Knight Without Armour (17 page)

Fortunately for their chances of escape, the surrounding country was full
of wanderers, refugees driven from their homes by the press of war or famine,
seeking friends or relatives in distant parts of the country, or else
tramping vaguely from village to village in default of anything more definite
to do. Even in the forest country there were folk of this kind to be met
with, and A.J. could not think of any better disguise than for the two of
them to appear to be such wanderers. His own attire was reasonably suitable
as it stood, but he realised that it would take a certain amount of
adjustment to make his prisoner look like anything but a former aristocrat.
Her clothes, though old and shabby, were hardly such as a peasant would ever
have possessed, and her shoes, even after repeated patchings, were still
recognisably foreign. He dared not allow her to be seen until these
incongruities were removed, and he explained the matter to her briefly.
“We shall have to be particularly careful during the next twenty-four
hours,” he insisted. “As soon as it is daylight I will leave you
in some arranged spot and try to get clothes for you. If there is a village
anywhere within a few miles I ought to be able to manage it.”

After their short rest he climbed the hill while she remained more
prudently below. The moon was now fast sinking over a distant ridge, and
while he crouched in the long grass trying to get his bearings he saw the
first whiff of dawn creeping over the eastern horizon. Soon he could see the
forests turning from black to green and the sky from grey to palest blue;
then, very slowly, the mist unrolled along the floor of the valley. But there
was no sign of any village. It was, he knew, a sparsely populated district,
and quite possibly the nearest settlement might be a score or more miles
away. If that were so, he and his prisoner must hide in the forest during the
day and push on as fast as they could when night fell.

By the time he rejoined her it was quite light, and the clear cloudless
sky showed promise of a hot day. He took off his coat and then looked around
for a stream from which to fill his water-bottle. Cautiously he descended the
slope, skirting the hill in a wide curve, with the first rays of sunlight
splitting joyously through the foliage. How lovely the world seemed, but for
human beastliness, and how disgusting to wish that the birds were not singing
so loudly, because they made it difficult to listen for anyone approaching in
the distance. Yet behind a certain quiet rage and perturbation, excitement
was on him, and when at last he found a stream, bubbling crystal-clear over
pearl- grey rocks, he knelt to it and, dashing the icy water over his face
and head, felt what was almost a new sensation—happiness.

After filling his water-bottle he looked up and saw something that gave
him a sudden shock. It was a timbered roof half-hidden among the trees no
more than a hundred yards away, yet even so close it would have been easy to
miss it. Probably a woodman’s cottage, he thought, and with still
cautious steps approached a little nearer to find out. Then he saw a thin
wisp of smoke curling up amidst the treetops that screened the tiny
habitation. The loneliness of the place as well as its look of cosy
comfortableness lured him to an even closer examination; he worked his way
through the trees towards a side which no window overlooked. In another
moment he was standing against the outside wall and listening
carefully—but there were no sounds of voices or of movement from
within. Then he turned the corner and, crouching near the window, slowly
lifted his head and peered over the sill. It was the usual one-roomed
habitation of the peasant, very dirty and untidy; two persons, man and woman,
were sleeping on a heap of straw and rags in a corner, and from their
attitude and state of attire, A.J. guessed it to be a sleep of drunkenness.
With greater interest, however, he saw the heap of clothes on the floor which
the couple had thrown off. That settled it; it seemed that fortune had given
him a chance which it would be far bigger folly to miss than to take. With
his revolver in one hand he lifted the door-latch with the other; as he had
hoped and expected, the door was not locked. He simply walked in, picked up
the litter of clothes, walked out, closed the door carefully behind him, and
climbed the hill through the trees. Nothing could have been easier, and he
was glad that, from their appearance, the couple would still have many hours
to sleep.

His prisoner laughed when he threw down the heap of clothes in front of
her. Then she took grateful gulps of water from the bottle he offered.
“You are very kind, Commissar,” she said. “But you had
better not make a habit of leaving me alone as you did just then. I warn you
that I shall escape at any suitable opportunity.”

“Naturally,” he answered, with a shade of irony. “But
for the present remember that we are both escaping.”

“Yes, that’s queer, isn’t it? You are taking me to
Moscow, where I shall probably be put on trial and shot; but for the time
being I haven’t to think about that—I must only bother about
preserving my life during the next twenty-four hours.”

“Well?”

“I’m afraid it all strikes me as rather illogical. If I am to
be killed anyhow, does it matter very much who does the job?”

“That, of course, is for you to decide. Personally, if I were in
your place, I should rather think it
did
matter.”

She suddenly put a hand on his sleeve. “Commissar, I can lose
nothing, can I, by asking a question? Just this—must you really take me
to Moscow and hand me over? Hasn’t my own—our own—our
rather unusual fate so far—given you a hint of anything else? To me it
almost seems as if fate were asking you to give me a chance. Briefly,
Commissar, I have friends abroad—influential friends—who would
make it considerably worth your while if you would take me somewhere else
instead of Moscow. Odessa, shall we say—or Rostov? You would have
earned the reward by your courtesy alone, and as for me, how can the
Revolution suffer because one poor woman takes ship for a foreign
country?”

He looked at her for a moment in absolute silence. Then he merely replied:
“You are mistaken in me—I am not bribable. And also, by the way,
you must remember in future not to call me
‘Commissar.’”

“I see.” And after a pause she added: “You are quite
incorruptible, then?”

“Quite.”

She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “Well, anyhow, let’s
not quarrel about it. Perhaps, after all, you think I deserve to be
shot?”

“No, I don’t say that. I don’t think anything at all
about it. You are my prisoner and I am taking you to Moscow. That is
all.” He went on, more quickly: “Will you please put on these
clothes without delay? We
must
get on—every minute increases the
danger.”

“Are they clean?”

“I don’t know—I hadn’t time to look. Probably not,
but you must wear them, anyhow.”

She laughed and their serious conversation ended by tacit agreement. She
was amused at having to dress herself in a peasant’s long skirt and
coarse coloured blouse, and she was still further amused when he told her how
he had obtained them. Her own clothes they buried in a hiding-place under a
heap of dead leaves; it was safer, he decided, than trying to burn them. Then
he cut his beard and moustache, transforming his appearance to an extent that
caused her a good deal of additional amusement. Next their joint luggage was
carefully sorted out and all articles that might seem suspicious were also
hidden away under the leaves. Finally he slit open the lining of his coat and
carefully concealed all his commissary papers and a few government banknotes
of large denomination.

These preparations took some time, and it was after eight o’clock
when a fairly typical pair of peasant wanderers made their way down the hill
to the valley on the far side of it. The man was tall and well-built, with a
thin stubble of beard round his chin (he had not dared to give himself a
close shave because of the deep tan that covered the rest of his face). The
woman, slighter in build and pale even in the sunlight, trudged along beside
him. They did not converse a great deal, but the man exchanged cheerful
greetings with fellow- peasants passing in the opposite direction.

Arrangements had been reached about other matters. They had given each
other names that were common enough, yet not suspiciously so; he was Peter
Petrovitch Barenin, of the imaginary village of Nikolovsk, in the province of
Orenburg; she was his daughter Natasha (called ’Daly’). They were
trying to reach Petrograd, where he had a brother who had formerly been a
workman in the Putilov factory. They were both poor people, he a
simple-minded peasant who could neither read nor write, but his daughter,
thank God, had had an education and had spent some years as lady’s maid
in an aristocratic family. (Hence her accent and soft hands.) But they had
both fallen lately on evil times—she, of course, had lost her job, and
he had had his cottage burned down by White brigands. It was all just the
sort of ordinary and quite unexceptionally pathetic case of which there were
probably some millions of examples at that time throughout the country.

The morning warmed and freshened as the couple wound their way along the
valley road. They met few people, and none save humble travellers like
themselves; from one of these peasant wayfarers A.J. bargained a loaf of
bread. With this and a few wild strawberries gathered by the roadside they
made a simple but satisfactory meal, washed down with icy mountain-water from
a stream.

Throughout the day they did not see a solitary habitation or come within
rumour of a village. All about them stretched the lonely forest-covered
foothills of the Urals, dark with pine-trees and soaring into the hazy
distance where a few of the peaks still kept their outlines hidden in mist.
The air was full of aromatic scents, and by the wayside, as they trudged,
high banks of wildflowers waved their softer perfumes.

Towards evening they met an old bearded peasant of whom A.J. asked the
distance to the nearest village. “Three versts,” he answered.
“But if you are travellers seeking a night’s shelter, you had
better not go there.” A.J. asked why, and the man answered: “A
band of soldiers have been raiding the place in search of someone supposed to
have murdered a Red guard in the forests. The soldiers are still there, and
if you were to arrive as a stranger they might arrest you on suspicion. You
know what ruffians those fellows are when they are dealing with us simple
folk.” A.J. agreed and thanked the man; it was a fine night, he added,
and it would do himself and his daughter no harm to rest in the forest.
“Oh, but there is no need to do that,” urged the other.

“You can have shelter at my cottage just away up yonder hill. I am a
woodcutter—Dorenko by name—but I am not a ruffian like most
woodcutters. As soon as I saw you and your daughter coming along the road I
thought how tired she looked and I felt sorry for her. Yes, indeed, brother,
you are fortunate—not many woodcutters are like me. I have a kind
heart, having lost my wife last year. Perhaps I may marry again some day. I
have a nice little cottage and it is clean and very comfortable, though the
cockroaches are a nuisance. Come, brother, you and your girl will enjoy a
good meal and a night’s rest under a roof.”

A.J., thinking chiefly of the soldiers in the neighbouring village,
accepted the invitation, and the three began to walk uphill, turning off the
road after a short distance and entering again the steep and already
darkening forest. A.J. told the old man the barest facts about himself; and
was glad to note that they were accepted quite naturally and without the
least curiosity. “I, too, had a daughter once,” said Dorenko,
“but she ran away and I never heard of her afterwards. She was not so
good-looking as yours.”

After a quarter of an hour’s hard climb they came to another of
those forest cottages, timber-built, and completely hidden from any distant
view. The interior was not particularly clean and comfortable, despite
Dorenko’s contrary opinion, and though also, after his warning, they
were prepared for cockroaches, they had hardly imagined such a plague of them
as existed. They swarmed over everything; they were on walls and roof, and in
every crack and corner; they had to be shaken off the bread and skimmed out
of liquids; they crackled underfoot and fell in soft sizzling pats on to the
smouldering hearth. “Yes,” admitted Dorenko, tranquilly,
“they are a nuisance, but I will say this for them—they never
bite.”

Dorenko was certainly hospitable. He made his guests an appetising meal of
soup and eggs; barring the cockroaches, there would have been much to enjoy.
He talked a good deal, especially about his late wife and his loneliness
since she had died. “Yes, indeed, I may marry again some day. I am on
the lookout for the right sort of person, as you may guess. And, of course,
it would not be a bad match in these days for a girl to marry an honest
woodcutter who has his own cottage and perhaps a little money hidden away,
too.” He leered cunningly. “You see I am trusting you, Peter
Petrovitch. I know you are not the kind that would rob an honest woodcutter.
But it is a fact, I assure you—I have hundreds of silver roubles buried
in the ground beneath this cottage. Think of it—and you are, without
doubt, a poor man!”

“I am a poor man, it is true, but I certainly would not rob
you.”

“I know that, brother. As soon as I saw you coming along the road I
thought—Here comes an honest man. And honest men are rare in these
days—nearly as rare as gold roubles, eh? Or shall we say nearly as rare
as a good-looking woman?”

A.J. conversed with him amiably for a time and then, as it was quite dark
and Dorenko possessed no lamp, suggested settling down for the night. He was,
in fact, dead tired, and he knew that Daly (as he had already begun to think
of her) must be the same. He arranged for her to have the best
place—near the fire and for that reason not so popular with the
cockroaches; he and Dorenko shared the ground nearer the door. He was so
sleepy that he felt almost afraid of going to sleep; he guessed that in any
emergency he would be hard to awaken. However, Dorenko seemed trustworthy and
there was always the revolver at hand. He lay down with it carefully
concealed beneath the bundle of clothes that formed his pillow. Neither he
nor Daly undressed at all, but Dorenko took off his outer clothes and
performed the most intimate ritual of toilet quite frankly and shamelessly in
the darkness. A decent, honest fellow, no doubt.