Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [277]
Below, meanwhile, everything was in confusion.
The men in the undercroft were now trying to put out the fire they had started. But it was not so easily done, for the straw had been well prepared.
At the foot of one of the ladders, about a dozen people were standing, staring at the two Cossacks, who in turn were calmly watching them.
And no one, it seemed, had noticed the little girl.
In the confusion inside, with people jostling near the window, she had been accidentally shoved into the path of a large man making for the exit. Scarcely troubling to think, and finding the child in his path, he had casually picked her up, tucked her under one powerful arm, and carried her down with him, dropping her when he reached the ground.
Now she was wandering about by the huts, hardly knowing where she was.
‘Where is Daniel?’ Andrei called out.
‘Inside,’ they replied. ‘What do you want with him? Who are you?’
And Andrei was just wondering what to reply when another cry rang out, this time from the roof.
‘The troops! I see them!’
They had arrived.
It was now that Andrei looked up and saw a huge figure coming down the ladder from the other window.
This must be Daniel: there could be no mistaking him, from Nikita Bobrov’s description. And from the moment he reached the ground it was obvious that, whatever his uplifted thoughts a few minutes before, he was now in a furious temper.
‘Get up the ladders,’ he roared at the people who had dared to come down. ‘Get up at once, you fools. It’s probably a trap.’ With a furious glance towards the two Cossacks he rushed to the entrance of the undercroft, moving with astonishing speed.
‘Light the fire!’ he bellowed. ‘The troops are here. Hurry!’
The people were running up the ladders again. Daniel, satisfied that the fires were now lit, was ordering the men from the undercroft up the ladder by the front of the church.
‘Up,’ he shouted. ‘Up and bar the door.’
Already, Andrei could hear a shout from near the village gate. The troops were entering.
He looked at Pavlo.
‘Better take no chances,’ he murmured. And urging his horse forward towards the church, he drew his sword.
The flames were already licking up the side of the building. From the undercroft, smoke was pouring. Andrei saw the ladders being drawn up into the building, heard the heavy doors slam and bars drop into place. One ladder remained, and Daniel was walking swiftly towards it as Andrei reached him.
As the huge fellow turned to look up at the Cossack with his raised sabre, there was not a trace of fear in his face: only anger and contempt. And his expression scarcely altered even when the Cossack stopped, open-mouthed, and cried out: ‘My God, it’s Ox!’
And it was as the two men stared at each other that a pale woman appeared above with a cry which, as he turned to look to where she was pointing, caused old Andrei to gasp once more, and wonder if he might not, after all, be in a dream.
Everything was swaying. But at last she knew where she must go. For now she saw the flames.
The flames. Like a huge candle. So comforting. She knew she wanted them.
She was walking towards them. The friendly flames, and the church, and her parents. Why did the church keep moving? She frowned. But still she pressed on.
Ah, she could hear their crackle. Feel their warmth now. If she could just find a ladder: that was what she needed.
‘Maryushka!’ Her mother’s voice. She smiled, went forward. Wasn’t that her father, with someone else by the ladder? It was. He would take her up the ladder. She cried out, tried to run towards him.
‘Maryushka!’ A man’s voice. But not her father’s. Why did the strange figure on the horse cry out her name? Why was the huge horse coming towards her?
Suddenly she felt herself scooped up, high. She was on the big horse with the stranger.
Yet why was he carrying her away from the flames, away into the darkness?
The destruction of the Bobrov estate at Dirty Place was complete.
That is to say, its principal assets – the peasants Bobrov owned – were completely destroyed.