Knight Without Armour

A.J. was a little paler when he rejoined the other prisoner. There was no time to be lost, and accompanied by guards the two hurried out of the prison and across the town-square to the commissary office. Baumberg was waiting; he had heard of the suicide by telephone and was in a fine fury. The Petrograd authorities would hold him responsible; how was it that the woman had been allowed to have in her possession such a dangerous weapon as a safety-pin; and much else that was extreme and absurd. Then, with one of those sudden returns to mildness that were such an odd trait in his character, he handed his assistant a sheaf of papers. “You are to take the remaining prisoner to Moscow, Andreyeff; there you will hand her over to the authorities. Two guards will go with you. Here are all the necessary papers; you will board the first train west from Tarkarovsk. The horses are waiting outside—you must set out instantly, for the latest news is that the Whites are advancing quickly along the line from Omsk.”

In the courtyard of the office building stood a couple of tarantasses—the ordinary Siberian conveyance which, badly sprung and yoked to relays of horses, would sometimes accomplish the journey to Tarkarovsk in five or six hours. There was a small moon shining, and a sky of starlight. The roads, after the grip of winter, were on the point of thawing; in a few days they would be choked with mud. A.J., clad in a heavy soldier’s greatcoat and fur cap, superintended the stowing away of the luggage into the first vehicle, which, driven by one of the guards, pulled out into the deserted street and clattered away south towards one o’clock in the morning. A few minutes later the second tarantass followed; A.J. and the woman sat together in the back of the swaying, rickety vehicle, while the other guard drove.

In the commissary yard A.J. had spoken a few words to his prisoner—formal courtesies and so on, but as soon as the journey began he relapsed into silence. He was, to begin with, physically tired; he had been working at more than normal pressure for weeks, and now reaction was on him. Apart from that, the stir of Countess Vandaroff’s death and the sudden unfolding of a new future gave him a certain weariness of mind; he felt too mentally fatigued to realise what was happening. Fortunately, fatigue drove away anxiety; he felt again as if he were living in the midst of some vague and curious dream, full of happenings over which he had no control and with which, in any major sense, he was completely unconcerned. He was, he supposed, bound for Moscow, yet how and even whether he would ever get there did not seem in the least important. He had a pocketful of documents stamped with all the official seals and signatures Baumberg had been able to commandeer, but he had no confidence that they were worth more than the paper they were written on. The ex-Emperor, it was rumoured, had been seized by the local Soviet at Ekaterinburg in defiance of official orders; things like that were constantly happening; anything, indeed, might happen. The only course was to drift onwards, somehow or other, inside this busy dream, always ready, in an emergency, to grope into a wakefulness that was but another dream of another kind.

Steadily through the night the horses galloped over the softening earth. Only once was anything said, and that was at Pokroevensk, where the horses were changed and rumours were shared with the local telegraph official. The latest report was that Tarkarovsk had already fallen to the Whites. A.J., with better knowledge of distances, did not credit this, but it was futile to argue. As the journey was resumed, the woman said: “So you are going on to Tarkarovsk, Commissar?”

“Yes.”

“But if the Whites hold the place, that means we shall be running into them?”

“Yes. Only I don’t believe they do hold it.”

“What would happen if they did?”

“You would be freed and I should be shot, most probably.”

“Whereas, if all goes well and we get to Moscow safely, it is I who will be shot?”

“Possibly.”

“You strike the Napoleonic attitude rather well, Commissar.”

“Pardon me, I am not striking any attitude at all. I am merely very tired—really too tired to talk.”

After that she said nothing.