The Retreat (12 page)

Flushed with happiness, Sebastian clasped his hands together to stop them trembling. Napoleon quizzed him, ‘Do you like the theatre?'

‘In Paris, sire, I went as often as my work at the Ministry of Defence allowed.'

‘Would you be able to revise a tragedy?'

‘Yes, sire.'

‘Comb the classics for situations and words with double meanings in which the audience would see allusions to the Empire and my person?'

‘Yes, sire.'

‘If you were submitted a play about Charles VI, how would you react?'

‘Badly, sire. Very badly.'

‘Explain.'

‘In that case, sire, there's nothing to rework, the subject itself is damaging.'

‘Go on.'

‘One does not show a mad king on stage.'

‘Bravissimo!
And would you be able to add classical material to plays that are too contemporary?'

‘I think so, sire, I know the Greek and Latin authors.'

‘Fain, when we get back to Paris, send your clerk to Baron Pommereul, he's in great need of assistance. Don't
pull such a face! You'll find another secretary to copy out your notes.'

To show his satisfaction, the Emperor either pulled your ear until it practically came off, or slapped you as hard as he could. Sebastian had the pleasure of feeling all five imperial fingers on his cheek, which was equivalent to being decorated.

*

‘Durtal! On reconnaissance.'

The dismounted dragoon began slowly crossing a long, narrow footbridge suspended over a ravine; he held his horse's bridle between thumb and index finger, as instructed, so as not to be dragged down with it if the animal stumbled and fell. The others watched him. D'Herbigny had taken thirty or so of his men south, into country beyond the desert of yellow sand. Comptroller Poissonnard's remark had nettled him and he had vowed to capture a drove. They had left Moscow before dawn, in the rain, their boots stuffed with straw because there had been frosts overnight. It wasn't raining after four hours' ride, but the wind was gusting sharply, their damp cloaks floated on their shoulders and their helmets' manes fluttered. On the other side of the gorge, they could see houses made of fir and moss. Smoke was rising from the wooden roofs. These peasants had fires going, they hadn't fled, they had provisions, forage – maybe even livestock.

‘Durtal!'

The footbridge had given way, as the dragoon was halfway across: the man, his mount and the logs of the roadway crashed to the bottom of the stony ravine. D'Herbigny averted his eyes. Durtal's screams died away.
Now they'd have to go round the ravine, which seemed to grow shallower before the horizon, and work their way back to the huts under cover of the forest, if it wasn't too dense. They rode into the wind in single file, didn't risk a second footbridge which they suspected was fragile or sabotaged and found a way over by late morning. As they were climbing the other slope, they heard hurrahs – the Cossacks' battle cry – and saw a small troop in flat caps charging at the gallop, lances and pikes levelled to run them through. The captain thought he was back in Egypt; the Arab horsemen used the same harrying tactics: they'd appear from nowhere, strike, scatter and then return from another direction.

‘Dismount! In position!'

The dragoons knew the drill. They took cover behind their horses, brought their guns to their shoulders. The Cossacks bore down on them; when they were ten metres away the captain gave the order to fire. After the smoke of their musketry had cleared, they inspected their bag: two horses and three men; the third horse was grazing the parched grass on the side of the ravine. The rest of the Cossacks had turned about and disappeared into the forest. The dragoons reloaded.

‘Any wounded?'

‘Not one, sir.'

‘We've been lucky.'

‘Except Durtal.'

‘Yes, Bonet, except Durtal.'

D'Herbigny had planned to spend the night in the hamlet he had seen a little while before, but entering the forest or pitching camp were now out of the question. Regretfully, he gave the order to fall back, and they rode
their exhausted horses as hard as they could. Returning empty-handed, the captain at least had the consolation of having picked up a sturdy horse and a pair of bearskin boots, with the fur on the inside. They were too small for him; he would give them to Anissia the nun, his protégée with short hair whose name he had found out.

In driving rain, the marauders returned to the Convent of the Nativity before nightfall. Water spurted off the roofs, streamed from the gutterless porch; d'Herbigny had to take a running jump to get through the waterfall and into the dry. Inside he took off his soaking cloak and his waterlogged bearskin, which sprayed him in the face. In the middle of the vaulted room that had previously been a parlour, some dragoons were sitting morosely in front of a mountain of bags.

‘What's happening?'

‘We've got our pay, sir.'

‘And that's not enough to gladden your hearts, you bunch of no goods!'

‘Well …'

The captain picked up a bag, opened it and took out a handful of yellow coins.

‘Are they copper?'

‘They're only worth their weight.'

‘You'd rather some false
assignats
?'

Large amounts of copper currency having been found in the cellars of the courts of justice, the regiments had drawn their pay. As the first in line, the Imperial Guard had been entitled to these bags of twenty-five roubles. The captain sneezed.

‘First I'll get dry, then we'll see.'

He left his troopers to their disappointment and ran up
to the first floor. Paulin was sitting on a stool, in the captain's cell, at the sleeping novice's bedside.

‘Anissia, Aniciushka …'

‘She hasn't got up all day, sir.'

‘Sick?'

‘I've no idea.'

‘You didn't call Monsieur Larrey?'

‘I don't have that authority.'

‘Idiot!'

‘Anyway he's a surgeon, Monsieur Larrey, what part of her is he going to amputate, poor little thing?'

Without listening to his servant's mumblings, d'Herbigny knelt down by Anissia. She looked like a madonna that he had stolen from a Spanish church once, because he found it touching; later he had sold it to treat himself to a blow-out.

*

It was still raining the following day. Sent to the Kremlin by his master, to the Guard's special infirmary, Paulin, on his donkey, was holding a Pekinese parasol that he had picked up in the bazaar as an umbrella. Without a cockade in his hat, the sentries hadn't let him into the citadel; nothing had swayed them, not even the letter dictated by d'Herbigny and signed with his left hand. Paulin was slowly making his way back; he was going to feel the captain's anger again, but he was used to it. In a spirit of conscientiousness, he made a detour via a military hospital on the banks of the Moskova; there he found overwhelmed doctors, rushing through high-windowed rooms between rows of fifty beds. They took a dead man out in front of him, wrapped in his sheet, while the dying looked furtively
on. Paulin left without having even been able to talk to a medical orderly. Drifting through the ruins, he caught sight of a crowd of Muscovites in Nicolskaya Street, where an impromptu currency market had sprung up. A handful of official buildings were still standing and soldiers were changing their copper coins at trestle tables. For ten kopeks, then fifty, then a silver rouble (the demand for legal currency kept pushing the prices up), the poor people took away a bag of them. There were women, urchins and old men in rags who seemed reinvigorated in that scrum. Sabres in hand, the infantry of the Guard were trying to maintain order; some fired into the air. But the press of the crowd was too great. They trampled and pummelled one another, those Russians, punching and elbowing their way through to the moneychangers' counters. A tall moujik grabbed a bag which a woman had managed to get hold of; she scratched him, he drove his knee into her stomach, but she clung on to his grimy tunic; he battered her with the bag to make her let go and finally she fell down, shouting abuse, and the people behind walked over her. The soldiers, meanwhile, had retreated inside the building, and were throwing their bags through the open windows, which only inflamed the crowd and made them even more brutal. A boy in a cloak with an oilcloth wrapped round his head had managed to get the wretched woman out of the mêlée. Under the cloak, Paulin recognized the blue-black coat with crimson velvet facings; this lad was part of the medical corps. He called to him. His voice couldn't carry in that din; he urged his donkey on until he was beside him. ‘Are you a doctor?'

‘Yes and no.'

‘An orderly?'

‘Junior assistant to a medical officer.'

‘My captain needs you.'

‘If it's for an officer …'

‘It's to stop him shouting at me.'

‘I know a little about powders and ointments, I've seen some bleedings …'

‘That's the spirit!'

The junior assistant seemed a bit simple but willing enough; besides, the colour of his uniform indicated his occupation, so that would probably do for the captain. Which it did. The boy took off his cloak and headgear, bent over the novice, took a small mirror out of his double bag and put it in front of her mouth. D'Herbigny watched him, scowling; he liked quick results.

‘I think …' began the boy.

‘I want certainties!'

‘I think she's dead, well, she seems dead, look, her breathing, the mirror's not misted up.'

‘When I'm asleep, I don't mist up any mirrors! What you're saying is impossible! What would she have died of, since you're so knowledgeable?'

‘We could take her to the medical officer …'

‘Get her back on her feet or I'll wring your neck.'

‘If you wring my neck, that will make two deaths.'

There was logic to what the simpleton said. He bent over the bed of furs again, studied the whites of her eyes, her complexion: ‘It looks as if she's been poisoned.'

‘Haven't you been watching her the whole time?' the captain asked Paulin.

‘Yes, apart from when I made her lunch.'

‘What did you give her?'

‘A piece of the mare's liver.'

‘That's the last thing you should have done! That meat was half rotten!'

‘We didn't have anything else …'

‘Where there's poison, there's antidote,' the simpleton added.

‘Administer your potion,' the captain whispered in a broken voice.

‘Ah, you'd need a priest for that. They know those things, secret herbs, healing prayers, icons that work wonders, it was my medical officer who told me so.'

For a moment d'Herbigny began to believe that the dead could rise again, that magic did have power, that sickness dissolved in incense smoke. The Emperor had authorized the resumption of religious worship to mollify the Russians who had remained in Moscow. Orthodox priests were conducting services again. When the captain went downstairs to order his men to find one of these clergymen officiating in a church not taken over by the army, he learned that all the nuns had died of poisoning. It wasn't the mare's liver that had killed Anissia.

*

Along the interminable corridors of the Kremlin, sentries guarded every door, although
guard
is probably an exaggeration. These grenadiers in fur-lined coats had swapped their belts for cashmere shawls and their bearskins for wrinkled Kalmuk caps; the least inebriated of them leant against the wall, the others sat and fished around in crystal vases with long wooden spoons, eating exotic jams which gave them a thirst and taking swig after swig of a robust brandy. Their weapons lay about amongst the jars and empty bottles. Sebastian no longer paid any attention to this
everyday sight. As he was making his way towards the staff mess, he met some Russians in civilian clothes with armbands of red and white knotted ribbons; a semblance of organization was being put in place: the Emperor had reestablished a town council, distributing posts among the merchants and townsmen who had refused to flee with Rostopchin.

Aides de camp, officers, doctors and paymasters now met for meals in an immense room with walls hung with red velvet and a central pillar supporting the arches that divided it in four.

‘Monsieur le secrétaire!'

Henri Beyle, a steaming plate in front of him, waved to Sebastian to join him. ‘I've kept you a place next to me.'

‘What are you eating?'

‘A fricassée.'

‘Of what?'

‘It tastes like rabbit …'

‘It must be cat.'

‘It's not so bad cooked in spices and with a glass of Malaga.'

Sebastian helped himself to beans but declined the fricassée. The two men discussed the merits of
Letters to my Son
by Lord Chesterfield, the book stolen from a library in Moscow, and then turned to Italian painting, of which Beyle admitted to be writing a history. They argued about Canaletto.

‘I know why you like Canaletto, Monsieur le secrétaire. His Venetian cityscapes resemble stage sets and, I might add, with his father and brother, when he was young, he did paint backdrops, balustrades and breathtaking perspectives. On canvas, I find the result a little stiff.'

‘Monsieur Beyle! Stiff? There is a perfection …'

‘Yes?'

Sebastian had fallen silent, his eyes riveted on a group of new arrivals, who were being shown in by Bausset, the prefect of the palace.

‘Those civilians appear to captivate you.'

‘I know them a little …'

‘What are they doing within our walls?'

‘They are a troupe of French actors. They were performing in Moscow.'

‘The girls, well I do declare! Not bad,
mon cher
. Hasn't a theatre lover like you, even to the extent of Canaletto's pictures – haven't you tried your luck?'