Valentina (17 page)

There were no beds for the wounded; De Chavel lay on his litter on the floor, and he was better off than some who had only a blanket between them and the bare boards; a crude kitchen provided the food, and this was in the main hall, near the ballroom. Stoves were set up and fires burnt, priceless furniture was chopped up for fuel, and gilded walls grew black with smoke. The sewage system in the most splendid Russian establishments were of the most primitive kind, hopelessly inadequate for the needs of a hundred and fifty men, and three hundred more who could not walk. The chief medical officer, tormented by fear of typhoid outbreaks and further attacks of dysentery, demanded men to prepare proper latrines, and was told there were more important things for the troops to do than dig cesspits because he objected to a stench. Near to the Colonel, a young Lieutenant of Grenadiers was slowly dying of internal injuries; he had been horribly trampled by Russian cavalry, and since there was nothing visible which the surgeons could stitch up or cut off, they were uncertain of the extent of his injuries, and he was given a place on the wagon when the battle area was evacuated. Many hundreds who were dying were left behind.

It was late afternoon, and the army surgeons had finished their inspection for the day, and there was only the final change of dressing for those whose bandages were soaked through. The vast linen closets in the house had provided a God-sent supply of material for dressings. De Chavel closed his eyes and withdrew from the pain as they began rebandaging his wounds; he forced his muscles to relax and sent his mind as far from his surroundings as possible till the ordeal was over. The effort exhausted him; men were groaning and calling out, and when he opened his eyes he saw three bodies being carried from the room. The boy beside him started coughing; he spewed blood and moaned. De Chavel tried to raise himself and call for help. ‘Orderly! Orderly, here!' The voice was cracked and weak and no one heard him. He fell back and for the first time tears ran down his sunken face, and they were tears of helpless pity for the boy in his twenties who was going through the final paroxysm of violent haemorrhage, and of rage with himself because he was too weak to help him. He called again, and this time someone heard and a harassed orderly came running. De Chavel fainted, and when he came to his senses the enormous room was in semi-darkness, a few candles burned at either end where there were medical officers on duty. He had forgotten what had happened earlier; his senses swam and his lost arm throbbed. With an effort he turned to his left, instinctively looking for the boy who had been his travelling companion since Borodino. The space on the floor was empty, and a soldier knelt wearily wiping away the traces of death with a dirty rag.

The Colonel shut his eyes and drifted into sleep, and while he slept he cried, but no one heard him, and he didn't wake again until the small hours. The ballroom was as light as if it were the middle of the day, and there was a continuous crackling noise with an occasional muffled bang. The tall windows were suffused with brilliant yellow light. Men were muttering and raising themselves, and the medical staff were clustered by the windows.

‘What is it? What's happened?' De Chavel asked the question again and again in a whisper, and at last someone passing paused and answered him.

‘The city's on fire! That's not the dawn you're seeing, Sir. That's Moscow!'

A few Russian patriots had stayed behind on the orders of the city Governor Rostopchine, and they had started fires at selected points throughout the city. Within minutes the flames were raging through the wooden buildings, fanned by a high wind which carried millions of blazing sparks from roof to roof.

The lack of water supplies made it impossible to control the fires, and fresh outbreaks occurred all over the area. French patrols caught and shot the fleeing Russian arsonists, but they were helpless to stop the inferno from spreading. The sounds De Chavel had heard were hasty dynamiting of adjacent buildings in the attempt to create a gap the fires could not bridge, but the fierce winds carried sparks and flames in a whirling, glittering cascade that spouted fresh fires wherever it touched. Twenty-four hours later, the order came to evacuate the hospital.

The Emperor himself had been driven from the Kremlin; the army, which had looked forward to shelter and time to regroup, was now forced to evacuate the blazing city and camp on the outskirts while their only hope of winter protection burned for five days and nights. The French emissary General Lauriston set out for St. Petersburg to try to persuade the Czar Alexander to negotiate; the former Ambassador Coulaincourt refused to undertake the mission. He knew from experience of the Czar that it was hopeless. He dared not make peace with France even if he wished; his family and Court were prepared to assassinate him if he tried. Any hope of peace Napoleon still held was abandoned when the Russian General Kutuzov surprised Murat and his troops at Winkovo and soundly defeated them. Orders were given to march away from the smouldering ruins of Moscow and take the road back to Smolensk where it was proposed to shelter the army for the winter. No one near the Emperor dared speak of the manoeuvre as a retreat, though everyone knew it was nothing less. His rage and desperation expressed itself in an order to Mortier to blow up the historic Kremlin buildings as they left.

The slow backward procession began on October 19th with the wagons full of sick and wounded bumping their way in the rear of the army and its artillery. De Chavel had insisted on sitting up; his first halting steps ended in a humiliating fall, when he lay gasping on the ground, and the wound in his chest seeped blood again. Now he rode with his back to the wagon's side, holding to the seat for support, a dozen wounded men ranged on either side of him, and men desperately sick, or too weak to sit up, lay bundled on the floor at their feet.

A certain Major Beaufois, who had fought with Ney's division at Borodino, and lost an eye from a dreadful sabre cut on the head, turned to the one-armed Colonel beside him and said: ‘Back the way we came, eh? This is the first retreat I've known in twenty years' service under the Emperor. Do you know where we're going, Colonel?'

‘I've heard rumours, nothing more,' De Chavel said. ‘It must be the Emperor's plan to winter somewhere and then mount another attack in the spring.'

‘What with?' the Major said. ‘Dead men? I tell you, Colonel, none of us will survive this winter—I was talking to a Prussian Lieutenant the other day—before we moved out again—and he said the winter here was the worst in Europe. That's why they burnt Moscow, he said, to force us out, to make us turn back. I have a wife and children in Nantes; I doubt I'll ever see them again. In a way it's just as well; my wife wouldn't welcome me with this face. Are you married, Colonel?'

‘No,' De Chavel said. ‘My wife is dead. I have no children.'

‘It's better so,' the Major said. ‘Then one can fight with a free mind.'

Through his delirium and pain De Chavel hadn't thought of any woman or seen any face; now Valentina was clearly in front of him as she had looked that last night at Czartatz when she told him she loved him. He had no wife, no sons or daughters, no one but friends who were soldiers like himself, and they were all probably doomed as the Major said. He had forgotten the girl until that moment, and he couldn't understand why the thought of her moved him. He remembered her sister's words before he left. ‘For some women there is only one man. If this is true of Valentina, she'll never be happy again.' It could not be true, of course. He had dismissed the idea as ridiculous as soon as she said it, and only weakness made him consider it seriously now. She had forgotten all about him, three and half months was a lifetime to a woman when the man was out of sight. Liliane had been unfaithful to him within a fortnight of his departure for Egypt. It was strange that it no longer hurt him to think of that betrayal; his wife was a fading memory, her face so indistinct that he couldn't recall it. The other face intruding, haunting in its beauty, the blue eyes followed him, bright with the love he had dismissed as a romantic fancy, and he felt suddenly angry that the Major should think him completely alone in the world, that when he died no one would mourn.

‘I have a mistress,' the Major went on. ‘A nice girl; she was at Danzig when we were there. She wouldn't like this face either. You must have a woman, Colonel—sometimes a mistress is more fond than a wife.' The Major put his hand to the bandage swathed round his head and the right half of his face. When the scars healed and began to pucker he would be grotesque.

‘There is someone,' De Chavel said. ‘In Poland. But what she or anyone else would want with a one-armed cripple I can't imagine. The best thing we can do, my friend, is to stop pitying ourselves and think about being able to fight again. I've got two eyes and you have a right arm. Together we can count as one whole man!' He laughed angrily, and then stopped because his chest hurt. The Major said nothing; he only touched his bandaged face again and let his head sink slowly, whether in sleep or despair De Chavel did not know.

Chapter 6

‘There is a lady asking to see you, Major.'

Paul Antoine de Lamballe looked up from the reports he was studying and frowned at the junior officer who had interrupted him. He had been left in charge of French Intelligence in Warsaw, with the nominal position of military adviser to the Diet of the Grand Duchy, and every despatch he received from his agents was worse than the last.

Morale in the Grand Duchy was sinking fast as the newspapers printed news of French losses and the burning of Moscow. His job and that of the French diplomats in Poland was to secure Polish support for the rear of the Imperial Army, and to keep their vital supply lines open. He had begun to think it an impossible task.

‘Who is she? What does she want?'

‘She didn't say, Major. She only said it was very urgent.'

‘Bah,' De Lamballe said. ‘It's always very urgent. Ask her name, and tell her I shan't see her unless she gives it.'

He was a good-looking man, with hair that the last fifteen years of soldiering had turned prematurely grey, piercing dark eyes, and one of the oldest and noblest names in France. He was a cousin of the Princess de Lamballe, Marie Antoinette's beautiful friend, whom the Paris mobs had torn to pieces outside the Queen's prison during the Revolution, and his parents had fled to England with him, where he had been brought up in comparative poverty. He had hated his exile and despised his aristocratic father for running for his life; more than anything he had hated England and the insufferable arrogance of the English nobility who showed their contempt and distrust of the French
émigrés
once the excitement of the Terror was forgotten. At nineteen he had made his choice. His family and friends might remain in exile with the Bourbon King Louis XVIII and exist on their old prejudices; he had no sympathy with the Royalist charade, the empty titles and useless protocol surrounding the ridiculous successor to the murdered Louis XVI. A new and glorious epoch was beginning in France under the first Consulship of the most remarkable young soldier in Europe. France was no longer run by Jacobins, screaming for blue blood. The Revolution was over and the marvellous national spirit born of it was being harnessed to a driving force of conquest that appealed very much to Paul de Lamballe. He returned and enlisted in the Army, and within two years he had distinguished himself and won commissioned rank. Fighting was his life; he had been awarded the Legion d'Honneur for outstanding bravery with Soult in the Spanish campaign, and contracted a recurring fever which took him off the active list just when the war with Russia was about to begin. As a result he found himself in Warsaw, in what he described as the most thankless and tedious position in the Imperial Army.

The junior officer came back after an interval of several minutes in which the Major had quite forgotten him.

‘The lady's name is Princess Suvarov. She's outside, Sir, she refused to wait downstairs.'

‘Suvarov? I know that name.'

‘You should do,' a woman's voice said curtly. ‘It belonged to one of the most famous Generals in the world.'

She walked into the room and threw back the veil which covered her face. De Lamballe raised his brows and stared at her without a flicker of surprise.

‘A Russian General, I believe. Who are you, Madame—a peace emissary from the Czar?'

‘No,' Alexandra snapped; she kept her temper with difficulty. Her nerves were quivering with worry and lack of sleep; as soon as they reached Warsaw she had gone into hiding in an inn in the trading quarter of the city, and only ventured out in a hired hackney coach, heavily veiled as if she were a widow. ‘I apologise for intruding, Major, but my business is terribly urgent. I must speak to you alone.'

He stood up and bowed to her; she gave him a curt nod and made a movement of impatience which she could not conceal. ‘I don't want to sit down, thank you. I prefer to stand.'

The young officer retreated, closing the door very quietly behind him; de Lamballe was sensitive to small noises; he had once thrown his ink-pot at the Lieutenant when he let the door bang by mistake.

‘What can I do for you?' he asked. He was amused by the effort the lady had made to contain herself; he had a furious and impulsive temper of his own and he recognised the signs in others. She was handsome too, very unusual with those Tartar eyes.

‘My sister has been abducted,' Alexandra said.

‘You have come to the wrong place, Madame. Go to the police.'

‘This is a political abduction,' she said. ‘You are the French political officer here, are you not? This is your business, Major; you are the only person who can help me.'

De Lamballe took a sheet of paper and selected a quill pen.

‘What is your sister's name, who abducted her, and why is this anything to do with me in an official capacity? I'm always interested in the abduction of beautiful ladies, in a private sense, of course. Since she's your sister, I presume she must be beautiful?' He smiled lazily at her, drawing the feather tip of his pen down one cheek like a caress. Very handsome, and full of fire. And arrogant as the devil, in her assumption that she could burst in upon him and demand his help.