Dennis Wheatley - The Ravishing of Lady Jane Ware

The Lieutenant and his men invited Roger to share in their stew and afterwards talked to him for a while in low voices, while the wind whistled outside; and, presently a wolf began to howl dismally. For a moment Roger feared it would attack his horse, but reassured himself with the thought that there must be the dead bodies of plenty of humans within the pack's range.

The Dijon men spoke bitterly of their sufferings during the past seven weeks; but they were still hypnotized by the personality of Napoleon and, apparently, it did not occur to them to blame him. Roger told them some stories about the Emperor and his brilliant Court, then they all settled down for the night.

Early in the morning they roused up, ate a frugal meal from supplies they had obtained while in Orcha, then made ready to set out again on their terrible journey. By seven o'clock, although it was still dark, they wished Roger and his wounded servant well, and went on their way.

In the early part of the night Mary had become delirious, but latter dropped asleep. Now she was again delirious and evidently in a high fever. For her to be moved that day was clearly out of the question. Roger bathed her eye, massaged some more of the opium ointment into the flesh round it, and put a cold compress round her head. Then he went out to see to his horse.

As daylight began to filter through the big hole in the roof of the woodshed, he was able to take stock of its contents. A big pile of logs, sufficient to last for the rest of the winter, filled one end of it. He was already deeply concerned about how he and Mary could remain at the farm in safety for at least two days. It was certain that another group of men would seek shelter there for the coming night, and they might not prove friendly as had the men from Dijon. Even more to be dreaded was the following day, when the last of the Grand Army would have passed and the pursuing Cossacks enter the area. Somehow he had to hide his horse and stores before nightfall; and, the day after, Mary and himself as well.

It then occurred to him that the logs might serve his purpose. Soon, he was hard at work carrying them from the end of the shed where they were stacked to build a four-foot-thick wall across the other end, leaving a good space behind it in which he could conceal the horse and, later, also Mary and himself.

Three times during the morning he went in to see how Mary was, and found her much the same. For the rest of the time he labored on the logs and, half way through his task, he met with a most welcome surprise. The owner of the farm had evidently had the same idea of using his stack of logs to conceal a cavity. Behind the pile, Roger found a space and, in it, two bales of hay and a sack of oats. There was enough fodder there to last for a fortnight, with care. At midday he was happily able to give his charger a luxury meal.

By this time his wall of logs was completed and the horse stalled, so he was able to return to and remain with Mary. She was still in a fever, but conscious. As he bent over her, she asked in a low voice:

'My eye, Roger. Will it recover its sight?'

He had not the heart to tell her that he doubted it, so he said, 'It is impossible to say as yet. We can only hope so.' Then, as there was no one else present he was able to kiss her gently, hold her hand and use endearments as he talked to her; but he would not let her tire herself by talking much.

The embers of the fire the soldiers had made were still glowing, so he put more fuel on them and some of the bacon to boil in an iron pot that he had found in the burnt out stable. Knowing that Mary would not be able to get down anything solid, he poured half the bottle of mule's blood into another bottle, filled them both up with brandy and fed her some of the mixture, a few sips at a time.

To his great relief, in the afternoon Mary's fever abated and she slept; so, for a long time, he sat looking out through a rent in the wall at the marchers on the road which was no more than fifty yards distant. For once it was not snowing and the light was good enough for him to see the endless stream of men clearly.

Now they looked much more like a whole nation of gypsies on the move than an army. When they had had to abandon most of their loot, many of them had kept richly embroidered silk and satin robes which they had intended to take home to their wives and sweethearts, and now wore them round their shoulders for extra warmth. Many wore furs that were either too large and trailed along the ground, or too small. Others wore sheepskin kaftans or the padded jackets of peasants. Under this strange assortment of garments it was no longer possible to distinguish infantry from dismounted cavalry or gunners from sappers, let alone tell whether individual men came from the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, the rugged cantons of the Alps, the forests of the upper Rhine or the flat, windy plains of Poland.

Here and there a group of them had harnessed themselves to a gun or limber and were pulling it with the aid of a single horse. Now and then an officer passed, still mounted on an apology for a charger, consisting of little more than skin and bone. Hands buried deep in their pockets or muffs, and heads thrust forward at an unnatural angle, the marchers tramped soundlessly onward through the last fall of snow. To conserve their strength they looked neither to right nor left, and maintained complete silence, not uttering so much as a word to their companions. Under fur hats or shapeless busbies, their faces were swathed in wraps of wool, doth or silk. Occasionally Roger caught a glimpse of long noses sticking out from pinched features above matted beards. They had been reduced to from three-quarters to half their normal weight and were little more than living skeletons. Many of them had bandaged heads, arms in slings or were limping along, supported by sticks or crutches. Only the inherent urge to survive kept them moving.

Yet even that could not impel many of them on indefinitely. Every quarter of an hour or so one of them would stumble and fall down in the snow, never to rise again, or just give up and sit down at the roadside on his knapsack, waiting for death to end his misery. Half a dozen times Roger saw a man halt, drop his musket, unfasten the bandolier carrying his ammunition and, with a sobbing curse, throw that down beside it. These arms and other objects that the men no longer had the strength to carry constantly added to the litter on the road. Along it, every fifty yards or so, there were mounds of snow covering the dead of yesterday or of the day before. And he knew that the road was like that for the whole of the four hundred and fifty miles back to Moscow.

In mid afternoon it began to snow again. Soon the heads and shoulders of the slowly-moving figures on the road were powdered with it. Then the fall increased to a blizzard and they were hidden from view. Suddenly apprehensive that the big, driven flakes would not provide a permanent and sufficiently thick curtain to conceal the farmhouse from the road, and that a group of men might seek refuge there, Roger hastily began to make preparations against that possibility.

First he took the panniers and saddle bags out to the woodshed, then he carried Mary there. In his wall of logs he had left a hole low down, large enough to wriggle her through, and he settled her behind it with the saddlebags beside her, and the panniers for a pillow. He then watered and fed his horse, and fed Mary for the third time on the warmed up mixture of mule's blood and brandy ;it had been his intention to remain there, but he feared that to have got into the sleeping bag with her would have prevented her from sleeping. After sitting with her for an hour, he became so cold that he was taken with bouts of shivering and his teeth began to chatter. Having decided that he mast return to the fire that he had left burning in the farmhouse, he told Mary why he was leaving her and promised to return once or twice during the night to see that she was all right.