Valentina (24 page)

‘What happened?' de Lamballe asked. ‘I didn't understand a word.' Alexandra told him quickly, and he swore. ‘You did very well, but we can't go anywhere near Platov's headquarters.'

‘What can we do?' Valentina said. ‘We can't escape these two men; they'll cut Janos down the first move he makes.'

‘Look out and tell me how far ahead they're riding,' he said.

‘Right up close,' Alexandra whispered. ‘They've dropped back, they're just behind Janos, one on each side of us. For God's sake keep down, one of them might decide to have a look inside!'

‘Right.' He crouched down again. ‘Valentina, can you shoot?'

‘No,' she shook her head. ‘I wouldn't know how to begin.'

‘I can shoot as well as you can,' Alexandra said tartly. ‘Probably better!'

He gave her a calculating, lover's look that mocked her masculine boast. ‘Good; now's your chance to prove it. Change places with Valentina, and when I give the word, lean out, take aim at the Cossack on your side, and shoot him dead! I'll kill the other one.'

Twenty minutes later he threw off the rugs and knelt at the window, his pistol in his hand. He glanced at Alexandra.

‘The patrol must be miles away by now. Ready? Right, now!' The two shots cracked out as one, and both the Russians lurched and fell, their horses rearing, before they galloped wildly off and disappeared. The Major jumped to the ground and bent over first one body then the other. He came back, and, taking Alexandra's hand, he kissed it. ‘I'll never challenge
you
to a duel,' he said. ‘I'll ride the lead horse for an hour or so, and let Janos get the ice out of his bones. We'll go back to those woods we saw, and spend the night there; we don't want to risk meeting your delightful countrymen again today.'

‘When will we get to Orcha?' Valentina asked him. The last hour had been like a nightmare; when she saw her sister leaning out and taking aim she shut her eyes. Two men lay dead a few yards away, and they had only escaped a death by atrocity themselves because of Alexandra's bluff. For the first time since they set out she felt her resolution faltering; cold and danger were things she was ready to endure, but killing in cold blood was different, horrifying. Neither the Major nor her sister seemed disturbed by what they had done in the least. They were looking into each other's eyes and holding hands and laughing.

‘When will we get there?' she repeated.

De Lamballe made a grimace. ‘By tomorrow night or early the next morning; it depends on how hard it snows tonight, and whether we have to leave the main road to avoid more Cossacks. I should say by the day after, it's safer.'

‘I'd like to go on,' Valentina said. ‘I'd like to get to the French army and stay with it. Aren't you going to bury them?'

‘Those two?' the Major looked back over his shoulder. ‘They wouldn't have troubled about niceties like that with us. Don't worry, my dear; the snow will cover them quicker than I could dig. Janos! Get down and ride inside!'

‘I wish we could go straight to Orcha,' Valentina said.

Her sister settled the rugs over herself. ‘A day won't make any difference to your Colonel,' she said. ‘He may not even be there. Have a little regard for our skins—Paul's and mine—even if you don't care about your own!'

It was the first angry word she had spoken to Valentina, and a moment later she leant across and said simply: ‘Forgive me. I was so afraid they would discover Paul and kill him, I had to snap at someone. We'd better wait as he says; we won't shake off the next Cossack patrol so easily.'

They spent the night in the wood, all four huddled together in the sledge; Janos had built a fire outside near the horses, and it would burn slowly through the night hours unless there was a heavy snowstorm. Keeping the horses from freezing to death was their worst problem; it was a risk to light a fire, but it had to be taken, and they had covered the animals with blankets and tethered them as close to the heat as possible. They were too tired to eat much, and the intense cold dulled all the senses, even that of hunger, after a time. They had enough supplies to last another two weeks if they were frugal; Alexandra had prepared with meticulous efficiency for every need. Most of all she had provided for an extra man on the return journey. There was enough for them and for De Chavel too, if they ever found him. Valentina slept very little; she was cold with the numbness that comes from never being really warm for days on end, and she was lonely for the first time. She heard her sister and the Major moving during the night, and knew that they were lying in each other's arms to sleep, and she turned away and wept because the man she loved was somewhere out in the wilderness, if he were still alive. Two days later they were stopped by the outposts of the French army at Orcha, and three hours afterwards they were escorted to Murat's headquarters.

He had changed so much that at first Valentina didn't recognise him; he was much thinner, and the last five months had aged him as many years; the flamboyant curls and sideburns were gone, and he wore a stained and shabby uniform, which hung on him as if it had been made for someone else. He sat at a wooden table, with a candelabra of solid gold to his left elbow, and drank cognac out of a bottle while he wrote out his dispatches for the Emperor.

‘Extraordinary,' he said, and the only thing Valentina remembered was the brigand smile which still flashed over them. ‘Amazing! What a journey for two delicate ladies to embark on! You must tell me everything!' They drank his cognac, and de Lamballe gave him a full account of their interview with Maret, and the crossing at Borrisov; when he described the killing of the two Cossacks, Murat gazed at Alexandra with both eyebrows up and made a silent whistle of surprise. He had hardly glanced at Valentina, yet she was aware that his attention was focused more on her than either her sister or the Major.

‘Is there any news of Colonel De Chavel, Sire?' The Major asked the question at last; it had seemed as if it would never be said, and now it was, Valentina trembled and turned white; she felt Alexandra's arm go round her.

‘He's not with us,' Murat's voice came from a distance and then grew louder as she recovered her command of herself. ‘He was terribly wounded at Borodino, poor fellow; that was the last time I saw him, just before the battle. I heard he was in the retreat from Moscow, but that was weeks ago. I don't know any more.'

‘How wounded?' Valentina said at last. ‘How badly?'

Murat hesitated. It was insane, of course; the woman had travelled hundreds of miles in unbelievable conditions and mortal danger to find a man who was probably dead long ago. It didn't make sense, not the sense with which Murat credited pretty women; their place was in the boudoir, the ballroom or in bed, doing what was natural to them as the charming toys of men. They didn't set out after a defeated army into Russia in the depths of winter and shoot Cossacks with a pistol. He looked into the ashen face of the woman he had once dismissed as a deceitful coquette, and what he saw in the burning, blue eyes unmanned him. ‘I don't remember exactly,' he said. ‘But it was very bad. You must be prepared for that, if he's alive at all. Look, my dear Countess, I think you've had enough for one day. Major, I'll put what resources I have at your disposal, and I will talk to you privately later. Now I think the Countess and her sister ought to rest.' He didn't want to continue the interview; he was tired and his spirits were in the depths. Everything was lost, the war, the Empire, Napoleon himself.

Forty thousand, half-starved, frost-bitten, miserable rabble were all that was left of the Grand Armée; men he had known and fought beside all over the world were dead in that frightful campaign of waste, error and disaster. He blamed Napoleon for it all, and though he had never liked him, he blamed him bitterly for sacrificing Michel Ney to save himself. He didn't want to explain any more to Valentina or face the implications himself that night. He had had enough, he wanted to get drunk or have a woman, and forget that they were all lost, until he had to remember it again the next morning.

Valentina didn't move. ‘If he's not with you, where is he?'

‘With the rearguard, Madame,' Murat said. ‘If he's alive.'

‘And where are they, Marshal?' she asked. ‘I must know. I've come so far to find him. If he's not with you, I must go on tomorrow. Where will the rearguard be?'

Murat looked at her. He saw de Lamballe come up and try to take her arm; she shook him off without moving her eyes from Murat's face.

‘Not till I know,' she said. ‘I'm not leaving till I know.'

‘God knows where the rearguard is!' Murat almost shouted the answer at her. ‘Anywhere between here and Smolensk—cut to pieces by Cossacks, blown to bits by Kutuzov! A few thousand men and the wounded that's what we left Ney with—and if you ask me where they are I'll tell you what I think. I think they're dead, all of them! We've waited as long as we dare for them; we're moving out in two day's time, before the Russians catch us. Your Colonel is a dead man, Madame. You might as well turn back and go home while you can. Now take her out of here, Major! I've got work to do!'

He turned away and stood with his back to them.

‘You swine,' Alexandra said very distinctly. ‘She's fainted!'

Valentina woke with a violent start; she had been dreaming, but the dream was forgotten the instant she returned to full awareness; they had spent the night in a house which Murat had put at their disposal, turning some very disgruntled young staff officers out to make room for them, and she had fallen asleep in Alexandra's arms after a long fit of desperate weeping. The bed was empty; her sister was not in the room, and it was still only half light; the noise outside had woken her, and it was a moment or two before she could identify it. The windows were double-framed and shuttered against the cold; yet the sound came through them like a roar. She got up and wrenched at the wooden fastenings, and pulled the heavy shutters back. The windows were frosted with snow; it was impossible to see anything. The noise was like cheering.

‘Valentina!'

Alexandra stood beside her; she was struggling into her dress.

‘What is it? What's happened?' Valentina said.

‘I don't know, but it sounds like cheering. Hurry up and get dressed! We'll go and find out!'

The streets were full of soldiers; they were running, and as they ran they cheered; a staff officer on an emaciated horse was whipping and spurring the animal through the crowds; the two women stood on the brink of the human stream for a moment before they were swept into it. Valentina seized a soldier by the arm; she was running with him. ‘What's happened? Where's everyone going to?'

‘Don't you know?' he shouted at her; his face was alight, and there were marks down his face where tears of joy had washed it clean.

‘It's Ney! It's Ruddyhead! He's brought the rearguard through! It's a miracle, woman, a real miracle!'

It was a miracle; long after the hysteria had subsided, and the thin straggles of approaching men had been engulfed by their comrades and brought into Orcha in triumph, a miracle was the only fitting description of what Ney had done. No victory could have raised the sunken morale of the French troops as high as the sight of Ney walking at the head of his men, when everyone from Napoleon himself had mourned him as lost. The Emperor threw his arms round his neck and cried, and gave him the title which had never been given or earned by another. The Bravest of the Brave. The army lifted its low head and rejoiced, as if the Czar had suddenly surrendered; Ney was back and they weren't beaten yet. Out of his six thousand fighting men he brought eight hundred with him into Orcha. They were spread out in a camp on the perimeter of the town; there were no shelters for them except what could be improvised, but men came forward with their own rations and firewood, and extra blankets, and the surgeons spent most of the night tending the wounded, and there were many. With Alexandra and the Major by her side, Valentina began the search among the eight hundred.

‘Is there a Colonel De Chavel here?'

Again and again the question was asked and the same answer given. ‘No, not here.'

‘Has anyone seen him?'

‘No; never heard of him.'

They went into the wretched shelters, bending double, and the ranks of sallow starving faces lifted, resentful at being disturbed, and the shaggy heads shook in unison; Not known. Not here. Once, a middle-aged trooper hesitated, trying to remember something, and then he too shook his head. ‘There was a Colonel at Krasnoi—but I think he fell out in the march. Try the hospital tents.'

They began the nightmare tour, and by the end of it, Alexandra turned aside into the darkness and retched and retched with horror. Only Valentina stayed unmoved, by the frost-bitten amputations, the madness, the gangrene, the mutilations, because De Chavel was not among them. It was nearly dawn when they came to the last group of shelters; at each entrance there was the same reply. At the last place, a tent made of blankets and a piece of wagon covering, a young man in the tattered remains of a staff officer's uniform crawled out on hands and knees and stared up at them. De Lamballe carried a torch, and the light fell on him; he blinked and shielded his eyes.

‘What do you want? The Colonel's sleeping. You'll disturb him!' He put his arm down and said fiercely in a whisper, ‘Go away!'

‘Colonel? What Colonel?' de Lamballe demanded. ‘De Chavel? Is that his name?'

Valentina waited, one hand reaching out towards the young man who was looking at each of them in turn, frowning and bewildered. ‘Is it Colonel De Chavel?' she whispered. ‘Please tell me, is that his name?'

Duclos stood up. ‘Why, yes,' he said. ‘I think it must be. I've been taking care of him. I promised to bring him to Orcha and I kept my word. I've looked after him quite well, I think. Come in and see.' He stepped to one side and Valentina bent down and went in; the tent was in darkness, but the light of the Major's torch at the entrance showed her first a man lying on the ground wrapped in a greatcoat, and then, after a moment, it showed the man himself.