September 1812
“Have you ever been in love, Zofia?”
“What?” The bedchamber was dark and Zofia had thought Charlotte asleep. The raspy, labored voice had surprised her, as had the question itself.
“In love?” Charlotte said. “Truly in love?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think so. Have you?”
“Oh, yes! A great love—before I met you. Before I left France.”
“You never told me.”
“A lady should have some secrets. Besides, the pain remained too close to the surface.”
“After all these years?—Who was he?”
“A duke. Aubrey was his name.”
“An unusual name.”
“It means ‘blond ruler.’”
“And did he love you?” How strange, Zofia thought. That this conversation was taking place in darkness. And that she had never spoken of it before.
“He did.”
“What happened, Charlotte?”
“He married another. At the wishes of his family. I was untitled at the time and they could not see beyond that.”
“I see. It was your only love?”
“It was.”
“What happened to him?”
“He died on the scaffold. Like so many.” Charlotte drew in a long, labored breath. “And you, Zofia? Was it Jan Stelnicki?”
Zofia took little time to think. “No, I think not.”
“Who, then?”
“Someone you never met.”
“Iza’s father?”
“You’re very talkative, Charlotte. You should be resting.”
“It was, wasn’t it?”
“He was just a boy.”
“But it was—different?”
“Yes, it was different. He was so innocent. He taught me how to carve some silly little figures out of linden wood. I even imagined myself staying in that tiny, pathetic village—living the life of a peasant.” Zofia forced a laugh. “He was a peasant boy. Isn’t that silly?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. What was his name?”
“Jerzy.”
“And you never saw him again?”
“I did see him. Once. Years ago at the presentation of the colors ceremony. He had joined the Poniatowski’s infantry.”
“Was he different than you remembered? Still innocent?”
“Still innocent, yes. But a man. He had become a man.”
“And?”
Zofia sighed. “I gave him the sendoff a man deserves.” Charlotte seemed to be waiting to hear more. “I never saw him after that.”
“He knew about Iza?”
“Yes. And he wanted to come back to Warsaw after the campaign. He wanted to meet her. He wanted to—oh, it was impossible, and I told him so.”
“And?”
“He probably died in the campaign. The infantry often get the worst of it, you know.”
“What do you tell Iza?”
“That he was a great lord and that he died fighting for Kościuszko.”
“I see.”
“You know, Charlotte, I’ve had many conquests.” She gave a little laugh. “Perhaps even more than you!”
“Indeed.”
“I’ve bedded King Stanisław and the little French emperor himself, for God’s sake! But there’s nary a night I don’t think about that blond peasant boy.—Isn’t that strange?”
Zofia sensed Charlotte shifting in the bed, then felt her take hold of her hand.
“Not so very,” Charlotte said. “Not so very.” And she lifted Zofia’s hand to her lips and kissed it.
Charlotte was weeping now, Zofia realized.
On 15 September, the main arm of the Grande Armée, a hundred thousand strong, reached Moscow. The sight of the oriental-flavored city with its many hundred golden spires and colored onion-domes rising above glittering palaces and numberless rooftops of wooden buildings caught Paweł’s imagination as much as it did the members of the Young Guard. Paweł stared long moments at the cathedral with its nine copper-covered bell towers, the tallest of which supported the thirty-foot-high silver cross of Ivan the Great. Days later, orders came down that the magnificent cross—and the great eagles on the Kremlin towers—were to be detached and trucked as trophies to Paris. In removing the oversized treasures, however, the carpenters and workmen nearly lost their lives as the icons crashed to the ground. The booty would prove too heavy to cart away.
It seemed inconceivable that they were here. The march from Smolensk had been the most demanding Paweł had experienced. The temperature in the course of a single day swung like a pendulum, arcing from sweltering afternoon heat to temperatures below zero at night. And the strong winds of the steppes whipped up dust that pelted the soldiers, forcing them to invent face coverings of odd rags. Water was bad or nonexistent, and food became extremely scarce, with horseflesh and corn providing the most common rations.
Natural elements aside, skirmishes had been plentiful and brutal. Besides huge casualties, the number of stragglers—those wounded or victims of hunger and disease—mounted into thousands upon thousands. But the battle that had turned aside the Russian army, permitting entry into Moscow, occurred at the village of Borodino. The victory had not come easily, for the Russians fought and fell in continuous forward movement as if they were mechanical soldiers that according to the emperor “only cannonballs can demolish.” The Russians suffered an estimated forty-five thousand men, dead and wounded; the French thirty-five thousand.
Before abandoning Moscow, its governor, Count Rostopchin, removed fire-fighting equipment and put hundreds of arsonists to work. The resulting fires lasted five days, devastating palaces, churches, homes, and businesses—so many made completely of wood. The Jewish quarter was reduced to ash and cinders. Fortunately, the Kremlin complex was spared. Paweł could not imagine the Poles burning Warsaw or the French burning Paris merely to slow an enemy. It was barbarous. Word filtered down that an enraged Napoléon had written to Tsar Aleksandr that Moscow no longer existed and that Count Rostopchin’s four hundred arsonists had been summarily shot.
Poniatowski’s Fifth Corps, along with General Murat’s cavalry, made camp in Voronov, a small abandoned village a bit southwest of Moscow. Paweł saw his Young Guard billeted in small wooden houses with thatched roofs. He admonished his men against destroying property or taking anything other than food, blankets, and warm clothes. While his men seemed to obey, much of the French army was bivouacked within Moscow, and with the fires providing diversion, plundering there went unchecked for several days. Men looted anything of value, heedless that they would have to carry it on their backs the long, long way they had come. Their consciences were cleansed, it seemed, when it was confirmed that the fires had been set by the Russians themselves.
The entire army should have been billeted outside the city, Paweł thought, but the temptations of real roofs, stoves, and beds had been too much for certain army authorities who must have prevailed upon Napoléon.
On the first morning in Voronov, Paweł knocked and entered the little dwelling that had been assigned to Jan Michał and Tadeusz. “Hello, soldiers! Hello!” he called.
Both boys had been sleeping. They jumped to their feet.
“Still abed, are we?” Paweł asked, with a laugh. “One would think you’ve been on a forced march!”
The boys smiled, wiping at their eyes.
“Get dressed now, while I put some wood in the stove. It’s freezing in here.”
A little while later, the three sat at a tiny table, sharing a meal of preserved deer meat that Paweł had fried up.
“What now, Major?” Jan Michał asked.
Paweł shrugged. “That depends on Napoléon.”
“And the tsar,” Tadeusz said.
“You’re right there, Tadek.”
“Will he sue for peace?” Jan Michał asked.
Paweł snickered. “Who knows the will of the gods, hey?” He drank down some warm mead. “Personally I don’t think we’ve done our job convincingly enough on their army, but we’ll see.”
A blue fire ignited in Tadeusz’ eyes. “At Borodino we should have followed Kutusov—allowing him to steal away into the night like that! A final frontal assault is what we needed.”
“We had been pushed to the limit if you hadn’t noticed, Tadek,” Jan Michał corrected. “And full frontal assaults can be ruinous. Isn’t that right, Major?”
Paweł nodded. “Sometimes, Michał, yes.” He took another drink. “As for Napoléon, I expect he’ll wait and see what comes.”
“You think we’ll winter here?” Tadeusz asked.
“Any extended waiting and we’ll have to,” Jan Michał said. “Yes, Major?”
Paweł nodded. “Your strategy professors taught you well. Winter on the steppes is deadly. How’s the meat?”
When the boys complimented Paweł, he laughed, calling them liars. “It’s tough and salty—but compared to what we’ve had, who’s to complain?”
“What’s that?” Tadeusz asked, his ears pricking up and his eyes shifting left to right.
“What?” Jan Michał asked.
“I heard nothing,” Paweł said.
“There, again!” Tadeusz cried.
“I think I did hear something, Major” Jan Michał said.
“I’m afraid the artillery has taken much of my hearing,” Paweł said with a little laugh.
“A goat?” Jan Michał suggested, half to himself. “Or a cat?”
Tadeusz stood and made for the door. He pushed his head out, surveying the front of the hut. After a long minute he closed the door and returned to the table.
“Nothing?” Jan Michał asked.
“Nothing.”
And then came the noise again.
“I heard that!” Paweł declared. “A baby!”
They listened in wide-eyed silence. It came yet again, more sustained. The three stood as if on command, their eyes moving to the ceiling. “Is there an attic?” Paweł asked.
“More of a loft,” Jan Michał said. “You know, for the animals when it gets cold enough.”
“Which is often in this God-forsaken tundra,” Paweł said. “Where’s the access?—Outside?”
“No,” Tadeusz said. “There’s a ramp behind the kitchen area.”
Paweł drew his pistol. “And you didn’t check it out?”
“I stuck my head up there,” Tadeusz said. “A lot of hay. Too dark to see much of anything.”
The three moved to the ramp without further words—and listened. Silence.
“Come down!” Paweł called, his voice authoritative and demanding. He drew his pistol. “Come down from there at once, or you will be shot!” He repeated the warning in Russian.
They could hear a little shuffling going on. Then the sound of someone moving on the boards. A red booted foot appeared on the ramp.
“Come ahead,” Paweł ordered. “If you have a weapon, drop it now, or you will be shot.”
“No weapon.” The tremulous voice was scarcely audible. The second boot and the hem of a brown muslin garment appeared. It was a woman, and with great hesitancy she moved down the ramp, carrying a bundle of blankets that held the little crier that had given away the hiding place. She was scarcely more than a girl, a terrified girl, younger than Jan Michał and no more than a year older than Tadeusz.
“What are you doing here?” Paweł asked in Russian.
“I live here.”
Her response had been in Polish, but Paweł took care not to register surprise. “Who else is up there?”
“No one.”
“Have a look around, Jan Michał.”
“I’ll go, Major!” Tadeusz cried.
“I said Jan Michał!” Paweł’s snappish delivery underscored that it was an order, and Tadeusz blushed at the censure.
Jan Michał started for the ramp.
“Damn it, Michał!” Paweł shouted, stopping him in mid-step. “Get your pistol!”
It was Jan Michał’s turn to be shame-faced now. He went for his pistol and in no time was ascending the ramp. They could hear him moving around overhead. How had they not heard the woman and baby before this?
“Nothing!” Jan Michał shouted.
“All right, come down!” Paweł ordered.
The woman looked as if she was about to faint. The baby started to cry now.
“Go sit down,” Paweł told her.
The woman sat and the three drew around her. The crying grew louder.
“Your baby is hungry?” Paweł asked. “If you’re able to feed it, do so.”
The woman went red as a ripe apple, adjusted the blankets in a camouflaging manner, and obeyed.
“You’re Polish,” Paweł said.
She nodded.
“What are you doing living here?”
“My husband is Russian.”
“In the tsar’s army?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you take to the forest with the rest of the villagers?”
She gave a little shrug and her eyes brimmed with tears. “I’m afraid of them. They are all Russian. They do not accept me. They would kill me. I know they would kill me.”
Paweł believed her.
“What are we to do with her?” Jan Michał asked.
“I can stay?” she asked.
Paweł looked down on her, this pathetic but pretty peasant madonna and her child. “It is your house. These soldiers are in your house.”
“I can cook for them,” she said. “My name is Nadzia.”
“The deal is struck!” Paweł cried, turning to the wide-eyed brothers. “They’ll watch out for you, and you’ll cook for them.”
“But, Major—” Tadeusz started.
“I expect,” Paweł interrupted, “she’ll do a damned sight better at the stove than I or either of you.”
Tadeusz knew better than to question any further.
Paweł’s eyes narrowed on his two charges. “Jan Michał, when you get up from the table, take your pistol, danger or no, and next time, my friends, thoroughly examine your quarters. Be aware of every bedbug! The enemy could have slit your young throats in your sleep. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” the brothers replied in tandem.