“However, I’m not like those traitors, like the emperor of Austria and the king of Prussia and all those other ingrates who abandon their friends in the face of adversity. The family of Georgia has always served me faithfully, and the princesses’ mother is very dear to us all. Right now she is waiting in tears in the salon. This dreadful business has been going on for nearly three months. I owe her an answer.”
His Majesty could not contain his rage.
“I had hoped that in the space of three months, you might have found a way out of this matter without my intervention!” he exploded. “Now what is your opinion? Can we still save the girls?”
“Yes, Your Imperial Majesty. They are imprisoned in the imam’s seraglio. Although they lack everything, they seem to be well treated. But time is short.”
“I’ll give you five minutes, Milyutin. Be brief. What the hell has been going on in the Caucasus while we have been fighting a war on the Turkish front?”
“An old story, Your Imperial Majesty, a very old story. Your Majesty is no doubt aware that Shamil has been demanding the return of his son for the past fifteen years? In all the peace overtures that we have extended to him, the return of Jamal Eddin has always been a condition sine qua non. How did he learn his son was about to marry a Christian? How did this news reach him so quickly? I suppose the imam has always feared that his son would be converted and placed informers in his entourage. Shamil’s network of spies is as effective as ours in the Caucasus and far superior to those of all the European powers. He knows everything. According to our sources, he was devastated at the news of his son’s forthcoming marriage. No doubt judging that he could not allow his son to be lost in this world and damned in the next, he reacted with all the determination that we already well know is part of his character. He took advantage of the fact that so many of our troops have been transferred to the Turkish front and are spread thin elsewhere to dare to do what he had never attempted before: a hostage raid on the plain, far from his eagle’s nest in Chechnya. We never would have imagined him capable of such audacity.”
“You should have expected it. The Montagnards’ raids on Georgian villages have been terrorizing the population for ages.”
“No murid band had ever dared to venture that far, Your Imperial Majesty. The expedition had been carefully planned. It was led by his younger son, a warrior named Mohammed Ghazi, the future imam. This Mohammed Ghazi swooped down from the mountains with an army of three thousand horsemen to attack the manor of Princess Anna.”
“Sinandali?” the czar interrupted.
“The same, Your Imperial Majesty.”
The czar was referring to the property of the Chavchavadze princes, a mansion nestled among the vineyards at the base of the high, snowy mountains of the Caucasus, three hundred versts from Tiflis. A domain blessed by the gods, it had a charm and sensuality that was matched only by the intellectual climate provided by the hosts. Griboyedov, the famous ambassador who had married the sister of one of the owners, had lived at Sinandali. Lermontov enjoyed long stays there as a guest. Even the emperor had chosen to spend a few hours in this paradise, in the company of the most eminent members of the Georgian aristocracy, during a trip to the Caucasus twenty years ago.
“I remember the vast terrace and an exotic garden with flowers everywhere. A chapel, too, on the riverbank.”
“They climbed up that way, from the riverbank, Your Majesty, and they burned everything—the chapel and all the rest. There’s nothing left. And as for the family—”
“I know. The empress shed every tear in her body describing what they did to them. I know, I know. And what is the state of negotiations now?”
“They are at a standstill, Your Imperial Majesty.”
“Who is talking to the Chechens right now?”
“The hostages’ family, Your Majesty, Prince David Chavchavadze, who is Princess Anna’s husband and the master of Sinandali. He wasn’t captured.”
“Where the devil was he?”
“At his post, Your Imperial Majesty, commanding the fort where he was stationed, on the other side of the river. He was fighting for Russia, not protecting his property. His relative, Prince Grigol Orbeliani, is negotiating for the princess Varenka Orbeliani on behalf of his brother, the princess’s late husband.”
“I didn’t know little Varenka was already a widow.”
“Her husband, Prince Elico Orbeliani, was killed by the Turks in December.”
“He had also once been the hostage of Shamil, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Your Majesty is correct. Prince Orbeliani was taken prisoner by Shamil about eleven years ago. Apparently the idea of exchanging an important captive for his son has been on his mind for some time. But fate has been cruel to the poor Orbeliani family. Varenka lost her husband during the siege of Oguzlu, at nearly the same time that one of her sons took ill and died in Tiflis. Her other child, a boy of eight, is being held prisoner with her in Shamil’s seraglio, along with her sister’s surviving children.”
“What does Shamil demand in exchange for their freedom?”
“Hostages for hostages. He wants his son, of course, and his nephew Hamzat, whom he believes is still alive. Third, he wants the son of his old friend, Ali Bek. And a hundred forty-eight other prisoners. As well as a ransom of a million rubles.”
“A million rubles! Does that savage have any idea what a million rubles represents? That’s my entire budget for the war ministry!”
“That’s what Prince Chavchavadze and Prince Orbeliani told him, Your Majesty, that his demands were so exorbitant that they made it impossible to continue the negotiations. They explained that this was an affair between families, theirs and the imam Shamil’s, and that they were dealing person-to-person, not state-to-state.”
“Well said. And how did Shamil react?”
“By threatening to sell their sons on the slave market in Constantinople and to divide up their wives, sisters, and daughters among his naïbs before the end of the month.”
“Will he do it?”
“He’s done much worse, Your Majesty. This is the kind of promise he keeps. The princes wrote back immediately, explaining that his son is not a hostage or a prisoner but an officer in the Russian army, and that they could not force him to return to the Caucasus. They added that no one would ever dare to request that the emperor send him back to his father. However, if Jamal Eddin wished to return to his family and asked for the czar’s permission to do so, then perhaps it would be granted. But such a request could come only from him.”
The czar sat down at his desk to think, his head bent over his clasped hands. If he surrendered Jamal Eddin to Shamil, all of Europe would believe that the imam of Chechnya had brought the emperor of Russia to his knees, that he had sold out to the crescent. He could just picture the headlines in London and Paris: “The will of the humble Shamil prevailed over that of the powerful Nicholas.” In these terrible times, this new humiliation would be one more slap in the face.
On the other hand, it was possible that complying with Jamal Eddin’s wishes and permitting him to marry had not been a wise move.
Had God allowed Shamil to seize the princesses so that the czar might reconsider the situation? Did the Lord actually want him to return to his initial plan, the idea that had motivated his educating the boy in the first place? He was still a Muslim and still fully able to fulfill the mission for which the czar had always intended him. His return to the Caucasus was still possible.