Flashman At The Charge Part 6

"Oh, come!" cries he. "What d'you mean? Oh, stuff! We were all boys then, and boys never get on too well, 'specially when some are bigger and older and . . . why, that's all done with years ago! Why - everyone's proud of you, Flashman! Brooke and Green - and young Brooke - he's in the Navy, you know." He paused. "The Doctor would have been proudest of all, I'm sure."

Aye, he probably would, thinks I, the d.a.m.ned old hypocrite.

... everyone knows about Afghanistan, and India, and all that," he ran on. "I was out there myself, you know, in the Sikh campaign, when you were winning another set of laurels. All I got was a shot wound, a hole in my ribs, and a broken arm. "23 He laughed ruefully. "Not much to show, I'm afraid - and then I bought out of the 101st, and - but heavens, how I'm rattling on! Oh, it is good to see you, old fellow! This is the best, most famous thing! Let me have a good look at you! By George, those are some whiskers, though!"

I couldn't be sure if he meant it, or not. G.o.d knows, Scud East had no cause to love me, and the sight of him had so taken me back to that last black day at Rugby that I'd momentarily forgotten we were men now, and things had changed - perhaps even his memories of me. For he did seem pleased to see me, now that he'd got over his surprise - of course, that could just be acting on his part, or making the best of a bad job, or just Christian decency. I found myself weighing him up; I'd knocked him about a good deal, in happier days, and it came as a satisfaction to realize that I could probably still do it now, if it came to the pinch; he was still smaller and thinner than I. At that, I'd never detested him as much as his manly-mealy little pal, Brown; he'd had more game in him than the others, had East, and now - well, if he was disposed to be civil, and let bygones be bygones . . . We were bound to be stuck together for some months at least.

All this in a second's consideration - and you may think, what a mean and calculating nature, or what a guilty conscience. Never you mind; I know my own nature hasn't changed in eighty years, so why should anyone else's? And I never forget an injury - I've done too many of 'em.

So I didn't quite enter into his joyous spirit of reunion, but was civil enough, and after he had got over his sham-ecstasies at meeting his dear old school-fellow again, I said: "What about this place, then - and this fellow Pencherjevsky?"

He hesitated a moment, glanced towards the wall, got up, and as he walked over to it, said loudly: "Oh, it is as you see it - a splendid place. They've treated me well - very well indeed." And then he beckoned me to go over beside him, at the same time laying a finger on his lips. I went, wondering, and followed his pointing finger to a curious protuberance in the ornate carving of the panelling beside the stove. It looked as though a small funnel had been sunk into the carving, and covered with a fine metal grille, painted to match the surrounding wood.

"I say, old fellow," says East, "what d'you say to a walk? The Count has splendid gardens, and we are free of them, you know."

I took the hint, and we descended the stairs to the hall, and out on to the lawns. The lounging Cossack looked at us, but made no move to follow. As soon as we were at a safe distance, I asked: "What on earth was it?"

"Speaking-tube, carefully concealed," says he. "I looked out for it as soon as I arrived - there's one in the next room, too, where you'll be. I fancy our Russian hosts like to be certain we're not up to mischief."

"Well, I'm d.a.m.ned! The deceitful brutes! Is that any way to treat gentlemen? And how the deuce did you know to look for it?"

"Oh, just caution," says he, offhand, but then he thought for a moment, and went on: "I know a little about such things, you see. When I was taken at Silistria, although I was officially with the Bashi-Bazouk people, I was more on the political side, really. I think the Russians know it, too. When they brought me up this way I was most carefully examined at first by some very shrewd gentlemen from their staff - I speak some Russian, you see. Oh, yes, my mother's family married in this direction, a few generations ago, and we had a sort of great-aunt who taught me enough to whet my interest. Anyway, on top of their suspicions of me, that accomplishment is enough to make 'em pay very close heed to H. East, Esq."

"It's an accomplishment you can pa.s.s on to me as fast as you like," says I. "But d'you mean they think you're a spy?"

"Oh, no, just worth watching - and listening to. They're the most suspicious folk in the world, you know; trust no one, not even each other. And for all they're supposed to be thick-headed barbarians, they have some clever jokers among em."

Something made me ask: "D'you know a chap called Ignatieff- Count Ignatieff?"

"Do I not!" says he. "He was one of the fellows who ran the rule over me when I came up here. That's Captain Swing with blue blood, that one - why, d'you know him?"

I told him what had happened earlier in the day, and he whistled. "He was there to have a look and a word with you, you may depend on it. We must watch what we say, Flashman - not that our consciences aren't clear, but we may have some information that would be useful to them." He glanced about. "And we won't feed their suspicions by talking too much where they can't hear us. Another five minutes, and we'd better get back to the room. If we want to be private there, at any time, we'll hang a coat over their confounded tube - you may believe me, that works. But before we go in, I'll tell you, as quickly as I may, those things that are better said in the open air."

It struck me, he was a cool, a.s.sured hand, this East - of course, he had been all that as a boy, too.

"Count Pencherjevsky - an ogre, loud-mouthed, brutal, and a tyrant. He's a Cossack, who rose to command a hussar regiment in the army, won the Tsar's special favour, and retired here, away from his own tribal land. He rules his estate like a despot, treats his serfs abominably, and will surely have his throat cut one day. I can't abide him, and keep out of his way, although I sometimes dine with the family, for appearance's sake. But he's been decent enough, I'll admit; gives me the run of the place, a horse to ride, that sort of thing."

"Ain't they worried you might ride for it?" says I.

"Where to? We're two hundred miles north of the Crimea here, with nothing but naked country in between. Besides, the Count has a dozen or so of his old Cossacks in his service - they're all the guard anyone needs. Kubans, who could ride down anything on four legs. I saw them bring back four serfs who ran away, soon after I got here - they'd succeeded in travelling twenty miles before the Cossacks caught them. Those devils brought them back tied by the ankles and dragged behind their ponies - the whole way!" He shuddered. "They were flayed to death in the first few miles!"

I felt my stomach give one of its little heaves. "But, anyway, those were serfs," says I. "They wouldn't do that sort of thing to -"

"Wouldn't they, though?" says he. "Well, perhaps not. But this ain't England, you know, or France, or even India. This is Russia - and these land-owners are no more accountable than . . . than a baron in the Middle Ages. Oh, I dare say he'd think twice about mishandling us - still, I'd think twice about getting on his wrong side. But, I say, I think we'd best go back, and treat 'em to some harmless conversation - if anyone's bothering to listen."

As we strolled back, I asked him a question which had been exercising me somewhat. "Who's the fair beauty I saw when I arrived?"

He went red as a poppy, and I thought, o-ho, what have we here, eh? Young Scud with lecherous notions - or pure Christian pa.s.sion, I wonder which?

"That would be Valentina," says he, "the Count's daughter. She and her Aunt Sara - and an old deaf woman who is a cousin of sorts - are his only family. He is a widower." He cleared his throat nervously. "One sees very little of them, though - as I said, I seldom dine with the family. Valentina . . . ah . . . is married."

I found this vastly amusing - it was my guess that young Scud had gone wild about the little bundle - small blame to him - and like the holy little humbug he was, preferred to avoid her rather than court temptation. One of Arnold's shining young knights, he was. Well, l.u.s.ty old Sir Lancelot Flashy had galloped into the lists now - too bad she had a husband, of course, but at least she'd be saddle-broken. At that, I'd have to see what her father was like, and how the land lay generally. One has to be careful about these things.

I met the family at dinner that afternoon, and a most fascinating occasion it turned out to be. Pencherjevsky was worth travelling a long way to see in himself - the first sight of him, standing at his table head, justified East's description of ogre, and made me think of Jack and the Beanstalk, and smelling the blood of Englishmen, which was an unhappy notion, when you considered it.

He must have been well over six and a half feet tall, and even so, he was broad enough to appear squat. His head and face were just a ma.s.s of brown hair, trained to his shoulders and in a splendid beard that rippled down his chest. His eyes were fine, under huge s.h.a.ggy brows, and the voice that came out of his beard was one of your thunderous Russian ba.s.ses. He spoke French well, by the way, and you would never have guessed from the glossy colour of his hair, and the ease with which he moved his huge bulk, that he was over sixty. An enormous man, in every sense, not least in his welcome.

"The Colonel Flashman," he boomed. "Be happy in this house. As an enemy, I say, forget the quarrel for a season; as a soldier, I say, welcome, brother." He shook my hand in what was probably only the top joints of his enormous fingers, and crushed it till it cracked. "Aye - you look like a soldier, sir. I am told you fought in the disgraceful affair at Balaclava, where our cavalry were chased like the rabble they are. I salute you, and every good sabre who rode with you. Chased like rabbits, those tuts*(*Renegades.) and moujiks on horseback. Aye, you would not have chased my Kubans so - or Vigenstein's Hussars24 when I had. command of them - no, by the Great G.o.d!" He glowered down at me, rumbling, as though he would break into "Fee-fi-fo-fum" at any moment, and then released my hand and waved towards the two women seated at the table.

"My daughter Valla, my sister-in-law, Madam Sara." I bowed, and they inclined their heads and looked at me with that bold, appraising stare which Russian women use - they're not bashful or missish, those ladies. Valentina, or Valla, as her father called her, smiled and tossed her silver-blonde head - she was a plumply pert little piece, sure enough, but I spared a glance for Aunt Sara as well. She'd be a few years older than I, about thirty-five, perhaps, with dark, close-bound hair and one of those strong, masterful, chiselled faces - handsome, but not beautiful. She'd have a moustache in a few years, but she was well-built and tall, carrying her bounties before her.

For all that Pencherjevsky looked like Goliath, he had good taste - or whoever ordered his table and domestic arrangements had. The big dining-room, like all the apartments in the house, had a beautiful wood-tiled floor, there was a chandelier, and any amount of brocade and flowered silk about the furnishings. (Pencherjevsky himself, by the way, was dressed in silk: most Russian gentlemen wear formal clothes as we do, more or less, but he affected a magnificent shimmering green tunic, clasped at the waist by a silver-buckled belt, and silk trousers of the same colour tucked into soft leather boots - a most striking costume, and comfortable too, I should imagine.) The food was good, to my relief - a fine soup being followed by fried fish, a ragout of beef, and side-dishes of poultry and game of every variety, with little sweet cakes and excellent coffee. The wine was indifferent, but drink-able. Between the vittles, the four fine bosoms displayed across the table, and Pencherjevsky's conversation, it was a most enjoyable meal.

He questioned me about Balaclava, most minutely, and when I had satisfied his curiosity, astonished me by rapidly sketching how the Russian cavalry should have been handled, with the aid of cutlery, which he clashed about on the table to demonstrate. He knew his business, no doubt of it, but he was full of admiration for our behaviour, and Scarlett's particularly.

"Great G.o.d, there is an English Cossack!" says he. "Uphill, eh? I like him! I like him! Let him be captured, dear Lord, and sent to Starotorsk, so that I can keep him forever, and talk, and fight old battles, and shout at each other like good companions!"

"And get drunk nightly, and be carried to bed!" says Miss Valla, pertly - they enter into talk with the men, you know, these Russian ladies, with a freedom that would horrify our own polite society. And they drink, too - I noticed that both of them went gla.s.s for gla.s.s with us, without becoming more than a trifle merry.

"That, too, golubashka," says Pencherjevsky. "Can he drink, then, this Scarlett? Of course, of course he must! All good horse-soldiers can, eh, colonel? Not like your Sasha, though," says he to Valla, with a great wink at me. "Can you imagine, colonel, I have a son-in-law who cannot drink? He fell down at his wedding, on this very floor - yes, over there, by G.o.d! - after what? A gla.s.s or two of vodka! Saint Nicholas! Aye, me - how I must have offended the Father G.o.d, to have a son-in-law who cannot drink, and does not get me grandchildren."

At this Valla gave a most unladylike snort, and tossed her head, and Aunt Sara, who said very little as a rule, I discovered, set down her gla.s.s and observed tartly that Sasha could hardly get children while he was away fighting in the Crimea.

"Fighting?" cries Pencherjevsky, boisterously. "Fighting - in the horse artillery? Whoever saw one of them coming home on a stretcher? I would have had him in the Bug Lancers, or even the Moscow Dragoons, but - body of St Sofia! - he doesn't ride well! A fine son-in-law for a Zaporozhiyan hetman,* (*Leader.) that!"

"Well, dear father!" snaps Valla. "If he had ridden well, and been in the lancers or the dragoons, it is odds the English cavalry would have cut him into little pieces - since you were not there to direct operations!"

"Small loss that would have been," grumbles he, and then leaned over, laughing, and rumpled her blonde hair. "There, little one, he is your man - such as he is. G.o.d send him safe home."

I tell you all this to give you some notion of a Russian country gentleman at home, with his family - although I'll own that a Cossack may not be typical. No doubt he wasn't to East's delicate stomach - and I gather he didn't care for East too much, either - but I found myself liking Pencherjevsky. He was gross, loud, boisterous - boorish, if you like, but he was worth ten of your proper gentlemen, to me at any rate. I got roaring drunk with him, that evening, after the ladies had retired - they were fairly tipsy, themselves, and arguing at the tops of their voices about dresses as they withdrew to their drawing-room - and he sang Russian hunting songs in that glorious orgam voice, and laughed himself sick trying to learn the words of "The British Grenadiers". I flatter myself he took to me enormously - folk often do, of course, particularly the coa.r.s.er spirits - for he swore I was a credit to my regiment and my country, and G.o.d should send the Tsar a few like me.

"Then we should sweep you English b.a.s.t.a.r.ds into the sea!" he roared. "A few of your Scarletts and Flashmans and Carragans - that is the name, no? - that is all we need!"

But drunk as he was, when he finally rose from the table he was careful to turn in the direction of the church and cross himself devoutly, before stumbling to guide me up the stairs.

I was to see a different side to Pencherjevsky - and to all of them for that matter - in the winter that followed but for the first few weeks of my sojourn at Starotorsk 7 thoroughly enjoyed myself, and felt absolutely at home. It was so much better than I had expected, the Count was so amiable in his bear-like, thundering way, his ladies were civil (for I'd decided to go warily before attempting a more intimate acquaintance with Valla) and easy with me, and East and I were allowed such freedom, that it was like month of week-ends at an English country-house, without any of the stuffiness. You could come and go as you pleased, treat the place as your own, attend at meal-times or feed in your chamber, whichever suited - it was Liberty Hall, no error. I divided my days between working really-hard at my Russian, going for walks or rides with Valla and Sara or East, prosing with the Count in the evenings playing cards with the family they have a form of whist called "biritsch" which has caught on in England this last few years, and we played that most evenings - and generally taking life easy. My interest in Russian they found especially flattering, for they are immensely proud and sensitive about their country, and I made even better progress than usual. I soon spoke and understood it better than East - "He has a Cossack somewhere in his family!" Pencherjevsky would bawl. "Let him add a beard to those foolish English whiskers and he can ride with the Kubans - eh, colonel?"

All mighty pleasant - until you discovered that the civility and good nature were no deeper than a May frost, the thin covering on totally alien beings. For all their apparent civilization, and even good taste, the barbarian was just under the surface, and liable to come raging out. It was easy to forget this, until some word or incident reminded you - that this pleasant house and estate were like a medieval castle, under feudal law; that this jovial, hospitable giant, who talked so knowledgeably of cavalry tactics and the hunting field, and played chess like a master, was also as dangerous and cruel as a cannibal chief; that his ladies, chattering cheerfully about French dressmaking or flower arrangement, were in some respects rather less feminine than Dahomey Amazons.

One such incident I'll never forget. There was an evening when the four of us were in the salon, Pencherjevsky and I playing chess - he had handicapped himself by starting without queen or castle, to make a game of it - and the women at some two-handed game of cards across the room. Aunt Sara was quiet, as usual, and Valla prattling gaily, and squeaking with vexation when she lost. I wasn't paying much attention, for I was happy with the Count's brandy, and looked like beating him for once, too, but when I heard them talking about settling the wager I glanced across, and almost fell from my chair.

Valla's maid and the housekeeper had come into the room. The maid - a serf girl - was kneeling by the card table, and the housekeeper was carefully shearing off her long red hair with a pair of scissors. Aunt Sara was watching idly; Valla wasn't even noticing until the housekeeper handed her the tresses."Ah, how pretty!" says she, andshrugged, and tossed them over to Aunt Sara, who stroked them, and said: "Shall I keep them for a wig, or sell them? Thirty roubles in Moscow or St Petersburg_ " And she held them up in the light, considering.

"More than Vera is worth now, at any rate," says Valla, carelessly. Then she jumped up, ran a cross to Pencherjevsky, and put her arms round his s.h.a.ggy neck from behind, blowing in his ear. "Father_ may I have fifty roubles for a new maid?"

"What's that?" says he, deep in the game. "Wait, child, wait; I have this English rascal trapped, If only ... "

"Just fifty roubles, father. See, I cannot keep Vera now."

He looked up, saw the maid, who was still kneeling, cropped like a convict, and guffawed. "She doesn't need hair to hang up your dresses and fetch. your shoes, does she? Learn to count your aces, you silly girl."

"Oh, father! You know she will not do now! Only fifty roubles - please - from my kind little batiushka!"*(*Father.) "Ah, plague take you, can a man not have peace? Fifty roubles, then, to be let alone. And next time, bet some-thing that I will not have to replace out of my purse." He pinched her cheek. "Check, colonel."

I've a strong stomach, as you know, but I'll admit that turned it - not the disfigurement of a pretty girl, you understand, although I didn't hold with that, much, but the cheerful unconcern with which they did it - those two cultured ladies, in that elegant room, as though they had been gaming for sweets or counters . And now Valla was leaning on her father's shoulder, gaily urging him on to victory, and Sara was running the hair idly through her hands, while the kneeling girl bowed her pathetically shorn head to the floor and then followed the housekeeper from the room. Well, thinks I, they'd be a rage in London society, these two. You may have noticed , by the way, that the cost of a maid was fifty roubles, of which her hair was worth thirty.

Of course, they didn't think of her as human. I've told you something of the serfs already, and most of that I learned first-hand on the Pencherjevsky estate, where they were treated as something worse than cattle. The more fortunate of them lived in the outbuildings and were employed about the house, but most of them were down in the village, a filthy, straggling place of log huts, called isbas, with entrances so low you had to stoop to go in. They were foul, verminous hovels, consisting of just one room, with a huge bed bearing many pillows, a big stove, and a "holy corner" in which there were poor, garish pictures of their saints.

Their food was truly fearful - rye bread for the most part, and cabbage soup with a lump of fat in it, salt cabbage, garlic stew, coa.r.s.e porridge, and for delicacies, sometimes a little cuc.u.mber or beetroot. And those were the well-fed ones. Their drink was as bad - bread fermented in alcohol which they call gva.s.s ("it's black, it's thick, and it makes you drunk," as they said), and on special occasions vodka, which is just poison. They'll sell their souls for brandy, but seldom get it.

Such conditions of squalor, half the year in stifling heat, half in unimaginable cold, and all spent in back-breaking labour, are probably enough to explain why they were such an oppressed, dirty, brutish, useless people - just like the Irish, really, but without the gaiety. Even the Mississippi n.i.g.g.e.rs were happier - there was never a smile on the face of your serf, just patient, morose misery.

And yet that wasn't the half of their trouble. I remember the court that Pencherjevsky used to hold in a barn at the back of the house, and those cringing creatures crawling on their bellies along the floor to kiss the edge of his coat, while he p.r.o.nounced sentence on them for their offences. You may not believe them, but they're true, and I noted them at the time.

There was the local dog-killer - every Russian village is plagued in winter by packs of wild dogs, who are a real danger to life, and this fellow had to chase and club them to death - he got a few kopecks for each pelt. But he had been shirking his job, it seemed.

"Forty strokes of the cudgel," says Pencherjevskey. And then he added: "Siberia," at which a great wail went up from the crowd trembling at the far end of the berm One of the Cossacks just lashed at them with his nagaika*(* Cossack whip.) and the wail died.

There was an iron collar for a woman whose son had run off, and floggings, either with the cudgel or the whip, for several who had neglected their labouring in Pencherjevsky's fields. There was Siberia for a youth employed to clean windows at the house, who had started work too early and disturbed Valla, and for one of the maids who had dropped a dish. You will say, "Ah, here Flashy pulling the long bow", but I'm not, and if you don_ ' believe me, ask any professor of Russian history.25 But here's the point - if you'd suggested to Pencherjevsky or his ladies, or even to the serfs, that such punishments were cruel, they'd have thought you were mad. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to them. - why, I've seen a man cudgelled by the Cossacks in Pencherjevsky's courtyard - tied to a post half-naked in the freezing weather, and smashed with heavy rods until he was a moaning lump of bruised and broken flesh, with half his ribs cracked - and through it all Valla was standing not ten yards away, never even glancing in his direction, but discussing a new sledge-harness with one of the grooms.

Pencherjevsky absolutely believed that his moujiks were well off. "Have I not given them a stone church, with a blue dome and gilt stars? How many villages can show the like, eh?" And when those he had condemned to years of exile in Siberia were driven off in a little coffle under the nagaikas of the Cossacks - they would be taken to the nearest town, to join other unfortunates, and they would all walk the whole way - he was there to give them his blessing, and they would embrace his knees, crying: "Izvenete, batiushka, veno vat,"* (*Pardon, father, I am guilty.) and he would nod and say "Horrosho,"*(*Very well.) while the housekeeper gave them bundles of dainties from the "Sudarinia*(*Lady.) Valla". G.o.d knows what they were - cuc.u.mber rinds, probably.

"From me they have strict justice, under the law," says this amazing gorilla. "And they love me for it. Has anyone ever seen the knout, or the butuks,* (*Press for crushing feet.) used on my estate? No, and never shall. If I correct them, it is because without correction they will become idle and shiftless, and ruin me - and themselves. For without me, where are they? These poor souls, they believe the world rests on three whales swimming in the Eternal Sea! What are you to do with such folk? I will meet with the best; the wisest of them, the spokesman of their gromada,* (*Village a.s.sembly.) driving his droshky.*(*Gig.). 'Ha, Ivan,' I will say, 'your axles squeal; why do you not grease them?' And he ponders, and replies, 'Only a thief is afraid to make a noise, batiushka.' So the axles remain ungreased - unless I cudgel his foolish head, or have the Cossacks whip and salt his back for him. And he respects me" - he would thump his great fist on his thigh as he said it "because he knows I am a bread and salt man, and go with my neck open, as he does.26 And I am just - to the inch."

And you may say he was: when he flogged his dvornik*(*Porter.) for insolence, and the fellow collapsed before the prescribed punishment was finished, they sent him to the local quack - and when he was better, gave him the remaining strokes. "Who would trust me again, if I excused him a single blow?" says Pencherjevsky.

Now, I don't recite all these barbarities to shock or excite your pity, or to pose as one of those holy hypocrites who pretend to be in a great sweat about man's inhumanity to man. I've seen too much of it, and know it happens wherever strong folk have absolute power over spiritless creatures. I merely tell you truly what I saw - as for my own view, well, I'm all for keeping the peasants in order, and if hammering 'em does good, and makes life better for the rest of us, you won't find me leaping between the tyrant and his victim crying "Stay, cruel despot!" But I would observe that much of the cruelty I saw in Russia was pure senseless brutishness - I doubt if they even enjoyed it much. They just knew no better.

I wondered sometimes why the serfs, dull, ignorant, superst.i.tious clods though they were, endured it. The truth, as I learned it from Pencherjevsky, was that they didn't, always. In the thirty years just ending when I was in Russia, there had been peasant revolts once every fortnight, in one part of the country or another, and as often as not it had taken the military to put them down. Or rather, it had taken the Cossacks, for the Russian army was a useless thing, as we'd seen in the Crimea. You can't make soldiers out of slaves. But the Cossacks were free, independent tribesmen; they had land, and paid little tax, had their own tribal laws, drank themselves stupid, and served the Tsar from boyhood till they were fifty because they loved to ride and fight and loot - and they liked nothing better than to use their nagaikas on the serfs, which was just nuts to them.

Pencherjevsky wasn't worried about revolution among his own moujiks because, as I say, he regarded himself as a good master. Also he had Cossacks of his own to strike terror into any malcontents. "And I never commit the great folly," says he. "I never touch a serf-woman - or allow one to be used or sold as a concubine." (Whether he said it for my benefit or not, it was bad news, for I hadn't had a female in ages, and some of the peasants - like Valla's maid - were not half bad-looking once they were washed.) "These uprisings on other estates - look into them, and I'll wager every time the master has ravished some serf wench, or stolen a moujik's wife, or sent a young fellow into the army so that he can enjoy his sweetheart. They don't like it, I tell you - and I don't blame them! If a lord wants a woman, let him marry one, or buy one from far afield - but let him slake his l.u.s.t on one of his own serf-women, and he'll wake up one fine morning with a split head and his roof on fire. And serve him right!"

I gathered he was unusual in this view: most landlords just used the serf-wenches the way American owners used their n.i.g.g.e.r girls, and pupped 'em all over the place. But Pencherjevsky had his own code, and believed his moujiks thought the better of him for it, and were content. I wondered if he wasn't gammoning himself.

Because I paid attention, toady-like, to his proses, and was eager in studying his language, he a.s.sumed I was interested in his appalling country and its ways, and was at pains to educate me, as he saw it. From him I learned of the peculiar laws governing the serfs - how they might be free if they could run away for ten years, how some of them were allowed to leave the estates and work in the towns, provided they sent a proportion of earnings to their master; how some of these serfs became vastly rich - richer than their masters, sometimes, and worth millions - but still could not buy their freedom unless he wished. Some serfs even owned serfs. It was an idiotic system, of course, but the landowners were all for it, and even the humanitarian ones believed that if it were changed, and political reforms allowed, the country would dissolve in anarchy. I daresay they were right, but myself I believe it will happen anyway; it was starting even then, as Pencherjevsky admitted.

"The agitators are never idle," says he. "You have heard of the pernicious German Jew, Marx?" (I didn't like to tell him Marx had been at my wedding, as an uninvited guest.*(*See Royal Flash)) "He vomits his venom over Europe - aye, he and other vile rascals like him would spread their poison even to our country if they could.27 Praise G.o.d the moujiks are unlettered folk - but they can hear, and our cities crawl with revolutionary criminals of the lowest stamp. What do they understand of Russia, these filth? What do they seek to do but ruin her? And yet countries like your own give harbour to such creatures, to brew their potions of hate against us! Aye, and against you, too, if you could only see it! You think to encourage them, for the downfall of your enemies, but you will reap the wild wind also, Colonel Flashman!"

"Well, you know, Count," says I, "we let chaps say what they like, pretty well, always have done. We don't have any kabala,*(*Slavery.) like you - don't seem to need it, for some reason. Probably because we have factories, and so on, and everyone's kept busy, don't you know? I don't doubt all you say is true - but it suits us, you see. And our moujiks are, well, different from yours." I wondered, even as I said it, if they were; remembering that hospital at Yalta, I doubted it. But I couldn't help adding: "Would your moujiks have ridden into the battery at Balaclava?"

At this he roared with laughter, and called me an evil English rascal, and clapped me on the back. We were mighty close, he and I, really, when I look back - but of course, he never really knew me.

So you see what kind of man he was, and what kind of a place it was. Most of the time, I liked it - it was a fine easy life until, as I say, you got an unpleasant reminder of what an alien, brooding hostile land it was. It was frightening, then, and I had to struggle to make myself remember that England and London and Elspeth still existed, that far away to the south Cardigan was still croaking "Haw-haw" and Raglan was fussing in the mud at Sevastopol. I would look out of my window sometimes, at the snow-frosted garden, and beyond it the vast, white, endless plain, streaked only by the dark field-borders, and it seemed the old world was just a dream. It was easy then, to get the Russian melancholy, which sinks into the bones, and is born of a knowledge of helplessness far from home.

The thing that bored me most, needless to say, was being without a woman. I tried my hand with Valla, when we got to know each other and I had decided she wasn't liable to run squealing to her father. By George, she didn't need to. I gave her bottom a squeeze, and she laughed at me and told me she was a respectable married woman; taking this as an invitation I embraced her, at which she wriggled and giggled, puss-like, and then hit me an atrocious clout in the groin with her clenched fist, and ran off, laughing. I walked with a crouch for days, and decided that these Russian ladies must be treated with respect.

East felt the boredom of captivity in that white wilderness more than I, and spent long hours in his room, writing. One day when he was out I had a turn through his papers, and discovered he was writing his impressions, in the form of an endless letter to his odious friend Brown, who was apparently farming in New Zealand. There was some stuff about me in it, which I read with interest: "... I don't know what to think of Flashman. He is very well liked by all in the house, the Count especially, and I fear that little Valla admires him, too - it would be hard not to, I suppose, for he is such a big, handsome fellow. (Good for you, Scud; carry on.) I say I fear - because sometimes I see him looking at her, with such an ardent expression, and I remember the kind of brute he was at Rugby, and my heart sinks for her fair innocence. Oh, I trust I am wrong! I tell myself that he has changed - how else did the mean, cowardly, spiteful, bullying toady (steady, now, young East) become the truly brave and valiant soldier that he now undoubtedly is? But I do fear, just the same; I know he does not pray, and that he swears, and has evil thoughts, and that the cruel side of his nature is still there. Oh, my poor little Valla - but there, old fellow, I mustn't let my dark suspicions run away with me. I must think well of him, and trust that my prayers will help to keep him true, and that he will prove, despite my doubts, to be an upright, Christian gentleman at last."

You know, the advantage to being a wicked b.a.s.t.a.r.d is that everyone pesters the Lord on your behalf; if volume of prayers from my saintly enemies means anything, I'll be saved when the Archbishop of Canterbury is d.a.m.ned. It's a comforting thought.

So time pa.s.sed, and Christmas came and went, and I was slipping into a long, bored tranquil snooze as the months went by. And I was getting soft, and thoroughly off guard, and all the time h.e.l.l was preparing to break loose.

It was shortly before "the old wives' winter", as the Russians call February, that Valla's husband came home for a week's furlough. He was an amiable, studious little chap, who got on well with East, but the Count plainly didn't like him, and once he had given us the news from Sevastopol - which was that the siege was still going on, and getting nowhere, which didn't surprise me - old Pencherjevsky just ignored him, and retired moodily to his study and took to drink. He had me in to help him, too, and I caught him giving me odd, thoughtful looks, which was disconcerting, and growling to himself before topping up another b.u.mper of brandy, and drinking sneering toasts to "the blessed happy couple", as he called them.

Then, exactly a week after Valla's husband had gone back - with no very fond leave-taking from his little spouse, it seemed to me - I was sitting yawning in the salon over a Russian novel, when Aunt Sara came in, and asked if I was bored. I was mildly surprised, for she seldom said much, or addressed one directly. She looked me up and down, with no expression on that fine horse face, and then said abruptly: "What you need is a Russian steam-bath. It is the sovereign remedy against our long winters. I have told the servants to make it ready. Come."

I was idle enough to be game for anything, so I put on my tulup,*(*Sheepskin coat.) and followed her to one of the farthest outbuildings, beyond the house enclosure; it was snowing like h.e.l.l, but a party of the servants had a great fire going under a huge grille out in the snow, and Aunt Sara took me inside to show me how the thing worked. It was a big log structure, divided down the middle by a high part.i.tion, and in the half where we stood was a raised wooden slab, like a butcher's block, surrounded by a trench in the floor. Presently the serfs came in, carrying on metal stretchers great glowing stones which they laid in the trench; the heat was terrific, and Aunt Sara explained to me that you lay on the slab, naked, while the minions outside poured cold water through openings at the base of the wall, which exploded into steam when it touched the stones.

"This side is for men-folk," says she. "Women are through there" - and she pointed to a gap in the part.i.tion. "Your clothes go in the sealed closet on the wall, and when you are ready you lie motionless on the slab, and allow the steam to envelop you." She gave me her bored stare. "The door is bolted from within." And off she went, to the other side of the part.i.tion.

Well, it was something new, so I undressed. and lay on the slab, Aunt Sara called out presently from beyond the part.i.tion, and the water came in like Niagara. It hissed and splashed on the stones, and in a twinkling the place was like London fog, choking, scalding, and blotting you in, and you lay there gasping while it sweated into you, turning you scarlet. It was h.e.l.lish hot and clammy, but not unpleasant, and I lay soaking in it; by and by they pumped in more water, the steam gushed up again, and I was turning over drowsily on my face when Aunt Sara's voice spoke unexpectedly at my elbow.

"Lie still," says she, and peering -through the mist, I saw that she was wrapped in a clinging sheet, with her long, dark hair hanging in wet strands on either side of that strong, impa.s.sive face. I suddenly choked with what East would have called dark thoughts; she was carrying a bunch of long birch twigs, and as she laid a hot, wet hand on my shoulder she muttered huskily: "This is the true benefit of the baths; do not move."

And then, in that steam-heat, she began to birch me, very lightly at first, up the backs of my legs and to my shoulders, and then back again, harder and harder all the time, until I began to yelp. More steam came belching up, and she turned me over and began work on my chest and stomach. I was fairly interested by now, for mildly painful though it was, it was distinctly stimulating.

"Now, for me," says she, and motioned me to get up and take the birches. "Russian ladies often use nettles," says she, and for once her voice was unsteady. "I prefer the birch - it is stronger." And in a twinkling she was out of her sheet and face down on the slab. I was having a good gloat down at that long, strong, naked body, when the d.a.m.ned serfs blotted everything out with steam again, so I lashed away through the murk, belabouring her vigorously; she began to moan and gasp, and I went at it like a man possessed, laying on so that the twigs snapped, and as the steam cleared again she rolled over on her back, mouth open and eyes staring, and reached out to seize hold of me, pumping away at me and gasping: "Now! Now! For me! Pajalsta! I must have! Now! Pajalsta!"

Now, I can recognize a saucy little flirt when I see one, so I gave her a few last thrashes and leaped aboard, nearly bursting. G.o.d, it must have been months - so in my perversity, I had to tease her, until she dragged me down, sobbing and scratching at my back, and we whaled away on that wet slab, with the steam thundering round us, and she writhed and grappled fit to dislocate herself, until I began to fear we would slither off on to the hot stones. And when I lay there, utterly done, she slipped away and doused me with a bucket of cold water - what with one thing and another, I wonder I survived that bath.

Mind you, I felt better for it; barbarians they may be, but the Russians have some excellent inst.i.tutions, and I remain grateful to Sara - undoubtedly my favourite aunt.

I supposed, in my vanity, that she had just proposed our steam-bath romp to help pa.s.s the winter, but there was another reason, as I discovered the following day. It was a bizarre, unbelievable thing, really, to people like you and me, but in feudal Russia - well, I shall tell you.

It was after the noon meal that Pencherjevsky invited me to go riding with him. This wasn't unusual, but his manner was; he was curt and silent as we rode - if it had been anyone but this hulking tyrant, I'd have said he was nervous. We rode some distance from the house, and were pacing our beasts through the silent snow-fields, when he suddenly began to talk - about the Cossacks, of all things. He rambled most oddly at first, about how they rode with bent knees, like jockeys ( which I'd noticed anyway), and how you could tell a Ural Cossack from the Black Sea variety because one wore a sheepskin cap and the other the long string-haired bonnet. And how the flower of the flock were his own people, the Zaporozhiyan Cossacks, or Kubans, who had been moved east to new lands near Azov by the Empress generations ago, but he, Pencherjevsky, had come back to the old stamping-ground, and here he would stay, by G.o.d, and his family after him forever.

"The old days are gone," says he, and I see him so clearly still, that huge bulk in his sheepskin tulup, hunched in his saddle, glowerin with moody, unseeing eyes across the white wilderness, with the blood-red disc of the winter sun behind him. "The day of the great Cossack, when we thumbed our noses at T'sar and Sultan alike, and carried our lives and liberty on our lance-points. We owed loyalty to none but our comrades and the hetman we elected to lead us - I was such a one. Now it is a new Russia, and instead of the hetman we have rulers from Moscow to govern the tribe. So be it. I make my place here, in my forefathers' land, I have my good estate, my moujiks, my land - the inheritance for the son I never sired." He looked at me. "I would have had one- 1_ Ake you, a tall lancer fit to ride at the head of his own sotnia*(*Company, band.) You have a son, eh? A st.u.r.dy fellow? Good. I could it were not so - that you had no wife in England, no son, nothing to bind you or call you home. I would say to you then: 'Stay with us here.

Be as a son to me. Be a Husband to my daughter, and get yourself a son, and me and a grandson, who will follow after us, and hold our land here, in this new Russia, this empire born of storm, where only a man who is a man can hope to plant himself and his seed and endure.' That is what I would say."

Well, it was flattering, no question, although I might have pointed out to him that Valla had a husband already, and even if I'd been free and willing ..-. but it occurred to me that he probably Wasn't the man to let a little thing like that stand in the way. Morrison may not have been much of a father-in-law , but this chap would have been less comfortable still.

"As it is," he growled on, "I have a son-in-law - you saw what kind o f a thing he is. G.o.d knows how any daughter of mine could . . . but there. I have doted on her, and indulged her, for her dear mother's sake - aye, and because I lovesher. And if he was the last man I would have chosen forc her - well, she cared for him, and I thought, their sons will have my blood, they may be Cossacks, horse-and-lance men, grandchildren to be proud of. But I have no grandsons - he gets me none!"

And he growled and spat and then swung round to face me. For a moment he wrestled with his tongue, and couldn't speak, and then it came out in a torrent.

"There must be a man to follow me here! I am too old now, there are no children left in me, or I would marry again. Valla, my lovely child, is my one hope - but she is tied to this . . . this empty thing, and I see her going childless to her grave. Unless ..." He was gnawing at his lip, and his face was terrific. "Unless ... she can bear me a grandson. It is all I have to live for! To see a Pencherjevsky who will take up this inheritance when I am gone - be his father who he will, so long as he is a man! It cannot be her husband, so . . If it is an offence against G.o.d, against the Church, against the law - I am a Cossack, and we were here before G.o.d or the Church or the law! I do not care! I will see a male grandchild of mine to carry my line, my name, my land - and if I burn in h.e.l.l for it, I shall count it worth the cost! At least a Pencherjevsky shall rule here - what I have built will not be squandered piecemeal among the rabble of that fellow's knock-kneed relatives! A man shall get my Valla a son!"

I'm not slow on the uptake, even with a bearded baboon nearly seven feet tall roaring at my face from a few inches away, and what I understood from this extraordinary out-burst simply took my breath away. I'm all for family, you understand, but I doubt if I have the dynastic instinct as strong as all that.

"You are such a man," says he, and suddenly he edged his horse even closer, and crushed my arm in his enormous paw. "You can get sons - you have done so," he croaked, his livid face beside mine. "You have a child in England - and Sara has proved you also. When the war is over, you will leave here, and go to England, far away. No one will ever know - but you and I!"

I found my voice, and said something about Valla.

"She is my daughter," says he, and his voice rasped like an iron file. "She knows what this means to the house of Pencherjevsky. She obeys." And for the first time he smiled, a dreadful, crooked grin through his beard. "From what Sara tells me, she may be happy to obey. As for you, it will be no hardship. And" - he took me by the shoulder, rocking me in the saddle - "it may be worth much or little, but hereafter you may call Pencherjevsky from the other side of h.e.l.l, and he will come to your side!"

If it was an extraordinary proposition, I won't pretend it was unwelcome. Spooky, of course, but immensely flattering, after all. And you only had to imagine, for a split second, what Pencherjevsky's reaction would have been to a polite refusal - I say no more.

"It will be a boy," says he, "I know it. And if by chance it is a girl - then she shall have a man for a husband, if I have to rake the world for him!"