“I wanted to see you, first of all, to thank you for all your service. And to tell you that tomorrow will be a great day. Tomorrow, hatred will cease to exist between our two peoples. Tomorrow, Montagnards and Russians shall meet in peace.
“According to our laws, a father must never go out to meet his son; it is the son who must come to the father. But tomorrow I will break this rule in order to prevent any incident that might occur in the course of the exchange. Tomorrow I shall inform all my naïbs that none must go beyond the limit I shall indicate to you. And you must swear to me, on your honor, that you will do the same. And that, on your side, this rule will not be broken.”
“You may be assured, Imam, that everything will happen according to your wishes and that we shall respect our word.”
A short silence ensued.
“And my son, tell me about my son. Is he well?”
“He is very well, thank God.”
“I have been told he no longer understands our language.”
“That is correct. But it is perfectly natural. He spent such a long time in Russia. You cannot blame him for having forgotten his Avar.”
“I will let him live as he likes in our mountains.”
“After a few months with you, he will become accustomed to your ways again. And I’m sure he will find it more interesting to command tens of thousands of horsemen here than a few hundred soldiers in Russia.”
Shamil, eyes half-closed, looked into the fire, lost in thought.
“Make sure this affair takes place without any treachery tomorrow.”
“Prince Chavchavadze shares your wishes. He has nothing to gain by trying to deceive you. He is just as anxious to recuperate his family as you are to find Jamal Eddin safe and sound, and just as happy at the prospect.”
“I admit, I’m terribly impatient. So impatient that, as you can see, I haven’t been able to sleep tonight for thinking of him.”
“Speaking of which, I’d like to transmit a message from Prince Chavchavadze. He knows that it is customary here to express high spirits with shouts and gunshots into the air. The prince begs you to order that nothing of the kind should happen tomorrow, in an effort to avoid any confusion on the part of our soldiers and any possibility of disorder among all of them.”
“I will respect this wish. Now listen to my instructions.”
On Wednesday, March 9, on the eve of the date chosen by Shamil, with the ransom in the sacks, the wagons loaded, and all the details arranged, the convoy was ready to leave the fort. Suddenly a sentinel announced the arrival of a horseman galloping toward Khassav-Yurt.
The men rushed to the camp gates, Jamal Eddin and David among them.
“Could they possibly want to change things again?” David said, his voice toneless.
“Why not?”
Jamal Eddin managed a wry smile. “Last night, they gave us their word, swearing on the Sharia, but this morning, the code of the adats takes precedence. They obey the law of God or the law of man depending on what suits their interests. That way they can break their promises and ignore their honor with a clear conscience,” he said sarcastically.
The cloud of dust cleared. From the mirador, the sentinel shouted that the horseman was not a Chechen but a courier from Saint Petersburg.
Jamal Eddin’s heart skipped a beat. A courier from the emperor?
The czar had spared him. The czar was saving him. The czar had found another solution. Something else to barter. Nothing was impossible for the emperor of Russia!
The messenger handed the missive not to Prince Chavchavadze but to his superior, the commander of the fort—a sign that this was an order from Petersburg.
Jamal Eddin was filled with irrational and uncontrollable hope. He watched the commander break the imperial seal, unfold the letter, and read. The czar was sending him back to Lisa, he was giving him back his happiness.
The commander refolded the letter and turned to the troops.
“Gentlemen, I have news.”
He had to compose himself before going on.
“His Imperial Majesty the Czar Nicholas Is no longer with us. The Lord God has recalled him in peace. All the regiments shall gather on the main square and immediately take the oath of loyalty to his son and successor, the emperor Alexander.”
Pale, his eyes red and brimming with tears, Jamal Eddin listened to the account of the death of the man he had loved and could not help but grieve. Apparently the czar had gone out without a coat, when it was twenty degrees celsius below zero. Hatless, he had reviewed the troops, and he had caught a cold that had rapidly turned into pulmonary congestion. At the end of a night of agony, he had motioned for his son to come close. The distraught Czarevitch Alexander had stood at the foot of the camp bed in the little study where His Majesty lay.
“Hold on,” he murmured, breathing laboriously. “Hold on to everything.”
With all the strength he had left, Nicholas had clenched his fist, as though holding the empire in his hand, and repeated, “Hold on to everything!”
Those were his last words.
His last thoughts, his very last words were for the grandeur of Russia.
He died like a saint, praying God’s forgiveness for all his sins.
After the official account, Jamal Eddin heard rumors. Far from the charmed circle of the court, far from the dazzled Princess Potemkina and the upper aristocracy, Jamal Eddin knew how unpopular the czar had become. It was especially evident here among the soldiers of the Caucasus: Polish resisters, torn from their lands and deported to the mountains; free-thinking, enlightened, and liberal Russian officers; men who had been broken, deprived of their rights, and exiled by Nicholas, all sent here to be massacred by the Chechens. Nicholas the Knout, Nicholas the Flogger, merciless to those who did not worship him, cruel to those who criticized or resisted him. The Iron Czar.
His was a thirty-year-long reign of terror. He isolated Russia from the rest of Europe and shut himself off from the reality of his own people.
In his overwhelming desire to control, direct, and manipulate everything, he had ultimately corrupted and lost it all.
It was even whispered that his death was self-inflicted, that he could not face the humiliating defeat of his armies in the Crimea. There were even wild rumors of his doctor providing him with poison.
Jamal Eddin was close enough to the emperor to know he could not have committed suicide. But he sensed that, haunted by the judgment of history, which he knew would be merciless, the czar had done all he could to shorten his life.
The bells of the little church at Khassav-Yurt tolled mournfully. The brass bands played gloomy dirges. The flags floated at half-mast. And the hundred horsemen accompanying two wagons loaded with sacks of silver and two full of prisoners seemed very much like a funeral procession as they left the gates of Khassav-Yurt.
Jamal Eddin marched at the head of the convoy with Chavchavadze and the other officers. No one had thought to urge him to participate in the ceremony of allegiance that had been held a few minutes earlier on the square. He had come spontaneously, of his own volition.
This ceremony was his last act as a Russian officer, the final gesture of love and loyalty of Lieutenant Shamil of the seventh division of the Vladimirsky Lancers to his emperor.
Now he would try to become again what he should never have ceased to be, a djighit, the best horseman of all the mountain men, a proper son to the Lion of Dagestan who had been decimating the ranks of the infidels for the past thirty years.
Now he would fight to make the sacrifice of his life worthwhile.
He would try to convince the two worlds to make peace.