Leo turned over and stretched and shivered. The warm presence that had comforted her all night had gone. She opened her eyes and looked around. Men were moving around, stoking the fire, boiling water, saddling horses. There was no sign of Sasha. For a moment she wondered if she had dreamed him, then she became aware of the cloak that still covered her. She pulled it up to her face and buried her nose in it. It smelt of him. It was unmistakeable, yet she had never realised before that she could recognise his smell.
He spoke from behind her. ‘Good, you’re awake. We have to move on soon.’
She struggled into a sitting position. ‘Sasha?’
He crouched beside her and touched her face. ‘You look better. I believe the fever has broken. Last night I was afraid for you.’
She rubbed her eyes and realised that her throat was hurting less and her headache had almost gone. ‘You’re real! I was afraid I’d imagined you.’
He smiled briefly. ‘I thought I was going mad when I saw you trudging along the road with the rest. I told myself you must be a real boy and it was just my fevered brain that saw a resemblance. What, in God’s name, has brought you back to Serbia?’
‘You,’ she answered.
He looked as if he was going to say more, but he shook his head in despair, or exasperation. An orderly appeared at his side with a steaming mug and a small piece of dry bread.
‘Would the young gentleman like some coffee, sir?’
He looked so puzzled that Leo felt a stab of concern, but Malkovic laughed. ‘This “young gentleman” is actually a young lady. You can call her Gospodica Leo. Yes, give her the coffee.’
The confusion on the young man’s face was so great that Leo almost laughed too, in spite of the fact that her head was swimming. Sasha held the cup out to her. It contained the usual brew of bitter black coffee, without which, it seemed, no Serbian could start the day.
‘No sugar this time, I’m afraid,’ Sasha said. ‘You had the last few grains in the bag last night.’
Leo sipped the drink and although it contained no nourishment, the warmth and the caffeine helped to raise her spirits. Before long she knew that she must answer a call of nature – but where, in the middle of all these men?’
She struggled to her feet. ‘Sasha, I must … I need to …’
He understood. ‘I’ll show you where.’ He led her across the clearing to where a tumble of rocks offered some shelter. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll see you are not disturbed.’
When she had finished she found him standing with his back scrupulously turned.
‘We must get on the road,’ he said. ‘Come.’
The orderly was holding Cloud, Sasha’s grey gelding, and Shadow ready, but as they approached them Leo gave a cry.
‘Oh, Sasha, they’re skin and bones! Poor creatures!’
‘I know,’ he replied. ‘We haven’t been able to find fodder for them for days. They are surviving on dried leaves. But there’s no help for it. We must hope that they will keep going until we reach the other side of the mountains.’
He helped her into the saddle and she felt Shadow sag for a moment under her weight. It crossed her mind that it was cruel to expect him to carry her, but she knew that she would never survive the journey on foot. If Sasha had not come upon her when he did, she would probably be lying helpless by the road now, like others she had seen as she trudged past.
All day the road wound on, higher and higher, the horses stumbling in the mud and slush. The river now ran in a ravine, far below them, and at one point Leo saw the snow flattened and discoloured at the edge of the track and, looking down, saw that a wagon had overturned and tumbled into the abyss, dragging the oxen that pulled it down with it. A little later they heard the sound of sawing and hammering and passed a group of wagons that had pulled off into a clearing. The oxen had been outspanned and the drivers were apparently cutting the wagons in half.
Sasha called out to ask them what they were doing and received the answer that the bridges ahead were too narrow for the wagons to pass, so the men were converting them into two-wheeled carts. Further on they came upon the contents of several vehicles in a heap at the side of the track. Guns and ammunition, cooking pots, tents – all the impedimenta that the army carried with it – had been off-loaded so that essential supplies could be carried. Sasha shook his head grimly.
‘If we get through alive we shall be a rabble, not an army!’
Worse was to come. In a little valley Leo saw ahead of them a crowd of moving shapes, wraith-like in the drifting snow. Coming closer, she saw that they were soldiers but not in Serbian uniform.
‘Austrian prisoners of war,’ Sasha said.
‘Do you mean they have just been abandoned, left to fend for themselves?’ Leo responded.
‘We can’t feed our own people,’ Sasha said. ‘Why should we use up our last essential supplies on them?’
As they rode past, the men stood and stared in silence. Leo bent her head and did not return their gaze. To leave them seemed inhuman, but she saw the strength of Sasha’s argument and reminded herself that it was the Austrians who had started the war. Nevertheless, she was ashamed.
Soon after that they began to pass bodies lying in the snow. Civilians, men, women and children, who had finally given up the struggle; and soldiers, too, many of them wounded. Some of them were still alive and called out for help. Sasha reached out and gripped Shadow’s reins, urging the horse on.
‘There’s nothing we can do, Leo. Those of us who have the strength must survive. Otherwise we all die. The Austrians are behind us and the Bulgarians are said to be moving in from the east. If they reach the far end of this valley before we do, we shall be bottled up here and forced to fight for our lives.’
Leo thought of her own convoy of patients and nurses. They would have had to abandon the ox-carts like everyone else. Were they still somewhere up ahead, struggling onwards? Or had she ridden past them, without recognising them? What of Milan and Stella Patterson? There was no way Milan could have walked. Was he one of those lying in the snow by the roadside?
That night they ate the last of the bread and huddled together round the fire, trying to sleep.
‘How much further?’ Leo asked.
Sasha shook his head. ‘A day? Two days? I don’t know.’
It was sometime around the middle of the next day that Shadow suddenly staggered and went down on his knees. Leo just had time to throw herself to one side before he collapsed. Sasha dismounted and went to the horse’s head, clicking his tongue and pulling at the reins. Shadow lifted his head once and made a feeble effort to bring his hindlegs under him, then sank back, his breath whistling through dilated nostrils. Sasha was still for a moment, then he drew his revolver.
‘Leo, turn your back.’
‘No!’ She knelt and stroked the black neck that had once been so sleek and powerful. ‘Is there nothing we can give him?’
‘You know there isn’t. It’s kinder to put him out of his misery than leave him to die. Turn away – please!’
She shook her head obstinately and after a brief hesitation he shrugged and put the muzzle of the gun against the horse’s head. There was a crack, Shadow convulsed once and was still. Sasha got up and pulled Leo with him.
‘Now you will do as I ask and come away.’
But she had already seen two of the men advancing with knives in their hands. That night the cauldron over the fire gave off an odour that filled her mouth with saliva and the resulting stew was rich with gobbets of meat seasoned with the fiery paprika the company cook had carried with him. Leo thought that the first mouthful would choke her but as soon as she tasted it sentiment was swamped by sheer physical need and she devoured everything that was given to her.
That night they all slept better but Leo woke to the sound of lamentation. One of the men had died during the hours of darkness and his companions were mourning him. Sasha’s face was taught with grief.
‘He’s the fourth to die since we left Pristina,’ he said. ‘And two others have just disappeared, left behind somewhere. God knows, we lost enough men in the fighting, but to see them dying from cold and hunger …’
He broke off and turned away. The ground was too hard to attempt to bury the dead man. They covered him with his greatcoat and someone fashioned a rough cross from two bits of wood, and then they set out again on their journey.
Sasha wanted Leo to ride Cloud, but she shook her head. ‘He’s your horse, and your men need you. I don’t belong here.’
He gripped her arm tightly. ‘You belong with me, and either we live together or we die together. Now get up on the horse! He hasn’t the strength to carry us both.’
She rode for a couple of hours, then made the excuse that her feet were freezing and she needed to walk for a while. So he looped the reins over his arm and took her hand.
‘We’ll walk together. Cloud needs the rest.’
At that moment they heard the crack of a rifle and a scream of pain. Swinging round, Leo saw one of Sasha’s men drop to the ground, clutching his shoulder. A second later she was forced down onto the snow herself, with Sasha on top of her.
‘Stay still! Stay down!’
‘What is it?’
‘Bandits! Albanians, out for all they can steal.’
Twisting round she saw him reach up and grab his rifle from where it hung on his saddle. There were other shots, now, closer at hand, and she realised that their own men were returning fire. Sasha’s rifle cracked close to her ear. She raised her head and saw figures among the trees, dodging from trunk to trunk. There was a cacophony of shots and screams, then sudden silence. She could hear Sasha breathing hard, then one more shot and a cry of triumph from one of his men. He got cautiously to his feet.
‘Cease fire, men. They’ve made a run for it. They’ll be looking for easier pickings somewhere else.’
Leo got up and grabbed her pack. There was little in it but she still had a few field dressings. The man who had been wounded by the first shot was groaning and swearing and a brief examination showed her that the bullet was still lodged in his shoulder.
‘We can’t probe for it here,’ she told Sasha. ‘All I can do is dress the wound to stop the bleeding and give him some morphia for the pain.’
‘Do it,’ he agreed, adding with a wry smile. ‘I had forgotten how useful it could be to have a nurse with us.’
They pressed on, along a track that grew narrower and narrower, towards the head of the valley. The way ran closer to the river again here, and they frequently had to cross it on bridges that consisted of nothing more than a few rough-hewn planks. More than once the whole column was held up because a pack mule or a handcart had slipped and fallen into the water. Then, towards midday, they heard a confused noise from the crowd ahead of them.
‘Is it another attack?’ Leo asked.
Sasha shook his head, screwing up his eyes. ‘It sounds more like cheering.’
The word began to spread back along the line. ‘The sea! We can see the sea!’
A distant memory stirred in Leo’s mind of her Greek lessons with her father. ‘Thalassa! Thalassa!’ she murmured, and Sasha grinned and squeezed her hand. ‘Zenophon. But it was the Black Sea in that case.’
Leo glanced sideways at him. ‘You’re the only person I know who would immediately recognise that.’
His grip tightened. ‘It’s only one of the many things we share.’
When their turn came to crest the last rise, Leo strained her eyes into the distance. At last the snow had stopped and far below them she could just make out the sea, like a band of pewter along the horizon. Looking ahead and behind from this vantage point, she was amazed to see how the line of people stretched out of sight in both directions. It was clear that they must number in their thousands.
‘It’s still a very long way,’ she murmured.
‘But we shall get there,’ he replied. ‘Now I have no doubt.’
She stumbled and he caught her arm again. ‘Now you will ride.’
This time she did not argue.
At evening they came to a small village, a collection of poor, circular huts straggling along a muddy street. The inhabitants stood in their doorways watching them pass with hostile faces. Sasha called out to one or two, asking if they would sell him some bread, but they turned away without answering; until they came to a house that stood slightly apart at the end of the village, where an ancient woman responded with a toothless smile.
‘Yes, I have bread. How much will you give?’
Sasha named a price twice what Leo had been paying, even when the shortages began to bite. The old crone cackled and asked for double. He offered a figure somewhere between the two and eventually she hobbled off into the hut and returned with four loaves of rough black bread. That night there was more horse stew and this time they each had a small piece of bread to dip into it. When they had eaten, Leo went to check on the wounded man. Until that time she had been too absorbed in her own struggle for survival to pay much attention to the rest of the company, but now she saw that several of them had minor wounds that were beginning to fester for lack of treatment. She spent an hour cleaning and dressing them and responding to their shy questions. It was plain that they were consumed with curiosity about her sudden appearance and her relationship with their commander but they had too much natural courtesy to ask her directly. She told them about the Sick and Wounded Convoy and how she had become separated from it. As to the rest, she left them to draw their own conclusions.
To Leo, the following day seemed the longest of all, even though they were going down hill and the snow had given way to a persistent drizzle. The bright strip of sea seemed to get no closer, and sometimes it disappeared from sight altogether and she began to think that it would take days rather than hours to reach it. But as the light faded they came at last to a proper road and turned south towards the port of Durrazzo. A messenger rode along the ranks towards them and stopped to speak to Sasha, who turned and shouted to his men.
‘Keep going, lads. There’s a camp waiting to receive us outside the town. Not far now.’
Starving and exhausted, they raised a ragged cheer and plodded on.
The camp, when they reached it at midnight, was in a field already churned to mud by the earlier arrivals. There were a few tents, but not enough by a long way to accommodate everyone, and they were already full; and there was no wood for fires. They spent a miserable night huddled together on the wet ground, with nothing to eat.
Soon after dawn, an officer rode into the camp, followed by three wagons. Leo took one look at his uniform and ran to greet him.
‘Good morning! I can’t tell you how glad I am to see a British officer! Oh, by the way, I’m Leonora Malham Brown. How do you do?’
He stared down at her and she suddenly realised how she must look to him; a filthy, ragged urchin. She ran a hand through her hair and said lamely, ‘I don’t usually look like this.’
He found his voice and said, ‘You’re English?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re – forgive me, you are a woman?’
‘Yes. I came out to help nurse the wounded, but I got separated from the rest of the convoy. But listen! These people are starving. I mean, quite literally dying of hunger. Do you have food in those wagons?’
‘Yes, some. But we had no idea that there would be so many. It won’t be enough to go round, but I will come back with more.’
She had been joined by Sasha and officers from the other units. The strongest men were called for and the wagons were rapidly unloaded and their contents, tins of bully beef and packets of hard biscuits, divided as equitably as possible. Leo watched Sasha going round his men, ensuring that the weakest were fed first. There were no arguments, and she marvelled, not for the first time, at the uncomplaining endurance of these peasant soldiers. He insisted on giving her an equal ration but when he came back to her she saw that he had reserved only a small portion for himself.
‘Here, you eat this. I’ve finished,’ she said, offering him the last biscuit with its smear of beef jelly.
He refused and they bickered for a few moments. Then he laughed and said, ‘I’d forgotten what an obstinate creature you can be. Here!’ And he broke the biscuit in two and put half in his mouth.
When the British officer returned he came to find Leo.
‘Forgive me, I completely forgot my manners this morning. My name is Robert Johnson. I have a message for you. There is a Red Cross mission in town with a number of English and American nurses. I’ve made some enquiries and they would be very happy to accommodate you until arrangements can be made for you to return to England. I can take you there on my way back.’
For a moment Leo was taken by surprise. The idea that she might leave Sasha and his men had never crossed her mind. She shook her head. ‘That’s very kind of you, but I have no plans to return to England at the moment.’
The officer looked nonplussed. ‘Well, at least let me take you to the mission until we are able to discover what has happened to your friends. I assume you will want to rejoin them?’
‘You should go, Leo,’ Sasha said quietly.
She turned to him. ‘You want me to leave you?’
‘I’m trying to do what is best for you.’
‘The colonel is right,’ the British captain said. ‘After all, this is really no place for a lady.’
Leo set her jaw. ‘Then perhaps I am no lady. I am staying here.’
The captain looked at Sasha. ‘Cannot you persuade her, sir?’
Sasha raised his eyes heavenwards. ‘I know that look. I might as well try to persuade the sun not to set.’
The captain frowned. ‘Very well. The offer is there, if you should change your mind.’
As he turned away Sasha said, ‘What is going to happen to us? We can’t sit here indefinitely.’
‘Ships have been chartered to take you off and transport you to Corfu. The first should arrive tomorrow, but it will be some time before we can accommodate so many of you. I’m afraid I must ask you to be patient.’
Leo had been thinking. Now she said quickly, ‘Captain, I’m sorry to have been so ungracious. I should like to accept your offer after all. But I should like to bring one of the men with me. He has a bullet in the shoulder and he needs a doctor urgently.’ Then she added in Serbian to Sasha, ‘Stefan will be better off in the hospital but I shall come back, before dark. You won’t go anywhere without me, will you?’
‘We shall be here,’ he said. ‘But you should go home, you know.’
‘Oh no,’ she replied. ‘I’m coming to Corfu with you.’
‘Leo! Leo, it’s you! Thank God! We thought you had been taken prisoner, or … well, we didn’t know where you were. It’s such a relief to see you!’
Stella Patterson caught her by the arms and hugged her as she entered the hallway of the building where the Red Cross mission was housed.
‘It’s a blessed relief to see you, too,’ Leo responded. ‘I was so afraid that you hadn’t made it over the mountains. How did you manage?’
‘It was thanks to our wonderful drivers. When the road got too narrow for the wagons they cut them up and made two-wheeled hand carts and dragged the patients along in them. We lost two of them on the way, sadly, but three survived.’
‘Including Milan? Tell me Milan survived!’
‘Yes, he did and he’s hobbling about on crutches. Come on in and see. The others are here, too. They will be so glad to see you.’
Stefan, the man who had been shot during the Albanian ambush, was taken up to one of the wards and minutes later Leo was reunited with the rest of her small team. They were all thin and tired but otherwise in good health. Having started out ahead of the main body of the army they had been able to buy supplies and had acquired three pack mules to carry them.
‘And the best news is,’ Stella said, ‘Stobart and the rest have reached Scutari, north of here and are heading for Medua. We’ve all been promised a ship to take us to Brindisi and from there it will be easy to get the train to Rome and then back to London. Have you realised what the date is?’
Leo shook her head. ‘I’ve no idea.’
‘It’s December twenty-third! Two days to Christmas. Of course, it isn’t Christmas by the calendar they use here, but that’s not the point. Just think! We shan’t make it home for Christmas, but we might get there for New Year.’
For a moment Leo’s imagination conjured a vivid image of the drawing room at Sussex Gardens; a blazing fire in the grate and Beavis bringing in tea with toasted crumpets. She dismissed it and smiled at the others.
‘I hope you do. You’ve all done a marvellous job out here.’
‘What do you mean?’ Stella asked. ‘Surely you are coming with us.’
Leo shook her head. ‘I’m going back to be with … with the people who brought me over the mountains. They’re old friends and I want to stay with them.’
She resisted all their attempts to persuade her to change her mind, but accepted the offer of a hot bath and a meal. The Red Cross nurses gave her a set of clean underwear but she declined the offer of a linen uniform dress and insisted instead on sponging the worst of the dirt off her breeches and tunic. She did, however, agree to exchange her smelly sheepskin coat for a thick woollen cloak with a hood. Lunch was the inevitable bully beef hash but it was followed by bread with real butter and apricot jam and coffee sweetened with condensed milk. The sudden rush of sweetness made her feel almost light-headed.
When they had eaten, she thanked the nursing sister in charge, a cheerfully efficient American, and added, ‘I wonder if I could ask you a really big favour. The men I came over the mountains with are almost starving. They are getting food now, though not really enough, but what they miss most is sugar for their coffee. It seems as though they can face almost anything as long as they get their hot, sweet coffee in the morning. Is there any chance you could let me have some sugar to take back to them? I probably owe them my life and I should like to repay them in some small way.’
As a result, she set off back to the camp in a donkey cart carrying the equivalent of a year’s ration of sugar for one nurse and several tins of jam. Her leave-taking was a tearful affair, and her companions still begged her to change her mind and go home with them, but she never wavered. The comforts of home were a distant illusion compared with the real prospect of returning to Sasha and his men.
Back at the camp, conditions had improved. There were still not enough tents, but rough shelters had been constructed with sheets of tarpaulin and the men had scoured the countryside for wood, so that each company now had its vital campfire. Hay had even been procured for the horses and Leo found Sasha at the horse lines, stroking Cloud’s emaciated flanks as the horse champed at the fodder. He greeted her with a frown.
‘What are you doing back here?’
She felt as if he had struck her. ‘I told you I was coming back.’
‘You should have stayed in the town. As the English captain said, this is no place for a woman.’
Leo swallowed. ‘Perhaps not. But it’s where I want to be. You sent me away once before. This time I won’t go.’
He turned to look at her and clasped both hands to his head in a gesture of self-mocking despair. ‘Dear God! What have I done to be punished with this insubordinate female?’
In the space of a breath they were in each other’s arms, not kissing but clinging together like the survivors of a shipwreck. She felt her tears soaking into the shoulder of his cloak. Voices nearby made them draw apart at length and as they looked at each other she saw that there were tears on his cheeks as well.
He ran the back of his hand across his eyes and then over her cheek. ‘You smell good. What is it?’
‘Soap and water,’ she answered. ‘Come and see what I have brought back with me.’
When she showed him the jam, he called his men together and she went along the line giving each one a spoonful, which they received with almost religious solemnity, as if it had been the Holy Sacrament. After that, they had beef stew fiery with paprika and finished with mugs of thick, dark, sweet coffee. The sugar raised their spirits to such an extent that one man produced a gusla and began to play and sing and two others even attempted the kolo; but they were quickly exhausted and sank down again onto the ground.
Sasha’s face was still gaunt with anxiety. ‘Some of them are so weak,’ he confided. ‘I thought if I could get them this far all would be well, but now I am afraid that we shall lose more unless they get better care soon.’
It was not long before the men moved back into their improvised shelters and began to roll themselves in their blankets and settle down to sleep. Leo looked at Sasha. On the mountains it had been a matter of survival to snuggle together, but now that excuse had vanished. She longed to feel his arms round her but he led her to a small space at the back of the tent, where a groundsheet had been suspended across the corner.
‘It’s not very comfortable, I’m afraid, but it will give you a bit of privacy.’ He touched her cheek and turned away to stretch out near his men.
She understood that he was concerned for her honour but as she settled down, covering herself with her newly acquired cloak, she could not help feeling abandoned.
All next day they waited for news of the ships that would take them to Corfu, but there was no sign of them. Around noon two Austrian Taube biplanes came over and dropped bombs on the harbour. None fell on the camp but the sight increased the sense of despair that had settled over the refugees. However, as the sun was setting, Captain Johnson returned to tell them that ships were expected the next day. They must make their way to the harbour at dawn to be ready to embark.
In the morning, as they prepared to leave after a hastily brewed cup of coffee, Leo looked for Sasha and could not see him. She found him down by the horse lines, standing by Cloud with his revolver in his hand.
‘What are you doing?’ she exclaimed, aghast.
He looked round at her, his eyes sunk so deep into their sockets that the flesh around them appeared bruised. ‘We can’t take horses on the ship. I won’t leave him here to be worked to death by some peasant.’
‘You can’t!’ she whispered. ‘Sasha, you can’t!’
‘What else am I to do? Stay here with him?’
He turned away and held his hand to the horse’s muzzle and Leo saw Cloud’s tongue flick over his palm and guessed that he had kept his share of the sugar ration as a last treat for him. Then he put his arm round the animal’s neck and whispered in his ear, and pressed the revolver against his head. Leo heard the report and saw the horse’s legs buckle beneath him. Sasha put a second bullet into his head to make sure and turned away.
‘Are the men ready?’
‘Yes, they are waiting for you.’
‘Let’s go then.’
When they reached the harbour, it was empty of ships, though the quayside was already crowded with men. The hours passed and they waited without food or shelter from the biting cold. Around midday a cheer went up and two Italian ferries steamed into sight. They were too large to moor up to the quayside, so small boats were commandeered to carry the troops out to them. They had just taken on their first load when the Taubes came over again. There was nowhere to shelter, so all they could do was huddle together on the quay and watch as the bombs dropped. Most of them fell harmlessly into the water, but one hit one of the ferries amidships. Within minutes she split in two and sank. The men in the small boats had to climb back onto the quay, while the boats went to rescue the survivors who were thrashing about in the harbour.
Eventually some of the waiting troops were loaded onto the second ship but it was clear that there would not be room for all of them. As the evening darkened, Leo looked at Sasha.
‘Should we head back to the camp, do you think?’
‘What would be the point? The men still waiting there will have eaten all the rations. We can starve here as easily as anywhere else.’
She had never seen him so dispirited and it hurt like a stab to the heart. But as she struggled to think of words to cheer him, another cry went up and they saw a rusty freighter steaming into the harbour. By midnight they were all aboard and the ship, so low in the water that Leo feared the slightest swell might swamp her, set sail for Corfu.