Their thirteenth day brought them within sight of the…city of Daugavpils. With terrible longing they gazed at the spires and towers. There lay food in plenty, warmth, rest and comfort. But such joys were not for them. To have entered the city would almost certainly have meant death for Roger. Turning away, they made a great detour round it.
With the detours to avoid towns that they had had to make and, from time to time, losing their way in buzzards, they were now averaging only about ten miles in each twenty-four hours, and they still had about a hundred and thirty miles to go before they could hope to reach the coast. Neither said so to the other but, at times, both of them began to wonder if their strength would last out long enough for them to complete the journey. Apart from the horseflesh, which they had not yet touched, their supplies were getting low and, although that lightened their burdens, having to ration themselves more strictly was undermining their stamina.
On their sixteenth day they at last had a piece of luck. They were by then passing through the country that Macdonald's corps had fought over and, here and there, the skeletons of burnt-out farmhouses rose starkly from the white sheet of the almost level plain. Since setting out they had come upon and searched a score or more of such ruins, but found nothing of use to them. On this occasion, they spent, from habit, a few minutes rummaging among the charred beams without result then walked on through a hedge enclosed plot that had once been the garden. At the bottom of it there was an orchard, the trees now bare and the snow on the branches glistening in the sunlight; but, among them, there were a number of beehives.
Assuming that they would be empty, Roger would have passed on, but Mary opened one and peered inside, then gave a cry of delight. The hives had not been taken in for the winter, so the bees were long since dead, but there were several combs of honey. Eagerly Roger set about hacking out lumps of the frozen honey, with his knife, then they happily sucked pieces of the sweet, sticky, life-giving food, devouring the wax as well. Having satiated their ravenous appetites, they started on a round of the hives to collect their contents. As they were about to open a third hive an angry, gutter-bred voice shouted in French:
'Hi! Lay off there, 'less you wants a bullet. That's my 'oney.'
Swinging round they saw that a tall, ragged figure had come up behind them and was pointing a musket at them. As the man had spoken in French, it was obvious that he was a deserter; so Roger called back:
'You have no more right to this honey than we have. But I've no wish to quarrel with you. What's your name
'Sergeant Gobbet, Sixth Grenadiers,' the man replied promptly.' 'Oo are you? Sounds from yer lingo as though you was an officer.'
'I am,' said Roger, and gave his name and rank.
The Sergeant grunted. 'So you're one of the bloody gilded Staff, eh? Well, I wouldn't give a cuss if you was a Marshal. We're all equals now. No difference 'tween you an' me if the Ruskies get us. They'd soon settle our 'ash. No difference neither if we freeze ter death in this bleedin' snow. What you got in them panniers?'
'Supplies of more value than this honey. Still, we might have a talk. I take it you're living in what is left of the farmhouse.'
'No. In the barn. It's got a bit of roof on.'
'Very well. Let's go back there.'
Sergeant Gobbet lowered his musket and they accompanied him to the barn. A low fire was burning there, and they squatted round it, gratefully warming their half-frozen hands by the glow of the embers, while the heat thawed out their frost stiffened furs and water from them made little puddles on the floor.
The Sergeant was a big, burly man with a full beard, small, pig like eyes, a receding forehead and a wonderful, flowing moustache. Roger discussed with him their respective aims. The main difference was that, while Roger had a plan for getting out of Russia, the Sergeant had not. He had simply made off, thinking that on his own he would stand a better chance of remaining alive than if he stayed with the Grand Army. Before the opening of the campaign, he had been stationed in Germany for the best part of two years and had picked up a smattering of the language. Knowing that to enter a Russian town in a French uniform was to ask to be set upon and killed, for several days past he had been keeping a look-out for a solitary Russian peasant whom he could shoot and rob of his clothes. Then he had meant to go into a village and hope to pass himself off as a Rhinelander. But no peasant had crossed his path. Half starving, he had reached the farm the previous day, found the honey, and meant to stay there for a few days, building himself up on it.
With a grim chuckle, he admitted that as Roger's uniform had been hidden by his furs, he had taken him and Hipe for Russians and, had either of them been alone, he would by now be dead; but he had not liked to risk shooting as, had they been armed, the survivor might have shot him before he could reload his musket.
Roger then spoke of his project of trying to reach the coast and getting away in a ship. Gobbet objected that, on arriving in Riga or some similar port, they would still be in French uniforms, so would either be killed or sent as slave labour to some camp where, before the winter was out, they would be knouted unmercifully and die of privation. To that Roger replied that to raid an inhabited house to obtain civilian clothes before they neared the end of their journey would be foolish, as a hue and cry after them might be started; but when they did come to the outskirts of a port, they must take that risk and bury their uniforms. He added that both he and Hipe could speak Russian well enough to pass as Ukrainians, and that he had ample money to buy passages in a ship for them; so if only they could come by enough food to keep them going on the way, he had good hopes of his plan succeeding.
The Sergeant's objections having been overcome, he became enthusiastic about the idea, so it was decided to pool their resources and travel together. Roger produced some strips of horseflesh, the fire was made up and twenty minutes later they were chewing the hard, unsavoury meat with as much gusto as if it had been chicken. Gobbet was a garrulous man and, while they ate, he gave them an account of how things had been with the Grand Army when he decided to desert.
'I was with Oudinot's corps "Old Blood and Guts" as we called 'im,' he told them. 'And a cracking good soldier 'e were, too. One what led 'is men in battle an' took good care of 'em other times. Back in the summer 'e got us all these sheepskin coats, like wot I'm wearin'. The weather was that 'ot then we didn't 'alf curse 'im. But come the autumn an' the snow, we was a durn sight better off than the chaps with the other corps.
'Things didn't go too bad until early November, then the Ruskies got atop of us an' pushed us east. Arter the middle o' the month we was down on the Berezina. Some dam' fool Polish General at Borisov ad given away the bridge over the river. But we got it back. Might 'ave made a stand there, too, if only Victor 'ad backed us up. But that red-faced drummer boy's a bad General an' a bad friend. 'E took 'is chaps across the river without a thought of anyone else. But our man, "Old Blood and Guts", 'e waited for the Emperor.
'About the 24th or 26th, wouldn't say which, the days 'as got a bit muddled in me mind, the main army came along an' started ter cross. The town bridge weren't the only one. It were said that General Eble im wot's the chief sapper-'ad 'ad orders ter burn 'is pontoons back at Orcha; but 'e 'adn't, an' 'e got two of 'em across the river 'igher up. All the same, things couldn't 'ave been worse wi'out 'em.