There were stone cottages for the officers and isbas for the Cossack families, wooden barracks for the soldiers, and barns with lofts, cowsheds, and stables. A few streets crisscrossed the square, and the commander’s quarters were situated in the center. Tied to the top of a roughly squared fir trunk, the purple and gold imperial flag snapped in the wind. All this was pompously baptized Fort Khassav-Yurt.
It was not even a village.
Jamal Eddin spent over three weeks behind the walls of this frontier outpost a few versts from the Chechen forests. He shared meals, quarters, and even a room with Prince David Chavchavadze, Anna’s husband, master of the now-ruined Sinandali and leader of the negotiations with Shamil.
The soldiers who saw them drink, smoke, play cards, and joke in Russian and French had no idea that Prince David and the hostage—as they referred to Jamal Eddin, who was once again “the rebel’s son”—had known each other for a long time. The two men exchanged books that came by the caseload from Saint Petersburg and lent each other musical instruments, painting supplies, and other items, all gifts of the czar. From all appearances, it seemed that they got on famously.
The reality was rather less rosy. Together, in a state of strained anxiety, they awaited the imam’s instructions.
Of medium height, slender, and with light-colored eyes, Prince David Chavchavadze was thirty-eight, fourteen years older than Lieutenant Shamil. He had begun to lose his hair and wore it combed forward, like the emperor Napoleon. His thick moustache was short and clipped in a straight line.
A man of honor, Chavchavadze came from one of the oldest families of the Georgian aristocracy and had made the military his career. Though his father had been exiled to Russia for resisting the annexation of his country and plotting against the occupying forces, the Chavchavadze clan had finally accepted the situation. Now the prince served the czar faithfully.
His superior, General Muravyev, had handed the lieutenant over to him the moment the young man had arrived from Poland with his friends. Leaving Sacha Milyutin and Buxhöwden to follow them, Chavchavadze had been careful to keep his prize in his own carriage. The prince could not risk the escape of his bargaining chip.
For the past nine months, he had been living a waking nightmare whose only constant feature was the uncertainty about the fate of his family. His wife, four of his children, his sister-in-law, his niece, the nannies who had cared for the Chavchavadze children for generations—in short, his entire household—were in the hands of Shamil. And so he had traveled all the way to the city of Vladikavkaz, the last town before the forts on the line, to fetch the precious “rebel’s son” and bring him back to Khassav-Yurt.
During this trip across the Caucasus, a strange friendship had developed between Prince David and Lieutenant Shamil. Sitting at the back of the sleigh that brought the former toward hope and pulled the latter into the past, they had shared their childhood memories of the Winter Palace. Together they remembered the magic of the Chinese lanterns in the wood at Peterhof, and they discovered that they shared similar tastes in poetry and music. Two men of the world, they chatted as though they were resting among potted plants in the corner of a salon.
Later Chavchavadze would describe his surprise at discovering that his traveling companion was a well-read officer of lively character and uncommon intelligence and energy. In addition, he found in Jamal Eddin another virtue: kindness. Though they had discussed all kinds of subjects during those long, intimate hours in the sleigh, they had carefully avoided the one that most concerned them both: the exchange. Where, when, and how would the lieutenant be exchanged for the princesses? Both pretended not to be thinking of how inextricably their respective fates were entangled or that David’s happiness depended entirely upon Jamal Eddin’s misery.
The prince was also struck by Jamal Eddin’s modesty, dignity, and self-control. He emphasized later that the younger man refused to play the hero or the victim. Only once during their long journey together did he express his distress, and even then, he did so with self-mocking black humor.
When they arrived before the sentinels of Khassav-Yurt and presented arms, Jamal Eddin wondered aloud how he could go back to killing Russian soldiers. He immediately erased the sadness of this thought with irony, explaining that—what a stroke of luck!—the honor his filial duty imposed upon him would surely inspire him to overcome his scruples. Thanks to “honor,” he would soon be able to justify slitting the throats of those who had been his friends.
On the evening of his arrival at the fort, Jamal Eddin had written to his father. He asked him to forgive his late arrival, explaining that the blizzards and avalanches of the last month had hindered his return, but that now he was here and awaited his orders.
He could not know that this letter, among the scores of others he had sent over the last sixteen years, was the only one that would ever reach its destination.
Shamil had known for a long time that his son was on his way home. He had known it ever since Jamal Eddin had left Warsaw the previous November.
At Christmas, Chavchavadze’s negotiators had even been received in the aul of Dargo-Veden, the eagle’s nest where the imam held the princesses captive, with these supposedly prophetic words:
“I had a dream. I saw the princes’ messengers bringing me good news of my child. My eyes followed his path. But is he really coming back to me?”
The note signed Jamal Eddin confirmed the reports of all his spies that his son was less than two days away on foot. The entire aul—even his wives and the princesses sequestered in the seraglio—heard the imam’s cries of joy.
Nonetheless, Shamil had plenty of reasons to be wary. How could he forget the duplicity of the Russians? What if the Great White Czar had kept the real Jamal Eddin and sent an imposter?
Among his naïbs, he chose four men who had known Jamal Eddin well as a child and sent them to identify the hostage.
Waving a white flag of truce, the four horsemen descended in broad daylight and presented themselves before the stockade.
It was early in the afternoon on February 20, 1855.
Obeying the commander’s orders, the sentinels made no move to disarm them this time.
Prince Chavchavadze and the “rebel’s son” had been waiting for this visit for days.
The messenger dispatched to give them the news had found them having lunch in the prince’s modest quarters in the company of Cornet Milyutin and Junker Buxhöwden, their usual dining companions.
Conforming to the code of honor that dictated that no Russian officer should let the whistle of a bullet interrupt his conversation, the four men pretended to ignore the salvos of gunfire that the Chechens seemed to enjoy firing every now and then, day and night. It was an old Caucasian tradition: the Montagnards would creep up to the edge of the camp like cats, shoot at the sentinels, and melt back into the mountain.
But this time the commotion was a signal for action.
The soldiers got rid of the remains of their meal, the empty bottles, the champagne flutes, and glasses of vodka, and emptied the ashtrays where their cigars still smoldered.
Outside, they were playing for time. The four murids were requested to dismount and leave their horses at the camp gates. Carefully guarded, they were led to the center of the fort on foot. There they were asked to wait, guarded by about fifty soldiers, while the officers and the interpreter rushed into the house.