down to it. They’re difficult to make out because they’re always together. I’m sure that if we managed to separate them for a few hours we’d find out a lot more, just by observing them. Perhaps, then, it’s precisely so that we don’t find out too much about them that they are inseparable. It’s as if each were hiding the dark side of the other; as if they were permanently back to back, covering for each other. But if Nedroni is concealing Fidassio’s incompetence, what is Fidassio concealing about Nedroni?’
‘A skeleton in the cupboard?’
‘According to von Stils, our Saxon Life Guard, it’s his homosexuality. Or else Nedroni has no secret and supports Fidassio in order to further his career. In any case, it’s pointless hoping to find a way of separating them. The only solution would be to kill one of them …’
Lefine chuckled. It was so good to laugh.
‘If we went for that option, Captain, I’d prefer it if we got rid of Nedroni. I fear him more than Fidassio,’ he chipped in.
‘Are you sure? When someone hits his master, even the most placid dog can go wild. The conclusion is that whatever the precise connection between them, Nedroni is bound to be in the know and will protect him no matter what. Your spies responsible for Pirgnon were killed but you were in the Great Redoubt with me.’
‘He was incredible! I give him second prize for foolhardiness, a pass with merit. Delarse receives third prize.’
Margont folded his arms, looking amused. ‘Really? I’m dying to know who won first prize.’
‘General Miloradovich. I have a friend who’s an interpreter in the general staff of our corps. A prisoner told him that Miloradovich wanted to prove that he was the bravest man in the whole Russian army so he sat on the ground where our guns were causing the maximum carnage and announced that he was going to have his lunch. That man is insane and gets a special commendation, “fit for the madhouse”.’
Margont was full of admiration. ‘How do you always manage to know everything about everything?’
‘Because that’s all I have to sell.’
‘Pirgnon loves Greek and Roman mythology and is astonishingly knowledgeable about it. When he talks about it it’s as if he was alive at the time. It’s as if he thinks he is the reincarnation of a famous classical figure. He must imagine being the hero of an odyssey.’
‘But if this campaign is an odyssey, it’s obvious that Pirgnon is not its Ulysses.’
‘What about Barguelot?’
Lefine became even more joyful. ‘I’ve kept the best until the end! Poor Colonel Barguelot really is unlucky: when the Broussier Division attacked the Great Redoubt … he sprained his ankle again.’
‘Oh! When you’ve sprained them once, these joints do tend to become unsteady … Why didn’t he go into the attack on horseback, then? Had his horse sprained its hoof?’
‘He’d left his horse in the rear.’
‘It’s true that it’s dangerous to go into the attack too quickly.’
‘You sometimes dismount before the assault yourself, Captain.’
‘Yes, but that’s in order to show solidarity with the men of my company. Besides, given how much marching we do in Russia, I wanted to be sure of keeping my mount. And, lastly, I did go to the Great Redoubt. Twice. It almost did for me, as well.’
Lefine wiped his face with a handkerchief in a vain attempt to clean it.
‘Colonel Barguelot also ended up in the redoubt. He just arrived a tiny bit late, when it was all over.’
‘His uniform was sparkling.’
‘He skirted the redoubt and entered via the gorge. It was less dirty that way. He still almost got killed.’
‘Really? Did he catch a bad cold?’
‘He was limping along well behind his regiment, surrounded by a dozen soldiers – including our spy – when a Russian soldier who’d been pretending to be dead got up and attacked him with his sabre. Barguelot parried the attack so badly with his sword that, but for the speed of one of his men who stopped the Russian in his tracks by running him through, Barguelot’s heart would have had a taste of metal.’
‘So his title of “fencing master” is just one more piece of deception, is it? Excellent work, Fernand.’
The two men were in no hurry to catch up with their regiment. They knew it was the moment for counting the dead. Men from each regiment were thinking of those they had lost or those hovering between life and death. The 84th had stayed in the second line so had not suffered much, but other regiments had sustained incredible losses.
Of Margont’s acquaintances, Gunner Vanisseau had died. He had imitated birds and known how to attract ducks. Parouen had had both legs broken by a cannonball. He had been nicknamed ‘the Pike’ because he would swim in any stretch of water he could find and because he’d give you anything in exchange for a grilled fish. Partiteau had finished up not far from the redoubt, covered in bayonet wounds, like a pincushion. Oh, Partiteau! ‘As stupid as Partiteau’, ‘as daft as a Partiteau’, ‘bird-brain Partiteau’. No one could be more simple-minded than he, so the army, with its habitual sense of humour, had put him in intelligence. Yet if you quoted a date, even one ten years back, he would immediately tell you if it was a Monday or a Thursday and would quote you the newspaper headlines – though, of course, he wouldn’t understand a word of them. Agelle was dying in hospital with more lead in his stomach than you’d find in a cartridge pouch. He used to spend his evenings writing letters to his Suzanne, letters that were so riddled with mistakes as to be unreadable. In any case, his fiancee couldn’t read. Zaqueron had been crushed to death under the dead body of a Russian hussar’s horse. He had been such a good cook that one day the Emperor had made a six-league detour to treat himself at his inn. Noyet had been shot to pieces by a shell. He had never stopped talking, even when people had hit him to make him shut up and sometimes even during his sleep. They were already beginning to miss his never-ending chatter. Rabut was also missing. Oh, Rabut! The longest-serving man in the 9th. He had been nicknamed ‘That’s Poppycock’. The old sergeant seemed to have fought in all the Napoleonic wars, all those of the Republic and also two or three in the old days of the King. Whenever he had read the Grande Armee bulletins he had never failed to exclaim, ‘Poppycock! Poppycock! I know it is, I was there, damn it!’ Now here he was, finally dead. It was said that it had taken no fewer than three Pavlovs to get the better of him. Droustic, who was called ‘the Bavarian’, had been sabred to death. No one knew where his nickname came from and he got angry when asked. Sapois was waiting for a surgeon to carry out an amputation. He’d seen a cannonball rolling along and had wanted to stop it for fun. The result was a broken foot, the sort of foolish accident that happens to an inexperienced soldier. Mardet, from the 8th Light, had just given up the ghost after bleeding to death from a bullet in the arm that had hit him in ‘the wrong place’. He had so many children that in a few years’ time they’d be able to repopulate the whole company entirely thanks to him. The two Taleur brothers, who constantly looked out for each other, had been found within a few paces of each other. ‘Cock-eye’ had been run through by an Imperial Horse Guard’s sabre.
This process lasted all night because they were still receiving reports of so-and-so’s body being found, that so-and-so hadn’t survived his operation or was lying in a cart for the wounded … There had never been so many dead and wounded, and the count was still not over. Even worse, it seemed as if it would never be over. And with each death, everyone had the feeling that a small part of humanity had just been lost for ever.
CHAPTER 26
ON 15 September the Grande Armee reached Moscow. Napoleon had admired it the day before, in the company of the vanguard, from Poklonnaya Hill, the Hill of Salvation. He had declared: ‘Here it is, then, this famous city’, before adding, ‘It is high time.’
Reaching Moscow caused an indescribable outpouring of joy. The regiments could see the columns ahead of them gesticulating on a hilltop and shouting: ‘Moscow! Moscow!’ The soldiers simply could not believe it. They speeded up, muddling their ranks, which the NCOs, with much swearing, then had to attempt to disentangle. The Hill of Salvation was blocking the view; Moscow was still only a dream, a city they had heard so much about but which perhaps did not exist, a sort of Russian Eldorado. But once they had reached the summit, suddenly Moscow stretched out in all its immensity. Everywhere were church cupolas and gilded onion domes, splendid palaces,
