by Eric Ambler
The Schirmer Inheritance
Eric Ambler
Eric Ambler
The Schirmer Inheritance
PROLOGUE
In 1806 Napoleon set out to chastise the King of Prussia. Both at Auerstadt and at Jena the Prussian armies suffered crushing defeats. Then, what remained of them marched east to join a Russian army under Bennigsen. In the following February, Napoleon met this combined force at the town of Preussisch-Eylau, near Konigsberg.
Eylau was one of the bloodiest and most terrible of Napoleon’s battles. It began in a blizzard and in a temperature well below freezing-point. Both armies were half starved and fought with desperate ferocity for the bleak shelter of the buildings of Eylau itself. Casualties on both sides were heavy, nearly a quarter of those engaged being killed. When, at night-fall on the second day, the fighting ended, it was from exhaustion rather than because a decision had been reached. Then, during the night, the Russian army began to retreat northward. The survivors of the Prussian corps, whose flank-guard action against Ney’s troops had nearly served to win the day, now had no reason to remain. They made their withdrawal through the village of Kuttschitten to the east. The cavalry screen of their rear guard was provided by the Dragoons of Ansbach.
The relationship between this unit and the rest of the Prussian army was absurd, but, in the middle Europe of the period, not unusually so. Not many years before, and well within the memories of the older soldiers in it, the regiment had been the only mounted force in the independent principality of Ansbach, and had taken its oaths of allegiance to the ruling Margrave. Then, Ansbach had fallen upon evil times and the last Margrave had sold his land and his people to the King of Prussia. Fresh oaths of allegiance had had to be sworn. Yet their new lord had eventually proved as fickle as the old. In the year before Eylau the Dragoons had experienced a further change of status. The province of Ansbach had been ceded by the Prussians to Bavaria. As Bavaria was an ally of Napoleon, this meant that, strictly speaking, the Ansbachers should now have been fighting against the Prussians, not beside them. However, the Dragoons themselves were as indifferent to the anomaly they constituted as they were to the cause for which they fought. The conception of nationality meant little to them. They were professional soldiers in the eighteenth-century meaning of the term. If they had marched and fought and suffered and died for two days and a night, it was neither for love of the Prussians nor from hatred of Napoleon; it was because they had been trained to do so, because they hoped for the spoils of victory, and because they feared the consequences of disobedience.
Thus, as his horse picked its way through the woods on the outskirts of Kuttschitten that night, Sergeant Franz Schirmer was able to consider his situation and make plans for extricating himself from it, without much inconvenience to his conscience. Not many of the Dragoons of Ansbach were left, and of those who were, few would survive the hardships to come. The wounded and the badly frostbitten would die first, and then, when the horses had been lost or eaten, starvation and sickness would kill off all but the youngest and strongest of the remainder. Twenty-four hours earlier the Sergeant could reasonably have expected to be one of the enduring few.
Now he could not. Late that afternoon he had himself been wounded.
The wound had affected him strangely. A French cuirassier had slashed with a sabre, and the Sergeant had taken the blow on his right arm. The blade had sliced obliquely through the heavy deltoid muscles and down to the bone just above the elbow. It was an ugly wound, but the bone had not broken and it had therefore been unnecessary for him to seek torture at the hands of the army surgeons. A comrade had bound up the wound for him and strapped the arm against his chest with a crossbelt. It throbbed painfully now, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped. He was very weak, but that, he thought, might be due to hunger and the cold rather than to any serious loss of blood. The thing he found so strange was that with all his physical distress there went an extraordinary feeling of well-being.
It had come upon him as the wound was being bandaged. The feelings of surprise and terror with which he had first regarded the blood pouring down his useless arm had suddenly gone, and in their place had been an absurd, splendid sense of freedom and light-heartedness.
He was a bovine young man of a practical turn of mind, not given to fancies. He knew something about wounds. His had been bound up in its own blood and could therefore be reckoned healthy; but there was still no more than an even chance of his escaping death from gangrene. He knew something about war, too, and could see not only that the battle was probably lost but also that retreat would take them into a countryside already picked clean by armies on the move. Yet this knowledge brought no despair with it. It was as if he had received with his wound some special forgiveness for his sins, an absolution more potent and complete than that which any mortal priest could give. He felt that he had been touched by God Himself, and that any drastic steps he might be obliged to take in order to stay alive would have Divine approval.
His horse stumbled as it fought its way clear of a snowdrift, and the Sergeant reined in. Half the officers had been killed and he had been put in command of one of the outlying detachments. He had orders to keep well out on the flank away from the road, and for a while it had been easy to do so; but now they had emerged from the forest, and in the deep snow the going was bad. One or two of the Dragoons behind him had already dismounted and were leading their horses. He could hear them floundering about in the snow at the rear of the column. If it proved necessary for him to lead his own horse he might not have the strength to get back into the saddle.
He thought about this for a moment. After a two-day battle fought so desperately, the chances of there being any French cavalry still capable of harrying the retreat from a flank were remote. The flank guard was therefore no more than a drill-book precaution. Certainly it was not worth taking risks for. He gave a brief word of command and the column began to turn into the forest again towards the road. He had no great fear of his disobedience being discovered. If it were, he would simply say that he had lost his way; he would not be severely punished for failing to do an officer’s duty. In any case, he had more important matters to consider.
Food was the first thing.
Luckily, the haversack beneath his long cloak still contained most of the frozen potatoes he had looted from a farm building the previous day. They must be eaten sparingly; and secretly. At times like these, a man known to have private stores of food went in some danger, whatever his rank. However, the potatoes would not last long and there would be no soup pots bubbling at the end of this march. Even the horses would be better off. None of the supply wagons had been lost and there was a day’s fodder still in them. The men would starve first.
He fought down a rising sense of panic. He would have to do something soon and panic would not help him. Already he could feel the cold eating into him. Not many hours could elapse before fever and exhaustion took irrevocable charge of the situation. His knees tightened involuntarily on the saddle flaps, and at that moment the idea came to him.
The horse had started and passaged a little at the pressure. Sergeant Schirmer relaxed his thigh muscles and, leaning forward, patted the animal’s neck affectionately with his left hand. He was smiling to himself as the horse walked on again. By the time the detachment reached the road his plan was made.
For the rest of that night and most of the next day the Prussian corps moved slowly eastward towards the Masurian Lakes; then it turned north to Insterburg. Soon after nightfall, and on the pretext of rounding up a straggler, Sergeant Schirmer left the detachment and rode south across the frozen lakes in the general direction of Lotzen. By morning he was south of that town.
He was also nea
rly at the limit of his strength. The march from Eylau to the point at which he had deserted had been bad enough; the cross-country journey from there would have taxed even an unwounded man. Now, the pain of his arm was at moments intolerable and he was shaking so much from fever and the bitter cold that he could scarcely stay in the saddle. He was beginning to wonder, indeed, if he might not have been mistaken in his estimate of God’s intentions, and if what he had supposed to be a sign of Divine favour might not prove to have been an intimation of approaching death. He knew, at all events, that if he did not very soon find shelter of the kind his plan called for, he would die.
He reined in and with an effort raised his head again to look about him. Far away to the left across the white desolation of a frozen lake he could see the low black shape of a farmhouse. His eyes moved on. It was just possible that there was a nearer building to investigate. But there was nothing. Hopelessly he turned his horse’s head in the direction of the farmhouse and resumed his march.
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 blunder
ed 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.