His attempt to take her mind off her misfortune by a joke brought a half-smile to her cracked lips. But she could not stop crying, and it was a long time before his comforting and caresses persuaded her that her disfigurement would make no difference to his feelings for her.
That night the moon was obscured by clouds and they virtually stumbled on a little town that, from his map, Roger believed to be Zepel. If he was right they had covered twenty-five miles in a little over two days and nights, which he considered to be good going. The town was burned out and, having made a cautious reconnaissance, they reached the conclusion that it had been completely evacuated. The cold was almost petrifying, as a wind was blowing from the east, so they decided to seek shelter among the ruins. Near the far end of the single street they came upon a hovel that still had a roof, but from it moisture had dripped down during the daytime to form a curtain of icicles, two feet long, over the open doorway. Breaking them off they went inside, lit a fire and spent the remainder of the night there.
The next six days and nights were uneventful. At times they saw small towns or villages in the distance, but as soon as they entered still-inhabited country they were careful to keep well away from them. The greater part of their way lay through forests where more icicles hung like stalactites from the branches of trees made feathery and sparkling by the snow, and an utter silence reigned. Even on nights when the moon was hidden, the all-pervading snow gave them enough light to see their way without difficulty between the trunks of the trees, and these at least broke the force of the wind that never ceased to blow across the open areas. But they found the absolute silence, broken only by the occasional howling of wolves seeking the bodies of dead deserters, eerie and oppressive, and the climate tried them sorely.
Only when, still wearing their furs, they huddled together in the sleeping bag, were they really warm; and they came to dread having to leave it. Frostbite was a constant menace. Even a short exposure numbed their noses, ears and fingers. Not an hour passed but they had to rub these places on one another vigorously, with handfuls of snow, to restore the circulation. When they were on the march, Roger’s beard and the eyebrows of them both were always rimed with frost. Often they had difficulty in keeping their teeth from chattering, and Mary’s chilblains caused her agonies.
Just before dawn on the eighth day they reached the frozen Dvina. When they had followed its southern bank westward for a few miles they saw at intervals across the broad river palisades running along the lower part of big, snow-covered mounds, and Roger realised that the mounds must be the earthworks thrown up to form von Phull’s great redoubt, behind which lay Drissa. Since there had been constant fighting in that neighbourhood until fairly recently, Roger wondered for a moment why they had not come upon broken gun-carriages and other debris that always littered old battlefields; then he realised that such jetsam would long since have become mounds covered with snow, and that some of the smaller ones they had passed over probably concealed the bodie of men and horses.
By reaching the river they had accomplished nearly a third of their terrible journey and since, apart from the constant gnawing of the cold, they had suffered no ill, they were cheered by the thought that, if their luck held for just over another fortnight, they should reach Riga. But misfortune was about to strike at them again.
With all the other things he had to carry, Roger had been able to bring only five days’ rations for the horse. He had counted on coming upon some means of renewing the supply—perhaps a solitary, still-inhabited farmhouse with a barn he could raid, or a barrow of turnips buried for the winter. But such hopes had not materialised, and they had not dared go near any of the villages that were inhabited.
At the time that the Prussians had attacked Mary, Roger’s horse had already become pitifully thin; and they had not been long enough at the farmhouse for the plentiful supply of oats there to put much weight on it. So, although Mary had walked for a good half of the time, the hundred-mile trek to the Dvina had again reduced the animal to a living skeleton.
When they woke from their daily sleep on the third day they had been unable to give the poor beast any food, they found it dead. This blow necessitated a redistribution of the things on which their lives depended and, although the panniers were considerably lighter than when they had left the farm, much as Roger would now have liked to take the meat from a whole haunch of the horse, he had to limit himself to cutting off only a few pounds, as he would also have to carry the sleeping bag.
Following the course of the river, but now and then taking short cuts across the bends, they trudged on. Neither of them could decide whether the snow storms that half blinded them and sometimes caused them to lose their way but made the atmosphere a little warmer, or a clear sky under which a knife-like wind often cut fiercely at their chapped faces, was the greater affliction. Mary’s chilblains itched intolerably, then broke and bled and, for a time, Roger was stricken with snow blindness, so she had to lead him.
Their thirteenth day brought them within sight of the city of Daugavpils. With terrible longing they gazed at the spires and towers. There lay food in plenty, warmth, rest and comfort. But such joys were not for them. To have entered the city would almost certainly have meant death for Roger. Turning away, they made a great detour round it.
With the detours to avoid towns that they had had to make and, from time to time, losing their way in blizzards, they were now averaging only about ten miles in each twenty-four hours, and they still had about a hundred and thirty miles to go before they could hope to reach the coast. Neither said so to the other but, at times, both of them began to wonder if their strength would last out long enough for them to complete the journey. Apart from the horseflesh, which they had not yet touched, their supplies were getting low and, although that lightened their burdens, having to ration themselves more strictly was undermining their stamina.
On their sixteenth day they at last had a piece of luck. They were by then passing through the country that Macdonald’s corps had fought over and, here and there, the skeletons of burnt-out farmhouses rose starkly from the white sheet of the almost level plain. Since setting out they had come upon and searched a score or more of such ruins, but found nothing of use to them. On this occasion, they spent, from habit, a few minutes rummaging among the charred beams without result, then walked on through a hedge-enclosed plot that had once been the garden. At the bottom of it there was an orchard, the trees now bare and the snow on the branches glistening in the sunlight; but, among them, there were a number of beehives.
Assuming that they would be empty, Roger would have passed on, but Mary opened one and peered inside, then gave a cry of delight. The hives had not been taken in for the winter, so the bees were long since dead, but there were several combs of honey. Eagerly Roger set about hacking out lumps of the frozen honey, with his knife, then they happily sucked pieces of the sweet, sticky, life-giving food, devouring the wax as well. Having satiated their ravenous appetites, they started on a round of the hives to collect their contents. As they were about to open a third hive an angry, gutter-bred voice shouted in French:
‘Hi! Lay off there, ’less you wants a bullet. That’s my ’oney.’
Swinging round they saw that a tall, ragged figure had come up behind them and was pointing a musket at them. As the man had spoken in French, it was obvious that he was a deserter; so Roger called back:
‘You have no more right to this honey than we have. But I’ve no wish to quarrel with you. What’s your name.?’
‘Sergeant Gobbet, Sixth Grenadiers,’ the man replied promptly. ‘’Oo are you? Sounds from yer lingo as though you was an officer.’
‘I am,’ said Roger, and gave his name and rank.
The Sergeant grunted. ‘So you’re one of the bloody gilded Staff, eh? Well, I wouldn’t give a cuss if you was a Marshal. We’re all equals now. No difference ’tween you an’ me if the Ruskies get us. They’d soon settle our ’ash. No difference neither if we freeze ter death in t
his bleedin’ snow. What you got in them panniers?’
‘Supplies of more value than this honey. Still, we might have a talk. I take it you’re living in what is left of the farmhouse.’
‘No. In the barn. It’s got a bit of roof on.’
‘Very well. Let’s go back there.’
Sergeant Gobbet lowered his musket and they accompanied him to the barn. A low fire was burning there, and they squatted round it, gratefully warming their half-frozen hands by the glow of the embers, while the heat thawed out their frost-stiffened furs and water from them made little puddles on the floor.
The Sergeant was a big, burly man with a full beard, small, piglike eyes, a receding forehead and a wonderful, flowing moustache. Roger discussed with him their respective aims. The main difference was that, while Roger had a plan for getting out of Russia, the Sergeant had not. He had simply made off, thinking that on his own he would stand a better chance of remaining alive than if he stayed with the Grand Army. Before the opening of the campaign, he had been stationed in Germany for the best part of two years and had picked up a smattering of the language. Knowing that to enter a Russian town in a French uniform was to ask to be set upon and killed, for several days past he had been keeping a look-out for a solitary Russian peasant whom he could shoot and rob of his clothes. Then he had meant to go into a village and hope to pass himself off as a Rhinelander. But no peasant had crossed his path. Half-starving, he had reached the farm the previous day, found the honey, and meant to stay there for a few days, building himself up on it.
With a grim chuckle, he admitted that as Roger’s uniform had been hidden by his furs, he had taken him and Hipé for Russians and, had either of them been alone, he would by now be dead; but he had not liked to risk shooting as, had they been armed, the survivor might have shot him before he could reload his musket.
Roger then spoke of his project of trying to reach the coast and getting away in a ship. Gobbet objected that, on arriving in Riga or some similar port, they would still be in French uniforms, so would either be killed or sent as slave labour to some camp where, before the winter was out, they would be knouted unmercifully and die of privation. To that Roger replied that to raid an inhabited house to obtain civilian clothes before they neared the end of their journey would be foolish, as a hue and cry after them might be started; but when they did come to the outskirts of a port, they must take that risk and bury their uniforms. He added that both he and Hipé could speak Russian well enough to pass as Ukranians, and that he had ample money to buy passages in a ship for them; so if only they could come by enough food to keep them going on the way, he had good hopes of his plan succeeding.
The Sergeant’s objections having been overcome, he became enthusiastic about the idea, so it was decided to pool their resources and travel together. Roger produced some strips of horseflesh, the fire was made up and twenty minutes later they were chewing the hard, unsavoury meat with as much gusto as if it had been chicken. Gobbet was a garrulous man and, while they ate, he gave them an account of how things had been with the Grand Army when he decided to desert.
‘I was with Oudinot’s corps—“Old Blood and Guts” as we called ’im,’ he told them. ‘And a cracking good soldier ’e were, too. One what led ’is men in battle an’ took good care of ’em other times. Back in the summer ’e got us all these sheepskin coats, like wot I’m wearin’. The weather was that ’ot then we didn’t ’alf curse ’im. But come the autumn an’ the snow, we was a durn sight better off than the chaps with the other corps.
‘Things didn’t go too bad until early November, then the Ruskies got atop of us an’ pushed us east. Arter the middle o’ the month we was down on the Berezina. Some dam’ fool Polish General at Borisov ’ad given away the bridge over the river. But we got it back. Might ’ave made a stand there, too, if only Victor ’ad backed us up. But that red-faced drummer boy’s a bad General an’ a bad friend. ’E took ’is chaps across the river without a thought of anyone else. But our man, “Old Blood and Guts”, ’e waited for the Emperor.
‘About the 24th or 26th, wouldn’t say which, the days ’as got a bit muddled in me mind, the main army came along an’ started ter cross. The town bridge weren’t the only one. It were said that General Eble—’im wot’s the chief sapper—’ad ’ad orders ter burn ’is pontoons back at Orcha; but ’e ’adn’t, an’ ’e got two of ’em across the river ’igher up. All the same, things couldn’t ’ave been worse wi’out ’em.
‘The ’ole bleedin’ Russian army came chargin’ up, screamin’ blue murder an’ dead set ter finish us off. Old Kutuzov an’ both ’is pals who’d been out on the wings. Both sides of the river, they were. They flung at us everything they’d got: cavalry, infantry, them bastards of Cossacks on their little ponies, thousands of cannon balls an’ Gawd knows that. Davout’s boys managed ter clear the far bank, then the crossin’ began. Us lot an’ the old sweats further along managed ter ’old the Ruskies off, but a ’ole mass of troops panicked. Jus’ meant to get over the bloody river at any price an’ devil take the ’indmost. There was lots of women among ’em. Yes, an’ children they’d ’ad on the march, too, though ’ow they’d managed to keep ’em alive beats me. Any’ow, the ’ole lot stampeded like a ’erd of cattle, ’undreds of ’em were tryin’ to force their way across the bridges at the same time. Consequence was ’alf of ’em got pushed off the bridge inter the river.
‘Gawd, yer never see such ’orrors in yer life. ’Ole divisions panicked. Wouldn’t wait fer a chance ter cross by the bridge, but tried ter cross over the ice. The river weren’t frozen all that ’ard. It cracked up under their weight, an’ there was the poor devils strugglin’ in the icy water. Tryin’ ter climb on one another’s shoulders ter get out, they was. But not a ’ope. Couple of minutes was enough. The freezin’ water got ’em in the ’eart. They slipped back an’ drowned.
‘Then the biggest bridge, the one wot the vehicles was goin’ over, gave way. Weight was too much fer it. You jus’ can’t imagine the nightmare ter be seen then. Screamin’ men, women and kids was all mixed up in an ’orrible ’eap wi’ the icy water closin’ over ’em. We was all bein’ shelled cruel by the Ruskies, so all them wot ’adn’t got no discipline any longer was frantic ter get across the river. Them be’ind pushed them in front till the bloody river were so full of corpses you could ’a walked near dryshod over ’em. An’ the Ruskie shells blowing’ them wot weren’t drowned ter bits every minute. Then, ter put the lid on everything, the foot bridge that I an’ my pals were about ter cross caught fire.
‘That’s when I opted out, that was. I says to myself I says, “Baptiste Gobbet, you old sod. You bin in Italy an’ Egypt an’ ’Olland an’ Austria an’ God knows where else, an’ you always got away with it. But this ’ere’s too much. Among that mob of ’owling perishers you won’t stand no chance. You’d best take care of Number One.” Night were fallin’ by then, so I jus’ slipped away quiet like, an’ ’ere I am.’
When the Sergeant had finished describing the awful scenes of chaos that had taken place during the crossing of the Berezina, it emerged that both he and Roger had been wounded at Marengo, so they talked about the old days for quite a time before settling down for a sleep.
On waking they ate another meal, then hacked all the frozen honey out of the hives and packed it into the cooking pot that Mary always carried. Leaving the farm they followed the course of the river, for most of the time walking along its hard-frozen surface, but where that was too broken by boulders and piled-up floes of ice, taking to the bank. The honey greatly benefited Roger and Mary, putting new energy into them, but the climate remained arctic. Just as the past summer had been exceptionally hot, so this winter was proving exceptionally cold.
For three days, accompanied by the Sergeant, they continued on their way north-westward, travelling mostly by night and, whenever they sighted a village, leaving the river for the woods. During their halts, when they ate their miserably small meals before sleeping through the mid
dle of the day, Roger and Mary said little about themselves; but Gobbet proved a great raconteur and never tired of telling stories about adventures he had had during his many campaigns. He was typical of the old soldiers who had joined up in their youth as volunteers when the young Republic had been in danger of being overrun by the Monarchies. Tough, resourceful and unscrupulous, his language was foul and he was a born looter and lecher. Most of his stories and his accounts of how, when sacking cities, he had raped grandmothers and schoolgirls indiscriminately would have made Mary blush to the roots of her, now, six-inch-long hair had she not become accustomed to hearing such talk during her weeks with the Grand Army.
On the fourth evening after they had met Gobbet, they had not been on their way long when, in the distance, they discerned a town; so, in order to go round it they left the river and entered a forest. Darkness fell soon afterwards and, several hours later, they ran into grave danger.
It was not snowing at the time and a now waning moon gave just enough light to see by. Suddenly, among the tree-trunks ahead, Roger, who was leading, caught sight of low, moving shadows. Next moment the silence was shattered by a loud baying, and the shadows came bounding toward them. In terror they realised that they were about to be attacked by a pack of wolves.
Many times during the march from Moscow, and in recent weeks, they had heard the howling of wolves and seen them prowling in the distance; but the beasts had never threatened to molest the living, at least as long as they showed they had the strength to defend themselves. That was because, all through the winter, there had been innumerable corpses for them to feed on. But now, the three weary, half-frozen travellers had left behind the country that had been fought over.
The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware Page 39
