It was wonderful to discover that he had managed to sit through another whole ballet without noticing it. Here was another entr’acte, with the light shining into the box, and the opportunity to stand and stretch one’s legs; it was even delightful to exchange polite banalities in French tinged with half the accents of Europe. When the entr’acte ended Hornblower was quite reconciled to reseating himself and bracing himself to endure one more ballet; yet the curtain had only just risen when he felt himself heavily nudged in the thigh by Essen, who rose and made his way out of the box with Hornblower at his heels.
“We may as well go and see,” said Essen, the moment they stood outside the closed door of the box. “It would not have been well to get up and go when the firing began. But the people will not know now that we left in haste.”
Outside the theatre a troop of hussars sat their horses, while two grooms stood at the heads of two more horses, and Hornblower realized that he was committed to riding in his full-dress uniform. It was not the serious business it used to be, though; Hornblower thought with pleasure of his dozen reserve pairs of silk stockings stored away in Nonsuch. Essen climbed on to his horse, and Hornblower followed his example. The bright full moon filled the square with light, as, with the escort following, they trotted clattering over the cobbles. Two turns and a moderate descent brought them to the big floating bridge that spanned the Dwina; the roadway across the pontoons drummed hollow beneath the horses’ hoofs. Across the river a road ran on the top of a high levée beside the water; on the far side the land was cut and seamed with ditches and ponds, around which twinkled innumerable camp-fires, and here Essen halted and gave an order which sent the hussar officer and half the escort riding ahead of them.
“I have no desire to be shot by my own men,” explained Essen. “Sentries will be nervous, and riding into a village that has just suffered a night attack will be as dangerous as storming a battery.”
Hornblower was too preoccupied to appreciate the point very much. His sword and his ribbon and star and his cocked hat added to his usual difficulty of retaining his seat on horseback, and he bumped ungracefully in his saddle, sweating profusely in the cool night, and grabbing spasmodically at items of his equipment whenever he could spare a hand from his reins. They were challenged repeatedly as they rode along, but despite Essen’s gloomy prognostication no jumpy sentry fired at them. Finally they drew up in reply to another challenge at a point where the dome of the church of Daugavgriva stood up black against the pale sky. With the cessation of the noise of the horses’ hoofs a fresh sound claimed Hornblower’s attention; a wailing clamour coloured by high agonized screams; a whole chorus of groans and cries. The sentry passed them through, and they rode forward into the village, and as they did so the groans and screams were explained, for they passed on their left the torch-lit field where the wounded were being treated — Hornblower had a glimpse of a naked writhing body being held down on a table while the surgeons bent over it in the glare of the torches like the familiars of the Inquisition, while the whole field was carpeted with writhing and groaning wounded. And this had been a mere outpost skirmish, a trifling matter of a few hundred casualties on either side.
They dismounted at the door of the church and Essen led the way in, returning the salute of the bearded grenadiers at the door. Candles made a bright pool of light in the midst of the surrounding gloom, and at a table there sat a group of officers drinking tea from a samovar which hissed beside them. They rose as the Governor entered, and Essen made the introductions.
“General Diebitch, Colonel von Clausewitz — Commodore Sir Hornblower.”
Diebitch was a Pole, Clausewitz a German — the Prussian renegade Hornblower had heard about previously, an intellectual soldier who had decided that true patriotism lay in fighting Bonaparte regardless of which side his country nominally assisted. They made their report in French; the enemy had attempted at moonrise to storm the village without preparation, and had been bloodily repulsed. Prisoners had been taken; some had captured an outlying cottage and had been cut off in the counter-attack, and there were other isolated prisoners from various units who had fallen into Russian hands at other points of the perimeter of the village.