Valentina (26 page)

‘Come.' The Major went up to her. ‘We must move on. This is no good to us now.'

She raised her head and glared at him, the tears crystallising on her cheeks in the cold. ‘Go to hell, I hate you!'

‘I know you do,' he said patiently. ‘But you'd better follow me unless you want to watch them cooking their feast'—he glanced over his shoulder—‘or rather eating it raw. Come on, and don't look.'

De Chavel put his arm round Valentina, and with the same whispered injunction to keep her head averted, they began to walk behind the Major. Alexandra trudged on alone, a little after him, refusing to speak or be assisted when she slipped and fell in a two-foot drift. She dragged herself upright, shook off the snow and walked on. It was nearly dark before she let the Major come near her, and then Valentina could hear her sobbing as she walked.

It was too cold to talk; the effort of forcing a way through the thick snow used all their strength; luckily there was no blizzard and above their heads the sky was bright and diamond clear, with a moon made of white ice to show the way. Shadows walked with them, some in front, others beside, shadows who lurched and stumbled and got up again, and some who fell and stayed there, mouths open and breath freezing, as it left their bodies. These soon drooped and sank into the bitter whiteness, and were mercifully frozen to death.

Valentina walked with her arm round her lover's waist; by the end of that march they held each other upright, and she could feel him gasping with each step.

‘Major!' she called out.'We must rest—he's exhausted!'

‘Anyone ready to make camp?' de Lamballe called out, and some of the shadows became men and moved around him.

‘I've got a blanket—who can light a fire?' A soldier in a filthy old cloak, with a woman's scarf wound round his head like a turban, pulled out his precious blanket from the bundle he carried, and others found sticks by the way, and de Lamballe moved among them, organising and directing.

When the fire was lit there was a rush; men pushed and yelled to get a place and the miserable little blaze was nearly extinguished in the struggle. De Chavel staggered into the mêlée, striking out with a pistol butt. ‘Get back, damn you! Get back! Everyone shall have a turn to get warm. Here—you! Build another fire—there's enough wood round here.'

The outbreak of violence stopped as suddenly as it began; the men crept away to find sticks and kindling under the shallower drifts of-snow, and after a while there were two more fires going, their yellow lights dancing above the thick dark circle of men crouched round them, shivering in the illusion of heat.

‘My little one,' De Chavel said tenderly, ‘you're freezing—take my coat.'

‘No, no!' Valentina clung to him. ‘I'm warm enough, my love. Just tired, that's all.'

They leant against each other, the meal of coarse bread and dried beans eaten and the little cognac drunk; their supplies were no more than they could carry, now that the sledge was abandoned, and the Major rationed them all strictly. He kept the brandy bottle away from Alexandra in spite of a torrent of abuse, which ended in a fit of violent weeping.

‘I've never seen her like this,' De Chavel whispered. ‘I couldn't imagine her crying.'

‘Janos had served her since she was a child,' Valentina said. ‘And she'd rather have horses than human beings. He'll calm her; he's marvellous with her.'

‘They're lovers, aren't they?' he asked, and she nodded and smiled up at him.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Like us, beloved.'

‘You don't regret it,' he whispered. ‘You're sure?'

‘I regret every minute before I met you,' she said. ‘No matter what happens to us, I don't care. Even if we're killed, so long as we're together, I'm content. When did you begin to love me?'

He smiled. ‘God knows. Out here, somewhere, when I dreamed of you, when I was dying after Borodino—I can't be sure. Perhaps before that, in Poland, and I wouldn't admit it to myself. But before God I love you now, sweetheart.' He turned her face to him and kissed her.

‘And so you should, my dear Colonel,' Alexandra said fiercely from her corner. ‘Her charming husband came near to having her hanged on your account—she didn't get those elegant scars on her wrists from wearing diamond bracelets. Ha, she hasn't even told you! I thought not—if she doesn't I will!'

Slowly and with reluctance, Valentina told him the story of her flight from Czartatz, her capture and ordeal in the Lubinski, and tried to resist when he rolled back her sleeves and examined the ugly scars of laceration made by Theodore's vicious bonds. He took first one thin, marked wrist and then the other in his hand and he kissed it on both sides. ‘My love,' he whispered, and his voice trembled.

‘Thank you, dear Princess, for opening my eyes to what I owe the Count Grunowski. The first thing I shall do is seek him out and kill him—that purpose would bring me out of the grave.'

‘Very noble,' Alexandra said to the Major. ‘More realistic if he had a right arm. How ironic it would be if Theodore were to kill him, after all this? If you don't pass that brandy bottle I shall push you into the fire—beloved!'

‘One sip,' de Lamballe said. ‘And no more. I know you in this mood and if you drink you'll pick a quarrel. What you need is what I can't give you because of all these damned people. I love you, even though you are impossible. That's enough, give it back!'

She leant against him, her Tartar eyes so narrow that they seemed closed, and suddenly she sighed. ‘I wouldn't let you, even if we could,' she said. ‘I haven't the stomach for it. I loved that poor fool Janos; he used to make toys for me when I was a little child. I wish you'd let me shoot one of them—just one for poor Janos! As for my horses … Ugh. Hold me close, Paul, I'm cold and heartsick tonight!'

He did as she asked and at last she slept; Paul de Lamballe glanced across at Valentina and her Colonel. They too slept, clinging so close together that they seemed one body in the flickering light. They were a separate entity, entirely concerned with each other, having only superficial contact with others in the outside world. He was crippled, one had only to look at him to know that he would never be the same man again after this campaign; she was attached to a man who might live another twenty years. If they survived this last, and worst, phase of the retreat, if the pursuing Russian armies didn't catch up with the pathetic rearguard and annihilate every member of it, then there was nothing ahead of them but a life of wandering; unable to marry, unacceptable in their own aristocratic milieu, denied children because they could never be acceptable either.

He had talked of killing Grunowski, and he was rash enough to try to do it, to free his mistress and avenge what she had suffered. De Lamballe had taken the man's measure in the little time they'd been together. He wouldn't hesitate to face an expert shot with only one arm, and a left one at that, and he would almost certainly be killed. It was a ridiculous situation, and because he was realistic, even cynical, in his approach to such problems, de Lamballe felt so irritated that he kept himself awake. Valentina was a sweet creature with a gentle, gallant courage which was just as true as the fierce bravery of the woman he loved so passionately. She would need it all before the next few days were over.

The main force of the French army reached the Beresina on the 29th and the Emperor called a conference. In the shelter of his tent, while a sudden blizzard screeched outside, and the snow fell as if God had opened a sack over their heads, Napoleon and his staff worked out a final desperate strategy. Murat was there, with Ney and General Colbert and the sapper General Elbe; Berthier, the dapper worried little Chief of Staff, was making notes and Marshal Victor watched the Emperor illustrate his plan on the big map table.

‘Gentlemen,' Napoleon said, ‘we are here.' He pointed to the spot, a few miles to the south of the captured Borrisov bridgehead. ‘Kutuzov is here …' the finger tapped a place to the rear of the first. ‘Wittgenstein is advancing here, and Tchitchagov here! The river is in front of us, and we have no pontoons, no means of crossing. Unless we
do
cross we will be surrounded, crushed, annihilated. I personally will not live to surrender. This is our problem. Now I propose this as the solution.' He paused, and glanced quickly round the ring of faces in the blowing candle flames. They were haggard faces, faces become gaunt with lack of food and sleep and with the slow erosion of their confidence in themselves and in him. He was not invincible; he had won every battle until his Marshals felt that this was more than brilliance, it was destiny. Now he had lost; he had lost to the Russians in a war that was essentially conducted on their terms of fighting, and the climate had beaten him too, because he had refused to take account of it. Yet he had not been blamed. His Marshals bickered and intrigued against each other and made accusations freely of incompetence and failure, but no one questioned the Emperor. And it was said later, and it was true throughout, that among the starving, suffering ghosts who crawled after him out of Russia, none was heard to reproach the Emperor. The best food went to his table; he was never allowed to suffer cold or want, and no one grudged him what they did not have in even a minimal degree. He was the Emperor, and when he moved among them they found the strength to cheer.

‘Marshal Victor—you will take your corps and you will hold back Wittgenstein at all costs. Oudinot—you will attempt to recapture Borrisov, and in any case you will make a feint of building a crossing to the south. In the meantime General Elbe will tell us what his reconnaissance have discovered. General!'

The General of Sappers stood up and approached the map table; he addressed himself to Napoleon.

‘General Colbert has discovered a possible fording place here—to the north of Borrisov. The water is no more than four feet deep in some parts and it's not frozen over. I have inspected the area this morning, and I think we can build two pontoon bridges there. But we must have time.'

‘Victor will give you time,' Napoleon said. ‘He'll hold back Wittgenstein until the bridges are built and we're across.'

‘I'll do my best, Sire,' Marshal Victor said. ‘How long will it take to build them, General?'

Elbe made a mental calculation. He had seen timber, and some ruined houses in the district. His men could use these materials.

‘Two days, Marshal,' he answered. ‘They'll only be temporary bridges, you understand, but they should serve.'

‘Good.' The Emperor gave him one of his rare smiles, establishing that personal communication which bound men to him for life.

‘When the bridges are built you, my dear Oudinot, will cross and attack Tchichagov's forces, driving them out of range of the main body of the army which will cross after you at the ford. In this way, gentlemen we will escape them yet! General Elbe, go and build the bridges. I will proceed to Borrisov after it's been retaken, and convince the enemy that our crossing will take place there.'

For two days and nights the few hundred trained sappers worked at the Studianka ford, waist-deep in freezing water, dying as they worked, to build the pontoon bridges for Napoleon's escape. They felled trees and tore down the wooden walls of houses, and with their General in command they performed one of the main miracles of the war and erected one bridge strong enough to take the weight of the few guns and wagons the army had left and another to bear the infantry. It was a superhuman effort, carried out by men so hungry that their bones showed through their tattered uniforms, and as they built they fell from cold and drowned in the bitter, shallow water, or expired on the banks when their task was finished. Elbe himself, who worked with them, was to die of exhaustion in the first month of the new year. On November 26th Marshal Oudinot and his forces crossed and engaged the Russians on the opposite bank, driving them back. As he had promised, Victor held Wittgenstein, while Napoleon abandoned Borrisov and led his forces to the Studianka. On the following day the Emperor crossed, and the day after the remains of the army, its wounded and rearguard and a mob of starving civilians came to the two bridges and began to cross. Victor had fought one of the epic battles of his career during those few days, but there was a limit to what even he could do, and slowly Wittgenstein and his troops moved forward, and his guns came within range of the bridges. Early on the 28th the bombardment began.

They lay in the snow, pressed flat to the ground, while the artillery fire crashed round them, and the ground was black with human targets, crammed and struggling along the river bank and the approaches to the two gaunt bridges. Slowly, so slowly, a double line of men and wagons had crawled up to the pontoons and crept across them, and when the first Russian balls fell among the waiting thousands on the bank a scream went up and out into the air that seemed to come from every throat. Valentina clung to De Chavel, her eyes tight shut, crouching against the ground; he had forced her to her knees and then down, avoiding the flying debris, some of it human remains which spattered round them as the balls fell thick in the area. They had lost Alexandra; she and the Major had been with them up to the last half-mile, and then they were separated by the pushing, fighting stream of men. There was a dreadful cry to the left of De Chavel; he raised his head and saw a group of men, shattered and dying after a direct hit, and a woman with a wounded child in her arms, screaming hysterically at the sky.

‘Come on,' he shouted, dragging Valentina by the arm. ‘We must move forward—we're right in the range here!' They stumbled onward, her arm round his waist, his guiding her; within two hundred yards of the first bridge they became wedged in a solid mass of struggling people, hopelessly jammed at the far end by the narrow entrance to the pontoon. Men punched and lashed out with empty muskets, forcing their way forward; a blow from a huge half-mad trooper with the jacket torn off his back in the struggle sent De Chavel sprawling to his knees, Valentina falling with him. She struck back at the giant, who brushed her off as if she were a fly settling on him, and heard herself shrieking abuse and cries for help as she struggled to pull the Colonel upright again. Someone, somewhere in the ghastly mêlée, paused to help her but she never saw who it was; she only knew that De Chavel was on his feet again. They stood together for a moment, buffeted on all sides, and she heard him call out for someone to come and take her across.