The Golden Sabre

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.

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—’