Dennis Wheatley - The wanton princess

'Damn you!' roared Napoleon before he had finished. 'I have heard all this before, and I don't give a hoot for it. This is no affair of yours but a matter of State, and to preserve the peace the Prince must die.'

'A few hours back Monsieur de Talleyrand said the same to me,' Roger retorted. 'Yet if it is not my affair it certainly is yours. Do you permit this to happen 'twill be murder! Murder! Murder! And your name will stink in the nostrils of all Europe as a result of it. For your own sake you have got to give me a reprieve that I can carry to Vincennes before it is too late. You must. If you refuse you will never live this down. For the rest of your life you will regret it.'

For a moment Napoleon considered; then, his mood com­pletely changed, he shook his head and said quickly, 'No, Breuc. You have ever advised me soundly and I appreciate that you have broken in on me only on account of what you believe to be my best interests. But it cannot be. I am deter­mined to make an example of this Bourbon Prince as a deter­rent to others.'

From the way he spoke Roger knew that further argument was useless; so he replied, 'Very well then. I will return to Vincenncs, tell Savary that I have seen you and that by word of mouth you have sent me to order a stay of the Prince's execution. There is still a chance that by doing so I may save you from your own folly.' Then he turned on his heel and left the room.

Outside the Palace he wearily mounted his tired horse and again set out on the ten-mile ride through the southern suburbs of Paris to Vincennes, which lay right on the other side of the city. He had covered no more than a quarter of the distance and was already reeling with fatigue in the saddle when, while trotting along a dark, tree-lined road, the faint light that lit the scene grew dimmer until he found him­self staring ahead into impenetrable darkness.

For a moment he thought that, for the first time in his life, he must have fainted. But almost immediately a new light dawned about him. It was not bright but clear and he found himself looking down on a wide expanse of sea upon which the sun was setting. He knew immediately that it was in the tropics for, in the distance, he could see a palm-fringed island. Close in to it there was a ship from which a cloud of smoke was ascending. She was on fire and sinking. Nearer, but some way off, there was a longboat in which the seamen were rowing desperately. Still nearer several men were swim­ming and one man held a slender sword clenched between his teeth.

Suddenly, immediately beneath him he saw Georgina struggling in the water. As clearly as if she had in fact been only a few feet from him he heard her shout, 'Save me Roger! Oh, save me!'

The strange psychic link that several times before, when one or other of them was faced with an emergency, had enabled them to communicate although hundreds of miles apart, had functioned once again. He felt as certain as he had ever felt of anything that the intangible spirit that gave him being and purpose had been transported to the West Indies and that at that moment Georgina was actually on the point of drowning.

In his deep consciousness he knew that physically he could not aid her, but that by joining the power of his will to hers he might give her the additional strength to keep herself afloat until she was rescued. No thought of their quarrel or her betrayal of him entered his mind. He was conscious only of his h'fe-long love for her. Calling silently on God to help him. he threw out the very essence of himself to buoy her up in her struggle to survive.

Next moment he found himself diving right on to her. He felt no impact but in some miraculous way they seemed to have become one. She had gone under but swiftly surfaced. Her arms flailed the water with new strength. Turning, she struck out vigorously for the shore. While still some distance from it his sight began to blur. Swiftly the vision faded. In earthly time it had lasted only for a few seconds. During that time he had lost control of his horse and plunged headlong from the saddle. In rapid succession he felt blows on his head, shoulder and ankle. The horse trotted on leaving him lying in the road unconscious.

23

Overwhelmed

When Roger came to, he dimly realized that he was in bed and that strangers were grouped round him. As his mind cleared his gaze focused on the face of a youngish man who was hurting him abominably by doing something to his head, then on a portly woman holding a basin of water. At the end of the bed stood an older man and with him a rather plain young woman.

Several hours later he learned that he had lain in the road unconscious for a long time, been found by two workmen in the dawn and carried into the house of a couple named Boutheron. They had called in their doctor to dress his wounds and the girl was their daughter Heloise. Still later he learned the full extent of his injuries. The back of his skull had been cracked, it was thought by a blow from a rear hoof of his horse as he fell from it; he had dislocated his left shoulder and sprained his left ankle.

The doctor declared that he ought not to be moved for some time and the Boutherons, who were prosperous bourgeois, said they were perfectly willing to look after him until he was out of danger. In due course, when he was able to tell them about himself, they declared themselves delighted and honoured to have as their guest an A.D.C. of the idolized First Consul.

His memory of the vision he had had of Georgina returned to him in his first spell of full consciousness, and as he lay there through the following days he spent many hours thinking about it, hoping that she had survived but tortured by the thought that she might be dead and that he would never see her again.

At first his head pained him too much for him to think coherently for long, but as he grew stronger he spent an hour each night attempting to solve the question by the only means which offered a chance that he might do so. Long since, they had solemnly promised one another that if one of them died he or she would appear to the other. Although fearing the result he forced himself to concentrate on willing her to come to him if she was dead; and when, after a week, his efforts proved abortive, he felt more hope that she was still alive. But he could feel no real certainty that she was as, although he was a convinced believer in survival, he could not dismiss the possibility that others, who did not believe in it, might be right.

Either Madame Boutheron or Heloise sat with him for a good part of each day and, when he grew strong enough, either talked or read to him, often from the news sheets. From them he learned that Savary had had d'Enghien exe­cuted in the moat at Vincenncs at half past two on that fatal morning, and also learned the results of this terrible affair.

In spite of the Government's attempts to suppress the facts the truth had leaked out and all Europe had denounced Napoleon as a murderer. Even several of Roger's friends who, when they learned where he was, came to see him, spoke of the affair with horror and said that it had stained the First Consul's reputation in a way that would long be remembered.

Then in mid-April Pichegru was found one morning strangled in his cell. It was given out that he had committed suicide but, after the d'Enghien affair, many people were of the opinion that Napoleon had given orders that the General, too, should be murdered.

Nevertheless Napoleon did not intend such adverse specu­lations to interfere with the designs he had formed for making use of the conspiracy, as Fouche told Roger when paying him a visit.

Keeping his fish-like eyes well away from Roger's, the cadaverous ex-Minister sniffed and said, 'Although Napoleon has been made Consul for life, as long as he remains an elected ruler his death would mean a struggle for power between half a dozen people ambitious to step into his shoes, and in the resulting turmoil the Monarchists would stand a very good chance of putting a Bourbon on the throne. In consequence, as soon as they have recovered from their recent setback they'll start planning another attempt to assassinate him. But if he became an hereditary monarch, whoever he had appointed as his successor would take over at once. Knowing that would put a real damper on Royalist hopes. None of them would then be willing to risk his neck on the chance of being rewarded with a dukedom.'