Russian series 03 - The Eagle's Fate (10 page)

‘Is that where you met?’

‘No. We knew each other long before that. Tatya’s father preferred one of his other estates to this one, and spent a great deal of his time there, and we were their nearest neighbours there. Our house in Moscow was just round the corner from theirs, and the same in Petersburg. We’ve known each other almost since we were babies.’

Nadya saw that Irina looked as if she wanted to ask something more, but didn’t quite know how to put it. Making a guess, she went on, ‘We lost all our money, quite suddenly, and had to sell our estates and the Moscow and Petersburg houses, and I haven’t seen Tatya since, until now, although she wrote to me very regularly, and often invited me here.’

‘It’s very awkward, being poor,’ Irina observed with a rueful smile. ‘People either don’t want to know you, or they offer charity, and it’s so depressing having to be grateful all the time, even for things you don’t like. There aren’t very many people like Tatya, who can make you feel almost as if you’re
entitled
to share what they have!’

‘She’s a very good friend.’

‘Lev said she was married very young, and her husband—well, he wasn’t a pleasant person.’

‘No, he wasn’t! Tatya was barely seventeen, and in her first season in Petersburg. Her father arranged the marriage to someone he thought was suitable—General Kalinsky. He was about forty years older than Tatya, which was bad enough, but her father died suddenly, only a few days after the wedding, and Lev was away with the Army, so she was suddenly left with her husband, and no one else to turn to when things went wrong. He was a very strange man in private, although he seemed pleasant enough when one met him socially. He-he enjoyed hurting people, you see!’

‘Physically7, you mean?’ asked Irina.

‘Yes. Tatya had a wretched time, and was terrified of him. Fortunately, after a few weeks, he went back to the Army for the campaign in Austria, and he was very badly wounded in the battle of Austerlitz. They took him home, and Tatya did her best for him, but he died. It may be wicked, but one could not help but be glad, for her sake.’

‘It’s surprising that she isn’t married again by now,’ Irina said after digesting the information for a while. ‘Lev said he thought it was time she was. He said he’d not be surprised to find she’d run off with a handsome hussar! Do you think he meant Andrei Ivanovich?’

‘He may well have done,’ Nadya replied with a curious little spasm of sorrow. ‘It was only the chance to see her that persuaded him to bring me here! I doubt if she’d run off with him, though. I think she has no wish to marry again.’

‘Well, I suppose the Church doesn’t exactly approve…’ Irina said doubtfully.

‘Oh, it’s not that–-I think she’s afraid! After all, she’s very well as she is, with a wide circle of friends, and any number of handsome young men to dance attendance on her and flirt with her. Why should she risk unhappiness again?’

‘If she found someone…’

‘That would be different. If she loved someone, she might feel she could trust him, but I’m sure there isn’t anyone at present. She likes several men, but she’d need more than liking to persuade her to marry one of them!’

Irina nodded, seeing the problem, and said, “It’s a great shame, for she’s such a lovely person—beautiful and kind. I’ve never known anyone like her before, and I felt she was my friend the moment we met. I—I’d like to be friends with you, too,’ she said shyly. ‘We have a great deal in common, having to run away, and suddenly finding ourselves quite alone, with hardly any money and nowhere to go! Oh, we’re not exactly the same, of course, for I was never anything but poor, and you were rich once, and that must be far worse—to come from that to poverty! We were both rescued too, though I think your rescuer might have tried to be kinder to you!’

‘I expect he has a good reason for disliking me, but I don’t know what it is,’ Nadya replied sadly.

They walked on until they came to a wooden bridge, where they crossed the river and returned on the opposite bank, pausing to pray and light candles in the village church, Nadya lighting one in particular for Andrei Valyev, and Irina presumably lighting hers for Lev.

The village was very different from the ramshackle collection of tumbledown cabins which Nadya had passed through on her way to Ryazan. Lev had some very advanced and westernised ideas about the welfare of the peasants on his estates, and had done more for them than free them from serfdom, although that was unusual enough. The houses were well-built, the street clean and paved with logs like a proper road, and there was a school for the children and an apothecary’s shop where the villagers could go for help and advice about illnesses and accidents. The people working about the place greeted Nadya and Irina politely and pleasantly, with none of the servility or surliness of serfs towards the nobility.

‘They’re very friendly,’ Irina commented as she and Nadya crossed back over the river on the stone bridge. ‘When I first came and they heard I was going to marry Lev, they came over to the house bringing me bread and salt and all sort of gifts—bunches of flowers and baskets of mushrooms, pieces of linen, wood-carvings—even a cradle! I was overwhelmed!’

‘It’s a pity there aren’t more landowners like Lev and more villages like his!’ Nadya replied sadly. ‘Most serfs are wretchedly poor, and hate their owners for keeping them so!’

During the afternoon Father Ilarion arrived, striding along like a young man, his staff swinging and his black robes flapping in a brisk breeze, and it was surprising to find when he came closer that his beard was quite white and his face as wrinkled as a last year’s apple. He blessed the house and the people within (and without, noticing a gardener in the middle distance) and bowed in a stately fashion in answer to Tatya’s greeting.

‘This is my friend, Nadezhda Igorovna,’ Tatya said, drawing Nadya forward. ‘Father Ilarion is an old friend, my dear, and I thought it might help you to talk to him for a while.’

Nadya was touched by the kind thought, and willingly went with the old man to one of the small sitting-rooms at the back of the house, where they sat down on either side of a small table and looked at one another for a few moments. The old priest’s eyes were clear, and so pale a grey that they seemed colourless. Nadya found them infinitely compassionate, and felt comforted just by looking at his serene face.

‘You are troubled, my daughter?’

‘Yes, Father.’ Hesitantly, Nadya began to tell him about leaving Moscow, the dreadful struggle on the Yauza bridge, and the realization, once she was across, that Luda was missing, followed by the information given her by the wagoner that she had fallen off the bridge.

‘A grievous shock,’ he said gently.

‘Yes, but it’s worse that that. You see, she didn’t want to come, and I made her, and then…when we were on the bridge and I was so frightened, with all the pushing and jostling—someone caught at my skirts—someone who’d fallen—and I didn’t even look to see who it was, but just fought to keep my feet—and—and when the person let go—I was glad!’

‘You think it may have been Luda?’

Nadya nodded wretchedly.

The priest thought for a few minutes, and then said calmly, ‘Had you allowed Luda to stay in Moscow, no doubt she would have died in the fires, or of mistreatment by the French. It was better to bring her with you. You made the right decision.’

‘But she died anyway.’

‘That is another matter. At the time the decision was made, it was the right one. Better to die quickly than to be burned, killed by the French, or starved. As for the other—had you turned back to help the person pulling on your skirts—whoever it was—could you have saved that person? Consider your answer honestly, without emotion.’

Nadya tried to do so, then silently shook her head.

‘I think you would simply have sacrificed your own life, and for nothing. Is that what Luda would have wished?’

Again, Nadya shook her head.

‘The loss of someone in such circumstances is distressing, and naturally one asks oneself if that person might not still be alive if one had done or not done this or that. The questioning is fruitless. You must leave the whole matter in the hands of God, Who knows and understands all that you meant to do, and forgives the failings you honestly regret. My own opinion is that you did all you could for the woman, and have nothing to regret save her loss. No one can be perfect, and you did the best you could for her. What else troubles you?’

Nadya, who had thought that was all, was surprised to find herself telling him about Andrei Valyev’s hostility, and her own regret that he should dislike her so much.

Again, Father Ilarion though for some minutes when she had finished, and then said, ‘It seems that the failing is in the man. You are sure you have never injured him in any way.’

‘Quite sure. I think it may have been something from the past, when my brother was alive…’

Father Ilarion nodded as if he knew about her brother, and asked, ‘The distress his coldness causes you—is it because it hurts your pride?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Nadya replied as honestly as she could. ‘I believe it’s more that I felt I should value his friendship, if I could have it. And it—it hurts me that he should dislike me for something—well, I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure it’s not my fault.’

‘Resentment is evil, whatever its cause. We must both pray that the young man is cured of his failing. Is there anything else you wish to tell me?”

Nadya made a general confession of her various small faults, clearing her conscience of everything she could think of, and received absolution. Father Ilarion was then persuaded to indulge in a small glass of wine and one little sugar-cake in the comfort of the salon before he set off to walk back to the monastery, leaving Nadya feeling much more at peace within herself.

During the next few days, it somehow became accepted that Nadya was to go to Petersburg with Tatya and Irina, although, when she stopped to think about it, she was not at all sure how it had come about.
She wondered if she ought to decline, for it would put Tatya to a great deal of trouble and expense, but several attempts to work the conversation round to a point where a withdrawal could be made were skilfully diverted by Tatya, and it dawned on her that Tatya really wanted her to go with them, and was not just being kind.

Then followed a very pleasant period of several weeks, during which the autumn weather continued, on the whole, to be fine and a little warmer than usual for the time of year, with no frost at all until a full week into October. There were invigorating walks to take about the estate, and drives into the surrounding countryside, visits to neighbouring houses, and several dinners and informal dances each week, when Nadya soon became to social conversation again, and found that, after an initial stiffness, she could still dance as well as ever. She still felt depressed at time, but found that a quiet half-hour in the little church helped to restore her spirits.

‘There was much to do at home, a well. Irina had never learned to dance, and it was necessary to give her some intensive instruction before she dare venture on to the floor with a partner. Fortunately, she was naturally graceful and light on her feet, and soon learned to perform creditably, and then to enjoy herself.

Then there was the sewing. Nadya made a very determined stand against Tatya’s plans to provide her with a wardrobe of new clothes, thanking her with sincerity, but insisting that the thought of the expense would destroy all her pleasure. And so trunks of gowns from past seasons—even some which had belonged to Tatya’s mother—were brought down from the attics, taken apart, and remade in the latest styles, with the help of a small army of women from the village who were skilled with their needles.

The result was a collection of very lovely gowns in the finest fabrics, but, unfortunately, in the pale colours which suited Tatya so well, but only made Nadya’s cheeks and eyes look colourless and her hair mousy.
Tatya bit her lip over it, and resolved to find some way of inserting at least one sapphire blue and one deep rose gown into her friend’s wardrobe while they were in Petersburg.

Meanwhile, of course, the war continued, although there seemed to be an extraordinary hiatus in its progress. The governor of Ryazan, an old friend of Tatya’s father, kept her informed o what news there was, which was really not much. Bonaparte had apparently expected Russia to sue for peace when his army occupied Moscow, but the Emperor Alexander had stated with unusual vehemence that he would grow a beard and cultivate potatoes in Siberia first! In any case, Marshal Kutuzov had refused a passport to Bonaparte’s envoy on the grounds that he had no instructions about the matter from St Petersburg.

The Russian Army was spread out in comparative comfort over a large area roughly midway between Moscow and Kaluga, increasing daily as fresh drafts of soldiers arrived from all over the Empire, and armed with the weapons which poured out of the foundries in Tula, or came by sea from abroad.
With the rich farmlands to the south within easy reach, the soldiers were said to be well-nigh embarrassed by the quantities of food they were receiving, while the French, in contrast, were sending out foraging parties which could find little of any reasonable quality. The Cossacks were removing or destroying everything of any use to the enemy, and they and the newly-formed bands of partisans which roamed the devastated band of country that marked the passage of the French from the border to Moscow, harried their communications and attacked their supply-trains.

There was sad news, too. The list of officers killed or wounded at Borodino was published and Tatya and Nadya wept over the names of more than a dozen old friends. The governor let them know that Prince Bagration, the hero of the Army, had died of the wound he had sustained in the battle, and when the postal service from Petersburg had been re-established by a roundabout route to avoid Moscow, Tatya learned that one of her oldest and dearest friends, Prince Nikolai Volkhov, lay near death at the house of his cousin, Maria Kirova.

‘I thought he was married,’ observed Nadya, who had cherished a girlish passion for the handsome prince and remembered him very well.