Valentina (15 page)

He knelt and pulled off his cap.

‘There's a woman at the inn ahead, Lord,' he said. ‘I saw a coach there and I went in and bought something to eat while my horse was watered. The keeper is an old Jew—filthy—' He turned aside and spat contemptuously. ‘I asked who the coach belonged to, and he said a lady was travelling to Warsaw. They'd just arrived.'

‘It must be the one,' the Count said. ‘How far ahead is it?'

‘About an hour's ride at a good pace, Lord. It took me longer because of the light, but we should get there in an hour. They'll be sleeping still.'

‘You've done well,' the Count said. ‘I only hope for your own sake you haven't asked too many questions and alerted them. If I find them gone, I'll have you hanged. Get the horses saddled up!'

The inn was a two-storey wooden building, with sprawling roofed stables, and as they came close to it, the Count could see the coach standing in front of it; there were no horses in the traces, but a little smoke twisted from the chimney, so that someone must be about inside the inn. He signalled his servants to dismount and they approached the inn on foot. He opened the door himself and stepped inside; it was dark and the atmosphere was sickening with the smell of stale wine and unwashed human bodies, and old food; he grimaced and swore under his breath. A man knelt by the enormous communal stove, pushing sticks into its belly; there were a few benches and a rickety table, with a stained top; the mud floor was covered with a few wisps of straw. The Count moved so quietly that the man heard nothing; he fed the fire in the stove and muttered to himself in Yiddish. The Count put his pistol to the man's ear.

‘Make no sound,' he said quietly, ‘or I will blow your head off. Get up and turn round.'

The innkeeper was an old man; his grey hair hung down beneath the round black cap and mingled with the strands of grey beard. He gazed up at the stranger in terror. Centuries of persecution had taught him and all his unhappy race to fear the unexpected. For them it usually meant violence and death. He and his wife had kept the desolate, poverty-stricken inn for twenty years; they had been robbed and threatened and cheated of their money more often than they were paid, but at least they lived and had enough to eat. He recognised the man as a noble by his dress; he thanked God it wasn't a visit from some band of roaming thieves. He fell to his knees and bent till his head almost touched the ground.

‘Lord, what is it? What have we done?'

‘You have a woman staying here,' the Count said.

‘Yes, yes,' the old man said. ‘A lady; she came yesterday.' His eyes widened in fear as he saw more armed men coming into the room. The leader was a big man, carrying a Russian knout, and the innkeeper recognised him as the visitor of the night before.

‘Where is she?' the Count asked. He aimed a kick at the old man to focus his attention.

‘Upstairs, Lord. We have only one room. Her two servants are in the back there.'

Theodore addressed the ex-Lancer. ‘Kill them,' he said. ‘Bury their bodies and take that coach and burn it.'

The old man doubled up, moaning. ‘My Lord, I have a wife,' he whimpered. ‘A harmless old woman; she sleeps near these men. I beg of you don't do her any hurt—she'll make no sound, no trouble—let me wake her first, Lord, Lord, I beg you—' He embraced the Count's feet and tried to kiss them. He received a kick in the face that sent him sprawling backwards. The Count was overcome with irritation and disgust. ‘Someone silence that miserable old dog.' He started up the narrow steps to Valentina's room.

The journey had been a nightmare since she left Czartatz. One of the wheels had split the first day, and it had taken four hours to repair it while the coach leant drunkenly on one side and she paced the dusty road; they hadn't reached shelter that night, and she had slept inside the coach and woken so stiff with cramp and cold that she could hardly move. At the first inn she had been afraid to sleep, remembering that here De Chavel had spent the night outside her door because he felt the innkeeper and his son were ruffianly. At this inn she had fought the impulse to throw off her clothes and fall on the dirty bed and sleep and sleep. Instead Valentina wrapped her cloak round her, hid the pistol under her mattress, and lay down. She didn't hear the door creak as it opened. She slept with her head turned to the tiny window and the early light streamed in on her. Her husband moved like a cat across the bare wooden floor; he had his pistol in his right hand, and the impulse to shoot her as she slept was so strong that he almost gave in to it. He had never imagined that he could hate a woman as he realised he hated his wife. Her beauty shone in the murk of the squalid room, luminous and different to what he remembered. She had changed, and her love for the Frenchman was the cause; her love had driven her from a safe refuge into danger and the hands of her most implacable enemy. Himself.

He had imagined what he would say when he found her; now his tongue was thick with anger, it couldn't find words to wake her. He couldn't bring himself to speak to her at all. He bent down and struck her hard on the jaw. She went from sleep to unconsciousness without making a sound.

She came to her senses with a pain that ran from her wrists to her elbows; when she opened her eyes she was looking at the floor, her head hung down over the edge of the bed, and she tried to move her arms to ease the shooting cramp in them. They were bound to her sides and her hands were tied behind her back. She was pulled round into a sitting position, and she was face to face with her husband. She cried out, but the cry was wordless.

‘Yes,' he said; his voice was thick with rage, and his hands trembled. As he bound her hands while she lay dazed and helpless, he had longed to take the cords and knot them round her neck. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘you're not mistaken. It's your husband, come to claim you back.'

‘Kill me,' Valentina said. ‘I swear that the moment I'm free I'll kill myself before I let you touch me!'

He leant forward and hit her across the face.

‘You whore and traitress,' he said. ‘Open your mouth again and I'll put a gag across that lying tongue which won't come out until we get to Warsaw!'

He dragged her to her feet and threw her cloak over her; he forced her down the stairs and out into the road. His servants were waiting; one had a riderless horse on a rein. There was no sound from inside the inn; the coachman and Kador had been clubbed to death while they slept, and the innkeeper's wife had been stripped and lay motionless where they had left her, her head wrapped in her own petticoat. Her husband hung from a low tree branch, his shirt in bloody tatters from the flogging the Lancer had given him as an expression of his dislike for Jews, and as a punishment for trying to interfere while they raped his wife. He held the lead rein of the waiting horse, the blood stained knout tucked in his belt. Nobody spoke as the Count led his prisoner up to them. She was young and very beautiful, and the rumour that she was his wife and had run off with a lover was probably true. The ex-Lancer dismounted and helped his master lift her on to the horse; she sat astride, and the servant tied her feet to the stirrups, and knotted the loose reins round the animal's neck; the Count refused to have her hands tied in front of her so that she could ride more comfortably. The man himself had made the request, fearing that she would lose her balance if she were forced to ride in that fashion; the woman said nothing; she looked ahead of her and sat straight-backed in her bonds.

‘Take her horse,' the Count said. ‘She is not to speak to you, you understand? If she utters one word, or gives any trouble, bind her face down across the saddle. Mount up—we'll be in Warsaw before the week is out!'

The return to Warsaw took three days; the Count insisted on a maximum pace, and by the end of the day, Valentina was so stiff and weary that she could hardly stand. They slept out, making a rough camp where any shelter could be found, and then her hands were loosed and she was given food and drink under the eye of the ex-Lancer. He had been watching her closely during the nightmare ride across country so rough that every man was exhausted by it, and she had neither faltered nor complained. She asked for nothing; when food was given to her she ate it, she submitted while her raw and swollen wrists were fastened again before the company settled for the night, and she maintained a contemptuous silence. The big peasant couldn't equate his opinion of women with this courage and endurance. Service in the Army had taught him a respect for bravery which was a substitute for the other human feelings he had lost through discipline and natural brutishness.

On the second night, when the Count was asleep and the others lay without moving, Valentina woke with a violent start to find him bending over her. He covered her mouth with his hand and whispered.

‘Don't scream, lady. I'm not meaning any harm to you. You can't sleep like that.'

To her astonishment, she felt him loosening her hands, and then he moved away from her. ‘I'll have to fasten you before morning,' he said.

‘If your master finds out that you've done this, you know what he'll do to you,' she said.

‘I see what he's doing to you, lady,' the man muttered. ‘I'll wake before he does, don't fear. You'll lose the power of your arms if you go on too long in bonds. I saw some of our men in Spain after those dirty Spaniards had kept them tied for days on end, and they were crippled.' He spat into the darkness at the memory. ‘Sleep now; there's a hard day ahead tomorrow.' There was nothing incongruous in his mind in the rape of an elderly Jewess and his flogging of an old man, and his act of gallantry towards a courageous Polish lady. He hated his master and admired the woman whatever she had done. It was as simple as that. Every night he crawled near to Valentina and made her free so that she slept in comfort; he pretended to fasten her hands each morning, but just before they mounted he eased them so that there was no friction and she didn't suffer pain. On the last night of the journey, Valentina reached out and touched him.

‘You've helped me,' she said. ‘Why? You've taken a great risk for me. How can I reward you unless you help me more?'

He half raised himself and then lay down again.

‘I can't do more than I've done,' he said. ‘And I want nothing for it. He had me given twenty lashes the first week for something I didn't do. I'm glad to make it easy for you, lady, that's why. But that's all.'

‘If you help me to get away,' Valentina said, ‘we can scatter their horses and be back on the road to my home. We'll be safe there; no one can touch us. I'll give you a hundred pieces of gold.' It was a hopeless chance, but the only one she had of escaping even at this last moment. The man had shown kindness and a willingness to disobey his master. Though she shuddered at the risk of putting herself in the hands of such a brute, it was better than being at Theodore's mercy. He hesitated. A hundred pieces of gold. It was a fortune; he could buy land, build himself a house. All he had to do was run the horses loose so that they couldn't be followed, and then ride off with the lady. It was simple. And possible, so long as they were quiet and no one woke.

‘Will you do it?' Valentina urged. ‘One hundred gold pieces. My sister may even give you more. Think—we can do it easily!'

‘Stay still, then,' he muttered. ‘Don't make a sound. I'll make our mounts ready—no, by God, I'll take the master's horse, it's the best! Then when I signal you creep away and come to me; when we're both mounted I'll fire my pistols and stampede the other horses. Not a movement now, until I give the sign!'

It was a brilliant moonlit night and she could see him clearly as he got up and began moving between the sleeping men, bent almost double. The horses were tethered fifty yards away by some deep trees; he had got clear of the camp, and was creeping up on them, when one of the mounts raised its head and whinnied. Valentina sank back and shut her eyes, not daring to look. There was no other sound, and after a moment she raised her head enough to see the big man's figure moving in among the horses. He had made no noise, and now he was out of the revealing moonlight. In a few minutes she would be riding for her life back to Czartatz; a lot would depend on how quickly the Count realised what had happened. They would make perfect targets in that light for the first hundred and fifty yards. She shut her eyes again for a second and prayed. Oh God, let him do it. Please, please let me get away.

‘Who's there! Come out, or I'll put a bullet through you!'

The Count's voice barked out, and she stiffened and then went slack as if she had been struck a paralysing blow. The ex-Lancer shouted in answer.

‘It's me, Lord. I thought I saw something moving near the horses!'

‘Nothing's moving,' the Count snapped. ‘Where's your prisoner—by God if you've let her move …' He came towards her, and she saw the pistol barrel gleaming in his hand. She lay still, her eyes open, but not looking at him. She had never once glanced near him since they set out. ‘By tomorrow you'll be in Warsaw,' he said. ‘If it weren't that Potocki wants a trial, I'd leave you staked out here. In a month or so some traveller might find you. You whore.' He said it deliberately, and he stirred her with his foot. She saw the man come up behind him and for a moment she thought there was something rigid about him that meant he was going to strike the Count down, but the impression passed as quickly as it came, and instead he bowed low, and said: ‘Everything is in order, Lord. My pardon for disturbing you.'

‘It's light enough to ride,' Theodore said suddenly. ‘We've slept long enough. Get yourselves together; we'll start off now. And she will ride with me,' he added. ‘Make her ready.'

The man bent over Valentina as the Count moved away. By the moonlight he saw that she was weeping. ‘The devil's own luck,' he whispered. ‘We haven't a chance now.'