‘Just in here,’ she said before running across a yard to open a little gate in a paling-fence, where she stopped and pointed to the small wooden end-section of a building that was blazing away merrily. One side of it had collapsed, the other was on fire, and flames were licking out of the window-holes and up under the roof.
As Pierre went in through the little gate he ran into a wall of heat, and instinctively stopped in his tracks.
‘Which one? Which is your house?’ he asked.
‘Oooh!’ wailed the servant-girl, pointing to the end-section. ‘That’s it. That’s where we been livin’. Burnt to death, you ’ave, our little treasure, Katechka, my dear little missy. Ooh!’ wailed Aniska at the sight of the fire, feeling it was her turn to give vent to her feelings.
Pierre darted across to the end-section, but the heat was so great that the only thing he could do was skirt round close to the big house, which was burning only on one side, and at roof-level. A group of French soldiers were swarming round it. At first he couldn’t work out what they were doing as they carried things out of the house, but when he saw a French soldier just in front hitting a peasant with the flat of his sword and pinching his fur-lined coat, Pierre got a vague impression they were after loot, though he had no time to stop and think about it.
The sounds of walls and ceilings breaking apart and crashing down; the sizzling hiss of the flames and the wild shouts of the crowd; the sight of billowing clouds of smoke belching out in great black swirls or shooting up and scattering showers of gleaming sparks; flames licking up the walls in big, thick red sheaves or covering them with what looked like golden fish-scales; the blistering heat, the choking smoke and the speed of everything roused Pierre in the way that only a huge fire can. The effect was particularly strong on Pierre, because now, at the sight of the fire, he felt suddenly liberated from all the ideas that had been weighing him down. He felt young and carefree, ready and resolute. He ran round to the end-section from the house side, and was about to dash into the bit that was still standing when he heard people calling out just above his head, and something heavy came crashing down close by.
Pierre looked up at the windows of the house and saw some French soldiers who had just thrown down a drawer out of a chest, full of metal objects. Other French soldiers waiting down below walked over to the drawer.
‘Hey there, what does that fellow want?’ shouted one of the French soldiers, looking at Pierre.
‘There’s a child in that house. Have you seen a child?’ said Pierre.
‘What’s he on about? Go on, get out of here!’ came various voices, and one of the soldiers, evidently worried that Pierre might take it into his head to pinch their bits of silver and bronze, pounced on him ominously.
‘A child?’ shouted another Frenchman from above. ‘I did hear something squawking in the garden. Perhaps it was the brat this fellow’s looking for. Got to be nice to each other, haven’t we?’
‘Where is it?’ asked Pierre.
‘Round there! Over there!’ the French soldier shouted down from the window, pointing to the garden at the back of the house. ‘Hang on, I’ll come down.’
And sure enough, a minute later the Frenchman, a black-eyed young man with a mark on his cheek, working in his shirt-sleeves, hopped out of a window on the ground floor, clapped Pierre on the shoulder, and ran round with him to the garden. ‘Get a move on, you fellows,’ he shouted to his comrades, ‘it’s getting hot.’ Running down a sandy path round to the back of the house, the Frenchman jogged Pierre by the arm, and pointed to a little round space. Under a garden seat lay a little three-year-old girl in a pink dress.
‘Here’s your little kid. Oh, it’s a girl. Better still,’ said the Frenchman. ‘So long, then, old boy. Got to be nice to each other. We’re all mortal, aren’t we?’ And the Frenchman with the mark on his cheek ran back to his mates.
Breathless with joy, Pierre ran up to the child, and tried to pick her up. But when she saw a stranger, the little girl – a consumptive-looking, ugly little thing, very like her mother – screamed and ran away. But Pierre soon caught her, and lifted her up in his arms. Screeching in desperate fury, she tried to wrench herself away from Pierre using her tiny little hands, and bite him with her slobbering little mouth. Pierre felt a pang of horror and disgust, as if he was in contact with some nasty little wild animal. Fighting down an impulse to throw the child away, he ran back with it to the big house. But now it was impossible to get out that way. Aniska, the servant-girl, was nowhere to be seen, and it was with a mixture of pity and disgust that Pierre held on to the sopping wet, pitifully howling baby as tenderly as he could, and rushed across the garden to find another way out.
CHAPTER 34
