Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Schneider blinked. “You too, sir? I thought it was just me. It sounded English.”
Georg threw a glance back through the window.
They’d just passed a grimy coach whose wheel was stuck in a hole, with a muck-splattered female standing upon a rock by the wayside, shaking her fist, shouting something decidedly inelegant after them.
“Some wench who appears to be talented at vulgar language.” Georg shrugged and settled back in his seat.
“Truly, this congress has attracted the oddest travellers to this country.”
Schneider, too, cast a look outside, but they had long passed the unfortunate coach and its cursing passenger by now.
“Which reminds me that with the influx of strangers, we need to tighten our security measures. We need to brief our agents to be even more careful these days. Security has to be watertight. The enemy won’t sleep. Neither shall we.”
“Yes, Your Excellency. Do you have specific instructions for our agents?”
Hartenberg thought for a moment. “I don’t want them spilling everything to Metternich.
While we have agreed to collaborate to a certain extent, and Metternich has been agreeably cooperative, the fact of the matter is that he benefits more.
The kind of intelligence he collects is police intelligence. It is markedly different from ours.”
Schneider nodded. “Indeed. Salon gossip. He bribes chambermaids for the contents of paper baskets, mail, love letters, notes about who wears what colour breeches, whether the Tsar wears blue or red stockings, and who visits whose bedroom, and who happens to be in love with whom, and such.”
“Precisely. Drawing room, or more specifically, bedroom drama. It’s all rather useless and does not concern us. While Metternich concerns himself with listening at keyholes, we deal with more pressing, serious issues that affect the direct security of our nation.”
He was, of course, referring to military intelligence. Such as the deployment and movement of enemy troops, fortification of borders, and upholding of the peace.
Schneider cast him a swift look. “Are you still sceptical about the perseverance of peace?”
“Call me pessimistic, but I am. Congress or no, I believe we should not sleep too soundly in our beds yet. I have a feeling, deep in my bones, that the former Emperor of the French hasn’t spoken his last word.”
Schneider looked troubled. “That is worrisome. For we know that whenever you have that feeling, it turns out to be true.” Indeed, it had saved them, and the entire army, more than once.
Even the Austrian emperor had learned that if Field Marshal Hartenberg had a ‘feeling deep in his bones’, one had better listen to it, for he was inevitably right.
“Lord, I hope you are wrong this time, Your Excellency. If this isn’t the end of Napoleon, it will mean disaster. ”
“Precisely.” Hartenberg rubbed his upper thigh, grimacing, as though it pained him.
Schneider regarded him with a worried frown. “You should have stayed at the lodge, Your Excellency. You are not fully recovered yet. There was really no need for you personally to come along on a mission that I could handle very well on my own.”
“I have no doubt at all that you can handle it on your own, but I confess I tire of sitting around doing nothing. Besides, I wanted to get a glimpse of our man and have him personally hand me the intelligence.”
“If he has chosen to show up.” Schneider threw a glance outside as they approached an abbey.
“‘If’ being the operative word.”
The carriage pulled into the courtyard of the abbey, which looked deserted. An Augustinian priest in a black habit who was crossing the yard looked up and nodded at them.
“Keep in mind I am incognito,” Hartenberg murmured.
He was wearing a charcoal grey loden greatcoat, Hessians and a simple, brown double-breasted frock coat, and instead of his usual bicorn, a beaver hat.
He could be any unremarkable country gentleman.
“We are merely travellers, come to admire this wonderful baroque church. Drop the ‘excellency’ and call me Herr Berg.”
“Jawohl, Herr Berg.”
To follow suit, Schneider was dressed in tobacco brown, a frock of much the same hue and a muslin cravat at the throat. Only their stiff, erect posture might signal to the observant eye that they were military men of consequence.
Hartenberg scanned the yard. “Check the other side of the house for horses. We meet inside the church.”
“Yes, sir.”
He circled the square, before stepping into the baroque church, which was empty. After a good two hours of waiting, the two men had to admit to themselves that the man they had come to meet was not appearing.
“Hofer is either late, or he has decided not to show up,” Schneider concluded.
“Or worse, he got caught.” Hartenberg threw a last look over the pews and the altar, then turned to go.
Schneider followed suit. “Hofer? Surely, you don’t really believe that? He is our best agent.” He held the heavy oak door open for Hartenberg.
“Even the best of us can make mistakes.” Hartenberg set his beaver hat on his head, glancing at the sky. A storm was brewing in the distance.
“I almost expected it,” Hartenberg said as he re-entered their coach. “I hope he didn’t get caught. I must confess, I’m somewhat worried. Let us return.”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
Der Schwarze Adler, a coaching inn on the main road to Vienna, was swarming with soldiers.
“The reserve corps returning from Saxony,” Schneider muttered under his breath. “None who would recognise you. Hopefully.” The infantrymen’s white uniforms were matted with dust, their trousers caked with mud.
Hartenberg exited the carriage, lowering his hat over his face and turning up his collar.
It was unlikely that anyone would recognise him since these men were not part of his regiment.
But who knew, an officer could appear, who might have seen him at a briefing at the Imperial War Council in Vienna, and recognise him.
Hartenberg wanted to prevent that at all costs.
A mud-splattered carriage pulled up with groaning wheels and stopped right in front of a puddle that covered nearly half of the yard. The carriage door opened, and a vision in white appeared.
“Ohhh,” Schneider exhaled. “I, I behold…an angel,” he stammered, entirely overcome by the beauty of the vision. It appeared he wasn’t the only one, either, as the general muttering of the soldiers abruptly ceased and the entire yard was struck dumb by the apparition that emerged from the carriage.
Hartenberg blinked. Did his eyes play tricks on him, or was there, indeed, a young lady in a white silken ballroom gown, with silken slippers and a shawl, her perfectly formed coppery-brown curls glinting in the evening sun hesitating inside the carriage door?
She looked dainty, as if a puff of wind could blow her away.
“Upon my word,” slipped out of his mouth.
She was the picture of delicate grace and coy helplessness. She looked to the left and the right. Then she beheld the puddle in front of her and shuddered.
Finally, she lifted her dress, revealing silver ballroom slippers embroidered with pearls and a pair of fetching, trim ankles; and that was it. That finished them all, the entire lot of them. A collective groan of admiration rose through the yard.
Including that of Schneider.
Hartenberg threw him an irritated look. He maintained a stony silence as he watched the spectacle unfold with a deep frown.
Then the scrambling began.
Schneider made a motion to rush forward to be the first to rescue her, but was held back by an iron, merciless grip, and a stern command, “Stay.”
“But Your Excell—I mean, Herr Berg. Don’t you see that utterly divine creature?
The puddle? How is she to descend from the carriage and get across it on her own?
” Schneider’s shining eyes revealed that he’d slipped into the role of heroic Saint George rescuing the maiden, ready to slay a malicious dragon which had transformed itself into the shape of a puddle.
“Collect yourself, man. That puddle isn’t the Red Sea,” Hartenberg snapped. “Let her discover it on her own.”
There was no need, for there were sufficient men jostling to rush towards her, eager to rescue the damsel in distress. It was a spectacle, indeed.
One infantryman clearly won, kneeling smack into the deepest part of the puddle, gallantly extending his hand towards her, inviting her to step on his knee.
Schneider was clearly agitated that he himself could not rush to her aid. “Oh do let me go! That ruffian will muddy her dress. Can’t you see? She needs to be lifted across, but he needs to take her hand first, gently—”
“Her dress? He is sullying his uniform!” Georg hissed.
“I can hardly believe how the victors of Leipzig are reduced to soppy idiots at the sight of some simpering female. What the devil does this china doll suppose we are doing here, about to dance a polonaise at an imperial ball?” His cutting tone carried clearly through the yard.
Schneider cringed. “She heard you!”
Indeed, the lady’s head snapped around, and she stared at them, pausing with her hand gracefully extended towards her cavalier who was kneeling in front of her, the muddied water seeping up his white trousers.
“Get me his name. He shall be reprimanded for this lack of discipline,” Hartenberg snapped.
“It is a crime how they treat their uniforms, and all because a simpering milk-and-water miss fails to have the common sense to dress appropriately when travelling. Truly, there is nothing I despise more than such a female.” His voice dripped with contempt.
The world was full of women like her. Pretty little porcelain poppets who melted at the first drop of rain, who continually complained, who expected a man’s sole purpose to be dancing attendance upon her, who lisped and cringed, burst into tears and fainted as soon as one touched them with a firmer grip, but who had nothing whatsoever in their daintily curled heads but fashion, fluff, and frippery.
Ah, she had indeed heard him, because her wide, limpid eyes were welling up.
He turned away disgustedly. Schneider, in agitation, pressed his hands together in quiet apology, with a half-bow in her direction, then rushed after his commander. “But sir…”
But Hartenberg had already stridden away and disappeared into the inn.