The Girl Who Fought Napoleon: A Novel of the Russian Empire (16 page)

At the center of the village was a handful of finer houses with stables, surrounded with brick walls. My colonel’s house was a compound with several outbuildings, a small bathhouse, stables, and a vegetable garden.

The colonel’s wife rushed out the door to meet us, pulling off her apron. This middle-aged and comely woman put a hand on her husband’s knee, not waiting for him to dismount. He bent over in his saddle, kissing her heartily. She was a tall woman, plump, with black eyes, brows, and hair, and a swarthy complexion.

“Ah! Jiula. May I present you to our guest, Aleksandr Vasilevich.”

Jiula’s hand flew to her mouth.

“So young! And dressed like a Caucasus Cossack!”

Her eyes scanned my dirty red uniform. She stared into my eyes.

“How could your parents allow you to leave their home alone? You can’t be more than fourteen. My son is eighteen and I will only permit him to go to foreign lands with his father.”

She smiled at me in a most agreeable way, clucking over me as if I were her own chick. After we took care of our horses, we returned from the stables to find that Jiula had set the table with honey, grapes, cream, and sweet, newly pressed wine.

When I hesitated to drink with the rest of the family—three boys—she poked fun at me.

“Ah, you dare not drink, young man! Here on the Don we all drink our wine. Women, even children, drink it like water.”

Of course I was afraid I might become tipsy and say or do something foolish that would betray my gender. And I was terrified of overloading my bladder and having to relieve myself publicly, by the side of the road as a man would. I always planned my urination breaks carefully before dawn or in the cover of night.

I had never tasted wine before but at her insistence I did. I felt her eyes scrutinizing me. Women’s eyes frightened me. They could catch on too quickly, recognizing their own in disguise.

The colonel replenished his supplies and left me immediately in the company of his wife. I watched him wave as he galloped his horse over the steppes into the horizon.

The next morning as I ate my breakfast, the colonel’s wife’s eyes were fixed on me.

“How unlike a Cossack you are, Aleksandr Vasilevich!”

I lifted my lips from the rim of the teacup she had handed me.

“How is that?”

“You are so pale, so slender, so shapely—like a young lady,” she said, smothering a giggle with her hand.

I quickly took another draft from my teacup to hide my face. I scalded my mouth and spat out the tea on her floor.

“Please pardon me!” I sputtered, looking around for a rag to wipe up the small puddle at my feet. “Let me clean it up.”

Her eyes fixed on me again. “Of course not! A military officer cleaning up a spill in a woman’s house? No Cossack would do such a thing!”

Certainly a Russian nobleman would not clean the floor. He would leave it for the serfs, I could hear her thinking.

Of course she was right. I settled back into the chair as she brought a rag to clean up my mess.

“Oh, Aleksandr Vasilevich! What a curious boy you are. Do you know what my women think? They have already told me this morning that they believe you are a girl in disguise!”

She burst out laughing, her merry eyes looking up at me from the ground as she wiped up the spill.

I forced a laugh. But I was dying inside.

“Here,” said the kind lady. “I have something for you.”

She left the room returning with a neat pile of blue linen in her hands.

“My husband asked me to dress you in proper Don clothes. You must not wear the red in our region. You are a guest of the Don Cossacks while under our roof.”

She laughed, adding, “And your scarlet uniform is tattered and dirty. It is falling to shreds on your little body!”

I bowed low in thanks. I was proud to accept the Don uniform but blushed hot red at her scrutiny of my body.

“Thank you, madam,” I said. “I am deeply honored.”

I left the colonel’s house as quickly as I could, riding Alcides across the steppe. From that morning on, I avoided the women as much as possible by staying away until nightfall.

A Cossack’s life was simple and communal. Every man worked the fields, even the officers. Lieutenants, captains, and even colonels who were not on active duty joined together at daybreak. They worked in long lines across the width of a pasture, their scythes arching overhead in a fluid motion, from right to left, left to right, a unified wave, the rhythm punctuated by the dry rustle of severed stalks falling to the ground. Old veteran officers, once decorated for their feats and courage in battle, now took their place among the rest, beads of sweat on their battle-scarred brows.

I recognized some of the Cossacks from our march. They pulled off their caps, whistling and waving to me as Alcides pranced by.

“Aleksandr Vasilevich! Once we have made the harvest and our captain returns, we will mount our horses and ride together again!”

The field erupted in cheers. I noticed the smiles of contentment on their damp faces.

This manual labor was not shameful to them. On a Russian nobleman’s estate, only serfs would do this kind of work. But here, the lands belonged to each and all of them, the bounty of the harvest would benefit all Cossacks of that village of the Don.

But a Cossack was a military animal. Any other chore beyond war and harvest was beneath his dignity. All the men were eager to mount their horses and go to war. It was the Cossack women who planted the crops, tended the fields, cut the wood, raised the children, and kept hearth and home fires burning.

The colonel’s wife worried about me, gone away the whole day from the home. I ate my cabbage soup by an oil lamp while she sat by the green tiled stove, knitting.

“You are so curious, Aleksandr Vasilevich!” she said, glancing up at me. “Why do you spend so much time away from our comfortable house? You should rest before the march, but you are always riding your horse, coming back at dark.”

“I want to remain fit for the march, madame. A good day’s ride keeps me in condition as it does my horse. Is that not the Cossack way?”

She laughed, putting down her knitting. “Yes, you could do with some more muscle, Aleksandr Vasilevich. And some fattening. Look how slender you are, like a fawn! You eat my cabbage soup but don’t touch the good fatty meat and sour milk. That and the pancakes with clotted cream would put weight on you.”

I struggled not to make a face. To my taste, Cossack meals of cold lamb trotters and hot mutton roasts swimming in soured milk did nothing to pique my appetite. I preferred the standard rations I had grown accustomed to on the march: cabbage soup, millet or buckwheat kasha.

“If you had more muscle and substance, a Cossack girl might take a fancy to you, Aleksandr Vasilevich!”

That settled it. No clotted cream for me.

While I rode through the village at dawn every day, I watched the young boys—some not more than three years old—ride the tribe’s horses to the stream. They rode bareback through the marsh grass, the feathered tips of the stalks tickling the soles of their feet. At the stream, the horses stood side by side, their necks extended down, muzzles sucking in the cold water. Meanwhile the boys on their backs wrestled, trying to knock each other to the ground. They roared with laughter as the littlest of them fell backwards off his pony, splashing into the frigid water.

Then they galloped their horses off to play war games. They raced each other along the dirt road from the river to the hay fields to the stables. The men harvesting whistled and urged them on.

Soon enough the boys would help gather the sheaves, but the scything was men’s work. Learning to become expert horsemen was crucial.

In the village at sunset, I passed a knot of women leaving the church. They grew silent as I rode by. I felt their black eyes scanning my body, scrutinizing my skin, face, even the new growth of hair along the back of my neck.

I shivered under their scrutiny, the hairs on my neck standing on end. I made up my mind to leave immediately, with or without the Cossack regiment.

As I rode back to the colonel’s house, I heard his voice ringing above the voices of other men.

“Ah! Aleksandr Vasilevich! There you are,” he said, as I slid off Alcides. “You must make ready, for we leave at dawn.”

The Cossack regiment was headed to the Grodno province, where many regular army regiments were gathered.

“You will be able to choose a good regiment,” said the colonel. “If they choose you!”

“Thank you, Colonel. I can never repay your kindness.”

He tousled my hair. “May God be with you, lad. Now get some sleep.”

I saddled Alcides at three in the morning. He snorted at the intrusion in the pitch black of night but settled when he drew in my scent.

“We are riding north, boy,” I said, slipping the bridle over his head. “We will be in battle, you and I. Just as soon as I can join a regiment.”

When I went into the house to bid good-bye to my hostess, a crowd of family packed the house. There on the floor was the colonel kissing his mother and father’s feet, asking their blessing for his journey.

“Go with God,” the parents blessed their son.

I thought of my childhood friend Olga, who had described the Cossacks as barbaric. Ignorant she was and ignorant she would remain.

I heard a rustle of a dress behind me. I turned and saw one of the servant women at my shoulder.

The old Cossack woman leaned closer and hissed in my ear. “And why are you still standing here alone, young lady? Your friends are mounted and your horse is running around the yard.”

I turned to her in horror. She nodded, an ironic smile twisting her face.

“We Cossack women are no fools. Go, little soldier girl,” she said. “But don’t touch our men or you’ll be sorry.”

Her words haunted me. I hurried out the door to where I had tied Alcides. No soldier had ever been as eager to begin a march.

The new regiment included many of the village Cossacks, but also many others I did not know. These other officers were better educated and remarked on my good manners, indicating my level of upbringing.

The command “To the right by threes!” rang out and we set off, the first unit singing “The Soul Is a Good Steed.”

Life on the route to Grodno with the Cossacks relieved my fears. I realized that women were much more intuitive about my sexual identity than the men who wrote me off as a young lad of nobility who neither drank much nor smoked.