Синтия Хэррод-Иглз - Anna

‘We must be married before he’s born,’ Nikolai said one day. ‘1 don’t wish him to be disadvantaged.’

Anne smiled, but felt a fluttering inside, as if she were a green girl in her first Season. ‘You have never asked me to marry you,’ she said teasingly, to hide her foolishness. ‘Perhaps I may not accept.’

He looked at her carefully, to see how serious she was. ‘Shall I do it properly? Shall I kneel?’

‘You needn’t kneel – but, yes, seriously, I should like you to ask me,’ she said.

He took her hand and kissed it, and then covered it with both of his. ‘Anna Petrovna, since I first met you on the Île de la Cité, in Paris, nine years ago, my love for you has never faltered, only grown. You are everything in the world that I want in a woman. You are to me entirely lovely.’

Her throat closed up at the depth of emotion she saw in those shining, green-gold eyes. It seemed almost frightening to be so much to someone: and yet she loved him as strongly, loved him wordlessly and absolutely, as she loved daylight and the air she breathed. Why should she be surprised?

‘I love you, too,’ she said. ‘I have no words to tell you how much.’

‘Will you marry me, then, doushenka? Will you marry me, little soul?’

Absurd that it should be so important; but she had heard at last the words from him that for so many years she had never dreamed she would hear. She felt happy, peaceful, triumphant.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes please.’

At the end of October, a letter arrived for Kirov from General Tolly – a private letter of farewell, informing him that he had resigned from his position, pleading ill health.

My health has certainly been impaired, and I have not been fully well since Borodino, the letter said, but I have no hesitation in telling you what I have already said to the Prince, that my resignation is hastened by deep dissatisfaction with the way things have been handled. The army has become a monster with two heads: administration and command, both, have become a chaos of incoherence and ineffectuality. I am retiring to Kolomna for a few months, and will write a full and detailed report to His Majesty, concealing nothing that has gone on. I regret nothing in leaving, but that I have not had an opportunity to say goodbye to you, Nikolai Sergeyevitch. I have a great admiration for your abilities: I hope if you return to your duties, that you will be better appreciated than I was.

When the letter came, Kirov was still sunk in his indolent period, and he was roused by it no further than to feel deeply sorry for the general who had been consistently undervalued and vilified, and yet who had done more than anyone else to keep the army together. The two heads of the monster – Bennigsen and Kutuzov – must have come close many times to driving Tolly mad, he thought. He hoped sincerely that the Emperor, who had always admired Tolly, would find some way to reward him, and to do him public justice.

It was not until the middle of October that Adonis began to bring his master back snippets of news from the outside world, when he ventured out for supplies. Napoleon was still sitting in Moscow, he told him, and suffering apparently from the same curious indecision which had marked the whole campaign. It was known that he had sent three times to Emperor Alexander offering terms for peace; it was thought that the Emperor had simply ignored them, had not troubled to answer. Yet Napoleon did not seem to have come to any conclusions as to what to do next, and neither moved on, nor retreated, but merely squatted in the ruined city.

The Russian army had retreated as far south as Tarutino on the Old Kaluga Road, where it was in touch with Kiev and Tula. Kutuzov was waiting for reinforcements who were at that moment marching up from the south. He made no attempt to engage the French in battle, and Kirov felt he was doing absolutely the right thing. The longer Napoleon remained in Moscow doing nothing, the more completely he was trapped; a hostile move on the Russian side might prompt him to action. Besides, the Russian army grew stronger day by day as the French grew weaker, and the threat of the army was as effective in confining the enemy as a battle would be – and much less costly.

The French advance guard under Murat had followed as far as Vinkovo on the same road, and stopped there. The two forces remained ten miles apart, facing each other in uneasy equilibrium. It was a curious period of inaction. The only hostilities were the Cossack raids on the supply lines along the Smolensk-Moscow High Road, and the relentless picking off of foraging parties whenever it could be done without risk.

The weather had remained unusually warm for the time of year – a factor, Kirov thought, in Napoleon’s continued delay. He had evidently been lulled into a false sense of security by the Indian summer – but the snow might begin in a fortnight, or a month, or tomorrow, and then the city would be cut off, and he would starve. Already the nights were increasingly cold, and there was sometimes a sharp frost for the oblique sunshine to warm away in the morning.

The mild weather which was perhaps deceiving Napoleon, also extended the idyll of Nikolai and Anne in their rural retreat. They were perfectly happy together, doing nothing but enjoying each other’s company, and the bliss of unimpeded love. In the middle of the day it was often warm enough to sit out of doors, and Anne, who was now out of bed and growing stronger, was amusing herself by pottering in the overgrown garden, and bringing in bunches of late, overblown roses and Michaelmas daisies to decorate the dinner table. They dined simply, and the plain food was satisfying as no banquet had ever been. In the evenings they sat by the fire and talked, or played cards, or read aloud to each other. They went to bed early, and made love, and then slept in each other’s arms.

It was a rude shattering of this idyll when Adonis came in one rainy day when they were confined indoors. He sought them out in the drawing-room without even taking off his wet tunic, and stood before them, dripping on the hearth rug, his one eye regarding them sternly.

‘That’s it, Colonel,’ he announced grimly. The return to the military title – of late he had been calling Kirov ‘master’ or the neutral ‘sir’ – shook the Count out of his reverie. ‘They’ve upped and gone!’

‘What? Who’s gone?’ He read the answer in Adonis’s face. ‘The French?’

Anne drew in a breath of surprise and alarm. ‘The French have left Moscow?’

‘Four days since,’ said Adonis. ‘Started off on the Old Kaluga Road, just as if they were going to challenge us to a battle; then turned off and went across country to the New Road. A sort of feint, it looks like – but the Cossack scouts were following ’em all the way, and soon saw what was going on.’

‘Across country? But that’s all marsh land that way. Those roads won’t take the weight of a whole army.’

‘So they’ve found out, Colonel,’ he said with relish. ‘That’s why it’s taken ’em so long – and from what I heard, you never saw such a circus as Napoleon’s got along with him! Not just the footsoldiers and the cavalry and the artillery, but carts and carts of plunder, a host of boulevard carriages they’ve picked up in Moscow, and such a crowd of hangers-on as you never did see, including, they say, the whole of the Theatre Français – afraid of being lynched if they stay in Moscow after the Grande Armée’s gone! Christ, I’d like to see Napoleon shift that lot along! This rain’s all but finished ’em off.’

Kirov was on his feet, walking up and down as his mind began to work again for the first time in weeks. ‘Moving south, is he? But if he has all that train along, he can’t be meaning to mount a military campaign. He must be retreating – heading back for the border.’