Swords From the Sea (32 page)

"At command!" I replied.

"Well then, listen." He looked at me keenly. "An order has been issued by her Majesty. Some minister or other-I forget his name-sent me out after you at this hour. How would you like, Ivak, to go back to your steppe? To the Black Sea?"

Now God could have sent nothing to warm my heart more than this. We Don Cossacks were all homesick, really sick. Now and then it had been permitted that we go out after wolves. But what are wolves? A stag is better. Aye, we had no hunting for a whole winter; all we did was to stand in the wooden boxes they made for their sentries, instead of riding a cordon as a man should.

The ensign must have seen how much this pleased me, because he went on less cautiously:

"You are detached from service with the squadron, and you alone will go of the Don ruffians. After sunrise report to one of the English officers, Lieutenant Edwards, quartered in the Admiralty street. He is going with you."

"Am I under his orders?"

At this the ensign was silent a moment. Some men never talk openly, and only a fool will share his blanket with that kind.

"Nay," he said after a while, "you are on a mission for the Empress herself. Accompany Lieutenant Edwards and act with him so far as your orders permit. You are to escort a foreigner to the Black Sea. Arrange for supplies, for post horses, and choose a route. You know the country down there, of course, and her Majesty is pleased to remember your service against the Kuban Tatars."

"Good! Who is this foreigner?" I asked. "The Englishman?"

"What a dolt you are! Don't you know a soldier never asks questions! A lashing would teach you Cossacks a thing or two."

He pulled at his clipped mustache and told me that the man who would be in my charge was a high officer.

"Pardon," I said again, "but in our service a man is a dolt if he doesn't get his orders clear in his head. Who is the high officer?"

The Preobrazhensky manling screwed up his eyes and spat. Well for him he did not spit on my boots! My rank was equal to his, but then the Muscovites held themselves above us Cossacks.

"You were hatched out of the same egg as Satan! Call him Pavel. That's enough. And don't blab about your mission to the tavern wenches, either, Ivak."

Evidently he thought, my brothers, that we men of the steppe talked about military affairs to womenfolk, every night, like the Muscovite officers at court. When we talk to the girls our words are otherwise.

He leaned over the side of the sleigh to whisper:

"Report to the Englishman, Edwards. But come to me-I am the ensign Strelsky of the Guards-for a final word before setting out. Don't fail!"

"I hear."

Wrapping his furs around him, he shouted an oath at the driver and whirled away. But my ears have listened for quail moving in thickets and wild pigs rooting by the rivers at night. I heard him mutter something that sounded like:

"Pavel-Edwards-Ivak-good riddance all three."

I wondered what final word he was saving for our setting forth-what word he could not speak to me now. And I wondered who Pavel might be, and why the order had come tome direct from the officers of the Empress, who was now monarch of all the Cossacks, instead of through our colonel, in the ordinary way.

As matters turned out, I did not see the ataman again, because my officer was having a fine carouse in the Winter Palace that night, and I said farewell to my brothers of the squadron a little before cock-crow. The essaul who assumed my duties, because he was envious of the order from the Empress and my departure for our steppe, said dark things:

"As God lives, Ivak, evil will come of this. It is a secret mission and when you dismount at the end you will step into a dungeon, like as not."

"Or they will tie your scalp lock with a riband like a Prussian pigtail," said another.

"It may chance that Pavel will be a woman," put in the other essaul, "and then, Ivak, you will be in worse trouble than a calf tied to a cart-tail."

I buckled my bag and saddled the Kabarda stallion that I had brought up into Muscovy. Then I took my lance from the rack, for we had been equipped with lances having long streamers, like the Polish hussars, and said farewell to the kunaks, my brothers.

"At least," I told them, "I will not be standing in an open coffin-" for that is how we called the sentry boxes-"saluting Moskya officers and picking my teeth. Nay, in another month I will be dancing with your girls in the Dnieper villages."

They were sorry to see old Ivak go, and so they cursed my beard until I was in saddle, then all came forward to press my hand and bid me go with God, as is our custom. Truly, though we had jested, their words and mine came close to the mark. For the journey that began that day was a race and not a journey at all. We raced with Death.

Aye, it followed close upon the heels of one of our company. And the end of the road was a strange place-where not even an order of the Empress bids a Don sotnik go. And here, my brothers, is the tale of the journey and the man who made it.

The quarters of the Englishman, Lieutenant Edwards, were in a fine brick house with a courtyard near the river. Even at sunrise many officers were being carried home from the festivities in sedan chairs and sleighs by their servants, heydukes dressed like Turks or Poles or Tatars, in turbans and pelises with silver frogs, though why the high commanders of St. Petersburg should dress their servants like their enemies I do not know. Nor why the most trusted officers of the Empress Catherine the Great should be chosen from among Prussians, who were as stiff as lancepoles, or French, who wore white wigs. But that is how it was.

I found the Englishman in the courtyard, in high boots and a fine blue coat. He had been at the festivity, but he was not drunk, because he was looking to the saddling of a big roan. The horse was dancing and quivering, and the grooms kept their distance from its heels.

Lieutenant Edwards took the reins, gaining the saddle in the same instant. As I live, there was a fiend in that roan. It circled and reared, and the officer's three-cornered hat flew off into the mud. Then he lost his whip, and the roan started to bolt.

The Englishman could ride a bit, and he pulled the beast up short. But the roan knew what to do next; it wheeled against the fence, and the man had to slip a foot from stirrup to save his leg from being crushed against a post. At once the fiend with four legs reared, and Lieutenant Edwards followed his hat, rolling over in the muck almost under the nose of my Kabarda.

Now few things are as pleasing to a Cossack as a bit of tricky riding. I was smiling, and the officer thought I was laughing at him, which was not so. But a man does not feel proud when he has tumbled out of a saddle.

"Climb down, you pig of a Moskya," he said in good Russian, "and my men will give you a whipping."

"Health to your Honor," said I, and dismounted, for his rank was higher than mine and it would have been insolence to address the officer from saddle. I, also, could speak the language of the Muscovites well-the speech of the Moskyas, which is not quite the same as our Cossack tongue.

"The sotnik, Ivak, reports to you by order."

He looked me over, frowning. Perhaps he had never before seen a Cossack. His cheeks were clean shaven and his eyes were clear. Probably he was not more than half my age, and certainly he lacked half a head of my height.

Perhaps my svitza, my long coat, was ragged at the bottom; but if the Englishman had eyes for such things, he would have seen that my sash was a fine Turkish shawl and the red morocco in my boots was good stuff. He called to his servants to bring him his hat and whip and they did so, keeping out of the way of the roan, which was ranging the courtyard, snorting.

The Englishman's chin was set and his nostrils quivered and it seemed to me that he meant to use the whip on me himself, which would have been an evil thing for both of us. Evidently he had a quick temper and was not exactly a coward.

"If your Honor permits," I spoke up, "I will ride the roan for a bit and bring him to hand."

"Five rix-dollars that you don't!"

"Agreed."

The Englishman laughed as if he thought I were jesting, but he watched while I walked over to the roan. The horse tossed its head and wheeled off. A second time and a third I approached him, talking under my breath.

Presently I had the rein, and the roan laid back its ears, but as I kept on talking without trying to gain the saddle, it fell to watching the grooms. Then I jumped into the saddle without laying hand on the horse. It reared and then kicked out, feeling the grip of my knees. Once I lashed it with the heavy Cossack whip, and all the infernal in it was loosed.

The grooms scattered as we plunged here and there. Beyond keeping it away from the wall, there was little about the task to trouble a Cossack, since the muddy footing soon tired the roan. Many a time have my folk lassoed the wild horses on the steppe and ridden them into the villages.

"Bravo," cried the Englishman, after I had made the circuit of the place three times. "Well done!"

He himself held the rein while I dismounted, which was needless. And he had forgotten all about the whipping. The English are a strange folk, not unlike us, with a black temper and the stubbornness of an ox and a way of laughing readily. He ordered one of his men to fetch the rixdollars for me-a thing I had not expected. A Muscovite officer would have forgotten the bet but not the punishment.

When he ordered brandy he did not forget a stoop for me. He asked who had sent me, and then who had issued the order. I drew myself up and said-"The Empress." This announcement made the Englishman thoughtful and, after he had seen that the roan was rubbed down, he looked around.

"Where are your men, sotnik?"

"Your Honor sees that I am alone."

At this his quick temper struck spark again, and he demanded with many oaths how he could journey to the Black Sea with Pavel, with an escort of only one man.

"True," I assured him, nodding, for it was unwonted. "Yet that man is Ivak, the galliard, the jighit, the outrider. I can lead you across the whole of the steppe by starlight, or you can bind up my eyes and arms, and I will race you to the camp on the Dnieper."

This was a good boast, because my Kabarda stallion would have picked its way unguided to the Cossack villages. But the Englishman was not in the mood for more wagers.

"You can't lead the way for Pavel," he growled.

And I wondered all the more who Pavel might be, and why he was not to be led. It was clear to me that many things had not been explained. My people have a saying that where there is much smoke in the air a fire is sure to be. I began to think about the fire that made all this smoke.

"Pavel will never reach St. Petersburg." The Englishman laughed as if that were a jest. "He is beyond the sea and the ice is in the Gulf still. Pavel wrote that he would be here, but no vessel has put in to the harbor. By the time the ice is gone many things will have happened and Pavel will be wiser. Better for him if he never comes!"

Ekh! My head sank lower when I heard this. My spirit was burning to be astir and flying toward the warm sun of the steppe.

"Pardon, your Honor," I said. "But this Pavel is a high officer and among these Muscovites the imperial one himself cannot do more things than a high officer."

"But Pavel is not a Russian. He is-" the Englishman frowned and tossed away a glove that was a little soiled with mud-"a pirate."

Now on our great rivers, the Volga and the Dnieper, we had many pirates, who took a toll from the merchants. They tossed the merchants overboard and made themselves gifts of the merchants' money boxes and goods. That is how they took toll. So I knew what the Englishman meant, since I had happened in among the pirate bands a few times when they were off on a frolic. Ai-a, things warmed up then! Heads were bashed in, and boxes broken open.

"On your faces, dogs!"

And the hedgehogs, the boatmen, threw themselves down.

"Kindle up on all sides, brothers! Sarina na kitchka! Let the merchants drink river water."

And, splash, a pot-bellied fox-fur would go and drink himself to death!

So, if Pavel were a pirate, I thought that we would escort him to be hanged on a steel hook. For that is how the pirates are dealt with. Surely, then, he would not come to St. Petersburg.

I waited in the courtyard of the Englishman's house until restlessness came on me, and he let me exercise the roan. Every day then I rode out to speak a word to the Don Cossacks and let them see what a fine horse was in my charge. And everywhere I asked for news of Pavel, the great pirate, and found that no one had heard of him; until one day, when, in spite of the mists, I had taken the river-road down among the tribesmen of the sea who wore little caps and huge boots and had their red jerkins spotted with tar.

They laughed at me and pointed at another rider, who had stopped to watch them cutting at timbers. I asked him about Pavel and he smiled.

"Stuppai!" he cried. "Forward!"

When he said this he spurred his horse and we raced along the bank of the Nevski, scattering the dogs and the peasants who floundered in the mud. The yellow mist rolled along with us, driven by a giant of a wind from off the sea. The cloak of the rider who had cried "Forward" whipped out like a loose shroud. I saw two long pistols in his belt and they were good ones.

In the time it takes to kindle a fire I could no longer see him, but the hoofs of his horse smacked in the mud behind the roan. At the first cross street where log houses showed up in the fog, I pulled in the Kabarda and, sure enough, the hoofs of the other nag sounded close behind.

"Evil will come out of the sea," I thought, shivering in the damp breath of the swamps and the harbor. "That is how it is-evil."

And the other rider swept up, slowing to a trot as he neared me. I put one hand on my belt, near the hilt of the saber, and he smiled. He said nothing, and the skin of his face was white-drawn tight over the bones. His plain blue coat was weatherworn and his buff boots caked with mud.

But his eyes-they were black as river stones-spoke tome as he passed, dripping water like a man who has forded a deep stream.