The Golden Sabre

The Gorshkov estate covered fifteen thousand acres. It had been founded originally by a Prince Gorshkov who had been one of Catherine the Great’s lovers; he had lasted three months and had been known as the Wednesday Man, that being his day to perform. Arriving one Wednesday and finding he was in a queue, he had decided his time was up and left St Petersburg, exiling himself before Catherine disposed of him more permanently. He had come east, established himself and died here on the estate, leaving a wife, a son and two daughters. Following generations had built up the estate and in 1860, in the reign of Alexander II, they had moved back to St Petersburg and built themselves a small mansion just off the Nevsky Prospekt. The young princes had been educated in the Cadet Corps; the princesses went to the Smolny Institute. Though their names were never entered in the livre de Velours, they were close enough to flutter like loose addenda to that almanac of nobility. Princess Gorshkov, the children’s mother, whose family had been in the Livre de Velours, had impressed all this on Eden when she had first arrived in St Petersburg. Eden, who had not even met the Mayor of Croydon, had been suitably impressed at the time, though her awe had since worn off.

Far out on the rear boundary of the estate Eden knew the farm workers would be bringing in the harvest; tomorrow the traction engine in the threshing yard would be started up and today’s somnolent peace would be gone. This would be the first harvest since Prince Gorshkov had gone off to fight with General Denikin’s army. She wondered if the workers would demand it as their own property. No one knew these days what the workers were going to demand next.

As she got down from the carriage Nikolai Yurganov came across from the stables and took the horses’ heads. ‘Miss Eden—’

She turned back as she was about to follow the children into the house. ‘What is it, Nikolai?’

‘There’s a man in the big bam – I think you should see him—’

‘A man? What sort of man?’

‘A foreigner, Miss Eden. He has a motor car—’ Nikolai Petrovitch Yurganov was a young man convinced already that he would not last to be old. He was a Cossack from the Don who had come east to avoid the fighting and carousing that had been his family’s main pursuits. He had pale brown hair, already starting to thin, a long bony face, a body to match it and a soft girlish voice. He had a pathological fear of horses and one small glass of vodka stunned him like a blow with a rifle-butt. At his birth he had set the Cossack tradition back a millennium. ‘He drove in here a while ago. His tyres are punctured—’

Eden stood irresolute. In the nine months since Prince and Princess Gorshkov had gone off to Georgia she had had no major problems to face; the war was a long way from here and even General Bronevich’s soldiers had not come out of town to worry her and the children. Once she had been myopic to consequences, the essential talent for any sense of adventure; she would, if she lasted long enough, stand gasping with admiration for the sunrise on Judgement Day. But today’s letter from Princess Gorshkov had brought a sense of foreboding.

‘Can’t you get rid of him?’

Nikolai shook his head. ‘He won’t take any notice of me, Miss Eden – no one ever does—’

‘Oh damn!’ she said under her breath and, carrying her parasol, stalked across to the main barn and into its cool dim interior. She saw the strange truck at the rear of the barn, next to Prince Gorshkov’s car under its big canvas cover; then she saw the man in a blue shirt, bib-and-tucker overalls and a flat-crowned cowboy’s hat sitting on the running-board of the truck. ‘What are – Oh, it’s you!’

‘Well, well, if it isn’t the old handbag whirler—’ Cabell felt his bruised ear. ‘I’d like you beside me some time in a bar-room brawl.’

‘Just the sort of place where I spend most of my time.’ Why am I sounding so tart? She should be welcoming this man, whoever he was; he was the first non-Russian she had spoken to in over two years, ever since the Gorshkovs had fled St Petersburg for this estate. ‘I’m sorry, Mr–?’

‘Cabell.’

‘What are you doing here?’

Somehow he had suggested to her that he would be garrulous, as long-winded as Trotsky, whom she had once heard speak; instead, in what seemed to her no more than half a dozen sentences, he told her who he was and how he had arrived here in the Gorshkov barn. But even his brevity landed like a weight on her.

‘You can’t stay here! I have the children to think of—’

‘Miss Eden.’ Nikolai stood like a trembling shadow in the doorway of the barn. ‘There are horsemen coming up the avenue!’

‘Oh Jesus,’ said Cabell. ‘I better be going—’

‘Going where?’

‘I’ll try and make it out there to the wheat-fields. Maybe I can hide—’

‘Stay where you are.’ Even as her decision was forming in her mind she wondered why she was making it. Was it just because the man spoke English? Did her charity lie only in her ear? She could not imagine herself being so impulsive about helping a Russian. ‘Put the horses away, Nikolai. And keep your mouth shut – you know nothing, you understand?’

She went out again into the glare, opening her blue parasol and raising it against the golden brightness. As the half-dozen horsemen galloped into the broad area in front of the house, Frederick and Olga came running out of the front door. ‘What’s going on? Why the soldiers? Are we being attacked?’

‘Be quiet,’ Eden said, and looked up at the sergeant leaning down at her from his horse. She recognized the men for Siberian Cossacks, the worst of all Cossacks. They wore their karakul hats, dirty grey uniforms and expressions that made her quail inwardly; sabres hung in scabbards from their saddles and all of them had rifles. The horses, crowding in around her, looked as wild as the men. ‘To what do we owe this honour?’

The sergeant peered and leered at her, split between appreciating this rich plum of a girl and wondering what she was doing here. A Turkic-speaking gentleman, he also only vaguely understood what she had said to him in Russian. He straightened up and nodded to one of his younger soldiers.

‘Question her.’

The young soldier pressed his horse forward, likewise leered down at Eden. She felt she was being visually molested as the horsemen crowded round her; Nikolai had warned her what might happen if these Tartars took it into their heads to come out from Verkburg and pillage the estate. Now here they were and if they found the man they were looking for, God help him. And, what was worse, God help her and the children.

‘I am in charge here—’ said Frederick.

Eden hit him with her handbag and the soldiers laughed and cheered. Frederick drew himself up and almost got another whack with the handbag. ‘Shut up, Freddie. What can we do for you, corporal?’

‘We are looking for an American in a motor car—’

‘That must have been he who passed us and covered us in dust,’ said Olga.

‘Children should be seen and not heard,’ said Eden, trembling inside, seeing two of the soldiers now leering at Olga. ‘Of course it was he, who else could it have been?’ She looked up at the young corporal. ‘He was travelling north at a great speed, out there on the Ekaterinburg road. He went by us in a cloud of dust and disappeared up the road.’

The corporal conveyed this information to the sergeant, who peered and leered again at Eden. She and the children were still tightly encircled by the horsemen. She felt more threatened now than ever before in her life; somehow she felt more endangered now than in the Revolution riots two years ago in St Petersburg; even the flight from that city had not had any close moments of danger. These Tartars, savages on horseback, could do what they wanted with her and the children and there would be no one to stop them. The estate workers were too far away, the house servants were probably already cowering in the cellars; Nikolai, she knew, was a reliable coward and the American, who had brought these men here, was an unknown quantity. She felt suddenly overcome by fear and the heat and was ready to collapse. She would be unconscious when she was raped for the first time, which was probably the best way to be.

The sergeant straightened up, snapped something to his men in his own tongue and all six of them suddenly whirled their horses about and went galloping off down the avenue, disappearing like evaporating ghosts into the shadows of the poplars. Eden, halfway to fainting, came back to full consciousness.

‘Just as well they decided to go,’ said Frederick. ‘I’d have shot them with Father’s gun.’

‘Just what we need,’ Eden said to Olga. ‘A stupid twelve-year-old hero. We’d have all been dead before you could have loaded the gun.’

‘It’s already loaded,’ said Frederick. ‘I’ve had it loaded for weeks, just in case.’

‘I had mine ready, also just in case.’ Cabell came out of the barn carrying a Winchester rifle. ‘Those bastards looked—’

‘Mr Cabell, could you please moderate your language?’

Cabell took off his hat and inclined his head. ‘Sorry. I’ve been talking to myself for so long, I keep forgetting … Thanks, Miss Eden. You could have given me up to those guys, you know. I wouldn’t have blamed you.’

‘Never!’ Frederick was a one-boy defender against the invaders. ‘Those men are barbarians!’

‘Do be quiet, Freddie,’ said Eden. ‘Mr Cabell, where were you intending to go?’

‘I was heading for Ekaterinburg. But I’m not going to make it now – when I blew my tyres I bugg – messed up the wheels. I’ll have to go on foot, unless I can buy a horse from you.’

‘We shall sell you a horse,’ said Frederick. ‘We have dozens – Ouch!’

Eden hit him with her handbag, but did not give him a glance.

‘Mr Cabell, if you go by horse you will have to travel at night. They will be watching for you all the way to Ekaterinburg. As soon as those men get back to Verkburg they will send a message through on the telegraph to all the villages and towns between here and Ekaterinburg. These White armies do fight amongst themselves, but they also co-operate with each other sometimes. We’ll give you a horse and you can leave after dark.’

‘Miss Eden, you are a peach. And very resourceful, if I may say so.’

Eden blushed under the compliment and Olga said, ‘I love to hear a man compliment a woman. It is the way things should be.’

Cabell raised an eyebrow, then bowed. ‘At your service, Miss—’

‘Princess,’ said Olga. ‘Princess Olga Natasha Aglaida Gorshkov.’

‘I am Prince Frederick Mikhail Alexander Gorshkov,’ said Frederick, not to be out-ranked.

‘And I am plain Miss Eden Penfold.’

‘Not plain,’ said Cabell, smiling. ‘And I’m delighted to meet a fellow proletarian. As for you two aristocrats, buzz off while I talk to Miss Penfold.’

‘We stay,’ said the two aristocrats. ‘This is our house—’

Eden raised her handbag again, but Frederick and Olga moved back out of range. Cabell looked at the two children, then shrugged. ‘Okay. Are there any servants here besides that guy Nikolai?’

‘There are four in the house, but they can be trusted,’ said Eden. ‘It is the workers out in the fields I’m not sure about.’

‘One of them is a Bolshevik,’ said Frederick. ‘That fellow Vlasov. He spits in the dust every time I pass him.’

‘So should I if I were not a lady. That doesn’t make me a Bolshevik. But Freddie is right – there are some out there who are not to be trusted. Nikolai has told me of some of the talk that has been going on lately.’

Nikolai had come across from the stables and stood just behind the two children. He did not understand the conversation in English, but he looked as worried as the others. He kept glancing down the avenue, waiting for the Tartars to come thundering back and kill them all.

‘The car under that cover in the barn,’ said Cabell. ‘Does it go?’

‘It hasn’t been driven since Prince Gorshkov went off to the war last December,’ said Eden.

‘What sort is it?’

‘A Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost,’ said Frederick. ‘There are only nine Rolls-Royces in the whole of Russia and the Tsar had two of those. But Father’s is the fastest of them all.’

‘A Rolls-Royce, eh? Then that means I couldn’t borrow it or buy it?’

‘Exactly,’ said Eden firmly. ‘You will take the horse and leave tonight.’

Cabell smiled. He was not much taller than Eden, just medium height, and though he had wide shoulders there was not much beef on him. Had the managers been able to sweet-talk him back in the days of his youth he would now be a middleweight, maybe fighting the likes of Mike O’Dowd and Harry Greb; whomever he fought, the situation would be less dangerous than this. He had black hair and a black moustache and sun-darkened skin that accentuated the white exclamation of his smile. His movements were a physical illustration of his personality, quicksilver in a tube that occasionally spilled its cork. Eden liked what she saw.

‘I won’t embarrass or endanger you, Miss Penfold. I’ll be out of here tonight. In the meantime I better start covering up my truck some way, in case those soldiers come back.’

‘Afternoon tea will be at four. I’ll send one of the servants for you.’

Eden had recovered her poise. She was perhaps a little stiff and starched, but that, Cabell guessed, went with being a governess. Under her straw hat he could see blonde hair drawn back in a bun; the style was severe but it showed her long graceful neck. She had dark blue eyes with heavy lids that made it hard for her to turn a glance into a stern stare; she had a slightly indolent look about her that was deceiving, an odalisque who cracked a whip; had Croydon had harems she might never have left England. Her figure was the sort that promised much even under the high-necked shirt and long brown skirt she wore; it was an unspoken and, to her, unrealized invitation to carnal thoughts in men. Cabell, who could have carnal thoughts with the best of them, shrugged philosophically. This was no time for getting randy.

‘Come on, children, time for your music lesson.’

‘I think I shall stay with Mr Cabell,’ said Frederick; then backed off as Eden raised her handbag. ‘Don’t you dare do that again! When we have won the war I’ll see that you go to jail with all the other Bolsheviks—’

‘Inside!’ snapped Eden, and after a moment’s further rebellion Frederick followed his sister into the house. ‘Forgive him, Mr Cabell. He’s not really a bad child. He just thinks, with his father away, that he has to be master of the house.’

‘Where are their parents?’

‘Princess Gorshkov is down in Tiflis, in Georgia, and Prince Gorshkov is somewhere with General Denikin’s army. I have no idea when they will be back,’ she added worriedly. ‘Princess Gorshkov wants us to join them in Tiflis. But how does one get from here to there, a thousand miles away?’

‘A good question,’ said Cabell; but he had his own problems.

‘I’ll be ready for tea when you call me. And thanks again, Eden.’

No man had called her plain Eden since Lieutenant Dulenko had called her that and my darling five years ago; not even Prince Gorshkov departed from the formal Miss Eden when he addressed her. But Igor Dulenko was long since dead and the love she had felt for him had withered away. It was strange that a strange man, using her given name so casually, should have reminded her of Igor and what she had once felt for him. For a moment she felt unutterably sad and she turned away from Cabell and went into the house without a word.

Cabell looked after her curiously, then he went back to the barn with Nikolai and began to think of ways of hiding the Chevrolet.

[3]

Cabell had been in the barn half an hour, had, with the willing help of Nikolai, pushed the Chevrolet right to the back of the barn and hidden it from casual sight behind stacked bales of hay. He had taken off his shirt from under his overalls and his skin, covered in dust, was streaked with a dark wash of sweat. He leaned against the shrouded Rolls-Royce and took the pannikin of water Nikolai brought him.

‘How is the war going, Nikolai? Are the Whites or the Reds winning?’

‘I don’t know, sir. We hear nothing down here. We have enough to worry about with that General Bronevich and his savages. As soon as the weather gets cooler they’ll start riding out this far and then we’ll—’ He did not finish the sentence, but shuddered.

‘Have you worked for the Gorshkovs a long time?’

‘Only three years. I am a Cossack from a little village on the Don.’

‘Then you’d be a good man to defend Miss Penfold and the kids.’

‘I doubt it, sir. My father used to say a fart would knock me down. He was a very vulgar man, vulgar and violent. He had seven sons, I was the youngest, and he said his spunk had run out by the time he got to me. When he was drunk he used to wail that he was the only Cossack along the whole Don River who had a fairy at the bottom of his garden. That was where he used to make me sleep, in the woodshed.’

‘Well—’ said Cabell; but was left with nothing else to say.

‘Well—’

Then they heard the sound of a car coming up the avenue. Nikolai raced to the doorway. ‘It’s General Bronevich and his soldiers!’

Cabell grabbed his shirt, hat and rifle and scrambled up the ladder to the loft of the barn. He heard the car grind to a halt, its engine whistling for a moment, then wheezing into silence; then he heard the jingling of stirrups and the murmurs of men as they steadied their horses. He crept across the loft and peered out through a crack in the timber walls.

The car’s driver had jumped down and opened the door. General Bronevich got out, followed by Pemenov. The sergeant and the horsemen who had been here earlier had returned, but they had not dismounted and remained in the background as the General went up the steps of the house and banged loudly on the front door.

Inside the house the servants, ears alert as yet-undiscovered radar, had once again fled to the cellars. Eden waved the children back up the stairs in the main hall and went fearfully to the front door and opened it. General Bronevich almost fell back down the steps in surprise.

He had been expecting some servant, as dumpy as himself, to open the door. Instead here was this pretty girl with hair the colour of Siberian buckwheat honey, a bosom that reminded him of the lower foothills of the Yablonois, and a body perfume composed of rosewater, starch and fear. He turned to Pemenov on the steps below him and said, ‘Come back for me in an hour. I shall interrogate this girl myself.’

‘Will it be safe, General?’

‘For me or for her?’ Bronevich’s smile was as obscene as an open fly, except that it was golden.

‘Yes, General. What about the men?’

‘Tell them to wait down by the front gates. I do not wish to be disturbed in my interrogation. You may take the motor car. Go for a drive and run over some peasants.’ He laughed loudly this time; he was suddenly in both high good humour and high tumescence. The afternoon was going to be better than he had expected, he had already forgotten why he had come here. ‘Get lost, as they say back in Skovodorino.’

Pemenov smiled, saluted, went down the steps, gave an order to the horsemen, climbed into the car and was driven off, followed by the six mounted soldiers. Eden watched all this, puzzled and still fearful, holding on to the front door for support while her legs seemed to get thinner and more brittle, so that she felt if she moved they would snap like dry twigs beneath her. She swallowed, trying to moisten her dry throat, while the palms of her hands felt as if they were holding a pint of water each.

General Bronevich gave her his bullion smile: gold gleamed in his mouth like a newly-opened reef. ‘I am General Bronevich,’ he said in Russian. ‘I am here to service you.’

Oh my God, Eden thought, does he really mean what he’s just said? She swallowed again, forced some words out of her arid throat: ‘What can I do for you, General? Your men have already been here—’

‘I am coming in,’ said the General and pushed past her and kicked the door shut behind him. He looked up and saw Frederick and Olga leaning over the balustrade at the top of the stairs. He hated kids, especially the kids of these nambypamby Russian aristocrats. He bellowed ‘Back to your room! I don’t want to see you again! Go!’

At the top of the stairs Frederick drew himself up; but Eden got in first: ‘Freddie, Olga – do as the General tells you! Go on, go back to your rooms – at once!’ Then she added, her voice thinning with the fear that was taking her over completely: ‘Please.’

Frederick hesitated, then abruptly he grabbed his sister and the two of them disappeared from the top of the stairs. General Bronevich winked approvingly. ‘You know how to handle children – good, good. Sometimes I think they should all be strangled at birth. But then we shouldn’t be here enjoying each other, eh?’ The gold came out again, carats of good humour. ‘Well, let’s see where we’ll have our little interrogation. Are there any bedrooms downstairs?’

‘No, General.’Should I scream for help? ‘Let us go into the drawing-room.’

The General, disappointed that he might have to take second best in the way of a comfortable rape, followed Eden into the drawing-room and shut the double-doors behind him.

It was a long, high-ceilinged room with a parquet floor on which rugs were scattered. A big blue-patterned ceramic stove stood in one corner; there was also a marble-surrounded fireplace in which logs were already stacked as if winter might strike at any moment. The furniture, painted white with gold trim, was solid rather than elegant; but the white grand piano in one corner stood on graceful carved legs and apologized for the heaviness of some of the other furniture. When the Gorshkovs had fled St Petersburg they had brought no furniture, but they had come heavily laden with ornaments. The rugs on the floor were Bokhara’s best, brought from the house in St Petersburg; a Corot and a Watteau, bought by Princess Gorshkov on one of her visits to Paris, hung on the walls; several minor pieces by Fabergé decorated the mantelpiece. But Bronevich, a man with a crude eye, saw none of these better adornments.

He walked to the piano, opened up the keyboard lid and struck the keys with hammer fingers. He nodded admiringly at the discord he had created, then looked around him. He saw the long couch facing the open french windows and the view of the wheatfields beyond. It was not as good as a bed, but it would do. He put his belt and holstered pistol on a side table and took off his jacket.

Eden, not quite believing this was happening, said, ‘General, what are you going to do?’

‘You,’ said the General and exposed his member, which, slant-eyed and bald-headed, looked as Mongolian as the rest of him.

Out in the barn Cabell, having seen Pemenov in the car and the six soldiers on their horses go off down the avenue, was wondering what was happening in the house. Down below him Nikolai had come back into the barn and was wandering up and down in a frenzy of fear and worry.

Cabell called down to him. ‘Go across and see what’s happening.’

Nikolai’s upturned face showed eyes as white as a terrified horse’s. ‘He will kill me—’

Then there was a scream from the house. Cabell, clutching his rifle, tumbled down the ladder, went racing out of the barn and across towards the open french windows. He leapt up the steps and plunged into the drawing-room as General Bronevich tried to plunge into the wildly evasive Eden.

Cabell shouted and the General, letting go his trousers, spun round and grabbed for his pistol on the table beside the couch. His trousers fell down round his ankles, he stumbled and fell forward on his knees and Cabell hit him hard behind the ear with the stock of the rifle. The General gave a grunt and went down on his face, twitched and lay still. Cabell kicked him over on his back, saw the General’s erection and modestly kicked him over on his face again.