Anne screamed. It was not Basil lying there, but an unspeakable horror. The shot, fired upwards, had severed his jugular vein and shattered his jaw, tearing away the side of his head. She snatched back her hands in helpless horror at the sight, even while the fountain of blood pulsed again, weakly, and then no more.
‘Oh God, oh God!’ she cried out, reaching her trembling fingers for the place where she should have pressed them, to keep the blood in. ‘No, please! No! Basil!’
It was too late. She had had one moment, she had wasted it. Mikhailo behind her moaned, ‘No, Barina, he’s gone.’
He couldn’t have lived anyway, with that horrific wound, some distant part of her brain told her; and yet she felt insanely that she had failed, she had let him go without trying, and she repented, repented, she wanted another chance.
‘I didn’t mean it!’ she sobbed aloud. ‘Basil! I didn’t mean it!’
‘Barina, come away, come away,’ someone said. One of the men behind her was sobbing in fright like a child.
She sat back on her heels, staring in horrified despair at her bloody hands, at Basil’s shattered head. Nausea rose thickly upwards in her throat, and she jerked her head away violently to look at something else, anything else! She mustn’t see that – the baby – she mustn’t look!
Something was shining on the cobbles in the surging torchlight. It must have been the thing in his hand which he had raised as a weapon, something which had fallen from the valise and he had picked up.
She recognised it belatedly, through her rising nausea. It was the gold tiger with the emerald eyes she had given him for his birthday, a lifetime ago, before the world went mad. One of the emerald eyes had been jerked loose when it hit the ground. She saw it glittering at a little distance, a tiny spark in the torchlight. The tiger snarled its defiance, but stared up at her sightlessly from an empty socket, even as Basil stared sightlessly at the night sky from the wreck of his face.
Anne moaned, put her fingers up to her mouth. Her stomach heaved helplessly, and she turned away and was sick on the cobbles.
Chapter Thirty-One
The original orders to withdraw from Borodino had suggested making a stand somewhere on the other side of Mozhaisk. Kirov had his doubts as to how much Kutuzov had really meant by that; although it was impossible to believe that he had intended at that point to leave Moscow undefended. But whatever his intentions, he sent Bennigsen on ahead to scout the road for possible battle sites; and Bennigsen came back at last to report that there was nowhere suitable along the way, but that the army could make its stand along the crest of the Hill of Salutation.
‘He’s crazy,’ Adonis grumbled as he stood at Kirov’s shoulder, looking over the hilltop where returning Muscovites traditionally stopped to kiss the ground in honour of the holy city. ‘He’s crazier than a cat in a bathtub. Who could fight a battle here?’
Kirov looked around him despairingly. The whole area was criss-crossed with deep, steep-sided gullies and ravines, virtually impossible to cross. If the army were forced to retreat – and after Borodino, who could guarantee it would not? – they would be trapped and cut down helplessly.
Colonel Toll strolled up to him. ‘What do you think of it, Nikolai Sergeyevitch? I spent hours with Bennigsen yesterday, trying to get him to draw up a map of his dispositions. Even he couldn’t decide where to put the defences.’
‘It’s impossible to defend a place like this,’ Kirov replied. ‘But what’s the alternative?’
‘Not my problem,’ Toll said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. ‘That’s up to His Excellency.’
Prince Kutuzov was seated on his camp stool by the roadside, with his aides around him listening to the arguments of the various generals about the positions they and their divisions had been assigned. Tolly, who had been confined to bed with a feverish cold since the battle, but had dragged himself up in view of the emergency, was attempting to talk them down and explain to Kutuzov the impossibility of the site.
At last Kutuzov beckoned Kirov and Toll over. ‘What do you think of this place? Do you agree with General Tolly? Answer me frankly, now.’
They exchanged a glance, and Toll said, ‘To be quite honest, Excellency, I myself would never have thought of placing the army in such a perilous position.’
Kutuzov raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, wouldn’t you? And what about you, Kirov? What do you think?’
‘It seems very dangerous to me, sir. I can’t see how it could successfully be defended.’
‘Yermolov? What’s your opinion?’
Burly Yermolov, who hadn’t always seen eye to eye with Tolly, Was vehement now in his support. ‘Impossible, Excellency! Absolutely impossible! If you tried to give battle here, you would be defeated without question, and the whole army destroyed.’
‘Hmm,’ Kutuzov said, his fleshy face non-committal. ‘You’ve surveyed the ground thoroughly?’
‘Yes, Excellency.’
‘I think perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to have another look at it. Take Crossard, here, and go over the ground again. He’s had plenty of experience in several countries. Report back to me when you’ve made another survey.’
As it was a direct order, Yermolov had no choice but to obey, but he rolled his eyes expressively towards Toll and Kirov as he stumped past them. As he and Crossard walked away, there came, like a theatrical warning, the distant sound of firing from over the next hilclass="underline" Miloradovich’s men were presumably involved in another skirmish with the French advance guard.
Emboldened by the sound, Toll stepped up to the Prince, and murmured into his ear. ‘Excellency, you must decide. Indecision is the worst thing of all.’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Kutuzov said. He sank his chin on his chest in thought. ‘We’ll have a meeting this afternoon, when Yermolov’s had a chance to do his survey. Four o’clock, in my quarters. All staff and corps commanders. You can all have your say, and then I’ll make my decision. Now where’s my Cossack? This grass is damp, you know – distinctly damp.’
Kutuzov’s temporary quarters were a wooden peasant hut in the village of Fili. The senior officers gathered in a bare room, furnished only with a long table and wooden benches, and, of course, the ikon with its red-shaded lamp in the Beautiful Comer. Colonel Toll came in with an armful of maps, which he spread across the table; Konovnitzyn was busy lighting his pipe, with which he would presently make the air foul; Tolly, his cheeks bright with fever, pointedly moved to the other end of the table, and drew out his handkerchief and trumpeted briskly into it.
At last everyone was assembled except Bennigsen, who had not come back from a further inspection of his chosen battleground. He arrived very late, to find everyone waiting for him in silence, watching the door; and finding the looks directed towards him as he entered largely unsympathetic, he took the offensive, striding to his place saying loudly, ‘The question before us, gentlemen, is simply this: is it better to give battle beneath the walls of Moscow, or to abandon the city to the enemy?’
‘Just a minute, Bennigsen,’ Kutuzov’s voice, rich with the patina of a lifetime of wine and cigars, interrupted him. ‘What’s at stake here is not just the city of Moscow, but the very existence of the State. We have but one army, you know! As long as it exists, we still have hope of a successful outcome to this war. Once it is destroyed, not only Moscow but all of Russia will be lost.’ Kirov met Tolly’s eyes. It was what Tolly had been saying all along, ever since Vilna; it was the policy for which he had been villified, and deprived of high command.