But as the smoke slowly cleared from the valley, the bivouac fires became visible like the stars coming out, pinpricks of still light in the blackness, spreading across the valley and up the hillside. There seemed a comfortingly large number of them. Of the Shevardino redoubt she could see nothing. It lay in the blackness between the two armies, and the dead needed no cooking-fire. She wouldn’t think of that: she fixed her mind instead on the Russian soldiers cooking soup and buckwheat porridge in their bivouacs, and smoking their pipes and telling stories. The fires said that everything was still all right.

The cloak round her shoulders was dewed with rain. She shivered suddenly, and went in to supper and to bed.

The next morning, Friday the 6th of September, she was up early. She thought that the battle would probably begin at dawn; she dressed herself hastily without waiting for Pauline, and hurried out into the grey morning with her hair still hanging loose down her back. But all was quiet. Down below, there were the orange points of cooking-fires, their smoke rising in faint ribbons in the damp air. There were movements in the horse lines as the troopers tended their animals; small domestic comings and goings amongst the infantry lines. As the sun came up, it caught and flashed on stacked bayonet tips, glowed on the polished bronze of mute gun barrels. The sun alone seemed to have any sense of urgency.

She turned her eyes to the French camp, and saw similar activity. But there was one person riding from place to place on a white horse, and she wondered if that were Napoleon himself, inspecting his lines – the whole world knew of his predilection for white horses. She remembered him as she had seen him in Paris, the cold piercing eyes which his smile never touched. She reached into herself for some burning hatred to throw out at him, as if she might curse him from on high like an old Roman deity; but she felt nothing for him. The scene below was like something in a theatre: a story whose ending she wanted to know. It was not real life.

There was no battle. Throughout the day the two armies sat facing each other, and went on with their preparations, as if they knew in some way that it was not to be today. Some common consent seemed to invest them – as swallows will gather through a series of autumn days, and then fly all at once on one day no different, to the observer, from its predecessors.

Saturday, the 7th of September, Anne came out on to the terrace before sunrise, and saw the whole valley filled with white fog. The air was chill, the grass silver-grey with a heavy dew. She thought of the soldiers, waking on the hard earth to find their blankets heavy with it; the patient tethered horses, their thick manes beaded as if sewn with pearls, their sweet breath smoking on the cold air. She imagined them stirring, shifting from foot to foot and shaking themselves as the camp came slowly awake. Someone would rake up the cooking-fire embers, shivering as the thought of warmth made the dawn seem chillier; a twig thrust into the red and fluttering heart would suddenly bloom a golden crocus flame. The first troopers, stretching their stiff legs, banging their cold hands together, would go towards the horses; someone would chirrup, and a ripple would pass down the line: heads turning, pricked ears and soft whickers of eagerness as they looked for their morning feed.

He would be there, too, waking chilled under a blanket on his army cot; feeling the first morning stiffness of limbs, his old campaigner’s mind waking before his body. Would he think of her? Perhaps for an instant, just once, before a thousand preoccupations, discarded for the brief night’s sleep, crowded in on him. Adonis would come into his tent with hot water for shaving, bringing the damp smell of fog with him. She envied Adonis briefly and passionately for being able to be with him and useful to him; she was jealous of their man’s intimacy which gave Adonis a place where she could not be.

The sun began to rise, turning the white fog to gold; down below bugles began to sound reveille, like cocks crowing defiantly in the dawn, challenging and answering from one invisible camp to the other. The mist began to thin and disperse and streaks of dark green appeared through it, as it caught and tore like gauze on the branches of the trees. The sun rose, golden and lovely, lifting effortlessly into the pale morning sky. The last of the mist was sucked up, revealing the amphitheatre below; a little steam rose from the ground as the night’s dew evaporated in the growing warmth. It was going to be a fine day, she thought.

Below on the plain, breakfast was over. In each of the opposing armies, the company commanders formed up their men to read to them the Orders for the Day, the last words of good cheer from their Caesars to those who were going to die.

Pauline came out and stood beside Anne, her fingers tucked under her armpits, her arms clasping her body. The sun had not yet come round: it was still cold on the terrace in the shadow of the trees. Anne wondered it the significance of the scene below would be apparent to her; but after a moment Pauline said, ‘Les pauvres! Voila la bêtise des hommes, madame.’

Pauline had no vested interest in the outcome of the conflict: whichever side lost, she did not win.

‘C’est plutôt leur faiblesse,’ Anne said with sympathy.

The first shots were fired at six o’clock. Two divisions of French infantry attacked Borodino itself, which was held by an elite Russian Jaeger regiment of light infantry. Taken by surprise, the Jaegers were driven back, and soon were retreating up the hill towards Gorky. The French, cheered by the easy victory, unwisely went in pursuit, streaming after them with yells of excitement. General Tolly was watching the events on horseback from the higher ground and saw the chance. He turned the Jaegers who, with the advantage of the slope now in their favour, mounted a bayonet charge whose momentum cut the French down helplessly.

But battle had now been joined in the centre, on the plain between the two roads. The most tremendous crash signalled the beginning of the battle between the opposing artillery forces. Cannon spoke, and cannon answered; roar followed flash, palls of bitter black smoke roiled upwards, as though the earth had erupted in volcanic violence. The crashes became almost continuous, so that it was impossible to distinguish one gun’s boom from another; and the noise was intolerable, blotting out thought itself.

This was a new kind of warfare, never seen before: a static battle between brazen monsters, bellowing their defiance, vomiting flame and iron, dealing death on an unprecedented scale; terrible in its inhumanity. Kirov and the other staff commanders watched from the high ground in grim silence. The smoke which covered the scene seemed almost genial, in masking this ultimate madness of mankind from human eyes.

Bagration’s left flank was under attack now from French infantry. Only the right flank, protected by the hills, was still standing by. A further threat was developing along the lines Bennigsen had dismissed as nonsense: Napoleon’s Polish regiments were coming up the old post road, and working their way round through the woods to the south to capture Utitsa, and outflank Bagration’s front.

Lieutenant Felix Uspensky had been sitting on his horse in front of his men for two hours now, trying to keep his mind off the things that might happen to him. He had never been fired at before, having only lately come from cadet school. He had joined the regiment from the reserves only at Tsarevo, and his uniform was still fresh and new and clean, unlike those of the officers who had come all the way from Vilna. When he had first tried it on, it had seemed splendid in its newness, and he had longed to show it to Kira in its pristine state. Now it seemed shameful to be so spotless; he felt his inexperience keenly. But whatever happened, he thought, he would not let his fear show to his men; he would not let his father or Colonel Kirov down.

His father had given him his horse, Svetka, for his last birthday. Uspensky reached forward and stroked the gleaming chestnut neck. Svetka was a pure-bred Arabian, the most beautiful creature Felix had ever seen, and he loved her more than anyone in the world – more, he thought guiltily, even than Kira. The sun cleared the hill behind him, warming his back, and Svetka, who was being remarkably patient, shifted her weight from one foot to the other and sighed a deep groaning horse sigh that made him smile.

He suddenly thought how lucky he was to be here, with his beautiful mare, on such an important day. It would be a thing to tell his children one day, (and his transparent skin blushed involuntarily at the thought of having children with Kira), that he had fought against Napoleon at the famous battle of Borodino. Perhaps he would do something tremendously brave, and the Emperor would give him a medal. That would be a nice thing to show his son one day.

He reached up and touched his untried blonde moustache, which Lolya had admired, and of which he was proud and doubtful in almost equal proportions. He wondered if the hair tonic that his father used on his scalp would make it grow faster.

Suddenly the woods in front of him were seething with movement. He jerked out of his daydream. Svetka waltzed sideways and back, and then Poniatowski’s famous and battle-hardened Poles on their fierce little horses came roaring out of the trees directly towards him. Everything in his body seemed to drop two feet downwards like a stone, leaving him cold and empty and weak; but it was an officer’s business never to show fear before his men. He knew that.