‘Very good, very good, but not just now. I haven’t time,’ said Yermolov, and walked out of the hut. The overall disposition of the troops as drawn up by Toll was a splendid one. Everything was neatly written out, as it had been at Austerlitz, but this time not in German. ‘Column Number One marches here, then there. Column Number Two marches there, then here . . .’ And so on.
On paper every one of these columns arrived in position dead on time, and they destroyed the enemy. As always on these occasions everything had been meticulously thought through, but as always on these occasions not a single column arrived anywhere on time. When enough copies of the disposition were ready, an officer was summoned and sent to Yermolov to hand them over for implementation. A young officer of the horse guards, one of Kutuzov’s personal staff, set off for Yermolov’s quarters, thrilled to be carrying out such a vital commission.
‘He’s not in,’ Yermolov’s servant told him. The horse guards officer set off for a general’s quarters where Yermolov was often to be found.
‘No, he’s not here. Neither is the general,’ he was told.
The officer remounted and rode off to another general’s.
‘No, he’s gone out.’
‘I hope they don’t blame me for slowing things up! It’s infuriating!’ thought the officer.
He rode all over the camp. For every man who claimed to have just seen Yermolov riding off with some other generals there was another who said he must be back home by now. The officer stayed out searching until six o’clock in the evening, and never stopped to eat. Yermolov was nowhere to be found, and nobody knew where he was. The officer had a quick meal with a comrade before setting off back to the vanguard to report to Miloradovich. Miloradovich was out too, but here at least they did tell him the general had gone to a ball at General Kikin’s and Yermolov was probably there too.
‘Well, where is it?’
‘At Yechkino, over yonder,’ said an officer of the Cossacks, pointing towards a country house in the far distance.
‘What, right over there! Outside our lines?’
‘Two regiments of our boys have been sent over to the outposts. There’s a right party going on out there now, I’ll tell you! Two bands, three lots of singers.’
The officer rode out through our lines and on to Yechkino. Some way off he could hear the happy sounds of soldiers dancing and singing merrily together.
‘In the country . . . in the countree . . .’ went the song, to a lot of whistling and the sound of a balalaika, swamped now and again by a great roar of voices. The officer’s own spirits rose when he heard these sounds, but he was still worried about being blamed for taking so long to hand over the vital message that had been entrusted to him. It was getting on for nine o’clock. He dismounted and walked up to the entrance of a big, completely undamaged manor house situated half-way between the French and the Russian lines. Footmen were trotting in and out of the vestibule and buffet bearing wine and food. The singers stood by the windows. The officer was taken across to a door, and there before him all of a sudden were all the top generals in the army, including the big, imposing figure of Yermolov. All the generals were standing round in a half-circle with their coats unbuttoned, pictures of merriment, red in the face and laughing their heads off. There in the middle of the room a handsome general, red-faced and not very tall, was dancing a trepak with much energy and not a little style.
‘Ha, ha, ha! Good for you, Nikolay Ivanovich! Ah, ha, ha!’
The officer felt doubly guilty for bursting in on them at a moment like that with an important message, and he would have waited, but one of the generals spotted him, heard why he had come and told Yermolov. The latter came across to the officer with a scowl on his face, listened to his story, and took the documents from him without a word.
‘Do you reckon he just happened to be out?’ said a comrade of the horse guards officer, a staff man himself, later that evening, referring to Yermolov. ‘Not on your life! That was deliberate. He was getting at Konovnitsyn. You watch the fur fly tomorrow!’
CHAPTER 5
