Then she saw that they were close by the bridge. The cossacks had dismounted and Barbe was struggling like a fury in the grip of three of them. They were carrying her towards the river. In sudden terror at the sight of that dirty grey water and the big, yellowish-coloured lumps of ice in it, Marianne began to scream and tried to struggle, but in vain. The men's grasp held firm and she felt paralysed with fear.

Forgetting where she was, she began to scream aloud in French: 'Help! Help! Save me!'

She was answered by such a roar that it seemed as if the earth itself had burst asunder. At the same time she felt herself swung up and tossed into the cold air. Then the river waters closed over her cries.

The water was freezing cold and fast-moving, made still more dangerous by the floating ice and the fact that it was in spate. Marianne felt that she was falling into a bottomless abyss, a cold hell that ate into her bones. Instinctively she tried to swim. Letting go the blanket round her and her enveloping shawls, she managed to struggle to the surface. Arms and legs were already numbed with cold but she forced them to the proper motions for swimming. Then, suddenly, her foot struck against something solid. She stood up and found that there was firm ground under her feet. There must be a ford, and the bridge overhung the ford because when she wiped the water out of her eyes she saw that she was quite close to one of the wooden piles. She reached out and clung to it.

To her surprise, the bank from which she had been thrown was empty. The kibitka was still there but there was no one with it. At that point it occurred to her that Barbe must have suffered the same fate as herself and she began searching the river with her eyes. She saw nothing and her heart contracted. Whether from the cold or because she could not swim, poor Barbe must have perished.

Frozen to the marrow, her teeth chattering, Marianne let go of her pile and staggered to the bank where she dropped on to the frosted grass. Her heart was thudding like a bass drum in her breast, filling her ears with a noise like thunder. She knew that she must get up and move about if she did not want to die of cold instead of drowning. The instinct of self-preservation was so strong that she did not give a thought to the fact that by coming out of the water she was likely to fall into the hands of her former persecutors again.

She dragged herself up the gently sloping bank and as her eyes came level with the road she understood at last that the thundering had not been only in her head. A short way off, between the river and the village, the cossacks were engaged with some other horsemen – horsemen who could only belong to the Grand Army.

Marianne felt as if the heavens had opened for her. Her fingers twined into the frozen grass were insensible to cold or pain as she followed the combat with her eyes. It was an unequal fight: some fifty cossacks to half a score of French who, though fighting like lions, were evidently getting the worst of it. Already three men were down and two horses lay dead in the snow.

'Oh God,' she prayed. 'Save them! Save us all!'

A great shout came in answer. Another little troop of horse had emerged beside a clump of trees at the top of the slope. This time there were perhaps a dozen of them. An officer in a plumed hat, evidently a general, broke away from the group and rode forward a little way, observing the skirmish by the river. He sat on his horse for a moment, the feathers in his hat streaming in the wind, then suddenly he pulled it off, drew his sword and, pointing to the fight, cried: 'Forward!' in unmistakable French.

What followed was magnificent. The handful of horse swept down on the cossacks in a furious charge, smashing into them like a tornado. Man after man went down before them as they rode to the relief of their friends, the murderous flash of their sabres whirling like sickles in a harvest field, spreading death around them.

It was quickly over. In a few minutes the surviving Russians had turned tail and were fleeing back towards the trees, pursued by the solitary figure of the general. The sound of his laughter was borne on the wind.

Then, quite suddenly, Marianne almost sang for joy. She had seen Barbe emerge from behind a fir tree and go running towards the wagon. Marianne stood up and tried to run after her but her frozen limbs refused to bear her. She fell heavily to the ground and called as loudly as she could: 'Barbe! Barbe! I'm here, Barbe! Come to me!'

Barbe heard her. In another moment she had reached her and was hugging her in her arms, laughing and crying at once, calling on every saint in the Polish calendar and swearing to light a forest of candles to every one of them at the first opportunity.

'Barbe,' Marianne wailed, 'I'm so cold I can't even walk!'

"Never mind about that!' And with that Barbe lifted Marianne as easily as if she had been a child and carried her, shivering, to the kibitka. Only then did they see that a man had forestalled them and recognized the general who had led the charge. He had his hand on the horse's bridle.

'My apologies to you, my good woman, but I've two wounded men here.'

Marianne had closed her eyes, as though in an effort to keep in what bodily heat she had left, but at the sound of his voice she opened them and saw to her amazement that the dashing rider of a moment ago was indeed none other than the man who had rescued her from Chernychev and fought with him for her sake in the garden in the rue de Lille,[3] Fortunée Hamelin's favourite lover, Fournier-Sarloveze.

'François!' she said weakly, finding his name spring as naturally to her lips as if they had been brought up together.

He turned and gaped at her, rubbed his eyes and then looked more closely.

'I've been drinking too much of their damned vodka again!'

"No, you're not seeing things, my friend. It really is me, Marianne. You've just rescued me for the second time, although you did not know it.'

For a moment he was speechless, then he burst out with a loud: 'Good God! But what the devil are you doing here? And soaking wet at that!'

'The cossacks threw me in the river – it would take too long to explain. Oh, my goodness, but I'm cold! I'm so dreadfully cold!'

'Threw you in the river? My God, I could kill another hundred of 'em for that! Wait a moment—Here, you, woman, take those wet clothes off her.'

He hurried to his horse, unfastened the big cloak that was rolled at the saddle and ran back again to fling it hastily round her as she stood in her soaking petticoat. Marianne tried to stop him.

'But you? Surely you'll need it?'

'Don't you worry about me. I'll pick up another from some cossack. Did you say this cart belongs to you? Where were you going with it?'

'I was trying to go home. François, for pity's sake, if you should see the Emperor, don't tell him you've seen me. Matters between us could not well be worse.'

He laughed, not without a touch of bitterness.

'Why should you think I'll be saying anything to him? You know he hates me – almost as much as I hate him. And this harebrained escapade isn't going to make us better friends. He's destroying the finest army in the world. But tell me, what was it happened between you to put you on such bad terms?'

'A friend of mine had given him some offence and I helped him to escape. Oh, François, I am being sought for! Haven't you been in Smolensk lately, or in Orcha, or any other town on the road to France? My description is pasted up everywhere.'

'I never read their damned notices. I'm not interested.'

Briskly he threw his arms round her, picked her up and carried her to the wagon and set her down inside it, tucking the cloak carefully round her feet which were blue with cold. Then he studied her intently for a moment, his face suddenly grave, bent down and set his mouth to her cold lips, hugging her to him with a kind of passionate fury.

'I've been wanting to do that for years,' he muttered gruffly. 'Ever since the night of Napoleon's marriage to be precise. Are you going to slap my face again?'

She shook her head, too much moved for speech. That burning kiss had been just what she needed to bring back the raw taste of life and make her herself again. She wanted to cling for a moment to that manly form and to the passionate lust for life that was in this unrepentant duellist. And she told him as much.

'Where are you going? I wish I could come with you.'

He shook his head and his handsome face twisted sardonically.

'Come with me? I thought you wanted to get out of this hell hole? All I could offer you would be a worse one, because we don't know what is coming to us. We've lost two-thirds of our force and the cossacks are everywhere. And now, instead of going on to Poland we've got to fall back with what troops we have left to join up with Napoleon. So you be off! And as quick as you can, while there is still time. Take a look at that river and the bridge. You must get across at once because as soon as our backs are turned I dare swear there'll be another lot of cossacks here to break it down. And I can't stop them. I've too few men.'

'But if the Emperor is retreating into Poland, how will you manage? The bridges at Borisov have been destroyed already.'

He made a tired, angry movement.

'I know. Well, we shall see. Go now, off with you! I'll see you in Paris – God willing.'

'And supposing I'm permitted to live. But what about your wounded?'

'We'll hoist them on to a horse. There's a medical unit not far off. Goodbye, Marianne. If you should happen to see Fortunée before I do, tell her not to start looking for consolation yet awhile because I'll be back. Do you hear that, I'll be back. Russia shall not have my bones.'

Was he saying that to reassure himself, she wondered? No, he was too sure of himself. It was not even a boast. If there were to be only one man left out of all the Grande Armée, Fournier would be that man. And, one way and another, it was good to know. Marianne smiled. And this time it was she who drew the general down to her and kissed him – in a very sisterly fashion.

'I'll tell her. Goodbye, François.'

After piling on top of Marianne everything they possessed in the way of clothes and blankets, Barbe clambered back on to the driving seat and took up the reins. A click of her tongue and they were off, lumbering towards the bridge. The wind had brought the snow with it and it was falling thickly now. Fournier stood by the road and watched the heavy wagon lurching over the uneven surface of trampled earth that covered the logs. He made a trumpet of his hands and shouted through them into the gale.

'Go carefully! Beyond the bridge the road goes through some nasty boggy ground, and the wind is very strong. Keep to the path! And try to avoid Smorgoni! There was some fighting there yesterday!'

Barbe waved her whip to show that she had understood and the kibitka rolled on into the white whirlwind on the road to Vilna, some fifty leagues farther on. When it was no longer visible, Fournier-Sarlovèze gave an angry shrug and put up his sleeve to brush away a drop of moisture from his cheek. Then he turned and walked back to his horse and springing lightly into the saddle trotted back to the head of his troop. The last bridge across the Berezina was left alone in the rising storm with only the dead for company. By next day, it was gone.

In the snow, the road to Vilna proved to be a terrible ordeal for the two women.. On the day after her enforced bathe in the Berezina, Marianne was coughing her lungs out and shivering with fever. By now she had no need to feign illness. She lay in the back of the kibitka, muffled up in blankets and in Fournier's great cloak, enduring the agonizing jolting without a murmur of complaint because she would not add to Barbe's difficulties.

Barbe's courage and fortitude were quite incredible. She slept for no more than three hours a night and she saw to everything. When they halted for the night she would make a fire and cook the invalid a soup of flour, rice and such few vegetables as they had left, concoct hot possets out of melted snow and heat up large stones that could be slipped inside Marianne's blankets at night to keep her warm. Nor did she neglect the horse but curried him at every halt, fed him, even put a blanket over him and saw that he was tethered out of the wind. By day, she sat stolidly in the driving seat, her eyes fixed on the line of the road, which was inclined to be haphazard except where it ran through trees. She had even used the gun against a pack of wolves, handling it with a skill denoting long practice. Her whole being was concentrated on a single thought: to get to Vilna, where the house where they were to put up belonged to a Jewish apothecary who was also a physician.