Inside her pleasant sitting-room, there was a large fire burning. To one side of it, Nyanya – Rose’s nurse – and Pauline sat sewing; Rose herself was sitting on the floor, her legs in their hated braces stuck straight out before her, playing with a striped marmalade kitten who had appeared from nowhere as soon as the fire was lit. To the other side of the fire sat Mile Parmoutier, reading aloud from a book of French essays.
The kitten, every inch of its small body quivering with intensity, pounced again on the straw Rose was twitching for it.
‘Maman, when are we going to see Papa?’ Rose asked, as she had asked already three times that day.
‘Soon,’ said Anne absently.
‘But when? I don’t like it here. I want to go home.’
Anne turned from the window. ‘We can’t go yet. Have you done your eye exercises this morning?’
‘I don’t like them,’ Rose pouted. ‘I want to go home. Can we keep the kitten?’
‘We’ll see.’
‘Can we? When are we going to see Papa?’
‘I don’t know,’ Anne said, exasperated. ‘Don’t keep asking the same question again and again!’
Rose burst into tears and the kitten fled under a chair. ‘I want Papa! I want to go home! My legs hurt!’
This last brought Mile Parmoutier out of her chair with a cry of concern, but Nyanya got there first, scooping Rose up with trained strength and croodling to her in Russian as she sobbed into the broad black calico shoulder.
‘She’s tired, Barina, that’s all,’ Nyanya said over Rose’s head.
‘She’s bored,’ Anne suggested wearily. ‘So are we all. This endless rain!’
Mile Parmoutier was unconvinced. ‘Perhaps, madame, we should call a physician. If her legs hurt her…’ She had once overheard Grubernik talking about rheumatic fever, and she had never been able to shake the dread out of her heart.
‘Of course her poor little legs hurt, don’t they, my little soul?’ Nyanya crooned, quelling the governess with a look. ‘And why shouldn’t they? But Nyanya knows how to make it better! A nice rub with warm oil for my little candle, and a piece of gingerbread to eat, as big as your hand, eh?’
Rose, whose sobs were already lessening, said something through her hiccoughs which the nurse evidently understood.
‘Of course we can, my pigeon,’ she said, and with one hand scooped up the striped kitten and stuffed it into her apron pocket, nodded to her mistress, and went out.
Parmoutier remained unconvinced and guilty. ‘I’m sure she ought to see a physician, madame. And all this travelling isn’t good for her. I wish we might go back to Petersburg. Do you think his lordship–’
But her mistress wasn’t listening. She was craning to look down into the street, where a horseman had just arrived.
‘It’s him! He’s here!’ she cried, and was gone from the room in a whirl of muslin before the governess could do more than draw a sigh.
They had the sitting-room to themselves now. The fire was burning brightly, and a new log Anne had just put on was hissing and popping as the bark curled in the heat. Hot wine and cakes were filling the gap while a meal was prepared. Anne was anxious, though he assured her he was quite well. Much of that drawn look in his face was from shock and distress rather than physical weariness, as she understood when he explained to her what he had seen.
‘Sergei’s Cossacks captured a foraging party near Novi Troki, and I was called in to listen while they were questioned. The poor devils were starving. We gave them some Polish sausage and rye bread, and they ate so fast one of them threw it up almost immediately.’
‘Starving already? But didn’t they bring any supplies with them?’ Anne asked.
He shrugged. ‘They’d all been ordered to carry pack rations – rice and flour enough for three days, which was supposed to get them from Kovno to Vilna. But these men were part of the third corps, who were still fifty versts or more from the Nieman when the crossing began. They had to force-march for forty out of forty-eight hours to catch up, across land that had already been stripped by foragers. Of course they had to eat their pack rations – and once they crossed into Russia, they came across the results of our scorched-earth policy.’
He passed a hand across his face, and she looked at him with keen sympathy. ‘Theirs was not an isolated case, I suppose?’
He shook his head. ‘The sights we’ve seen – the things Sergei has told me! The horses were starving before ever they reached the Nieman, and once the rain began, they just lay down and died in their thousands! The cold and hunger, and trying to drag heavy field pieces through fathoms of mud… They’ve got no fodder for them at all. They’ve been trying to feed them on green rye, but it just bloats them up, and they die of colic. We skirted Vilna on our way back here, and I tell you I must have seen hundreds of dead horses just lying there, rotting.’
Anne was silent with pity. After a moment he went on.
‘The foot soldiers are suffering from ague and dysentery, and when they drop out of the column for any reason, the Cossacks pick them off. There’s talk of typhus, too. I know as I skirted Vilna I saw that some of the horse carcases had been toppled into the river. The men we spoke to said the terrible weather was seen as a bad omen. They’re so demoralised, some of them just walk off into the woods in despair and shoot themselves.’
‘Then – he’ll turn back? He must turn back, surely?’
Nikolai shook his head, and told her about his and Balashov’s interview with Napoleon two days before. ‘He has lost a vast number of men – but the number he has at his command is still more vast. I don’t believe he will turn back until he has lost every man and horse, and even at this rate, that will take a long time.’
They were silent, staring into the fire, and then he roused himself to say, ‘How are things with you, doushenka?’
‘We’re all well. Rose is bored and wants to go home, and the horses are pining for lack of exercise, that’s all.’
‘You’ve had no trouble with the locals?’
‘They’ve treated us very courteously – though I don’t know what will happen when the French come nearer, and they’re forced to evacuate. Stories are already coming through about the way the French army has looted every town and village it passed.’
‘I don’t suppose they are more than the truth. My darling, you must not stay here any longer. I must go and report to the Emperor at Drissa, but I don’t suppose we’ll stay there very long. It’s not a good place to have to defend, and in any case, I don’t believe Tolly will want to make a stand until we’ve weakened the French still further. Vitebsk, perhaps, or even Smolensk, will be near enough. You must go further than that, to be safe. It will not be good to be anywhere near the French army as they get hungrier, and more of the horses die.’
‘I want to be near you.’
‘I don’t suppose I shall have the leisure to visit you, even if there were a safe place for you to stay. You say Rose wants to go home. Why don’t you go back to Petersburg?’
Because it’s too far from you, she thought, but she didn’t say it. ‘She wants to see her father,’ she said instead.