Ride with Me

Thomas B. Costain

Description

Francis Ellery is a young, courageous newspaper editor who publishes scathing broadsides against the rampaging Napoleon. One foggy London night he loses his heart to the beautiful Gabrielle de Salle, one of a group of exiled French aristocrats. But as the Continent becomes engulfed in the Napoleonic wars, Francis must part from her. He serves on the battlefronts of Spain and Russia as a war correspondent, surviving many colorful and bloody conflicts. And as romance and intrigue swirl around Francis and Gabrielle, their destinies are swept into a vortex of crises and betrayal, spurred on by a hero’s rousing cry, RIDE WITH ME...

Sujets

• Romance
• Histoire
• Military
• Napoleonic Wars
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Treasure Editions
• Date de parution: 09 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781774643891
• Langue: English

Extrait

Ride with Me
by Thomas B. Costain

First published in 1944
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Ride With Me



by Thomas B. Costain
To
MOLLY

INTRODUCTION
I began this story with the sole intent of relating in fiction form theexploits of an unusual soldier who has been allowed to drop out of sight.As the work progressed, however, the glamour and excitement of theNapoleonic period took possession of me and I found myself obsessedwith a desire to get down on paper a detailed picture of those excitingdays, particularly as I began to realize that the situation which existedthen has been reproduced today with amazing faithfulness in even thesmallest matters. That I yielded to the impulse is evident in the size of thisvolume; for which I apologize, being completely aware that I have succeededin capturing no more than a fleeting glimpse of those mostcolorful and prophetic times.
Despite the liberties I have taken with my readers, carrying them fromEngland to the Iberian Peninsula, then back again to England, only topick them up bodily and transport them to Russia for a view of the tragicbusiness of the Moscow retreat, finally setting them down in Franceafter the Hundred Days to watch the closing scenes of the Bonapartistsaga, I have not succeeded in telling the whole story of Sir Robert Wilson.That extraordinary fellow had many adventures which I have hadto pass over. It was particularly hard to refrain from telling of the part heplayed in the feud between George IV and his frowzy German queen butthat episode, one of the most spectacular of all, lies far outside the boundsof my story.
I am sure that all who ride with Robert Thomas Wilson in these pageswill agree that he was born in the wrong period. He had so many qualities,counted faults at the start of the nineteenth century, which wouldhave been virtues in the days when knights obeyed only the dictates ofhonor and followed unquestioningly when the finger of adventurebeckoned. Lack of discipline accounted for all the black marks on hisrecord; but it may be recalled that it was against Charlemagne’s ordersthat the stout Roland turned at bay in the valley of Roncesvalles to providechivalry with its brightest annal. Had Wilson lived in the MiddleAges, he also would have inspired great legends. Instead he was borninto the England of the last Georges where he was most completely outof place. He was treated, with some justice no doubt, like a disobedientschoolboy. It may very well be, however, that it was not Wilson who wasat fault so much as the times in which he lived.
The story I have set down is, of course, a compound of fact and fiction.Wilson did all the remarkable things with which he is credited, althoughit has been necessary to summon imagination for the fictional embroideryof them. Many other real characters appear at intervals in the pageswhich follow: Wellington, Dumouriez, Horne Tooke, Kutuzov, theLavalettes, Michael Bruce, Captain Hely-Hutcheson, La Bellilote. Themain characters are all purely fictional as are the situations of the storyexcept as they concern the participation of the historical characters.
I hasten to explain that the newspaper called the Tablet never existed.I have taken the liberty of borrowing some details from the history of theLondon Times (particularly in the sending out of the first war correspondentand the introduction of power presses) but the troubles andbickerings of the Ellerys are purely imaginary and in no single respect areflection of the lives of the members of the Walter family who owned the Times .
Many books were read or consulted for the background of the story,between four and five hundred to be more exact, and so a completebibliography would serve no purpose save to use up valuable space. InsteadI wish to put on record my debt to a few writers whose skillfulwinnowing of pure gold from the dross of the period has been particularlyhelpful to me:
Giovanni Costigan, Sir Robert Wilson, a Soldier of Fortune . CarolaOman, Napoleon at the Channel . Comtesse de Boigne, Memoirs . AugustLudolf Friedrich Schaumann, On the Road with Wellington . RobertBlakeney, A Boy in the Peninsular War . Marianne Baillie, Lisbon . SirRobert Wilson, The French Invasion of Russia .

BOOK I England
Francis Ellery leaned against the side of a bus which apparently hadabandoned the idea of going any further in the fog. He was tired andhis stiff knee was hurting him abominably. It was with a deep sense ofrelief that he heard the sharp voice of Sergeant Cripps far ahead give theorder for them to break up and get home as best they could.
Borcher the hatter, who had marched with him at the end of the squad,adjusted his scratch wig with blue fingers and then buttoned his tunictightly over the yellow waistcoat which proclaimed his Liberal tendencies.“What are ye down for tonight, Ellery?” he asked.
“Committee for London defense. And you, Borcher?”
The hatter snorted as he hobbled off aggrievedly into the dense mist.“Waterworks patrol. But I’ll never get there in this fog. A lot of blastednonsense anyway. This damned Corsican certainly plays hob with ourlives.”
“M’sieur,” said a pleasant feminine voice from above, “is it possibleyou can tell us where we are?”
Ellery looked up and was able to make out that all the upper seats onthe bus were occupied by people in evening clothes. “French,” hethought. Many times he had seen émigrés starting off like this for dinnerand unconcernedly taking the cheapest way of getting there.
A male voice said in French, “Allow me to attend to this, Gabrielle, ifyou please,” adding in slow and halting English, “You in blue coat, whereis Can-non Square?”
Looking up at the row of expectant heads, Frank answered: “CannonSquare is a good quarter mile from here. I’m afraid you’ll have to chancethe rest of the way on foot. The bus will never get you there now.”
The masculine voice lapsed into French again. “This filthy London!These stupid English! Tonight there will be a soft haze over Paris andpeople will be riding in open carriages to dinner or the opera. I can’tstand to live among these savages any longer. I think I shall cut mythroat tonight and be done with it.” He leaned over the rail and calleddown brusquely in English, “A shilling, my man, to show the way.”
Frank laughed. “As it happens, I’m going in your direction and I’ll beglad to guide you without any fee, handsome though your offer is.” Hepaused and then added in French: “I forgive you, m’sieur, for not findingLondon to your liking on a night like this. But may I point out that manythousands of exiles from your gentle France have found it a safe andfriendly sanctuary?”
He heard the pleasant feminine voice expostulating in a low tone.“Jules, will you never learn? Must you always say such things? One cantell from his voice that he’s a gentleman.”
“I mean it,” said the man impatiently. “I shall cut my throat tonight.”
Through the open door of a tavern a hoarse voice said, “Ye won’t see a’and afore yer ’umping face in ’arf a ’our.” This was no exaggeration.Already the fog was settling down like a damp blanket, with blinding,choking insistence, blotting out the buildings, filling every crevice, turningthe lights from shopwindows into faint yellow smudges against thepervading gray. Voices heard at a distance of more than a dozen feetseemed to issue from the air with a suggestion of ventriloquism. It wasa lucky thing, Frank said to himself, that he knew every foot of thispart of London.
The French party was climbing down the steps of the bus with muchtalk and laughter. He wondered that they could be so gay. It was thetalk of London that most of them had been forced to accept any formof menial work which offered and that they subsisted on almost nothing.This was largely hearsay, however, for the refugee colony kept exclusivelyto themselves and had little to do with their English neighbors.
The owner of the pleasant voice proved to be a young girl with a worncashmere shawl around her shoulders. The rest were shadowy figures tohim, even when they had reached the ground and stood about in an expectantgroup, but somehow he could see her as clearly as though shewere on a floor of a ballroom with candles by the hundred. She waswearing a Mary Queen of Scots cap, and under its tartan band herreddish-brown hair curled closely. Her face was a slender oval in whichher dark and lively eyes seemed unusually large. He could see that herfeet (skirts were being worn much shorter than ever before this season)were very trim in a fragile pair of velvet slippers and that the handclasping the shawl around her neck was small and white. She was solovely, in fact, that he had a tendency to stammer when he addressedher.
“If you can spare the time, mademoiselle, I will try to find sedanchairs for you and your friends.”
The man who had offered him the shilling, and who had followedimmediately after her down the steps, did not favor this idea. Frank sawthat he was tall and quite handsomely attired in lavender coat with aflowing cravat and a well-powdered wig.
“We’re late as it is, Gaby,” said the dandy. “The Comtesse will thinkwe’re not coming and will be having a perfect tantrum.”
The girl nodded and then said to the Englishman: “I think we shallhave to walk, m’sieur. Will you be so very kind as to show us the way,then?”
Frank bowed. “I know this section quite well, but it will be necessaryto proceed with the greatest caution. I’m going to walk close to thebuildings so I can feel my way along. You had better follow in singlefile, and I suggest you join hands. It’s very