They had hauled me into the guard-room, and there he was, the inevitable cigarette clamped between his teeth, those terrible hypnotic blue-brown eyes regarding me with no more emotion than a snake’s. For a full minute he stared at me, the smoke escaping in tiny wreaths from his lips, and then without a change of expression he lashed me across the face with his gloves, back and forth, while I struggled feebly between my Cossack guards, trying to duck my head from his blows.
“Don’t!” I cried. “Don’t, please! Pajalsta! I’m a prisoner! You’ve no right to … to treat me so! I’m a British officer … please! I’m wounded … for God’s sake, stop!”
He gave me one last swipe, and then looked at his gloves, weighing them in his hand. Then, in that icy whisper, he said: “Burn those,” and dropped them at the feet of the aide who stood beside him.
“You,” he said to me, and his voice was all the more deadly for not bearing the slightest trace of heat or emotion, “plead for mercy. You need expect none. You are forsworn – a betrayer of the vilest kind. You were treated with every consideration, with kindness even, by a man who turned to you in his hour of need, laying on you the most solemn obligation to protect his daughter. You repaid him by abducting her, by trying to escape, and by abandoning her to her death. You …”
“It’s a lie!” I shouted. “I didn’t – it was an accident! She fell from the sled – it wasn’t my fault! I was driving, I wasn’t even with her!”
His reply to this was a gesture to the aide, who struck me with the gloves again.
“You are a liar,” says Ignatieff. “The officer of the pursuing troop saw you. Pencherjevsky himself has told me how you and your comrade East left Starotorsk, how you basely seized the opportunity to escape …”
“It wasn’t base … we’d given no parole … we had the right of any prisoners of war … in all honour …”
“You talk of honour,” says he softly. “You thought to escape all censure, because you believed Pencherjevsky was doomed. Fortunately, he was not a hetman of Cossacks for nothing. He cut his way clear, and in spite of your unspeakable treatment of his daughter, she too survived.”
“Thank God for that!” cries I. “Believe me, sir, you are quite mistaken. I intended no betrayal of the Count, and I swear I never mistreated his daughter – it was all an accident …”
“The only accident for you was the one that prevented your escaping. I promise you,” he went on, in that level, sibilant voice, “that you will live to wish that sled had crushed your life out. For by your conduct, you understand, you have lost every right to be treated as an honourable man, or even as a common felon. You are beyond the law of nations, you are beyond mercy. One thing alone can mitigate your punishment.”
He paused there, to let it sink in, and to take another cigarette. The aide lit it for him, while I waited, quaking and sweating.
“I require an answer to one question,” says Ignatieff, “and you will supply it in your own language. Lie to me, or try to evade it, and I will have your tongue removed.” His next words were in English. “Why did you try to escape?”
Terrified as I was, I daren’t tell him the truth. I knew that if he learned that I’d found out about his expedition to India, it was all up with me.
“Because … because there was the opportunity … and there wasn’t any dishonour in it. And we meant … ah, Miss Pencherjevsky no harm, I swear we didn’t …”
“You lie. No one, in your situation, would have attempted such a foolhardy escape, let alone such a dishonourable one, without some pressing reason.” The blue-brown eyes seemed to be boring into my brain. “I believe I know what it was – the only thing it could possibly be. And I assure you, in five minutes from now you will be dying, in excruciating agony, unless you can tell me what is meant by –” he paused, inhaling on his cigarette “–Item Seven.” He let the smoke trickle down his nostrils. “If, by chance, you are unaware of what it means, you will die anyway.”
There was nothing for it; I had to confess. I tried to speak, but my throat was dry. Then I stammered out hoarsely, in English:
“It’s a plan … to invade India. Please, for God’s sake, I found out about it by accident, I …”
“How did you discover it?”
I babbled it out, how we had eavesdropped in the gallery and heard him talking to the Tsar. “It was just by chance … I didn’t mean to spy … it was East, and he said we must try to escape … to get word to our people … to warn them! I said it was dishonourable, that we were bound as gentlemen …”
“And Major East was with you, and overheard?”
“Yes, yes … it was his notion, you see! I didn’t like it … and when he suggested we escape, when those beastly peasants attacked Starotorsk … what could I do? But I swear we meant no harm, and … and it’s a lie that I mistreated Miss Pencherjevsky – I’ll swear it, by my honour, on the Bible …”
“Gag him,” says Ignatieff. “Bring him to the courtyard. And bring a prisoner. Any one in the cells will do.”
They stuffed a rag into my mouth, and bound it, stifling my pleas for mercy, for I was sure he was going to make away with me horribly, now that he had his information. They pinioned my wrists, and thrust me brutally out into the yard; it was freezing, and I had nothing but my shirt and breeches. I waited, trembling with cold and funk, until presently another Cossack appeared, driving in front of him a scared, dirty-looking peasant with fetters on his legs. Ignatieff, who had followed us out, and was pinching the paper of a cigarette, beckoned the Cossack.
“What was this fellow’s offence?”
“Insubordination, Lord Count.”
“Very good,” says Ignatieff, and lit his cigarette.
Two more Cossacks appeared, carrying between them a curious bench, like a vaulting horse with very short legs and a flat top. The prisoner shrieked at the sight of it, and tried to run, but they dragged him to it, tearing off his clothes, and bound him on it face down, with thongs at his ankles, knees, waist and neck, so that he lay there, naked and immovable, but still screaming horribly.
Ignatieff beckoned one of the Cossacks, who held out to him a curious thick black coil, of what looked for all the world like shiny liquorice. Ignatieff hefted it in his hands, and then stepped in front of me and placed it over my head; I shuddered as it touched my shoulders, and was astonished by the weight of the thing. At a sign from Ignatieff the Cossack, grinning, drew it slowly off my shoulders, and I realized in horror as it slithered off like an obscene black snake that it was a huge whip, over twelve feet long, as thick as my arm at the butt and tapering to a point no thicker than a boot-lace.
“You will have heard of this,” says Ignatieff softly. “It is called a knout. Its use is illegal. Watch.”
The Cossack stood opposite the bench with its howling victim, took the knout in both hands, and swept it back over his shoulder so that its hideous lash trailed behind him in the snow. Then he struck.
I’ve seen floggings, and watched with fascination as a rule, but this was horrible, like nothing imaginable. That diabolical thing cut through the air with a noise like a steam whistle, so fast that you couldn’t see it; there was a crack like a pistol-shot, a fearful, choked scream of agony, and then the Cossack was snaking it back for another blow.
“Wait,” says Ignatieff, and to me: “Come here.” They pushed me forward to the bench, the bile nearly choking me behind the gag; I didn’t want to look, but they forced me. The wretched man’s buttocks were cut clean across, as by a sabre, and the blood was pouring out.
“The drawing stroke,” says Ignatieff. “Proceed.”
Five more shrieking cuts, five more explosive cracks, five more razor gashes,