Because he was defending his country, Lieutenant Shamil had exchanged the cherkeska of the Montagnards for the red, blue, and gold uniform of the Vladimirsky Lancers.
“Odessa bombed. Bomarsund under siege. How are such disasters possible, Major General Milyutin?” the czar roared, pacing up and down in the spacious room, which, built to look like a ship’s cabin, took up the entire attic of the cottage.
Dmitri, the eldest of the Milyutin boys and Jamal Eddin’s former guardian, stood up straight in the center of the room, miserably watching His Majesty come and go before him.
The czar wore a simple tunic; the only touch of color was its gold epaulets. The light that flooded in from the balcony played on the frescoes of the wall murals and the ceiling, a décor of trompe l’oeil draperies that evoked a war chief’s tent at the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
The two men had known each other for a long time. Major General Milyutin had accompanied the czar to Olmütz and to Potsdam during the most recent negotiations with the Austrians and the Prussians.
Nearly forty years old by this time, Dmitri had filled out considerably. His blond curls, though still a little too long, had touches of gray now. But he had maintained a youthful figure reminiscent of an adolescent who had grown too quickly, and his shoulders stooped only slightly. His capacity for work, his enthusiasm, frankness, energy, and integrity—qualities all too rare in this administration—had earned him the resentment of powerful enemies. He had not been spared the opposition of various aristocrats, particularly the adversaries of his uncle Kiselyev, but they had failed to affect what had been a splendid career. Today Dmitri was among the emperor’s closest military advisors.
As first secretary to the minister of war, he had been assigned to elaborate strategies of defense in the Baltic Sea, but Major General Milyutin’s field of specialization remained the wars in the Caucasus. His Majesty hadn’t gotten around to reading his report, the fruit of ten years of research on the Muslim peoples of the mountains, nor had he yet deigned to hear the major general’s conclusions on how to achieve a lasting peace in this mysterious region of the world. Nonetheless, Milyutin did not despair of one day capturing his interest. The czar had chosen him as his privileged advisor and sounding board on all questions relating to Chechnya. But for the moment, those questions had been pushed to the back of the sovereign’s mind.
“The English fleet here, beneath this balcony, the English fleet in Russian waters, daring to thumb their noses at me all the way here, at my home, at the cottage!”
In June, the shadow of war in Europe had indeed descended over the czar and his family at Peterhof-Alexandria. The enemy had sailed into the Gulf of Finland, just a few cables’ lengths from Petersburg. For several days, you could spot the British admiral’s sails from the windows of the czar’s office. The courtiers at Peterhof had found the nautical show amusing, but the czar was beside himself. Milyutin found him so changed that he didn’t dare bring up the new disaster he had come to discuss, the taking of hostages on his lands in Georgia.
“And now France!” the czar ranted on. “Europe sold out and the French are disembarking on the beaches of the Crimea! How is this possible?”
He struck one of the shelves with his palm and repeated, “How is this possible? I accepted without protest our defeat on the Alma River, since that was God’s will. But what pain, Milyutin, what utter humiliation it is to know that this defeat is due only to a lack of courage on the part of my troops. You, Milyutin, you who know how to fight. Think of Akulgo. Taking the promontory of Akulgo was infinitely more difficult than merely defending the Alma! I ask you, what has become of our glorious army? What happened to this army that vanquished Napoleon, crushed the Turks, took Warsaw, and saved the Hapsburg Empire?”
“The Russian army hasn’t changed since 1812, Your Imperial Majesty. The Russian army is still the bravest and the most faithful of all armies. But our rifles, Your Imperial Majesty, haven’t a quarter of the range of the French rifles.”
“What are you talking about?” the czar snapped. “Our soldiers are so well equipped that they could go around the world and back and still lack for nothing.”
Milyutin had been hearing this phrase in schools and ministries for twenty years and always found it exasperating. However, he thought it best not to mention this and returned to his central preoccupation.
“I’m only telling you the truth, Your Imperial Majesty. Even in the Caucasus, we are sometimes issued rifles without any triggers, without bullets and munitions. They send us cartridges that are too small. Or too big for the breeches. Or cartridges filled with millet dust instead of gunpowder. The imam Shamil’s muskets are even older and in worse shape than ours, but—”
“But that doesn’t prevent him from committing atrocities. Let’s discuss that then, Milyutin, since that is why I summoned you. Your minister’s reports about this affair are confusing, though I suppose that he, like all of us at this difficult time, has other pressing worries on his mind. But the empress can’t sleep for thinking of it.”
Indeed, Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna hadn’t slept for months. The conflict pitting the czar against her brother, the Prussian king, had upset her to the point of making her ill. Like her husband, she could not understand Europe’s attitude. Her surprise at the hatred of powers she had always considered friendly, her disgust and anguish, were wearing her down. There was too much injustice, too much ingratitude. The slight nod, a nervous tic that she had developed when she was upset, had become a continuous trembling. She was fifty-six, but she looked twenty years older. Her two youngest sons were leaving for the front the next day, Nicky for the Crimea and Mischa for Poland. And now, as if the danger threatening her children were not enough, her old friend Princess Anastasia of Georgia had thrown herself weeping at her feet with a dreadful tale of the imam’s latest abomination.
Anastasia’s daughters, once her own maids of honor, beautiful Anna and sweet Varenka, had been kidnapped by the hordes of the imam Shamil. Anna and Varenka were now hostages of the Chechens! The empress lacked both imagination and experience of the world, but she had no difficulty conceiving what this kind of captivity implied. The heartbroken mother had told her how the young women had been attacked at their country home. How they had been robbed, stripped of their clothing, and forced by blows of the lash to leave their manor house. Half-naked, they had been dragged to the mountains on foot, barefoot, with their children and all their servants riding pillion behind the murid horsemen. How they had galloped for a month, hanging onto their kidnappers, even though Anna was still breast-feeding her new baby. She described how all their little ones, from two months to six years old—all of Princess Anastasia’s grandchildren—had been separated from them, and how Lydie, Anna’s infant, had slipped from the arms of her exhausted mother during a chase and been stabbed and trampled by the Montagnards. The czarina was horrified by such terrifying images. She knew she must speak to the emperor and force him to do something. He alone could save Anna and Varenka.
But Nicks had other worries on his mind, things far more pressing than the kidnapping of twenty-three women and children. There were so many dead in the Crimea. Poor Nicks. He was so good and so generous; he did not deserve this.
“The empress is begging me to intervene and negotiate with the imam,” Nicholas continued, frowning. “The czar of Russia doesn’t talk to bandits! Dealing with Shamil would make all the Muslim fanatics think that they can get what they want simply by attacking defenseless victims. One cannot give in, one can never give in to blackmail; it’s a question of honor. But then, what does honor mean now, when Christians are betraying each other?