The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware by Dennis Wheatley

mission, we must agree a night to dine together.’
    When Roger returned to his chair, he was in two minds whether or not to be pleased that a long wait lay ahead of him. On the one hand he was anxious to get his audience over, and so learn the worst; on the other he had had little time to think out how he could most effectively use the forged letter, and the delay would give him a chance to do so.
    He had been pondering the matter for three-quarters of an hour when Marshal Brune came in and took a seat near him. Brune was the son of a lawyer: a well educated man with literary pretensions, who prided himself particularly on his poetry; but it was so indifferent that he had had to buy a printing press to get it printed. Like Lannes, Augereau and Bernadotte, he regretted the ending of government by the people, so was not well regarded by Napoleon. Unlike those Marshals, he had little ability as a soldier, and his only claim to military fame had been in 1799 when Bonaparte was in Egypt.
    Bonaparte’s absence had led to the loss of Italy, and France had been threatened with invasion from both the east and north. Masséna had held the bastion of Switzerland and won undying fame by defeating the Russians under the redoubtable Suvarov; while Brune had been despatched to repulse an English army that had landed in Holland. It had been commanded by the hopelessly inefficient Duke of York, and at Alkmaar Brune had compelled him to surrender. But every General knew that, given sufficient troops, any fool could have done that.
    Nevertheless, the public had acclaimed him a hero, so Napoleon had thought it politic to include him in the original creation of Marshals; but there his elevationhad stopped short. When the other Marshals, with the exception of Jourdan, Serurier and Perignon, had been made Dukes, Brune had received no title. Many people believed that this omission was due to his having, while Governor of Hamburg, gravely offended Napoleon by referring to himself as a Marshal of France, instead of a Marshal of the Empire. In recent years he had been employed mainly on administrative duties.
    Greeting Roger pleasantly, he remarked anxiously, ‘I would I could guess why our master has sent for me. I hope to God it is not to despatch me with a corps into Spain.’
    â€˜Indeed,’ Roger replied noncommittally, still occupied by his own uneasy forebodings. ‘I would have thought that after all this time you would have welcomed a command in the field.’
    Brune passed his hand over his tall, bald forehead. ‘I would; but not in Spain. The war there is not war as we understand it. Every hand there is against us. Rather than let us buy their food and fodder, the peasants burn them. Even the children are used to carry intelligence to the English, so that General Wellesley is kept informed of our every move, which makes it impossible for us ever to take him by surprise. Our armies are isolated, each hundreds of miles from the others, and separated by countless thousands of murderous brigands. They take no prisoners. Instead, they flay or roast alive any Frenchman they can catch. The women are as bad as the men, and at times pretend friendliness in order to poison our troops. It is certain death for fewer than a score of our men to venture a few miles from their camps. Do you know, if one General wishes to send a message to another, he now has to provide his courier with an escort of two hundred horse to make certain of his reaching his destination?’
    Roger nodded. ‘How awful for our people. I had not realised that things were quite so bad as that. But I gatherthat Austria is on the verge of agreeing a peace. Once that is signed, the Emperor will be able to send a great army into Spain and subdue it.’
    â€˜You think so? Well, perhaps you are right, but I doubt it. No-one would dispute his genius. I tell you, though, the war there is utterly unlike those he has been accustomed to waging. He has