by Katy Moran
‘Now then, Lieutenant Rumyantsev,’ Madam Krakowski said, taking both Nadezhda’s hands in her own, which were damp with sweat, ‘I can tell you’re a well-brought-up young man – you won’t refuse us. Do join us for something to eat before you get on your way. When I think of my own sons off at war, I like to think of other people’s mamas taking care of them!’ Her eyes lingered on Nadezhda’s face with that familiar air of faint puzzlement. Women so often sensed that something here was awry, even if not precisely what.
Nadezhda bowed. ‘I’m afraid we really must get on, ma’am. The farms with horses are surely spread over quite a distance, and Captain Helford and I have been long expected at the cavalry commissariat in Petersburg with the horses.’
‘Of course they’ll join us. Lads your age are always hungry.’ General Krakowski cleared his throat and sat down at the scrubbed wooden table, shaking out his napkin with an air of finality: there was no choice but to sit down. ‘Don’t trouble yourself about the horseflesh, Rumyantsev. Your attention to duty is admirable, but I’ve dispatched a detachment of my Cossacks to guard the horses you already have, so what harm can possibly be done?’ He reached for a dish of fresh butter, obviously considering the matter closed.
Sitting, Nadezhda accepted a basket of bread rolls from the now silent Krakowski daughter at her side. Every instinct screamed at her to walk out of the door, find the horses and ride away from this godforsaken town as if the unquiet dead were at her heels. They must leave this place, she and Kitto. She tried and failed to catch his eye, but he had taken a seat on the bench and his gaze was fixed with a predator’s intensity on the window facing the street.
Madam Krakowski smiled brightly down the length of the table. ‘Well, how odd it is, to be sure, that you’re on the way to Petersburg, Lieutenant. That’s exactly where my elder daughter and I have just come from.’
‘Spending far too much on silks and furs, as usual, and going to endless routs and balls.’ Krakowski spoke with such false indulgence: it was as if he wore a grotesque mask that kept slipping. Nadezhda felt as though she were watching characters act out roles in a play. What was she missing? Kitto might sense the presence of a French soldier from thirty feet away, in the dark, but he seemed not to notice the unspoken current of unease between all of the people in this room, or share her unpleasant certainty that the Krakowskis were not all they seemed. Still looking out of the window, Kitto passed a dish of spiced pears to a freckled Krakowski daughter with mechanical courtesy. The girl at his other side fidgeted with wild curls bursting from the end of one long red braid, stealing glances at him, and then flushing as she stared at her plate of pickled turnip and sliced beef.
The elder daughter glanced up from her bowl of kasha and preserved pears. ‘We heard the most extraordinary story in town, didn’t we, Mama?’ A thicker, even more uncomfortable silence fell, and the Krakowski girl flushed purple, but instead of conceding her error, she persisted. ‘Only think of it,’ she went on with brittle and disingenuous good humour, speaking much too quickly, ‘they say that an English officer has dishonoured Countess Tatyana Orlova as well as the English diplomat’s daughter.’
‘Really, darling, we don’t discuss such stories,’ Madam Krakowski said, unconvincingly, in Nadezhda’s estimation, because there was no other way her daughter could have learned such a thing. What were they trying to hide beneath this second-rate society gossip?
Apparently oblivious to his daughter’s merchant-trader’s manners, Krakowski genially asked Kitto to pass him the dish of cream. There was no reply. Nadezhda glanced at him; Kitto had put down his knife and fork.
‘What,’ he said with sudden and succinct menace, every shred of his attention now focused entirely on the girl, ‘was the English soldier’s name?’
‘Oh, surely that’s not important, Captain Helford?’ Krakowski replied, dismissive. ‘There are so many of you milling about all over Petersburg, this fellow is very unlikely to be an acquaintance of yours – or I should hope not, anyway.’
Kitto ignored him with breathtaking rudeness, turning to the talkative daughter. ‘Who was it?’
She flushed up to the roots of her hair and glanced uncertainly at her mother. ‘Lord Lamorna. Apparently he’s a famous rake.’
Nadezhda watched Kitto tip a spoonful of sugar into hot coffee and stir it.
‘And now Lamorna’s a traitor, apparently.’ Krakowski shook his head. ‘A traitor to his own nation, making up to the French, so they say. Disgraceful. No doubt they’ll catch up with the man before long, and he’ll get his just reward. Never mind, my dear. You go off with your sister to practise your music – we’ve business to discuss here.’
Kitto had gone white. Nadezhda had never seen him look truly angry before; he said nothing but his air of suppressed fury silenced the room, even as sunlight glanced in through the window illuminating the dish of yellow butter and the silver bowl of damson preserve. The meal concluded in silence, and the girls and their mother dutifully pushed back their chairs and filed from the room, each pausing to kiss the general on the cheek as she passed, the picture of such feminine obedience and duty that Nadezhda felt sick to observe it; if they died here she would never go back to that, at least. Kitto was silent still, his long fingers now turning a silver salt cellar over and over.
‘The horses, sir—’ Nadezhda began, but Krakowski held up one hand.
‘There’s something far more important to attend to. As I’ve said, my Cossacks will take care of your herd. Listen, Rumyantsev, there’s a French force of very significant size just twenty versts from here, and I want you to get into their camp.’ Krakowski smiled as though he had just suggested they join him on a picnic with his daughters.
‘Twenty versts away?’ Nadezhda heard herself say. ‘Twenty versts?’ Another day, and she and Kitto would have herded four hundred horses directly into enemy hands. Kitto glanced up then, as if the prospect of annihilation was a mere irritation compared to Petersburg gossip about this sibling of his.
Krakowski smiled again. ‘It seems Marshal Davout has managed to move his men with rather more circumspection than anyone suspected. One never knows what one might hear, and I’m sure your superiors would agree that any failure to investigate would border on treason.’
‘Our superiors? Mine and Captain Helford’s?’ Nadezhda stared at him. ‘Sir, I understand the need for reconnaissance, but why can’t you order your uhlans to do it? Captain Helford and I have our own mission. We must take these horses to Petersburg – the commissariat’s need is surely even greater if the French are so close—’
Krakowski shook his head. ‘The only people in this town who speak French are me, my wife and our daughters. None of my men have enough of the language to learn anything useful. I can hardly abandon my post or send my daughters in lieu of myself.’
Kitto looked up with a smile that made Nadezhda instantly uneasy. ‘Petersburg can wait a little while longer for the horses, surely? This is far more important.’
‘No, this is suicide,’ Nadezhda heard herself say. ‘It’s sheer foolishness. I have my orders, General. Without horses, the army is hobbled – our own cavalry is useless, and the French are clearly manoeuvring.’ She turned to Kitto. ‘If we don’t arrive in Petersburg by the end of next week, we could be shot for disobeying orders—’ She fell silent, aware of Krakowski watching, his face slack with disgust. She’d broken an unspoken code: Krakowski now suspected her of cowardice, of not conducting herself as a real man should. Kitto had led her into a position from which there was no other course of action but to accept this idiotic mission or risk exposure – all because he had lost his temper. If Nadezhda ever had the misfortune to meet Lord Lamorna, she would have something to say to him.
43
Chudovo reeked of death. Kitto sensed the stink of it in every narrow street of this Russian hellhole, behind every shuttered window. Even in the smiling face of Krakowski’s faded wife, he’d seen the bared teeth of a corpse from a two-week-old battlefield. He wa
lked at Krakowski’s side to the north gate, listening to the heavy crunch of the general’s boots in dried mud and small, scattered stones, wondering if Nadezhda too had realised that there was no birdsong here. She and Krakowski had been exchanging Russian small-talk, but when she fell back to walk side by side with Kitto instead, he sensed her equally constant appraisal of the dusty streets along with her barely concealed fury, and felt a moment’s relief that they were quite unable to talk freely with Krakowski as their escort.
Regardless, she turned to him. ‘I suppose you’re pleased with yourself. What have you just talked us into? For what?’
He ignored her, angrily hooking one forefinger into his grimy white leather ammunition belt.
‘All this is because of some ridiculous second-hand Petersburg gossip about your brother, isn’t it?’ Nadezhda hissed.
‘If you knew him, you wouldn’t say so.’ Kitto knew only too well that he was almost incoherent with anger. ‘If you understood what we’d suffered in the Occupation – and then he just switches allegiance to France because it suits him. France. If Castlereagh doesn’t hang him for this, I’ll kill the traitorous bastard myself.’
‘Oh, how ridiculous,’ Nadezhda said in a furious undertone. ‘We have our own task to do here, in case you’d forgotten—’
‘Oh, believe me, I haven’t,’ Kitto replied. Was the world not a difficult enough place for Hester already, without the humiliation of being married to a man who couldn’t be bothered to keep his indiscretions from the rumour mill in every capital city between London and the Urals?
‘Well, that’s just as well,’ Nadezhda said, ‘because something tells me we’ve got more to deal with here than your godforsaken family.’
He knew she was right. A bucket lay on its side outside the front door of a tall, narrow wooden house with a pattern of flowers carved on the gable. The dusty earth was stained with a trickle of dark liquid, and Kitto detected the faintest scent of sour goats’ milk. Spilled milk that no one cared about. A bucket not picked up. Nadezhda had moved on ahead, talking to Krakowski again, her shoulders defensively hunched in that guard’s jacket, with all the silver embroidery on the epaulettes. They’d nearly reached the north gate, silent wooden houses with strawberry beds and tidy rows of fresh young cabbage leaves giving way now to scrubby grassland, the fence nothing more than a ring of hazel hurdles enclosing the town in a lazy embrace, the wooden gate bleached pale silver by years of northern winter and elusive summer sun. Krakowski nodded to the silent gate guards and, led by some deep-rooted urge, Kitto felt his gaze drawn to a patch of wilting dandelions and scrubby grass that had attracted a cloud of flies hovering low to the ground. Half hidden beneath diseased yellow dandelion leaves, he glimpsed embroidered leather, a shoe small enough to fit a child of no more than three or four. Beneath a mat of shifting, glistening bluebottles, the leather was stained almost black with old blood.
He and Nadezhda would be allowed to leave the town alive, Kitto knew that immediately – why else would they not already be bayoneted in the dirt, flies hovering over the mess – but what was next? He watched in silence as Nadezhda saluted farewell to Krakowski, and one of the guards opened the gate. Krakowski turned to him, nodding and smiling, and Kitto raised his own right fist in a salute, bringing it up to his forehead. The guard averted his gaze as they walked past, which in itself would have told Kitto that he and Nadezhda were now the walking dead.
Leaving Krakowski, the gate guards and Chudovo itself behind, he and Nadezhda walked in silence across a meadow incongruously streaked with bright swathes of wild flowers. Bees hung in the air at knee-level. A thick line of forest blanketed the horizon with faint trails of smoke just visible above the treeline, the only visible sign of the twenty thousand French soldiers that lay between Kitto, Nadezhda and St Petersburg. He couldn’t shake a bone-deep sense of loss without the horses – of their warm breath, that awareness of the herd intelligence.
Nadezhda spoke without looking at him, fixing her gaze on the forested horizon. ‘Chudovo’s already been taken by the French, hasn’t it? It’s not just that they’ve passed through. Krakowski’s actually acting on French orders. But what do the French want with us?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Kitto said. ‘But I’d wager he wishes his wife and daughters were still in Petersburg.’
‘If we don’t get to the camp, those girls of his are going to die, aren’t they? Raped, most likely, and then killed.’ Nadezhda spoke still without looking at Kitto.
The Krakowski family were likely already dead, but what was the use in saying so? ‘Oh, let’s go into the camp all the same,’ Kitto said, doing his best to sound unconcerned. He’d twice faced a dishonourable death at the end of a rope. At least here he would die fighting.
‘Well, we’ve lost the horses,’ Nadezhda said firmly. ‘The least we can do is get back to Petersburg with some intelligence. What I don’t understand is why the French are manoeuvring around Petersburg like this if Napoleon’s in Austria. Surely that’s where his real business is, not here? If he means to take Petersburg, would he really leave that to Davout?’
Kitto shrugged, eyeing the grassland for any signs of sabotage or ambush, fighting a queer sense of inevitability. They were going to die beyond that forest, he and Nadezhda, of that he was quite certain. It was only a question of when. At his side, she stopped where she stood, and in that moment they reached for each other, his hands lightly gripping her waist.
‘Are you sure?’ he said, and she looked up at him, tanned golden by the sun, her eyes like dark earth.
‘Yes. It’s my decision,’ she replied, and so he kissed her then, with the sun on his back as he leaned over her; she was swiftly responsive, and her light, strong fingers touched his face, one thumb grazing the smooth, secret hollow of skin behind his ear, and she tasted him until they broke apart, the kiss lent heat by sheer unthinkable danger of being seen: to all appearances two boys kissing. She laughed. ‘Whatever happens in that camp, I’m ruined – completely ruined.’
‘You need not be,’ Kitto said, trying to appear careless. ‘You might marry me, if you like, and then you won’t be ruined at all. Will you?’
Nadezhda replied with another kiss. ‘Yes,’ she said, so quietly that he could scarcely hear, and he wondered if her eyes only shone with tears because they would be killed before ever she had the chance to be his. ‘Yes, Kitto, I will do that, and gladly.’
*
The French Second Army’s campfires lit up the plain like stars fallen to earth. The night air smelled of pine sap and Kitto was restless, eager to move after waiting so many hours in the forest for darkness to fall. He wanted only for this all to be over, wanted really to kiss Nadezhda again, to slide the worn-out jacket from her shoulders. None of it could happen, not now. Side by side, they walked in silence down the French side of the reverse slope, and Kitto heard his brother’s voice in the back of his mind. Always conduct yourself as if you have every right to be exactly where you are. Why must Crow forever be such an eternal disappointment?
The moon slid behind a bank of cloud and, as they approached the camp, Kitto began to pick out the voices of individual French soldiers, men gathered around guttering fires, the smell of frying bacon. He doubted they’d hear anything useful, about French intentions or the deployment of other troops, but one never knew – not that it made any difference, considering the sheer unlikelihood of getting out of here alive. They were, after all, expected. He heard nothing except snatches of irrelevant conversation about who had contraband to sell, and which of the camp whores had the pox. Then, without a word, Nadezhda took hold of Kitto’s wrist, immediately releasing him as if scorched. They turned to look at each other, and she nodded towards the pale shape of a field tent now just visible as a large group of French infantrymen moved past, drinking from hip flasks and exchanging crude jokes about a Polish woman. The tent was lit from within, shadowy figures clearly visible sitting at a camp table; one got up and walked across to adjust a lamp where it hung
.
Despite everything, Kitto felt a high, wild surge of excitement: whoever commanded this rabble would be in that tent and, to judge by the quantity of staff officers in cockaded hats going in and coming out, there was someone important inside. Even then, the night air was punctuated by a thin, desperate scream that made his insides clench. The girl screamed again, louder this time. Perhaps she was from Chudovo. The wife or daughter of some town merchant. They were in the middle of a camp of soldiers: no one else was listening. Nadezhda stood quite still, a muscle twitching in her jaw. A further shriek. It was the same in any English camp: disgraceful. Rape for men who couldn’t get a willing woman. Without a word, Nadezhda began walking towards the source of the screaming.
‘What in hell’s name are you doing? Kitto said quietly, following her. He reached out but Nadezhda shook his hand away and carried on walking. They were closer now. Side by side, they passed a cache of stores – piled-up barrels, sacks of grain still loaded on a wagon. Another scream rang out and Nadezhda moved faster, with swift, purposeful intensity. She was talking to herself very quietly, in Russian. Repeating the same words over and over again. Nyet, nyet, nyet: no. Dark, long-suppressed memories rose up in the back of Kitto’s mind: riding home across the moor to Nansmornow with Crow, Hester and a servant, long ago now, miserable in the certainty that he was in for a hiding, all that eclipsed by the sight of three bodies hanging from the chestnut tree. He remembered his half-sister Roza’s pale, naked legs, her inner thighs stained with dark blood. Roza would have screamed like this as those French soldiers raped her, right up until the moment they hanged her. Kitto grasped the handle of the cutlass sheathed at his belt and glanced across again at Nadezhda, who walked on towards the covered commissariat wagon with an unsettling, hungry expression. Reaching it, Kitto swept aside a curtain of burlap. In the wagon, a bald-headed soldier was on top of the girl, facing towards them but intent on his task as he thrust with brutal force, a knife held to the girl’s throat; her cap had fallen off and her meagre, mouse-brown braids spilled into the sawdust she lay in. Perhaps the knife made it impossible to go on screaming. Two more cavalrymen stood idly by, as though waiting their turn for water at the village pump.
