‘I borrowed it from a friend. I’m not wounded. It was the shock that made me fall. And the fear as well. Why did no one spot the marksman?’

‘We were too busy watching the other one,’ Lefine replied. ‘He created an effective diversion.’

Margont picked himself up. He looked at the hole in the material.

‘A hell of a shot …’

By now Dalero and Saber had also ventured into the rubble. Behind them lights and faces were appearing at windows and a sentry had sprung out from a porch.

‘Who goes there?’ he yelled.

‘Friends! France!’ Saber answered, to avoid getting a bullet between his shoulder blades.

There were piles of rubble that were liable to collapse underfoot, sections of wall from behind which someone could pounce on you, areas of shadow capable of hiding a marksman … Dalero and Saber, sabres in hand, were progressing speedily but cautiously. Saber noticed the man on the run disappear behind a heap of fallen masonry.

‘Over there!’ he exclaimed, pointing with the tip of his sword.

He wanted to press forward but the charred floorboards gave way beneath him and he went sprawling amongst the ashes. Dalero got slightly ahead of him. When Saber caught up with him, it was only to be told that the man had disappeared.

In the opposite direction Fanselin was still in pursuit of the other man, while Piquebois had stopped to lean against a wall. He still hadn’t fully recovered from the concussion he had suffered at the Moskva. The figure turned round, pointing a pistol. Fanselin instinctively hunched his shoulders and bent over. But the marksman did not slow down and his bullet missed the lancer by a long way. Fanselin had noticed that the fugitive was in excellent physical shape. He ran very fast and had been doing so for some time. Sensing that if it came to endurance he would be the loser, Fanselin decided to use guile instead. When the man turned into a street, he himself went into a parallel one. He lost sight of him but could still hear his footsteps. Fanselin was trying to make as little noise as possible, even if it meant slowing down. The man almost gave him the slip but Fanselin made up for lost time by taking a short cut through the rubble. The fugitive turned round several times and, with no one in sight, thought he was safe. He changed direction and disappeared down an alley. Fanselin thought he was going to lose him for good but he glimpsed him again, separated from him by a row of crumbling houses. The man had started to walk to get his breath back. He wandered through the streets for a moment, frequently looking over his shoulder. Fanselin contented himself with following him in parallel, guided only by his hearing. Reassured at last, the man eventually reached a splendid-looking palace with several windows lit, even at this late hour. The two sentries guarding the railings surrounding the garden presented arms. He did not bother to look at them and went into the drive.

Fanselin edged closer and put his face to the icy bars. He recognised Colonel Barguelot.

Margont was examining Sergeant Andogio’s dead body. The murderer had slit his throat. Dalero was gazing at the discarded musket.

‘Line infantry musket first produced in 1777 and modified in 1801. How many of these are there in the army? Two or three hundred thousand? In any case, he certainly knows how to use it.’

Further away, infantrymen were hoisting Fimiento’s groaning body on to a cart pulled by a scrawny horse. When Fanselin eventually returned, he took Margont and Dalero to one side to tell them what he knew. Then he left them on their own. Dalero was absently toying with the tassel of his sword-knot.

‘Colonel Barguelot is popular with the general staff of IV Corps. He’s invited the prince to dinner several times and His Highness has always come back from those evenings in a very good mood.’

‘It’s certainly true that Colonel Barguelot knows how to entertain. I can still remember the delicious meal he invited me to.’

‘We can’t arrest him when we have no evidence. Any tribunal would dismiss the case.’

‘That’s my opinion too. We’ll have to continue spying on him. We know and he knows that we know. We’ll have to see how he’s going to react.’

Dalero glanced at the area of rubble in which his chase had come to a sudden end.

‘If only we’d been able to lay hands on his henchman and force him to testify …’

‘The day we finally have evidence of Colonel Barguelot’s guilt, we’ll force him to denounce his accomplice. I’m very sorry about your sergeants. If Fimiento had been wearing a breastplate like me …’

‘If we’d all had breastplates, your friend the Red Lancer would never have caught up with Colonel Barguelot. So we need to wait. I hate waiting. What if we don’t find any evidence against him?’

‘Then we’ll have to review the situation again.’

Dalero went to the cart in which Fimiento was lying, to try to get him more speedily transported to the nearest hospital. He grabbed the pommel of his sabre in his left hand and drew the blade about an inch out of the sheath before putting it back in. He repeated this gesture a dozen or so times without thinking.

CHAPTER 29

NAPOLEON had organised life in Moscow. He had been forced to authorise looting during the fire to enable his army to obtain food and clothing. Then he had strictly forbidden it. He had succeeded in restoring law and order and had set up a Russian local administration. The theatres had reopened. There were performances of The False Infidelities, The Game of Love and Chance, The Lover as Author and Servant, The Three Sultanas and The Absent-Minded Lover … There was even a ballet. People could also go to restaurants, admire the Emperor as he reviewed his troops, or watch the Guard on parade … But their hearts weren’t in it because the expected victory was lacking.

Napoleon was waiting for negotiations to commence. He had sent Baron de Lauriston to meet Kutuzov to offer him peace. The crafty generalissimo was playing for time. He had dispatched an aide-de-camp to St Petersburg to pass on this message to the Tsar.

But despite the loss of Moscow, Alexander did not want to give in. He kept repeating that he would fight to the bitter end, and if he lost the last of his soldiers he would continue the struggle at the head of his ‘beloved nobility and loyal peasants’. He was careful, however, to conceal his intentions from the French. The result was that while Napoleon was waiting for the peace, the Tsar and Kutuzov were waiting for the winter.

So, life in Moscow was tinged with anxiety for some, but enjoyable for others – those who had a blind faith in the Emperor and who had never heard about Russian winters. Colonel Pirgnon informed Margont that his plan for a Moscow Club would have to be ‘temporarily postponed’. He too was worried about the future and didn’t feel inclined to engage in witty conversation.

Margont explored every corner of Moscow. He walked along the red ramparts and gazed in awe at the cathedrals and churches. He visited the palaces and was always welcomed warmly by those quartered there when he brandished bottles of wine or gin. He also spent hours drawing. He cursed his lack of skill, but his sketches of a façade or a view were sometimes quite competent.

In the evenings he prepared dinner for his friends, partly because he enjoyed cooking, greedy as he was, and partly to keep busy. Lefine was involved in various shady dealings and regularly brought back new ingredients so that they could vary the way in which they cooked the inevitable salted fish.

Once they had eaten their fill, everyone settled down in the palace’s most beautiful drawing room to engage in inexhaustible conversation over vodka, rum, coffee and tea accompanied by chocolates and caramels. Saber never tired of recounting how he had been promoted at the Great Redoubt itself. Piquebois talked of home; Margont about Russian culture; Jean-Quenin about medicine and ethics; and Lefine filled them in on the gossip: a general was having an affair with a Russian princess; some completely inebriated Bavarian gunners had attacked the Kremlin with their cannon, then been doused with water so that they would be presentable in front of the firing squad; the Emperor had ridden around in between reviewing the troops, and one night, instead of sleeping, he had drawn up a decree proposing to unite the actors of the Comédie Française into a company …