The Brave Captains

by V. A. Stuart

  “You are sure that he’s dying, Miss Moray?”

  Catriona freed herself from Phillip’s protective embrace. “The surgeon said so,” she confirmed. “He has a saber wound in the chest—it is very deep and has penetrated the lung. No man could live for more than a few hours with such a wound.” She shrugged helplessly. “You have only to look at him, if you doubt my word. We have done all we can but he is sinking fast.”

  Phillip glanced reluctantly at the wounded Russian. The man’s face was a white, unrecognizable blur but he did not go closer, did not attempt to identify him, since there was no need for him to do so. Fantastic though the coincidence was, he knew who lay there—knew and shrank from the recognition for this time, it was evident, he could not send Mademoiselle Sophie’s husband back to her. The man she had married barely six months before, in the great domed Cathedral at Odessa—the arrogant young princeling, whom he had hated, envied, and despised because Mademoiselle Sophie had married him—was dying. Dying here, in this small lamplit tent, from a British dragoon’s saber-cut, received during the fierce mêlée on the slopes of the Causeway Heights this morning.

  This morning … he drew in his breath sharply. What had Catriona Moray said, about the leg wound being gangrenous? It was too soon, surely, for gangrene to have set in but—Narishkin had lost an arm and been wounded in the leg at the Alma, which suggested … Phillip’s throat was suddenly tight. It suggested that Prince Andrei Stepanovitch Narishkin, Colonel of the Chasseurs of Odessa, must today have gone into action with his wounds imperfectly healed and an empty sleeve, where his sword-arm had been. Enemy or not, this was courage of a very high order; the selfless, calculated heroism of a man who had known what it meant to fall on the field of battle and, as such, deserving of his respect, even of his admiration. As if she had guessed the trend of his thoughts, Catriona observed softly, “The brave men are not exclusively ours, are they, Mr Hazard? In any war, both sides have their heroes. The pity of it is that so many of them must die.”

  And their widows weep for them, Phillip reflected, thinking of Mademoiselle Sophie. He inclined his head unable, for a moment, to speak. Then, the words less a question than a statement, he said, “You know who he is, Miss Moray?”

  “I know only too well,” she admitted, without hesitation. “He is the Prince Narishkin.”

  “Then you have met him before?”

  “I have seen him before,” Catriona corrected. “He was a frequent visitor to the house in which I was employed as governess, after my father died. My employer was his aunt—I was governess to his two young cousins, who live in Sebastopol.” She smiled faintly. “In Imperial Russia, a governess is seen but never heard. All the same, I once spoke to the Prince Narishkin. He was gracious and kind. His aunt and the rest of the family were kindness itself to me, Mr Hazard, and this I—I cannot forget.” Once again, Phillip saw, her eyes were misted with tears and this time she did not seek to hide them. “One should not shed tears for the enemy, should one? Yet for Prince Andrei, I …” She glanced up at him sadly. “But you know him, do you not? He was asking for you, saying your name again and again, begging me, if I could, to bring you to him. He said he had something to tell you—that was why I sent for you, Mr Hazard. But now that you have come, he is unconscious, he does not realize that you are here.”

  “I can wait,” Phillip offered, “at any rate until dawn, in case he should recover consciousness.”

  “Thank you,” Catriona Moray acknowledged, as if he had done her a service. “But you are tired, are you not, and I do not suppose you have eaten since this morning. Be seated, please, and rest. I will watch over our—our fallen enemy, while Morag prepares some food for you. We haven’t much but you are welcome to share what we have.”

  Phillip did as she bade him. There were a great many questions he wanted to ask her concerning Narishkin’s family and, in particular, concerning Mademoiselle Sophie but, in spite of this, within a few minutes of seating himself with his back against the tent-pole, his head slumped forward onto his chest and he slept.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1

  “Lieutenant Hazard!” Please to bestir yourself, sir.” The whispered voice was that of Sergeant MacCorkill’s wife, Morag. Accustomed, when at sea, to being turned out of his hammock—often after only a few hours’ sleep—Phillip was instantly alert. He sat up, stretching his cramped limbs, stiff from a night spent on the hard ground.

  “I am awake, Mistress MacCorkill,” he said. “What is it?”

  “’Tis this, sir.” Morag MacCorkill thrust a steaming bowl into his hands and offered him a horn spoon, a smile briefly lighting her gaunt face. “I am sorry indeed to have to disturb you, and you sleeping like a babe, sir,” she told him. “But ’tis wanting scarcely an hour to dawn and you have not yet eaten. You will be needing food more than you are needing your sleep now, I am thinking.”

  A pleasantly savory smell rose from the bowl and, as he inhaled it, Phillip thanked her. It seemed a long time since he had eaten any sort of meal, least of all a hot one that smelt as appetizing as this did, and he was about to fall hungrily upon the contents of the bowl when, with full wakefulness, memory returned. He glanced uneasily across to the opposite side of the tent, his conscience pricking him. He had slept, as Morag MacCorkill had put it, like a baby, while Mademoiselle Sophie’s husband lay dying, a few feet from him. Perhaps he was already dead but … his first quick glance reassured him. Prince Andrei Narishkin lay as he had lain the previous evening, still swathed in the folds of the borrowed Highland plaid, with Catriona Moray kneeling at his side.

  Sensing Phillip’s eyes on her, she looked up from the cloth she was in the act of moistening and shook her head wordlessly, before she laid the freshly wrung cloth on the wounded man’s brow. Narishkin stirred and cried out something in a high pitched, agonized voice which shattered the prevailing silence but, again meeting Phillip’s gaze, the girl repeated her headshake. A few minutes later Morag MacCorkill took her place beside the wounded Russian and Catriona moved across to join Phillip in his corner, also carrying a bowl of steaming broth. He made room for her, holding her bowl until she had seated herself.

  “How is he, Miss Moray?”

  “He is delirious and in a high fever,” she answered despairingly. “Much as he has been throughout the night. I would have wakened you, had he recovered consciousness and asked for you, Mr Hazard. But he did not and”—she brushed a lock of unruly hair from her damp brow wearily—“he is sinking fast, I am afraid.”

  “Perhaps, by this time, the surgeons are not all so hard pressed—” Phillip began, thinking of Surgeon Fraser. But she cut him short. “I sent Morag for one of the 93rd’s surgeons during the night. He administered an opiate, to lessen the pain but that, it seems, is all anyone can do for him now. Except”—she sighed—“except set his mind at rest, if only one knew how and I, alas, do not.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You heard him cry out, just now?” Catriona asked. “Well, he keeps saying a name I cannot catch, the same name, over and over again, at times quite frantically, as if it meant a great deal to him. He has talked, in his delirium, and I believe that is a woman’s name but I cannot be certain and—”

  “Was the name Sophie?” Phillip put in quietly. “Or Sophia?”

  Catriona looked up at him, her eyes widening in surprise. “Yes, I fancy it might have been. But what leads you to suppose that it was and … who is Sophie?”

  “She is his wife.” He said it without a qualm, his voice expressionless. “They were married in Odessa when I was a prisoner of war there, following the loss of the Tiger.”

  “But did not Prince Andrei marry a niece of the Emperor?” Catriona demurred. “I am sure I heard the Paveloffs speak of it. He was betrothed to one of the grand duchesses, whose name was …” She frowned, in an effort to remember. “The Grand Duchess Olga Caterina Mihailovna, was it not?”

  “Olga Caterina Sophia Mihailovna,” Phillip amended. He added wryly,
the old, all-too-familiar knife twisting in his heart as it always did when he permitted himself to think of her. “Whom I knew as Mademoiselle Sophie.”

  “As Mademoiselle Sophie? But—were you actually acquainted with her? Was this in Odessa, Mr Hazard?”

  “No, it was before that. You see, we brought her out with us from England in the steam frigate Trojan, just before war was declared. She was accompanied by her duenna, a rather fear-some Austrian baroness called von Mauthner.” He explained the circumstances, and went on, “We had, of course, no idea who she was—her identity was revealed to our Captain in sealed orders from the Admiralty, to be opened only after we had sailed. Captain North did not confide in any of us. In common with the rest of the ship’s company, I was instructed to refer to our passenger as Mademoiselle Sophie so, naturally, I did so. There was some speculation as to her nationality but she spoke French, German, and English fluently and, her companion being Austrian—”

  “You suspected nothing?” Catriona put in.

  Phillip smiled faintly, as the bittersweet memories came flooding into his mind. “Towards the end of the voyage we did—when our Mademoiselle Sophie was received by Lord Stratford de Redcliffe in person and when we learnt that her ultimate destination was Odessa. But at the time, our orders bound us not to talk of the matter.”

  “You are at liberty to talk of it now, surely?”

  He shrugged. “Yes, I suppose so. But—”

  “What was she like?” Catriona asked eagerly. “Tell me about her, will you not, Mr Hazard?”

  Reluctantly at first, Phillip found himself telling her of the voyage and of Trojan’s two mysterious female passengers. After a while, however, as they sat side by side sipping their broth, it became almost a relief to confide in her and to talk of Mademoiselle Sophie to an understanding and sympathetic listener. He chose his words with care, at pains to give no hint of the feelings he had secretly cherished for the lovely, dark haired girl, with whose urgent delivery to Constantinople his late commander had been entrusted, unaware that even the tone of his voice when he spoke of her was a betrayal.

  Catriona listened for the most part in silence, only occasionally prompting him gently, and he went on to tell her of his imprisonment in the residence of the Governor of Odessa, of the wound he had suffered when the Tiger had been shelled and set on fire, and finally of Mademoiselle Sophie’s daily visits to his sickroom.

  “I can’t be sure, looking back now, whether she did come or whether I imagined her presence,” he confessed. “I fear I imagined it for, like that poor fellow over there, I was delirious and almost out of my mind. Yet it seemed to me, that she kept vigil at my bedside and even prayed for my recovery.”

  “Why doubt what you want to believe, Mr Hazard?”

  “How can I help it?” Phillip protested. “It would scarcely have been fitting for a Russian Grand Duchess to visit a British prisoner of war, surely? Even if his prison were the Governor’s palace and his physicians the Governor’s own as, in fact, mine were. The Russians treated us well, all of us, not only our wounded … although it is tantamount to a court martial offense to mention this now in the British Fleet! But both officers and seamen were given the freedom of the town, entertained and made welcome in their homes by the townsfolk, the sick given the best of care, so that we felt more like guests than prisoners. And this was in Odessa, a town which our combined fleets had recently bombarded and left in flames! It is strangely at variance with the terrible tales one hears of Russian atrocities, committed on the battlefield, is it not?”

  “The atrocities are committed by the common soldiers,” Catriona said. “For whom there is, perhaps, some excuse. They are ignorant peasants, taught to expect no mercy at the hands of the enemy. In consequence they show none, either during or after a battle … and the Cossacks are the worst! I expect you saw them today?”

  “I saw them, Miss Moray,” Phillip confirmed grimly.

  Catriona avoided his gaze. “I, too, was treated with the greatest possible kindness and generosity during my stay in Sebastopol, Mr Hazard. The Russian nobility are chivalrous, almost to a fault—or so I found, and I lived amongst them for two years, my father for much longer. Many of them were our friends. That is why …” She hesitated, looking up at him now and searching his face gravely. “Mr Hazard, do not be offended but … if she held you in particular esteem or if there was a—a sentimental attachment between you, I believe that even a Russian Grand Duchess might have defied convention and ignored what was fitting.”

  Taken off his guard by the unexpectedness of her suggestion and all that this implied, Phillip reddened in confusion. “I do not think that Mademoiselle—that Her Imperial Highness held me in particular esteem, Miss Moray. And as to a sentimental attachment, I—” He had been about to deny it vehemently but the denial froze on his lips as, in memory, he heard again Mademoiselle Sophie’s sweet, gentle voice and the words with which she had—or he had imagined she had—taken leave of him.

  “We shall not meet again, Phillip but … to know that you are living, somewhere in the world, will comfort me. The heart does not forget … and, when peace comes, I shall see you with the eyes of the heart, as you set your course for England.” His hands clenched convulsively at his sides, the palms clammy despite the early morning chill pervading the tent. She had bent over him then, he remembered, and her lips had brushed his cheek. “May God be with you, now and always, my dear English sailor …” Had he imagined those words, he asked himself, the words and the farewell kiss? Had the whole episode been a dream, born of pain and delirium, of despair and frustrated longing? It was possible, it was quite likely; he might very easily have deluded himself, for was not the wish father to the thought and every dream an illusion? Yet the words were printed indelibly in his memory, never, it seemed, to be forgotten whether Mademoiselle Sophie had said or he himself invented them when his mind was wandering in that strange limbo, which lies between waking and sleeping and, sometimes, between living and dying.

  His gaze went involuntarily to the still form of Prince Andrei Narishkin and then, almost guiltily, to the small, pale face of Catriona Moray, upturned to his, its expression full of concern. She, too, had dreamed, he reminded himself and, with her Highland ancestry, set much store by the dream, on her own admission; what dreams, what delusions were haunting poor Narishkin now, as he stirred restlessly beneath the plaid which covered his broken body? Catriona had said that she wanted to set his mind at rest … could this be the purpose for which they had all three been brought together? Was the coincidence, which he had thought so fantastic, the strange working of a divine providence, intentional, rather than blind chance?

  Phillip drew a long, uneven breath. “The sentimental attachment was on my part,” he said aloud, “not on hers. Her Imperial Highness was very young, a child, fresh from the schoolroom, and with a child’s trusting innocence. If she honored me with her friendship, she likewise honored several of my brother officers and we all—because we had met no one like her—expressed our life-long devotion to her when she left the Trojan. Our personal devotion for, of course, in the circumstances and with our two countries at war, it could be no more than that but in token of friendship, she entrusted me—as First Lieutenant of the Trojan—with a ring. It was an emerald ring, of considerable value, with the arms of Her Imperial Highness’s family cut into the face of the stone. I had it on my person when I was taken to Odessa and—”

  “This ring, Lieutenant Hazard?” The interruption came from the shadows on the far side of the tent. The voice, although faint, was perfectly lucid and it was Narishkin’s. Phillip lapsed into a startled silence but quicker than he to realize what had happened, Catriona whispered urgently, “He is conscious at last —go to him, please, Mr Hazard. He … may not have long.”

  Obediently Phillip went to kneel by the wounded man, and Morag MacCorkill slipped unobtrusively away, leaving the three of them together. The ring, with its double-headed eagle crest, lay in the Russian’s outstretch
ed palm, the magnificent stone gleaming in the lantern light and Phillip felt an odd tightening of the muscles of his throat as he recognized it. He made, however, no move to take it and Narishkin let the ring fall on to the tartan plaid and roll slowly towards him.

  “Please,” he invited, “my wife would have wished you to keep her gift, on behalf of your brother officers of Her Britannic Majesty’s frigate Trojan. Take it, will you not, Mr Hazard, for this time the gift comes also from myself.” The bloodless lips curved briefly upwards, in a smile of singular warmth. “The case is in my pocket, if you need it.”

  Phillip took the ring and started to stammer his thanks but Andrei Narishkin weakly motioned him to silence. “I am in your debt and it is a threefold debt, my friend, if—from the threshold of eternity—I may be permitted thus to address you?” His English was fluent and accentless but the words were a trifle slurred, as if each one cost him an effort.

  “A threefold debt, sir?” Phillip bent closer. “I can recall only one occasion when I might have merited your Highness’s gratitude and even then, I—”

  “I will refresh your memory,” Prince Narishkin offered. “Firstly, I am indebted to you for having delivered my bride to me with that—that childlike, trusting innocence, of which you spoke just now, completely unimpaired. Secondly—and this, no doubt, is the occasion you do recall—for having saved my life, after the bloody battle in which we engaged at the Alma. Thirdly …” His smile returned, lighting the wan face and rekindling in the pain-dimmed eyes something of their old, arrogant mockery. “Thirdly for allowing me to die in such good company as your own and that of the young woman who caused me to be brought here. I should be obliged if you would convey my thanks to her, for she has been more than kind. I have no ring to give her but there is a cross about my neck, which is of some value, if she would accept it.”