“No,” said Marie. “You will need every man, and I am as useful as a man. I know every ford and bridle-path round here. I stay with M. le Comte too.”
“But Marie —” said the Count.
Hornblower made no protest at all. He knew he might as well protest about the fall of an elm-tree branch or a change in the direction of the wind. He seemed to recognise destiny — the utterly inevitable — in all this. And one glance at Marie’s face silenced the Count’s expostulations.
“Very well,” said the Duchess.
She looked round at them; it was time for the rebellion to begin in earnest. Hornblower put aside his personal feelings. There was a war to be fought; war with all its problems of space and time and psychology. He set himself, almost without willing it, to pick up the tangled threads. Above the desk where the Prefect had sat to execute instructions from the Paris Government was a large scale map of the Department. On the other walls hung even larger scale maps of the sub-prefectures. He looked over at them. Roads, rivers, forests. Goodbye to England.
“The first important thing to know,” he began, “is where the nearest regular troops are stationed.”
The campaign of the Upper Loire was begun.
CHAPTER XIX
The forest track which they were following met another at right angles. It was frightfully hot even here in the shade of the pines, thunderstorm weather. Hornblower’s feet were badly blistered, and he was hobbling along with difficulty even on the soft pine-needle mould underfoot. There was no wind to call forth any sound from the trees; everything was silent. Even the hoofs of the horses made no sound — the three pack-horses that carried food and ammunition, the two horses carrying wounded men, and the one horse that carried His Excellency the King’s Lieutenant-General for the Nivernais. Twenty men and two women were shuffling along the trail with Hornblower, the main body of His Most Christian Majesty’s army. There was an advance guard of five under Brown out ahead, a rearguard of five far behind.
Where the tracks crossed a man was waiting for them, a connecting file that Brown, like a prudent officer, had left behind so as to leave the main body in no doubt about which track he was following; as they came up he turned and pointed to something hanging beside the trail — something grey and white. It was the dead body of a man, clothed in peasant’s dress, hanging by his neck from a pine-tree limb; the white colour was a large printed placard fastened to his chest.
“Frenchmen of the Nivernais!” it said. “With my arrival at the head of a large body of troops all foolish attempts to resist the Government of our august Emperor Napoleon must cease forthwith. It is gratifying to me to find that so poor a reception has been given to the Count de Graçay’s insane attempt to oppose the Emperor, recalled to his throne by the supplication and suffrages of forty million of his loyal subjects. Yet some unfortunate people have been deluded into taking up arms.
“Know, therefore, I am instructed by the clemency of His Imperial Majesty to proclaim that any Frenchman, with the exceptions mentioned below, who hands in his arms and makes personal surrender to any troops under my command before fifteen days from the date of this proclamation will receive amnesty and pardon. He will be free to return to his farm, to his shop, to the bosom of his family.
“Anyone remaining in arms will receive sentence of death, to be carried out immediately.
“Any village offering shelter to the rebels will be burned to the ground, and its leading inhabitants shot.
“Any person giving assistance to the rebels, whether by acting as guide or by giving them information, will be shot.
“Exceptions to the amnesty. The above-named Count de Graçay. His daughter-in-law, known as the Vicomtesse de Graçay. With them are included the Englishman, known as Lord Hornblower, who is required to pay for a life of outrage and crime.
“Signed,
emmanuel clausen, Count, General of Division.
June 6th, 1815.
The Count looked up at the blackened face of the corpse.