'I hope it doesn't come to Moscow. The plague, I mean,' said Domnikiia.
'Maybe it will reach us at about the same time as the French do. Save us the trouble of killing them.'
'Is that going to happen?' She huddled closer to me, her voice calling for a reassuring answer.
'No, Domnikiia,' I lied. 'Neither Bonaparte nor the plague will ever get as far as Moscow.' But I'd seen for myself how fast both the French and the plague could travel. And what eventually did arrive proved to be more terrible than either.
When I returned to my room, there was a parcel waiting for me. It was from my wife. Most of the news in the accompanying letter was long out of date, but with it in the parcel was a small oval icon of Christ, on a silver chain. In her letter, Marfa explained she had heard stories that Bonaparte was the antichrist, and she asked me to wear the icon to protect myself. I felt a shiver of guilt. So far I had needed no protection from French bullets, but I had not found myself protected from temptation. I kissed the image out of habit and then put the chain round my neck, perhaps with the hope of it leading me away from any further encounters with Domnikiia, perhaps with the intent of assuaging my guilt afterwards.
Most of the letter contained nothing of especial interest, just general news from Petersburg. Vadim's daughter, Yelena, was still healthily pregnant. Everyone we knew was well, but all were worried about the war and wanted my opinion on what would happen.
The part of the letter that I read again and again was about our son, Dmitry. It was nothing special, just a mother's detailed description of how he was behaving. He would be six in a few months' time and I'd probably spent less than a third of his life in his company. It was the same for so many children of soldiers. I was pleased to read that he was often asking when I would return; pleased that he even remembered I existed.
We'd named him Dmitry after Dmitry Fetyukovich. Seven years ago, Dmitry Fetyukovich had not been the tough cynic I knew today. Fighting the Turks had changed him somehow, but I had never learned precisely what had happened to him. He never learned precisely what happened to me either; no one did, not even Marfa.
I'd first met Dmitry in the June of 1805. He was passionate, radical and optimistic, as so many young, educated Russians were at the time, having heard of the freedoms that men enjoyed in the west. Despite the tsar's vocal support for the new coalition against Bonaparte, our troops were slow to move into action. Dmitry and I had both volunteered for reconnaissance work, and we spent many hours together watching and assessing enemy movements, but still our forces did not engage the French head on. England – thanks to Nelson – fought better at sea than on land and so, throughout that autumn, Austria was left alone to face the French advance, with little success. The farcical capture of tens of thousands of Austrian troops at Ulm was the pinnacle of their ineptitude. We Russians were to first see action that winter at Austerlitz; a battle of over 150,000 men.
But Austerlitz itself was not to be our first battle. The night before, Vadim called us together. It was our most dangerous mission to date. Vadim led us deep behind French lines, so that we could get last-minute reconnaissance of their positions. We were spotted and attacked – perhaps fifteen French against only us four.
It should have been a thrashing, but we were all strong fighters with the sword. The four of us had stood side by side, slashing and thrusting at our French attackers, who had become so pampered by the superiority of their rifles that they had forgotten how a sabre should be used. I had already despatched two when a blow from the butt of a third sword had knocked me to the ground. I saw a French sabre raised above me, poised to give a final, fatal strike when Dmitry threw himself in the way. The blade bounced off his raised arm and sliced open his right cheek. I felt his blood splatter on my face, but the wound did not hamper him. He slashed the French soldier across his belly and then struck a mortal blow to his neck. By then, I was back on my feet.
I know that at other times in other battles I have had my life saved by my comrades, and I'm sure that I have saved theirs; in the heat of battle, one does not have time to stop and notice. But on this occasion I did, and Dmitry's brave action forever held a special importance for me.
Faced with me, Vadim and Dmitry – still ferocious despite his wounds – the surviving French soon retreated. It was only then that we realized they had taken Maksim with them as their prisoner. We hoped he was a prisoner; there was certainly no body that we could see. Maksim's capture lay heavily on Vadim's conscience in particular. He had only been eighteen at the time and Vadim felt responsible for taking an inexperienced boy on such a mission, but we had little time to indulge in the luxury of regret.
The following day had come the Battle of Austerlitz itself – a humiliation for Austria and Russia, but perhaps Bonaparte's greatest triumph. The three of us – Dmitry, Vadim and I – were under the command, ultimately, of General Booksgevden. We were part of the force which was to take the village of Telnitz and from there, turn right to encircle Bonaparte's flank. The capture of the village was straightforward enough, but it soon became clear that we risked being encircled, not encircling. All we could do was stay there and await further orders. Elsewhere on the field, the battle had been going just as badly. The light frost and snow – which we Russians, if not our Austrian allies, should have been familiar with – was giving Bonaparte further advantage. Perhaps the frost was not heavy enough and the snow not deep enough for what Russians are used to.
It had been well into the afternoon before we at last received orders to retreat. The land behind us was a mass of bogs and lakes, but at least the cold had caused them to freeze over. I had long become separated from Vadim and Dmitry and had abandoned my horse and was, with hundreds of others, halfway across the frozen Lake Satschan when the first of the French 'hot shot' landed – cannonballs heated before they were fired so that they would melt the ice when they hit. All around me, men were falling off the ice into the freezing water. Beneath my feet, through the ice, I saw bodies floating past; even living men, their numb hands searching the glassy sheets above them for a way to the surface. I tried to pull those that I could back on to the broken ice sheets, but it was not easy. Eventually, I myself fell in and only just managed to grab hold of a chunk of the floating icepack and then haul myself back on to it. Then I had possessed all of my fingers. Today, I do not know whether I would be able to achieve a similar feat.
Fear took me. I gave up any attempt to help my fellow troops out of the water and concentrated on the sole task of getting myself to the other side of the lake. I sprang from one block of floating ice to another, the constant motion being somehow more steady than my earlier slow caution. If there were other men precariously balanced on those same ice blocks, I did not notice them; my one intent was to get myself across the lake and on to solid ground. I succeeded, but looked back to see the scene of horror from which I had so recently escaped: men tottering off the unsteady ice into the water, and then attempting to swim to shore, past the drowned, freezing corpses of their comrades. It was a winter scene that was to make me abhor winter ever after.