“They drove the poor King to it, you know, the Queen and all those other young hotheads,” the banker told Laurence. “They would prove that they could beat Bonaparte, and they could not, and who is it that pays for their pride but us, I ask you! So many poor young men killed, and what our taxes will be after this I do not want to think.”
Having delivered himself of these criticisms, however, he was quite willing to advance Laurence a good sum in gold. “I had rather have my money in an account at Drummonds’ than here in Berlin with a hungry army marching in,” he said candidly, while his two sons lugged up a small but substantial chest.
The British embassy was in turmoil; the ambassador already gone, by courier, and scarcely anyone left could give him good information, or would; his green coat commanded not the least attention, beyond queries if he were a courier, bringing dispatches.
“There has been no trouble in India these three years, whyever should you ask such a thing?” a harried secretary said, impatiently, when Laurence at last resorted to halting him in the corridor by main force. “I have not the least understanding why the Corps should have failed in our obligations, but it is just as well we had not more committed to this rout.”
This political view Laurence could not easily subscribe to, still more angry and ashamed to hear the Corps described in such a way. He closed his mouth on the reply which first sprang to mind and said only, very cold, “Have you all safe route of escape?”
“Yes, of course,” the secretary said. “We will embark at Stralsund. You had best get back to England straightaway yourself. The Navy is in the Baltic and in the North Sea, to assist with operations in support of Danzig and Königsberg, for whatever good that will do; but at least you will have a clear route home once you are over the sea.”
If a craven piece of advice, this at least was reassuring news. But there were no letters of his own waiting, which might have given him an explanation less painful to consider, and of course none would find them now. “I cannot even send a new direction home with them,” Laurence said to Granby as they walked back towards the palace. “God only knows where we shall be in two days, much less a week. Anyone would have to address it to William Laurence, East Prussia; and throw it into the ocean in a bottle, too, for all the likelihood it should find me.”
“Laurence,” Granby said abruptly, “I hope to God you will not think me chickenhearted; but oughtn’t we be getting home, as he said?” He gazed straight ahead down the street and avoided Laurence’s eyes as he spoke; there was alternating color and pallid white in his cheeks.
It abruptly occurred to Laurence, to be compounded with his other cares, that his decision to stay might look to the Admiralty as though he were keeping the egg out in the field intentionally, delaying until Granby might have his chance. “The Prussians are too badly short of heavy-weights now to let us go,” he said finally, not really an answer.
Granby did not answer again, until later, when they had come to Laurence’s quarters and might shut the door behind them; in that privacy he bluntly said, “Then they can’t stop us going, either.”
Laurence was silent over the brandy-glasses; he could not deny it, nor even criticize, having entertained much the same thought himself.
Granby added, “They’ve lost, Laurence: half their army, and half the country too; surely there’s no sense in staying now.”
“I will not allow their final loss to be certain,” Laurence said strongly at this discouraged remark, turning around at once. “The most terrible sequence of defeats may yet be reversed, so long as men are to be had and they do not despair, and it is the duty of an officer to keep them from doing so; I trust I need not insist upon your confining such sentiments to your breast.”
Granby flushed up crimson and answered with some heat, “I am not proposing to go running around crying that the sky is falling. But they’ll need us at home more than ever; Bonaparte is sure to already be looking across the Channel with one eye.”
“We did not stay only to avoid pursuit or challenge,” Laurence said, “but because it is better to fight Bonaparte farther from home; that reason yet remains. If there were no real hope, or if our efforts could make no material difference, then I would say yes; but to desert in this situation, when our assistance may be of the most vital importance, I cannot countenance.”
“Do you honestly think they will manage any better than they have so far? He’s overmatched them, start to finish, and they are in worse case now than they were to start.”
This there was no denying, but Laurence said, “Painful as the lesson has been, we have surely learnt much of his mind, of his strategy, from this meeting; the Prussian commanders cannot fail to now revise their strategy, which I fear before this first contest of arms had too much to do with overconfidence.”
“As far as that goes, too much is better than too little,” Granby said, “and I see precious little reason for any confidence at all.”
“I hope I will never be so rash as to say I am confident of dealing Bonaparte a reversal,” Laurence said, “but there remains good and practical reason to hope. Recall that even now the Prussian reserves in the east, together with the Russian Army, will outmatch Bonaparte’s numbers by half again. And the French cannot venture forward until they have secured their lines of communication: there are a dozen fortresses of vital strategic importance, fended by strong garrisons, which they will first have to besiege and then leave troops to secure.”
But this was only parroting; he knew perfectly well numbers alone did not tell the course of battle. Bonaparte had been outnumbered at Jena.
He paced the room for another hour when Granby had at last gone. It was his duty to show himself more certain than he was, and besides that to not permit himself to be downhearted, sentiments which should surely convey themselves to the men. But he was not wholly sure of the course he was following, and he knew that his decision was in some part formed by his disgust for the notion; desertion, even from a situation into which he had effectively been pressed, had too much an ugly and dishonorable ring to it, and he had not the happy turn of character which might have allowed him to call it by another name, and lose the odium thereby.
“I do not want to give up, either, though I would like to be at home,” Temeraire said, with a sigh. “It is not so nice, losing battles, and seeing our friends taken prisoner. I hope it is not upsetting the eggs,” he added, anxious despite all of Keynes’s reassurances, and bent over to nudge them gently and carefully with his nose where they lay in their nests, presently tucked between two warming braziers under a ledge in the main courtyard of the palace, waiting to be loaded aboard.
The King and Queen were saying their farewells: they were sending the royal children away by courier to the well-protected fortress of Königsberg, deep in East Prussia. “You ought to go with them,” the King said softly, but the Queen shook her head and kissed her children goodbye swiftly. “I do not want to go away, either, Mother; let me come, too,” said the second prince, a sturdy boy of nine, and he was only packed off with difficulty and in the face of loud protests.
They stood together watching until the little courier-dragons dwindled to bird-specks and vanished, before at last they climbed back aboard Temeraire for the journey eastward with the handful of their retinue brave enough to venture it: a small and sad party.
Overnight a steady stream of bad news had flowed into the city, though at least these pieces of intelligence had been largely expected, if not so soon: Saxe-Weimar’s detachment caught by Marshal Davout, every last man of ten thousand killed or taken prisoner; Bernadotte already at Magdeburg, cutting Hohenlohe off; the Elbe crossings falling into French hands, not a single bridge destroyed; Bonaparte himself already on the road to Berlin, and when Temeraire rose up into the air, they could see, not very distant, the smoke and dust of the oncoming army: marching, marching, with a cloud of dragons overhead.