Free The Retreat by Patrick Rambaud Page B

asleep and woken up a thousand leagues from Moscow, in the wings of a Parisian theatre. She and Catherine had known each other for ages, sharing the stage countless times from their debuts in minute roles – non-speaking or one-line perhaps – to
Monsieur Vulture
, when they had played opposite the wildly, fabulously famous Brunet, and Mme Aurore had remarked upon them, the dark-skinned woman for her style, the redhead for her freshness. They were hired and enjoyed an unbroken run at the Délassements, in the faubourg du Temple, until the day came when Napoleon decided to close most of Paris’stheatres to prevent competition with the eight houses he subsidized. To get any work, they had to leave France and tour abroad, playing to expatriates or cultivated Europeans who understood French. Aurore Barsay’s wandering troupe had been acclaimed in Vienna, St Petersburg, and, for the last two months, Moscow – Moscow, where they were at the mercy of fire and soldiers, without audiences, roubles, luggage or costumes.
    â€˜Oh, Catherine,’ said Ornella. I’ve had enough …’
    â€˜Me too.’
    â€˜I’m going for supplies!’ d’Herbigny announced. ‘Get yourselves set up in that side chapel. Martinon, you, and you, follow me. The rest of you, tether the horses to the altar rails.’
    â€˜The what?’
    â€˜There, you ignoramus! Those things in gilded wood!’
    *
    The captain kept his weariness and doubts buried deep inside him. One-handed for the rest of his life, scars all over his body, he stifled his true desires by gripping the hilt of his sabre. Sometimes there rose up in him a paradoxical yearning for a peaceful, rural life, or he’d imagine himself as an innkeeper, since he liked people and wine and fattened pullets on spits, all golden and tender and juicy. He dismissed the image of roasting birds which jarred on that September afternoon in Moscow overrun by wolves, convicts and fire. Instead, stomach rumbling, he put on one of his green coats and buttoned up a pair of grey linen over-breeches at the seams – his helmet had stayed in the ruins of the Kalitzin house, crushed and melted – and set off prowling with his ragged men.
    Apart from several churches, the neighbourhood they found themselves in consisted predominantly of small, pitched-roofed houses, like Swiss chalets, two-storeyed, with little gardens in front enclosed by low picket fences: d’Herbigny thought it would be darned surprising if they couldn’t find something to eat. They were preparing to work their way through the houses systematically – a dragoon had raised the butt of his musket and was about to stave in the lock of a door – when lancers came galloping down the street. One of them slowed and shouted at d’Herbigny, ‘Watch out for the doors! They’ve booby-trapped their hovels!’
    The dragoon stopped, his musket poised in midair, his mouth open.
    â€˜You heard, didn’t you, you blockhead? Through the window.’
    They tore off a shutter and smashed a window pane; the captain climbed through the window, inspected the room: a bench, a stool … He took a few steps. Twigs snapped under his boots. He looked down. The former inhabitants had made a pile of sticks and wood shavings in front of the door. He saw a musket tied to the lock: if they’d broken down the door, the impact would have depressed the trigger, the flash of the charge would have set fire to the pile of dry wood. Sergeant Martinon poked his nose through the window. ‘Captain, we’ve gone over the garden with our sabres and found a chest.’
    The troopers had dug up the chest, which opened easily. It contained crockery. They continued their search in the other houses. With extreme care, they tested the ground with their sabres, turned the soil, went down to the cellars; they found a shell in one stove and a number of otherbooby-trapped doors. It took