'Varvara Andreevna, calm down; everything is all right. We will go there together straight away, but first you must catch your breath, you look terrible.'
He took her gently by the elbow, but for some reason the entirely gentlemanlike touch of his hand provoked an overwhelming attack of nausea. She doubled over and vomited copiously all over Erast Petrovich's boots. Then she sat on the step, trying to understand why nobody was sliding down off the ground when it was sloping at such an angle.
Varya felt something pleasant and ice-cold touch her forehead and gave a low moan of pleasure.
'A fine business,' she heard Fandorin's hollow voice say. 'This is typhus.'
Chapter Ten
IN WHICH THE EMPEROR IS PRESENTED WITH A GOLDEN SWORD
The Daily Post (London) 9 December (27 November) 1877
For the last two months the siege of Plevna has effectively been commanded by the old, experienced General Totleben, well remembered by the British from the Sebastopol campaign. Being rather more of an engineer than a military leader, Totleben has abandoned the tactic of frontal attacks and imposed a strict blockade on the army of Osman-pasha. The Russians have lost a great deal of precious time, for which Totleben has been subjected to severe criticism, but now it must be acknowledged that the cautious engineer is right. Since the Turks were finally cut off from Sophia one month ago, Plevna has begun to suffer from hunger and a shortage of ammunition. Totleben is referred to ever more often as the second Kutuzov (the Russian field-marshal who exhausted Napoleon's forces by retreating incessantly in 1812 - Editor's note). Osman and his army of fifty thousand are expected to surrender any day now.
It was an abominably cold and unpleasant day (grey sky, icy sleet and squelching mud) when Varya made her way back to the army positions in a specially hired cab. She had spent an entire month on a hospital bed in the Trnovo Epidemiological Hospital, where she could quite easily have died, because many people did die of typhus, but she had been lucky. Then she had spent another two months dying of boredom while she waited for her hair to grow, because she certainly couldn't go back with her head shaved like a Tatar. Her accursed hair had grown back far too slowly and even now it stood up on her head like a crew-cut or the bristles on a brush. In fact, she looked perfectly absurd, but her patience had run out - one more week of idleness and Varya would have been driven totally insane by the sight of the crooked little streets of that horrid little town.
Petya had managed to get away to visit her once. He was still officially under investigation, but he had been let out of the guardhouse now and gone back to work -the army had grown a lot and there was a shortage of cryptographers. Petya was greatly changed: he had let his beard grow, but it was sparse and straggly and really didn't suit him at all, and he had wasted half away, and he mentioned either God or service to the people with every second breath. What had shocked Varya most of all was that when they met her fiance had kissed her on the forehead. Why did he have to treat her like a corpse in a coffin? Had her looks really suffered that much?
The Trnovo highway was choked with strings of army wagons and her carriage was barely crawling along, so since she was familiar with the area, Varya ordered the coachman to turn off on to a track that led south, around the camp. It was longer that way, but they would get there sooner.
On the empty road the horse broke into a lively jog and the rain almost stopped. In another hour or two she would be home. Varya snorted. A fine 'home'! A damp tent open to all the winds under heaven!
After they passed Lovcha they began meeting individual riders, for the most part foragers and brisk, bustling orderlies, and soon Varya saw the first person she knew. There was no mistaking that lanky figure in the bowler hat and the redingote, perched awkwardly on the dejected chestnut mare. McLaughlin! Varya had a sudden sense of deja vu: during the third siege of Plevna, when she was returning to the army positions just as she was today, she had encountered the Irishman in precisely the same way. Only then it had been hot, and now it was cold, and she had probably looked better then.
But it really was very fortunate that McLaughlin would be the first to see her. He was unaffected and forthright; his reaction would tell her straight away whether she could show herself in society with her hair like this, or whether she ought to turn back. And she could find out all about the latest news . . .
Varya courageously grabbed the cap off her head, exposing her shameful brush. She might as well do things properly! 'Mr McLaughlin!' she shouted out, half-rising from her seat, as her carriage overtook the correspondent. 'It's me! Which way are you headed?'
The Irishman looked round and raised his bowler hat. 'Oh, Mademoiselle Varya, I'm very glad to see you in good health. Did they crop your hair like that for reasons of hygiene? I can hardly recognise you.'
Varya felt a cold shiver inside. 'Why - is it so terrible?' she asked dejectedly.
'Not at all,' McLaughlin hastened to reassure her.
'But you look much more like a boy now than you did when we first met.'
'Are we going the same way?' she asked. 'Get in with me and we can talk. Your horse doesn't look too good.'
'A terrible old nag. My Bessie managed to get herself in the family way by a dragoon's stallion and she blew up like a barrel. And the headquarters groom Frolka doesn't like me because I never give him bribes - what you might call tips - as a matter of principle, so he palms me off with these dreadful jades! I don't know where he gets them from! And right now I'm in a great hurry on extremely important, secret business.'
McLaughlin paused provocatively, and it was clear that he was positively bursting to tell her just how important and secret his business was. The contrast with the son of Albion's habitual stolid reserve was striking - the journalist really must have discovered something quite extraordinary.
'Sit in for just a minute,' Varya wheedled. 'Let the poor animal have a rest. I have some jam pies here, and a thermostatic flask full of coffee with rum . . .'
McLaughlin took a watch on a silver chain out of his pocket. 'Haf pust seven . . . Anatha foty minits to get thea . . . Oil rait, then haf an aua. Etl be haf pust eit . . .' he muttered to himself in that incomprehensible foreign tongue of his and sighed. 'Oh, all right, but just for a minute. I'll ride with you as far as the fork in the road and then turn off for Petyrnitsy.'
He hitched his reins to the carriage and took a seat beside Varya, swallowed one pie whole, bit off half of a second and gulped down a mouthful of hot coffee from the lid of the flask with great relish.
'Why are you going to Petyrnitsy?' Varya asked casually. 'Are you meeting your informant from Plevna again?'
McLaughlin gave her a searching glance and adjusted his steamed-up glasses. 'Give me your word that you won't tell anyone - at least not until ten o'clock,' he demanded.
'My word of honour,' Varya said immediately. 'But what is the great mystery?'
McLaughlin began huffing and puffing, taken aback by the casual way in which the promise had been given, but it was too late for him to recant now, and he was obviously longing to confide in someone.
'Today, the tenth of December, or in your style the twenty-eighth of November 1877, is a historic day’ he began and then dropped his voice to a whisper. 'But as yet there is only one man in the entire Russian camp who knows it: your humble servant. Oh, McLaughlin doesn't give people tips just for performing their duty, but for good work McLaughlin pays very well, mark my words. No more, no more, not another single word about that!' He held up his hand to forestall the question that Varya was about to blurt out. 'I won't tell you the name of my source. I will only say that he has been tested many times and has never once let me down.'