Читать книгу The Great White Army (Historical Novel) - Pemberton Max - Страница 14

My nephew, Léon, had sworn to seek out the beautiful young Frenchwoman, Valerie, whom we had last seen in the gardens of the burning house; but many days elapsed before that came to be, as you shall presently learn.

In the first place, there was far too much to do in Moscow for the army to think about women at all.

We had arrived at the end of our journey, and the twelve hundred leagues of marching had tired the strongest of us. Now we would rest at the heart of Russia, while the Emperor dictated peace to the Tsar and his army made good its losses. We never so much as dreamed that we had pursued a phantom, and that it would lead the Grand Army to its destruction.

So you must behold us for many days in Moscow enjoying the fruits of our labours and yet finding plenty of work to do. I have told you already that the Guards were quartered in the Palace of the Kremlin, whither the Emperor had repaired; and there I took up my residence with my nephew Léon, and was occupied for some days in attending to the sick who had accompanied us on our long journey from Smolensk. Though many rumours came to me of the strange things that were happening in the city beyond the palace, I paid little heed to them. His Majesty the Emperor had set out to conquer Russia, and here he was at the heart of their empire. What remained, then, but to sign a splendid peace and to return in triumph to Paris?

This is how things should have been, yet how different they were!

We had been prepared to find the Russian nobles fled from Moscow, but the absolute desertion of the city by its people astonished us beyond compare.

Often would I go forth into these magnificent streets, to find the great houses all shut up, their gardens a solitude, the cafés closed, and none but our own soldiers abroad.

Deserted houses everywhere! The hotels shut up and boarded against the stranger. All the shops denuded of their goods and shuttered and barred as though they were prisons.

Such Russians as we met had the most revolting aspect and were clad in the coarsest sheepskins. We knew that the best of them were convicts who had been released by the governor on our advent, and now they skulked like wolves to do us a mischief in every alley or by-street which sheltered them.

For the rest, Moscow might have been a mausoleum. We danced to the music of our own voices; the cheers that were raised were the cheers from French throats which heralded only a hollow victory.

The plunder that we seized came to our hands undisputed. No man contended with us save the brigands, and they were like jackals, whose howls were chiefly heard by night.

I have often wondered at the sang-froid with which all this was received at head-quarters. None of the staff appeared aware of the perils of our situation, nor did the fact that we were already running short of provisions alarm our leaders. Many things we had in abundance, and they should have provoked our irony. It was ridiculous to see whole companies of the Guard making merry over casks of French liqueur or wallowing like schoolgirls in boxes of sweetmeats. Yet such was the case, and nothing but the actual riches of the city blinded the rank and file to the truth.

Oh, what days of plunder they were, and how our good fellows revelled in them!

A man had but to sally forth with an axe in his hand to reach the riches of a Croesus. I have seen the veriest Gascons so laden with furs and jewels and the wealth of nobles that they themselves, could they have conveyed their burdens to Paris, might never have had an anxiety about their bread to the end of their days. It was the commonest thing to discover carts and wagons in Moscow piled high with the treasures of centuries and led uncontested to the camps of an enemy which had found the gates open and the ramparts undefended. Even the Imperial edict against pillage and rapine was useless to prevent this spoliation. The men had suffered much to reach the Holy City, and His Majesty the Emperor was wise enough to reward them according to their hopes.

Here I must tell you that the common troopers were by no means the only offenders in this respect. There was not an officer in or out of the Guards who did not claim his share of the plunder, while he shut his eyes to the doings of those under him. If I myself forbore to take a hand in this profitable amusement, it was because my burdens were heavy and owed not a little to the state of Moscow even in the early days of our occupation.

Then, as afterwards, fire was our almost daily enemy. One day it would be in the bazaars; the next in the poorest quarters of the city; again in the houses of the rich, which our troopers had pillaged. We were told the convicts fired the buildings by the governor's orders. We could not believe it, and yet we hunted the rascals down as though they were vermin.

I have often wondered what His Majesty the Emperor would have done had he known the true state of affairs in Moscow. He did not know them, however, and he was still anxious to propitiate those whom he believed to be its people. Every day we heard the story of the peace which was to be signed, and of the profit which was to come to our arms thereby; and every day we who served were abroad in street or alley wrestling with the flames and smoke of the burning houses, or hanging and shooting the incendiaries who had become the enemy.

Little wonder that my nephew Léon had no time for love-making. Often would I ask him if he had heard of or seen the beautiful Valerie again. The rascal pretended that he had forgotten her very existence, and yet I knew in my heart that he had remembered her. It was no surprise to me when, at the end of the third week, I heard from his servant, Gascogne, that he had received a letter from Valerie herself, and that it had contained an invitation to dinner in a house beyond the suburbs of the city. When I charged Léon with it he shook his head and smiled in his boyish way.

"Oh, mon oncle," he protested, "what time have I for anything like that?"

I rejoined that a man has always time for a pretty woman, and at that he laughed loudly.

"She asked me to dinner," says he, "but, of course, I shall not go. Why, my dear uncle, it would be very dangerous to do so. Do you not know that her friend is Prince Nicholas, who has sworn a vendetta against every Frenchman in Moscow? I should be a fool to do anything of the kind."

I agreed that he would be, and really I was not a little astonished at his common sense.

Captains of the Guard are rarely prudent where a pretty face is concerned, and Valerie St. Antoine was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in all my life. It was amazing to me that Léon should have learned so much wisdom in so short a space of time, and I plumed myself upon his sagacity. Oh, how easily do we old fogeys deceive ourselves! Not three days had elapsed before I learned that he had written to the lady, and on the fourth I heard with some regret that he had gone to dine with her.