The Golden Sabre

Eden sat up on the couch, gasping for breath as she pulled her skirt down over her exposed legs. Her hair had tumbled down from its pins and hung wildly about the torn shoulders of her shirt; she looked nothing like the starched governess Cabell had talked to out in the barn. She glanced down at General Bronevich and saw the huge lump behind his ear from which blood was welling in a dark bubble.

‘Oh my God! Is he–?’

For the first time Cabell realized what he might have done. He dropped down on one knee and felt the General’s pulse. Then he rolled the Tartar over on his back, grabbed a rug and threw it over the now limp weapon that had threatened Eden, and bent his ear to the General’s broad fat chest. Then he straightened up, wondering if today wasn’t someone else’s nightmare that he had wandered into.

‘He’s dead!’

Then the door burst open and Frederick, a double-barrelled shotgun held at the ready, stood there with a wide-eyed, terribly frightened Olga at his shoulder. The two children looked down at the dead General, then Olga pushed past her brother and ran into Eden’s arms. Eden tried to comfort her while trying to pull herself together. Too much had happened in the last five minutes, she had been raped emotionally if not physically.

Cabell crossed to Frederick and took the gun from him. The boy stared at him, but there was no dispute. He would have fired the gun if there had been need for it; he was prepared to kill but he was not prepared for death. He had seen dead men before, the bodies of soldiers glimpsed lying beside the railway tracks as they had fled from St Petersburg, but he had never seen death up close. It was even more horrifying to have it here in the house with them.

‘We’ve got to get away,’ said Cabell. ‘When will that dwarf in the car be back? Eden, I’m talking to you!’

Eden’s senses, which seemed to have left her, started to work again. ‘The dwarf? Oh – he told him to come back in an hour. But—’

‘No buts. We’re getting out of here. You, me and the kids.’

Frederick drew a deep breath, took his eyes off the corpse on the floor and tried again to be the man he thought he was. ‘How? You said your motor car won’t work—’

‘We could go on horseback,’ said Eden. ‘But not to Ekaterinburg—’

‘There’s a British consul there – you’d be okay—’

‘But not the children—’ Her mind was in gear again. ‘The local commander in Ekaterinburg would not let the children go—’

‘Then we better head somewhere else. Does that Rolls-Royce work?’

‘Of course,’ said Frederick. ‘Every week I run the engine – Father asked me to do that. But we’d have to put the wheels on. Father took them off and put them in one of the big wine vats with french chalk on them, to stop the tyres from perishing,’ he said.

‘Okay, you come with me. Eden, you and Olga pack a bag. You better tell the servants to get the hell out of here – they don’t want to be in the house when the dwarf and those soldiers come back and find him.’ He nodded down at the dead General, just a mound beneath the Bokhara rug. ‘Can you see the road from upstairs?’

‘Yes, from the main bedroom.’

‘Olga, you stay at the window and keep an eye on the road. Let me know in a hurry if those soldiers start coming up from the gates. Eden, when you’ve packed your bag, get some food and water together. But first, get rid of those servants. Come on, Freddie.’

Cabell had no idea where he would head once (if) he got the Rolls-Royce started. But going on foot or on horseback would be futile; it would be like galloping off on a treadmill that would gradually grind to a halt beneath them. General Bronevich had probably been on the telegraph line to Ekaterinburg before he had left Verkburg; patrols would be on the alert all the way up the main road. To head west would mean going up into the Urals, into mountains that would offer no refuge; to go east would take them into the semi-desert steppes where they might run into another Tarter ataman’s army. The only imperative need was to get away from here and trust to luck, that some road would open up to safety.

As he crossed the yard towards the barn the full impact of what he had just done hit him. He pulled up sharply, as if it were a physical blow; then he hurried on, trying to shut his mind against the killing of Bronevich. He had injured men in fights, been injured himself; he was no stranger to violence in the often violent world in which he worked. But he had never killed a man before. What worried him was that as he had swung the rifle butt at the Tartar he had meant to kill him, though he hadn’t expected it would happen. He had never even thought of killing any of the men he had fought; but those fights had been over private, personal differences, some trivial. He had never fought over a woman. But it struck him now that he had meant to kill Bronevich because of what the General had been trying to do to Eden. He went into the barn cursing his chivalry.

When he threw back the cover from the Rolls-Royce he was amazed at the condition of the car. Its royal blue paintwork and huge copper-domed headlamps gleamed; its leather upholstery was uncracked. It looked ready to be driven off at once, except that it had no wheels and was mounted on wooden horses.

‘Nikolai washes and polishes it every week,’ said Frederick. ‘It was Father’s pride and joy and he told Nikolai he expected it to be as good as new when he came home from the war.’

In the next half-hour Cabell came to admire and bless the absent Prince Gorshkov, who had such blind faith in the future that he wanted to ride into it in the same style as he had ridden out of the past. He had left instructions that would have done credit to Henry Royce himself; nothing had been overlooked. The tyres, kept in french chalk, were in perfect condition. There were five of them with inner tubes, plus four others stuffed with sponge rubber balls. There were six four-gallon cans of petrol, a two-gallon can of Castrol oil and a box of spare parts. And there was a small single-shaft, two-wheeled wagon that could be attached to the back of the car.

When the car was ready to go, Cabell stood back. ‘Your father had some purpose for all this – he didn’t get all this ready for nothing. Did he ever tell you what he had in mind?’

Frederick shook his head; but Nikolai answered, ‘His Highness told me, sir. He said if ever the war was lost he was coming dack here and was going to drive the family to Vladivostok.’

‘Father would never have said such a thing,’ said Frederick. ‘He wouldn’t think that we could lose the war.’

Poor kid, Cabell thought. His Old Man protected him too well. The Russia of Rolls-Royces, even just nine of them, was gone forever. But Prince Gorshkov, wittingly or not, hadn’t bothered to tell his children. ‘We’re not going to try for Vladivostok,’ he said.

‘Where are we going then?’ said Frederick.

‘Christ knows. I’ll drive the goddam thing around in a circle and we’ll see what direction it comes out.’

Then Olga appeared at the doorway. ‘One of the soldiers is coming up the avenue!’

‘Where’s Miss Penfold?’

‘Here.’ Eden, dressed like Olga in a travelling suit, came into the barn carrying two large suitcases.

‘Where are the servants?’

‘They’ve all gone out to the fields. Quick – we must hurry!’

‘Is there any back road out of here?’

‘Yes – it goes down through the fields and out through the estate village.’

‘Goddam!’ Cabell went to the door, looked slantwise down through the poplars; the soldier, horse at a slow trot, was no more than a couple of hundred yards from the house. ‘If he sees us drive out of here he could cut across the fields and head us off. Nick!’

Nikolai was slow to respond; he was thick with fear. ‘Sir?’

‘Go out, see what he wants. Try and get him to come into the barn. Offer him a drink of vodka, wine, anything. But get him in here! Eden, get yourself and the kids out of sight. Come on, for crissakes move!’

Eden pushed the two children ahead of her towards the rear of the barn. Nikolai turned to follow them, but Cabell grabbed him and spun him round.

‘I told you – get out there and bring that soldier in here!’

‘I can’t, sir – I’m just jelly—’

‘You’ll be pulp if you don’t do what I tell you!’

‘You don’t have to do it, Nikolai,’ said Frederick gently. ‘I’ll go.’

He spun away from Eden and before she or Cabell could stop him he had run through the doorway and out into the yard. Cabell called to him in a low voice, but Frederick took no notice. Tears sprang into Nikolai’s eyes, ashamed that a boy had gone out to do what he had been afraid to; yet he still couldn’t move, stood there and wanted to die. Out in the yard Frederick stood with his back to the barn as the horseman came slowly out of the shadow-latticed avenue into the bright white dust of the yard.

‘Good afternoon.’ Frederick’s voice broke, ending on a high note; he cleared his throat and tried again. ‘Good afternoon, soldier. The General does not wish to be disturbed.’

The horseman was Pemenov. Thirsty, tired of driving around in the bone-shaking car, he had come back to the gates down on the road, where the six horsemen sprawled in the shade of the poplars. He had not wanted to drive up to the house in the car for fear its noise might disturb the General before the latter was finished whatever or whomever he was doing. He knew from experience how the General hated to be distracted while raping; it was one of his few sensibilities. The walk up the long avenue was too far for Pemenov’s short legs, especially on a day like this; so he had borrowed one of the horses. He had shortened the stirrup leathers and one of the soldiers had lifted him into the saddle; he knew that they laughed at him behind his back, but they would never laugh at him to his face while he was the General’s favourite. Now he sat above this arrogant aristocrat boy, his short legs sticking out on either side of the saddle, knowing he looked ridiculous and daring the boy to laugh. He would kill him if he did.

‘I want water,’ he said. ‘A drink.’

‘Water?’ Frederick was still having trouble with his voice. Cabell, listening to him, thought, The kid’s scared stiff. He looked angrily at Nikolai, but the anger died at once. Nikolai was still crying and behind the tears there was a look on his face that puzzled Cabell.

But Frederick was still managing to fool Pemenov: ‘Get down, soldier—’

‘Don’t keep calling me soldier. I am a major, Major Pemenov.’

This funny little man a major? But Frederick couldn’t laugh. ‘Major … Get down and come into the barn. There’s water there. And some of my father’s vodka, too.’

Pemenov nodded agreeably. ‘Vodka? That would be better.’ He smiled and Frederick gave a tentative smile in reply: they were like two children getting to know each other. ‘But with water, too.’

He slipped down from the saddle, landing with unexpected grace on his tiny feet. Leading the horse, he followed Frederick towards the open door of the barn. Frederick, for his part, suddenly realized he had no idea what Mr Cabell had in mind.

He faltered, stumbled, and the dwarf, still smiling innocently, as if eager to be a friend, reached forward and steadied him. Then they passed from the bright sunlight into the dimness of the barn.

Pemenov blinked, caught a glimpse of the gleaming big motor car, one he had never seen before, standing in the middle of the barn floor. He said, ‘It’s dark and cool in here.’

Then he saw the American coming at him. Cabell hit him with the starting handle of the Rolls-Royce and he went down into an even darker and cooler state. He dragged the horse’s head down with him as he fell face forward; it stumbled but kept its feet and finished up astride him, its hooves pawing nervously on either side of him. Cabell wrenched the reins free of the dwarf’s hand and threw them at Nikolai.

‘Tie the horse over there! Okay, everyone in the car!’

Eden pushed Olga up into the rear seat, dumped the suitcases in the trailer and clambered into the front passenger seat. Cabell dragged a tarpaulin over the loaded trailer, tied it down with rope. Frederick had already jumped up into the driver’s seat, closed the air tank switch and was pumping up pressure on the dashboard gauge. Cabell flooded the carburettor, then went round to the front of the car while Frederick set the mixture control to Strong, put the ignition control to Late and the governor control to Midway. Cabell gave the starting handle two complete turns, then Frederick switched on the engine.

‘Here we go,’ said Cabell. ‘Say your prayers!’

There was no need for prayers. Henry Royce’s engine started up at once, purred like some satisfied women Cabell had known. He ran round to get into the driver’s seat, but Frederick had one hand on the wheel and with the other was reaching to let off the hand-brake.

‘Out of there!’

‘I understand this car better than you! My father taught me how to drive it—’

‘Jesus, sonny, you’d turn the Virgin Mary into a Bolshevik! In the back, you hear!’ He stood on the running-board, reached down and Frederick, with a yell, went backwards over the seat and into the rear beside his sister. ‘You argue with me again and I’ll hit you with the goddam handle!’

He dropped into the driver’s seat, reached for the brake-handle and saw Nikolai standing in front of the car. ‘Sir—’

‘For crissake, Nick, get out of the goddam way!’

‘Sir, I want to come with you—’

‘There’s no room! You’ll be safer here – just disappear for a while—’

‘Let him come,’ said Eden. ‘We can’t leave him here. He’s a foreigner, even to the people on the estate – just like you and me—’

‘Oh Jesus,’ said Cabell. ‘Okay, in the back!’

He let in the gears and the Rolls-Royce glided out of the barn, the only noise that of the small trailer bouncing along behind it on its iron-shod wheels, did a wide turn and went down between the barn and the cow-sheds and out on to the narrow dirt road that led down through the tall yellow sea of wheat.

‘Okay, we’ve started. Now where the hell do we head for?’

‘Mr Cabell, would you mind moderating your language?’

‘I will when I know where the hell we’re going!’

‘I think we should head for Tiflis,’ said Eden.

‘Jesus wept,’ said Cabell and lifted his eyes skywards. The immensity of the sky seemed to reflect the distances that lay ahead of them. He had always had love affairs with horizons, but this was heading for the edge of the world. ‘Tiflis!’

[4]

Pemenov got slowly to his feet. His head, always too big for his body, felt even bigger and heavier. He looked around, saw the tyre-marks of the Rolls-Royce as it had gone out of the barn into the yard. He felt the back of his head and cursed softly; he would kill the American when they captured him. Then he remembered the General.

He ran out of the barn and across to the house. He hammered on the front door, but there was no response. He raced down the front steps, round the side of the house; he came to the long narrow terrace and the open french windows. He went in, still running, and pulled up so sharply he skidded on the parquet floor.

It took him only a moment to learn the General was dead. He knelt beside the corpse, pulled the trousers up and covered the limp instrument that had led the General to his death. Tears came into his eyes as he looked at his uncle’s ugly, brutal face. The General had laughed at him, made cruel jokes; but he had killed three men who had made the same jokes at Pemenov’s expense. Pemenov’s mother had killed herself when she realized what she had borne; his father, always a drunkard, had been killed in a drunken brawl when the cruelly named Peregrine had been only five years old. For the next twenty-five years Yuri Bronevich had cared for his unfortunate young cousin, treating him as a nephew. He had laughed at him, abused him, belted him, but he had protected Pemenov against what the rest of the world would have done to him.

Pemenov threw the rug back over the body. He took Bronevich’s pistol from where it had fallen, went out on to the terrace and fired two shots.

In less than a minute the horsemen came galloping up the avenue, followed by the General’s car with its driver and, beside him, the soldier whose horse Pemenov had borrowed. Pemenov, who had now slung Bronevich’s gunbelt across his chest like a bandolier, shouted orders for someone to look after the General’s body; then he clambered up into the car and snapped at the driver to follow the tyre-tracks that led out of the yard. The driver let in the gears and the car, an ancient Mercedes that had never been properly serviced, wheezed out of the yard and down the narrow road that led through the wheat-fields.

It had gone no more than half a mile when its engine coughed, spluttered and died. The driver, a hulking youth who had never ridden in a car till a year ago, looked helplessly at the little man beside him. ‘No petrol, Major. I forgot to fill the tank when the General rushed us out here—’

Pemenov’s first reaction was to hit the driver with Bronevich’s pistol. But some inner caution, always on the alert from past experience, held him back; his only protector was dead back there in the house. He sat there in the car, in the midst of the blinding yellow glare of the wheat-fields, and wanted to weep tears of rage and frustration. Then, looking back, he saw the horseman galloping at full pelt along the road after them. He stood up on the front seat and waited.

The soldier reined in his horse in a cloud of dust. ‘We found a motor truck in the barn – it is the American’s! The Englishwoman lied to us!’

Pemenov almost fell off his perch in a swoon of rage. First the American who had knocked him unconscious, then the Englishwoman who had tried to protect the American. The foreigners had to be driven out of Russia. Or killed … ‘Give me your horse!’

The soldier reared back with his horse. ‘Why should I? Who are you now–?’

Pemenov levelled the General’s pistol at the man: Bronevich, though dead, still lent him some protection. ‘Bring your horse here by the car! Give me the reins. Now get down!’

The soldier glared, but swung down from his horse and backed away. Pemenov stepped up on to the side of the car and vaulted into the saddle. He gestured to the driver. ‘Give me the General’s rifle and the bandolier and his binoculars!’

The driver, careful of the gun pointed at him, did as he was told. The rifle was a Mosin-Nagent, better than the ancient Krenk in the saddle scabbard. Pemenov took the Krenk from the scabbard, unloaded it and flung it into the wheat. He adjusted the stirrup leathers, then he was ready to leave.

‘Don’t follow me or I shall kill you. Give the General a decent burial.’

He dug in his heels and turned the horse south. He had no idea where he was heading, except to follow the tyre-tracks in the dust for as far as they might go. If he lost them, he would just keep riding south anyway, into the steppes and oblivion if that was the way it had to be. He could not stay here: his life would be hell. Better to head south, ride after the American, kill him. He owed it to the General who could no longer protect him.

Chapter Two

‘Tiflis is over a thousand miles from here, you know that?’ They had left the estate wheat-fields and were on a narrow country road, bowling along under the immense blue glare of the late-afternoon sky, a long trail of dust whirling out behind the Rolls-Royce and its bouncing trailer. ‘Where does this road lead?’

‘It goes round south of Verkburg, then up towards the mountains. No one will be looking for us south of Verkburg. That’s why I suggested we should head for Tiflis.’

‘Why not Cairo or Capetown? Goddam women! You put ’em in an automobile and they lose all sense of distance, they think they’re on some goddam magic carpet!’

‘Watch it!’

‘Put down your handbag! I’m not going to apologize – you’re enough to make Jesus Christ Himself swear!’

‘I wish you wouldn’t keep bringing the Holy Family into your conversation. The children are good Orthodox Christians. So am I. Well, not Orthodox – Church of England.’

‘I’m an orthodox lapsed Catholic. I’m not driving this thing all the way to Tiflis – tomorrow I’ll take the Holy Family and myself and head north and take my chances. We’ll talk about it when we stop to have a meal – where’s the food basket and the water?’

‘Oh my goodness!’ Eden slapped a hand to the top of her head, as if her hat were about to blow off. ‘I left the basket and the water-skin on the table in the kitchen!’

Cabell looked at her with wry disgust. ‘What do you want me to say now? Oh my goodness?’

They had gone fifty miles, were south of Verkburg and heading up into the hills when a rear tyre blew out with a blast like that of a small cannon. The car skidded, but Cabell kept it under control and ran it gently off the road and in amongst a stand of fir trees.

‘There’ll be twenty or thirty more of those before you get to Tiflis,’ Cabell said as he got out to fit the spare.

‘We could fit the tyres with the rubber balls in them,’ said Frederick, who had now got over his pique at being relegated to the rear seat.

‘You can save those for the really rough roads.’

‘You talk as if you’ve already made up your mind you’re not coming with us.’ Eden was careful not to sound aggressive. She had had time to think about what lay ahead of them and her early confidence had drained out of her as if a plug had been pulled.

‘Let’s say I’m looking for an alternative.’ Cabell stripped off his shirt and hung it on the tonneau of the car. He saw Eden frowning at him as he pulled his overalls straps back over his shoulders. ‘Okay, don’t start lecturing me about my dress, Miss Penfold. I’m not going to get my shirt all sweaty and dirty just to shield your maidenly susceptibilities.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of mine. I was afraid for Olga’s.’

‘Does my bare chest worry you, honey ?’

‘Princess,’ corrected Olga. ‘Not at all, Mr Cabell. Naked men are beautiful.’

Eden gasped. ‘You haven’t seen any!’

‘In books. With fig-leaves on.’

‘There,’ said Cabell to Eden. ‘I could even get by in front of the Princess with just a fig-leaf … Relax, Miss Penfold. Take your corset off.’

‘Not in your company, Mr Cabell.’ Eden, aware that she now had to court Cabell into staying with them, tried to smile. But it was like a strip of lemon pith.

‘Oh, you and I are going to be like an old married couple by the time we say goodbye.’

‘How romantic,’ sighed Olga. ‘Love at first sight.’

Cabell grinned, patted her shoulder. ‘That’s one of the dangers of myopia, honey. Get Miss Penfold to explain that to you in one of her lessons.’

He was taking the spare tyre out of the trailer when he stopped and gazed down through the trees. Almost a mile away, perched on the side of a steep hill above a narrow pass, was a village, a collection of log huts strung along a single street and behind them the log stockades surrounding their gardens.

‘Nick—’ He took some roubles from the purse in his overalls pocket. ‘Get along to that village and buy what food you can. Meat, bread, potatoes, whatever you can get. And see if they’ll sell you a couple of water-bags.’

‘What do I say if they ask who I am? Everyone is so suspicious these days.’ Nikolai would much rather have remained to help fit the tyre.

Cabell looked at Eden. ‘You know this area. Who could he be?’

‘I don’t really know it at all – we’ve hardly moved off the estate.’ She was feeling more helpless by the minute and that annoyed her; she had always prided herself on being resourceful. But she tried: ‘Nikolai, tell them you are up in the mountains with a prospecting team. There are one or two small iron mines up there, I think.’

‘I’ll go with you, Nikolai, and help you,’ said Frederick, and Nikolai looked at him gratefully.

‘You’ll stay where you are,’ said Eden.