We found an empty table and ordered drinks, and although Bakrylov busied his hands shuffling the cards, he seemed in no hurry to deal them. I waited until the serving girl brought us a bottle and glasses, my two men standing impassively behind our chairs. I was sure no one there knew who I was, but Oliver and Emil looked the part between them and it was obvious I was someone, and Bakrylov was clearly a cavalry officer. I suspected most people thought him my guest and not the other way around, but that was well enough. I’ve always found it best, when in an unfamiliar environment, to act like you own the place. It’s truly astonishing how many people fall for that, and ask no questions. Either way we were left alone, and that was good.
‘What’s on your mind?’ I asked once the serving girl had left us, gratefully clutching the silver penny I had given her for a tip.
‘Perhaps I just wanted your company, old boy,’ Bakrylov said, and raised a teasing eyebrow.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve told you that’s not going to happen, and you’re not a fool. You don’t even want it to happen, for Our Lady’s sake. You’re not here for that, so what is it?’
He poured brandy for us both and swallowed his, then looked at me across the card table with a truly serious look on his face for probably the first time since I had met him.
‘I am a war hero,’ he said, and there was no hint of boast in his voice. Quite the opposite, if anything. ‘I took the west gate at Abingon with barely six hundred men, everyone in the city knows that story. Lord Vogel has made sure of it. I got a fucking medal for it, don’t you know?’
‘Aye,’ I said carefully. ‘I know.’
I knew that story too, everyone did. I had been there, after all, although mercifully in a different regiment. I don’t think I would still be alive to record these memoirs if I had been cavalry. Major Bakrylov had assumed command of his regiment after their colonel fell; he had given them the order to storm the gate. He’d had barely six hundred men after he had taken it, to be sure – when he gave the order to charge, he’d had over three thousand.
I met the major’s eyes then, and I realised that he had never forgiven himself for that.
‘What is it you’re looking for, Bakrylov?’ I asked him. ‘Forgiveness? A priest? Because I’m that, aye, and I’ll hear your confession if that’s what you want to give, but I reckon Our Lady knows your name well enough already. You sent two and a half thousand and more of our countrymen’s souls across the river to Her in the space of barely half an hour, and the gods only know how many of the enemy’s.’
‘Bakrylov the Bear, that’s what Vogel called me,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘I was presented with my medal by Her Majesty the Queen herself, but I knew those were Vogel’s words she spoke. And do you know what the common soldiers called me?’
‘Aye, I do,’ I said, and in that moment I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. I had kept my peace about it at Vogel’s dinner for political purposes, but I knew this was different now. I looked at him for a moment and I realised that he wanted me to say it. Needed me to say it, perhaps, however much it hurt him. ‘Bakrylov the Butcher.’
He hurled his brandy glass onto the floor and put his head in his hands, both elbows braced on the card table as he sobbed into his palms. I didn’t really know what to do with that. The war affected all of us who fought, but was I truly expected to comfort Bakrylov the Butcher? I thought him a decent enough fellow, as Dannsburg society people went, but that didn’t mean I could truly see past what he had done in the war.
‘I didn’t know what else to do,’ he said after a while, once a footman had come over to reprimand him for the broken glass and Emil had chased him away again with a savage glare that resulted in the serving girl bringing a fresh glass and no more said about it. ‘The colonel was dead, and his last orders had been to take the gate whatever it cost. So I . . . I took the gate. I couldn’t see any other way to do it. I was only following my orders. But Bakrylov the Bear? Fuck off! I didn’t even ride in the charge. I wanted to, but the colonel’s adjutant said I had to stay with the command post, had to . . .’
He hiccoughed incoherently through his sobs, and I filled the replacement glass and pushed it across the table to him.
‘Drink that and pull yourself together, man,’ I said. ‘People are staring.’
They were as well. In fact, a man I didn’t know was making his way towards our table even then, a worried look on his face.
‘It’s battle shock, isn’t it?’ he said as he approached. ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m a doctor. I’ve seen this before. Too many times before.’
I looked up at him. He had somewhere around sixty years to him, with grey whiskers and thinning hair that he combed straight back over his bald spot.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ I asked.
‘Doctor Almanov,’ he said. ‘I work at the palace, Sir Tomas. I recognised you, and I felt obliged to help your friend.’
If you work at the palace and recognise me then you must know fucking well who I am and what I do, I thought, but I didn’t say it. Such were the webs the Queen’s Men spun. Always someone watching, and always
