Flashman at the Charge fp-4

by George MacDonald Fraser

  "Ain't they worried you might ride for it?" says I.

  "Where to? We're two hundred miles north of the Crimea here, with nothing but naked country in between. Besides, the Count has a dozen or so of his old Cossacks in his service—they're all the guard anyone needs. Kubans, who could ride down anything on four legs. I saw them bring back four serfs who ran away, soon after I got here—they'd succeeded in travelling twenty miles before the Cossacks caught them. Those devils brought them back tied by the ankles and dragged behind their ponies—the whole way!" He shuddered. "They were flayed to death in the first few miles!"

  I felt my stomach give one of its little heaves. "But, anyway, those were serfs," says I. "They wouldn't do that sort of thing to -"

  "Wouldn't they, though?" says he. "Well, perhaps not. But this ain't England, you know, or France, or even India. This is Russia—and these land-owners are no more accountable than … than a baron in the Middle Ages. Oh, I dare say he'd think twice about mishandling us—still, I'd think twice about getting on his wrong side. But, I say, I think we'd best go back, and treat 'em to some harmless conversation—if anyone's bothering to listen."

  As we strolled back, I asked him a question which had been exercising me somewhat. "Who's the fair beauty I saw when I arrived?"

  He went red as a poppy, and I thought, o-ho, what have we here, eh? Young Scud with lecherous notions—or pure Christian passion, I wonder which?

  "That would be Valentina," says he, "the Count's daughter. She and her Aunt Sara—and an old deaf woman who is a cousin of sorts—are his only family. He is a widower." He cleared his throat nervously. "One sees very little of them, though—as I said, I seldom dine with the family. Valentina … ah … is married."

  I found this vastly amusing—it was my guess that young Scud had gone wild about the little bundle—small blame to him—and like the holy little humbug he was, preferred to avoid her rather than court temptation. One of Arnold's shining young knights, he was. Well, lusty old Sir Lancelot Flashy had galloped into the lists now—too bad she had a husband, of course, but at least she'd be saddle-broken. At that, I'd have to see what her father was like, and how the land lay generally. One has to be careful about these things.

  I met the family at dinner that afternoon, and a most fascinating occasion it turned out to be. Pencherjevsky was worth travelling a long way to see in himself—the first sight of him, standing at his table head, justified East's description of ogre, and made me think of Jack and the Beanstalk, and smelling the blood of Englishmen, which was an unhappy notion, when you considered it.

  He must have been well over six and a half feet tall, and even so, he was broad enough to appear squat. His head and face were just a mass of brown hair, trained to his shoulders and in a splendid beard that rippled down his chest. His eyes were fine, under huge shaggy brows, and the voice that came out of his beard was one of your thunderous Russian basses. He spoke French well, by the way, and you would never have guessed from the glossy colour of his hair, and the ease with which he moved his huge bulk, that he was over sixty. An enormous man, in every sense, not least in his welcome.

  "The Colonel Flashman," he boomed. "Be happy in this house. As an enemy, I say, forget the quarrel for a season; as a soldier, I say, welcome, brother." He shook my hand in what was probably only the top joints of his enormous fingers, and crushed it till it cracked. "Aye—you look like a soldier, sir. I am told you fought in the disgraceful affair at Balaclava, where our cavalry were chased like the rabble they are. I salute you, and every good sabre who rode with you. Chased like rabbits, those tuts*(*Renegades.) and moujiks on horseback. Aye, you would not have chased my Kubans so—or Vigenstein's Hussars24 when I had command of them—no, by the Great God!" He glowered down at me, rumbling, as though he would break into "Fee-fi-fo-fum" at any moment, and then released my hand and waved towards the two women seated at the table.

  "My daughter Valla, my sister-in-law, Madam Sara." I bowed, and they inclined their heads and looked at me with that bold, appraising stare which Russian women use—they're not bashful or missish, those ladies. Valentina, or Valla, as her father called her, smiled and tossed her silver-blonde head—she was a plumply pert little piece, sure enough, but I spared a glance for Aunt Sara as well. She'd be a few years older than I, about thirty-five, perhaps, with dark, close-bound hair and one of those strong, masterful, chiselled faces—handsome, but not beautiful. She'd have a moustache in a few years, but she was well-built and tall, carrying her bounties before her.

  For all that Pencherjevsky looked like Goliath, he had good taste—or whoever ordered his table and domestic arrangements had. The big dining-room, like all the apartments in the house, had a beautiful wood-tiled floor, there was a chandelier, and any amount of brocade and flowered silk about the furnishings. (Pencherjevsky himself, by the way, was dressed in silk: most Russian gentlemen wear formal clothes as we do, more or less, but he affected a magnificent shimmering green tunic, clasped at the waist by a silver-buckled belt, and silk trousers of the same colour tucked into soft leather boots—a most striking costume, and comfortable too, I should imagine.)

  The food was good, to my relief—a fine soup being followed by fried fish, a ragout of beef, and side-dishes of poultry and game of every variety, with little sweet cakes and excellent coffee. The wine was indifferent, but drinkable. Between the vittles, the four fine bosoms displayed across the table, and Pencherjevsky's conversation, it was a most enjoyable meal.

  He questioned me about Balaclava, most minutely, and when I had satisfied his curiosity, astonished me by rapidly sketching how the Russian cavalry should have been handled, with the aid of cutlery, which he clashed about on the table to demonstrate. He knew his business, no doubt of it, but he was full of admiration for our behaviour, and Scarlett's particularly.

  "Great God, there is an English Cossack!" says he. "Uphill, eh? I like him! I like him! Let him be captured, dear Lord, and sent to Starotorsk, so that I can keep him forever, and talk, and fight old battles, and shout at each other like good companions!"

  "And get drunk nightly, and be carried to bed!" says Miss Valla, pertly—they enter into talk with the men, you know, these Russian ladies, with a freedom that would horrify our own polite society. And they drink, too—I noticed that both of them went glass for glass with us, without becoming more than a trifle merry.

  "That, too, golubashka," says Pencherjevsky. "Can he drink, then, this Scarlett? Of course, of course he must! All good horse-soldiers can, eh, colonel? Not like your Sasha, though," says he to Valla, with a great wink at me. "Can you imagine, colonel, I have a son-in-law who cannot drink? He fell down at his wedding, on this very floor—yes, over there, by God!—after what? A glass or two of vodka! Saint Nicholas! Aye, me—how I must have offended the Father God, to have a son-in-law who cannot drink, and does not get me grandchildren."

  At this Valla gave a most unladylike snort, and tossed her head, and Aunt Sara, who said very little as a rule, I discovered, set down her glass and observed tartly that Sasha could hardly get children while he was away fighting in the Crimea.

  "Fighting?" cries Pencherjevsky, boisterously. "Fighting—in the horse artillery? Whoever saw one of them coming home on a stretcher? I would have had him in the Bug Lancers, or even the Moscow Dragoons, but—body of St Sofia!—he doesn't ride well! A fine son-in-law for a Zaporozhiyan hetman,* (*Leader.) that!"

  "Well, dear father!" snaps Valla. "If he had ridden well, and been in the lancers or the dragoons, it is odds the English cavalry would have cut him into little pieces—since you were not there to direct operations!"

  "Small loss that would have been," grumbles he, and then leaned over, laughing, and rumpled her blonde hair. "There, little one, he is your man—such as he is. God send him safe home."

  I tell you all this to give you some notion of a Russian country gentleman at home, with his family—although I'll own that a Cossack may not be typical. No doubt he wasn't to East's delicate stomach—and I gather
he didn't care for East too much, either—but I found myself liking Pencherjevsky. He was gross, loud, boisterous—boorish, if you like, but he was worth ten of your proper gentlemen, to me at any rate. I got roaring drunk with him, that evening, after the ladies had retired—they were fairly tipsy themselves, and arguing at the tops of their voices about dresses as they withdrew to their drawing-room—and he sang Russian hunting songs in that glorious organ voice, and laughed himself sick trying to learn the words of "The British Grenadiers". I flatter myself he took to me enormously—folk often do, of course, particularly the coarser spirits—for he swore I was a credit to my regiment and my country, and God should send the Tsar a few like me.

  "Then we should sweep you English bastards into the sea!" he roared. "A few of your Scarletts and Flashmans and Carragans—that is the name, no?—that is all we need!"

  But drunk as he was, when he finally rose from the table he was careful to turn in the direction of the church and cross himself devoutly, before stumbling to guide me up the stairs.

  I was to see a different side to Pencherjevsky—and to all of them for that matter—in the winter that followed but for the first few weeks of my sojourn at Starotorsk I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and felt absolutely at home. It was so much better than I had expected, the Count was so amiable in his bear-like, thundering way, his ladies were civil (for I'd decided to go warily before attempting a more intimate acquaintance with Valla) and easy with me, and East and I were allowed such freedom, that it was like month of week-ends at an English country-house, without any of the stuffiness. You could come and go as you pleased, treat the place as your own, attend at mealtimes or feed in your chamber, whichever suited—it was Liberty Hall, no error. I divided my days between working really-hard at my Russian, going for walks or rides with Valla and Sara or East, prosing with the Count in the evenings playing cards with the family they have a form of whist called "biritsch" which has caught on in England this last few years, and we played that most evenings—and generally taking life easy. My interest in Russian they found especially flattering, for they are immensely proud and sensitive about their country, and I made even better progress than usual. I soon spoke and understood it better than East—"He has a Cossack somewhere in his family!" Pencherjevsky would bawl. "Let him add a beard to those foolish English whiskers and he can ride with the Kubans—eh, colonel?"

  All mighty pleasant—until you discovered that the civility and good nature were no deeper than a May frost, the thin covering on totally alien beings. For all their apparent civilization, and even good taste, the barbarian was just under the surface, and liable to come raging out. It was easy to forget this, until some word or incident reminded you—that this pleasant house and estate were like a medieval castle, under feudal law; that this jovial, hospitable giant, who talked so knowledgeably of cavalry tactics and the hunting field, and played chess like a master, was also as dangerous and cruel as a cannibal chief; that his ladies, chattering cheerfully about French dressmaking or flower arrangement, were in some respects rather less feminine than Dahomey Amazons.

  One such incident I'll never forget. There was an evening when the four of us were in the salon, Pencherjevsky and I playing chess—he had handicapped himself by starting without queen or castle, to make a game of it—and the women at some two-handed game of cards across the room. Aunt Sara was quiet, as usual, and Valla prattling gaily, and squeaking with vexation when she lost. I wasn't paying much attention, for I was happy with the Count's brandy, and looked like beating him for once, too, but when I heard them talking about settling the wager I glanced across, and almost fell from my chair.

  Valla's maid and the housekeeper had come into the room. The maid—a serf girl—was kneeling by the card table, and the housekeeper was carefully shearing off her long red hair with a pair of scissors. Aunt Sara was watching idly; Valla wasn't even noticing until the housekeeper handed her the tresses."Ah, how pretty!" says she, and shrugged, and tossed them over to Aunt Sara, who stroked them, and said:

  "Shall I keep them for a wig, or sell them? Thirty roubles in Moscow or St Petersburg_ " And she held them up in the light, considering.

  "More than Vera is worth now, at any rate," says Valla, carelessly. Then she jumped up, ran across to Pencherjevsky, and put her arms round his shaggy neck from behind, blowing in his ear. "Father, may I have fifty roubles for a new maid?"

  "What's that?" says he, deep in the game. "Wait, child, wait; I have this English rascal trapped, If only … "

  "Just fifty roubles, father. See, I cannot keep Vera now."

  He looked up, saw the maid, who was still kneeling, cropped like a convict, and guffawed. "She doesn't need hair to hang up your dresses and fetch your shoes, does she? Learn to count your aces, you silly girl."

  "Oh, father! You know she will not do now! Only fifty roubles—please—from my kind little batiushka!"* (*Father.)

  "Ah, plague take you, can a man not have peace? Fifty roubles, then, to be let alone. And next time, bet something that I will not have to replace out of my purse." He pinched her cheek. "Check, colonel."

  I've a strong stomach, as you know, but I'll admit that turned it—not the disfigurement of a pretty girl, you understand, although I didn't hold with that, much, but the cheerful unconcern with which they did it—those two cultured ladies, in that elegant room, as though they had been gaming for sweets or counters . And now Valla was leaning on her father's shoulder, gaily urging him on to victory, and Sara was running the hair idly through her hands, while the kneeling girl bowed her pathetically shorn head to the floor and then followed the housekeeper from the room. Well, thinks I, they'd be a rage in London society, these two. You may have noticed , by the way, that the cost of a maid was fifty roubles, of which her hair was worth thirty.

  Of course, they didn't think of her as human. I've told you something of the serfs already, and most of that I learned first-hand on the Pencherjevsky estate, where they were treated as something worse than cattle. The more fortunate of them lived in the outbuildings and were employed about the house, but most of them were down in the village, a filthy, straggling place of log huts, called isbas, with entrances so low you had to stoop to go in. They were foul, verminous hovels, consisting of just one room, with a huge bed bearing many pillows, a big stove, and a "holy corner" in which there were poor, garish pictures of their saints.

  Their food was truly fearful—rye bread for the most part, and cabbage soup with a lump of fat in it, salt cabbage, garlic stew, coarse porridge, and for delicacies, sometimes a little cucumber or beetroot. And those were the well-fed ones. Their drink was as bad—bread fermented in alcohol which they call gvass ("it's black, it's thick, and it makes you drunk," as they said), and on special occasions vodka, which is just poison. They'll sell their souls for brandy, but seldom get it.

  Such conditions of squalor, half the year in stifling heat, half in unimaginable cold, and all spent in back-breaking labour, are probably enough to explain why they were such an oppressed, dirty, brutish, useless people—just like the Irish, really, but without the gaiety. Even the Mississippi niggers were happier—there was never a smile on the face of your serf, just patient, morose misery.

  And yet that wasn't the half of their trouble. I remember the court that Pencherjevsky used to hold in a barn at the back of the house, and those cringing creatures crawling on their bellies along the floor to kiss the edge of his coat, while he pronounced sentence on them for their offences. You may not believe them, but they're true, and I noted them at the time.

  There was the local dog-killer—every Russian village is plagued in winter by packs of wild dogs, who are a real danger to life, and this fellow had to chase and club them to death—he got a few kopecks for each pelt. But he had been shirking his job, it seemed.

  "Forty strokes of the cudgel," says Pencherjevskey. And then he added: "Siberia," at which a great wail went up from the crowd trembling at the far end of the barn. One of the Cossacks just lashed at them with h
is nagaika*(* Cossack whip.) and the wail died.

  There was an iron collar for a woman whose son had run off, and floggings, either with the cudgel or the whip, for several who had neglected their labouring in Pencherjevsky's fields. There was Siberia for a youth employed to clean windows at the house, who had started work too early and disturbed Valla, and for one of the maids who had dropped a dish. You will say, "Ah, here Flashy pulling the long bow", but I'm not, and if you don't believe me, ask any professor of Russian history.25

  But here's the point—if you'd suggested to Pencherjevsky or his ladies, or even to the serfs, that such punishments were cruel, they'd have thought you were mad. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to them.—why, I've seen a man cudgelled by the Cossacks in Pencherjevsky's courtyard—tied to a post half-naked in the freezing weather, and smashed with heavy rods until he was a moaning lump of bruised and broken flesh, with half his ribs cracked—and through it all Valla was standing not ten yards away, never even glancing in his direction, but discussing a new sledge-harness with one of the grooms.

  Pencherjevsky absolutely believed that his moujiks were well off. "Have I not given them a stone church, with a blue dome and gilt stars? How many villages can show the like, eh?" And when those he had condemned to years of exile in Siberia were driven off in a little coffle under the nagaikas of the Cossacks—they would be taken to the nearest town, to join other unfortunates, and they would all walk the whole way—he was there to give them his blessing, and they would embrace his knees, crying: "Izvenete, batiushka, veno vat,"* (*Pardon, father, I am guilty.) and he would nod and say "Horrosho,"*(*Very well.) while the housekeeper gave them bundles of dainties from the "Sudarinia*(*Lady.) Valla". God knows what they were—cucumber rinds, probably.