His sense that he was on a desert island in Sevastopol was not so fanciful. The great fortified port lay in a circle of yellowish hills near the southern tip of the Crimean peninsula – not far from the ancient Tatar capital of Bakhchisarai – and was therefore some hundred and fifty miles out from the Russian mainland into the waters of the warm Black Sea. To the south, before the port’s massive, jutting fortifications, the forces of three major European powers – French, British and Turkish – were encamped. The bombardment from their artillery – superior in every way to anything the Russians possessed – had been pounding at poor Sevastopol for eleven months. Its once graceful squares and broad boulevards were mostly rubble. Only the endless obstinacy and heroism of the simple Russian soldiers had prevented the place from being taken a dozen times.
Those approaching the city from the north crossed the harbour on a pontoon bridge. To the west, across the harbour mouth, the outdated Russian fleet had been sunk to prevent the allied ships getting in. The best use for our ships really, Misha considered, since they’re quite incapable of actually fighting the modern fleets of the French or the English. Beyond the line of sunken hulks, out in the open waters of the Black Sea, the allied ships lay comfortably across the horizon, blockading Sevastopol very effectively.
What a mad business it was, this Crimean War. On the one hand, Misha supposed, it was inevitable. For generations the empire of the Ottoman Turks had been getting weaker, and whenever she could, Russia had taken advantage and expanded her influence in the Black Sea area. Catherine the Great had dreamed of taking ancient Constantinople itself. And if ever Russia could control the Balkan provinces, then she could sail a Russian fleet freely through the narrow strait from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. No wonder then if the other powers of Europe watched with growing suspicion every time Russia looked at the Turks.
Yet the actual cause of the war was not a power play at all. In his chosen role as defender of Orthodoxy, the Tsar had found himself in dispute with the Sultan when the latter had removed some of the privileges of the Orthodox Church within his empire. Troops were sent by Tsar Nicholas into the Turkish province of Moldavia, by the Danube, as a warning. Turkey declared war; and at once the powers of Europe, refusing to believe that the Tsar was not playing a bigger game, entered the war against Russia.
There were in fact three theatres of war. One by the Danube, where the Austrians contained the Russians; one in the Caucasus Mountains, where the Russians took a major stronghold from the Turks; and lastly, the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea, which the allies attacked because it was the home base of the Russian fleet.
It was a messy business. True, there were moments of heroism, such as the insane British Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava. But mainly it had been a stalemate, with both sides entrenched upon the peninsula, and typhus carrying off far more, despite the ministrations of Florence Nightingale and others like her on all sides, than did the actual fighting.
Above all, win or lose, the war was a humiliation for Russia. The weapons and techniques of the Russian army were shown to be hopelessly out of date. Her wooden fleet could beat the Turks, but confronted with the French or British, it was a joke. The prestige of the Russian Tsar abroad plummeted. Belief in the Tsar’s autocracy at home, too, was severely shaken.
‘Our country simply doesn’t work,’ people complained. ‘Do you know,’ a senior officer remarked irritably to Misha, ‘the allies out there can get relief supplies from their own countries far faster than we can get them from Moscow. These are modern countries fighting an empire that is still in the Middle Ages!’
The war had started in 1854. By the end of that year, everyone knew, even down to the simplest enlisted peasant, this simple but devastating fact: ‘The Tsar’s empire, our Holy Russia, doesn’t work.’
If I get out of this, Misha had decided, I’m going to resign my commission and go to live in Russka. His father and Ilya were both dead. The estate needed looking after. And anyway, he concluded, I’ve had enough.
It was only after he had been in Sevastopol a week that he encountered Pinegin.
He had almost forgotten about the man, yet suddenly there he was, hardly changed: still a captain, his iron-grey hair hardly any thinner, his weatherbeaten face as calm as ever, and a pipe as usual stuck in his mouth.
‘Ah, Mikhail Alexeevich,’ he said, as if their meeting were the most expected thing in the world. ‘We have a matter to settle, I believe.’
Was it really possible, Misha sometimes wondered, that after all these years Pinegin could really be serious? Indeed, at first he had been inclined to treat the matter as a sort of macabre joke.
But as the months passed he came to realize that for Pinegin, with his rigid code, there was no other course. Misha had called him a coward; therefore they had to fight. The fact that ten years had passed before they happened to meet again was a mere detail, of no importance.
It was out of the question, against all rules of military conduct, to settle such matters during an active engagement. ‘But when this is over, if we both live, then we can settle our difference,’ Pinegin remarked pleasantly. And there was nothing to be done about it. Which means that, excluding a miracle, he’s certainly going to kill me, Misha thought.
They met, quite often, as it happened, during that terrible siege. There, with men dying in their thousands in the beleaguered and disease-ridden port, these two – separated by their strange understanding, Misha thought, like two visiting spirits from another world – continued to meet quietly, politely. The encounters were almost friendly. Once, after a heavy bombardment, with hundreds of casualties, they found themselves helping each other to remove bodies from a burning building. On other occasions, Misha saw Pinegin calmly moving amongst the sick, apparently oblivious to the risk of infection himself. He would quietly write letters for the men, or sit there, smoking his pipe, and keeping them company by the hour. He was a perfect officer, Misha considered, a man without fear.
And yet this was the man who had killed Sergei and would surely kill him too.
So the months had passed. In March that year, Tsar Nicholas had died, and his son Alexander II had come to the throne. There were rumours that the war would end: but although there were negotiations, they failed, and the dismal siege went on. In August, a Russian relieving force had been checked by the allies. Three weeks later, the French had taken one of the main redoubts and refused to yield it.
It was on the morning of September 11 that the word finally came. It spread through the port like a whimper; it turned into a mutter, then a huge, excited, restless moan: ‘Retreat.’ They were going to retreat. Suddenly pack horses were being prepared; wounded men loaded into wagons. Confusion was everywhere, in the streets, along the boulevards, as the vast, untidy business got under way by which a weary army makes a last, huge effort to pull itself together sufficiently to remove itself, with some semblance of order, from the scene of conflict.
It was mid-morning when the special units were sent into action. There were several dozen of these and their task was simple but important. They were to blow up all the remaining defences of Sevastopol. ‘If the enemy wants this place, we shall leave him only ruins,’ Misha’s commanding officer remarked. ‘I’ve been asked to supply some officers and men right away. You’re to report to the ninth company at once.’
And so it was that Misha found himself under the command of Captain Pinegin.