The Girl Who Fought Napoleon: A Novel of the Russian Empire (20 page)

Your servant,

Adam Czartoryski

Tears of humility sprung to Alexander’s eyes.

He’s right. No one else on earth would tell me the truth. They would kiss the manure from my boots, toast my immortal name and all tsars of Russia before me. But only Adam Czartoryski would ever dare to show me my error. No one else in the world would have the courage to berate me like this in order that I might alter my course of destiny.

No—there is one other who tells me the truth. One other whom I can trust.

Alexander turned toward his secretary, who was standing in the antechamber.

“Please tell Her Highness, the Tsarina Elizabeth, to expect me to sup with her this evening.”

Chapter 28

Berlin

October 1806

The French soldier smiled broadly, exposing the gaps in his rotten teeth. Warm sun, bright for so late in October, lit his face.

He bit off a chunk of bread and hearing the whining of the dog that accompanied him, threw him half his piece.

The sun glanced off the soldier’s bayonet. From his musket hung a goose, dangling wildly from its broken neck on a piece of twine. Like all the French troops, this soldier was not shy about taking the spoils.

The soldier grinned, blinking into the tart autumnal air, his skin red and oily. He looked up at the nearby statue of Frederick the Great and shook his head. The Frenchman and his comrades had defeated the Prussian army—a quarter million strong—and battled their way into the Prussian capital. They had won the right to take whatever they could find. He looked down at his toes, emerging caked with dirt from the holes in his boots.

He sniffed the air, enjoying the wafting aroma of the enormous cooking pot on a flatbed wagon just ahead of him. The army was accompanied by vast cauldrons attached to wagons, kettles large enough to feed hundreds at a time. The cooks and stokers worked around the clock. The cooks concocted stews and soups to feed French stomachs so far from home, while the stokers kept the fires burning constantly despite inclement weather or raging battle.

As the soldier enjoyed the thought of a hot meal, Napoleon reined in his stallion and surveyed the city of Berlin from the shadow of the statue of Frederick the Great. Watching his troops march through the arched gateway, he noticed the jolly soldier with his tattered uniform and battered boots, a goose swinging from his musket.

“Now he’s a sight,” said a staff general, reining his horse next to the emperor. “What a disgrace to the Grand Armée!” As the general moved to reprimand the soldier, Napoleon held up his hand, staying him.

“Leave him be. He’s not that far, not that long from the battlefield of Jena. These Frenchmen. My countrymen. They can fight,
Mon Dieu!
”

Napoleon nodded toward the soldier.

“Let him hang a goose from his bayonet. He enters Berlin a French victor. He’ll look livelier for the next battle.”

Napoleon turned to his brother-in-law, Murat, the king of Naples.

“I want to pay my respects to Frederick the Great,” he said, tucking his right hand into his shirt, his fingertips on his heart.

“The Prussian?” said Murat, wrinkling his nose in disgust.

“Ask Caulaincourt to locate the crypt. I intend to pay my respects before I settle into quarters.”

“And what about the king and his beautiful queen?” asked Murat, smirking. “Will you pay your respects to her? Or only to her defeated husband?”

“Queen Louise of Prussia is a beauty. But both she and her husband Frederick William are fools.” Napoleon leaned over from his horse to take an apple offered by a staff sergeant. He bit into the fruit with a crisp snap.

“Good autumn fruit,” he said. “It has been a good season.” The emperor smiled, dabbing apple juice from his mouth with his gloved hand.

“Why, they thought they could defeat France and the Grand Armée without a single ally standing along them. Stupidity! Arrogance!” Napoleon said. “If they had waited until Alexander moved his Russian army to the battlefield, then we would have had a battle to test our strength.”

The king of Naples grunted in agreement.

“The Russians weren’t much use at Austerlitz, were they? Rumor has it Alexander relieved General Kutuzov of command just before the battle.”

Napoleon smiled. That great victory would always remain sweet. And yet, victory or defeat, there was always another battle to be fought. He sighed.

“Alexander suffers from inexperience and youthful arrogance,” said Napoleon. “As for these Prussians, they are brave and quite skilled, but they have some incompetent commanders. That’s why I pay my respects to the greatest warrior of them all: Frederick the Great.”

He looked up at the statue above him. “If he were alive we wouldn’t be here. Don’t doubt that for a minute, Murat.”

In the street, the soldier started whistling a tune, a bawdy song from a Parisian tavern. The dog trotted along at his side, his tongue slung long and panting from his mouth.

“Find Caulaincourt,” Napoleon said, referring to his former ambassador to St. Petersburg, now his master of the horse. “He’ll know where the crypt is. I hear Tsar Alexander visited the tomb a year or so ago.” The victorious emperor of France chuckled. “A lot of good it did him. He must have offended the great warrior.”

Chapter 29

Battlefield of Heilsberg, Prussia

May 1807

I can barely hold my pen, I am so exhausted:

Dear Papa,

Since our ignoble defeat at Austerlitz seventeen months ago (28,000 noble Russian soldiers slaughtered!) our Polish uhlans have been ordered to the battlefields of the East in Heilsberg to defend Prussia.

Prussia! Their vile King Frederick William antagonized Napoleon, challenging him to war on the battlefields of Jena and Auerstadt. What stupidity! Together we could have defeated this French ogre. But instead of waiting for us to join the Prussian army on the battlefield, Frederick William declared war and stood against Napoleon. Alone.

Now their country is sliced into tidbits at Napoleon’s whim.

I swear my allegiance to our supreme Tsar Alexander I. I shall die for him. I shall die for Russia. But for Prussia?

Heilsberg. I see many men as white as sheets, I see them duck when a shell flies over as if they could evade it. Evidently in these men, fear has more force than reason. I have already seen a great many killed and maimed. It is pitiful to watch the wounded moaning and crawling over the so-called field of honor. What can ease the horror for a common soldier? For an educated man it is a completely different matter; the lofty feeling of honor, heroism, devotion to the emperor, and sacred duty to his native land compel him to face death fearlessly, endure suffering courageously, and part with life calmly.

As I dipped my pen in the bottle of ink, I wondered,
What did the infantryman really feel?
So many serfs were forced to fight, “given” by the wealthy aristocrats as their contribution to the cause, Mother Russia, to our tsar. So cheap are their souls, offered so freely by their masters! These serfs were the ones who pressed forward, who fell face first into the mud, one after another to fight, to die winning just another patch of mud, foot by foot against the French. Their war was a bloody game of dominoes, one dead comrade falling against another.

The infantry had no horses to carry them into victory or to gallop away in retreat. Battles were won by the foot soldiers, not by the cavalry. We owe them a great debt.

But I could not write that to my father.

So I simply signed the letter:

Your loving son,

Aleksandr Durov

I sat and stared at that letter for a long time. How long, I could not say. Then I carefully tore it into tiny pieces and scattered them to the wind.

Alcides lost a shoe. The imbalance would make him lame if he didn’t bruise and tear his hoof first.

As I rode through the explosions, heavy smoke, and rain of grapeshot, I was wondering how to find a good farrier in the heat of battle when a grenade exploded under Alcides. He leapt with wild surprise. Shrapnel whistled around us, showering us in dirt so that I saw nothing. I responded the only way I could, by digging my seat deep into the saddle and clamping my legs around Alcides’s barrel.

“You’ve been hit by a grenade,” shouted Nestor, a new recruit, riding next to us.

“What?” I could not comprehend.

I leapt off Alcides, examining him from head to tail, running my shaking hands under his belly.

“Get back on him,” screamed another uhlan. “Race for the hill! We are under artillery attack!”

It was not until we were over the knoll that I thought of examining myself.

“Are you wounded, Durov?”

“No,” I said, not comprehending.

“It is impossible,” said Nestor to the others in my squadron. “We saw the grenade explode under the horse’s belly.”

“No, I examined him! He galloped soundly and swiftly. Not a false step.”

“Impossible!” repeated Nestor. “We all saw the grenade explode!”

“What strong angels guard over you,” said Oleg, who rode directly behind me in our regular formation. “Think now of your angels and those who pray for you, that you might recognize their power and give thanks.”

Still dumbfounded, I thought of my father and old grandmother. My mind flashed on the old Lithuanian babushka who cared for me when I was dying.

And of course Astakhov, who gave me Alcides.

The order was given to pull back. Our regiment suffered many casualties, and the groaning survivors were carried in an endless parade of litters to tents or simply laid in the trampled grass. The echoing screams of amputation made the horses white eyed with fear, rearing and pulling back on the picket lines.

I needed no looking glass to imagine my physical state. I regarded the faces around me. Young men, aristocrats, moving with the stiffness of ninety-year-old men. Knuckles swollen as big as pig trotters, faces haggard. I heard the chatter of teeth that matched my own.

But worst of all, their eyes! Haunted. Seared by images too horrible, blocking the natural light of their young souls. Their eyes were dull, deadened to the world around them. These soldiers moved merely in order to survive, automatically stuffing stale brown bread into their mouths, dampened by the pouring rain. Their hair was either plastered to their skulls or spiked in dozens of directions like madmen’s.

They were no longer alive, just phantoms wandering the earth.

I received permission to ride to Heilsberg a verst away from the battlefield to find a farrier. I had to find food as well. In battle we are required to carry our own rusks. Mine had disappeared with my saddlebags.

The rain had begun the night before, soaking the ground where we slept. Rain dripped down my helmet, splashing my chafed breasts, forming rivulets at my collar that worked a chill down my spine. The rain even made its way into my boots, soaking my already-freezing feet. I quaked like a birch leaf and could not control my shivering body.

At Heilsberg I found a blacksmith who was shoeing some Cossacks’ horses. He agreed to shoe Alcides. I walked a short distance to a roadside tavern. A Jewess ushered me to a large leather chair, where I flopped down in exhaustion. She agreed to find me bread and rusks. I could barely manage to dig my frozen hand into my purse for money.

I gave her the coins with my stiff fingers and fell instantly asleep. The warmth of a fire, the comfort of the old stuffed chair, lulled my aching body and mind into a numbing slumber.

I dreamt of a man in the dark touching me, in intimate places. His hands were huge and rough. I was riding Alcides in my nightgown. The man seized my shoulders, lifting me off my horse’s back.

He forced me astride, facing him in his own saddle, a bolster almost as large as a chair. His tongue ran over my neck, my breasts. He grasped at the ribbons of my nightgown.

I strained to see his face in the darkness. He pressed his shoulder against my mouth so I could not scream.

“Shh! Little horse girl,” he said. “I will not hurt you.”

I awakened to a soldier shaking my shoulder.

“Honorable sir! You must wake up!”

The room was black, with only the embers of a fire glowing orange. It was deserted except for the soldier and me.

“The cannons are getting closer,” he said. “Cannonballs are falling on the city!”

I raced back to the blacksmith and found Alcides still standing there. Wet from the rains, unfed and unshod. The blacksmith, the tavern owners, had all fled.

“Oh, Alcides!” I muttered, burying my face in his neck. I felt his body shivering.

I mounted my poor horse, moving him toward the city gates. But we were fighting against the tide. Throngs of wounded were pushing their way into the city, along with men, women, and children all surging through the gates to find shelter from Napoleon’s troops.

Alcides kicked against the pressing crowd. I knew he would rear if he could find space. We stood like a rock in a river, immobile in the flood of humanity fleeing the French.

A troop of Cossacks pressed through the crowd as only Cossacks could. I followed in their wake, Alcides’s head to the rump of the Cossack in front of me. My knee was crushed against the side of a wagon. I was pulled sideways in my saddle, clutching Alcides’s mane to keep from tumbling off. Hanging over my saddle, my shoulder struck against the struts of a carriage.

I was certain I had broken my shoulder. The pain rendered me weak and useless. I was astonished that I still straddled Alcides’s back, my left hand entwined tightly in his mane.

As we were spat out beyond the city gates, I had no choice but to urge my tired, unshod horse into a gallop toward my squadron’s last station. I knitted my fingers even deeper into his mane, my body unsteady but spurring him on. I had to find my platoon’s new location.

The night was as dark as a coal mine. I could not see beyond my horse’s ears. I loosened the reins, hoping his sense of smell would locate my platoon’s herd of horses. I surrendered myself completely to Alcides’s instinct.

We blundered up a steep embankment and then another. I smelled the rot of death but could not see anything. Alcides shied and jumped away from unseen obstacles. I clung tighter to his mane, mumbling prayers into his coarse hair.

Finally after an interminable time struggling upwards, Alcides plunged down an embankment. I was thrown forward but used what remaining strength I had to ease myself a little back in the saddle, taking the weight off his exhausted forelegs.

But the incline was steeper than any imaginable. To save both of us, I leapt off him, my hand clutching the reins. I tumbled forward taking him with me, barely avoiding his hooves from crushing my skull.

Hot pain shot through my shoulder. But I had realized by this point it was not broken.

With my shaking steps I led Alcides blindly down the cliff, clutching at shrubs to keep from slipping. I bent close to the ground to inspect each footstep forward. At this incline I could take a false step and plunge into an abyss.

Where have you taken me, Alcides?

We stepped at last into level ground and I remounted. The moon had finally risen, illuminating a ghastly vision.

Alcides had taken me to a field of death: the scene of the retreat from Heilsberg on the road to Friedland.

Corpses lay everywhere. An officer’s gold braided uniform was washed in red, his neck slashed. Blood curdled like red whey in the mud. Bodies littered the field in awkward positions, some impossibly contorted, others like boys curled asleep in the torn grass. A young Don Cossack had died with his mouth stretched in yowling surprise. Flies buzzed lazily in and out of his mouth.

This boy was a Don Cossack but I don’t know his regiment. Was he a comrade of the cheeky Cossack scout who had stolen a kiss from me? Will I find Denisov’s body here in the same battlefield?

Alcides dropped his nose to a dead man, snorting, then leapt over him, bolting up so abruptly I nearly lost my seat in the saddle.

Beyond the field toward the right I saw the yellow embers of campfires. I quickly calculated where Alcides had taken me. Those must be the embers of our platoon!

I urged Alcides forward toward the fires. Though he moved forward he fought me to bear left.

“Enough, Alcides!” I said.

I spurred him forward over the mayhem. Dawn was approaching but the moonlight still played on the ghastly scene. Alcides jumped the corpses, each time landing to the left, pulling me off center in the saddle. I yanked his reins to the right and we crabbed toward the soldiers’ cook fires.

I heard the clatter of horses’ hooves beyond me.

“Halt!” cried a voice in Russian. “Who goes there?”

My spine relaxed, my shoulders sagging forward.

“A Polish uhlan,” I answered.

“Where are you going?” shouted a general, reining his horse toward me.

“Oh, Your Excellency! I am returning to the Fourth Platoon.”

“But the Fourth Platoon stands behind us!” he answered, pointing in the direction Alcides had been determined to take. “You are riding toward the enemy, uhlan!”

The general and his men galloped off in the direction of Heilsberg.