The Commodore h-10

by Cecil Scott Forester

  “Your Majesty is too kind,” gulped Hornblower.

  Then the royal group passed on, and Hornblower turned to meet the Countess’s glance again. The fact that the Tsar had addressed a few words to him personally evidently confirmed her suspicions that he was a man of potential influence, and there was a considering look in her eyes.

  “Will you be making a long stay in Russia?” she asked.

  It was very hard, during this period of intense reaction, to keep his mind on anything. All he wanted to do was to sit down and rest quietly. He flogged his mind into making a polite rejoinder, and when the men of the party began to ply him with questions about the British Navy and about maritime affairs in general he tried to answer sensibly, but it was a forlorn hope.

  Footmen were rolling in long buffet tables, glittering with gold and silver; Hornblower forced himself to watch keenly, so as to commit no breach of etiquette. To one side the royal party had taken their seats. Empresses and Tsar in armchairs and the princes and princesses in upright chairs, and everyone had to be careful always to face in that direction so as not to commit the heinous crime of letting royalty see a human back. People were beginning to take food from the buffets, and, try as he would, Hornblower could see no sign at all of any attention to precedence. But there was the Persian Ambassador munching something from a gold plate, so that he was justified in making a move in the same direction. Yet all the same this was the most curious dinner he had ever attended, with everyone standing up except royalty: and royalty, he could see, were eating nothing at all.

  “May I offer you my arm, Countess?” he said, as the group began to drift towards a buffet.

  The courtiers by dint of long practice had seemingly mastered the art of eating while standing up and while holding their hats under their arms, but it was not easy. His dangling sword was liable to trip him, too, and that infernal pistol in his waistband was digging uncomfortably into his side. The footmen serving at the buffets understood no French, and the Countess came to Hornblower’s rescue with an order.

  “That is caviare,” she explained to him, “and this is vodka, the drink of the people, but I think you will find that the two are admirably suited to each other.”

  The Countess was right. The grey, unappetizing-looking stuff was perfectly delicious. Hornblower sipped cautiously at the vodka, and in his present highly-strung condition hardly noticed the fierce bite of the liquor; but there was no doubt that vodka and caviare blended together exquisitely. He felt the warm glow of the alcohol inside him, and realized that he was desperately hungry. The buffet was covered with foods of all kinds, some being kept warm in chafing dishes, some cold; under the tutelage of the Countess, Hornblower went a fair way towards tackling them all. There was a dish apparently of stewed mushrooms that was excellent, slices of smoked fish, an unidentifiable salad, some varieties of cheese, eggs both hot and cold, a sort of ragout of pork. There were other liquors as well, and Hornblower ate and drank with his spirits rising momentarily, playing his part in the conversation and feeling more and more warmly grateful to the Countess. It might be a queer way to have dinner, but Hornblower thought he had never tasted such delicious food. His head began to whirl with the liquor; he knew that danger signal of old, although this time he did not resent it quite so bitterly as usual, and he checked himself in the midst of a laugh in time not to be too unrestrained. Laughter, chatter, and bright lights; this was one of the jolliest parties he had ever attended—he felt as if it had been someone else who had slashed Braun’s wrist open with a sword an hour ago. Hornblower replaced his lovely porcelain plate on the buffet, among the gold dishes, and wiped his mouth with one of the silken napkins that lay there. He was comfortably replete, with the gratifying sensation of having eaten just too much and having drunk just enough; he supposed coffee would be served soon, and a cup of coffee was all he needed to complete his internal gratification.

  “I have dined extremely well,” he said to the Countess.

  The most remarkable expression passed over the Countess’s face. Her eyebrows rose, and she opened her mouth to say something and then shut it again. She was smiling and puzzled and distressed all at the same time. She again started to speak, but her words were cut short by the ceremonial opening of yet another pair of doors from which twenty or thirty footmen emerged to form an avenue leading into the next room. Hornblower became conscious that the royal party had risen from their chairs and were falling into formation, and the complete cessation of conversation told Hornblower that some specially solemn moment had arrived. Couples were moving about the room like ships jockeying for position. The Countess laid her hand on his arm with a gentle pressure as if to lead him. By George, a procession was forming behind the royal party! There went the Persian Ambassador, a smiling girl on his arm. Hornblower just had time to lead his own partner forward to join the procession next, and after two or three more couples had joined behind him the procession began to move forward, its tail being steadily lengthened as it went. Hornblower kept his eyes on the Persian Ambassador before him; they passed down the avenue of footmen, and entered the next room.

  The procession was breaking off to left and to right in alternate couples as though in a country dance; the Persian Ambassador went to the left, and Hornblower was ready to go to the right without the prompting of the gesture of the Grand Marshal, who was standing there ready to direct anyone in doubt. It was another enormous room, lit by what seemed to be hundreds of cut-glass chandeliers dangling from the roof, and all down the length of it ran a vast table—miles long, it seemed, to Hornblower’s disordered imagination—covered with gold plate and crystal and embanked with flowers. The table was shaped like a T with a very small crosspiece, and the royal party had already taken their seats at the head; behind every chair all the way down stood a white-wigged footman. It dawned upon Hornblower that dinner was about to begin; the food and drink which had been served in the domed hall had been something extra and introductory. Hornblower was ready to laugh at himself for his idiotic lack of comprehension at the same time as he was ready to groan with despair at the thought of having to eat his way through an Imperial dinner in his present distended condition.

  Save for royalty, the men were standing at their chairs while the ladies sat; across the table the Persian Ambassador was bending affably over the young woman he had brought in, and the aigrette in his turban nodded and his diamonds flashed. The last woman took her seat, and then the men sat down together—not quite as simultaneously as marines presenting arms, but almost so. A babble of conversation began immediately, and almost immediately a golden soup plate was put under Hornblower’s nose and a golden soup tureen full of pink soup was offered to him for him to help himself from. He could not help glancing down the table; everyone had been given soup at the same moment—there must be two hundred footmen at least waiting at table.

  “That is M. de Narbonne, the French Ambassador,” said the Countess, indicating with a glance a handsome young man across the table two places higher than the Persian Ambassador. “Of course the Grand Marshal did not present you to him. And that is the Austrian Ambassador, and the Saxon Minister, and the Danish Minister, all your enemies officially. The Spanish Ambassador comes from Joseph Bonaparte, not from the Spanish partisan government which you recognize, so you could hardly be presented to him either. I don’t believe there’s a soul here except us Russians to whom it would be proper to present you.”

  There was a cool, pleasant yellow wine in a tall glass before Hornblower, and he sipped it.

  “My experience to-day,” he said, “is that the Russians are the most delightful people in the world, and Russian women the most charming and most beautiful.”

  The Countess flashed a glance at him from her sultry eyes, and, it seemed to Hornblower, set his brains creeping about inside his skull. The golden soup plate was whisked away and replaced by a golden dinner plate. Another wine was poured into another glass before him—champagne. It effervesced just as his thoughts appeared
to him to be doing. His footman spoke to him in Russian, apparently offering him a choice, and the Countess settled the problem without referring to him.

  “As this is your first visit to Russia,” she explained, “I could be sure that you have not yet tasted our Volga River trout.”

  She was helping herself to one as she spoke, from a golden dish: Hornblower’s footman was presenting another golden dish.

  “A gold service looks very well,” said the Countess sadly, “but it allows the food to grow unfortunately cold. I never use mine in my house save when I entertain His Imperial Majesty. As that is the case in most houses I doubt if His Imperial Majesty ever has a hot meal.”

  The gold knife and fork with which Hornblower dissected his fish were heavy in his hands, and scraped oddly against the gold plate.

  “You have a kind heart, madame,” he said. “Yes,” said the Countess, with deep significance.

  Hornblower’s head whirled again; the champagne, so cold, so delicate, seemed perfectly adapted to put this right, and he drank of it thirstily.

  A couple of fat little birds on toast followed the trout; they melted delicately in the mouth; some other wine followed the champagne. And there was a venison stew, and a cut off some roast which might be mutton but which was borne on Pegasus-wings of garlic beyond mundane speculation. Somewhere in the procession of food appeared a pink water ice, only the third or fourth which Hornblower had ever tasted.

  “Foreign kickshaws,” said Hornblower to himself, but he enjoyed the food and had no prejudice against foreign cookery. Perhaps he said ‘foreign kickshaws’ to himself because that was what Bush would have said had he been eating the dinner. Or perhaps it was because he was a little drunk—Hornblower’s persistent self-examination brought him to this startling conclusion with a shock, comparable with that received by a man walking into a stanchion in the dark. He must certainly not get drunk while he was representing his country, and he would be a fool to get drunk while in the imminent personal danger which surrounded him. He personally had brought an assassin to the palace, and if the fact ever leaked out it would go hard with him, especially if the Tsar should become aware that the assassin was armed with a rifled pistol which was Hornblower’s private property. Hornblower sobered still further when it came to him that he had forgotten all about his junior officers—he had left them trying to dispose of the wounded assassin, and what they would do with him was more than he could guess.

  The Countess beside him was pressing his foot under the table; and a little electric thrill ran through him and his steadiness vanished once more. He smiled at her beatifically. She gave him a long look with lowered lids and then turned away to address a remark to her neighbour on her other side, a tactful hint for Hornblower to pay a little attention to the Baroness to whom he had hardly spoken a word. Hornblower plunged feverishly into conversation, and the general in the outlandish dragoon uniform on the far side of the Baroness joined in with a question about Admiral Keats, whose acquaintance he had made in 1807. The footman was offering a new dish; his hairy wrist was exposed between his cuff and his white glove, and that, wrist was spotted with flea-bites. Hornblower remembered having read in one of the books he had been studying about the northern powers that the farther east one travelled the worse the vermin became—the Polish flea was bad, but the Russian flea was unbearable. If it was any worse than the Spanish flea, with which Hornblower had an intimate acquaintance, it must be a remarkably well developed flea.

  There must be hundreds—there must actually be thousands—of servants in this palace, and Hornblower could guess how closely they must be herded together. Having waged a ceaseless war against body-vermin for twenty years in crowded ships Hornblower was well aware of the difficulty of extermination. But while one part of his mind was discussing with the dragoon general the principles of seniority and selection in the British Navy another part was telling himself that he would greatly prefer not to be served by a flea-bitten footman. The conversation languished, and Hornblower turned back to the Countess.

  “Do pictures interest monsieur very much?” she asked.

  “Of course,” said Hornblower politely. “The picture gallery in this palace is very fine. You have not seen it yet?”

  “I have not yet had that pleasure.”

  “This evening, after the royal party has retired, I could show it to you. Unless you would rather join one of the card tables?”

  “I would much prefer to see pictures,” said Hornblower. His laugh rang a little loud even in his own ears.

  “Then if, after the royal party has withdrawn, you are by the door on the far side of the room, I shall show you the way.”

  “That will be delightful, madame.”

  They were drinking toasts at the head of the table—for the first one everyone had to stand while they drank the health of the Prince of Sweden, and after that conversation perforce became disjointed with other toasts to be drunk, announced by a gigantic official with a colossal voice—Stentor with Hercules’ frame, said Hornblower to himself, pleased with the classical touch—who stood behind the Tsar’s chair. Between toasts there was music; not orchestral music, but vocal music from an unaccompanied male choir, seemingly of hundreds of voices which filled the vast room with their din. Hornblower heard it with the faint but growing irritation of the completely tone-deaf. It was a relief when the music ceased and everyone stood once more while the royal party withdrew through a doorway near the head of the table, and no sooner had the door closed after them than the women went out too, ushered through the far door by Madame Kotchubey.

  “À bientôt,” smiled the Countess, as she left him.

  The men began to gather in groups along the table while footmen hastened in with coffee and cordials; Wychwood, his bearskin still under his arm, made his way round to Hornblower. His face was redder than ever; his eyes, if it were possible, stuck out even farther from his head.

  “The Swedes’ll fight if Russia will,” said Wychwood, in a grating whisper. “I have that direct from Basse, who was with Bernadotte all day.”

  Then he passed on and Hornblower heard his remarkable French being practised on a uniformed group higher up the table. The room was unbearably hot, presumably because of the infinity of candles alight in it; some of the men were already beginning to drift away through the door where the women had preceded them. Hornblower drank his coffee and rose to his feet, transferring his cocked hat once more from his knees to under his arm. The room he entered must have been the counterpart of the one in which the royal reception had been held, for it was domed too, and of similar proportions; Hornblower remembered the two domes he had seen when his carriage drew up to the palace. It was dotted with chairs and sofas and tables, round one of which a group of dowagers were already playing cards, and an elderly couple were playing backgammon at another. At the far end his eye instantly discerned the Countess, seated on a couch with her train spread beside her and her coffee cup and saucer in her hands, while she chatted with another woman; every line of the Countess’s attitude proclaimed girlish innocence.

  From the number of people already assembled it was clear that this was the meeting-place of the whole Court; presumably the hundreds of people who had perforce witnessed the royal reception from the gallery were permitted to descend and mingle with their betters after dining less elaborately. Young Mound was lounging towards him, his lean gangling body looking like an overgrown colt’s.

  “We have him in a side room aloft, sir,” he reported. “He fainted with the loss of blood—we had to put a tourniquet on his arm to stop the bleeding. We bandaged him with half of Somers’ shirt, and Somers and Mr. Hurst are keeping guard over him.”

  “Does anyone know about it?”

  “No, sir. We got him into the room without anyone seeing us. I poured a glass of liquor over his coat and from the stink of him anyone’ll think he’s drunk.”

  Mound was obviously a capable man in an emergency, as Hornblower had already suspected.

&n
bsp; “Very good.”

  “The sooner we get him away the better, sir,” said Mound, with a diffidence to be expected of a junior officer making suggestions to a senior.

  “You’re quite right,” said Hornblower, “except that—”

  Hornblower was still having to think quickly. It would hardly be possible, in any case, to leave at once, the moment dinner was over. It would not be polite. And there was the Countess over there, presumably watching them. If they were to leave now, immediately after conferring together—and breaking an engagement with her—she would be full of suspicion, as well as of the fury of a woman scorned. They simply could not leave immediately.

  “We shall have to stay another hour at least,” he said. “The conventions demand it. Go back and hold the fort for that time.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Mound restrained himself in the nick of time from coming to attention as with the habit of years he had grown accustomed to do when uttering those words—further proof of the clearness of his head. He nodded and wandered off as if they had been merely discussing the weather, and Hornblower allowed his slow legs to carry him over towards the Countess.

  She smiled at his approach.

  “Princess,” she said, “you have not met Commodore Hornblower? The Princess de Stolp.”

  Hornblower bowed; the Princess was an elderly woman with a good deal left of what must have been marvellous beauty.

  “The Commodore,” went on the Countess, “has expressed a desire to see the picture gallery. Would you care to come with us, Princess?”

  “No, thank you,” said the Princess, “I fear I am too old for picture galleries. But go, my children, without me.”

  “I would not like to leave you alone, here,” protested the Countess.

  “Even at my age, I can boast that I am still never left long alone, Countess. Leave me, I beg you. Enjoy yourselves, children.”

  Hornblower bowed again, and the Countess took his arm, and they walked slowly out. She pressed his arm, while footmen stood aside to allow them passage.