As Eagles Fly Read online

  “I think it is,” the Countess Natasha contradicted. “I never thought I would meet an Englishman who is a coward.”

  Lord Athelstan gave a little laugh with no humour in it.

  “You are very cleverly trying to provoke me, Countess,” he said. “You know as well as I do that nothing is likely to incite a man more than an accusation of cowardice. But may I tell you that it is often more difficult and courageous to refuse a request than to acquiesce in it. That is my position.”

  “You are really refusing me?” she enquired in a low voice.

  “I am telling you that what you ask of me is impossible,” he said. “It would involve a violation of the diplomatic privilege I am accorded everywhere I go. I cannot express my own feelings in this matter. I can only act correctly within the terms of my office.”

  The Countess rose to her feet.

  “Is that your last word on the matter?”

  “With the deepest regret, I can only reiterate that there is nothing I can do to help you.”

  He paused.

  “I will, of course, speak to the Imam on your behalf, although I doubt if he will listen to me.”

  “It is the Murids who will not listen,” Countess Natasha said bitterly. “Shamyl is a just man in his own way, but they have become greedy. The Holy War they have fought for so long and the Paradise for which they will die so willingly, pales beside the thought of golden roubles. They want to buy guns and more guns so they can go on killing.”

  Her voice seemed to ring out in the small room.

  Then she looked at Lord Athelstan and he saw not only anger in her eyes, but a hatred that was almost like a glint of fire.

  “You may be an excellent diplomat, my Lord,” she said, “but as a man I despise you.”

  Lord Athelstan’s face was quite impassive, as he bowed to her almost ironically.

  Holding her head high, with a dignity that was unmistakable, she swept by him.

  He thought for a moment that her ragged dress might have been trimmed with ermine and that she wore a coronet on her dark hair.

  Chapter Two

  Lord Athelstan stood for a long time after Countess Natasha had left the room wondering what he could do to help her.

  He knew that there was in fact nothing.

  It was unthinkable that he should in his position get himself involved in anything so completely alien to Western thought.

  When the Princesses returned to their homes, they would certainly relate what had happened to their friend, the young Countess, and the whole world would be shocked at the thought of a Christian woman being incarcerated in the Sultan’s Palace.

  Every instinct in Lord Athelstan’s body urged him to prevent this happening, but his mind told him logically and unemotionally that he was in point of fact powerless.

  He could, of course, appeal to the Imam and this he intended to do.

  Hadjio came to tell him that his presence was required in the Selamek or reception room and, putting on a thick cloak lined with sable, Lord Athelstan followed the Steward along the narrow twisting passages of the aôul.

  As he went, he thought how bitterly cold the hostages must have found their prison after the warmth of their Palaces, which were kept so hot that gardens of flowers and orange trees bloomed inside them all the year round.

  The Imam was waiting for Lord Athelstan, attended by only an interpreter, which, since his Lordship could speak to him in his own language, was only a formality.

  They bowed to each other and exchanged the flowery fulsome greetings that were usual in the East, before the Imam sent the interpreter away so that they could sit alone over their cups of coffee.

  It was then that Shamyl asked Lord Athelstan to tell him the truth as to the prospect of his receiving any help from England in his fight against the Russians.

  Choosing his words with care, Lord Athelstan was truthful.

  He knew as he spoke that what he had to say was what the Imam had expected, even though it was bitter for him to realise that he must go on alone or be conquered.

  Things in the Caucasus had, Lord Athelstan learnt, been far more difficult since Field-Marshal Prince Alexander Bariatinsky had taken command of the Russian troops.

  Four years earlier, in 1851, he had begun to win battle after battle against Shamyl’s forces.

  His methods were entirely different from those used by any previous Commander. By a series of out-flanking manoeuvres, new to Shamyl’s forces – whereas before head-on battles had been usual – he was able to gain successes that were astonishing.

  He used methods very unlike those employed by the Russians in the past and he had a sense of theatre and drama that almost equalled Shamyl’s.

  After one battle, when there had been terrible fighting on both sides, he accepted the surrender of a large body of Tchetchens. He then gave them back their swords, dismissed his own men and told the Tchetchens to guard him while he slept.

  These new methods, combined with a clemency never known before, impressed the Caucasians and resulted in quite a number of minor tribes defecting to the Russian side.

  Prince Bariatinsky even changed the landscape itself.

  The great forests had always been Shamyl’s finest natural defence, so much so that not only did he impose very heavy fines on any man cutting down a tree for his own purposes but he often hanged offenders there and then as a warning to others.

  Prince Bariatinsky felled the forests, cleared the scrub and bridged the rivers.

  From high in the mountains Shamyl, with his telescope fixed on the woodcutters, could watch his defences falling one by one and knew that there was nothing he could do about it.

  Looking at the Imam sitting opposite him, remembering the legends of his invincibility, Lord Athelstan could not help feeling sadly that Shamyl was nearing the end of the road.

  The Russians would never give up and they were encroaching nearer and nearer to Dargo-Vedin, his secret stronghold which, as Hawkins said, was like an eagle’s nest, but which one day he might have to surrender.

  There was, however, the present to contend with and this included the hostages who, if rumour was to be believed, were very near their time of release.

  Shamyl had an amazing chain of communication, which kept him to a large extent in touch with the outside world.

  He had set it up soon after he came to power, having admired the system employed by the Russians of posting along their military highways.

  But Shamyl used a relay system across country where no foreigner could go, over glaciers, forests, swamps and mountains.

  The swift Caucasian horses were the link in the chain by which news could be transmitted at an almost incredible speed.

  Every soul under his command kept in readiness their fastest horses, saddled and ready for a messenger who might arrive at any moment by day or night on an exhausted mount.

  If the man was ill, if he was wounded or otherwise unable to travel further, another rider was ready in a second to carry on the messages.

  The Caucasians rode in every type of weather, crossed raging torrents, clung to the perilous paths to reach Shamyl, carrying despatches that told him every detail of Russian life.

  He knew not only of reinforcements and the arrival of new Regiments and more guns but also of balls and the gossip of Society, of which particular Circassian beauty was the mistress of which Officer, of talks with local Khans and who was acting as a spy against him.

  Shamyl was in fact far better informed than his enemies.

  Their paid spies were found dead at night with a knife in their backs. Their new offensives were anticipated and their element of surprise ineffective.

  Lord Athelstan therefore suspected that Shamyl was well aware that his son, Djemmal Eddin, had left St. Petersburg in January and had driven in a troika, accompanied by an escort of Cossacks, to Moscow.

  There he was feted. Balls were given in his honour and he was fawned on by all the most beautiful women in Moscow.

  At t
he beginning of February he should have reached Vladikavkaz where the Russians would undoubtedly treat him as a hero.

  Shamyl did not tell Lord Athelstan all he knew, but from long years of trying to fathom the twisted tangles of the Eastern mind and having seen Djemmal Eddin in St. Petersburg, Lord Athelstan could fill in a great deal that remained unsaid.

  He realised that it had been a stab in the heart to Shamyl when his son was taken from him.

  But he wondered if he would not experience an even greater agony when the same son returned radically changed and now completely alien to what must seem to him a barbarian existence.

  It was, however, impossible for Lord Athelstan not to admire the Imam and to know that, when history came to be written, he would go down as one of the great leaders of the world and a great visionary.

  They talked for a long time.

  Lord Athelstan at last expressed the thoughts that were uppermost in his mind,

  “I have seen the Countess Natasha,” he said. “Would it not be possible to allow the lady and her small brother to go free?”

  “Without recompense?” Shamyl asked.

  “Why not?” Lord Athelstan asked. “You were not expecting a ransom for them when they were captured.”

  “That is true,” Shamyl answered. “At the same time I have many prisoners, some of whom have been held in Dargo-Vedin and in other parts of my territory for more than ten years. What will I say to them if for no apparent reason two aristocrats, who have been my prisoners for little over seven months, are returned without payment?”

  It was a logical answer to which Lord Athelstan knew there was no reply.

  He was well aware of the sufferings endured by the prisoners of the Caucasians.

  There must, he thought, be hundreds of other Georgian captives, soldiers and people of no consequence, who would never be ransomed and therefore would die where they were incarcerated in the small cold airless prisons where they were half-starved and where terrible tortures were often inflicted on them.

  “It is not my decision alone,” Shamyl said after a moment. “My Murids would not tolerate it.”

  This Lord Athelstan knew was true. Things had changed in the Caucasus since Shamyl had tried to unite the whole country against the common enemy.

  The Murids had grown more powerful and they were not prepared to accept the ideal of a Holy War without more material recompense.

  They had become avaricious and at this very moment they were overruling the Imam on the amount that should be paid for the Princesses.

  A little later when Shamyl had left him, Lord Athelstan was to learn of this from Princess Anna.

  He asked again if he might see the hostages and he knew it was only with reluctance that Shamyl finally agreed that he should talk for a few minutes with Princess Anna.

  Thinking about her while he waited in the Selamek, Lord Athelstan remembered meeting her once some years ago when he had first visited Georgia.

  The granddaughters of George XII, the last King of Georgia, Her Serene Highness Princess Anna and her younger sister Princess Varvara were outstandingly beautiful in a country of beautiful women.

  They had both been appointed Lady-in-Waiting to the Czarina and after being admired and courted in St. Petersburg Society, they had married two handsome Georgian Princes and returned to live in their own country.

  As he waited, Lord Athelstan wondered if Princess Anna’s looks had been impaired by what she had suffered.

  He could not imagine anything more distressing than for a gently nurtured lady, used to all the comfort and luxury that money could buy, to be imprisoned in this cold, bare and frightening mountain stronghold.

  But, when the Princess Anna came into the room, he realised that apart from appearing ill and very thin, she had not really altered.

  Her classical features were still perfect, her thick black hair was coiled into a chignon on her proud head, and she looked just as statuesquely Regal in the tattered rags that she wore as she had been in a ball gown and fabulous jewels when Lord Athelstan had last seen her.

  She held out her hand with a little cry of welcome and he raised her fingers to his lips.

  She was accompanied into the room by two Murids with drawn swords and the interpreter who, Lord Athelstan knew, would repeat every word and even the intonation of their voices, to Shamyl.

  “Your Serene Highness is all right?” Lord Athelstan asked in English.

  “We are alive,” Princess Anna replied.

  “I will not waste time in expressing my sorrow at what has happened to you,” Lord Athelstan said. “I know what you must have suffered and I can only pray that your captivity is now at an end.”

  “That is what we are praying for,” Princess Anna answered, “but I am desperately afraid that something will happen at the last moment to prevent our release.”

  “The ransom?” Lord Athelstan asked.

  “Exactly,” she answered. “It is impossible to convince these people that my husband cannot raise a larger sum. He has already offered forty thousand roubles. They say it is not enough.”

  There was an agony in the Princess’s voice and Lord Athelstan said quickly,

  “I am sure in the end it will be acceptable. The Imam’s only thought for the last thirteen years has been that he should have his son returned to him.”

  “That is our one hope,” Princess Anna answered, “but I cannot help feeling sorry for Djemmal Eddin.”

  “You know him?” Lord Athelstan asked.

  “Very well indeed. He is a charming delightful boy. Very cultured and I know that he has almost forgotten his home. He is Russian through and through. How will he ever endure this life?”

  It was typical, Lord Athelstan thought, that Princess Anna, who was indeed a very remarkable character, should think of Djemmal Eddin’s sufferings in the midst of her own.

  Then she said with a sigh,

  “I am not only thinking of myself if we are not rescued but of the children. How can they remain here to be brought up as Caucasians, the girls married off when they are almost too young to know what is happening to them and the boys taught to fight against our own people?”

  “I am sure what your husband has offered will be acceptable,” Lord Athelstan said soothingly. “You know as well as I do that they are bound to bargain, to argue and to try to extract a little more up to the very last moment.”

  Princess Anna sighed.

  “I try to cheer myself up by thinking that, but you can imagine what it has been like these last months.”

  “Has your treatment been very harsh?” Lord Athelstan asked.

  “No,” she answered. “Shamyl is a just man, but your Lordship will appreciate that he cannot always control his household and women are always more spiteful than men.”

  Lord Athelstan guessed that she must have suffered at the hands of Shamyl’s wives.

  “At first it was terrible,” Princess Anna went on in a low voice. “There were twenty-three of us all in one small room and not allowed to move out of it. Later our servants were given separate accommodation.”

  There was a brooding look on her face as if she were remembering how intolerable the situation had been.

  Then with a smile, she went on,

  “Only the children did not mind and Shamyl has always been kind to them. Every day he has them brought to his room where he plays with them, giving them fruit and lollipops.”

  “It seems hard to imagine,” Lord Athelstan remarked.

  “It is true,” Princess Anna said. “No matter how many problems he has on his mind, or how concerned he is with his wars, he always has time for the children.”

  “It is something I certainly did not expect to hear,” Lord Athelstan remarked.

  “When my baby Alexander was ill, the Imam fetched medicine men from his farthest Provinces,” Princess Anna continued. “He even had him wrapped in the skin of a freshly-slaughtered sheep which the Caucasians regard as an infallible cure.”

  “
The child is alive?” Lord Athelstan asked gently.

  “Shamyl gave permission for him to sleep with a nurse outside our crowded room, which had been weakening him,” Princess Anna answered, “and after that he began to mend slowly.”

  “I am glad.”

  It was strange, Lord Athelstan thought, that two men who hated each other, whose life’s work had been to oppose each other, Shamyl and the Czar, were both so fond of children.

  Perhaps if they ever met, children might become a mutual bond to foster some understanding between them.

  Then, as if she realised that time was passing and she would not be able to linger with Lord Athelstan, Princess Anna said,

  “I would speak to you about Natasha Melikov.”

  “I have already seen the Countess,” Lord Athelstan said. “I cannot help her.”

  “It is not possible for you to think of some way?” Princess Anna pleaded. “The Imam will not let her leave with us.”

  “He has already told me so.”

  “If she stays here, her brother stays with her. If she goes to Constantinople as Shamyl intends, we can take Prince Dimitri home.”

  “I understand the problem,” Lord Athelstan said, “but I regret it is utterly and completely impossible for me to be of assistance.”

  He thought the Princess Anna might be annoyed with him, but instead she smiled.

  “I knew that would be your answer long before it was suggested,” she said. “Here it is easy to forget the protocol that is so important in our previous lives.”

  “Thank you for understanding,” Lord Athelstan said.

  “I knew that as a diplomat you could not stoop to intrigue,” Princess Anna went on. “Natasha is too young to understand.”

  “I can only repeat how sorry I am to be so unhelpful.”

  “It’s time to go,” the interpreter interrupted sharply.

  Princess Anna held out her hand to Lord Athelstan. He took it and raised it to his lips.

  “I am hoping that next time we meet it will be in very different surroundings.”

  “You have given me hope,” Princess Anna replied, “not only by what you have said but just by my seeing you. Thank you.”