothbrush.’ He bared his toothless gums.

‘You used to have excellent teeth,’ said Ratapoil.

‘I have none left that show – I was kicked in the face by a horse.’

‘You shall have the best teeth that money can buy,’ said Ratapoil, ‘the teeth of a healthy young negress, fresh-pulled; and Dr Brossard will fit them into your jaws, so that you’ll never know the difference. Meanwhile, drink, Tessier, drink. Brandy needs no chewing.’

Tessier drank, muttering: ‘The devil take all horses, and, in particular, dapple-grey mares that show the whites of their eyes…. Believe me, Ratapoil, men, women and horses are never to be trusted when they show the whites of their eyes below the iris…. Also, beware of Roman noses, they also are signs of danger in men, women, and horses…. Damn that roman-nosed dapple-grey mare from throat-latch to croup; and damn her rolling eyes!’

‘I detest horses,’ said Ratapoil. ‘But then I am an infantryman, born and bred. I’d rather trust myself to my own two legs than to the four legs of that most hysterical and cowardly of beasts, the horse. I can at least rely on these feet of mine not to bolt with me if a rabbit starts up under my nose in the moonlight; or not to kick my teeth out when I stoop to cut their toe-nails … Still, horses have their place in the world, also.’

‘You are even beginning to think like a bourgeois,’ said Tessier. ‘All the same, you are right. Every grain of sand has its assigned position in the Scheme of Things——’

‘– I should say so! Do you remember when I fought LeGrand with pistols in Egypt? A grain of sand flew into my eye just as the handkerchief dropped, so that I missed him clean; otherwise I should certainly have shot him. As it turned out, I was in the wrong; and LeGrand and I became good friends, until he was killed at Eylau. How old is a grain of sand, and how many grains of sand are there in a desert? And how long had that grain in particular been lying there, awaiting instructions to fly up and prevent an injustice? It goes to show … But what were you doing on horseback at your time of life, Tessier?’

‘Taking my place in the Scheme of Things,’ said Tessier, sombrely, ‘dust that I am.’

His pale, toothless mouth pulsed like a frog’s throat as he sucked his cigar alight at a candle. Then he went on:

… You, Ratapoil, were always a Legitimist at heart. I, au fond, was always a good Republican. But both of us loved France, first and foremost; therefore we gave of our best to Napoleon for the greater glory of France. Our health, our youth, our blood, our marrow – what we had, we gave! And after we had grown old in his service Buonaparte brushed us off, like dust from his cuffs; you for breach of discipline, me as a political suspect. Then we said, in effect: Beware of the Dust, O Emperor! The Wrath of God waits in the Dust! (only you said ‘God’, and I said ‘History’.) And we joined little anti-Napoleonist clubs.

You were in the Malet Plot; I was a member of the Brutus Club. Still, we were old comrades and helped each other. You escaped from France by the skin of your teeth, in 1812, and came here to America. I stayed, more fool me!

I still clung to some mad hope of a Republican coup. If that hope had been realised – which it could not have been, because the time was not ripe for it – I should now be a General. As events occurred, Louis XVIII came back to France when Napoleon went to Elba.

You, wisely, stayed in New Orleans. But, where was I to go? Whichever way the cat jumped, I was the mouse. At that time the Bonapartists hated me; the Legitimists hated me; the Republicans, driven underground, split into a hundred tiny sects, every one of which execrated me as a heretic, a Republican of the old-fashioned Classical School.

I got out of Paris and wandered, living from hand to mouth. For a while I was a waiter in Antwerp, and then I worked for a bookseller in England, compiling a French Grammar and Phrase-Book for Young Ladies. Then I went to Belgium, as courier and what-you-will to an Anglo-Indian gentleman. But, not long after Napoleon returned from Elba and the Infantry hailed him, again, as Emperor, my nabob paid me off and made for Flushing and the sea in a light carriage, leaving me with a trunkful of soiled linen, and one of his horses – a dapple-grey mare named Cocotte.

She had cast a shoe on that appalling stretch of road between Marchienne and Fontaine l’Evêque, by the River Sambre: a most desolate and dreadful place, a brooding brown plain under a sky such as must have hung over Sodom before the fire fell from Heaven. Only, in this case, the heavens were full of water, but none the less black for that. It was a wet spring, that spring of 1815, and nowhere wetter or more sombre than at Marchienne, where the Sambre runs from above Landres to join the Meuse at Namur.

We had put up at a questionable kind of inn. Originally, it had been named ‘L’Aiglon’, the Imperial Eagle. As soon as Napoleon was deposed, the landlord had painted out his sign, leaving it blank. Later, he had daubed on a Fleur-de-Lys. When we arrived, he was trying to smear back the Eagle: the news of the Emperor’s return from Elba had already broken.

‘If we scraped off a few strata of paint,’ I said to him, ‘no doubt we should come to the Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.’

He said: ‘I am only a poor inn-keeper, I am a neutral – I move with the times.’

This inn-keeper’s name was Morkens, and he was a boor. He had some arrangement with the local blacksmith: if a traveller lost a tyre, a horseshoe, or the merest lynch-pin, the blacksmith would detain him, so that he was compelled to stay with Morkens. Morkens charged the traveller treble, and the blacksmith charged him quintuple; each paid the other commission.

We paused at this inn (call it what you will), intending to stop for two hours. Two days later, the mare was still unshod. ‘Is it my fault?’ whines this execrable Morkens. ‘If milord is in a hurry, I can sell him a horse——’

‘Do so,’ says my master; and Morkens sells him an abominable screw for the price of a thoroughbred, swearing that he is taking the bread out of his children’s mouths.

‘I’ll pay!’ cries my nabob, dashing down golden guineas. Then, to me: ‘Here’s your money, my good man. Can’t take you with me. Travelling light – can’t spare weight. Here’s another ten guineas for you.’

‘Your trunk, milord? The mare?’ I asked.

‘Oh, damn the trunk and confound the damned mare! Keep ’em! I’m away!’ cries he.

And off he went, bumping over the most dismal and treacherous road in the world, leaving me standing under an equivocal sign that creaked outside the world’s worst inn, rubbing elbows with the meanest rogue in muddy Flanders: Morkens.

The chaise was not out of sight when this Morkens turned to me, and said: ‘The linen he left behind in that trunk is of the finest cambric——’

‘– How do you know?’ I asked.

‘Oh,’ said Morkens, ‘I gathered as much from the quality of the stuff your master had on his back. Why do you ask? Would I look in his trunks?’

‘Of course not,’ I answered.

You understand; my instinct warned me to continue to play the perfect courier-cum-valet de chambre with this Morkens. I spoke primly, but at the same time gave him a sidelong glance, smiling with the right-hand corner of my mouth, while I winked with the left eye, falling impassive, again, upon the instant.

‘Now, look here,’ said he, ‘then we’ll go halves.’

‘Halves? Of what?’ I asked.

‘Oh, linen and what-not,’ said Morkens. ‘The linen, the horse …’

‘But milord gave the horse and the linen to me, my friend,’ I said. ‘You heard him.’

He shouted: ‘Hey, Marie!’ and his wife came out. She was good-looking in the Flemish style – a skin like cream, and hair like copper. The cream soon goes cheesy, and the copper tarnishes; still, while their looks last, Flemish women, as you know, are very pretty, if you like something to get hold of (if you understand what I mean). Marie Morkens must have been a good twenty years younger than her hogshead of a husband, and she had the sleek look and something of the colouring of a fine, healthy, tortoise-shell cat. I remember that she had golden eyelashes; never trust a woman with fair eyelashes.

‘My darling,’ said Morkens, ‘did we hear milord giving his horse and his linen to this gentleman?’

She answered: ‘Of course not, my dear…. Hey, Cornelys, come here!’ Her voice was husky, yet penetrating, not unlike a cowbell in a mist.

Cornelys, the blacksmith, whose smithy was only twenty yards away, came running, hammer in hand, and stood open-mouthed, a veritable Vulcan with his leather apron and his blackened face. He stood, grinning like an idiot, rolling his inflamed eyes at the inn-keeper’s wife, with whom he was obviously head over heels in love.

‘Cornelys,’ said she, ‘you did not hear the English milord giving his horse and his linen to this gentleman here, did you?’

‘No.’

‘You heard him giving them to my husband, didn’t you?’

‘Did I? Oh yes, I remember now. That’s right; to your husband, certainly,’ said this idiot.

Morkens said: ‘So there you are!’

You know, my friend, that I am nicknamed ‘The Fox’. I am supposed to be incredibly clever. In point of fact, I am not; I pass as clever only because, in an emergency, I keep a cool head, hold my tongue, keep my temper, and wait to see which way the cat jumps. I hold by the old apophthegm To the ignorant much is told, moreover. I give away as little as possible, and prefer to profess, above all, an abysmal ignorance of foreign languages when in out-of-the-way places. In Flanders, for example, I pretended not to understand Flemish, although I understand it perfectly; thus I overheard many interesting things, as will soon be evident.

Now the woman turned to her husband and in the barbarous dialect of the locality – it always reminds me of a dog with a bone in his throat – said: ‘Joris, give him the horse. One side or the other will be advancing or retreating, any day now, and horses will be commandeered anyway.’

‘Give him the horse? Are you out of your mind, wife?’

She purred in her throat: ‘Give him the horse, I say, husband; and sell him a saddle.’

‘You are right, my heart.’

‘I am not your heart, you fat lump; I am your brain, you fool. Let me handle this,’ said she. Then to me, in French: ‘Nevertheless, monsieur, it is not in my character to see a traveller stranded in this God-forsaken mud. My husband is willing to lend you milord’s horse. A light rider like yourself can easily overtake milord’s coach, which will be going heavily, the roads being as they are. You can join milord at Flushing, and all’s well that ends well. No?’

I said, with simulated reluctance: ‘Very well. I see that I am outnumbered here. Shoe me the mare, and let me go.’

The blacksmith said: ‘Oh, as for that – ten minutes! The shoe is made.’

So I led the dapple-grey mare out of the stable, and to the forge. Madame Morkens accompanied me. She stood, hugging herself as if in secret delight at some incommunicable titillating thought, as such women will, while Cornelys went to work with rasp and hammer. That lovesick clown’s mind was not on his work. Every other second he paused to make sheep’s eyes at Madame Morkens. Once, indeed, while he was driving home the first nail, the mare Cocotte almost kicked him into his own fire.

‘Easy, there!’ I said. ‘Do you want to lame the beast?’

‘She’s vicious,’ he said.

‘You are clumsy,’ said I, ‘you are not nailing a plank to a joist!’

He cursed me obscenely in Flemish, and when I said: ‘I beg pardon?’ he said in French: ‘I was simply saying “You are quite right, monsieur.”’

So, at last, Cocotte was shod and I led her back to the inn. Madame Morkens lingered for a few seconds. I heard the smack of a boorish kiss, and when she joined me she was wiping soot from her face with her apron. And then the rain came down again – but what rain! Every drop hit the mud with a smack and a splash like a musket-ball.

The landlord had prepared some pleasant concoction of mulled spiced wine. He said: ‘Well, so now you have your horse, all right and tight…. No doubt monsieur is an expert bareback rider, like the ladies in the circus?’ I asked him what he meant, as if I did not know. He continued: ‘Monsieur proposes, no doubt, to ride to Flushing without a saddle?’

‘Oh – oh!’ said I. ‘I never thought of that. Oh dear!’

‘As luck will have it,’ he said, ‘I have a fine English hunting saddle, almost brand-new. I can let you have it dirt-cheap, if you like.’

‘I’d like to have a look at it,’ I said.

You see, it was my intention to have him saddle and harness Cocotte, and then, pretending to try the saddle for comfort, to get my feet in the stirrups, give the mare the edge of my heel, and so away.

But he said: ‘Oh, the saddle’s in the stable, and the rain is coming down in bucketfuls. Let it give over. Why hurry?’

The saddle was in the stable, then; that was something worth knowing.

She said: ‘In any case it will soon be dark, monsieur, and the roads are terrible. Best take your dinner at your ease and stay the night, and make a good start at daybreak,’ and gave her husband a quick, sidelong look that chilled my blood.

She had seen milord give me my pay, thirty guineas, and ten guineas over and above that, for a pourboire; besides, I had twenty guineas more in my purse, some of it my own money and some of it petty cash for travelling expenses with which milord had entrusted me and of which I had neglected to remind him. And I have seen a throat cut for five francs in wayside inns in Flanders!

Morkens muttered in Flemish: ‘It’s dangerous….’

‘Fool!’ she said. ‘In a few days, after the battle, the whole countryside will be littered with stabbed carcasses. Who will count one more or less?’

I said: ‘I beg pardon?’

She said: ‘I was saying “More haste, less speed,” and telling my husband to go and kill a capon for dinner.’

‘Oh well,’ I said, ‘no doubt you are right. The weather is, as you say, impossible. I will go to my room and pack my little valise in readiness for the morning.’

They had given me a horrid little closet of a room overlooking the yard, and smelling abominably of the stable; but I was glad of it now. If the window was too small to let the daylight in, it was not too small to let me out, and if I hung by my hands from the sill, I should have only a six-foot drop to the yard. So far, so good.

Also, I had another idea. You know that I am still troubled periodically with my old Egyptian dysentery. When it begins to trouble me, I take ten drops of tincture of laudanum, which is nothing more nor less than opium. In case of emergency, I always carry a vial of it wherever I go. I took this vial out of my valise now, and slipped it into my pocket – a good two ounces of the stuff.

Then I went downstairs and waited. Madame Morkens was roasting the chicken and her husband was setting the table. I guessed that their plan was to make me comfortably drowsy with good food and wine – he had brought up a couple of sealed bottles of his best from the cellar – and then, quite simply, knock me on the head. The woman alone would have been more than a match for a shrimp like me, to say nothing of her ox of a husband. I carried a little pair of pocket pistols, it is true, but I always keep my small-arms for use if all else fails.

So. While we were picking the bones of the capon, I, pretending to be a little lively with wine, said: ‘Upon my word, madame, you are a cook fit for a king, and beautiful as a queen! And you, Monsieur Morkens, are a jolly good fellow! I’ll tell you what – I’ll stand you a bowl of rum punch in the English style, and mix it myself according to Lord Whiterock’s own secret recipe…. You, old fellow, will be so good as to fetch me a bottle of rum, a bottle of brandy, and a bottle of port wine. You, madame, will get me lemons and sugar, nutmeg and ginger, cinnamon and cloves … and I see a fine old ale-bowl over there which will be the very thing to mix it in!’

It worked. He went to fetch the spirits and the wine; she took her keys to the spice cupboard; and I, uncorking my bottle, emptied it rapidly into the bowl. It went without a hitch. In fifteen minutes the punch was mixed. Laudanum has a bitter, cloying taste, but the rum, the brandy, the port, the sugar and the spices that I mixed in that punch would have disguised it if it had been so much asafoetida. I insisted on filling immense bumpers. You understand – I had been taking laudanum therapeutically for twenty years or so, so that what I swallowed in my punch was merely a homeopathic dose. But the effect of the drug on the Morkenses soon became apparent. Their minds wandered; the pupils of their eyes contracted. They drank again and again, not knowing or caring how much they drank, never noticing that I had taken no more than one glass. All the same, they were tough, those two!

It was eleven o’clock before Madame Morkens became unconscious. Her husband saw her fall across the table. He pointed at her, chuckling stupidly, and then rolled sideways out of his chair and fell to the floor with a crash. ‘Hodi mihi, cras tibi,’ I said, ‘today to me, tomorrow to thee, my friends…. And now I think I will punish you a little. A vindictive man would burn your inn over your heads. But I …’

… In short, I went through their pockets, etcetera, for their keys. As I had guessed, it was the woman who had in her keeping the most important of the keys – one in particular, a little one, suspended on a piece of string which she wore about her neck. The key of the cash box, evidently. And where would they hide their cash box, these two? Unquestionably, under their bed. It was so. After twenty years in the Grande Armée one acquires experience in looting, eh?

I found the loose plank, and had that cash box open in five minutes. It contained banknotes and gold to the value of about seventy thousand livres, which I stuffed into my pockets.

Then I took my little valise, and put on my cloak and my hat, and went out. The landlord and his wife were stertorously snoring, almost as if their skulls had been smashed. I had nothing to fear from them. The great dog in the yard barked furiously, but luckily for me he was chained. I got into the stable with the aid of Morkens’s key, and lit the lantern, by good luck, in no time at all. I always keep my tinderbox dry, as you know. The saddle was hanging on a nail. It was a mouldering old English hunting saddle, but I made shift to buckle it on the mare Cocotte.

I had my left foot in the stirrup, and was ready to mount, when I heard another horseman approaching.

Now, the manner of his approach made me pause. A bona-fide traveller, coming to an inn at night, makes a noise, shouts ‘Landlord! Landlord!’ – is, in fact, in a devil of a hurry to get in out of the rain; especially on such a night as this was. Furthermore, I heard him speak to the dog in Flemish, and the dog was silent. A friend of the family, evidently. He tried the front door, and found it locked. Then, leading his horse, which was very weary, he came round to the back.

Believe me when I tell you that I slid out of the stirrup and into the hay as I heard that fellow approach. His horse, alone, came into the stable before him; he had been there before – he knew his way. I could not see him; he was of the colour of the darkness, an iron-shod shadow, only I heard him walking and breathing.

Also, I heard the rider knocking upon the back door of the inn, and calling in a kind of subdued shout: ‘Morkens, Morkens!’ There was no answer. He came stumbling and splashing back, cursing at the end of his teeth, and I heard him call the name of Cornelys. The rain washed most of his voice away; all the same, I heard him between the drops … ‘Cornelys! … Cornelys! …’

Here, you may say, was the time to get out. So it was. But you know that there are times when curiosity is somewhat stronger than the desire to live. I had guessed that this night-bird, since he was in the confidence of Morkens, who was a cut-throat, must be some sort of highway robber – especially since he came quietly by night, on an exhausted horse. I wanted to know more, quite simply; therefore I waited, particularly after I heard him call for Cornelys the blacksmith, who was another thorough-going rascal.

Cornelys came soon, with a lantern. By the sound of him I knew that he was booted and spurred: a nice way for a simple blacksmith to be, at that time of night, on a lonely road! Furthermore, his voice had changed somewhat since last I had heard it; now he spoke hard and tight. Following the newcomer into the stable, Cornelys said: ‘What’s this? What’s the matter with Morkens and Marie?’

He spoke in Flemish, and in Flemish the other man replied: ‘Dead drunk in the kitchen.’

‘Impossible,’ said Cornelys. ‘Can’t be. Not now!’

‘No? Go and see.’

He went, but soon returned, grunting incredulously: ‘This night of all nights!’ The other man groaned. ‘What’s the matter with you, Klaes? Are you hurt?’ asked Cornelys.

‘No; tired, dead tired, Cornelys. Dropping where I stand,’ said the man who had been addressed as Klaes. Indeed, he sounded tired.

‘Makes no difference,’ said Cornelys the blacksmith. ‘In any case, it was I who was to carry the word. I am ready…. Well?’

‘Well,’ said the man called Klaes, speaking very deliberately, like a man who is drunk or used up. ‘Get it right the first time, Cornelys, because I swear I’m in no condition to repeat it … oh, dear God, how tired I am! … Listen carefully, now; the password is the English word, Ditch. Have you got that?’

‘Ditch,’ said Cornelys.

‘You will pass that word to Collaert’s vedettes,’ said Klaes.

‘Where?’ asked Cornelys.

‘Between here and Braine le Comte,’ Klaes said.

‘I will pass the word Ditch to Collaert’s vedettes between here and Braine de Comte,’ Cornelys said. ‘And then?’

‘Then you will be conducted at once to General Collaert of the cavalry, by his aide-de-camp, Brigadier de Beukelaer, who will have a fresh horse waiting. You will tell your message to Collaert in person. This is what you will say: That you come from Jan Klaes (that, of course, is myself). That Klaes has been compelled to take devious roads because he has been shadowed. That Jan Klaes has been forty-eight hours in the saddle, and therefore sends you to deliver to Collaert a message which should have gone in advance to Wellington at Brussels. … Is this fixed in your mind?’

Cornelys repeated it, word-perfect. He was not the fool that he pretended to be…. Or was he? I don’t know. I have known congenital idiots, and nagging women, who had that same curious knack of repeating, with just such exactitude, precisely what vibrated the nerves of their ears. Empty domes throw back the most perfect echoes…. This Cornelys repeated the very inflection of the man Klaes, who, in something between a groan and a yawn, expressed approval, and then went on.

‘Excellent. You will say this to Collaert, then: Our man de Wissembourg, whom Collaert knows, has taken the place of Lacoste, as Napoleon’s guide. Napoleon is completely ignorant of the terrain around St Lambert. It is reasonably certain that the Emperor will deploy his cavalry before the plateau of Mont St Jean. This force of cavalry will consist mainly of Milhaud’s cuirassiers – twenty-six squadrons, supported by Lefebre Desnouette’s division. Altogether, between three and four thousand of the cream of Napoleon’s heavy cavalry…. Have you got that?’

‘I have. Continue.’

‘Good. Listen again: ‘If Wellington makes a show of English infantry on the plateau of Mont St Jean, behind a light covering fire of canister from the masked batteries on the Nivelles road, the odds are that Napoleon will make one of his master-strokes – his heavy cavalry, en masse, will charge the English infantry line, with a view to smashing it and cutting the Allies in two, before the German reinforcements arrive; Blücher and Bülow being already delayed…. Is that clear?’

‘Perfectly clear – not that I understand. Go on. It is written in my head as on a slate.’

‘You are neither expected nor required to understand, only to remember. Listen again: Before the French cavalry can reach the English infantry, therefore, they must cross a certain little road that runs across the plain from Ohain to Mont St Jean——’

‘Cross it, how?’ said Cornelys. ‘I know the Ohain road. Road? It is a ditch, twelve feet deep, banked up steep on either side. Mountaineers cross such a road, not cavalry. I know the Ohain road.’

‘All the better. Tell Collaert so, and answer clearly any questions he may ask. Meanwhile, remember again: If Wellington, having arranged his foot-guards above the Ohain road, draws the main charge of Napoleon’s heavy cavalry, he will break the head off Napoleon’s sledge-hammer, and break off the jaws of his tongs, too. It is Jan Klaes who says so, having received word from de Wissembourg, alias Lacoste, Napoleon’s own guide…. For God’s sake, is all I have said impressed upon your memory, Cornelys?’

‘Every word,’ said the blacksmith, ‘firm as print, clear as ink – aie – aie! What’s this?——’ He had put out his hand, instinctively stroking and stroking as blacksmiths will, feeling the back of the mare Cocotte. ‘– Why, may I die, if Morkens hasn’t saddled the Englishman’s mare!’

‘What Englishman? What mare?’ Klaes asked.

‘A bony dapple-grey, sixteen hands. I shod her myself today. Fed like a fighting-cock. Broken to shafts and saddle, and good for anything; a horse for a lady or a gentleman.’

‘What Englishman?’

‘Oh, a millionaire, a nabob. He left the horse as a tip for his valet; simple as that! Not to go into details: I guess that Morkens had her saddled and ready, knowing that my little gelding is a little too light for my weight. This dapple-grey will carry two hundred pounds over fifty miles of mud. A good idea!’ said Cornelys.

‘The Englishman is gone. And the valet?’ Klaes asked.

Cornelys said: ‘I think the valet won’t be needing the dapple-grey tonight.’ I almost felt the darkness contract and expand as he winked unseen.

‘Good,’ said Klaes. ‘To horse and away, hell for leather! Be off!’

But now Cornelys became insolent and, quoting some clownish proverb, ‘Patience, fleas, the night is long!’ he then said: ‘Those two sots have left the best part of half a bowl of punch, eh?’

‘Hurry,’ said Klaes.

But Cornelys insisted: ‘A stirrup-cup first, and then we’re off!’ – and splashed back to the house.

Crouching in the hay with my hands on my pistols, I was almost sorry then for the man Klaes, squatting on his truss of straw; for I perceived the weary misery of him when (believing himself to be alone in the dark) he moaned ‘… Oh Lord, Lord, Lord! … Is it for me to choose Your instruments? … I can no more, I have done my best….’ Wow, but that man was tired!

Then the oaf Cornelys came back chuckling, saying: ‘May the Lord forgive all the sins of the man who mixed that punch! It goes down well on a night like this. I finished it to keep out the damp….’

So Cornelys had drunk the rest of my punch, then! Good.

‘Away with you!’ cried Klaes. The blacksmith swung himself into Cocotte’s saddle, said au revoir, and was off.

I kept still in the hay, working over in my mind the tremendous significance of the message which Klaes had conveyed to Cornelys, and which Cornelys was to carry to Wellington. The weight of this message crushed the breath out of me, because the fate of an Empire depended upon it! I knew that this messenger Cornelys must, at all costs, be intercepted and his message diverted. But, I ask you – how? Violence is not in my line – I live or die by my wits. He was a powerful and resolute man, mounted on a strong, fresh horse. I was a shrimp of a man with nothing to put between my thighs but an exhausted scrub. True, I had a pair of pistols in my pockets; so, without doubt, had Cornelys.

But the odds, as I counted them, were evened by the laudanum in the punch Cornelys had drunk. He had told Klaes that he had drunk half a bowl of the mixture; so he had (the shallower half of the bowl, which was, therefore, only a third of the total volume); still, that should be sufficient, in a literal sense, to tip the balance – Cornelys’s equilibrium – in my favour.

In a flash, you realise, I had seen my duty. I did not like Napoleon; indeed, in my time I had plotted against him. But in this moment I saw him not as the renegade Republican, not as the ingrate, not as the ambitious little deserter of Egypt and of Russia; I saw him as the old eagle hatched again. I saw in him something symbolic of the Spirit of the Man that goeth Upwards. In this extraordinarily indomitable little rogue returned from Elba to confront the gathered might of the Allies I saw – for give the comparison – something of myself. I recaptured a little of the old enthusiasm. Yes, old comrade, I saw again the red dawn of Egypt. I knew then that I must, by hook or by crook, warn Napoleon of the menace at his elbow.

Ah, if only I had had with me then you, or any one of half a dozen other stout fellows I could name! Then I should have let Cornelys carry his message to Collaert, while you carried to Napoleon the intelligence of that message well in advance. Thus forewarned, having allowed the English infantry to form, Napoleon would have fallen upon their left flank and carried the plateau of Mont St Jean!

But I was alone, and only one course was open to me: I must intercept Cornelys, before he reached Collaert, and cut him down. This, as a first move, was the wisest for me, situated as I was. I had something like a dog’s chance of overtaking Cornelys, and then, mounted on the mare Cocotte, making my way to the French lines. And this I resolved to do.

Hence, when the tired man Klaes dragged himself back to the inn, I mounted that weary horse of his, and, using my pen-knife as a spur, made after the blacksmith. That horse had heart. He drew a long breath, and hit the road.

And do you know what, old comrade-in-arms? Then it was as if I had shed the weight of a quarter of a century. I felt as I had felt on a certain dawn in the spring of 1795, when, seeing sunlight through the powder-smoke, I first realised that I was a grown man, and therefore too old to be afraid…. Then my heart, which had been flapping and fluttering somewhere below my belt, found its wings and soared, singing to high heaven; Fear of Death was a shadow in the valley far below and far behind me; and I laughed and cried, delighting in my new-found freedom from that fear….

So I felt, then, when I nudged and goaded Klaes’s weary horse back into the mud and the darkness. Ah, but that was an enchanted moment – how good it was to feel that rain, and to see so far away that struggling, watery moonlight!

The horse seemed to catch my exhilaration. He was winded, so that I might have been sitting astride Cornelys’s own heaving, wheezing bellows; but still he galloped. All the same, exaltation apart, my reason had not deserted me. The blacksmith was mounted on Cocotte, who was strong and fresh, and had the start of my poor nag. But I had not forgotten that, within the hour, Cornelys should be most insecure in that little hunting saddle, if he were seated at all. By the time I overtook him, he must in any case be too befuddled to aim a pistol; and then I should have him.

I planned to put a ball in his thick head, take his mount, and ride belly-to-earth north-east to the first French outpost where I would pass the word: The so-called Lacoste, the Emperor’s guide, is an enemy agent – beware the sunken road between Ohain and Braine le Leud, between the French front and the plateau of Mont St Jean!

… So, I rode, only God knows how, for that road was rutted inches deep under a layer of red clay whipped by the rain and mashed by a million wheels and hoofs into a most dangerous mire. And then, that rain! The Deluge was come again. I believe that summer of 1815 was the wettest summer in the history of the world. It was as if Fate, in a sporting mood, seeing two tremendous adversaries coming to hand-grips had said: ‘You shall wrestle in the Indian style, my children – in a pit of slippery mud, just to make the game a little more difficult….’

A storm broke, and at every clap of thunder the whole black sky splintered like a window struck by a bullet – starred and cracked in ten thousand directions letting in flashes of dazzling light, so that I was stunned and bewildered. Dr Mesmer (he, also, dressed all in black) used to daze his subjects with little mirrors revolving before their eyes in order to put them to sleep. So the elements under the black cloak of the night seemed resolved to mesmerise me.

But my brave horse carried me on until, at a bend in the road, he stumbled and shuddered; went down on his knees, and rolled over on his side. I sprang clear just in time … tugged at the reins, shouting encouraging words; then let go his head. He was dead. He had burst his heart.

I stood by my dead horse, sick with hopelessness. But then the lightning flashed again, and I saw, not a hundred paces in front of me, the big grey mare Cocotte, walking very slowly, riderless, in the rain. I made my way to her, and you may rest assured that I had my hands on my pistols under my cloak. When I reached her, I saw in the light of another flash why she was walking slowly: the blacksmith Cornelys had tumbled out of the saddle, his left foot had caught in the stirrup, and she was dragging his enormous bulk in the clinging mud.

Hope flamed high again. I was sure then that Fate was on my side. Cornelys was not dead, only drugged and stunned. In a little while he would recover and continue on his errand as best he could. But first he would have to find another horse; he would be seriously delayed. Before he could be well on the road again to carry his message to Collaert at Braine le Comte I should be half-way to Genappe, where Napoleon was!

I disengaged his boot from the stirrup. His ankle was broken. So much the better! I sprang into the little hunting saddle on the back of the grey mare, turned her head, cried: Hue! – Hue! – Hue, Cocotte! and galloped back down the road over which I had travelled … away, away, past that accursed inn, through Fontaine l’Evêque, and so in the direction of our French outposts … past Drapceau, through St Estelle-sur-Ruth; and, as I rode, I dreamed fine dreams and even – could I have mixed that punch too strong even for my own head? – made up little songs which I sang inside myself to Cocotte’s hoof-beats …

And then, not far from Trois Ruisseaux – you know my luck – the rhythm halted and changed. The mare Cocotte had gone lame, and was limping on her off hindleg.

I assumed that she had picked up a flint, or, perhaps, a bit of a broken spike, from those deplorable roads. So, saying: ‘Patience, Cocotte, my darling; we will put you right in no time at all, and you shall yet help Tessier to save France’ – I dismounted, took out my pocket-knife, and, lifting up the mare’s lame hoof, explored it with my finger-tips, since there was no light to see by. I could feel nothing amiss. Then I remembered how Cocotte had started and kicked while Cornelys the blacksmith, driving home a nail, was making eyes at the inn-keeper’s wife, and my heart sank. He had lamed her through his inattention, the accursed idiot! I realised then that I would have done better to let Cornelys go unpursued to find myself stuck in the mud with a lame mare, while I took my chance in the direction of the French lines…. But I ask you, how was I to have foreseen this?

Full of bitterness, I let go Cocotte’s hoof.

She shook her leg, and kicked me in the face.

I do not know, my friend, how long I lay unconscious in the ditch. I know that when I came to myself I was lying on my back, blinking at a dirty sky from which the rain was no longer falling, and that for the moment I thought that I was again in Spain, when the English stormed the battery and an infantryman knocked me down with the butt of his musket. I was in the most atrocious pain, and my throat was full of blood. It was this very blood, this very pain, that brought me back to consciousness; for the blood made me cough, and the cough shook my head, and my lower jaw was badly broken. Several of my teeth were embedded in my tongue, which was half bitten through.

I have, in my time, been wounded in almost every conceivable way. I have survived grape-shot in my ribs, a musket-ball in the stomach, a pistol-ball in the shoulder and, most miraculous of all, a biscaïen ball in the hip (I say nothing of the bayonet-thrust, or a sabre-cut, here and there) and I have had most of the fluxes, dysenteries and agues that our frail flesh is heir to; together with a rheumatic fever which, I believed, was the ultima Thule of punishment. But the gathered might of all my enemies, my friend, never inflicted upon me one-half of the anguish I suffered under the hoof of that white-eyed devil of a dapple-grey mare! The pain of the broken bones in my face was terrible. The agony of my bitten tongue was worse. But worst of all was the pain of a shattered nerve on the left-hand side of my face. It was as if some fiend had delicately pushed a wire into my left nostril, up through some fine passage at the back of the eyeball, and out at the ear – and then applied a powerful current of electricity. My face twitched and jerked like Galvani’s frog….

However, never mind that. I took off my cravat and tied up my jaws, and then staggered away in search of my horse. Puzzle: find her! She had bolted, God knows where, sore foot and all. Blind with misery and the night, I walked, I cannot tell you how far or for how long, until at last I saw the lights of a wayside inn.

With my muddy, bloody, smashed face, and my sodden black cloak, I must have looked like the Angel of Death himself, for the inn-keeper fell back a pace when he saw me. I tried to speak, but I could not, so I pushed past him, seated myself, put down a gold napoleon and, taking out tablet and pencil, wrote the word: Cognac.

He shook his head: he could not read. Then, as best I could, I drew the outline of a bottle and a glass. I am no draughtsman, but he understood, and brought me eau-de-vie and a glass. Heavens above, but the raw spirit stung like a swarm of bees! Yet it stung me alert. I beckoned the man to my side, and drew the outline of something like a horse, saddled; and put down on the table a handful of Morkens’s gold.

He said: ‘Monsieur wants a horse? Monsieur is in luck, then. I have one only, a beautiful grey mare. She belonged to a Belgian colonel of cavalry. I could not part with her for less than a hundred louis d’or – but, seeing it’s you, I’ll throw in the saddle, a beautiful light saddle, the property of Milord Wellington himself. He brought it over from England when he hunted the fox in a blue coat to pass the time away, at the time of the Spanish blockades. The mare has been eating her head off in my stable for the past six months – God strike me dead if I lie! Well?’

I counted the rascal out his hundred gold pieces, and followed him to the stable.

‘I had her shoed only this morning,’ said he, holding high his lantern.

And what did I see? You have guessed. Cocotte, hook-nosed and supercilious as a camel, rolling her eyes at me in the dim yellow light.

There was nothing to be gained by argument: there was no time to lose, and I was growing weaker and weaker. Cursing the inn-keeper in my heart, I mounted, thinking: Filthy Cocotte! If I get off your back between this and Genappe, it will be to fall dead into the road. And, curse you, if you cannot take me there on four legs, by God you must carry me on three!

So, I rode again, still mounted on Cocotte. The rain was falling again, and now every drop of cold water on my sore head was like a blow with a hammer. Somewhere between my eyes, something was revolving like one of those children’s rattles composed of a springy strip of wood and a cogged wheel….

Brother, when you were a boy at school you learned the nature of the ancient Roman catapult? It was a system of stiff, springy beams mounted on a ponderous base. With ropes and winches the ancient artillerymen dragged down the topmost end of the upright beam until it was bent almost to breaking point. To this beam was fastened a cup. In this cup they played a great net bag filled with loose stones to the weight of about sixty pounds. The catapulter pulled a trigger. The agonised, bent beam snapped upright, struck the crossbeam with a horrible jolt, thus sending the bag of stones whirling away in a giddy parabola…. You remember? Believe me, I remembered! My spine was the strained upright, my shoulders were the crossbeam; my skull was the cup, my brains were the rattling stones; and every step Cocotte took pulled a trigger…. I was too wretched even to cry out, because when I cried my tongue vibrated, and I could not bear that.

Yet, agonised as I was, I continued to think, asking myself: Dumb, wounded beast that I am, how shall I pass the sentries? How shall I deliver my message to the Emperor?

I answered myself: How, but in writing? … I must write a series of messages on little pieces of paper; keep these messages in separate pockets of my waistcoat, and present them in their proper order.

I stopped again at a wretched farmhouse. Staying in the saddle – I should not have had the strength to remount – by the light of a lantern I wrote my notes, and put them into their respective pockets. After that, I bullied Cocotte back to the road, and so we struggled, splashing, on our way.

What was the name of that Greek who was doomed to push a great boulder up a steep hill for ever and for ever? I think his name was Sisyphus. I drink, comrade-in-arms, to Sisyphus; I think I know something of what he went through. It seemed to me – pain of bitten tongue and broken jaw apart – that I was condemned to ride eternally, through blinding rain and endless night, upon a lame mare, on a mission of honour, slipping back two paces for every pace that I covered. Soon I felt Cocotte weakening under me. Ah well, poor beast, she too had her troubles!

I remembered that my great cloak, sodden with the rain, must weigh heavy, so I unclasped it at the throat and let it fall behind me…. Everything was spinning, and spitting sparks. There were fireworks in my head, I tell you! Still, I remembered that it is the odd, superfluous pound of weight that tries you at the last mile … and I was carrying in my pockets something like thirty thousand livres in gold, and forty thousand in good paper. My friend, it was not entirely delirium that inspired me to put my hands in my pockets and scatter to the mud and the rain more gold than I had ever touched in my life. The tail-pockets of my coat were heavy with the stuff, after I had emptied the side and breast-pockets; these same coat-tails were slapping heavily against Cocotte’s belly. My mind was set now on my objective. I unbuttoned my coat, and let that fall, too, and felt lighter for the loss of it. Gold and banknotes were in that coat, and my pistols too…. I tore off my watch and chain, which also I tossed into the ditch. I would have kicked off my boots, only I dared not take my feet from the stirrups.

Now, then, I was riding in my shirt, trousers, and waistcoat; there was no more to jettison. All the time, notwithstanding, Cocotte went slower and slower.

At last – it was dawn, I think – to my infinite relief, I heard a hoarse voice cry: ‘Qui va là?’

I could not speak, of course, so I pulled out my first written message. It said:

A mounted trooper took the paper, and handed it to another man. Seen through the curtain of the road, through my tired eyes, he looked like one of those terra-cotta soldiers on terra-cotta horses that we used to play with when we were children; he was so plastered with mud. But he spoke very civilly in the French of Paris, saying: ‘What is your message, Colonel Tessier?’

I felt myself fainting, fading away. I had done all that I could do. I tapped my right-hand waistcoat pocket. It seems, then, that I slid out of the saddle; because I know that I had a sensation of falling, as it were, down the side of a mountain, and uppermost in my mind was a dread of what I should feel when my cracked face hit the road.

The terra-cotta man caught me. I heard him cry: ‘Hold up there, sir!’

I became senseless, as much from horror as from pain and exhaustion.

He had cried out in English.

When I came to life again, I was lying on the floor in the kitchen of a farmhouse. My clothes had been stripped off, and I was wrapped in a dry cloak. They had put me by the fire, which was blazing bright. I saw, still dimly, a tight-faced officer in a blue uniform, sitting at a table between two pair of candles. Standing beside him and behind him were four other officers in blue. I recognised that tight face: it belonged to Collaert of the Allied cavalry.

Also, I saw my muddy waistcoat and trousers on a chair. Collaert was holding between a fastidious thumb and forefinger a little piece of paper which I knew. It was my second note. It said:

It was anguish of spirit that made me cry out at this, not pain of the body. Someone put something like a rolled-up greatcoat under my head, and the voice of the terra-cotta man murmured in English: ‘No shame in missing your way on a night like last night, in weather like this. Cheer up, monsieur; better luck next time!’ He was Captain Conconnel of Lord Wellington’s staff, but I did not learn that until later.

I made certain unmistakable motions with my fingers. The Englishman said: ‘He wants to write something.’

They gave me pencil and paper, and I wrote: Please give me a pistol and allow me to kill myself.

But they did not. Couriers were dispatched to Wellington with the intelligence which I had believed I had delivered to Napoleon. A doctor came to set my jaw, and later, locked in a bedroom, guarded by a grizzled old English trooper, I lay and listened to the rain on the shutters; and soon I heard the guns of Waterloo, and oh, but I wept bitterly! I had not the strength to lift my hand to wipe my eyes. The trooper came and wiped them for me: he had no handkerchief, so he offered me his cuff, saying: ‘Easy does it, mounseer – steady on, froggie. You’ll be a man before your mother yet….’ But he, also, was listening to the guns….

I need not tell you what happened. Blücher was delayed, indeed. The English cavalry was cut to pieces, and we had the balance of artillery in our favour. It remained only to break that infernal English infantry, and the battle was in our hands. Napoleon knew this, and therefore he ordered that terrible charge of cuirassiers at the plateau of Mont St Jean. The guide Lacoste – in other words the spy de Wissembourg – was at his elbow at the very moment when he gave that order. Lacoste, as he is called, omitted to mention the ‘hollow road’ of Ohain. There is no stopping a full charge of armoured cavalry, as you know. Before they could begin to pull up, two thousand cuirassiers were in the ditch of Ohain; the remainder were flying in disorder under volley upon volley of musket-fire; demoralisation had set in; the English had re-formed and were attacking; and that was the end of us. Napoleon fled.

So, brother, France fell: I blame myself for that.

Tessier sighed, and lit a fresh cigar. Ratapoil said: ‘Come now, old moustache – how can you talk like that? There are more causes than one to any conclusion. You might, for example, also say that Cornelys the blacksmith won the battle of Waterloo because, making eyes at the inn-keeper’s wife, he lamed your mare. No one is to blame … though, had I been you——’

‘Don’t say it,’ said Tessier. ‘You asked me to tell you how I lost my teeth, and I have told you. And now, with your kind permission, I will go to bed.’