Valentina (14 page)

‘We've no room here, Sir,' he said. ‘As fast as we throw out the dead, the quicker more wounded come in. He looks gone to me—'

‘Fetch me a surgeon,' Macdonald snapped. ‘Hurry, damn you,' he shouted as the man began to speak again. ‘Don't argue with me or I'll break your neck! Get a surgeon here!'

Carefully he eased the Colonel's body down in a space near the flap; a dead trooper of Cuirassiers lay nearby, and Macdonald dragged him feet first to the entrance and left him outside. Burial parties were collecting the corpses and bundling them into shallow trenches. It was the best they could do; there was no hope of burying the thousands out on the fields and in the woods.

He moved De Chavel into the dead trooper's place, and knelt beside him; a moment later an army surgeon came up wiping his hands on the red apron. ‘Major—I have twenty men waiting for operations—'

‘Examine this officer,' Macdonald said angrily. ‘I think there's a heart-beat left. He's a favourite of the Emperor's. He must be saved!'

‘Very well, in that case. But he looks dead to me.' The surgeon cut away the tattered uniform coat, and exposed a hideous blackened wound encrusted with hard blood. He grimaced, and bent to the left side of the chest, listening to the heart. After a moment he straightened up, and lifted one closed eyelid in the ashen face.

‘Well?' Macdonald demanded.

‘He's still alive,' the surgeon said. ‘It's incredible what the human body can endure. There's a bullet in his chest—that right arm looks bad—nasty sabre slash—can't tell if it's cut into the bone. I'll have to take the bullet out and clean the wound. Orderly! Bandages and a chest dressing here!' He turned to Macdonald. ‘I don't think for a moment he'll live to get on the table,' he said. ‘He's lost too much blood and that ball must be a few inches from the heart. But when I've finished with the next case I'll see what I can do for him. His name, please, and rank; if he's so important I must make a note for the casualty lists.'

‘Colonel De Chavel, Imperial Guard,' the Major said. ‘I'll come back in an hour.'

‘Two hours would be better. We'll do what we can for him.'

It was more than two hours before the surgeon sent an orderly to see if the Colonel was still alive, and to his surprise the man said that he was, and was showing signs of consciousness. They brought him to the plain wooden table which was black and slippery with blood, and strapped him by the arms and legs; there was no laudanum left to deaden the pain, and the surgeon kept his meagre supply of brandy for those who were fully conscious. De Chavel lay motionless, a leather thong between his teeth to prevent him biting through his tongue, his face and body the colour of clay, except where the blood seeped through the bandages.

The surgeon extracted Captain Nikoliev's bullet, and muttered to himself; it was indeed a bare four inches from the sluggishly beating heart. A quick examination of the damaged right arm and shoulder joint showed bone splintering and jagged edges. He had seen too much gangrene in wounded men to leave anything to chance. If the Colonel survived that hole in his chest he would be dead of the arm in a few days.

The surgeon took it off at the shoulder. When the Major returned in the small hours he had an order signed by Ney himself to remove Colonel de Chavel from the hospital tent to the staff quarters, if he were still alive. When Macdonald saw what had been done to him, he wished with all his heart that he had left his friend to die.

‘You are perfectly certain she is coming to Warsaw?' the Count demanded. The messenger who had brought the newspaper to Czartatz nodded. The Count had been paying him for some weeks to report everything he saw and heard at Czartatz and he seemed very interested in his latest report.

‘I heard the Countess arguing with her sister,' the man insisted. ‘She said: “I'm going to Warsaw to find out what's happening—if he's dead I want to know. I shall die if I stay here any longer!”'

‘Ah,' the Count said, ‘and what did the Princess say to this?'

‘She was very angry,' the man said. ‘She said the Countess would be lost if she left the estate. They had a quarrel in the end, and I heard the Countess say: “I'm going, I don't care what happens to me. I'm going to Warsaw, I'll go to Russia to find him if I have to!”'

‘Very good,' the Count said. ‘You've done well. Here.' He counted out four coins and gave them to the man. ‘What you must do is go back to Czartatz, find some place where you can lodge, and the moment you see or hear that the Countess is leaving, send word to me. Then keep a watch for her sister.'

‘I'll go to Russia to find him.' So they were lovers after all, this French Colonel and his wife. Theodore had never been jealous in his life before; what he experienced then was a sense of impotent fury at the fact of anything belonging to him being stolen by someone else. And of his wife loving the man enough to risk her life by leaving her safe refuge and venturing out in search of him. Even to Russia. It was hysterical, of course, and quite unlike Valentina. She had been so calm and level always; even after he had thrashed her she had kept her self-control. It convulsed him with rage to think of her losing it in this fashion over the Frenchman; what had he done to awaken in her the response, the passion which had always eluded the Count? It was an unbearable humiliation, and only the extraordinary news his spy had brought gave him hope of revenging himself.

She was leaving Czartatz. In spite of her sister, in spite of what her lover must have made her promise, Valentina was coming back to Warsaw. He smiled to himself and set out immediately for Count Potocki's house.

‘I told you to be patient,' Potocki said. ‘I told you we would deal with her in time. I'll confess I didn't expect it would be so soon. The moment she leaves her own boundaries, she's ours!'

‘I propose to take a small force of men, say a dozen, and make the arrest myself,' Theodore said. ‘I can then remove her to my house at Lvov, where sentence can be executed. No one will ever know.'

Potocki hesitated. He knew that if the Count were allowed to spirit his wife away to the isolated fortress house at Lvov he would exact a punishment far in excess of what any Diet Court would pronounce. He waited, weighing the advantages of having her disappear without trace against the danger of French reprisals when it was known that she had been given over to her husband. The fortunes of France were in the balance at that time; the news from Russia was slow and unreliable. There were constant reports of battles and huge casualties, and these were followed by rumours that the Czar had been assassinated, or had sued for peace. The latest news was of a French victory at Borodino, but at frightful cost. It was impossible to say whether the final outcome would be worth all that the campaign had cost Napoleon in men and war materials. Potocki decided to take a middle course in the Grunowski affair. It might still be necessary to explain to the French military authorities what had happened to the mistress and protégée of Colonel De Chavel.

‘I will authorise you to make the arrest,' he said. ‘I promised you that, and I shan't break my word. But you are to bring her to Warsaw to stand trial. A secret tribunal will consider her case and she can be kept in the Lubinski Prison. Your wife is a traitress, Count, and if she's to be punished, then it must be done according to the law. She cannot be put to death by you, or it will be said that her real crime was adultery. You must appreciate this.'

The Count didn't answer. He stood up, facing the impassive statesman, and knew that if he argued he would not be allowed any part in the affair. ‘You are afraid of French enquiries,' he said at last.

‘I must bear them in mind,' the Count Potocki said. He didn't add that he intended keeping Valentina Grunowska alive until he knew whether to expect what remained of the Grand Armée as victors or fleeing in defeat. She could rot in the Lubinski for a few months, and be quietly put to death when he felt sure she was no longer protected or remembered. ‘It's a pity we shan't catch her sister in the same trap,' he remarked. He had hated the Russians all his life, and the existence of the wealthy Princess Suvarov at Czartatz had been an irritation to him and other members of the Diet for some time.

Grunowski smiled. ‘Oh, but we will,' he said. ‘I assure you; the moment she finds out that her sister has been taken, she will come looking for her. We will have them both!'

‘Excellent.' Potocki smiled his wan, cold smile, and stood to end the interview. ‘
Au revoir
, my dear Count. I shall wait till I hear from you again.'

‘That will be when I bring my wife to Warsaw,' Theodore said quietly.

‘Madame, I beg of you—don't go!' Jana had done as her mistress ordered and packed a few clothes in a valise, and ordered the coach which hadn't been used since their father's death. Now she implored Valentina, with tears running down her cheeks, to wait until the Princess returned from hunting before she set out.

‘No,' Valentina said. ‘You know perfectly well that she would stop me. I'm leaving in half an hour; she won't return until the light goes.'

Every time she mentioned going to Warsaw there was a violent quarrel with Alexandra, and she had finally threatened to detain Valentina at Czartatz by force if she persisted with her plan to leave. To placate her and gain time, Valentina had pretended to be convinced; she no longer spoke of going in search of De Chavel, or read the reports of the campaign a dozen times a day. She kept her fears under control and played her part so well for the last two weeks that even Alexandra began to think she had come to her senses and was trying to forget the Colonel. But only Jana, who saw her weeping every night in her own room, and listened to her restless pacing when the household was asleep, knew that she had lost nothing of her determination to find the man she loved. Now, dressed in a plain travelling cloak and bonnet, Valentina waited for the coach to be brought round. She had refused to allow Jana to come with her, and this increased the maid's anxiety.

‘How can you travel alone?' she wailed. ‘How can a lady make a journey like that with only that fool Kador on the box and a coachman? It's not right, Madame, it's not proper! Let me come with you?'

‘No, Jana,' Valentina said. ‘I am travelling as simply as possible. If anyone is looking for the Countes Grunowska they will expect to find her with maids and servants; no one will connect her with a woman travelling alone. You are to stay here and give my letter to my sister.'

‘She will kill me,' Jana said. ‘She will have me flogged—'

‘No, she won't,' Valentina said. ‘I've explained that you are not to blame. She won't hurt you, Jana. Go and see if the coach is ready.'

She was not afraid; for the first time in weeks of miserable inactivity Valentina felt alive again; the strain of acting a part with her sister had worn her nerves threadbare, and the unvarying routine of life at Czartatz was killing her with frustration. She had accepted her intuition that De Chavel was seriously wounded or even dead; the only purpose which sustained her was the determination to find out what had happened to him, and to that determination she had added a more impossible objective still, which made Alexandra smash and swear when she discussed it with her. She was going to Russia. Warsaw was only the first step in a journey of incredible peril and difficulty, a means of gaining all possible information about the position of the French army and the names of casualties available, and if De Chavel was not among them, to set out along the path of Napoleon into Russia. If he were alive she would join him, wounded, she would nurse him, dead, she would kill herself on his grave. It was as simple and terrible as only the decision of a desperate woman can be, and nothing Alexandra had threatened or pleaded or argued could change her mind.

She went to the door and called out; impatient to be gone. Jana came running upstairs to tell her that the coach was ready. The journey would take the best part of a week or more; Kador the postilion was only seventeen, but she had given him and the old coachman a pistol each to protect them from being robbed at the wretched inns on the road, and she carried no money, only her jewels sewn inside the lining of her valise. Kador was entrusted with the few kroner needed on the journey to pay for food and lodging and the care of their horses.

‘Goodbye, Jana. You have the letter I gave you? Good. Give it to my sister as soon as she gets back. And don't be frightened; she won't hurt you.'

‘Madame, Madame,' Jana cried out after her, ‘supposing the Count finds you!'

‘He won't,' Valentina said. ‘I'll try and send word from Warsaw.' A few minutes later the coach started out on the same road taken by De Chavel more than four months before, when she had watched him from her window and asked God to send him back to her. She had changed radically since that morning; the cruellest anxiety had matured her. She had learnt the meaning of a sexual desire so strong that it made sleep impossible, and of a tenderness so deep that it caused physical pain. She had learnt what it meant to love, and she had become a woman in the process. When she assured Jana that the Count would never capture her, Valentina meant it. She also had a pistol and she would shoot him if he tried.

Chapter 5

The Count had been riding for three days since he left Warsaw; a dozen armed servants were with him. He had started off as soon as he received his spy's message from Czartatz, and they had searched two of the dirty posting inns without finding Valentina. She must have travelled slowly; he was confident that the frightened innkeepers told the truth when they assured him that no travellers had passed that way. She must be ahead, and they would coincide within the next day or two. They had food and provisions with them. The message had said she was alone, with only two menservants. Her sister had not succumbed to the temptation to follow her yet, or he would have received another message. It was a pity. He would have enjoyed confronting Alexandra with her sister as a prisoner. Theodore and his men had slept under some trees that night, disdaining the shelter of the last posting inn; he had sent a man ahead to see if his wife had arrived on the further stage of the journey, and an hour after dawn the man came back, his horse lathered from the pace he had forced out of it. He threw himself down and came running to the Count. He was a powerfully built ex-soldier of the Polish Lancers who had been dismissed for stealing, and the Count had specially selected him and the others for this mission.