He pushed aside the tray and held out his arms to her, and she knelt up and put herself into the circle of them, and he held her close.
‘I know it’s a hard thing to ask you – that there are principles at stake,’ he said. ‘But lately I have felt…’ He paused and began again. ‘I used to play fast and loose with life. When you are young, you think you’re immortal. Then you have children, and you know you’re not. But it’s only when you get to my age that time seems to run faster and faster, dragging you along with it, and you can only try to clutch at things as they pass, and they’re whipped away from under your fingers.’
She nodded, her face pressed against his. He stroked her head. ‘What I mean to say is that life is uncertain at the best of times, and in time of war there is no certainty at all. My only sureness is that I love you, and I don’t want to waste any of the time we have left in being apart from you.’
She nodded again, and he could feel her thinking; but she was not consenting, not yet. He went on gently, ‘Annushka, I’ve never asked you what happened between you and Basil Andreyevitch, but I have been in the world a lot longer than you. I think I know what he is. I ask you this: do you owe such a man any loyalty?’
She pulled herself back from him, and looked into his eyes. ‘It isn’t that, you see,’ she said. ‘It’s what I owe myself.’
‘Do you think you would do wrong by loving me?’ he asked carefully, afraid of what her answer might be.
She looked at him searchingly, and after a long moment, she said, ‘No.’
‘Then you’ll come with me?’
She hesitated. ‘I have to think of Rose.’
‘You can leave her in Petersburg. She’ll be quite safe.’
‘No. I can’t leave her with him – with them.’
‘I meant with my household, with Sashka. My staff is perfectly reliable as you know. And once the roads are fit they can all go down to Schwartzenturm, and stay–’
But Anne was shaking her head before he had even finished. ‘No. I can’t leave her.’ She opened her mouth to explain, and shut it again. There was simply too much to be said. He must understand without words.
He thought a moment, and said, ‘Then bring her with you. Didn’t Grubernik say she should have change, stimulation? Bring her nurse and her governess, yes, and Grubernik too, if you like, though there are some excellent doctors in Lithuania. We’ll take a house, hire extra servants, make a home for her with us. It’s lovely there in the spring. Why not? Say yes, Annushka. For God’s sake say yes!’
‘The roads will be too bad,’ she said. ‘Think of lurching through all that mud – it would be terrible for her.’
That was a point. ‘Very well, then. I have to go now – I’m under orders – but in a fortnight’s time, as soon as the roads are sound, I’ll send Adonis for you, to bring you to me. And meanwhile, I can have the house made ready for you, and everything prepared. You can send any special instructions to me in the diplomatic bag. We’ll still have a month or six weeks there before we need to move on.’
He looked at her expectantly, and suddenly she laughed.
‘It’s madness,’ she said, shaking her head; and he knew she would come to Vilna.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Anne’s first sight of Vilna was a smiling one, as she approached it on a sunny day in May. It was built on a curve of the river Vilia, which ran in a deep, wooded ravine through gently hilly country. The town itself spread along the bank and climbed up the hillside, a pretty tangle of houses and narrow twisting streets. The soft red-tiled roofs were dominated by a forest of spires and golden cupolas, rising to the highest point where an octagonal red-brick tower was all that remained of the original mediaeval fortress. A single wooden bridge spanned the river at the foot of the town, and the hills above it were crowned with forests of birch and fir which protected it from the north and west.
From Vilna the road led westwards to Kovno on the River Nieman, about fifty miles away. Other roads came in from St Petersburg in the north, and from the vast and impassable area of the Pripet Marshes in the south: it was this area of marshland which limited Napoleon’s choice of route for his invasion. The main road to the east was the long and winding one via Smolensk to Moscow, some six hundred and twenty-five miles away.
When Adonis had come to fetch her, Anne asked him anxiously about the town and the facilities.
‘Oh, you’ll like it,’ he said ironically. ‘It’s not like military headquarters at all. There’s dancing and banquets and parties. The local gentry come in their best clothes, all smelling of mothballs, and fawn at the Emperor’s feet, and he gives them medals, and makes their wives and daughters ladies-in-waiting to the Empress, who’s here in Petersburg. You’ll feel at home, all right.’
Anne looked concerned. ‘But doesn’t the Emperor do anything?’
‘Oh, yes. He rides here and he rides there, and he sits up all night writing letters. He never stops. Well, he’s not my Emperor, thank God.’ He shrugged. ‘We’ll have a good fast journey, anyway – the roads have hardened off nicely.’
Anne had hired a large berlin, across the seats of which a mattress could be placed on a board, so that Rose could lie down as well as sit. She had been a little worried as to how Rose would react to Adonis’s ruined face, but Rose took to him at once, evidently having inherited her father’s taste for the bizarre. At their first meeting they fixed each other with a solemn, one-eyed regard, and after a moment’s judicious study, Rose favoured him with her most ravishing smile, and held out her hands to be picked up.
Adonis lifted her with skilled ease to his shoulder, and she studied his face at close quarters and finally put out a tentative finger to touch his scar. ‘Does it hurt?’ she asked in English.
Adonis touched her velvet cheek, and to Anne’s surprise replied in the same language. ‘No more than this does.’
‘I didn’t know you spoke English,’ Anne said.
He shrugged. ‘I speak a little of everything.’
And Rose, who at that time spoke English and French more or less at random, decided from then that the English language was peculiarly for Adonis.
Basil had received the news that Anne intended to go to Vilna without comment; and when she had said she was taking Rose with her, he had opened his mouth and then closed it again, knowing the weakness of his position. But for Rose’s sake he made light of their separation, telling her that she would enjoy herself, and that they would meet again soon, and Rose had seemed to accept it without fuss. Anne was unspeakably glad to be removing her child from Jean-Luc’s influence, even if only for a time. Now she would have the chance to win back Rose’s love; and by the time she saw her father again, who knew but that Jean-Luc might have disappeared from the scene entirely? Rose parted from them at the carriage door with some tears, but once they were on the move, and Anne was pointing out things of interest to her from the window, and telling her of all the fun they would have together, the tears soon dried. At that age, Anne thought, a child’s memory is short.
The journey was accomplished without difficulty, and Adonis’s burly muscles and trained strength made light of Rose’s disabilities. Anne’s caravan included Quassy and Image, being led along between the carriages by grooms. On the first evening, when they stopped at an inn, Adonis went with the grooms to see the riding horses settled; and coming back to report to Anne, said to her thoughtfully, ‘If you want her to ride the colt one day, you must begin soon.’
Anne began to ask how he knew what had been in her mind, but decided not to waste her time. Instead she said, ‘How can she ride? She can’t even walk.’