Not a strong enough force to withstand artillery fire, Anne thought in a dazed way, seeing the scene through two pairs of eyes, in two opposing lights.
‘The fair one – he longed for honour. I saw it in his eyes! The shame was on him, to see his fellow countrymen show their cowardice. So he cried out to his own men, “Come, follow me! We will conquer, or we will die!” And I thought, truly, here is a leader worth the following. So I called my own men, and we rode with him.’
He straightened in the saddle, his eyes flashing.
‘We galloped straight at the enemy, straight into their fire, and they cut us down like a sickle through ripe corn! But we killed as we went. We slashed to left and right, and they fell too, and their blood mingled with ours in the dust.’
Anne felt sickened, that he saw this as something to be proud of. How different, how irreconcilable were their minds!
‘How – how did you escape?’ she asked through a dry mouth.
‘Our charge carried us right through their lines and out at the other side. These five of my men were all that were left to me. Then I saw that the fair one had been wounded, but he stayed in the saddle, and his horse carried him clear before he fell. I thought, there is no more honour here for me. I will not fight for cowards. So I bring him here to you, and take what is left of my men home.’
His narrative was done. ‘I must go to him,’ Anne said. ‘Will you not stay?’ He shook his head.
‘Then – I can only say, thank you,’ Anne said again, holding up her hand to him. He reached down and took it.
‘I told you,’ he said, ‘that our third meeting would portend great good or great evil. I hope you may save the fair one; if you do not, glory in his honourable death! We shall not meet again, I think.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘God bless you, Akim Shan, and bring you safe home.’
He whirled around, and in a clatter of hooves they were gone. Anne pushed the gates shut, and thought of the caged tiger in Akim’s mountain fastness. Had Akim Shan been killed in battle as he had hoped, the tiger would also have died. Was she glad for the tiger, that its life had been spared, or sorry, that it’s unending imprisonment would now continue? Shaking the thoughts away, she hurried indoors.
Pauline looked up in frightened relief when she came in. ‘Oh Madame, I don’t know what to do for him,’ she cried. ‘There’s blood everywhere!’
The three men were standing in a helpless group, staring round-eyed. They had put the litter down on the floor in the drawing-room, and already the slowly dripping blood had made a puddle on the polished boards.
‘We must stop the bleeding first,’ she said, ‘and then we must get him into bed. Yurka, go to the kitchen and bring me hot water and towels. Pauline, bring bandages – anything!’ she forestalled the inevitable question. ‘Petticoats, tablecloths, anything you can tear. Go now, don’t argue. And ardent spirits – see what Stenka has. Brandy is best – but anything will do.’
Pauline hurried out after Yurka, and Anne turned to the coachman and groom. ‘Now you two, I want you to find a bed, a narrow bed so that I can get round it, and bring it in here, and then fetch sheets for it. I want it in here in less than five minutes, do you understand? Go! Hurry!’
Left alone, she bent over the wounded man, appalled at the responsibility. She hardly knew where to start. His clothes seemed all to be soaked with blood, dank and heavy with it, and his face was pale under the dust. How much blood can a man lose and still survive? she wondered. She dragged off the burka and threw it aside.
The wounds to his thighs, she thought, looked superficiaclass="underline" the blood on his breeches had dried already. She began unbuttoning his jacket. His waistcoat was completely sodden with blood: the wound must be somewhere to his torso. The feeling of the blood-soaked cloth was vile, the butchery smell of it sickening. Sergei did not move at all. Was he dead? But dead men did not bleed – she had read that somewhere. Find the bleeding first, and stop it, she told herself.
Under the waistcoat, the shirt. Wet and warm and palpitating. Her throat closed up, she had to force herself to go on. The shirt seemed to be in pieces, and she peeled it away, and reeled back in horror from the wound that gaped like an evil grinning mouth from his flesh. He must have been slashed with a sabre from the side as he rode through the enemy lines. She could see the gleam of bone, the red pulse of soft tissues. Oh dear God, it was worse than anything she had imagined! She would never stop the bleeding!
‘Pauline! Pauline! Bandages!’ she yelled, and the sound of her own voice frightened her, unrecognisable with panic. She stood up and dragged up her skirt, and began fumbling desperately with her petticoat, trying to pull it off. Undo the laces, she told herself, while panic fluttered whimpering round her body, and that pulsing wound mocked her feeble efforts. Carefully, or it will knot! She found an end with numb fingers and pulled and oh, thank God! it came loose. Her petticoat descended to her feet and she stepped out of it. She flung herself down again beside him; but she couldn’t lift him single-handed, to slide the petticoat under him. She must have help! Where in God’s name was Pauline?
A footstep. Her head jerked round – it was Zina with a can of hot water, and towels over her arm. Anne’s desperate eyes met hers, deep and dark in a mesh of wrinkles. What use would this old woman be? Where was Pauline?
‘Poor young man,’ Zina said unemphatically, ‘Let me help you, Barina. This is not work for a lady.’
The old fool, Anne thought furiously. ‘Go and fetch my maid! Hurry!’
But Zina lowered herself painfully to her knees on the other side of the litter, and her brown, shiny, hands, strong from a lifetime of labour, were slipping under Sergei’s body.
‘Now, Barina, lift with one hand, and push the petticoat through to me with the other,’ she said, just as if they were doing nothing more extraordinary than making beds. Anne controlled her panicking rage, and did as she was told. Everything moved as though ordered by God; she felt the petticoat taken from her, and now Zina was drawing it round, covering that terrible, unnerving wound from sight.
‘If you fold a towel, Barina, and put it over the wound before I draw the bandage tight, it will help,’ Zina’s quiet voice went on. Anne felt herself sinking back under control. Pressure to slow the bleeding, she thought; we need a doctor to stitch it up, but for the moment, pressure to slow the bleeding.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘All right.’
‘Stenka’s helping the men bring the bed,’ Zina went on. ‘Poor young man – was he in the battle, Barina? What a dreadful thing! Do you know who he is?’
The question took Anne by surprise. ‘He’s the son of – the son of–’
Zina nodded wisely. ‘Then his father will have to be told.’
Anne hadn’t thought of that. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘When the sun goes down, they’ll stop the fighting,’ Zina said. ‘One of the men can go down and tell him then.’
The bed was brought, and Pauline reappeared, pale and wet-eyed, with a heap of linen which she began to rip into bandages. While the men set up the bed and put the sheets on, Zina and Anne hoisted Sergei into a sitting position against their shoulders – Zina showed her how – so as to pull off his sodden coat, waistcoat and shirt. That was when they found he had been wounded in the back, too – a bullet wound. It was bleeding very little, but at the sight of it the last of Anne’s hope quietly died. There was no corresponding wound of exit. The bullet must still be inside him, which meant that he would certainly die, of fever and mortification, if he didn’t bleed to death first. She did not fool herself that there was any chance of getting a surgeon up here to operate on him in time, even if such an operation had any chance of success.