The Schirmer Inheritance (2 page)

The area into which the Sergeant had ridden was, although at that date part of the Kingdom of Prussia, inhabited mainly by Poles. It had never been very prosperous; and after the Russian army had passed through it, commandeering the winter stores of grain and fodder and herding away the livestock, it was little more than a wasteland. In some villages the Cossack horses had eaten the very thatch from the roofs, and in others the houses had been gutted by fire. The campaigns of the armies of Holy Russia could be more devastating for her allies than for her enemies.

The Sergeant, himself an experienced campaigner, had not been unprepared for devastation. Indeed, his plan had depended upon it. Country that had just supplied a Russian army would not attract another army for some time to come. A deserter might consider himself reasonably safe there. What he had not been prepared for, however, was the absence of a starving population. Since dawn he had passed several farmhouses, and every one had been abandoned. He had realized by now that the Russians had been more exacting even than usual (perhaps because they had been dealing with Poles), and that the inhabitants, unable to conceal enough food to keep them alive until the spring, had trekked to places farther south that might have been spared. For him, therefore, the situation was desperate. He could perhaps stay in the saddle for another hour. If all the peasants in the immediate vicinity had gone with the rest, he was finished. He raised his head again, blinking to free his eyelashes from the ice that clung to them, and peered ahead.

At that moment he saw the smoke.

It came in a thin wisp from the roof of the building he was heading for, and he saw it for only a moment before it disappeared. He was still some way off, but he was in no doubt as to what he had seen. This was a peat-burning area and that was smoke from a peat fire. His spirits rose as he urged his horse forward.

It took him another half-hour to reach the farmhouse. As he approached he saw that it was a wretched and dilapidated place. There was a low wooden building which was both barn and living-quarters, an empty sheep-pen, and a broken-down wagon almost hidden under a drift of snow. That was all.

The horse’s hoofs made only a faint crunching sound in the frozen snow. As he drew nearer, he let go the reins and carefully eased his carbine from its long saddle-holster. When he had primed it he wedged the weapon across the saddlebags and against the rolled blankets at the pommel. Then he took up the reins again and went on.

At one end of the building there was a small shuttered window, and beside it a door. The snow outside had been trodden since the last fall, but except for the slight trickle of peat smoke from the roof, there was no other sign of life. He stopped and looked about him. The gate of the sheep-pen was open. Near the cart was a slight mound of snow that probably covered the remains of a hayrick. There were no cattle droppings on the fresh snow, no sounds of poultry. But for the faint sighing of the wind, the silence was absolute. The Russians had taken everything.

He let the reins slip through his fingers, and the horse shook its head. The jangling of the bit seemed very loud. He looked quickly at the door of the building. If the sound had been heard, the first response to it would be that of fear; and, providing that it led to the immediate opening of the door and prompt compliance with his wishes, fear would be useful. If it led to the door’s being barricaded against him, however, he
was in a difficulty. He would have to break the door down, and he could not risk dismounting until he was sure that this was to be the end of his journey.

He waited. There was no sound from within. The door remained shut. His Dragoon’s instinct was to slam the butt of his carbine against it and yell at those inside to come out or be killed; but he put the temptation aside. The carbine butt might have to come into play later, but for the present he would try the friendly approach he had planned.

He tried to call “Ho!” but the sound that came from his throat was no more than a sob. Disconcerted, he tried again.

“Ho!”

He managed to croak the word this time, but a deadly feeling of helplessness swept over him. He, who a moment ago had been thinking of battering on a door with his carbine and even of breaking it down, had not enough strength left to shout. There was a roaring in his ears and he thought he was going to fall. He shut his eyes, fighting down the horrible sensation. As he opened his eyes again, he saw the door slowly open.

The face of the woman who stood in the doorway looking up at him was so ravaged by hunger that it was hard to tell what her age might be. But for the braids of hair wound round her head, even her sex would have been in doubt. The voluminous peasant rags she wore were quite shapeless and her feet and legs were bound with sacking like a man’s. She stared at him dully, then said something in Polish and turned to go inside. He leaned forward and spoke in German.

“I am a Prussian soldier. There has been a great battle. The Russians are defeated.”

He said it as if he were announcing a victory. She stopped and looked up again. Her sunken eyes were quite expressionless. He had the curious idea that they would remain so even if he were to draw his sabre and cut her down.

“Who else is here?” he said.

Her lips moved again and this time she spoke in German. “My father. He was too weak to go with our neighbours. What do you want here?”

“What’s the matter with him?”

“He has the wasting fever.”

“Ah!” If it had been the plague, he would have chosen to die in the snow rather than stay.

“What do you want?” she repeated.

To answer her, he undid the fastenings of his cloak and threw it back to reveal his wounded arm.

“I need shelter and rest,” he said; “and someone to cook my food until my wound is healed.”

Her eyes flickered from his bloodstained tunic to the carbine and the bulging saddlebags beneath it. He guessed that she was thinking that if she had the strength she might seize the gun and kill him. He put his hand on it firmly and her eyes met his again.

“There is no food to cook,” she said.

“I have plenty of food,” he answered; “enough to share with those who help me.”

She still stared at him. He nodded reassuringly; then, holding his carbine firmly in his left hand, he brought his right leg across the saddle and slid to the ground. As his feet touched it, his legs gave way under him and he sprawled in the snow. A burning shaft of agony shot from his arm through every nerve in his body. He screamed, and then, for a moment or two after, lay there sobbing. At last, still clutching the carbine, he clambered dizzily to his feet.

The woman had made no attempt to help him. She had not even moved. He pushed past her through the doorway into the hovel beyond.

Inside, he looked round warily. By the light from the doorway that filtered through the peat smoke he could dimly see a
rough wooden bed with what looked like a pile of sacking on it. A whimpering sound came from it now. The peat fire glowed dully in a crude clay stove in the centre. The dirt floor was soft with ash and peat dust. The reeking air made him choke. He blundered round the stove and between the roof supports into the space where the animals had been kept. The straw under his feet here was filthy but he kicked a pile of it together against the back of the stove. He knew that the woman had followed him in and gone over to the sick man. Now he heard a whispered conversation. He arranged the pile of straw into the semblance of a bed and when he had finished spread his cloak on it. The whispers had ceased. He heard a movement behind him and turned.

The woman stood there facing him. She had a small axe in her hands.

“The food,” she said.

He nodded and went out into the yard again. She followed and stood watching as, with his carbine held between his knees, he awkwardly unstrapped the blankets. He succeeded at last and flung the roll in the snow.

“The food,” she said again.

He raised the carbine and, pressing the butt against his left hip, slid his hand down to the lock. With an effort he managed to cock it and move his forefinger on to the trigger. Then he put the muzzle to the horse’s head just below the ear.

“Here is our food,” he said, and pulled the trigger.

His ears sang with the noise of the shot as the horse sank kicking to the ground. The carbine had leaped from his hand and lay in the snow, smoking. He picked up the blankets and tucked them under his arm before retrieving it. The woman still stood watching him. He nodded to her and, motioning to the horse, went towards the house.

Almost before he reached the door, she was on her knees by the dying animal, at work on it with the axe. He looked
back. There was the saddle and its contents; his sabre too. She might easily kill him with it while he lay helpless. There was a fortune, by her standards, in the flat leather pouch beneath his tunic. For a moment he watched the quick, desperate movements of her arms and the dark mess of blood spreading in the snow beneath her. His sabre? She would not need a sabre if she had a mind to kill him.

Then he felt the periodic agony of his arm returning and heard himself beginning to moan. He knew suddenly that there was nothing more he could do now to order the world outside his own body. He stumbled through the doorway and to his bed. The carbine he put on the ground under the cloak. Then he took off his helmet, unrolled his blankets, and lay down in the warm darkness to fight for his life.

The woman’s name was Maria Dutka, and she was eighteen when Sergeant Schirmer first set eyes on her. Her mother had died when she was young and, as there were no other children and her father had failed to find a second wife, Maria had been brought up to do the work of a son and heir on the holding. Moreover, the chronic disease from which Dutka suffered was now of long standing and the periods of relief from it had become rarer. She was already accustomed to thinking and acting for herself.

She was not headstrong, however. Although the idea of killing the Sergeant, in order to avoid having to share the dead horse with him, did occur to her, she discussed the matter with her father first. She was by nature deeply superstitious, and when he suggested that some supernatural agency might have had a hand in the Sergeant’s providential appearance, she saw the danger of her plan. She saw, too, that even if the Sergeant were to die of his wound—and he was very near to death in those first days—the supernatural powers might consider that her murderous thoughts about him had turned the scale.

She nursed him, accordingly, with a kind of anxious devotion
which it was easy for the grateful Sergeant to misunderstand. Later, however, she did something that appealed to him still more. When, during his convalescence, he made an attempt to thank her for so faithfully keeping her part of their bargain, she explained her motives to him with great simplicity and candour. At the time he was both amused and impressed. Afterwards, when he thought about what she had said and the fact that she had said it, he experienced rather more surprising sensations. As the food they shared restored her youthful appearance and vitality, he began to watch the movements of her body and to modify pleasurably his earlier plans for the future.

He stayed in the Dutka house for eight months. Preserved under the snow, the carcass of the horse supplied them all with fresh meat until the thaw came, and then with the smoked and dried remains. By that time, too, the Sergeant was able to take his carbine into the woods and bring back deer. Vegetables began to grow. Then, for a few remarkable weeks, old Dutka rallied and, with the Sergeant and Maria doing a horse’s work in the traces, was even able in the end to plough his land.

The Sergeant’s continued presence was taken as a matter of course now. Neither Maria nor her father ever referred to his military past. He was a victim of war, as they were. The returning neighbours found nothing strange in his presence. They themselves had spent the winter working for strangers. If old Dutka had found a strong, hard-working Prussian to help him set things to rights, so much the better. And should the curious wonder how old Dutka paid him or why a Prussian should trouble to work so poor a patch of land, there was always someone to remind them of Maria’s broad hips and strong legs and of the harvest to be reaped between them by such a lusty young fellow.

The summer came. The battle of Friedland was fought. The Emperors of France and Russia met on a raft moored in the
river Niemen. The Treaty of Tilsit was signed. Prussia was stripped of all her territories west of the Elbe and all her Polish provinces. Bialla, only a few miles south of the Dutkas’ holding, was suddenly on the Russian frontier, and Lyck had become a garrison town. Prussian infantry patrols came seeking recruits, and the Sergeant took to the woods with the other young men. He was away on one of these excursions when Maria’s father died.

After the burial ceremonies he got out his leather money-pouch and sat down with Maria to count his savings. The proceeds of many looting forays and the peculations of four years as a non-commissioned officer, they were more than sufficient to match the small amount that Maria would get from the sale of her father’s holding to a neighbour. For there was no question now of their remaining to work the land. They had seen what could happen when the Russian armies came, and with this new frontier the Russians were no more than a day’s march away. To them this seemed a weightier argument for leaving the holding than the Sergeant’s precarious position as a deserter. The place for them to go was clearly somewhere where there were neither Russians nor Prussians, and where Maria, already pregnant, could bring up their children in the certainty of being able to feed them.

Early in the November of 1807 they set out, with a handcart contrived from Dutka’s old wagon, to walk towards the west. It was a hard, dangerous journey, for their road lay through Prussia and they dared travel only at night. But they did not go hungry. They had brought their food with them in the cart and it lasted until they reached Wittenberg. That was the first town they entered in broad daylight, too. They were free of Prussian soil at last.