Against a Crimson Sky

by James Conroyd Martin

  By the time they climbed back onto the road, much of the dead horse’s remaining blood had seeped into the snow, freezing immediately. From the crimson-colored ice Jan Michał and Tadeusz chiseled out neat little cakes that they placed in their saddlebags. Later they would suck on them for sustenance.

  Jan Michał could not think about the horse he had come to love and protect, just as he could not think about those stragglers who called weakly now from the side of the road, begging for assistance. He walked, leading Tadeusz’ horse, both brothers keeping their eyes trained forward as they went, as if they could not see those calling out, as if the cries of the dying could not pierce fur-covered ears.

  At Ilia, Jan Michał insisted Tadeusz practice more with his crutches. He reluctantly obeyed. In the morning, Tadeusz suggested that they both ride his horse. Jan Michał demurred. He would walk. How long the surviving horse could hold out was already in question.

  Two days later, with only brief stops to relieve themselves, they came to Molodeczno. Tadeusz was so stiff with cold and pain that when Jan Michał helped him down from the horse he could scarcely stand. Jan Michał’s feet were numb, and he worried about frostbite. “Halfway to Wilno?” Tadeusz asked.

  Jan Michał shrugged. “Give or take,” he said, immediately depressed by the thought. Only half way!

  They were given a room in the cottage of an old couple on the outskirts of the town. A wounded French soldier being housed there overnight told how the Cossacks had staged a heavy attack on the rearguard as the Grande Armée remnants trudged through.

  “What day was this?”

  “Two days ago,” the soldier replied in French.

  Jan Michał and Tadeusz looked at one another. There was no need for words. Each was thinking how far they had fallen behind the main force. They knew that the danger of Cossacks only increased for stragglers. Just the same, they had bargained to stay the night and they would do so. They needed the rest.

  In the morning they came to regret their decision. Jan Michał and Tadeusz sat at the tiny table waiting while the old woman stood at the stove stirring gruel and grilling some corn. Suddenly, her husband burst into the cottage, the cold wind trailing him like a shadow. He could hardly speak. “A thousand pardons!” he cried. “Dear God in Heaven, a thousand pardons!”

  “What is it?” Jan Michał asked—even though he thought he knew what had happened.

  “Your horse, milords! Your horse!”

  “It’s dead?” Tadeusz asked. The horse’s death would not surprise him.

  “No,” the old man said, his eyes round as coins. “The horse is gone. Poof! Vanished!”

  “Stolen?” Tadeusz asked, his face paling.

  Jan Michał grew dizzy. His appetite went the way of the horse. He blamed himself. He had been weak in will—he should have stayed in the pathetic little barn with the horse. It had been a foolish gamble. But the old man had locked the barn, assuring him the horse was safe, that the penalty for horse theft was death. There was no law in war, he thought now. It was a hard lesson. What was the penalty of death these days to anyone? Nothing. For many death was merely a quicker way out of misery.

  Tadeusz attempted to stand. “We should find the horse thief out, Michał. Shoot him!”

  Jan Michał pulled his brother back into his chair. “We don’t have the energy to spare, Tadek. What use would it be? The horse is long gone and if not on the road, its haunches are probably in someone’s fry pan at this very moment.”

  Tadek’s shoulders slumped forward. “May the bastard die.”

  “Very likely. But we won’t, Tadek. We won’t!”

  Tadek nodded. Jan Michał turned to the old man. “Are there any horses for sale here in Molodeczna?”

  The man shook his head. “Not one.” A grim expression on her lined face, his wife came up to the table and slopped the gruel into brother’s bowls. She returned to the stove then for the corn. Jan Michał forced himself to eat. The news about the horse proved the least digestible.

  “It’s a good thing you robbed some poor cripple of his damn crutches,” Tadeusz said, picking up his spoon. “I’ll give you that.”

  After their meal, they readied their things. The old man provided Jan Michał with a sturdy piece of leather with which to bind Tadeusz’ bad leg. They set off at mid-morning with a band of seven other stragglers, mostly camp followers of one occupation or another. They passed a tiny division of the rearguard that had stayed behind for some reason. As they were mounting up, one of them was heard to say, “Look at them, will you! Stragglers! Let’s get the devil out of here before we join them!”

  So now we are the stragglers, Jan Michał thought. We are the pitiful ones not to be looked at, not to be heard, as the army moves forward!

  Once they were out on the road, Tadeusz turned to Jan Michał as he maneuvered his crutches in the snow. “Do you think the old man is lying, Michał?”

  Of course, he had considered it, too. The peasant could have sold the horse. God knows what the market price might be—despite its condition. Or he might have hidden it in the forest. “I don’t think so, Tadek. His humiliation seemed quite real.”

  Tadeusz gave out with a little harumph. “I thought so, too.”

  Jan Michał’s thoughts were on the road now. If they were about half way to Wilno, that meant they had eighty miles to go. On foot.

  He would not think about Wilno . . . Smorgoni would come first. . . .

  Neither brother spoke for hours on end. By nightfall, they realized that two of the group had slipped behind. Everyone paused in their tracks for a minute, looking back. The two were but two dark dots in the snow a mile distant. The remaining seven looked, said nothing, turned again to the northeast, and moved on. Stragglers could not wait for other stragglers. Doing so would mean their lives, too. By morning—against a crimson sky—they realized another two had fallen off from the band.

  At noon the remaining members of the band stopped to relieve themselves. Tadeusz was sitting on a stump when Jan Michał emerged from the trees at the side of the road. “I don’t think I can go on,” he said.

  “What do you mean, Tadek? You’re doing fine.”

  “My leg—the pain’s too great.”

  “It’s a lucky thing you can feel it and that it hasn’t gone numb! Let me take a look.” Jan Michał unwound the leather covering, then the dressings that had not been changed for two days. It was an ugly sight. The open wound was obviously infected, the flesh around it darkening.

  “You see?” Tadeusz said, pulling back the woolen material protecting his face and ears. Jan Michał took note that he was flushed and feverish. “They’re moving on, Michał,” Tadeusz said, nodding toward the other three farther up the road.

  “So?” Jan Michał said, all the while trying to think, trying not to let his mind go as blank as the snow stretching out in every direction. Here and there he could see mounds that he was sure were bodies, men who had sat down without the ability or will to go on.

  “You need to push on, Michał. I won’t have you stay for me.”

  “Push on for what? To tell Mama that I left you on the road to Wilno. Left you to freeze to death?”

  Tadeusz went into one of his old rages even as tears formed in his eyes. “Don’t play some goddamn hero. There’s nothing here for you, Michał. You still have a chance! Take it, goddamn you!”

  “I won’t leave you here!” Jan Michał screamed.

  “I’ve got plenty of company,” Tadeusz said, nodding at a mound in the gully at the side of the road. “You must save yourself!”

  Jan Michał jerked Tadeusz to his feet, held him there, while he reached for the crutches and roughly set them under his brother’s arms. Now he tied the wool about Tadeusz’ face, leaving room for him to see, and securely replaced the fur hat.

  Tadeusz relented, pushing forward. They got no more than fifty paces before Tadeusz fell over, too faint to go on. “I’ll carry you, damn it,” Jan Michał said, lightly slapping his brother’s cover
ed face. “Do you hear me, Tadek? Stay awake!”

  Jan Michał used his belt to fasten the crutches to himself, then pulling Tadeusz to his feet, he pulled him onto his own back. Tadeusz was too weak to hold on, so Jan Michał grasped his arms, one on each shoulder. And he began to move forward, one step at a time. Unsturdy at first, he moved pathetically slowly, but as he got the weight on his back positioned just right, he advanced a little faster and with more assurance. “Stay awake, Tadek. Don’t go to sleep, hear? We’ll sing, all right?—All right?”

  Tadeusz mumbled.

  Jan Michał started in on the only song he could think of at the time:

  “Darling war, darling war,

  What a lady you must be

  For all the most handsome boys

  To follow you like this.”

  Every so often, Jan Michał had to shake his brother to coax a semblance of the lyrics out of him. Two hours passed in this way. Of course, the other three stragglers were long out of sight.

  A rise came in the road ahead , and when Jan Michał saw it, both his body and spirit faltered for a moment. His singing stopped. He didn’t know if he could last . . . if he could make it. Dear God in heaven, he cursed, how far to Smorgoni? How far? He prayed for it to be just over that hill. That his feet had not stopped came as a surprise to him. They moved like spokes of a machine. “Come on, Tadek,” he cried. “Sing with me!”

  Tadek obeyed, his voice a mere rasp.

  “Darling war, darling war,

  What a lady you must be

  For all the most handsome boys

  To follow you like this.”

  They came at last to the crest. The road stretched ahead, as far as Jan Michał could see. Reason told him Smorgoni was still miles and miles away. “We’ll rest here, Tadek.” Jan Michał gently set his brother down near a tree. “I have to piss.”

  Tadek was nearly delirious. But not quite. Every so often he mumbled, “Go, Michał. Go on.”

  Jan Michał knew how his brother thought, and so he relieved himself very close by out of fear that Tadek would try to take his own life so as not to be a burden.

  He came back and sat on a fallen tree, near Tadek, forcing him to mindlessly sing again. Neither of them had eaten for twelve hours. And yet food seemed not to matter.

  What seemed an hour passed. The air grew colder, and the wind picked up.

  Jan Michał was losing faith. They were to die as stragglers—it was their fate. His mind had gone blank, it seemed, when his brother touched his arm. He looked up to see fear bring alive Tadek’s blue eyes. Then he turned to see what had caught his attention.

  In the far distance—ahead—he could see two or three dark spots on the snow-bleached road. Moving figures. Moving toward them.

  “Cossacks!” Tadeusz hissed without moving his jaw. “Cossacks!”

  Fear ran through Jan Michał, too. Any of the retreating allies would not be returning east. He stood. “Let’s get you into the gulley—now!”

  “They’ll see us moving, Michał.”

  “And they won’t see us lying in the road like wounded deer? Get up, damn it!”

  Jan Michał pulled his brother down into the ravine, positioning him behind the mound where snow covered a corpse. He pushed snow atop him. “Don’t move, hear?”

  Suddenly, Jan Michał remembered the crutches. They lay where he had cast them in his panic—in the middle of the road. There was no time now to retrieve them. From his crouched position in the gully, he could not see the riders, but he could hear the hooves against the hard winter earth. He folded himself into a fetal position, hoping that he, too, would be taken for dead.

  Time stretched out in the most surreal way as the horses came closer. He kept his hand on his saber. He would manage a fight. If death had come for him and his brother this day, it would be an honorable death. A soldier’s death. Preferable to dying from the cold.

  The snow-muffled thud of the horses’ hooves slowed. The Cossacks had seen the crutches and been put on guard. And yet he heard no voices.

  The horses had stopped—just above him now. There was no escaping. He heard the crunch of boots in the snow coming nearer, nearer. His grip on his saber so tight it hurt, he held his breath, waiting for the Cossack cry, waiting for them to leap into the gulley, lances or swords in hand. Well, he would take at least one with him into the next world.

  A long, long minute passed. He could hear the hard breathing and occasional snort of two horses. Just two, he thought.

  Slowly he turned his head and looked up at the road. The sight formed a kind of queer human wycinanki, a papercutting formed by the silhouette of a tall, dark figure against the failing daylight. Behind him was what seemed the side planking of a sledge.

  The man’s head was tilted down, his vision directed to the gulley.

  Jan Michał stood up, saber lifted in defense, fully prepared to die.

  Now came the man’s deep, sonorous voice, wonderful and miraculous. “Jan Michał?”

  Jan Michał stared up, a shiver of cold and disbelief running through him. “Major Paweł?”

  The sledge sailed slowly northwest through the pitch of night. Tadeusz lay nestled in furs in the coffin-like bed of the vehicle. For the first few miles, Jan Michał rode up front, next to Paweł who still marveled that he had come upon Michał and Tadek when he did. Were it not for crutches left in the road, the boys would not have survived. Was it mere happenstance? He had always thought that there was some scheme of things in the universe—and this seemed to bear that out. Was it God? Fate? The powerful prayers of their parents?

  “How is it,” Jan Michał asked, “you were able to leave your duty and come back for us?”

  “While the Cossacks are still biting at us like flies, the campaign has been suspended.”

  “For the winter.—Or for good?””

  “That depends on Napoléon’s luck in Paris.—He left Smorgoni yesterday in a closed sleigh.”

  Jan Michał’s well-covered head tilted up at Paweł. “Left? He just left his Grande Armée? Hightailing it back to Paris?”

  Paweł pointed to a little clearing to what had been a little campsite. Whereas most of the fallen up to this point had been wounded and camp followers, the men here—frozen like ice sculptures—were ordinary soldiers of the French infantry. “Not so grand anymore,” he said.

  “Will he come back?”

  “There was a little matter of an attempted coup at home, but I have no doubt he’ll put it down and come back with a new army.”

  “You have faith in him.”

  “I do. What choice is there?—You know, your brother needs medical help as soon as possible.”

  “Wilno?”

  “Too far. Too many days.”

  “Smorgoni? Is there a surgeon there?”

  “Its little hospital is jammed. Filthy, too, and full of typhus. I wouldn’t take him there. I do know of someone, though.”

  “Who, Major?”

  “A man that put a few of us up the last two nights.”

  “A doctor?”

  “A bear tamer.”

  Jan Michał gasped and laughed simultaneously. “A bear tamer!”

  “There are many of them in these parts.”

  “Bears or bear tamers?”

  “Both. The man’s good with wounds. I assisted him in an operation. I nearly fainted dead away, but he was good at it, Michał. I have faith in him.”

  “Like you do in Napoléon?”

  “Touché! But, yes, I guess faith is faith.—But the decision is for you and Tadeusz to make. You’re men now.”

  “My brother’s in no condition to make a decision. I don’t see there’s much choice. The bear tamer, it is.”

  “It’ll at least make a good story one day,” Paweł said.

  Jan Michał laughed. “You should introduce your bear tamer to Napoléon before he goes after the Russian bear a third time.”

  Paweł laughed, too.

  A small movement on Jan Michal’s right c
aught his eye. They were passing the three fellow stragglers who had gone on ahead. In a snowy clearing they sat in a cluster around a pitifully tiny fire.

  One of them looked up to the road as the sledge passed, watching it passively, too weak or too hopeless to call out.

  36

  December 1812

  “You’re awake awfully late, Marek, Anna whispered. “It’s midnight.—Are you a little better today?”

  “A bit, milady.” Even in the dimness of the ward it was evident his cheeks were reddening.

  Anna smiled. The twenty-four-year-old infantryman stared up at Anna as if she were the madonna. She suspected that no titled woman had ever even spoken to him before. “You should be going home soon.”

  He nodded and his eyes became distant. It was as if Anna could read his mind. She was certain he was wondering what his homecoming would be like when he returned to his little village near Poznań. He was anticipating—fearing—how his wife and two boys would react to the loss of his arm. She touched him lightly on the forehead before moving on.

  Marek had come to the hospital in a convoy, one of many that had brought countless wounded from the early battles at Wilno and Smolensk. As the patients arrived, the veracity of Napoléon’s early optimistic Bulletins de la Grande Armée was put in serious question—by the sheer numbers of wounded and by the sobering accounts the soldiers themselves provided.

  Anna went back to the little wooden table that served as her desk in the fifty-bed ward. The truth was that she had volunteered for the nighttime shift because of her own insomnia. If she were at Zofia’s, she knew sleep would not come. She worried constantly about Jan Michał and Tadeusz. No letter had arrived in months. And with the interruption of bulletins from the east, no word had come from Paweł, either. Were they even alive?

  Anna had not been home to Sochaczew in months, had not seen Jan in that space of time and missed him terribly. She knew instinctively that he was going through his own hellish nightmare. As a soldier for so many years, it had been difficult for him to send his sons off to war, a war he questioned. That his best friend Paweł was trying to watch out for them no doubt complicated his feelings. Jan would be doing that for himself—had not his faith in Napoléon been tapped dry.