That night a carriage left Burgos at nine o’clock. It was drawn by four horses whose trace-chains were of silver. The horses were white. The carriage was dark blue, polished so that it reflected the stars, and its elegant outline was traced with lines of silver paint. Its windows were curtained.
Ahead of the carriage went four grooms, each holding a lantern. Two more lanterns were mounted high on the carriage itself. The postilions carried loaded guns.
The coachman paused at the city’s edge and looked down at the Lieutenant who commanded the guardpost. `All well ahead?’
`How far are you going?’
`Two villages.’
The Spanish Lieutenant waved the coach on. `You’ll have no trouble.’ He looked at the intricate coat of arms painted on the carriage door and wondered where La Puta Dorado went this evening. Only an hour before an Inquisitor had passed the guardpost and the Lieutenant toyed with the fancy that she was selling it to the priests now. He laughed and turned back to his men.
The moonlight showed the road as a white, straight ribbon that lay across the plain until it came to a village just a mile from the city. There the road twisted between houses, crossed a ford, before running straight towards the lights of the cavalry outpost.
The carriage moved swiftly, each wheel putting up a plume of dust that drifted pale in the night. The lanterns flickered yellow. The smell of the town was left behind, the thick smell of rotting manure, nightsoil, horses and cooking smoke. Instead there was the scent of grass. One curtain of the carriage was pulled back and a face pressed white against the glass.
La Marquesa was angry. Pierre Ducos had refused to issue the passport that would release her wagons. He claimed it was a small thing, a clerk’s mistake, but she did not believe that any clerk’s mistake would deter Pierre Ducos from achieving what he wanted. She suspected he planned to take them and she had written as much to the Emperor, but it could be weeks before a reply came, if any came at all; weeks in which the wagons could disappear. This night, she decided, she would persuade General Verigny that he must steal the wagons back. He must defy Ducos, go to the castle with his men, and drag the wagons out. She knew that General Verigny, for all his medals, feared Pierre Ducos. He would need persuading and she wondered whether a hint that perhaps marriage was not so unthinkable after all might work.
The carriage slowed at a crossroads, bumped over the transverse wheel ruts, then passed a house, its windows broken and doors missing. She heard the brake scrape on the wheel rim and she knew that they approached the ford where the road snaked between houses.
The brake scraped and the carriage shuddered. She heard the coachman shouting at the horses as the carriage swayed, slowed, and halted. She frowned. She tried to see through the window, but the lantern blinded her with its flame. She lifted the leather strap and let the window fall. `What is it?’
`A death, my Lady.’
`Death?’
She leaned out of the window. Ahead of them, just where the road twisted down to the shallow stream, a priest carried the Host for the final unction. Behind him were two altar boys. The soldiers who guarded this place had their hats off. She noticed that they were Spanish soldiers loyal to France. `Tell him to move!’ She said it irritably.
`There’s a carriage coming the other way. We’ll have to wait anyway, my Lady.’
She pulled on the strap, slamming the window up, and muffling the sound of the other carriage that rattled towards her. She settled back on the velvet cushions. God damn Pierre Ducos, she thought, and God damn Verigny’s reluctance to oppose him. She thought of King Joseph, Napoleon’s brother and the French puppet king of Spain. If the treaty was signed, she reflected, then Joseph would lose his throne. She wondered whether, by betraying the secret to Joseph, he might reward her by ordering the wagons released; if, that was, even King Joseph dared to defy his brother’s loyal servant, Pierre Ducos.