‘Who are you?’ Sebastian asked him.
‘What’s that? Who am I? The lighting is poor, I grant you, but even so!’
In the flickering torchlight his expression turned to a grimace. Hand on heart, the costumed figure began to declaim:
‘Until our age, Athens and Rome
Doubted a man could create a throne
To rival their dominance.
But now their pride fades, is muted
All their conceit stands refuted
By the sovereign of France …’
Everyone was dumbfounded by this performance, apart from one grenadier, less literate, perhaps, or less susceptible to blandishments, who frowned and said threateningly, ‘Answer Mr Roque or I’ll give you a good thrashing!’
The soldier started climbing over the furniture to grab hold of the old ham, who swept on, ‘You see before you the Grrrreat Vialatoux, who has carried our authors, classical and not quite so classical, to the furthest corners of the Empire! Comedian, tragedian, singer – the theatre, don’t y’know! All the arts in one sole, unique form!’
Other figures stood up behind him and a bossy, high-pitched female voice cried out, ‘Damn and blast it! Long live the Emperor!’
‘Show yourselves,’ ordered the chef, who hated complications and still hadn’t got his extra stove. There were three of them stepping from one piece of furniture to the next down to the cellar’s beaten-earth floor: a thin boy who was clasping a set of tinplate medieval armour to his chest, the overacting Roman and a woman of forty or more, rather round-shouldered, the manageress of this travelling company.
‘Thank goodness you weren’t any longer,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t take any more in this horrific hiding place! Look what we’ve been able to salvage: Joan of Arc’s armour, Brutus’ helmet, Caesar’s toga and nothing else, nothing!’
‘Why are you in this palace?’ Sebastian asked wide-eyed.
‘For the past week we’ve been rehearsing the historical fantasia composed by Mme Aurore for Count Rostopchin,’ said Vialatoux. ‘He had lent us a room in the Kremlin, and then events stopped us in the middle of the third act.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It was terrifying,’ the boy with the armour continued. ‘There was a stampede, everyone was petrified, we had to find somewhere safe; there was no way of getting back to the house we’re renting from an Italian merchant behind the bazaar, everywhere people were in a frenzy, weeping, moaning …’
‘And then?’ Sebastian again asked.
‘We had to bury ourselves away here,’ explained the Great Vialatoux, hitching up the toga, which was slipping off his shoulder. ‘Too dangerous outside for French citizens.’
‘You hadn’t sensed anything looming?’
‘Only our performance,’ exclaimed Mme Aurore, shocked by the tactlessness of such a question.
‘How is that possible?’ Sebastian asked in amazement.
‘Art is enough for us, young man,’ boomed Vialatoux.
‘All we thought of were our parts,’ murmured a young girl at the back. ‘Acting’s very absorbing, you know.’
‘I don’t, actually,’ said Sebastian, trying to see her better in the shadows. ‘But even so! This is war.’
‘We were concentrating on the play.’
Sebastian was still holding the torch. He cast more light on this ingénue, whose voice fascinated him. As he looked at the actress from head to toe, he felt himself grow short of breath. Mlle Ornella was dark-skinned with curly hair, oblong, very dark eyes, and long eyelashes. Sebastian immediately thought of the actress who had enraptured him in The Triumph of Trajan at the Opera, the unattainable Mlle Bigottini who was showered with ducats by a Hungarian Maecenas. Her counterpart here wore a short-sleeved over-blouse with an old-fashioned cotton cambric skirt and lace-up leather boots that came to above her ankle. Because the torch was trembling in Sebastian’s hand and he was about to set a chest on fire, the grenadier took it back from him and asked, ‘Do you want your desk, then, Monsieur le secrétaire?’
‘Yes, yes …’
*
The Emperor was irritable. His mood hovered between fury and exhaustion. At six in the evening, he had picked half-heartedly at some cutlets, sitting outside on his red morocco-leather chair, his feet resting on a drum. Now he was silently watching the servants taking his iron bed and folding furniture out of the leather slings in which they were carried by the mules. On the doorstep of the one passable inn in the neighbourhood, where he was going to spend the night, he saw Roustam, his chief Mameluke, cleaning the pistols with Medusa-head grips, which he only used to shoot crows. Night was falling; bivouac fires were being lit under the ramparts and on the plain. After drinking his glass of Chambertin diluted with iced water, Napoleon was seized by a dry cough, which shook him in his armchair. Dr Yvan, as ever, was not far away; as soon as the fit passed, he advised immediate rest and a course of hot baths once they were in the Kremlin. The Emperor’s health was deteriorating. On the eve of the battle near the village of Borodino his aide-de-camp Lauriston had applied emollient poultices to his stomach; not having recovered his voice since the stop at Mojaisk, His Majesty had scribbled hard-to-decipher orders on pieces of paper. He was growing stout. He walked less because of the oedemas in his legs. More and more often he slipped a hand under his waistcoat, pressing down as spasms stabbed him between his stomach and bladder; he was in pain relieving himself, passing muddy urine, drop by drop. His physical decay made him aggressive. Like Robespierre. Like Marat. Like the tubercular Saint-Juste. Like Aesop, Richard III and Scarron, the hunchbacks.
‘Come along, Monsieur Constant,’ he said to his valet, ‘this cursed charlatan must be obeyed …’
Thus described, Dr Yvan helped him stand; they followed Constant into the inn and climbed a rudimentary staircase without a banister. Upstairs the Emperor found his campaign furniture, two high stools, a writing desk with a lamp and several candles, and his bed with its green silk curtain. Constant helped him out of his overcoat; his armchair was brought up, he threw himself into it, tossing his hat on the floor. He had a plump face, smooth as ivory, the delicate and determined features of a Roman, according to their statues, and thinning hair, a lock of which curved like a comma over his forehead. With a weary gesture he dismissed his attendants. He loved power, not men, with an artist’s love, as a musician loves his violin; it was an exercise of absolute solitude and mistrust. Who could understand? The Tsar perhaps: Alexander had also surrounded himself with sycophants, libertines, villains and mercenaries who bombarded him with dangerous advice; English and émigrés mingled with these prophets of doom. ‘Napoleon’s Europe is cracking,’ they said, and they were right. Marmont had just let himself be crushed near Salamanca. Out of pure jealousy, Bernadotte, his old rival, had instigated talks between Sweden and Russia. Who should he rely on? The allies? Oh, they were a fine bunch, the allies! The Prussians detested Napoleon. Half the Spanish battalion had been shot for indiscipline. The thirty thousand Austrian soldiers sent in exchange for some provinces kept as far away from the fighting as they could; anyway, Russia and Austria had a secret understanding. The allies! Old enemies waiting for the chance to betray him. And the marshals themselves were complaining: they said that by extending its territories France was going to become diluted, that a Europe under coercion was ungovernable. The Emperor believed in nothing anymore except destiny. Everything was written. He knew he was invulnerable but still the image of Charles XII haunted him.
Every evening he’d return to Voltaire’s description of that young Swedish king’s disastrous undertaking; a century earlier he had lost his army and his throne on the road to Moscow. He’d experienced the same inconclusive battles; his artillery and wagons had become mired in the same marshes, the dragoons of his vanguard had been similarly weakened by surprise attacks from the Muscovite rearguard. People had called him invincible too, but he’d ended up fleeing to Constantinople on a stretcher. Was that repeating itself? It was unthink
able. And yet there were coincidences that troubled Napoleon. A little while ago, when he saw one of his captains throw a moujik armed with a pitchfork into the Moskova, he had remembered a story told by Voltaire at the end of the first part of his History of Russia. An old man dressed entirely in white, holding two carbines, had threatened Charles XII in the same fashion; some Swedes had cut him down. The peasants had mounted a revolt in the fens of Mazovia; they had been captured and forced to hang one another. But then the King had pushed deep into desert wastes chasing Peter the Great’s armies, who kept on retreating, drawing him on, leaving nothing but scorched earth behind them … The Emperor stirred nauseously in his armchair. ‘Constant!’
His valet, stretched out in front of the half-open door, an ear cocked, stood up, straightening his uniform.
‘Sire?’
‘Constant, my son, what a terrible musty smell!’
‘I will burn some vinegar, sire.’
‘It’s unbearable. My coat.’
Constant draped a slightly worn sky-blue coat with a gold embroidered collar over the Emperor’s shoulders; he’d worn it in Italy and since then whenever he was under canvas. He went downstairs treading heavily, one step at a time, disturbing the secretaries, officers and servants; they were spending what they anticipated would be a short and uncomfortable night on the stairs. Immediately outside Napoleon found Berthier and some generals engaged in animated conversation.
‘Fire, Your Majesty,’ said the major general, pointing to a glow in the city.
‘Where?’
‘Barges caught fire on a branch of the river and then the wooden piers and a brandy warehouse,’ explained an aide-de-camp who that moment had come back from Moscow.
‘Our soldiers can’t work out how to light the Russian stoves,’ Berthier said ruefully.
‘Get a bloody move on! Those coglioni had better not torch my brother Alexander’s capital!’
Two
THE FIRE
HIS BRAWNY HANDS resting on one of the Byzantine crenels of the Kremlin’s parapet, old Marshal Lefebvre was watching the blue flames rising in the distance from the alcohol warehouse. ‘My eye!’ he stormed. ‘Vat are they shilly-shallying for, those bluudy sapperrrs!? It’s not that complicated, pourrring riverrr water on a shack!’ He took a deep breath and said to the officers of his staff, ‘I haf seen some firrres in my time, some devilishly big ones, as a materrr ov fact.’ Lefebvre was starting to repeat himself, endlessly chuntering on about his past exploits. Decent fellow though he was, he was about to launch into a story that was all too familiar to his staff when, wrinkling his potato-shaped nose, he caught sight of Sebastian.
‘You’rrre still herrre?’
‘To obtain your permission, Your Grace …’
‘Still your agtors? Can’t you see I’m busy vatching these insects in uniforrrm who can’t even put out a campfirrre on the Moskova?’
‘Yes, Your Grace, but …’
‘My dearrr sirrr, concerrn yourself with copying out His Excellency Barrron Fain’s notes in ink and imparrrting an elegant turn ov phrase to His Majesty’s vords; ve all haf our worrrk. Aparrrt from those in the Emperror’s service, therrre’s no kvestion of me prrroviding quarters for civilians. Do you underrrstand?’
‘Yes, Your Grace, but …’
‘He’s stubborrrn, the little nitvit,’ grumbled the marshal, crossing his arms.
‘Can I at least borrow a barouche to drive them back to their neighbourhood?’
‘Do whateverrr you so please, monsieur le segrétaire, but I don’t vant to see your band of jackanapes in fancy dress loiterrrring anywhere near me! Do you vant my infantry to trample your leading ladies underrfoot?’
‘No thank you, Your Grace.’
As Sebastian was leaving, the marshal shrugged his shoulders and sighed, ‘They’re all the same, these civilians, they haf no idea. And that other lot, over there, not bloody able to put out a chit ov a firrre! Where are they vrom? Not vrom my part of the country, at any rate – a rrreal peasant can put a burrrning barn out vith a glass of vater!’
Son of a Rouffach miller, whose accent he had inherited, husband to a laundress of whom the hereditary nobility of the Court made fun, and yet the first to be rewarded by Napoleon with an imaginary duchy, Lefebvre took pride in recalling his humble origins at every possible opportunity. But today, his officers thought, even armed with a bucket, his ideal peasant wouldn’t have had any luck: that was a mighty blaze raging on the other side of the city.
*
At ten o’clock in the evening, an open army barouche equipped with lamps that reached only as far as the horses’ hindquarters left the Kremlin and headed towards the north-east corner of the city. Mme Aurore’s entire troop was crammed into it: the Great Vialatoux had agreed to take off his centurion’s helmet and one of Joan of Arc’s greaves was sticking out of the door. Sebastian had positioned himself on the box next to the postilion, Intendant Bausset having given him permission to escort his protégés, and he kept on turning round in his seat to try to see Mlle Ornella’s silhouette in the darkness. This furtive contemplation was complicated by the omnipresence of Mme Aurore, who knew the way by heart and was an outspoken guide; standing in the middle of the carriage, despite the bumpy road, she pointed out the short cuts to their rented lodge.
‘To the right, down there, we’re going to drive round the bazaar …’
The carriage turned where the manageress said.
‘It would be shorter going through the bazaar,’ the chatterbox carried on. ‘But the cellars’ trapdoors open right in the middle of the street and, just look at that scrimmage …’
The carriage passed narrow streets of single-storey brick houses with porticoes. Finally rid of their officers, the soldiers were stocking up, squabbling over barrels of honey or a scarf woven with silver thread. This was the Chinese quarter; Lan Tchu’s merchants dispatched goods here from all over Asia. They came from beyond the River Amor, from places where one no could be sure where Russia finishes and China begins. Their caravans left the Silk Road north of the Caspian and travelled up the Volga and the Don to Moscow to sell white silk from Bukhara, engraved copperware, sacks of spices, sticks of soap and blocks of pink-veined salt. Hanks of hair swung in the shop windows, lit up by lanterns of the pillagers of the Guard. Uniforms disappeared under garishly coloured brushed velvet, shakoes were swapped for Tartar caps with earflaps; they pilfered objects made from walrus tusks and draped yellow- and violet-striped fabrics from Hissar round themselves as capes. The men poured out of the bazaar in unrecognizable bands and the carriage had to fight its way through; the horses were reduced to a walk. The journey seemed endless but Sebastian was growing more and more thrilled, the longer he spent in the presence of Mlle Ornella, who seemed to him to possess all the virtues of heaven and earth, when an explosion made him jump. On their left a bazaar stall was on fire. Blurred figures were running in all directions, shouting. The postilion whipped up the horses, which broke into a smart trot in the chaos, sometimes hitting a grenadier or a voltigeur as they came rushing out of the Chinese quarter; one of them hung on and climbed onto the footboard. ‘It blew up when we broke the door down!’
The soldier had knotted a piece of silk round his neck and donned a wolfskin jacket, and he was saying accusingly, ‘You’ll see, we’ll end up roasting in this filthy town!’
‘Hold your tongue,’ Sebastian said with an authority that was new to him. ‘You’re scaring these ladies.’
‘Ladies aren’t the only ones who get jittery. If I could play the bird, I’d fly away from here pretty damn quick, I can tell you!’
‘It’s on fire the other side as well,’ said Mme Aurore.
‘Past the Foundling Hospital. It must be the Solenka.’
‘The what?’ asked Sebastian.
‘The salt fish-sellers’ street, Monsieur Sebastian.’
Mlle Ornella had just spoken to him. All that registered was the soft musical lilt of her voice and he clean forgot about t
hose countless fires which no longer seemed fortuitous in the slightest.
*
Captain d’Herbigny had claimed Count Kalitzin’s scantly, but nonetheless welcomingly, furnished apartments for himself and was studying a candlelit painting of bathing nymphs that had been spared in the upheaval. He would have preferred real women to these plump, dimpled figures, so out of step with the tastes of the day, but unable to sleep, with a touch of imagination and the prompting of his memories, he was bringing the scene to life and peopling it with young Russian wantons. Paulin had found dinner services emblazoned with the family crest but not much to serve on them: some dried fruit and a brown, sickly sweet jam. The captain held out his glass and his servant filled it with birch wine, which he drank down in a single draught. ‘This really isn’t anything like champagne,’ he said, smoothing his moustache. He had exchanged his dragoon’s uniform, waistcoat and shirt for a fox-fur-lined, vermilion satin coat and was picking at the food, eating the jam with a spoon. Paulin, meanwhile, was making the bed, using tablecloths instead of sheets. At the front of the house, the chained mastiffs started barking again.
‘I should have cracked their skulls, those babbling hounds. Paulin, go and see.’
The servant opened the casement window, leant out; he reported to his master that some unknown civilians were talking to the sentries.
‘Go down and find out what’s happening, at the double!’
The captain filled a glass to the brim and gazed at his reflection in the mirror on the wall facing the table. He liked the look of himself this evening, decked out like a Muscovite, without a helmet, glass in hand. ‘To my very good health,’ he said, saluting himself. The decor, these vast, bare rooms, reminded him of growing up near Rouen in the d’Herbigny chateau, a big farmhouse, really, on an estate which his father farmed. The bedclothes were crawling with insects; the guests who wouldn’t leave ate all the food, because there were always visiting neighbours, a relative who was a parish priest or some other impoverished member of the decayed nobility. In winter everyone huddled round the only fireplace that worked. D’Herbigny had enlisted in the National Guard very young, and learnt the profession of soldiering in the field; after that he was only good for killing, charging at the sound of the trumpet and collecting medals. He’d encountered death so often that everything seemed to be its due. One day he’d buried his sword in a little pipsqueak’s guts who cut him an insolent look. Another day, at a toll barrier, he’d beaten the life out of a customs officer who’d intended to levy a charge for entering Paris. And that fight at Vaugirard between the dragoons and chasseurs when they clashed in the middle of the open-air cafes; he was laughing at the memory of it when Paulin appeared.
The Retreat Page 4