When they entered the water, the riders fell silent. There were no more shouts and boasts, no argumentative exchanges and indecipherable grunts. The horses were indeed swimming even though they were weighed down with their riders and the cattle they were pulling. Anna’s lower half was plunged into the cold water. It filled her shoes and pulled down her petticoats and dress. She turned and saw the amazement in Alexander’s face. He had forgotten his fear and the bruise on his arm. Anna lifted Lydia even higher.
A sound of a splash as Madame Drancy fell into the river. The men burst out laughing while she flailed in the water shouting for help.
‘Hey, drag her out … enough,’ the Lezgin ordered and they obeyed, good-natured and at ease. It filled Anna with loathing and the urge to escape. Then panic rose in her throat like vomit. She was away from home now, floating weirdly on water. This Lezgin and his devilish horse were keeping her alive. Where were the Russian defences? She wanted the nightmare to end. Enough. Lydia was fidgeting against her. She needed her nappy changed.
Madame Drancy was now up behind her captor; she was breathless and soaked. Anna shouted out, ‘Are you all right?’ The spluttered reply elicited another foreign joke.
At the other side of the river, they stopped while the men made their ablutions and lined up to pray. Alexander took an interest in what they were doing, watching them from a distance. Anna took the opportunity to clean Lydia’s nappy but she did not have a change of clothes. She did her best under the circumstances but was not satisfied. The baby’s skin was sensitive and it would chafe. She washed the dirty nappy in the river and wrung it out. She hung it
on a bush but they did not stop long enough for it to dry. She had to carry it damp.
‘You should give your baby to one of the men,’ said the Lezgin. They had been coming up to Anna with pantomime gestures, offering to do so.
‘Never.’ She held Lydia closer.
‘Suit yourself.’ He adjusted his turban. ‘It will be a dangerous climb.’
Lydia slept but was jolted awake with every leap and jerk of the horse. She started to cry, working herself up to such a pitch that her face turned red and her body rigid. She was so loud that some of the other riders heard her. They turned around and made lewd gestures as if to instruct Anna to feed her. She did eventually because she had to, because there was no other way to make this piercing, frustrating sound stop. Lydia was so overwrought that she could not at first settle and suck. The unsteady movement of the horse over the rocks made matters even worse. Still whimpering as if feeling sorry for herself, as if berating and reproaching her mother, she finally was able to draw in and swallow. But true satisfaction didn’t come. Anna’s milk was watery and insufficient. So long ago, it seemed, she had skimped breakfast in order to start the packing. Since then she had not had anything except gulps of water from the river. Lydia squirmed, sucking intensely until it made Anna’s nipple sore. She strained her ears for the Russian picket; surely they were stationed near, surely they would come to rescue them.
When the sun started to set, they made camp on the mountainside. It startled Anna to see Madame Drancy in a burka. It belonged to her captor and he had flung it over her to keep her warm. ‘The water was freezing,’ she said sitting down next to Anna, and arranging the folds around her. ‘Hideous outfit.’
They sat in front of the fire. A campfire like the ones they used to see from the windows of Tsinondali. ‘The water made my fingers numb,’ said Anna. ‘I had trouble holding Lydia.’
‘Luckily Alexander didn’t get wet,’ said Madame Drancy. He too was wrapped in a burka, sound asleep.
Anna’s stomach growled. She had pushed away the dinner of dried millet they had been offered. It was unappetising and touched by their dirty fingers. Lydia was asleep now but she would not stay asleep for long; fretting and hungry, she would want to be nursed all night.
‘They say the journey up the mountains will take five weeks.’ Madame Drancy spoke in a matter-of-fact way.
Anna could not even visualise one week. She turned to look at Madame Drancy’s face. It looked fresher and leaner, like she had been on a brisk walk.
Madame Drancy said, ‘I wonder if one of these highlanders would be sympathetic enough to help us escape. I can teach him a little bit of French. We can bribe him …’
‘With what? They’ve taken everything.’
‘We can promise to reward him once we are free.’
Anna sighed, ‘You are so fanciful. We will be rescued. Surely by now David will have heard of our predicament.’
‘It’s only been a few hours,’ was the governess’s terse reply.
Of course it felt more than that. The night was long too. Anna couldn’t sleep even though she was exhausted and bruised. It was uncomfortable to lie on the ground without a pillow. The moonlight was too bright and there were the menacing sounds of the forests, the torrential river, the snores of these violent men. It seemed that whenever she dozed, Lydia would wake up whimpering and whenever Lydia fell asleep, Anna lay anxious, alert to the dangers around her. Images of the day pounded the gap between wakefulness and dreams; the pistol snatched away, a cow being dragged from the stables, Gregov’s body sprawled on the ground. She closed her eyes and saw Madame Drancy fall in the river. The water had been icy, it had chilled Anna’s legs and when her hands got wet, her fingers became numb. They felt clumsy and fat and it was awkward to hold up Lydia. She had been afraid that she
would let her slip, straining all the time to keep her from sliding, forcing herself closer to her captor’s back because that was the only way to keep the baby safe.
Anna finally fell asleep a little before dawn and woke up to a foreign chant. It was some of the men praying. A part of her had hoped that she would wake up in her bedroom in Tsinondali and all of this would have been the longest of nightmares. Her body was stiff as she followed Madame Drancy deeper behind a clump of trees. This was their toilet and surprisingly the men were decent enough to stay at a distance. Perhaps they judged them too weak to escape or else they knew she would never run off and leave Alexander.
He was faring better than her and did not complain. He ate the food they put before him and drank a mug of tea. ‘I have to eat for Lydia’s sake,’ thought Anna. No food and drink meant no milk. It was as simple as that. She forced herself to eat. Her stomach felt full even though it wasn’t; her mouth was dry. One of the highlanders shambled close and pointed at Lydia, making gestures as if he wanted to carry her when they next rode off. His plebeian face was in smiles and he spoke in a dialect Anna couldn’t understand. She held Lydia close and waved him away, shaking her head. He persisted, trying to ingratiate himself by bowing and begging. Exasperated and eager to get rid of him, she took off her pearl earrings and tossed them to him. The bribe worked. He put them in his pocket and turned away.
When it was time to mount again, Anna retched out her breakfast. It splattered on her dress. She used to be clean and sweet-smelling. And Lydia too, used to be clean and sweet-smelling. Now her wispy hair was matted against her scalp, there was congealed milk behind her ears and in the folds of her neck. As expected, her lower half had risen in a red rash that extended even to the folds around her knees. She needed a bath, talcum powder, a change of clothes. But where would these come from?
Although their progress was slow, the higher they climbed, the more Anna’s heart sank. They were venturing further and further towards Shamil’s territory. This was the border that David was meant to be protecting, this was the line where the river forts were stationed. Around them was nothing but the forests and the mountains, familiar to these men; their natural habitat.
She dozed against her will and woke with a shock to find that her arms had gone slack and Lydia was wedged loosely between her and the rider, the trail of her nappy dangling over the saddle. The baby was wide awake, gazing up with large wet eyes at the green swirl of the trees, the sun filtering through.
They reached a clearing, a stretch of flat ground and suddenly there was a whizzing sound that made Anna turn her head. Were they being followed? The loudest cry from the Lezgin as his horse wheeled and broke into a gallop. ‘It’s an ambush. Go, go, go.’
Anna felt her whole body sway backwards, her arms instinctively jutting out for balance. ‘Stop,’ she screamed, ‘I’m not holding her properly.’
Lydia was loose in her arms, a lopsided bundle, as bullets zinged past them, as the highlanders dispersed, yelping and working their horses up to a frenzy. One of the riders was shot. He groaned and fell to the ground.
‘Hold your hostage close!’ the Lezgin shouted to his men. The horses of their pursuers could be heard now. They were gaining on them. A bullet hit a horse and it skidded and crashed down, flinging its rider.
‘Stop,’ she screamed. ‘Please stop.’
‘Hold tight to my belt, Princess.’
‘My baby is slipping from me. Stop now, I beg you.’
‘Soon, soon we will stop.’
I am holding her, aren’t I? She is here and we are being rescued.
The Lezgin suddenly reeled his horse to the right and dashed into the forest. The movement guaranteed their escape but Anna swayed
and nearly tipped over. He reached behind to steady her but only succeeded in knocking her elbow. Lydia slipped from her arm. ‘My baby!’ she screamed. She screamed and the sound pressed close, her nerves vibrating. The bundle fragile on soil and leaves. Her wrong empty hands. It was as if her own insides squished and bled. Her own spine cracked and the thud was thunder in her inner ear.
‘Can I have a word with you, Natasha?’ Iain put his head through the door. It meant he wanted me to come to his office. ‘Any time within the next hour,’ he added. He drummed his fingers against the doorknob. As always, his clothes hung on him as if they were a size too large. His hair, too, always seemed big for his face, a throwback to the 1980s. The formality of his request surprised me. A dull ache started behind my eyes. I was still shaken by what had happened this morning.
After leaving Malak, I drove through slush, streets that were busier than usual now that the snow was melting. The need-to-catch-up mood reached me through the edgy shoppers impatient to cross the road and the announcement on the radio that Debenhams would stay open till ten. The Christmas songs were familiar and reassuring. I found that I had an effortless memory for past Number One hits. Given a year, I could guess either the song or the artist, sometimes even both. When it was time for the news I found myself gripping the steering wheel. But there was no mention of dawn raids or of Oz.
Today I had my own catching up to do. I had missed one full day of work and most of the morning. Next week, exams started and there were plenty of emails from my superiors to wade through first, answer or file before I turned to the students’. Without my laptop, I would have to get through them at the desktop in my office. Even my personal emails. I tried not to think of the files on my laptop that I had not backed up.
There was an email from the Classic Car Club saying that tonight’s Christmas dinner was cancelled because of the weather. Lucky for me that I wasn’t in charge this year. These kinds of decisions were not easy to make. Last year I was events secretary and that party was a success. It was disappointing that this one was cancelled. I had been looking forward to it, a chance to show off my 1960 Czechoslovakian-built Skoda after all the work I’d had done to it. I was much less hands-on than the others, who tended to do all the work themselves and devoted more time to their car. It cost a fortune at the garage but I would not begrudge my heroic Felicia, which made it to the West at the height of the Cold War.
When I sat in the armchair in Iain’s room, he said, ‘It’s not good news about Gaynor Stead. They’ve decided to uphold her complaint.’
Gaynor had been my student last year. I had judged her to be the stupidest person to have ever stepped into university. It baffled me that she survived until third year after repeating both of the previous ones. Too often I had watched quirky and brilliant students crash and burn. Instead it was the doleful and dogged Gaynor who was the survivor of the species. She never missed a class – perhaps that was her secret. Or because she knew her rights and felt entitled to a degree as if she were a client and the university a service. She had failed my class, but that was not the issue – her work was poor without question. Instead she claimed that I had sat on top of her desk and broken one of her fingers! It was a seminar and there were only about ten students, the desks arranged in a rectangle. While answering a question, she stumbled over the pronunciation
of a Russian name and clammed up, refusing to speak any further. Instead of asking her to spell the name or leaning over to look at her notes or just moving on to someone else, I perched on top of her desk and picked up her notebook. She was clearly irritated by my proximity, swinging her hair back sharply and muttering something under her breath. But there was no cry of pain, nothing about a bruised or injured finger. And I was sure, as much as I could ever be sure, that I did not sit on her finger or even her pen.
‘Iain, this is ridiculous. She never left the room. Would anyone with a broken finger continue to take a class as if nothing had happened?’
‘She has a letter from her doctor.’
‘On that same date?’
He spoke slowly. ‘The school is going to look into all that. It’s going to take time. In the New Year there’ll be another meeting and they’ll decide then whether to go ahead with any action.’
There was a picture of his wife and two children on his desk. His wife was wearing a purple jumper; the little boys, only a few years apart, resembled her in that they both had red hair. The photo, taken in front of their new house, seemed recent because of the snow. I too would like to leave my flat and move to a house. I could sit in the garden with my laptop. This was not likely on the pay scale I was on now and the expense of keeping two cars. I would have to be a professor, like Iain. In time I could become one; there was nothing wrong with my abilities. ‘This isn’t the first time Gaynor has complained about a member of staff. How come this time she’s being taken seriously?’ My voice sounded sharp to my ears.