Nikolai told her in his letters of the terrible sights he had seen along the roads. Horses had continued to die by the thousand: the road was lined with their corpses, and with sick and dying soldiers, abandoned field pieces, carts of equipment for which there were no longer teams to draw them. The French were losing men through dysentery, typhus, festering wounds, desertion, and sheer hunger and exhaustion.


Some of the stragglers we have picked up speak of such misery and disillusionment amongst the ranks, that I imagine many are dying simply because they have no desire to live. Hardly any are Frenchmen, and most seem not to understand why they are here at all. Napoleon is promising them all they need– food, rest, clothing – when they reach Vitebsk, and that gets them along a little. But by my estimates he must have lost half the force with which he crossed the Nieman. His numbers are still formidable – but they are only flesh and blood, which I think he sometimes forgets.


At Vitebsk the old argument for making a stand had been renewed amongst the Russian commanders, but Tolly’s first army had not yet been able to join up with Bagration’s second army, and so was still vastly outnumbered. The Russians quietly vacated the city during the night as the French approached, and withdrew towards Smolensk, leaving Napoleon to enter the next morning a city empty of inhabitants, save the very old and the very sick. Empty, also, of everything they needed – food, medical supplies, doctors, fodder for the horses.

Nevertheless, Napoleon remained there for more than two weeks, and Nikolai concluded in one of his letters that the French supremo was unsure how to proceed.


Prudence must make him realise that to advance further will only result in more loss. His advisers – Caulaincourt, at least – will try to persuade him to make Vitebsk his winter quarters, to consolidate his position and begin the campaign again next year. It remains to be seen what he will decide. We march on for Smolensk, and a rendezvous with Prince Bagration’s army there.


On August the 12th, Napoleon’s ambition evidently outweighed his adviser’s caution, for he left Vitebsk and continued the march eastwards towards Smolensk. Here the Russians made a stand, and on the 17th of August a battle was fought, resulting in heavy losses on both sides. When firing ceased at nightfall, the French had managed to take the suburbs, but the Russians still held the old city itself.

Now Prince Bagration was amongst them, the arguments for withdrawing no further and ‘finishing it’ here at Smolensk were advanced with great passion. Smolensk was an extremely holy city, and to abandon it would be close to blasphemy. The whole of Russia was smarting under the humiliation of this continuous retreat, he declared. History would never forgive them for having allowed the Corsican Bandit to penetrate so far into the heartland of Russia. Now was their chance to make amends, to prove what they were made of, to make an heroic stand, and write their names in letters of fire and blood on the pages of history!


It was splendid, stirring stuff, Nikolai wrote. I must tell you that as he spoke, I even found my own pulse responding. After all, the French had taken a heavy loss that day, to add to their undoubted losses on the march. And I longed – and do long still – to be freed from the necessity of this war, so that I can come home to you, dearest, and rest in your arms.

But then Tolly spoke up quietly, and pointed out that the old town, which was largely made of wood and had been set on fire by French artillery shells, was burning briskly around us, and that the streets were filled with corpses. More seriously, though we might have the bridges over the Dnieper under our control, there was a ford at Prudishevo three miles downstream, and it was only a matter of time before Napoleon’s scouts found it. Once they crossed the river, they would surround us, and our position would be hopeless.

So we evacuated the city during the night, burnt the bridges behind us, and withdrew down the Smolensk-Moscow High Road. We are now at Viazma, and I hear that Tolly is to be replaced as commander-in-chief by Kutuzov, who is being sent to us from St Petersburg by the Emperor himself. Poor Tolly takes it very hard; but / tell him that His Majesty is obliged to take some account of public opinion, which is as vociferous as it is uninformed. And Kutuzov is, at least, a soldier, so there may be some hope of guiding him rationally, if we can keep Bagration away from his right ear. We are to meet Kutuzov at Tsarevo on the 29th.


When Anne read that letter, she was roused out of her lethargy by a consuming loneliness and longing for him. She had been alone in the house now for ten days; parted from him for almost two months; and the crazy idea came to her that there was nothing to stop her from going to him. Tsarevo was about a hundred miles from Moscow, but the Smolensk-Moscow High Road was a good one, and she could be there, with fast travelling, in two days – and it would take the army at least two days to reach it from Viazma. She could be there at the same time as him! In two days she could see him again!

Well, why not, she argued with herself? People did travel with armies. Many wealthy, aristocratic officers travelled with an entire household, coaches and cooks and all the comforts of home. Prince Kutuzov lived like a pasha, with a tentful of dancing girls to soothe his brow at the day’s end.

But he was not like that, her conscience told her. Like the austere Tolly, he lived hard when on campaign. Her presence would be an embarrassment. He might even think it improper of her to have come.

Then she had a better idea. Basil owned a hunting-lodge, Koloskavets, in the wooded hills above Borodino, a village on the same road about seventy miles from Moscow. There was nothing in the least improper about going there, to her own husband’s property. He had told her to go out of Moscow into the country, hadn’t he? And with the entire Russian army between her and the French, it must be safe. Once there she could write to him, telling him where she was, and then he could make his own time for coming to see her.

In the face of such determination, the dissenting voice retired, and she jumped up and rang the bell for Pauline with her pulse leaping at the prospect of positive action, and the thought of seeing him again.


All along the road, at every stop, Anne heard the name of Kutuzov on every lip as that of his country’s saviour. The army had been retreating in the most cowardly way for months, and Napoleon had got scandalously near Moscow; but now Kutuzov had come, things would change. He would stand and fight the Monster, and beat him, and Russia would be saved! He was a true Russian – not like Tolly, who was really a German, and Bennigsen, who was a Swede. Prince Kutuzov was the real article, and a cunning old fox, and there was no need to fear that Napoleon would get any closer to Holy Moscow now than Tsarevo. Napoleon would find he had met his match at last.

Anne, who had met Kutuzov once, and knew quite a lot about him from hearsay, couldn’t help wondering at the faith that was invested in the fat, elderly, one-eyed sybarite; but still she found herself affected by it. She began to think that perhaps it would really all be over in a week or two. One good battle, and the men would come home!

At Mozhaisk, the next town before Borodino, a road from the south joined the Smolensk-Moscow High Road, and here her coachman had to hold back to allow a group of horsemen – Caucasus irregulars by the look of their dress and horses – to take the road ahead of them. She wondered vaguely if they were part of Sergei’s troop, and why they were scouting on this, the wrong side of the main army. They didn’t seem to have an officer with them. The man at the head of the troop was a Tartar in a leather cap trimmed with black sheepskin, wearing a striped surcoat over the glint of body armour; a tall man on a magnificent bay Khabardin, with crimson tassels and gold discs on its bridle.

He turned his head as he reached the turning and looked straight into the carriage window, straight into her eyes; and then waving his men past him with an imperious gesture, he turned his curvetting horse three times on the spot and drove it, against its better judgement, away from its companions and up to the carriage. He stooped from the saddle to look in through the window, his teeth bared in a savage smile, and the pearls in his ears quivering.

Pauline gave a little squeak of alarm and drew back, and Anne laughed, because the situation was so strangely familiar.

‘Amongst my people,’ he said, ‘there is a saying that where there have been two meetings, there must be a third, and that it will portend great things, for good or for ill. Twice have we met, English lady; and now I find you here, to meet a third time. May the Great One bless you.’

‘And you also, Akim Shan,’ Anne said. It was the most astonishing thing; and yet she didn’t feel at all surprised. Russia had done that much for her. ‘What are you doing here, with your men?’

‘We have come to fight the battle,’ he said with dignity. ‘We are Tartars, and the Russians have called a Tartar to lead them at last against the foe.’

‘You mean Prince Kutuzov?’

‘The one-eyed, yes. So we have answered the call.’

‘But this war is not your war,’ Anne said, mildly puzzled. ‘Why should you fight?’

He grinned. ‘Because life is for battle and glory. As long as a man can sit his horse and wield his sword, he will seek honour in the field of battle, and the victor’s spoil, and a noble death.’