The Retreat (7 page)

‘No, no, I'm coming.'

They caught up with the others on the half-landing; the smoke was up to their waists and the Great Vialatoux almost lost his balance.

‘Hang onto the banister!'

‘I've trodden on something soft.'

D'Herbigny bent down, groped around in the smoke, felt a body at his fingertips, sat it up; it was Maillard, as asphyxiated now as he was drunk and weighing a ton; he grabbed him by the collar and dragged him down the stairs. The rest followed, choking in a cloud of smoke, their eyes stinging; they covered their noses and mouths with their clothes, a handkerchief or a scarf. Paulin had come out of the count's bedroom, struggling with the portmanteau and pushing Catherine and Ornella in front of him, wrapped in tablecloths, rubbing their eyes and coughing themselves hoarse. ‘Quick!' d'Herbigny told his men and they tore down the stairs, suffocating, not even thinking to be afraid; on the ground floor he saw flames curling under a door that was cracking as it burnt. ‘Quick! Quick!' he repeated and they rushed towards the hall door but outside on the steps the chained dogs lunged at them, trying to bite. Suddenly bursting from the back of the building, the fire was already catching the long curtains. The captain laid Maillard down on the flagstones, shot one of the dogs with
his second pistol, then had no time to reload – anyway, what with? As for Martinon and Bonet, those imbeciles had mislaid their weapons when they were getting dressed up. Paulin, kneeling next to Maillard, reported, ‘This one's dead, sir.'

‘He won't be causing a stir in any more henhouses, bloody idiot!'

The captain picked up the body by an arm and shoved it at the other guard dog, which sank its teeth into it as if it was a quarter of beef.

‘Make a dash for it!' d'Herbigny commanded the fugitives, who ran to the avenue, where the rest of the troop were having trouble quieting their horses as they pranced and jostled, terrified by the spreading fires.

*

Sebastian waited, his pencil in the air. The secretaries never knew if the Emperor was going to want to dictate just one or several letters at a time, so they were always ready to take notes, in pencil; in either case, His Majesty's quick, rushed delivery gave them no chance of taking down entire sentences in a clear hand. So Baron Fain, following his colleague Ménéval's lead, had devised something like a code of practice: it was a matter of catching the key words as they spilled forth, using them as aides-memoires with which to reconstruct a coherent text and then copying this out in ink, polishing the language in the process and adding the customary civilities. At first Sebastian had dreaded the exercise, the risk that he might misrepresent Napoleon's thoughts, but Fain had reassured him, ‘His Majesty never re-reads what he signs.' Today, therefore, the secretaries were waiting at their desks facing the wall, a position which made dictation
harder for them because they couldn't decipher difficult words by reading the Emperor's lips. Hands behind his back, he was pacing up and down, mumbling, delivering streams of invective or grumbling. Napoleon wanted to send a message to the Tsar proposing peace; the secretaries had been told this, to make it easier for them to improvise on the final draft. A letter had to be dashed off that was at once majestic, amicable and conciliatory – so much for the tone. But the content? They were still waiting when the major general entered the salon unannounced with some grenadiers of the Old Guard in long grey greatcoats, who were escorting a moustachioed man in a big bearskin coat.

‘Berthier, you're bothering me!' said the Emperor.

‘Sire, I beg you.'

‘I'm listening,' the Emperor sighed, dropping into a chair and jabbing at the armrest with a penknife.

‘And looking, I trust – this is what we found on this bandit.'

‘A muff? A cushion?'

‘A powder hose, sire. This brute was trying to set the palace roof on fire.'

The Emperor took the well-sewn canvas object thoughtfully; he slit it with his penknife the way one guts a fish, and black powder spilled onto the floor. The prisoner was laughing noiselessly.

‘Are you convinced, sire?'

‘That this Russian wanted to set this whole damn place on fire? Oh yes, Berthier, but why is he laughing, the devil?'

‘Because “sire” in his language means “cheese”,' explained Caulaincourt, who had joined the group with Marshal Lefebvre.

‘Very amusing!' Turning to Lefebvre, he asked, ‘Have you questioned him, Your Grace?'

‘Ov corrrse.'

‘Well?'

‘He sit nawthing.'

‘But under his bearskin,' said the major general, ‘look, he's wearing the blue jacket of a Cossack officer.'

‘It is an isolated attempt.'

‘No, sire, a premeditated crime.'

‘A trap,' added Caulaincourt.

‘Yor orrrdrs?' asked Lefebvre.

‘My orders? Guess,
è davvero cretino!'

Lefebvre signalled to the grenadiers. ‘Have this incendiaarry shot!'

‘He is not necessarily alone,' continued the major general.

‘Send out patrols, suspects are to be shot, hanged, exterminated, understood?'

The Emperor stood up and pressed his forehead to the pane of a French window. The Chinese quarter was burning again but this time in different parts. Fires were breaking out in remote suburbs towards the east, and the wind was rising, carrying the flames towards the ramparts.

*

From the Kremlin, the Emperor could not see the fires that were starting beyond the bazaar, they were obscured by a ring of churches, but all the glass in the windows of the Kalitzin house had shattered and flames were belching out of them and blackening the facade; the curtains, net and hangings had been torn loose and were flapping in the wind. Beams started snapping, one after another, and then
the roof collapsed with a crash as if the house had sucked it into itself. The surviving watchdog, which was still chained up, had abandoned Maillard's barely touched corpse and was barking frenziedly; when the fire rolled onto the steps, it would burn alive.

At the head of his men, with Mme Aurore close on his heels, d'Herbigny kept to the middle of the thankfully broad avenue, while his dragoons pulled their mounts behind them by the bridle; the horses had been blinkered so they wouldn't see the lurid light of the fires, but still the oven-like heat and the smells of charred wood, tar and black smoke made them step nervously. The troupe of actors followed, indistinguishable from the bizarrely dressed soldiers. Mlle Ornella limped, barefoot, on the hot cobbles; in one hand she carried her half-boots with their slit laces and with the other she held her friend Catherine Hugonnet's arm. Both of them were barely dressed, with embroidered damask tablecloths draped over their shoulders, and they cursed that swine of an officer who had set about slitting, ripping and taking their clothes apart stitch by stitch the minute they'd gone to sleep. They watched him up there in front, strutting along like a cock of the walk, even though his troopers were laden with furs and trinkets as if they were about to perform an opera. Still, they thought to themselves, at least they were alive; destitute but alive. They had looked on miserably as their green chalet had burned to the ground, but the wooden houses in this part of town had been spared and, at the end of the avenue on an untouched square, there stood a church – or perhaps cathedral – with blue domes. They had nearly reached it when the dragoons' horses refused to go any further. At the foot of a clump of trees, a pack of large, silent dogs was
staring up into the branches; they had powerful chests and grey coats. The party came to a halt; the captain's voice rang out, ‘These nags are a little afraid of fire, but dogs give them the mortal terrors, is that it?'

At the sound of this voice, the dogs in question quit their trees and glanced over at the stationary group. They had slanting, green eyes and flat heads.

‘Those aren't dogs, sir,' said Trooper Bonet, ‘they're wolves.'

‘You've seen wolves, then, have you?'

‘Oh, I've seen them close up, in the Jura. There was one that ate a woman from my village and attacked a whole score of other people. Dangerous, they are. They love war: the more dead and carrion and snakes there are, the more wolves you're going to get.'

No one had interrupted the trooper. They were all standing stock-still, observing the wild beasts. Were they going to attack? Those who still had sabres unsheathed them. No need. At that moment, a band of red-uniformed hussars came riding past the great church's porch, leading two moujiks with their hands bound. Too many men, too much risk: the wolves ran off.

The hussars led their prisoners to the trees. D'Herbigny called to them and a lieutenant rode over at a gentle trot and asked, ‘Do you understand French?'

‘Captain d'Herbigny of the Dragoons of the Guard.'

‘Forgive me, Captain, but I wouldn't have guessed …'

‘I know!'

‘Sir's uniforms are in that portmanteau,' said Paulin, pointing to the baggage strapped to his donkey.

‘We've just escaped a fire by the skin of our teeth,' said Mme Aurore.

‘I wouldn't stay out in the open, if I was you. Take cover in that church; it's good solid stone, a fair old distance from any wooden buildings, there shouldn't be any danger of it going up.'

‘Do you think I'm just going to stand around twiddling my thumbs, Lieutenant?'

‘Captain, drunken convicts are swarming all over this neighbourhood, spreading the fires with these …' He threw a lance at d'Herbigny which the captain studied closely. ‘They stoke them with tarred lances like that,' the hussar reiterated, then rejoined his companions who were stringing up two of the alleged incendiaries.

When d'Herbigny and his troop rode round the copse before taking shelter in the church, they saw a dozen or so hanged men: dinner for the wolves. Ornella looked down and didn't look up again until they were inside the church and, as it seemed to her, in another world: in the side aisles, between each of the pillars and in front of the choir, hundreds of candles gleamed in bulky candelabras. Lit by whose hands? It didn't occur to her to ask. Instead she clung tighter to her friend. She would have liked to have fallen asleep and woken up a thousand leagues from Moscow, in the wings of a Parisian theatre. She and Catherine had known each other for ages, sharing the stage countless times from their debuts in minute roles – non-speaking or one-line perhaps – to
Monsieur Vulture
, when they had played opposite the wildly, fabulously famous Brunet, and Mme Aurore had remarked upon them, the dark-skinned woman for her style, the redhead for her freshness. They were hired and enjoyed an unbroken run at the Délassements, in the faubourg du Temple, until the day came when Napoleon decided to close most of Paris's
theatres to prevent competition with the eight houses he subsidized. To get any work, they had to leave France and tour abroad, playing to expatriates or cultivated Europeans who understood French. Aurore Barsay's wandering troupe had been acclaimed in Vienna, St Petersburg, and, for the last two months, Moscow – Moscow, where they were at the mercy of fire and soldiers, without audiences, roubles, luggage or costumes.

‘Oh, Catherine,' said Ornella. I've had enough …'

‘Me too.'

‘I'm going for supplies!' d'Herbigny announced. ‘Get yourselves set up in that side chapel. Martinon, you, and you, follow me. The rest of you, tether the horses to the altar rails.'

‘The what?'

‘There, you ignoramus! Those things in gilded wood!'

*

The captain kept his weariness and doubts buried deep inside him. One-handed for the rest of his life, scars all over his body, he stifled his true desires by gripping the hilt of his sabre. Sometimes there rose up in him a paradoxical yearning for a peaceful, rural life, or he'd imagine himself as an innkeeper, since he liked people and wine and fattened pullets on spits, all golden and tender and juicy. He dismissed the image of roasting birds which jarred on that September afternoon in Moscow overrun by wolves, convicts and fire. Instead, stomach rumbling, he put on one of his green coats and buttoned up a pair of grey linen over-breeches at the seams – his helmet had stayed in the ruins of the Kalitzin house, crushed and melted – and set off prowling with his ragged men.

Apart from several churches, the neighbourhood they found themselves in consisted predominantly of small, pitched-roofed houses, like Swiss chalets, two-storeyed, with little gardens in front enclosed by low picket fences: d'Herbigny thought it would be darned surprising if they couldn't find something to eat. They were preparing to work their way through the houses systematically – a dragoon had raised the butt of his musket and was about to stave in the lock of a door – when lancers came galloping down the street. One of them slowed and shouted at d'Herbigny, ‘Watch out for the doors! They've booby-trapped their hovels!'

The dragoon stopped, his musket poised in midair, his mouth open.

‘You heard, didn't you, you blockhead? Through the window.'

They tore off a shutter and smashed a window pane; the captain climbed through the window, inspected the room: a bench, a stool … He took a few steps. Twigs snapped under his boots. He looked down. The former inhabitants had made a pile of sticks and wood shavings in front of the door. He saw a musket tied to the lock: if they'd broken down the door, the impact would have depressed the trigger, the flash of the charge would have set fire to the pile of dry wood. Sergeant Martinon poked his nose through the window. ‘Captain, we've gone over the garden with our sabres and found a chest.'

The troopers had dug up the chest, which opened easily. It contained crockery. They continued their search in the other houses. With extreme care, they tested the ground with their sabres, turned the soil, went down to the cellars; they found a shell in one stove and a number of other
booby-trapped doors. It took them the whole day to muster a barrel of brandy, some root vegetables and a smoked sturgeon.