(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 lust 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 nigger 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 assumed 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 God 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 bastard 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 damned. It's a comforting thought.
So time passed, 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 hell 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 bumper 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 hell, 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 partition, 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 partition. '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 partition.
Well, it was something new, so I undressed. and lay on the slab, Aunt Sara called out presently from beyond the partition, 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 hellish 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.
