Cynthia Harrod-Eagles - Anna

The servants shrank back behind Anne in terror, the grooms who had brought out the horses seemed frozen to the spot. She placed herself instinctively between them and the invaders, and the leader of the men halted in front of her, surveying her by the light of his torch, while his companions spread across the yard behind him, looking around them with sharp, nervous glances.

‘All right, madame, there’s nothing to worry about,’ said the man, holding up a document, a folded piece of stiff paper with a red wax seal clearly visible on the outside. ‘No harm will come to you.’ He waved his men forward, and as they thrust past him he said, ‘By the order of His Excellency the Governor, these horses are requisitioned on State business of the utmost urgency. That’s right, Vanya, lead ’em off!’

Basil came alive. ‘Don’t take my horses! You can’t take them, damn you!’

‘Governor’s business, sir. Don’t get in our way, if you please, or I shall be obliged to use force.’

‘You don’t understand – they’re the last! All the rest have been taken already! How can we get away if you take them? The French are coming! You can’t take my last two horses!’

‘Sorry sir,’ the man said briefly, without interest. ‘Orders are orders.’ Basil grabbed at him, and the man sidestepped and pulled a pistol from his belt. ‘Keep your hands to yourself, sir, or I’ll have to shoot. My orders are to take the horses, at any cost.’

Anne stared. The pistol convinced her of what she already suspected. It had been rather a coincidence that they had arrived just as the horses were led out, hadn’t it? Quite suddenly she knew they were not police at all. They were a band of looters, with a cunning and resourceful leader, who had seen the horses from the street and were snapping up the chance.

‘Show me your orders again,’ she said sharply. Behind her there were sounds of scuffling, and the rattle of nervous hooves on the cobbles.

‘Barina!’ One of the servants called out desperately, and swinging round, she saw him struggling with one of the men, who had pulled a soft valise from the coach and was trying to make off with it. As they dragged, each on one handle, it tore open, and a number of precious objects – gold plate and cups and so on – thudded heavily on to the ground.

‘Show me those orders!’ she snapped at the leader.

‘Sorry, madame, no time now,’ he said, his voice rising with urgency as he backed off, keeping the pistol pointing at them. Others were already trotting the horses towards the gate. Basil caught Anne’s eye and she saw the truth dawn on him too.

‘No!’ he screamed, ‘No! Robbers! Looters! No!’

The leader turned and ran. Basil stooped to grab something from the cobbles, and with insane courage, born of desperation, he flung himself after them, his arm raised above his head as if to strike down the man with whatever it was he held in his hand.

‘Basil, no!’ Anne cried out. In the same instant, the man in front of him turned, raising his hand, and a pistol cracked, spitting a tongue of flame in the darkness of the yard. Basil went down, skidding face downwards a few feet along the cobbles before coming to rest. The servants who had been running forward in his wake stopped dead at the sound of the shot; the horses were gone through the gates, and there was only the diminishing sound of hooves and running feet.

Anne had run to Basil, who was lying still where he had fallen. He didn’t move as she touched him.

‘Basil! Are you all right?’

She slipped her hand under his shoulder to try to pull him up, and found her fingers were wet. ‘You’re hurt,’ she said in consternation. ‘Oh you fool, why did you do it? You knew he had a gun!’

Light fell across her shoulder – one of the servants bringing up a torch. It wavered madly back and forth. She used both hands and managed to pull him over, and as he rolled on to his back, blood pulsed up into the air in a glittering black fountain.

Anne screamed. It was not Basil lying there, but an unspeakable horror. The shot, fired upwards, had severed his jugular vein and shattered his jaw, tearing away the side of his head. She snatched back her hands in helpless horror at the sight, even while the fountain of blood pulsed again, weakly, and then no more.

‘Oh God, oh God!’ she cried out, reaching her trembling fingers for the place where she should have pressed them, to keep the blood in. ‘No, please! No! Basil!’

It was too late. She had had one moment, she had wasted it. Mikhailo behind her moaned, ‘No, Barina, he’s gone.’

He couldn’t have lived anyway, with that horrific wound, some distant part of her brain told her; and yet she felt insanely that she had failed, she had let him go without trying, and she repented, repented, she wanted another chance.

‘I didn’t mean it!’ she sobbed aloud. ‘Basil! I didn’t mean it!’

‘Barina, come away, come away,’ someone said. One of the men behind her was sobbing in fright like a child.

She sat back on her heels, staring in horrified despair at her bloody hands, at Basil’s shattered head. Nausea rose thickly upwards in her throat, and she jerked her head away violently to look at something else, anything else! She mustn’t see that – the baby – she mustn’t look!

Something was shining on the cobbles in the surging torchlight. It must have been the thing in his hand which he had raised as a weapon, something which had fallen from the valise and he had picked up.

She recognised it belatedly, through her rising nausea. It was the gold tiger with the emerald eyes she had given him for his birthday, a lifetime ago, before the world went mad. One of the emerald eyes had been jerked loose when it hit the ground. She saw it glittering at a little distance, a tiny spark in the torchlight. The tiger snarled its defiance, but stared up at her sightlessly from an empty socket, even as Basil stared sightlessly at the night sky from the wreck of his face.

Anne moaned, put her fingers up to her mouth. Her stomach heaved helplessly, and she turned away and was sick on the cobbles.

The original orders to withdraw from Borodino had suggested making a stand somewhere on the other side of Mozhaisk. Kirov had his doubts as to how much Kutuzov had really meant by that; although it was impossible to believe that he had intended at that point to leave Moscow undefended. But whatever his intentions, he sent Bennigsen on ahead to scout the road for possible battle sites; and Bennigsen came back at last to report that there was nowhere suitable along the way, but that the army could make its stand along the crest of the Hill of Salutation.

‘He’s crazy,’ Adonis grumbled as he stood at Kirov’s shoulder, looking over the hilltop where returning Muscovites traditionally stopped to kiss the ground in honour of the holy city. ‘He’s crazier than a cat in a bathtub. Who could fight a battle here?’

Kirov looked around him despairingly. The whole area was criss-crossed with deep, steep-sided gullies and ravines, virtually impossible to cross. If the army were forced to retreat – and after Borodino, who could guarantee it would not? – they would be trapped and cut down helplessly.

Colonel Toll strolled up to him. ‘What do you think of it, Nikolai Sergeyevitch? I spent hours with Bennigsen yesterday, trying to get him to draw up a map of his dispositions. Even he couldn’t decide where to put the defences.’

‘It’s impossible to defend a place like this,’ Kirov replied. ‘But what’s the alternative?’

‘Not my problem,’ Toll said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. ‘That’s up to His Excellency.’

Prince Kutuzov was seated on his camp stool by the roadside, with his aides around him listening to the arguments of the various generals about the positions they and their divisions had been assigned. Tolly, who had been confined to bed with a feverish cold since the battle, but had dragged himself up in view of the emergency, was attempting to talk them down and explain to Kutuzov the impossibility of the site.

At last Kutuzov beckoned Kirov and Toll over. ‘What do you think of this place? Do you agree with General Tolly? Answer me frankly, now.’

They exchanged a glance, and Toll said, ‘To be quite honest, Excellency, I myself would never have thought of placing the army in such a perilous position.’

Kutuzov raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, wouldn’t you? And what about you, Kirov? What do you think?’

‘It seems very dangerous to me, sir. I can’t see how it could successfully be defended.’

‘Yermolov? What’s your opinion?’

Burly Yermolov, who hadn’t always seen eye to eye with Tolly, Was vehement now in his support. ‘Impossible, Excellency! Absolutely impossible! If you tried to give battle here, you would be defeated without question, and the whole army destroyed.’

‘Hmm,’ Kutuzov said, his fleshy face non-committal. ‘You’ve surveyed the ground thoroughly?’

‘Yes, Excellency.’

‘I think perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to have another look at it. Take Crossard, here, and go over the ground again. He’s had plenty of experience in several countries. Report back to me when you’ve made another survey.’

As it was a direct order, Yermolov had no choice but to obey, but he rolled his eyes expressively towards Toll and Kirov as he stumped past them. As he and Crossard walked away, there came, like a theatrical warning, the distant sound of firing from over the next hill: Miloradovich’s men were presumably involved in another skirmish with the French advance guard.

Emboldened by the sound, Toll stepped up to the Prince, and murmured into his ear. ‘Excellency, you must decide. Indecision is the worst thing of all.’