The man shrugged, continuing his cold glare while Jan Michał affected a conversational tone. “Both horses look strong enough.” The man grunted, mumbling something Jan Michał could not make out. “You have passengers, then?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“One.”
“And that one is yourself?”
“It is.”
“I see. We have a young mother and a baby here. They’ll not take up much room and they weigh little.”
“They’ll take up no room on my wagon.”
“What’s your name?”
“Oleg.”
“Oleg, I am Jan. Did my brother Tadek explain the emperor’s orders?”
“Your emperor is not my emperor.” The man sneered. “I don’t take his orders.”
“Ah, I see. Just what is it you’re transporting here, Oleg?”
“That’s my business.”
But Jan Michał was already walking around the wagon, lifting the canvas here and there, peeking beneath. He saw a gilded French desk and other furniture, as well as paintings, furs, and brocaded material. “All from your house, Oleg?”
The man had followed him. “Perhaps.”
“You must be very rich.”
“That’s my business.”
“What is this number 142 painted on the side?”
“All the vehicles have been given one.”
“Then you are going under the auspices of the French?”
“Auspices?”
“Protection.”
The man shrugged. He understood.
“My brother was trying to tell you, Oleg, that Napoléon has ordered that no vehicle is to have fewer than two of the wounded or civilians.”
When the man persisted in his indifference, Paweł said, “Perhaps he didn’t tell you also that any vehicle not conforming to this order would be burnt on the spot. All up and down the line here, you’ll find that every wagon has its passengers. If you wish to keep your nice things, you will take the woman and baby tomorrow.”
The man started to bite at his lower lip. He had been boxed into a corner and knew it. A long moment passed before he gave the slightest of nods.
“Good! We are in agreement, then.”
Another grudging nod.
“And you are to take good care of the two. If we should find, my friend, that they’ve come to harm because of you, my brother and I will search you out and make you familiar with a Polish lance.” Jan Michał grinned widely now. “And you, Oleg, will find yourself opened up like a pig being made ready for sausages.”
The man’s eyes widened. “Yes, soldier.”
Jan Michał smiled to himself as he moved toward the hut. Evidently the threat had suffered little in the translation to Russian.
The next day, 19 October, the main forces quit Moscow. Paweł knew that the word retreat was taboo. The plan was to join the large French force left at Smolensk. Conditions and supplies there were thought to be good, and Napoléon would be able to fashion one of his Bulletins de la Grande Armée that would transform the pig’s foot they had come away with into a plump roast. Oddly enough, Napoléon had not ordered his men to travel light, and they started out carrying as much in spoils as they could, resembling more the Israelites fleeing Egypt than soldiers.
Their route to Smolensk had been kept secret. Upon setting out, Paweł guessed that they would take a southern route so as to avoid the inward path that had already been stripped clean of supplies. The southern route was the smarter route.
The Grande Armée moved like a great tortoise and by the twenty-third, the hare, General Kutusov, had moved in behind it at the town of Maloyaroslavets. The next day a deadly battle commenced, and control of the town switched sides seven times. Paweł would remember it as one of the bloodiest. This time it was the Italian corps that finally drove the Russians out, and while the French licked their wounds, Napoléon met with his generals. The resulting decision—to take the northern and supply-poor route to Smolensk—incensed Paweł. It seemed unfathomable. It had long been wrung dry of food sources. And the army was already in short supply of rations. While the men had up until now shared their foodstuff and put in shares of flour for the common soup, they started hoarding any flour, rice, biscuit, or potato in their possession. The common soup became one flavored by horseflesh, the only commodity at the ready.
The ammunition warehouses and the Russian army barracks went up in a magnificent explosion. Jan Michał and Tadeusz had helped in the laying of the fuses, and they were both awestruck by the results. Ammunition and thousands upon thousands of muskets were destroyed, muskets that the Russian nobles had not dared pass out among the populace for fear—a justified one—they would turn them on the nobility that had held them down for generations.
“What now?” Tadeusz asked.
“We’re going to do what we were told to do—search out supplies.”
The brothers were on one of the streets untouched by the fires. Hundreds of the Young Guard swarmed the streets on the same mission.
“But what about the Kremlin buildings?” Tadeusz whined. “You know as well as I that they were to come down, too!”
“I thought so, too. Plans must have changed.”
“No, you heard Paweł just before he left. The Young Guard was commissioned to bring down the Kremlin. By the emperor!”
“And you’re disappointed?” Jan asked.
“Damn it all—yes! I was looking forward to the flame and ash. And a fire that would outshine the sun!—I don’t think Napoléon relented.”
“You think it was General Mortier?”
“Yes!”
“Deliberately disobeying the emperor?—Now why would he do that? You do grant we’ll need the supplies for the long trek back to Smolensk, or wherever it is we’ll winter.”
“Yes, I give you that. But we can collect supplies and still blow the place sky high. Listen, I say we go now and set some fires. Let’s do it, Michał! This is our chance.”
“Wait a minute!” Jan Michał could see that he was serious. “Tadek, who’s going to suffer if it’s destroyed?”
“What do you mean?—The Russians will suffer!”
“Not the leaders. Not the army. Think, Tadek! The people will! In taxes and in broken backs.”
“Who cares?” Tadek started down the street that led to the Kremlin compound.
Jan Michał had to double his step to catch up. “You’ll be disobeying orders yourself, Tadek!”
“Not the emperor’s orders. Those are the ones that count. Don’t you realize we must be the only ones who know about them? It’s up to us to finish off the Kremlin! If it weren’t for Paweł letting us in on it— ”
“Stop!” Jan Michał cried, his hand clamping onto his brother’s arm. “Listen to me. Mother told us about the massacre and destruction at Praga in ‘94, yes?”
“Exactly! All the more reason!”
“No, it’s not. Warsaw itself went untouched. The Royal Castle still stands, as does Zygmunt’s Column! The Russians could have destroyed the city. And when the Prussians left much more recently they could have done likewise. War may seem to be without limits, Tadek, but it isn’t. It isn’t!”
Tadek thought for a long moment, his blue eyes fixed unflinchingly on Jan Michał’s brown.
Jan Michał now delivered the coup d’grace. “What would mother do, Tadek?”
Tadeusz was caught off guard. His eyes narrowed and his face became pinched. “Damn it, Michał, don’t bring her into this!”
“Why not? Is it something you’ll proudly tell her?—Is it? Would blowing up those incredible buildings make her proud?”
Tadeusz pulled away. “She’d light the fuses herself!”
“You know that’s not true!”
Tadeusz shrugged and laughed. “You’re right, but bringing Mother into it was such a low blow, I had to counter somehow—all right, Michał, you win.—Let’s get the damn supplies.”
Jan Michał grinned. “There’s a
building there that looks as if it hasn’t been searched. Let’s try it.”
“Fine. But I have to say that Mother would not approve of the three Cossacks you dispatched the other day.”
“Oh, now that’s where you’re wrong. If she had been born a man, she’d be riding in the vanguard.”
Tadeusz laughed and threw his arm around his brother’s shoulder. “Say, didn’t our own King Zygmunt’s army take Moscow?”
“It did, in the early 1600s. Zygmunt held it for just two years.”
“A better showing than Napoleón’s.”
Jan Michał nodded. “Indeed, but in the end, Russia’s a hard nut to crack.”
The Young Guard withdrew from Moscow on the twenty-third, leaving the Kremlin intact. Carrying with them important supplies, they followed the path blazed by the Grande Armée. It was an easy thing to do, for the roads and fields were littered with broken wagons and abandoned booty that included paintings, books, and silver too heavy to carry. Mortier put out an order that any soldier caught salvaging goods would be summarily shot. Jan Michał told Tadeusz to keep his eye peeled for wagon 142 among the abandoned vehicles, but it was nowhere to be seen. He prayed that boded well for Nadzia and her baby.
The Young Guard joined the main forces at Maloyaroslavets two days after the battle there. The soldiers moved in, stunned to find seven thousand of their own—and nearly as many Russians—lying in the environs of the town like macabre fallen statues, crimson on uniforms, on lifeless faces, on the earth.
The Young Guard cursed General Mortier and themselves for their tardiness. As for the emperor, Napoléon was glad to see them. Whether Mortier told Napoléon about the sparing of the Kremlin, Jan Michał never learned, one way or the other.
Late that night Jan Michał quietly returned to the camp of the Young Guard.
“Did you find Nadzia?” Tadeusz asked.
“Yes, thank God. The wagon was intact. Oleg had lightened it considerably, but he seems to have taken my threat seriously.—She’s good, it seems. I left them what food I had with me, biscuits mostly.” Jan Michał sighed. “She was depressed, though, to find lice on herself and on the baby.”
“”Good God, I can imagine. She kept that little hut clean as the gold buttons on a general’s coat.”
“Probably caught the creatures from the Russian—he’s dirtier than a pig.”
A silence ensued as Jan Michał wrapped himself in his bedding. Long after he thought Tadeusz must have fallen asleep, his brother spoke up. “You like her, Michał? Yes?”
Jan Michał looked up at the clear night sky, taking in a thousand stars. “Yes.”
“Much?”
“Yes, Tadek.”
Neither spoke after that, and soon Tadeusz’ regular breathing indicated sleep had overcome him. It took a good while longer for Jan Michał to sleep. He feared that when the Grande Armée moved out in the morning the forty thousand camp followers—Nadzia among them—would fall far behind. He wondered if he would ever see her again.
The Grande Armée moved with greater speed, covering the fifty miles to Mojaisk in only two days. A day later the march brought them through Borodino. While Paweł was disappointed that they were taking the already plundered route, he was struck dumb that no one had thought to avoid the Borodino battlefield. The horrors war had imposed as they moved toward Moscow a matter of weeks before now seared the eyes as the exodus from Russia continued. No one could look away. Spirits plummeted at the sight and stench of thirty thousand corpses torn to pieces by wolves and carrion crows. And yet, Paweł thought it perhaps a good thing that the Young Guard realize war meant more than courage and glory. The starving, ragtag army pushed on, passing through Gjatsk and arriving in Viazma at the end of October. A muster revealed that sixty-five thousand troops remained of the ninety-six thousand accounted for in Maloyaroslavets.
Cossacks and peasant bandits were unrelenting in their guerrilla attacks upon the stragglers who more and more were falling to the wayside, but the Russian army allowed the Grande Armée to stumble forward. In the meantime, another force was making its way toward the allied forces. On 5 November, before Smolensk could be reached, it began to snow. “General Winter”—in the words of Napoléon—made himself known. By the seventh, heavy snow was falling, the roads iced over.
Without winter shoes, horses by the thousands slipped and fell on the ice, thousands more just dropping to the ground out of starvation, exhaustion, and cold. For many miles before reaching Smolensk, soldiers and stragglers survived by eating horseflesh and blood soup.
Several hours after the entry into Smolensk on the ninth, Paweł went in search of Jan Michał and Tadeusz. He found the Young Guard billeted in an overcrowded barn. Tadeusz’s thin and unhealthy appearance came as a shock. “Have you eaten yet, Tadek?”
“We ate, shortly after arriving.”
“What?”
Tadeusz affected a smile. “We dined on horse liver with snow for drink.”
Paweł suppressed a grimace. “It’ll keep you going, at least, yes?—Where’s Michał?”
“He’s gone to look for Nadzia.—Major, are we to winter here?”
“It was a possibility, but it seems unlikely now. The city is already depleted of supplies, and we have word that the Russians are not about to leave us on our own for the winter. Their numbers have increased, while ours—well, you’ve seen the results of the march. Fewer and fewer men and almost no discipline.”
“How long do you think we’ll stay?”
“Not long. We have intelligence that the enemy plans to thwart our crossing the Rivers Dneiper and Beresina. Two days—three at the most.”
Some of the camp followers had managed to keep pace. Jan Michał found Nadzia not far from the city gates, sitting, her back against the battered and crumbling wall. “Nadzia?” Had it not been for her holding the baby, he would not have given her a second look. Her looks had changed so. She was deathly ill. “Nadzia?” he repeated.
She lifted her head and stared, seeming not to recognize him. Her once charming face was skeletal now.
Jan Michał knelt down in front of her. “We must get you to the hospital, Nadzia. Do you hear?” It was as if she weren’t aware of his presence. She drew her legs up into herself, clutching the baby tighter. The covered bundle had neither made nary a noise nor movement. “Is Nelek all right?” Jan Michał asked, making a move to pull back the corner of the blanket that covered the child’s face. Nadzia pulled away, but Jan Michał spoke to her in reassuring terms, gently insisting that he see the baby.
It was as he had feared. The child was dead. But the sight was unimaginable. His skin, splotchy with raised sores, was as dark as black raspberries. The little body was completely frozen, one tiny fist raised as if to wail against its fate. Nadzia clung to a baby that must have been dead for days.
Jan Michał didn’t attempt to pry the baby from her grasp. He did, however, attempt to get Nadzia to her feet. As she struggled against him, a piece of fur covering one of her feet came free, and he could see that she had been badly frost-bitten.
“We need to get you to the hospital, Nadzia.”
The young woman refused, fighting him off with surprising energy. He stood then and looked down at her. Nadzia returned his look, and he knew for certain that she recognized him. And that she understood. But she fell on her side now, drawing herself up into a fetal position, the baby still in her grasp. She was giving herself over to her fate.
It was an easy thing to die of the cold, they said. One just went to sleep. It seemed almost pleasant. Jan Michał turned now and ran for help. It took good time to find what accounted for a hospital and convince an orderly to help him. By the time the two came upon Nadzia, she was fully asleep and could not be roused. Someone had stolen her feet coverings.
“It’s too late,” the orderly said.
“It’s not!” Jan Michał screamed. “Let’s get her to the hospital!”
Shrugging, the orderly nonetheless helped Jan Michał envelop he
r in a blanket that they had brought and aid him in carrying the young woman.
The hospital was a vortex of chaos. Jan Michał fought for a place for her and was assigned a narrow space on the floor against the wall. The orderly had been right, of course. Nadzia was but one of many that he had seen in the same condition. Jan Michał stayed nearby, intermittently attempting to rouse her, but by early morning, she was dead.
“There’s a trench in front of the city walls,” he was told by a doctor. “Take the bodies there. The French army dug it before going on to Moscow. Little did they know how it would be used.”
Jan Michał found the trench, hundreds of paces long, half filled with bodies frozen in the most surreal poses. He made his way into the trench, laid down his burden, and arranged it as best he could, placing the hospital blanket he had stolen over Nadzia—and the baby that he had returned to her arms. He said a quick prayer and pulled himself out of the burial site. A city worker there assured him the most recent bodies would be covered before nightfall with lime and dirt. “Are you certain?” Jan Michał pressed, afraid that the bodies of Nadzia and her little son would be cannibalized.
“I am, soldier.”
Jan Michał gave a grudging nod and dropped a few coins into the worker’s hands. “Cover them now, if you please.”
35
When the Grande Armée left Smolensk on the twelfth, after a stay of three days, they numbered no more than forty-one thousand. Besieged by blizzards and icy roads at first, Jan Michał knew that he could not continue to fasten onto thoughts of Nadzia, for the dead and dying were all around him and it would take every particle of concentration, cleverness, and determination to bring himself and his brother out of this catastrophe alive.
The Young Guard marched in the van now. Jan Michał and Tadeusz often walked their overworked and underfed horses. In this way the cavalry managed to keep their animals alive longer while most of the horses that had pulled wagons and caissons had succumbed or been killed for food.
Against a Crimson Sky Page 40