Flight From the Eagle (17 page)

'Yes, it's nearly sunrise. How are you?'

He was silent for a moment and then said, 'Did the wound open again?'

'Yes. Do you remember what happened?'

'It was Grushchev—he wanted to kill Kusminsky. I remember trying to stop him. What happened then?'

'He threw you against a tree, you went after him and then he knocked you down. The others caught him. Dr Kusminsky is quite safe.'

He rubbed his face against her hair, then said, 'What about Grushchev?'

'He—he hanged himself.'

Orlov sighed again. She felt him relax, his breathing becoming more regular. After a while she carefully released herself from his encircling arm and sat up. He was sleeping naturally and when she felt his forehead, it was quite cool. She saw that the chalky pa
llor of his face had changed to
a slightly more healthy look.

He slept until the time came to put him on the cart again for the day's journey. The movement woke him, but when they had finished tying the stretcher securely in position, he turned a little on his right side and fell asleep again. Kusminsky had a look at the arm just before they started off and was actually whistling through his teeth as he mounted his horse.

The weather seemed to be even hotter, the dust more
irritating and gritty than ever. For part of the morning, they were moving across open country, with fields full of green oats and rye. There was no sign of life anywhere, except when once, in the distance, they saw a little group of about half-a-dozen serfs who watched them for a while and then ran off into the forest. The sun beat down on the awnings, and a tiny fitful breeze blew the dust about but failed to give any impression of coolness.

Just after midday, they reached the village to which the fields belonged and found it completely deserted, but not yet set on fire. They stopped there for their usual break and Kolniev sent men to search the little wooden hovels, the barns and outhouses. They found very little of any use. The serfs seemed to have taken everything portable of value or use with them and the barns contained hardly anything except a few handfuls of hay and some poor quality oats.

Kolniev wondered whether he should burn the place when they left. He consulted Orlov's map and decided that they must be halfway to Kaluga by now. Surely they must be far enough from the Moscow road to be beyond the reach of French foragers? That assumed, of course, that the enemy intended to go to Moscow. Perhaps they would move on Kaluga instead where there were a lot of stores and a major camp. Perhaps they were still in Smolensk, settling in for the winter. In the end, he tossed a coin and it indicated that the village should be left for the Cossacks to burn. Kolniev was relieved.

Orlov woke up while they were resting and lay still for a time, looking round in a puzzled way. He felt utterly exhausted and it was quite five minutes before he could manage to sit up, holding onto the side of the cart. The sight of the deserted village gave him a feeling of disorientation—he felt sure he'd never seen it before—but then he saw the Countess and Kolniev sitting on the ground behind the cart, talking, and he realized that he must have been unconscious while the party had moved on without his knowledge.

He started to speak and found that his voice was husky. He had to clear his throat and start again. At the sound, the two of them got up and came to him and the Countess got into the cart, gently pushing him back to lean against a sack which she pushed behind him to prop him up.

'How are you?' asked Kolniev.

Orlov frowned and tried to remember what had happened id him and suddenly recollection flooded back. 'Just a bit weak,' he replied. 'How long have I been out of action?'

'About thirty-six hours,' Kolniev informed him. 'Do you remember what happened?'

Orlov thought for a moment. 'Yes, it was Grushchev,' he replied. 'Did you say he hanged himself?' he asked the Countess, who inexplicably blushed. He puzzled over this. He could remember her voice telling him that the sergeant had hanged himself, but there didn't seem to be anything in that to make her
color
up.

His thoughts were interrupted by Josef arriving with a bowl of broth and after an initial argument, which he lost, he leaned contentedly against the sack while the Countess spooned the food neatly into his mouth. It was all very pleasant, in a way. The pain in his arm was still there, of course, hut he was getting used to it and could almost forget it if he didn't move the arm.

'What's in the sack?' he asked.

'Oats.' Her whole attention seemed to be on the task of getting the next spoonful of broth into him without spilling any and he watched her face thoughtfully, his black brows quirking up in a puzzled frown. Why had she blushed?

He continued to wonder from time to time all the rest of the day, whenever he was not asleep, listening to people talking or answering their inquiries about his welfare. The cart rolled along with an occasional jolt and a continual rhythmic creaking. The atmosphere seemed to grow more and more sultry and Orlov kept drifting into a doze, waking again to lie watching the shadows of the trees on the awning above his head, the horses drawing the cart behind or the Countess sitting beside him.

Halfway through the afternoon, Kusminsky appeared alongside the cart and looked in at him. 'How are you now?' he asked. 'Don't tell me—perfectly all right, of course. You realize you've lost a lot more blood and broken half your stitches? You're a damned nuisance, Major Orlov, and I'd wash my hands of you entirely if I didn't have a strong suspicion that you saved my life. I'm very grateful to you.'

Orlov realized that the surgeon's hectoring tone covered a great deal of feeling and replied in the same vein, 'I'd no wish to see you murdered—I might have to do all the bandaging myself if we lost you. How bad have I been?' The last question was quite serious, and so was Kusminsky's reply.

'Not as bad as I feared. I managed to stop the bleeding pretty quickly, and you didn't have a very bad fever—only about twelve hours, and not too much tossing about. There was one bad spell last night, when you kept asking for something—Kolniev was with you and he couldn't make out what it was. Luckily, Countess Barova seemed to understand, and by the time I arrived, you were quiet again.'

'What was it?' asked Orlov. 'I don't remember any of this.'

'Sounded like "sparrow",' said Kusminsky. 'What do you think it was?'

Orlov dared not look at the Countess or reply to Kusminsky's question. Instead, he began to sit up and complained that he was uncomfortable. In the resulting confusion of injunctions to keep still and attempts to make him more easy, Kusminsky appeared not to notice the oversight.

When Orlov's position had been arranged to his satisfaction, Kusminsky instructed him not to try to do too much too soon. 'Not that you'll take any notice,' he added. 'You always do as you damned well please!' He snorted, and rode off in disgust as both the Countess and Orlov burst out laughing.

CHAPTER NINE

They made camp for the night in yet another glade in the interminable forest. Orlov watched the smooth routine with a curious sense of timelessness, feeling as if the whole business was some kind of a dream, an eternity of moving along the same dusty road to the same camp ground in endless repetition, totally removed from real life.

The stretcher-bearers came to carry him to his tent but he refused indignantly to allow them to do so. Despite their protests, he hauled himself onto his feet and let them help him down out of the cart. Then he walked slowly across to the tent and sat down rather suddenly on a box outside it.

There was an exclamation from inside. The Countess opened the flap and looked out at him, holding her dress in front of her. She was clearly in the middle of washing and changing her clothes and Orlov apologized for disturbing her.

'Did you walk from the cart?' she asked.

Orlov admitted that he had, and she said anxiously, 'Oh, do be careful! You've been very ill, you know, feverish, and quite delirious.'

'So I gather. What else did I say?'

'N-nothing,' the Countess stammered, blushing again.

'What did I do, then?' His voice was suddenly sharp with anxiety. She met his eyes and saw the urgency in them.

'Nothing very much. You put your arm round me, that's all,' she replied.

'I'm sorry.'

She smiled. 'It was nothing,' she assured him and retired inside the tent as Josef arrived with a bucket of water for Orlov to wash off the dust.

He rested for a while after he had washed and changed, put on his coat against the evening chill (he had been in shirtsleeves all day), then walked slowly across to the 'dining table', which was set up under a nearby tree. Kusminsky watched him and refrained from comment, but Kolniev met him halfway and insisted on giving him an arm to lean on. Orlov sat down gingerly and leant against the tree trunk.

'What progress have we made?' he asked.

'We're about halfway,' Kolniev replied. He took the map out of his pocket and showed Orlov where he thought they were. The Countess came over and asked to see, so Orlov spread the map out on the ground and pointed out the course of the road, showing her the various points at which they had stopped. 'You see,' he said, tracing the Moscow road with his finger, 'we're gradually moving away from it, out of range of the French advance—if they are advancing.'

She looked at the map, bending close to Orlov, and followed the line of the road they were on to Kaluga, and then moved her finger on to Ryazan. 'Is that where your sister is?' she asked.

Orlov peered closely at the map in the fading light and showed her the exact location of his home, just outside Ryazan. 'There,' he said, 'unless she's run off with a handsome hussar officer.'

'Do
you think she might?' The Countess sounded both alarmed and intrigued.

'Well, she's an Orlov too!' he said slyly, and they both laughed.

After the meal, Orlov felt so tired that he was glad to accept the support of Kolniev's arm again back to the tent where he turned in and fell asleep almost immediately. When the Countess came a short while later, she spread his greatcoat over the top of his blankets and touched the unruly mop of curls which Was the only part of him visible. He did not stir.

A good night's sleep, after the amount of rest he had been able to take the day before, did a great deal to restore his energy. He found in the morning that he could walk about
without much difficulty, although standing up after sitting or lying still made him feel dizzy.

During breakfast he considered the possibility of riding, but he could see the big grey over in the picket line prancing about in a lively fashion and common sense told him that another day of riding in the cart would do him more good than trying to control an over-energetic mount. Despite his dislike of giving in to his own weakness, and the knowledge that the jolting progress of the vehicle was uncomfortable, somehow the prospect of sitting in the cart seemed curiously attractive.

'You'll go in the cart today,' said Kusminsky, echoing his thoughts in a flat statement that brooked no contradiction. He looked surprised when Orlov meekly agreed and regarded him with some anxiety. 'How do you feel?' he asked.

Orlov gave him a smile of bland innocence. 'Amenable and lazy,' he replied and laughed at the expression of suspicious disbelief on the surgeon's face.

Kolniev seemed a little distracted when he appeared and Orlov asked him what was wrong. 'We're running a bit short of supplies,' he replied. 'Not desperately so yet, but we've only enough for a couple of days at the present rate. I've cut the horses' rations a little—I think we were over-feeding them. It would help if we could camp where there's some grass again. We're low on meat and fresh vegetables, though I suppose we could live on cheese and hard bread and dried peas until we get to Kaluga.'

'Not much of an invalid diet,' commented Kusminsky. 'We really need plenty of good nourishing broth, though the men seem to be thriving on what they're getting and I don't suppose a few more days on short commons will hurt.'

All through the meal, Orlov had been conscious that Countess Barova was very quiet and when the other two had gone off to see to their responsibilities in preparation for the day's journey, he turned to her and scrutinized her face with some anxiety. She was sitting in her usual straight-backed manner, but her head drooped a little and she looked very pale and tired, with dark smudges under her eyes. He felt a pang of concern for her—poor little Sparrow! She looked worn out and unhappy.

She looked up suddenly and met his gaze. 'What is it?' she asked, puzzled.

'I was about to ask you the same thing,' he replied and suddenly understood why she looked so tired. 'I'm afraid you haven't had much sleep these last few nights. Have I been a great nuisance?'

'It was all right last night but the two nights you were ill, I was too worried to sleep. Oh, you weren't a nuisance!'

She looked so distressed that Orlov moved closer to her and took hold of her clasped hands in what he intended to be a comforting grip, but he underestimated his returning strength and she winced slightly. What with concern about her appearance and annoyance at his clumsiness, he was suddenly reduced to a state of self-conscious uncertainty such as he had not experienced since his first love affair.

He wondered what on earth his friends would think if they could see him now—the gallant, urbane, self-possessed Major Orlov, reduced to blushing incompetence by a thin, plain, provincial little innocent without an ounce of coquetry in her slender body! With a wry smile, he pulled himself together and made her a charming and very sincere little speech of thanks for her kindness in nursing him.

She bent her head to look down at his hand, still clasping hers, and her colour rose a little. Orlov went on talking to her, gently and very kindly, praising her courage and endurance in standing up to the hardships and tribulations of the journey. Eventually she looked up at him, and he saw that her eyes were brimming with tears. He broke off in mid-sentence, and regarded her with some perplexity. 'Don't cry, Sparrow,' he said. 'Everything will be all right.' He leaned towards her and would have kissed her, but Kusminsky suddenly said drily from behind him, 'Are you accompanying us today, or waiting here for Bonaparte?'

Orlov scrambled to his feet too quickly and had to cling to Kusminsky for support during the resulting spell of dizziness. By the time it had passed and the surgeon had made a few acid comments about his slowness to learn what he could and could not do, the Countess had recovered her normal air of quiet composure and resumed her old place on the box of the second cart. Sergeant Platov made way for her with relief
as two days' driving had made his injured shoulder ache.

The sergeant and the corporal stood beside the cart, clearly waiting for Orlov to say whether he intended to ride inside it and to help him up if he did. By the time he reached the vehicle, he too had recovered his normal self-possession, and hauled himself up on the box beside the Countess in the matter-of-fact manner which usually served to take him wherever he wanted to be without exciting comment. It seemed to work this time as well. The two NCOs climbed into the back of the cart, the Countess gave him a little smile, and the procession bounced across the grass onto the road and started the day's journey.

This section of the road seemed to be in a particularly bad state of repair and the thickness of the dust made it difficult to see and avoid all but the largest of the potholes and projecting stones on the surface. The consequent jolting made it necessary for Orlov to hold onto the bar which ran along the front of the cart and made a rather uncomfortable backrest for the driver. He was sufficiently self-critical to be aware that there was no real necessity for him to extend his right arm along it so that if the Countess leaned back he would in effect be sitting with his arm round her. She did not lean back—clearly her aunt had been particular in the matter of deportment—or was she perhaps embarrassed by his nearness? He twisted a little sideways so that he could see her face without being too obvious about it, but she was gazing straight ahead between her horses' heads and presented him with a charming but unreadable profile.

What did she think of him? Sometimes she seemed afraid of him, but at other times she seemed quite easy and friendly, even snubbing him gently once or twice. She was quite unlike any other woman he had known. He knew a number of ladies —wives and sisters of his friends mostly—with whom he indulged in a little harmless mild flirtation from time to time, and there were a few others who were ladies in the sense of having social position but whose moral attitudes made them available for a more intimate relationship.

He prided himself to some extent on the fact that he had never seduced a woman. He had always found plenty of amusement offered by bored society ladies with complaisant husbands without any
need to make much effort himself, or to upset anyone in the process, apart from the conventional tears at the ending of a liaison (and they usually dried pretty quickly if the parting gift was a handsome one).

There were, of course, other ladies in his world to whom he was conventionally polite. Usually they were of plain appearance and narrow ideas of virtue. There were also the colourless, unnoticeable ones like the shadowy background figures of companions, among whom he supposed the Countess would have found her place had he met her under normal conditions—or would she? Surely there was a great deal more about her than that? Even in those first few minutes when she appeared on the steps of the inn, he had noticed her eyes and hair, despite his preoccupation with his responsibilities and the pain of his wound.

Surely under any circumstances, even in the shadow of a domineering old lady in some provincial backwater, he would have noticed her?

'I expect I'm becoming disgracefully sunburnt.' Her voice cut across his thoughts and he realized with a start that he had been staring at her face for some time and she had clearly become self-conscious about it.

'Oh, Tatia will soon rid you of that,' he replied. 'She has an infallible recipe which restores her complexion to perfection in time for the Petersburg season, however much she rides and walks about the country all summer.'

'But your sister is in Ryazan. Surely we are going to Kaluga?'

Orlov suddenly realized that he was assuming that he would send the Countess to his sister, but he had no idea when the assumption had been made.

'I thought you might go and stay with her for a while,' he said. 'Just until we've put Bonaparte back across the Niemen and I can come home and sort out your affairs.'

'But that will be months!' she protested. 'I can't just descend on a total stranger and stay indefinitely! It would be a terrible imposition—I'm sure she wouldn't like it at all—and what would people think? You can't wish me on your sister without any reason at all. What would her husband say?'

'Nothing. She's a widow. Tatia lives in my house while I'm away. She prefers it. We're very similar; we always like and
dislike the same people. As for what people think—there'll be any number of folk uprooted by this invasion and going to live with friends or relations in other parts of Russia. You'll just be one of them. Tatia will be glad of your company because you're not the spineless, obsequious shadow that most companions seem to be.'

'My aunt says—said—that I'm rebellious and difficult,' she informed him. 'I'm sure you mean to be very kind, but how can you just send me to your sister without even asking her and expect her to keep me, perhaps for months? I can't live on charity----'

Orlov smiled at her with a touch of mischief in his face. 'I think we've had this argument before and if you recollect, it resulted in my becoming exceedingly ill-tempered and arrogant. I'm afraid that it's not the slightest use arguing with me once I've made up my mind. I've a very stubborn and self-willed disposition and you'll undoubtedly end up by making me say a great many things I shall bitterly regret afterwards if you persist in thwarting me. In any case, you certainly won't be living on anyone's charity! Tatia is a much nicer person than I am, but she'll make you work very hard and do all manner of horrid things, I've no doubt, just like her cruel and domineering brother.'

She opened her mouth in what was obviously going to be a vehement protest, but his eyebrows rose in a quizzically warning look and he continued, 'Don't you dare deny it! Who made you bandage a very hideous wound, and drive a farm-cart like a peasant girl, and darn stockings, and sleep on the hard ground in a nasty draughty tent and—and—a number of other distasteful and unsuitable things?' He had suddenly become aware that the passengers in the cart were sitting close behind them, ostensibly and rather too obviously asleep. Orlov wondered what they would make of the conversation.