Now, he had one card only left up his sleeve and it was a most dangerous one. But, having been condemned to death, he felt that no worse could befall should he play it and it failed. Their glasses of wine being empty, he turned to the glowering Baroness and said, in German. 'The Russian intends to have me shot, but first I have something to say to him, so tell your man to open another bottlc of wine.'
Staggered by his impertinence and apparent indifference to his fate, she spoke to her man, who uncorked a second flagon and refilled their glasses. Turning to the Hetman, Roger said:
'Before you have me shot, I would like you to know what led up to our killing the Baron. He had a bailiff named Kutzie —a rough diamond but not a bad fellow. Although they searched us after they picked us up on the battlefield, I had some fifty Napoleons in gold in my money belt, and I managed to hide it from them. When our wounds were sufficiently healed, we began to consider plans for an escape. As the three of us were lame, we knew that we could not get far without being overtaken, unless we had horses. With my gold I succeeded in bribing Kutzie to come to us after dark this evening, and help us to get away in the troika.'
For a moment Roger paused, then he went on. 'Somehow the Baron found out. You would hardly credit what he did to the unfortunate Kutzie. But come with me and I'll show you.'
Standing up, Roger led the way out. His heart was now beating violently, because he had not the least idea what had happened to Kutzie since he had been thrown naked into the pigsty; so he was taking a most desperate gamble.
Kutzie might have come to, broken free of his bonds and escaped, to be lurking somewhere in the shadows awaiting a chance to be avenged on the Frenchmen who had condemned him to such a ghasdy death. Should the pigs have ignored him, he would still be there, alive and kicking; and, as soon as the gag was removed he would, somehow, succeed in conveying to the Hetman the truth about what had happened.
Should either prove the case, Roger had little doubt that he and his two fellow prisoners would shortly be blindfolded, put up against a brick wall and executed by a firing squad.
Despite the intense cold, as he led the way across the forecourt sweat broke out on his forehead. Although Dutoff had obviously taken a liking to him personally, he was clearly an officer who put duty before other considerations. With a certainty upon which he would have wagered every penny he possessed, Roger accepted it that, if Kutzie were still alive, he, Fournier and Vitu were as good as dead.
From the sty there came a grunting, for which Roger thanked all his gods. That indicated at least that the pigs were awake, so Kutzie was unlikely to be lying among them unmolested. But was he still alive, and capable of blurting out the truth about how he came to be there? That was the all-important question.
Raising a lantern that he had brought from the house, Roger leaned in awful anxiety over the low wall of the sty. To his immense relief, he saw that Kutzie was far past uttering any sound. He was already almost unrecognisable: his body torn and bleeding as the swine, grunting round him, gorged themselves upon his flesh.
The Baroness, who had accompanied them, gave a scream, covered her eyes with her hands for a moment; then, lowering them, glared at Roger and cried, 'So this is more of your abominable night's work. You reveal it only because you are already condemned and evidently take pride in your ruthlessness.'
He shook his head, and replied in German, 'Nein, Gnadige Frau Baronin. This is your husband's doing. I bribed Kutzie to help us to escape, but the Baron found out, and this is the way he chose to punish his unfortunate servant.'
'It is a lie!' she screamed. 'Kutzie would never have betrayed his master.'
In sick disgust at the horrible sight, Dutoff had turned away. Ignoring the Baroness, Roger said to him, 'Well, Hetman, what do you say now? Were we not justified in putting an end to that monster, after he had jeered at us about having ruined our plan to escape and told us of the awful vengeance he had taken on his wretched henchman?'
The Russian nodded. 'You have made your case, Colonel. It would not have been in human nature, given the chance, to have refrained from according the brute his just deserts. The three of you will, of course, remain my prisoners; but I will write a report in which I’ll say that, knowing we were likely to come here and deprive him of you, his hatred of the French was such that he decided to kill you; but you killed him in self-defence.'
Overwhelmingly relieved, Roger expressed his thanks. Sensing that she was to be deprived of her revenge, the Baroness again broke into violent denunciation; but Roger's paramount advantage was that she could not understand what he said to Dutoff and the Russian could not understand what he said to her. So he silenced her by telling her that the Het-man intended to send his prisoners next day to headquarters, where they would be tried by a military tribunal, and had little hope of escaping a death sentence.
Then, changing over to Russian, he told Dutoff what he had said, and added, 'All the same, she is so filled with venom that, should I and the others sleep tonight in the castle, I think she is quite capable of endeavouring to make certain of our deaths by getting her people together and attempting to murder us. So, if you are agreeable, I'd prefer that we occupied our old quarters in the loft of the barn, and you set a guard on us; although, of course, I'll give you our parole that we will not try to escape.'
To this the Hetman agreed; so, twenty minutes later, Roger was rejoined by Sergeant Fournier and Corporal Vitu. For the past hour or more they had believed that there was no chance of their escaping the worst, and they could have hardly been less scared had they shared with Roger the awful gamble he had taken in leading Dutoff out to the pigsty. When he told them how he had fathered Kutzie's death on to the Baron and they had no more to fear than being taken to a prisoner-of-war camp, the old Sergeant impulsively embraced Roger and kissed him on both cheeks; while Corporal Vitu gave way to tears of relief.
The following morning, Dutoff commandeered the best horse in the stable in order that Roger could ride with him. The Baroness was furious, but he shrugged aside her protests and insisted on her accepting a scrawled requisition order, on which he-had included the troika for the other two prisoners to ride in.
On leaving the castle, the sotnia of Cossacks did not head south, in the direction from which they had come, but took a track through the forest that led north. After they had proceeded for a mile or so, the forest ended and they entered the sprawling township of Znamensk, from which the Baron had taken his inherited title. It was a poor place, consisting of not more than a hundred one-storey wooden houses. The few people they saw there looked half-starved, and were clad in tattered furs or sheepskins. From the doorways of their dark hovels, with sullen, resentful stares they watched the Cossacks pass through the main street that led down to the river Pregel. For the greater part of the year a large, wooden ferry attached to a stout rope was used to cross it; but the river was still frozen so hard that there was no danger of the ice cracking under the weight of a body of mounted men.
On the far side of the river they turned east along a road that followed its course and led, as Dutoff told Roger, to Insterburg. As the two officers rode along at the head of the small cavalcade, they conversed in the most friendly fashion, exchanging accounts of the engagements in which they had fought, and gossip about mutual acquaintances in St. Petersburg.
Roger had last been there in 1801, but he had also spent some while in the Russian capital in the summer of 1788, when Catherine the Great was still on the throne. Dutoff, being several years younger than Roger, had never known that bold, beautiful, cultured, licentious woman, and was fascinated to hear Roger's description of the marvellous fetes, luxury, licence and gaiety of her Court; for he had known