Far Flies the Eagle (14 page)

The dragging frustration of the campaign had made considerable demands on all those men, men who excelled in the war of action and movement and had been pursuing an elusive enemy through a burning empty countryside until that time. Smolensk had yielded them nothing and cost them a great deal; there was trouble among the recruited element in the army, and difficulty in keeping the enormous numbers from straggling, losing their equipment and deserting during the march across Russia. Food supplies were short, the lines of communication stretched too far back; there was no time to establish proper base camps before greater distances were put between them and the advancing army every few days. But now it would soon be over; the enemy had stopped retreating, his entire forces were marshalled at Borodino, barring the way to Moscow, and Napoleon knew that he had caught up with them at last.

“They could hardly have gone on retreating,” Murat remarked. “We'd have taken Moscow.”

“I counted on that,” Napoleon said. He emptied his wineglass and held it out to an orderly to be refilled. “I knew they'd lose their heads after Smolensk. Our brave Alexander, so far from the battle himself, would have to defend Moscow.”

“It's a pity he didn't direct the armies himself, Sire,” Ney said. “We should enjoy another Austerlitz.”

Napoleon shook his head. “He's not that great a fool, my dear Ney. He's no soldier and he knows it; he's clever enough to stay away and let his Generals take the blame. Besides, Kutuzov was at Austerlitz.”

Murat laughed. “Hé! there should be some action at Borodino! I can hardly restrain the cavalry, Sire. Can you, Ney? They think they'll never get at the Cossacks.”

“Don't underestimate them, your Majesty,” Ney answered. He disliked Murat, and only addressed him by his Royal title when he wished to be sarcastic. Both men laid claim to be the foremost Marshal in the French Army, and their exploits were about equal. But Murat was tall and very handsome in his flamboyant way, while Ney was unobtrusive. Murat looked at his rival and grinned mockingly; before he could answer Napoleon interrupted.

“Ney is right,” he said sharply. “Don't underestimate them. They're good soldiers; whether Kutuzov is an old goat or not, his men fight well.”

He looked round the table and slowly he began to smile, his eyes searching each face, seeing the smile returned and the devotion behind it; even the dour Davoust looked at him with the eyes of a dog for his master. They loved him, all of them, the bravest and most brilliant soldiers in his kingdom, men who had risen with him in the struggle for power in France and continued it with him across half the world. He was the Emperor, but the bond of their common beginning and their tremendous victories transcended everything. He had seized supreme power for himself, but he had been equally generous to all of them. Money, titles, honours and lands had followed every campaign, and in every campaign he shared the dangers with them.

Only two of his old comrades were missing from the table that night; Lannes, whom he had loved and held in his arms before he died after the battle of Essling in the second war with Austria, and Bernadotte, the elected Crown Prince of Sweden, who had turned against him. A third absentee was the new Marshal Marmont, who had just been beaten by the English Commander Wellington in Spain, where the war still continued as fiercely as before. Napoleon banished the thought of Lannes, of Bernadotte and of Marmont. None of them was important enough to cloud his triumph or the moment of unity with his beloved comrades.

‘Allies and politicians, I trust none of them,' he thought. ‘But I trust these, my Marshals.…'

“We shall be victorious, my friends,” he said. “I know it. Kutuzov has made one mistake already.” He paused and they stared towards him; Poniatowsky, handsome and incredibly brave, Murat, Ney, Davoust caught with his mouth full, and Berthier half smiling, because he had studied the position with the Emperor earlier that day.

“The Russian lines extend north of the River Kolochá,” Napoleon explained. “The general position at Borodino is excellent for a defensive battle; only a fool in a hurry would have disposed his army in such a wide half-circle, assuming that an even greater fool would attempt to attack on the whole front. But as I think you know, gentlemen, I am not a fool. Our full force of a quarter of a million men shall attack the centre and left flank of the position. The Russians to the north will have an excellent view of the battle.”

“They're on a slope,” Davoust said. “Casualties will be heavy.”

Napoleon smiled at him and shook his head in reproof.

“Bah, you old pessimist,” he said. “We meet to-morrow morning, Gentlemen, to discuss final details. I give you a toast.” He stood and raised his glass. “To Borodino!”

Marie Naryshkin was walking up and down the little anteroom of Alexander's bedroom in the Palace. After a silence lasting three weeks he had sent for her, and she had immediately forgotten her resolve not to see him again and left her house on the islands to come to him.

It was already half an hour after the time appointed, and she was burning with restlessness. The story of her amour with the Polish admirer was now supplanted by fresh scandal and new names; everyone in Petersburg delighted in repeating the rumours, it helped them to forget the war and their own terror of Napoleon.

Alexander's mistress was unfaithful to him, openly and at every opportunity; any young and personable man who wasn't at the front was invited into her bed, and the Czar either didn't know or didn't care.

She was thinner, her lovely face colourless, the lips painted a vivid red; she was more beautiful than at any time in her life, though her body ached with debauch. Through it all there had been a hope that Alexander would show some sign that he had heard what she was doing; any reaction, even punishment, would have proved that he was not indifferent, that it was still possible for her to touch him. But there was nothing. No letter, no angry summons, nothing.

She had shut herself up in the house on the islands where they had spent so many hours of happiness together and cried hysterically. She had debased herself in the attempt to hurt him, and he had not even noticed. ‘This is impossible,' she told herself at last. ‘He can't have meant this much to me. He was unfaithful and I knew it, for the first few years he wasn't even in love with me.… I've lived with him for nearly thirteen years. I can't still love him. I can't, I can't.…'

Nobody continued to care for one man, she insisted, it was ridiculous, it was bourgeois. She was a fool to come to the islands, a sentimental snivelling woman sitting alone in a place full of memories. Even sleeping in the bed they once shared.

She had laughed suddenly and then stopped. That night she slept with a young footman; it was not a success, he was much too frightened of her.

The following day she received a note from Alexander. He was lonely for her, it said gently. Would she come and spend the evening with him?

Always the unexpected, she thought as she waited; would he mention anything; he must know, of course he knew.… But he was late, which was unusual; punctual and courteous and unpredictable, that was Alexander, so gentle and kind, so utterly immovable when he didn't wish to be moved. And yet tender and loving and gay; laughing with her as they sat by the fire in the white drawing-room in her house, cut off from the world by the Neva; wandering through the garden with his arm round her shoulders; dancing with her at a Court Ball, whispering things to make her giggle when she should have been grave; talking of problems and affairs of State she didn't understand because he trusted her.

The clock on a buhl table struck the hour and she started. “Oh, God,” she said aloud. “Please, God, let him come! I'll go on my knees to him, I'll do anything, put up with anything just to be near him again. If he doesn't want me any more then I'll accept it, I'll be his friend. Please, please. God.…”

At a quarter-past the hour she opened the door and ordered the lackey on duty to find Alexander's Chamberlain.

It was not the Chamberlain but only his secretary who finally came to her.

“Where is His Majesty?” she asked him. “He sent for me. I have been waiting for more than an hour.”

He opened his arms in a gesture of apology.

“I'm sorry, Your Highness. Someone should have come to you. We have received terrible news. Our army has been defeated at Borodino.”

“Oh.”

Marie felt for the back of a chair and held on to it. For a moment the full meaning of what she heard over-rode the sick disappointment, the knowledge that it might be hours before she saw Alexander now. Borodino … the road to Moscow was open.…

“Where is the Emperor?” she asked.

“I'm sorry, Your Highness. He has left the Palace. He has gone to his sister, the Grand Duchess Catherine.”

Catherine and her husband George of Oldenburg were dining when the Czar was announced. Husband and wife were alone together, seated at opposite ends of the long table, so far apart that if George wanted to speak to her he had to shout. The situation always amused Catherine; she used to mimic George leaning towards her, blinking and clearing his throat, and Bagration used to sit back and roar with laughter.

“Why keep the poor fellow at such a distance?” he used to ask, having learnt of the ridiculous isolation in which they took their meals alone. And Catherine would laugh back at him.

“Because he bores me, my beloved. I assure you, I've reduced conversation to a minimum, and really he doesn't mind. He'd much sooner eat in peace and so would I.”

She was thinking of Bagration during the meal, smiling to herself at the memory of all the laughter they had shared. He could manage her; she thought, of all the men he was the only one … and, oh, how she loved him. She looked up at her husband. Poor George, so small and ugly and forlorn. Bagration didn't really like her to torment him. Perhaps she would have their places set together the next time.…

At that moment the Controller of her Household came to her elbow and announced the Czar.

“The Czar?” She stared up at him. “George, did you hear that? Alexander's here!”

“He wishes to see you at once, Your Imperial Highness. And alone,” her Controller whispered.

“Very well.” She rose and waved George of Oldenburg back into his chair. “Finish your dinner. He only wants to see me.”

Alexander was waiting for her in her private drawing-room. It was a charming room, elegantly furnished with the frail chairs and ebony tables of the new ‘Empire' style. A fire burned in the marble grate, for the September air was cold.

She came towards him and curtsied.

“Alexander. What a surprise to see you. And what a pleasure. Alexander, what's the matter, why are you looking like that?…”

He stood before the fireplace, his hands behind his back.

“Catherine,” he said slowly. “Catherine, we've lost at Borodino. Kutuzov was beaten. We've lost 40,000 men.”

She stepped forward quickly. “Oh, my God,” she said. “My God, that old fool.… Alexander, have him shot!”

“It's no use. I should never have put him in command.”

“I know I urged you,” she retorted. “What have you come here for, to blame me?”

“No.” He looked away from her then. “No, I didn't come for that.”

There was silence for a moment, and Catherine's hand suddenly flew to the pearl locket she wore round her neck. Alexander saw the movement and knew that it held a miniature of her lover.

“It's Bagration,” he said at last. She opened her eyes very wide and shook her head once, violently.

“No,” she exclaimed. “No. What are you trying to tell me?… He's hurt.…”

“He's dead,” Alexander said. “He died of wounds after Borodino.”

She swung round and stood with her back to him. He had never heard her cry before. It was a harsh, agonized sound, muffled by the fingers pressed over her mouth; she bent forward as if she were going to fall and he moved towards her.

“Don't,” she spat at him. “Don't touch me, leave me alone.”

He walked away from her and stood staring down into the fire, listening to the terrible weeping of a woman who doesn't know how to cry.

“I never thought he'd be killed,” she was saying. “All the time I was urging you to let our army fight, and I never thought of this.… I never thought he could die. It's all right, my brother, I'm not crying any more, you can turn round.”

She pulled a bell-cord, and when the lackey opened her door she ordered him to bring some brandy. “Bagration liked it,” she explained with terrible restraint. “He taught me to like it too. It's a good brandy, don't you think?”

“Yes.”

He sipped out of his glass; he was tired and strained to the limit. Borodino, he was thinking, Borodino lost and Moscow defenceless.… But I have to make sure of Catherine first.…

“I can't believe it,” she said tonelessly. “I shall never be able to believe that I'm not going to see him again.”

She swallowed the glass of brandy and poured herself another; her movements were stiff and measured as if she were suddenly blind.

“It was good of you to come and tell me, Alexander. I'm grateful to you. Some more brandy?”

She filled his glass for him and he watched her face. It was sallow, as expressionless as a mask; only her lips trembled.

“I suppose we've lost the war,” she said.

Alexander put his glass down. “
I
have lost nothing. I'll retreat to Tobolsk and fight Napoleon there if I have to. Moscow will fall now, there's nothing to stop it. But he can take every capital city in Russia and I won't make peace.”

She stared at him without answering, thinking dully that she was seeing her brother properly for the first time. The intriguers had approached her again, murmuring that he was a weakling and a bungler who would deliver them all to Napoleon unless she agreed to overthrow him. And she had listened then as she had always done, the old envy and power lust rising in her. As she looked into his eyes she saw that he knew.