Nearly a thousand ladies of honor packed the balconies. Their sumptuous traditional costumes, in keeping with Nicholas I’s wishes, subtly announced each woman’s respective duty, age, wealth, and rank.

The most titled among them, the empress’s attendants, wore the imperial monogram pinned to their shoulders. The older women in charge of the czarina’s toilette, the dames à portraits, wore diamond-framed miniatures of her pinned to their bodices. Younger and more numerous, the maids of honor assigned to the service of the five grand duchesses all wore satin tiaras of azure, trimmed with swan feathers. Forbidden from wearing the colors of the imperial attendants’ trains—purple or green trimmed with gold, or plain blue—the other ladies of the court wore colors that harmonized with the blue of their sapphires and the green of their emeralds. The feathered fans they waved in the stuffy, crowded premises lifted the veils of their crownlike kokoshniks, and the sweet, heady scents of their hair wafted into the air.

These blended with the perfume of lilies and tuberoses from the window boxes and the incense from cassoulets that burned near the stoves. Scents of the Orient, the heavy fragrance of Russia.

The foreign dignitaries, also in dress uniforms covered with gold, plumes, metal, and gems, breathed in this potpourri as they listened and observed the scene before them. Never before had they encountered such a spectacle of colors, fabrics, and perfumes. Not at the courts of Paris or Vienna, nor at the sumptuous ceremonies of the Vatican. Even the princes of the reigning royal houses were hypnotized, breathless with wonder. Few things could compare to the magnificence and solemnity of the Russian court.

There was nonetheless one element of this vibrantly colored crowd that particularly intrigued the foreign guests, one touch of black in their midst, an incongruous figure who looked entirely out of place.

It was a child of about nine or ten, dressed in a cherkeska that was too long for him, obviously a hand-me-down, with his left arm in a sling.

“Who is he?” the visitors asked. “What’s he doing here?”

No one answered their questions.

The child was, of course, not the only one of his age to attend the ceremony. At the four doors of the White Hall, the cadets of the First Corps, dressed in green and red, stood at attention in formations of twenty square. But the austerity of this little one, the coldness of his expression, and the solitude that emanated from his entire being, made him stand out among all the others.

He appeared to be accompanied—or rather, watched over—by a young lieutenant who leaned down to whisper things in his ear from time to time. But every time the officer tried to catch his attention, the child moved perceptibly away, straining to distance himself from the voice of his guardian. Perhaps because of all the noise around him, or because Milyutin did not speak his language well, the boy did not even pretend to listen or to look in the direction of whatever the lieutenant was describing. His expression haughty, his faced closed and impenetrable, he remained at whatever distance he could, as though he had seen, heard, and understood nothing. The spectacle was probably too new for him to be touched or impressed by it all. What event in his past could possibly compare to all this? There was absolutely no common point of reference between his past and what he saw before him, no link whatsoever that would have offered him a means to compare and judge what was taking place.

The crowd and the noise made him feel confused; he was blinded by the vivid colors and light-headed from the violent onslaught of all the various perfumes. In sum, none of it particularly pleased him. On the contrary, the disorder of all these sensations made him dizzy. He concentrated on concealing his feelings and behaving with all the politeness one should show when under another’s roof, without expressing any sign of rejection or surprise. No curiosity, really? To all outward appearances, this seemed to be the case.

Ten shots of cannon fire marked the hour. All the double doors clacked as they opened in unison. A murmur passed through the crowd of courtiers who pressed forward excitedly toward the connecting rooms, the majordomos holding them back behind the cordons. These signs, like battle preparations, made the boy nonetheless lift his head attentively. From the back, a boot step resounded on the parquet.

A shiver of impatient expectation rippled through the crowd, and he understood. The Great White Czar was coming. In spite of his efforts, his curiosity got the better of him. No longer able to stand still, he leaned forward with the others.

His view was blocked by a line of soldiers standing at attention along the connecting rooms. But already a procession of harbingers, pages, and gentlemen was arriving at the White Hall. A voice silenced the crowd.

“Messieurs, the czar!”

The women curtsied deeply, and the men bowed.

Above all the respectfully lowered heads, Jamal Eddin at first saw only one thing: the high, black papakha of his countrymen.

This was a shock, one that went straight to his heart.

The Great White Czar was not wearing the traditional Russian uniform, with its epaulets, gold-tipped silk cords, military decorations, and golden crucifix. Instead, a gleaming ghizir covered his breast, the row of cartridge belts festooned with silver. He wore the tightly cinched cherkeska of the Caucasian Montagnards, with his pants tucked into his boots and a pair of splendid crossed kinjals slipped into his belt, as was customary. The severe expression of his heavy-lidded steel-gray eyes was impenetrable. The high forehead, the beauty, the nobility, and authority of this face—in fact, everything about this individual—was the incarnation of Jamal Eddin’s idea of a commander. His unusual height—gigantic in comparison to most of the other men at court—made him immediately stand out. A colossus. His gait, the way he held his head, his adamantly imposing presence—the child recognized it all.

Milyutin observed the child’s reaction and immediately understood. The illusion was almost complete. The idea had never occurred to him, the comparison had never entered his head, but today, standing next to this child dressed in what appeared to be a costume matching the emperor’s, the likeness struck him for the first time. Because of his age, his size, his complexion, and his look, the czar could not help but evoke the image of his father, the imam Shamil. The same majesty and the same austerity governed his features, the same sense of theater. And, as the crowning detail, the same escort.

Following in his steps marched not the harbingers and pages who had preceded him, but Lesghiens, Avars, and Chechens. A detachment of twenty Montagnards, all of them splendid in their red cherkeskas, rich sheepskin hats, and leather boots, armed with kinjals, sabers, and crops, served as his praetorian guard.

“The bravest warriors of the empire,” Milyutin whispered in Jamal Eddin’s ear, “the fiercest and the most loyal. The emperor places all his pride and his confidence in these men. They alone are chosen to serve him and to protect and defend him.”

Milyutin chose to omit one crucial detail of his otherwise appealing discourse. The men, hand-picked for their handsome looks, did indeed accompany the czar wherever he traveled. However, he had failed to mention that Nicholas I was not wearing the costume of the murids, as Jamal Eddin might have thought, but rather the uniform of the Terek Cossacks, the “Christian settlers” of the Caucasus. In fact, he was dressed as the ataman of the Cossacks, the generalissimo of the troops that fought the Montagnards.

Why tell him?

Having lived so long among the Montagnards, fighting them and hating them and fearing them, the Cossacks had eventually adopted their dress, their customs, their arms, even their horses and equestrian exploits. They differed in only one respect, thought Milyutin, but it was the most important one—religion. In any case, ever since Akulgo, the Montagnards had belonged to the same people as the Cossacks. They were all Russians.

The young officer drove this last point home by concluding, “That, Jamal Eddin, that is the empire!”

Even if the boy had understood his words, the lieutenant could see that they scarcely inspired the reaction he had expected. Glancing at the child’s face, he was surprised to see what a transformation the vision of these wealthy, powerful Muslims, submissive to the infidels and serving the czar, had wrought.

In four months, Jamal Eddin had never allowed Milyutin even a glimpse of his feelings. Through silence and reserve, he had steadily expressed his disdain for the giaour. But now his features were suddenly contorted with contempt, indignation, and anger at his own people. This time, he lost control of himself.

His eyes flashed, his face flushing dark with fury as he watched these believers who had abandoned the inhabitants of Akulgo and deserted his father.

Cowards. Pacifists. Hypocrites. The words, all those words he had not said for months, crowded into his head and filled him with murderous indignation. The words swirled in his mind.

To the hypocrites, I make it known that I will obtain by brute force what they refused me in my kindness. My warriors will descend like black clouds on their auls.

His hatred was so obvious that his guardian was taken aback.

Traitors to the imam Shamil, traitors to the Almighty.

Though the child said nothing, the officer was sure the child would spit his anger and disgust out before everyone. In the Caucasus, Milyutin had seen how the defeated branded the traitors—not their flesh, but their honor—by spitting spectacular and copious jets of saliva in their faces. He wouldn’t give his prisoner the chance to do this. Grabbing him by the elbow—their first physical contact since the child had been kidnapped and wounded—he pulled the child along behind the others in the cortège.