Russian series 03 - The Eagle's Fate (26 page)

‘The Admiral exploded then, and I’ve never heard such a magnificent exhibition of bad language in my life! He can swear in Russian, French, English, Turkish, Polish and German, and never repeats himself! One of the advantages of being a sailor, I suppose. The funny thing was that he said it all in a conversational tone with a smile on his face, so anyone show wasn’t close enough to hear what he was actually saying would have thought it was just a friendly conversation, and the Marshal just listened without a flicker of expression at all!’

The ladies made some slight pretence of being n at this, but the picture Lev conjured up obviously amused the two men a great deal, and the ladies permitted themselves tolerant smiles after a few moments.

‘How is Boris?’ enquired Tatya, remembering her auntly duty.

‘Oh, very well! He had a few unpleasant moments from time to time and collected a couple of scars—nothing serious, but enough to show he was there without spoiling his good looks! He’s grown up a great deal, and you wouldn’t have known him when we got to Vilna! A villainous great black beard, and a Cossack cap pulled down over his ears instead of his kiver! We spent Christmas together with the Karachev brothers, who’d been with the Marshal all the time.’

‘I don’t suppose you had a very good Christmas,’ Tatya commented.

‘Well, in the circumstances…it wasn’t all that bad, in fact. We had the satisfaction of knowing that the French were gone, of course, and the people did their best for us, but there was so much bickering and bad feeling between the Generals, and the conditions in the town…Most of us were arguing about what to do next—some, like me, anxious to come home, and others itching to cross the Niemen and chase Bonaparte all the way to Paris!’

‘You said that Boris and Vladimir Karachev are staying in the Army?’ Tatya said.

‘Yes. They’re professionals, of course, and still have a career to make. I’ve gone as far as I want with mine, put in fourteen years’ service and made Major, and, frankly, that’s more than enough for me, quite apart from my arm! The Emperor offered me a regiment, but I declined politely, so he gave me an order instead.’

‘An order?’ asked Irina, puzzled. ‘To do what?’

‘To wear this,’ Lev replied, with a grin, and pulled a case from his pocket. It contained a handsome red enamel and gold cross suspended from a scarlet ribbon, ‘The Order of St Alexander Nevsky! Pretty, isn’t it, Sparrow?’

It was passed round and admired. All of them, except Irina, had seen the Order on one or other of the senior officers of the Army and Navy, or Court Officials, but only Andrei, whose father had it, had ever had the chance to look closely at an example. The red-enamelled cross had four golden Imperial two-headed eagles between its arms, and a coloured enamel miniature icon of the saint was painted on a white disc in the centre. It was quite heavy.

‘why are you not wearing it?’ Tatya enquired.

‘I have to collect the ribbon and star first, and I shall only wear them in Court dress now I’m a civilian,’ Lev replied.

‘What are you going to do now you’re out of the Army?’ Andrei asked, obviously seeking to compare Lev’s intentions with his own.

‘Marry my Sparrow first of all, and then settle down and be a good landlord, on the Western model,’ Lev replied seriously. ‘With the amount of land I own that should keep me busy enough, and I hope I’ll be able to convert a few of my neighbours as well. It’s time we moved away from our Asiatic customs!’

‘I wish you luck!’ Andrei sounded as if he doubted if Lev would meet with much success in that particular ambition. ‘The Empire would be a great deal the better for a strong dose of Westernisation!’

‘Before you embark on Lev’s favourite subject.’ Tatya put in quickly, “I should draw your attention to the fact that it is past one in the morning, and Lev has just completed a very long journey! I suggest that we adjourn the meeting now, and resume after a few hours’ sleep!’

She had laid one hand on Andrei’s as she spoke, and gave it a little squeeze before she released it, and it was only then that he realised what she had done, and looked at her incredulously as she turned away to kiss her brother goodnight. Then he caught Nadya’s eye, and she managed to give him a little smile to show that she had noticed too.

Nadya carried the thought of that exchanged look to bed with her, and worried about it for a while, hoping that Andrei was not mistaking Tatya’s natural kindness for any deeper feeling. She knew how easy it was to let one’s hopes build on such a flimsy construction, interpreting another’s careless or kind action in accordance with one’s own desire, rather than with reality.

That, naturally enough, led her to wonder if she was falling in the same trap herself. Andrei had been kind to her in many ways, but she must remember that it was only because he was sorry for his initial harshness, and because he wished to please Tatya. After all, it would be very difficult for him to have any real liking for the sister of the man who had murdered his own brother, in spite of what he had said about it the other afternoon! A person might say that something was over and done with, and genuinely try to let the past bury its dead, but still not manage to stop feeling anger and resentment in the depths of his heart. Just as she could tell herself over and over again that she was a fool to go on loving Andrei when there was no hope that he would ever return her feelings, yet she loved him just the same!

She was moved to get out of bed and say her prayers again before her little icon of the three daughters of St Sophia, Faith, Hope and Charity. She asked for courage to accept the inevitable, but still with a rebellious little thought in the back of her mind that Catholic girls often prayed to St Catherine for the husband of their choice, against all odds. It did not make for a peaceful or restful night’s sleep.

In the morning, Tatya recollected that Lev’s last letter had mentioned coming home in January, and she enquired at breakfast how he had managed to arrive before December was out.

‘Ah, that’s thanks to Vassily Karachev,’ he replied. ‘One of the Ministries suddenly found it had urgent need of him, and summoned him to Petersburg. They sent him an Imperial Courier’s pass, which gave him first call on post-horses, and he invited me to keep him company on the journey. We fairly flew home, and he set me down on the doorstep as he passed the house.’

‘How odd!’ commented Nadya. ‘Why should a Ministry suddenly want someone as urgently as that?’

Lev scratched the side of his nose and shrugged. ‘He sometimes does odd errands for the Foreign Ministry, I believe,’ he replied evasively. ‘What’s to be done today, Tatya?’

‘You had best begin by going to see the Metropolitan, to find out when and where you may be married, and then I should think your tailor will wish to see you, unless you intend to go on wearing uniform despite resigning your commission. Try not to be late for luncheon, for we have an Imperious Command from Aunt Xenia for this afternoon.’

Tatya waved the note at him—one of the dozen or so which had been delivered that morning. Lev pulled a face and murmured something about nieces taking after aunts, then assumed a meek expression and said, ‘Yes, ma’am, no ma’am, very good, ma’am!’ in a rapid monotone, at which Tatya looked for a moment as if she might so far forget herself as to throw something at him. However she restrained herself and merely replied, ‘Go along then, and make a start!’

Lev did indeed ‘go along’ a few minutes later, and Andrei also excused himself and withdrew, but without saying where he was going. Tatya quickly riffled through the miscellany of invitations, divided them into two neat piles, and set them aside to be dealt with later.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘the men having been disposed of, we can start on the serious business! First of all, Irina, are you quite sure you wish to marry Lev?’

‘Yes!’ Irina looked quite shocked.

‘Good! I though so, but I don’t wish you to feel that you’re being rushed into anything! That being settled, we must make a few arrangements, and I’m sure Nadya can help us, if she will, so shall we retire to the garden-room and set to work?’

The ladies spent most of the morning sitting round the table in the garden-room compiling lists of guests to be invited to the wedding itself, and a much longer list of those who should be invited to the ball in the evening of whichever day it took place. Then they made a list of the bare necessities for Irina’s trousseau, the length of which quite frightened her, and another of things which could be left until later. After that, they discussed Irina’s wedding-gown, and decided in a warm golden shade overlaid with the Valenciennes, provided that Tatya could find it among the many trunks and boxes in the attics.

‘If not,’ said Tatya, ‘I shall ask Aunt Xenia, and if she had none to lend, we shall have to think again, for I doubt if it will be possible to buy French lace anywhere in Russia just now!’

Nadya did indeed contribute to the planning, but she was more conscious of her bruised side today and had not slept very well, so she concluded that she must be a little overtired. It was quite bad enough feeling stiff and a trifle out of sorts, so it seemed unreasonable that she should also feel rather low in spirits when everyone else was happy at Lev’s safe return so much earlier than they had expected, and excited about the wedding plans.

Lev arrived back punctually for luncheon, but had to report that he had not managed to see the Metropolitan.

‘We’ve overlooked the date,’ he said. ‘It’s the eve of New Year, so when I arrived at the Alexander Nevsky, they said he’s in retreat! However, I managed to see one of their senior fellows, and he’s going to arrange things and let me know. I said we’d prefer it in church, so it will probably be the Kazan Cathedral. I didn’t think Holy Trinity—all that grey marble is so depressing!’

Andrei came in just then, and apologised for being late, for they had begun the meal without him. Of course, Tatya apologised in turn for that, but she had been unsure whether or not he meant to be in for luncheon.

When the apologies were finished and Andrei was being served, he said to Lev, ‘I’d be grateful if you’d clarify something for me. There’s been a lot of criticism of Admiral Chichagov over the Beresina business. Everyone seems to think he should have stopped the French on the line of the river, but somehow he let them slip past and get away. What’s the truth about it?’

Lev considered the question, and then replied, ‘He made one mistake—he was misled by information that seemed reliable at the time. All his Staff agreed about it—that Bonaparte meant to cross the Beresina south of Borisov. So that was where most of us went, but in fact, the crossing was made north of Borisov. By the time we had turned round and gone back to the right place, two French Corps were over.

‘The Admiral attacked as soon as we’d got our breath back, and we fought damned hard, if you’ll excuse the adjective! The trouble was that the marshes were frozen, so the French were spread out all over them, and the Admiral had only twenty thousand men available, which may sound a lot, but more than half of them were cavalry, which were useless on that terrain and in the weather conditions, and the French had somewhere between forty and fifty thousand effectives, and half as many again in stragglers and oddments, some of whom could at least fire a musket.

‘They were still an army when they reached the Beresina. They were a broken rabble when they left it, and two-thirds of them never did leave it. If we’d not been misinformed, or if our other two Armies had arrived even one day earlier on the scene, none of them would have escaped. Mind you, I don’t think it made much difference. Looking back on it, it seems to me that Bonaparte started the destruction of his own army by advancing as far as Moscow. Then he stayed there too long, followed that by failing to break through to the southern route back to the west…I don’t mean to undervalue what our own people have done, or underestimate the effect of the weather, but I think it can fairly be said that the main weapon in Bonaparte’s defeat was his own over-confidence! D’you recall Aesop’s fable about the eagle?’

Everyone looked blank for a moment, mentally returning to their various nurseries, and Nadya was the first to reply. ‘Yes! The arrow which killed the eagle was feathered with one of his own plumes! And the moral was—er—“we often give our enemies the means of our own destruction”!’

A little shiver ran through her, for it reminded her of something she had thought not so very many weeks ago about her feelings for Andrei.

‘Precisely. Well done!’ said Lev. ‘That’s what I think, anyway.’

‘Thank you,’ Andrei said, and concentrated on his luncheon.

‘It must have been terrible, fighting in such awful weather,’ Tatya said tentatively.

‘Yes, it was,’ Lev replied. ‘I have no intention of talking about the last three months of 1812 to anyone, ever, so I’ll be obliged if you don’t ask me! There’s only one thing I want to remember, and I’ll tell you about that now, if you’d care to listen?’

Everyone murmured to the effect that they would be interested to hear, so he went on, ‘The Admiral’s Army stopped at Vilna, but Matvei Platov and his Cossacks went on after the French, all the way to the frontier at Kovno. The Admiral sent Boris and me to tell Matvei Ivanovich to come back when he’d finished seeing them off, and we found him with a hundred or so of his men and half a dozen light cannon on a little ridge overlooking the bridgehead.

‘It was some way out of the town, to the north, and the French had left a camp there and a guard for their pontoon bridges—there aren’t any permanent bridges in that area—when they invaded in June, but when we arrived, they’d fired the camp and two of the three bridges. It was night, and it looked like a scene from Dante’s Inferno—snow and wreckage and—and bodies everywhere all lit by that smoky, lurid light…

‘The last remnants of the French were dragging themselves over the bridge and the Cossacks were just watching—they hadn’t the heart to fire on the poor wretches! There was a small rearguard—only a dozen men—standing on the near end of the bridge, with one man in command—a tall fellow with a bushy red beard. He was wearing a ragged greatcoat—fur, mostly—and we could see quite a lot of gold braiding through the rents in it. Platov pointed to him and gave me his little telescope to take a look at him, saying “That’s Michel Ney!” And so it was! I recognised him, for I saw him several times at Tilsit.