The Retreat (4 page)

‘In the basement, I think.'

‘The Emperor loathes his dinner being cold,' the chef complained. ‘If I have to climb three flights of stairs, then walk three leagues of corridors, he'll throw his fricassée in my face!'

‘You'll find a solution, Monsieur Masquelet, Tsar Alexander doesn't exist on cold food either.'

Everyone set to. Sebastian asked about a desk, Masquelet a stove; one bright spark brought in wolf skins he'd purchased from a corporal to make up a bed on the parquet floor; on Bausset's orders, a valet took down the portraits of the Tsar and his family, which would have irritated the Emperor. A small, silent group on the terrace were casting an eye over the city and the white marble statues of the Pascov Palace by the ramparts.

‘There's a whole stack of furniture in the cellars,' a valet said to the Intendant. ‘A grenadier has just passed it on.'

‘Well, what are you waiting for?' said Bausset.

‘Coming?' Masquelet suggested to Sebastian. ‘You're bound to find your desk down there.'

Striding briskly along the corridors so as not to waste time, the expeditionary party of Roque, the chef and a number of valets enlisted several grenadiers who were guarding empty rooms or playing cards on a drum. The most heavily moustachioed fellow had put his bearskin on a plaster goddess, which he had taken down from its plinth;
he was pawing the statue and declaring, ‘My pay to anyone who finds me a real Russian beauty!' The presence of these veterans, Napoleon's old ‘grumblers' who'd seen hell a hundred times, comforted Sebastian, but where was the entrance to these cellars? They hurried down a grand staircase, wandered through deserted reception rooms and along passageways, pushed open doors, asked other soldiers who had no idea and eventually found another, worn stone staircase, narrower and cruder, that led to enormous rooms with vaulted ceilings, like chapels, that were so dark that one of the grenadiers went back upstairs to look for torches. They waited. The walls and floor smelled of damp. From one torch they lit several more and started to explore. Openings in the walls appeared in the darkness; they ventured through them, even if it meant not being able to find the way back. The torches smoked, their eyes stung; their misshapen shadows stretched across the pillars and vaults, flickered over the ceilings; with his cape with all its collars, Sebastian's silhouette looked like a vampire's (alone in that situation, he would have scared himself).

‘There's something at the back,' said a grenadier.

‘Crates …'

‘Give us some light, but not too close,' ordered Masquelet, ‘What if it's munitions, eh? You there! Come and open this with your bayonet.'

The lid of a crate sprang open with a splintering sound; the chef fearlessly plunged in his fist and brought up a handful of powder.

‘Hold your torch up, here, over my palm, so we can see what we've got …'

‘No need,' answered the grenadier. ‘You can smell it.'

‘I can't smell anything.'

‘You haven't got a nose, sir. It's snuff.'

‘Well, well,' said a lackey coming over.

‘You're right,' agreed the chef and took a large pinch, which made him sneeze and the torchlight flicker.

There was a mountain of other crates like it; Roque and Masquelet had to chivvy the grenadiers and lackeys as they filled their pockets with snuff. Next they found a stack of bales and rows of barrels, the former containing wool, the latter star anise, which disgusted the chef.

‘I can't do anything with those spices; they're only fit for their barbarian's food. If I used aniseed in his macaroni, His Majesty would be furious!'

‘Here it is, your furniture's this way,' interrupted a grenadier who'd ventured into an adjoining room.

The torches lit up a collection of chests of drawers, armchairs and bed frames; they just had to help themselves from the hoard. Sebastian spotted a little roll-top desk, which would be ideal for taking down the Emperor's correspondence in full flow, but to get it, a massive cupboard had to be pushed aside and a path cleared between a tangle of sideboards and footstools.

‘These cushions are mouldy,' a valet declared disconsolately.

‘Come and give me a hand over here instead,' asked Sebastian.

‘Hold my torch,' said a grenadier. ‘I'll see to your desk.'

Just as Sebastian took the torch and held it up at arm's length, a man stood up behind a wooden sideboard that glinted red where the light caught it; the apparition wore a Roman centurion's helmet and a toga thrown over one
shoulder. Everyone stopped their foraging. One of the grenadiers drew the bayonet he had tucked into his sword-belt.

‘Ah! Gentlemen! I could hear that you are French,' said the apparition, ‘and now I can see your glorious uniforms!'

‘Who are you?' Sebastian asked him.

‘What's that? Who am I? The lighting is poor, I grant you, but even so!'

In the flickering torchlight his expression turned to a grimace. Hand on heart, the costumed figure began to declaim:

‘
Until our age, Athens and Rome

Doubted a man could create a throne

To rival their dominance
.

But now their pride fades, is muted

All their conceit stands refuted

By the sovereign of France
…'

Everyone was dumbfounded by this performance, apart from one grenadier, less literate, perhaps, or less susceptible to blandishments, who frowned and said threateningly, ‘Answer Mr Roque or I'll give you a good thrashing!'

The soldier started climbing over the furniture to grab hold of the old ham, who swept on, ‘You see before you the Grrrreat Vialatoux, who has carried our authors, classical and not quite so classical, to the furthest corners of the Empire! Comedian, tragedian, singer – the theatre, don't y'know! All the arts in one sole, unique form!'

Other figures stood up behind him and a bossy, high-pitched female voice cried out, ‘Damn and blast it! Long live the Emperor!'

‘Show yourselves,' ordered the chef, who hated complications
and still hadn't got his extra stove. There were three of them stepping from one piece of furniture to the next down to the cellar's beaten-earth floor: a thin boy who was clasping a set of tinplate medieval armour to his chest, the overacting Roman and a woman of forty or more, rather round-shouldered, the manageress of this travelling company.

‘Thank goodness you weren't any longer,' she said. ‘We couldn't take any more in this horrific hiding place! Look what we've been able to salvage: Joan of Arc's armour, Brutus' helmet, Caesar's toga and nothing else, nothing!'

‘Why are you in this palace?' Sebastian asked wide-eyed.

‘For the past week we've been rehearsing the historical fantasia composed by Mme Aurore for Count Rostopchin,' said Vialatoux. ‘He had lent us a room in the Kremlin, and then events stopped us in the middle of the third act.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘It was terrifying,' the boy with the armour continued. ‘There was a stampede, everyone was petrified, we had to find somewhere safe; there was no way of getting back to the house we're renting from an Italian merchant behind the bazaar, everywhere people were in a frenzy, weeping, moaning …'

‘And then?' Sebastian again asked.

‘We had to bury ourselves away here,' explained the Great Vialatoux, hitching up the toga, which was slipping off his shoulder. ‘Too dangerous outside for French citizens.'

‘You hadn't sensed anything looming?'

‘Only our performance,' exclaimed Mme Aurore, shocked by the tactlessness of such a question.

‘How is that possible?' Sebastian asked in amazement.

‘Art is enough for us, young man,' boomed Vialatoux.

‘All we thought of were our parts,' murmured a young girl at the back. ‘Acting's very absorbing, you know.'

‘I don't, actually,' said Sebastian, trying to see her better in the shadows. ‘But even so! This is war.'

‘We were concentrating on the play.'

Sebastian was still holding the torch. He cast more light on this ingénue, whose voice fascinated him. As he looked at the actress from head to toe, he felt himself grow short of breath. Mlle Ornella was dark-skinned with curly hair, oblong, very dark eyes, and long eyelashes. Sebastian immediately thought of the actress who had enraptured him in
The Triumph of Trajan
at the Opera, the unattainable Mlle Bigottini who was showered with ducats by a Hungarian Maecenas. Her counterpart here wore a short-sleeved over-blouse with an old-fashioned cotton cambric skirt and lace-up leather boots that came to above her ankle. Because the torch was trembling in Sebastian's hand and he was about to set a chest on fire, the grenadier took it back from him and asked, ‘Do you want your desk, then, Monsieur le secrétaire?'

‘Yes, yes …'

*

The Emperor was irritable. His mood hovered between fury and exhaustion. At six in the evening, he had picked half-heartedly at some cutlets, sitting outside on his red morocco-leather chair, his feet resting on a drum. Now he was silently watching the servants taking his iron bed and folding furniture out of the leather slings in which they were carried by the mules. On the doorstep of the one passable inn in the neighbourhood, where he was going to
spend the night, he saw Roustam, his chief Mameluke, cleaning the pistols with Medusa-head grips, which he only used to shoot crows. Night was falling; bivouac fires were being lit under the ramparts and on the plain. After drinking his glass of Chambertin diluted with iced water, Napoleon was seized by a dry cough, which shook him in his armchair. Dr Yvan, as ever, was not far away; as soon as the fit passed, he advised immediate rest and a course of hot baths once they were in the Kremlin. The Emperor's health was deteriorating. On the eve of the battle near the village of Borodino his aide-de-camp Lauriston had applied emollient poultices to his stomach; not having recovered his voice since the stop at Mojaisk, His Majesty had scribbled hard-to-decipher orders on pieces of paper. He was growing stout. He walked less because of the oedemas in his legs. More and more often he slipped a hand under his waistcoat, pressing down as spasms stabbed him between his stomach and bladder; he was in pain relieving himself, passing muddy urine, drop by drop. His physical decay made him aggressive. Like Robespierre. Like Marat. Like the tubercular Saint-Juste. Like Aesop, Richard III and Scarron, the hunchbacks.

‘Come along, Monsieur Constant,' he said to his valet, ‘this cursed charlatan must be obeyed …'

Thus described, Dr Yvan helped him stand; they followed Constant into the inn and climbed a rudimentary staircase without a banister. Upstairs the Emperor found his campaign furniture, two high stools, a writing desk with a lamp and several candles, and his bed with its green silk curtain. Constant helped him out of his overcoat; his armchair was brought up, he threw himself into it, tossing his hat on the floor. He had a plump face, smooth as ivory,
the delicate and determined features of a Roman, according to their statues, and thinning hair, a lock of which curved like a comma over his forehead. With a weary gesture he dismissed his attendants. He loved power, not men, with an artist's love, as a musician loves his violin; it was an exercise of absolute solitude and mistrust. Who could understand? The Tsar perhaps: Alexander had also surrounded himself with sycophants, libertines, villains and mercenaries who bombarded him with dangerous advice; English and émigrés mingled with these prophets of doom. ‘Napoleon's Europe is cracking,' they said, and they were right. Marmont had just let himself be crushed near Salamanca. Out of pure jealousy, Bernadotte, his old rival, had instigated talks between Sweden and Russia. Who should he rely on? The allies? Oh, they were a fine bunch, the allies! The Prussians detested Napoleon. Half the Spanish battalion had been shot for indiscipline. The thirty thousand Austrian soldiers sent in exchange for some provinces kept as far away from the fighting as they could; anyway, Russia and Austria had a secret understanding. The allies! Old enemies waiting for the chance to betray him. And the marshals themselves were complaining: they said that by extending its territories France was going to become diluted, that a Europe under coercion was ungovernable. The Emperor believed in nothing anymore except destiny. Everything was written. He knew he was invulnerable but still the image of Charles XII haunted him.

Every evening he'd return to Voltaire's description of that young Swedish king's disastrous undertaking; a century earlier he had lost his army and his throne on the road to Moscow. He'd experienced the same inconclusive battles; his
artillery and wagons had become mired in the same marshes, the dragoons of his vanguard had been similarly weakened by surprise attacks from the Muscovite rearguard. People had called him invincible too, but he'd ended up fleeing to Constantinople on a stretcher. Was that repeating itself? It was unthinkable. And yet there were coincidences that troubled Napoleon. A little while ago, when he saw one of his captains throw a moujik armed with a pitchfork into the Moskova, he had remembered a story told by Voltaire at the end of the first part of his
History of Russia
. An old man dressed entirely in white, holding two carbines, had threatened Charles XII in the same fashion; some Swedes had cut him down. The peasants had mounted a revolt in the fens of Mazovia; they had been captured and forced to hang one another. But then the King had pushed deep into desert wastes chasing Peter the Great's armies, who kept on retreating, drawing him on, leaving nothing but scorched earth behind them … The Emperor stirred nauseously in his armchair. ‘Constant!'

His valet, stretched out in front of the half-open door, an ear cocked, stood up, straightening his uniform.

‘Sire?'

‘Constant, my son, what a terrible musty smell!'