The Retreat (5 page)

‘I will burn some vinegar, sire.'

‘It's unbearable. My coat.'

Constant draped a slightly worn sky-blue coat with a gold embroidered collar over the Emperor's shoulders; he'd worn it in Italy and since then whenever he was under canvas. He went downstairs treading heavily, one step at a time, disturbing the secretaries, officers and servants; they were spending what they anticipated would be a short and
uncomfortable night on the stairs. Immediately outside Napoleon found Berthier and some generals engaged in animated conversation.

‘Fire, Your Majesty,' said the major general, pointing to a glow in the city.

‘Where?'

‘Barges caught fire on a branch of the river and then the wooden piers and a brandy warehouse,' explained an aide-de-camp who that moment had come back from Moscow.

‘Our soldiers can't work out how to light the Russian stoves,' Berthier said ruefully.

‘Get a bloody move on! Those
coglioni
had better not torch my brother Alexander's capital!'

H
IS
BRAWNY HANDS
resting on one of the Byzantine crenels of the Kremlin's parapet, old Marshal Lefebvre was watching the blue flames rising in the distance from the alcohol warehouse. ‘My eye!' he stormed. ‘Vat are they shilly-shallying for, those bluudy sapperrrs!? It's not that complicated, pourrring riverrr water on a shack!' He took a deep breath and said to the officers of his staff, ‘I haf seen some firrres in my time, some devilishly big ones, as a materrr ov fact.' Lefebvre was starting to repeat himself, endlessly chuntering on about his past exploits. Decent fellow though he was, he was about to launch into a story that was all too familiar to his staff when, wrinkling his potato-shaped nose, he caught sight of Sebastian.

‘You'rrre still herrre?'

‘To obtain your permission, Your Grace …'

‘Still your agtors? Can't you see I'm busy vatching these insects in uniforrrm who can't even put out a campfirrre on the Moskova?'

‘Yes, Your Grace, but …'

‘My dearrr sirrr, concerrn yourself with copying out His Excellency Barrron Fain's notes in ink and imparrrting an elegant turn ov phrase to His Majesty's vords; ve all haf our worrrk. Aparrrt from those in the Emperror's service,
therrre's no kvestion of me prrroviding quarters for civilians. Do you underrrstand?'

‘Yes, Your Grace, but …'

‘He's stubborrrn, the little nitvit,' grumbled the marshal, crossing his arms.

‘Can I at least borrow a barouche to drive them back to their neighbourhood?'

‘Do whateverrr you so please, monsieur le segrétaire, but I don't vant to see your band of jackanapes in fancy dress loiterrrring anywhere near me! Do you vant my infantry to trample your leading ladies underrfoot?'

‘No thank you, Your Grace.'

As Sebastian was leaving, the marshal shrugged his shoulders and sighed, ‘They're all the same, these civilians, they haf no idea. And that other lot, over there, not bloody able to put out a chit ov a firrre! Where are they vrom? Not vrom my part of the country, at any rate – a rrreal peasant can put a burrrning barn out vith a glass of vater!'

Son of a Rouffach miller, whose accent he had inherited, husband to a laundress of whom the hereditary nobility of the Court made fun, and yet the first to be rewarded by Napoleon with an imaginary duchy, Lefebvre took pride in recalling his humble origins at every possible opportunity. But today, his officers thought, even armed with a bucket, his ideal peasant wouldn't have had any luck: that was a mighty blaze raging on the other side of the city.

*

At ten o'clock in the evening, an open army barouche equipped with lamps that reached only as far as the horses' hindquarters left the Kremlin and headed towards the north-east corner of the city. Mme Aurore's entire troop
was crammed into it: the Great Vialatoux had agreed to take off his centurion's helmet and one of Joan of Arc's greaves was sticking out of the door. Sebastian had positioned himself on the box next to the postilion, Intendant Bausset having given him permission to escort his protégés, and he kept on turning round in his seat to try to see Mlle Ornella's silhouette in the darkness. This furtive contemplation was complicated by the omnipresence of Mme Aurore, who knew the way by heart and was an outspoken guide; standing in the middle of the carriage, despite the bumpy road, she pointed out the short cuts to their rented lodge.

‘To the right, down there, we're going to drive round the bazaar …'

The carriage turned where the manageress said.

‘It would be shorter going through the bazaar,' the chatterbox carried on. ‘But the cellars' trapdoors open right in the middle of the street and, just look at that scrimmage …'

The carriage passed narrow streets of single-storey brick houses with porticoes. Finally rid of their officers, the soldiers were stocking up, squabbling over barrels of honey or a scarf woven with silver thread. This was the Chinese quarter; Lan Tchu's merchants dispatched goods here from all over Asia. They came from beyond the River Amor, from places where one no could be sure where Russia finishes and China begins. Their caravans left the Silk Road north of the Caspian and travelled up the Volga and the Don to Moscow to sell white silk from Bukhara, engraved copperware, sacks of spices, sticks of soap and blocks of pink-veined salt. Hanks of hair swung in the shop windows, lit up by lanterns of the pillagers of the Guard. Uniforms disappeared under garishly coloured brushed
velvet, shakoes were swapped for Tartar caps with earflaps; they pilfered objects made from walrus tusks and draped yellow- and violet-striped fabrics from Hissar round themselves as capes. The men poured out of the bazaar in unrecognizable bands and the carriage had to fight its way through; the horses were reduced to a walk. The journey seemed endless but Sebastian was growing more and more thrilled, the longer he spent in the presence of Mlle Ornella, who seemed to him to possess all the virtues of heaven and earth, when an explosion made him jump. On their left a bazaar stall was on fire. Blurred figures were running in all directions, shouting. The postilion whipped up the horses, which broke into a smart trot in the chaos, sometimes hitting a grenadier or a voltigeur as they came rushing out of the Chinese quarter; one of them hung on and climbed onto the footboard. ‘It blew up when we broke the door down!'

The soldier had knotted a piece of silk round his neck and donned a wolfskin jacket, and he was saying accusingly, ‘You'll see, we'll end up roasting in this filthy town!'

‘Hold your tongue,' Sebastian said with an authority that was new to him. ‘You're scaring these ladies.'

‘Ladies aren't the only ones who get jittery. If I could play the bird, I'd fly away from here pretty damn quick, I can tell you!'

‘It's on fire the other side as well,' said Mme Aurore.

‘Past the Foundling Hospital. It must be the Solenka.'

‘The what?' asked Sebastian.

‘The salt fish-sellers' street, Monsieur Sebastian.'

Mlle Ornella had just spoken to him. All that registered was the soft musical lilt of her voice and he clean forgot
about those countless fires which no longer seemed fortuitous in the slightest.

*

Captain d'Herbigny had claimed Count Kalitzin's scantly, but nonetheless welcomingly, furnished apartments for himself and was studying a candlelit painting of bathing nymphs that had been spared in the upheaval. He would have preferred real women to these plump, dimpled figures, so out of step with the tastes of the day, but unable to sleep, with a touch of imagination and the prompting of his memories, he was bringing the scene to life and peopling it with young Russian wantons. Paulin had found dinner services emblazoned with the family crest but not much to serve on them: some dried fruit and a brown, sickly sweet jam. The captain held out his glass and his servant filled it with birch wine, which he drank down in a single draught. ‘This really isn't anything like champagne,' he said, smoothing his moustache. He had exchanged his dragoon's uniform, waistcoat and shirt for a fox-fur-lined, vermilion satin coat and was picking at the food, eating the jam with a spoon. Paulin, meanwhile, was making the bed, using tablecloths instead of sheets. At the front of the house, the chained mastiffs started barking again.

‘I should have cracked their skulls, those babbling hounds. Paulin, go and see.'

The servant opened the casement window, leant out; he reported to his master that some unknown civilians were talking to the sentries.

‘Go down and find out what's happening, at the double!'

The captain filled a glass to the brim and gazed at his
reflection in the mirror on the wall facing the table. He liked the look of himself this evening, decked out like a Muscovite, without a helmet, glass in hand. ‘To my very good health,' he said, saluting himself. The decor, these vast, bare rooms, reminded him of growing up near Rouen in the d'Herbigny chateau, a big farmhouse, really, on an estate which his father farmed. The bedclothes were crawling with insects; the guests who wouldn't leave ate all the food, because there were always visiting neighbours, a relative who was a parish priest or some other impoverished member of the decayed nobility. In winter everyone huddled round the only fireplace that worked. D'Herbigny had enlisted in the National Guard very young, and learnt the profession of soldiering in the field; after that he was only good for killing, charging at the sound of the trumpet and collecting medals. He'd encountered death so often that everything seemed to be its due. One day he'd buried his sword in a little pipsqueak's guts who cut him an insolent look. Another day, at a toll barrier, he'd beaten the life out of a customs officer who'd intended to levy a charge for entering Paris. And that fight at Vaugirard between the dragoons and chasseurs when they clashed in the middle of the open-air cafes; he was laughing at the memory of it when Paulin appeared.

‘Sir, sir …'

‘Your report, you brute!'

‘Strolling players, they're asking for shelter.'

‘No room for bohemians in my palace.'

‘They're French, sir, they were living in the green villa opposite which our men have ransacked.'

‘Well, let them sleep on the ground, it's very good for your back. Got to bring ‘em to heel, that sort.'

‘I thought …'

‘Who pays you to think, fool?'

‘There are young women …'

‘Pretty?'

‘Two or three.'

‘Bring them to me so I can choose.' He twisted up his moustache. ‘Unless I take the whole batch.'

The captain was splashing himself with an eau de cologne he'd rooted out from the countess's bedroom when the batch, as he put it, entered behind Mme Aurore; her voice like thunder, she was pushing a dragoon in front of her and pummelling him in the kidneys. Brandishing a shawl with her other hand, she called out to the captain, ‘Are you the officer in charge of these good-for-nothings?'

D'Herbigny opened his mouth but didn't have time to answer the actress before she stormed on, ‘Will you explain to me why I found my shawl tied like a belt round his belly?' She hit the sheepish dragoon harder in the stomach. ‘I know why! It was your soldiers who ransacked the house we've been living in for the last two months! I demand …'

‘Nothing at all,' said the captain, getting up from his chair. ‘You have no demands at all to make! The entire city belongs to us! Whoa there, you! What on earth are you up to?'

The Great Vialatoux had put his centurion's helmet down on a console table and was trying on the captain's, which was too big for him.

‘Don't touch my things!' yelled d'Herbigny.

‘Did you have any scruples about ours?' said Mme Aurore, not at all impressed by this sort of flashily dressed swaggerer.

‘We are members of the Emperor's intimate circle,' added Vialatoux. ‘By the offices of one of his private secretaries. He brought us here personally.'

‘A much more agreeable boy than you,' said a redhead, accentuating the mocking tone of the soubrettes she was used to playing.

The captain recovered his temper as he let his eye dwell on this young lass who he anticipated would not put up great resistance. ‘Well … You've got to understand how soldiers are, for a start, and then we can come to some agreement, can't we … compatriots, what? There's plenty of room here. Paulin! Put up our new friends. Mesdemoiselles, my room, where a count slept, is at your disposal.'

‘Do you come with it?' Mlle Ornella asked ironically, knowing that she had been singled out.

‘Ah well, we'll see …'

D'Herbigny retrieved his helmet and Paulin led the rest of the band to the stairs, with a lamp; the two chosen ones sat on the edge of the big bed, whispering things and making each other laugh. The captain stayed stranded in the middle of the room; to interrupt the chorus of mockery, he asked them their Christian names.

‘Jeanne,' said Mlle Ornella, who was called Jeanne Meaudre offstage. ‘She's Catherine.'

‘Catherine? Ah hah, that rhymes with libertine! Not so?'

The two girls burst out laughing again. ‘And what does Jeanne rhyme with?'

‘Now let's see, let's see …'

Embarrassed by the question, the captain frowned to show he was thinking, unable as he was to come up on the spot with any rhyme other than ‘man' or ‘handstand'.

‘Oh!' exclaimed Catherine the redhead. ‘Your right hand.'

‘My right hand?'

He raised his stump, which was trussed up in a shirt tail like a sausage.

‘My right hand has stayed somewhere in Russia, my pretty ones, but I often get the feeling that the fingers are moving.'

Since his two guests had stopped giggling and were listening with new interest, the captain described the amputation. To show his courage and tease them by scaring them a little, he explained how Dr Larrey, Surgeon to the Guard, had applied fly larvae to the open wound, since he'd discovered that, in the process of breeding in colonies, maggots could prevent gangrene. Then he recited his wounds, each linked to a valiant feat of arms, which he listed at random, becoming more and more stirred. ‘At Wagram I was burnt when the artillery set fire to the crops. At Pratzen I had a horse disembowelled beneath me by a shell. I was almost swallowed up by a peat bog in Poland. With the English on my tail, I all but drowned swimming across a torrent near Benavente; at Saragossa my skull was split open by the butt of a musket and the day after that, a mined house fell on my head! I've often thought I was dead, I've seen blood bubbling out of my mouth, that was in the convent of San Francisco – and here, look, I was shot in the hip … Hey!'

The girls had fallen asleep during the catalogue, snuggled up together.

‘Ah no, my darlings, that would be too easy!' grumbled the captain, his shirt unbuttoned to the waist to show his
glorious, pinkish scars, and going closer, he listened to the girls' rhythmical breathing. With a knife he slit the laces of Mlle Ornella's half-boots, who did not wake up, and he was working his way through all the little flibbertigibbets' buttons, braids and ribbons when a knocking disturbed him. He ran to the door in a fury, tore it open and bumped into Paulin, who was red in the face, with dragoons holding lanterns standing behind him.