BEFORE CHAOS AND THE GLARE

By Rita Oakes

(Originally published in Tales of Moreauvia (Spring 2008)

 

Moscow, 15 September, 1812

My dearest Charlotte,

        We have  arrived safely in Moscow. A most magnificent capital of oriental splendor, but the populace has fled, which makes our victory more unsettling than triumphant. You know well I am not by nature fanciful, but I cannot shake the feeling we have entered a city of ghosts.

        I cannot describe my weariness. The last battle at the Moskva, called by some Borodino, held the fiercest fighting I have ever witnessed--I dare say the fiercest fighting the world itself has seen. The guns pounded so long and hard I felt my bones must surely shatter within my flesh. Heart-rending casualties on both sides. I myself performed over two-hundred amputations within twenty-four hours.

        I beg you to forgive my uncharacteristic melancholy--my weariness seems beyond the physical--it weights my very soul. I must take a lesson from our brave soldiers who have borne so much these many months--I have a duty to them--and to our beloved Emperor. An uninterrupted night's sleep will restore my cheer, so you must not worry.

        I am presently in the company of our good friend Hippolyte Belliard and his wife. Hippolyte is convalescing from a fever. I believe his survival is due more to the assiduous care of his wife than to my modest arts. The two are, as ever, most amiable companions.

        We have occupied a dwelling so large and exquisite it seems more palace than house. The resourceful Madame Belliard prepared a lovely dinner in spite of the absence of servants. She is as charming and brave as a man might wish, for all that she is great with child.

        Were it not for the rigors of travel and the ravages of the Cossacks, I would wish you here with us, for it must be difficult for Madame, surrounded only by bluff and hardened men at so tender a time. Selfishly, I would wish you here for my sake as well, for the affectionate glances these two bestow most constantly upon one another only serve to remind me how little of our eighteen years of marriage we have spent in each other's company. How I long to hear your voice and to press your hand once again in mine.

        Give my love to Isaure. At ten, the child must be nearly a young lady now--I am certain she is as beautiful as her mother. Tell her and young Felix their father will bring them some memento from Moscow. With much pride and fondness I gaze even now upon our son's image on the ivory miniature you sent. Always I wear it close to my heart.

        Until I see you again, my worthy and most patient wife, I remain,

                                                                Your devoted husband--

 

        "Dominique!"

        Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey's pen scraped across the paper, leaving an inelegant trail of ink. In surgery such a slip of the hand would have meant death for the patient. He was not usually so easily startled, but the eerie silence of Moscow unnerved him. And Major Belliard's tone held a note of urgency. The hussar had never been prone to panic.

        "Is it Madame?" Dominique asked, rising. God send the child not arrive before time.

        "No, no--Gabrielle is fine. Come to the window."

        Dominique replaced his pen in its tray, lowered the hinged cap over the inkwell, and crossed to the window where Hippolyte held the heavy brocade drapes to one side. Spots of red glowed in the distance.

        "More fires?" Dominique said. "The men are not usually so careless."

        "I have heard the Russians set madmen and criminals loose in the city. They are setting the fires. We must be watchful. I will loan you one of my pistols. Keep it close."

        "I am a healer, Hippolyte, not a warrior. I would be more likely to shoot myself in the foot."

        "What is all this talk of shooting?" Gabrielle Belliard swept into the parlor.

        Hippolyte gave Dominique a look that commanded silence on the matter before seizing his wife's hand as warmly as if he had not parted from her a quarter of an hour since. Hippolyte was most unfashionably in love with his wife, Dominique thought, unable to suppress an indulgent smile.

        "I was trying to convince our esteemed surgeon that we should go hunting soon," Hippolyte said. "However, he has doubts."

        "And so do I," Gabrielle said. "I would not lose you to the Cossacks just yet. Either of you."

        She looked lovely in a fresh gown of primrose-colored silk.  Though her tone held something of jest in it, Dominique could tell her husband's lie had not deceived her.

        "I must congratulate you again on such a magnificent supper," Dominique said, kissing Gabrielle's hand. No harm in changing the subject, he thought. He was pleased on closer examination to see that Gabrielle's color remained good, her eyes bright. One could scarcely imagine she had journeyed halfway across the world with the Grande Armée, defied Napoleon's ban on wives crossing the Nieman, or would be delivered of her first child in a scant few weeks.

        "Why, thank you, Dominique," she said, a pleased blush blooming upon her visage. "And a glass of cognac would be a fitting end to the evening. I believe I saw a bottle in the cellar."

        "I shall fetch it," Hippolyte said.

        "Nonsense, I am perfectly capable of managing the stairs." She smiled in sudden mischief, revealing dimpled cheeks. "Do explain to my husband that women have been bearing children for quite some time, Dominique, and that he mustn't treat me like an invalid."

        Dominique bowed. "I will do so, Madame."

#

        There are few things to chill a fond husband's blood so quickly as a wife's scream.

For one heartbeat Dominique and Hippolyte stared at one another. They bolted for the cellar door.

        Gabrielle stumbled up the narrow stairs to meet them, lantern clutched in one white hand. The other she held to her bosom, where it rained blood upon yellow silk. Dominique seized the lantern before she could accidentally set her gown alight. Hippolyte swept her into his arms and carried her to a chaise in the parlor.  "My darling, what has happened? Dominique! She bleeds."

        Dominique raised the lantern, casting light upon the steep stairs. He saw nothing but cobwebs and shadow. He closed the cellar door, knelt beside Gabrielle and gently took her injured hand.

        "Fetch me a flagon of water and a bowl," he said. "Turn your head away, Madame, I pray. It will do you no good to watch."

        But Gabrielle ignored his request, stared unflinchingly as Dominique rinsed away the blood to better assess the extent of her hurt. The ring and little fingers of her right hand were all but severed, the flesh shredded as by teeth. She had lost color, but was more composed than many a wounded soldier he had treated in dozens of battles.

        "What happened?" Dominique asked, retrieving his surgical kit.

        "There was a man--not quite a man--I'm not certain. He was hiding behind a stack of barrels. He was--horrible--he grabbed me and--he bit me." She shuddered. A small moan escaped her as the motion jarred her hand.

        "A man did this? I will kill him." Hippolyte had returned with the supplies
Dominique requested. The hussar drew his saber and strode toward the cellar.

        "Deal with the madman later. I need you to attend to your wife."

        Hippolyte froze, torn between outrage and devotion. A moment longer he hesitated, before sheathing his saber and returning to his wife's side. She squeezed his hand with her unwounded one, and he brought one of her cascading curls to his lips.

        Gabrielle made no sound when Dominique removed her ruined fingers. His speed in surgery was legendary, but he felt great regret at mutilating so lovely a hand.  Swiftly, he bandaged her with lint soaked in warm wine and camphor. She lay still, eyes closed at last, wounded hand at rest over her heart. Dominique plopped the delicate severed fingers in a faience bowl Hippolyte hastily seized from the mantlepiece. Pale, Hippolyte placed the bowl upon Dominique's writing table.

        "She will rest now," Dominique said, drawing a cloak over Gabrielle's bloody gown for warmth. "Let us search the cellar. I think I should be glad of one of your pistols, after all."

        Hippolyte's color had returned, but his face remained grim as he loaded and primed a matched pair of miquelet pistols he had plundered from a Cossack near Smolensk. The barrels were long and elegant, the butt adorned with a fluted ball of ivory.   Dominique hoped the weapons proved as efficient as they were beautiful. Certainly he found the weight of one in his hand reassuring.

        Hippolyte seized the remaining pistol in his left hand, drew his saber with his right. "If you will take the lantern, my dear Baron."

        The stairs were not wide enough to descend side by side. Dominique went first,  holding the lantern high. He had spent his life attending to the fallen while musketballs and cannonfire rained about him, so he did not consider himself without courage, but his eyes strained to pierce the gloom, and his palms began to sweat. "This darkness is practically Stygian," he muttered.

        Behind him, Hippolyte said, "Where is the cursed brute? And why should he have attacked Gabrielle in so vile a fashion?"

        "The man is plainly mad. One of those incendiaries plaguing the city, no doubt, and deserving of our pity."

        "I shall pity him after I have killed him," Hippolyte said. "An injury to myself, I might pardon, but to so cruelly wound Gabrielle, who has harmed none--that I cannot forgive."

        Dominique was inclined to agree. The realization startled him, for he was generally the mildest of men. He longed for home, a shaded chair in the garden where he might watch his children at play and enjoy the warmth of Charlotte in his arms.

        He chided himself for such disloyal thoughts. He served the Emperor and sentiment must not cloud duty.

        A furtive thump below stairs, such as a rat might make when scurrying over a loose board, and a pale face loomed in the darkness below. Dominique drew in a sharp breath, and stopped so abruptly Hippolyte jostled him from behind.

        "Something more than a madman and less than a man," Dominique said. By the slender lamplight, the creature's face had a blueish cast. The eyes appeared as flattened pools of darkness, the pupils dilated so wide they appeared to have devoured all color in the iris. With his trained physician's eye, Dominique could not help but notice the fixed stare, and the lack of reaction to light.

        It bared its teeth. Blood stained the lips and chin. Gabrielle's blood.

        The thing lumbered toward them and Hippolyte brushed past Dominique. "Keep the lantern steady," he said. Hippolyte fired his pistol.

        The report seemed very loud in the confined space and Dominique blinked at the flash. Hippolyte's ball sped true, and struck the creature in the heart.

        It did not bleed or fall, but shambled toward them. The stairs confounded it. Repeatedly it struck the bottom step with its leg, instead of raising a foot to climb. The jaw hung slack.

        With a cavalryman's oath he would never have uttered in his wife's hearing, Hippolyte rushed the thing with his saber.

        The wounds the blade made were grievous, but the mindless thing seemed impervious to pain.

        It does not bleed.

        Hippolyte's breath rasped. "What in the name of God is it?"

        "Fall back," Dominique said. He drew a deep breath, thought of surgery. The trembling of his hand ceased. Dominique cocked the pistol, aimed it, and pulled the trigger.

        The ball took the monster in the forehead. Mercifully, it dropped where it stood.

        "Well done," Hippolyte said. He nudged the thing with his boot, pushed it off the stairs, where it lay face down in a heap.

        Dominique descended the last few steps, set the lamp upon the floor and turned the corpse over.

        Hippolyte stared. "Any of a dozen wounds should have killed him."

 

        "It was already dead."

        "Impossible."

        "No breath. No loss of blood. No reaction to light. And look at the color--that blue-grey only appears long hours after death."

        "Have you ever seen the like?"

        Dominique retrieved the lantern and straightened. "Never. How he died--and, more importantly--why he did not stay dead--I confess it is beyond me."

        Hippolyte glanced about the cellar, cautiously peered behind the dust-coated barrels. Finding no further surprises, he returned his attention to the wine rack. Seizing a bottle, he wiped the cobwebs from it. "Ah, cognac. I think we are both entitled to a drink."

#

        Patrolling the house with Hippolyte, Dominique found it hard to reconcile its tasteful elegance with the horror in the cellar. Marquetry floors, furniture of gleaming ebony and costly damask, gilt mirrors, Chinese porcelain--the rooms were as finely appointed as any to be found in Paris.  So strange that the inhabitants had abandoned all with no attempt to negotiate terms with their conquerors. Had they been unable to stomach the thought of Napoleon's troops in their beloved city?

        Satisfied the house was secure, Dominique and Hippolyte returned to the parlor. Hippolyte gathered Gabrielle in his arms and carried her upstairs. Dominique cleaned his instruments and repacked his surgical kit.

        Such a pity Gabrielle was now maimed for life. She retained her thumb and first two digits. He hoped she would not be self-conscious. Perhaps Hippolyte might find a skilled artisan to fashion new fingers for her of silver when they returned to Paris.

        Dominique sat down at the writing desk. Before retiring for the evening he intended to add a postscript to his letter. Glancing at the faience bowl, his hand froze in the act of reaching for his pen. Gabrielle's fingers retained their delicate and well-manicured beauty, though their color had gone the greenish-gray of unfired porcelain.

        Her severed fingers writhed. Dominique rubbed his eyes. The Russian campaign had been long and the night's adventure more than passing strange. Perhaps his wits deceived him.

        The eyelids of victims of the guillotine occasionally blinked. Many a medical student had been startled when a cadaver in a state of putrefaction moved as a result of internal gases. As a surgeon, Dominique was accustomed to the involuntary motion that sometimes occurred in amputated limbs.

        None of these instances betrayed the sense of purpose he currently witnessed. Gabrielle's fingers, more elegant than leeches, crooked and crawled within the shallow bowl.

        Dominique turned over the letter to his wife, smoothed the page. Dipping his pen into the inkwell, he wrote:  It is a scant twenty minutes since Hippolyte and I felled the creature in the cellar--not quite an hour since I performed surgery upon Madame Belliard's lovely hand. The bloodless fingers make slow, patient progress around the bowl, as if intent on escape.

        He pulled out his watch, checked the time. Nearly eleven at night. Dominique noted this, set his pen down. Unbuttoning the high embroidered collar of his uniform, he searched the parlor for a suitable covering for the bowl and its weirdly animated contents. Settling upon the lid of a crystal biscuit jar, Dominique placed it over the bowl, trapping the fingers, but not immobilizing them. He hesitated a moment longer, then draped a serviette over lid and bowl to conceal the strange sight within.

        Dominique intended to note observations hourly, but when he settled himself in a comfortable chair by the fire, exhaustion overcame him.

        Hippolyte roused him before dawn. "I am sorry to wake you. Will you look in on Gabrielle?"

        Dominique rubbed a neck made stiff by dozing upright. He yawned, longed for the days of his youth when weariness could not touch him. He cast a glance at his desk, but did not wish to distress Hippolyte by revealing the existence of the moving fingers. Whatever spark that had animated them surely had exhausted itself over the past hours.

        "Is she fevered?" he asked, running a hand through lank hair and rebuttoning his collar. He needed a shave, too, but doubted Hippolyte would have the patience to wait.

        "Not fevered," Hippolyte said, as they mounted the stairs to the rooms above, "but she passed a most restless night."

        "You should have summoned me earlier. I could have given her a sleeping powder."

        "She did not want to disturb you."

        "Brave lady. She will shame us all."

        Gabrielle reclined upon a profusion of pillows. She or Hippolyte had removed her ruined gown and she was now dressed in a cotton chemise that draped her form in the style of the antique Greeks.

        "My dear lady," Dominique said, pressing her unwounded hand between both of his own. "Are you in pain?"

        She was pale to the lips, but her smile charmed him as it always did. No stain of fever marred her cheeks, though he thought her breath seemed shallow, her pulse faint.

        "No," she said. "I did have the most fearful dreams. Poor Hippolyte slept not at all, but sat with me the entire night. I am vexed to be so much trouble."

        Dominique smiled. "You are no trouble, Gabrielle. But I must change your dressing, and then you will take a little broth."

        As gently as possible, he unwound the bandages and examined the ruined hand. Her skin felt unnaturally cool and a faint grayness extended from wrist nearly to the crook of her elbow. No pus. No scent of incipient gangrene. No signs of sepsis at all.

He applied fresh lint and told himself his misgivings were unfounded.

#

        Dominique shaved and combed his hair before setting out to make his rounds at the military hospital. Though surprisingly well-supplied, the hospital had been a mess when he'd arrived, the Russian casualties there tending to each other as well as they could, but without any surgeons or nurses among them.
        Dominique set his medical corps to work so all casualties, friend and foe alike,  received proper care.

        The route between the hospital and his billet had been a broad, tree-lined promenade, as lovely as the rest of the city, but strong winds had set in overnight. The fires Hippolyte noticed the evening before were now whipped to fury, and though the flames remained distant, the air reeked of burning timbers and hot iron. Such wanton waste.

        Near the hospital, he paused before a group of infantry in the act of hanging Russian civilians from a row of lamposts. Outraged, Dominique sought their officer. "What is the meaning of this?"

        The man, a Captain, paid him only cursory attention. "Incendiaries," he said, as if that explained all.

        "You're hanging men without trial?"

        "We caught them in the act. My orders are to secure the city, and I intend to do so. Perhaps this will deter the others."

        One of the prisoners, a monk with a full beard and dark robes, fell to his knees and crossed himself in the Eastern fashion. He babbled something in Russian.

        "What does he say?" Dominique asked.

        "The same foolishness they have all been spouting: 'The dead walk. The dead hunger.' Superstitious nonsense, all of it." The officer gave a sign and a noose went about the unfortunate monk's neck. Two soldiers hauled upon the rope and the prisoner rose into the air, kicking and jerking while he slowly strangled.

        "Monstrous," Dominique said. "The Emperor shall hear of this. Even if you must execute them, you could do so in a more humane fashion."

        "I have no guillotine," the officer said, "and I will waste no cartridges on such as these. You may tell the Emperor that Captain Feraud always does his duty, however unpleasant. Good day to you."

        Sickened, Dominique pressed on--not toward the hospital as he'd originally intended, but to the Kremlin, where the Emperor had taken residence. Napoleon had to be made aware of the excesses committed in his name. And Dominique must find a way to inform his majesty about the restless dead, without the Emperor thinking he'd become lunatic.

        Dominique waited for two hours before being told that the Emperor was not receiving.

        "The matter is urgent," he said, out of patience and unintimidated by the Imperial Guard who towered over him. After all, he'd treated most of them--for typhus, dysentery, or pox as often as for wounds--they bled as any other men.

        The Emperor had always been warm--even affectionate toward Dominique--had he not ennobled him on the field at Wagram? Surely Napoleon realized his chief surgeon would not plague him with trivialities?

        "I am sorry, Monsieur le Baron. The Emperor is receiving no one." The Guardsman lowered his voice conspiratorially. "Not even his generals."

        Dominique swore.

        He recovered some of his characteristic good humor at the hospital. His surgeons had matters well in hand and only two patients had died overnight. Dominique gave instructions for orderly evacuation of men and supplies should the city's fires threaten the hospital. He ordered some of the less robust horses slaughtered to make soup. The cavalry officers would probably object as usual, but there was little fodder left--better the animals should feed sick and wounded men than suffer slow starvation.

        Satisfied that this small bit of Moscow, at least, was free of the disorder that plagued the rest of the city,  Dominique returned to the Kremlin, only to discover the Emperor was still not receiving.

        This inaccessibility was most unlike him. Usually Napoleon could be seen in the middle of everything, directing all with boundless energy and brilliance. That the Emperor should choose this particular time to remain isolated from friends and advisors did not bode well.

        Depressed, Dominique retraced his steps toward his billet.

        At the boulevard of the hanged men, he jerked to a halt.

        The executed men dangled from the lamposts as before, but all of them now lacked their lower limbs. Removed at the knee, or sometimes above, the work had not been performed with the care a surgeon would take, with scalpel and bone saw, but rather the legs appeared torn, shredded--much as a starving man might wrench a drumstick from a roasted capon.

        Bad enough these poor wretches went to their makeshift gallows without trial, but to be dishonored so after death--it went against every code of decency and civilized behavior he knew. Dominique had seen enough of revolution and war to know the evils men might dare, but this--

        He came to the corpse of the thick-necked monk. Dark robes concealed the form, but examination revealed he had been mutilated like the others. Exposed bone, tattered bits of flesh, strings of blood vessels and tendons stuck to the coarse wool of his garment. A large quantity of blood and other liquids more foul coated the ground beneath.

        Dead men do not bleed. Good God.

        The poor wretch had been alive when his legs were taken.

        Dominique could scarce imagine the ordeal of the man--slowly strangling as the rope tightened about his bullish neck, cursed by his physical strength to long agony--and then to have his limbs ripped from him by . . . by what?

        Teeth.

        No.

        Dominique's brain rebelled at the thought.

        But the tearing of flesh, the scoring of bone--could that have been made by other means? The undead creature in the cellar--he had bitten Gabrielle's fingers--torn them not unlike the flesh of this poor monk. Where there had been one abomination, might there not be more?

        The monk spasmed beneath Dominique's hand. A gurgle escaped the blue lips.

        Alive? After suffering so much?  Hastily, Dominique set about untying the rope. He lowered the man to the ground. "Rest easy, my friend," he said. "I am a doctor. I will help you." He wished he could remember a few phrases of Russian he'd learned from tending wounded prisoners, but the words had fled. He could only hope the monk understood French, or could recognize by Dominique's tone that he would come to no further harm.

        As Dominique loosened the rope biting into the man's neck, the monk's teeth clicked and snapped, stirring the air over Dominique's hands. Dominique jerked back, as from an ill-tempered dog. The hairs prickled along his forearms.

        Someone seized Dominique from behind and pinned him. A soldier thrust a bayonet into the skull of the monk, twisted it, and drew back.

        "Were you bitten?" Captain Feraud shouted at him. When Dominique made no answer, Feraud slapped him. "Were you bitten?"

        Blood rushed into Dominique's face. Hot-tempered he was not, but his honor was at stake. "Name your friends and I will meet you on the field of honor--or be known ever after as a base coward!"

        In a more patient tone the Captain said, "Forgive me if I have things other than dueling on my mind, Monsieur le Baron. Now for the last time, were you bitten or no?"

        Dominique mastered his indignation. "No."

        "A near thing. Release him."

        Freed, Dominique stepped a few paces away and straightened his coat. He glared at the soldiers, caught their weary, soot-stained faces, and the sliver of insanity beginning to touch their eyes. He had seen soldiers break, and these men hovered at the edge.

        More troubling, he feared he might see a similar expression in his own eyes when next he angled a mirror to shave.

        Feraud nudged the corpse with his boot. "I do regret the monk," he said. "It appears he tried to warn us. The dead walk, he said. The dead hunger. And you see the result."

        "You are saying dead men did this?"

        "I would not believe it, had I not seen it. A musket is useless against them, unless the ball pierces the brain." He gestured to the dead monk. "A bayonet is better. You'd better come with us. It is safer not to travel alone."

        Gabrielle.

        "I must tend to a patient."

        "Very well. You have your sword--I hope it has a keen edge. The fresh ones move the most quickly. If we survive this, I shall look forward to giving you satisfaction."

#

        Hippolyte hailed him from the top of the stairs. "Thank God! Gabrielle needs you. The child--"

        Dread squeezed Dominique's chest. It was too early for the baby.

        He took the stairs two at a time, arriving flushed and breathless, and damning the lost vigor of youth.

        Gabrielle lay still, her eyes closed, a fine sheen of sweat upon her face. The bed linens were soaked with blood.

        Hippolyte whispered in his ear. "So much blood is not usual, is it? And see how gray she looks."

        "Fetch me another lamp," Dominique said. He wished he had words to reassure Hippolyte, but he would not deceive a friend with false optimism. There was too much blood, and Gabrielle's grayness seemed to have spread upward from her wounded hand, like some new form of gangrene.

        "Madame?"

        Gabrielle opened her eyes, clasped his hand with her unbandaged one. Pools of patient weariness marred her gaze. Dominique knew that look--he saw it in every soldier he'd been unable to save--the look that came when death crept close, less as an enemy than as a welcome friend. Not a look he expected on the face of a young, vibrant woman.

        Her grip tightened. "You must save my child," she said. "Promise me."

        "My dear lady," he said, "I will do everything in my power to save you both."

        Gabrielle smiled, as if he had said something both charming and foolish.

#

        Dominique washed the infant free of blood and birthing fluids and massaged the tiny chest. He blew into the mouth and rubbed the flesh all over gently, but vigorously. No healthy blush tinged the skin. No cry issued from the blue lips. No birdlike thrumming betrayed a living heart. Gabrielle was gone and, in spite of his promise, so too was her son. Swallowing grief, he wrapped the child in a blanket, touched a finger to the silky, damp hair.

        He rinsed his hands and dried them methodically. Dominique knew the pain of losing a son--his firstborn had lived only ten days after drawing breath. He'd not been present at the birth of Felix or Isaure--the army kept him hundreds of leagues from family for months at a time. Charlotte's letter informing him of Isaure's birth had not reached him for almost a year.

        But to lose wife and son at once?

        Dominique had spent all of his life fighting death. He took pride in his surgical skill, but it was the lives he failed to save that gnawed at him without cease. And now this sweet, gentle lady--so much like his own beloved, she might have been Charlotte's younger sister--now her life had slipped away in blood and pain.

        Hippolyte still sat at Gabrielle's bedside, her unbandaged hand clasped in his own, his face pale in shock.  Dominique clapped his shoulder. "My friend--go downstairs and pour yourself a cognac. I will join you presently."

        Hippolyte sighed, rose. He was too used to following orders to protest, perhaps--or simply too defeated. When the door closed, Dominique tossed away the bloody bed linens and spread a clean blanket over Gabrielle's body, for decorum's sake. Mother and son lay side by side upon the bed as though sculpted of gray wax.

        Would she rise like the hanged monk, hungry and mindless? Distasteful as it was, he must make sure she did not. But how could he bear to spoil the lovely brow? It would be an insult--and he'd already failed her so badly. "Forgive me, my dear lady," he said, as he set to work.

#

        Downstairs, Dominique found Hippolyte staring out of the window, his face bathed in a red-orange glow. Dominique poured himself a drink and stood beside the hussar.

        Wild winds had whipped the multiple fires into one hellish conflagration. Dominique could feel heat through the glass. Cinders swirled in the gusts like mad fireflies. Reflected light pulsed through the amber of his drink. Dominique swallowed liquid flame, but the cognac did nothing to improve his spirits.

        "Between the chaos of the dead and the glare of flames, we stand before Hell itself," he muttered.

        "Fire purifies," Hippolyte said. "The city was beautiful once, but it has destroyed all I love." His face contorted with rage. "I'm glad it burns."

        Dominique tried to decide whether a stern reminder of duty or a sympathetic shoulder squeeze would do Hippolyte the most good--Hippolyte's eyes wore the strained look of one close to madness--and a misstep risked sending him into the abyss.

        A thud from upstairs made them both glance, startled, at the ceiling.

        "Gabrielle," Hippolyte whispered.

        A baby wailed and fell silent.

        "Dear God," said Dominique.

        Hippolyte bolted for the stairs.

        Dominique raced after him, caught his arm. "Do not go up there."

        Hippolyte shook him off. "She is my wife."

        Dominique saw there would be no reasoning with him. In a mad world, what place had Reason?

        Headless, Gabrielle paced the bedchamber, infant held awkwardly to her breast. Her movement lacked the easy grace of living steps. Instead she possessed the mechanical jerkiness of a Dresden clockworks doll. The child--dear God,  could he have been mistaken, and the baby not stillborn at all? Or was the child also a simulacrum--an appalling counterfeit of life? And what milk could spring forth from a dead breast?

        Gabrielle's head lay upon the floor where it had fallen when the corpse stirred to hellish unlife. She watched them with reproachful eyes. Tendrils of hair spread about like a tangle of eels. The lips moved, though no words issued from the breathless face.

        You promised.

        Hippolyte made a retching noise. He turned to Dominique, his eyes filled with disbelief. "What have you done?"

        Dominique had seen men stretched beyond endurance, like catgut strings over-tightened by an inattentive musician. The soldiers he had encountered earlier wore that look. Hippolyte wore it now.

        "It is some sort of pestilence," Dominique said, "transmitted by bite--like hydrophobia. I thought surgically removing Gabrielle's head would be sufficient to prevent her rising. I would have spared you this, if I could."

        But Hippolyte was no longer listening. Lantern in hand, he strode toward wife and child. The hand holding the lamp shook as he shone light upon the bloodless stump of his wife's pretty neck, the gray form of his son, but he put his arm around Gabrielle's waist and pulled her close. She leaned into him as she had done a hundred times before.         Dominique's chest tightened. Charlotte rested against him like that during their too infrequent reunions--the melding of a couple fortunate enough to retain marital affection in spite of all adversity.

        Gabrielle's head watched her husband, and though the death-dilated eyes should have been incapable of such, Dominique would swear he saw a film of tears. But perhaps it was only that his own eyes were wet.

        "Hippolyte," he said. "Come away."

        Hippolyte shook his head. He released Gabrielle long enough to remove the globe covering the oil lamp. He held the wick to the bedcurtains and when they were alight, he dropped the lamp and wound the burning cloth around himself, binding Gabrielle to him in a curtain of flame. Oil spread at his feet, ignited. Liquid fire spread to Gabrielle's long hair.

        The baby, silent while suckling uselessly at his mother's breast, gave another wail.

        You promised.

        Gabrielle made no effort to free herself of the fire, or of her husband's fiery embrace, but she held her son toward Dominique in mute appeal.

        The child's cry broke Dominique's stunned paralysis. Heat crawled over his flesh, singed his eyebrows as he darted forward and snatched the infant from Gabrielle's hands. Coughing, he retreated before the smoke. The stench of burning hair and meat clawed at his nose. He stumbled from the room with the baby cradled close. He could not save Gabrielle and Hippolyte, but he had sworn an oath to save their son.

        Eyes streaming tears from smoke and grief, Dominique fled down the stairs. His friends were lost, the house was lost, the entire city was lost--lost and damned.

        Hands trembling, Dominique found Hippolyte's haversack. He poured the contents onto the floor and placed the tiny infant inside. He slung the strap over his shoulder.

        Fire roared in his ears. Already flames licked at the ceiling. He must hurry before the house collapsed about him. At his writing desk, he tossed letters, pen, ink, and Hippolyte's pistols into the box that contained his surgical kit. He snapped the lid closed and tucked the box under his arm.

        The last thing he seized were Gabrielle's fingers. He clutched them in his fist like cut flowers. He knew it was madness, but he could not force himself to leave them to burn.

#

        In the street, all was chaos. Cinders filled the air. Smoke roiled. Dominique could barely see as he ran toward the hospital. Dark figures lurched at the edge of his vision--whether they were the hungry dead or merely drunken pillagers, he did not pause to see.

        Embers swirled about him, settled upon his coat, crept inside his collar. Dominique had no free hand to bat at them, barely registered the pain.

        Flames belched as if from the mouth of Hell. The winds fanned the fire to even greater fury. An iron roof tile clattered to the street, barely missing him. At his back, the child wailed, though whether from terror or hunger, he could not tell. Dominique had neither breath nor time to soothe the infant. How could the flames have overtaken them so quickly?

        He raced on.

        Chest heaving, lungs starved for unseared air, at last Dominique slid to a stop before the hospital.

        His mind rebelled at the sight. One wing of the building already burned furiously. Men lay broken and dying upon the ground. As Dominique watched in horror, a patient flung himself out of a smashed upper window to escape the flames.

        No. Not the flames. To escape the ravening dead. Amid the smoke, Dominique saw another man about to leap to his death. A gray hand snatched him back from the window. An agonized scream pierced the thunderous roar of the fire.

        More shrieks from inside. Dear God.

        The dead were feeding upon the wounded. His wounded.

        For a few agonized seconds, Dominique stood rooted. The anguished wails of the damned finally pierced his shock. Galvanized, he raced to the hospital door.

        But a musket held across the chest barred his way.

        "Stand aside! Do you not hear the men upstairs!" Dominique tried to push by, but the grim-faced soldier remained firm.

        "I am sorry, Monsieur le Baron. I have my orders."

        "Damn your orders! Those are my patients up there!"

        A firm hand clasped his shoulder from behind. "Come away, Monsieur le Baron. There is nothing you can do here. We must save your talents for the living."

        Dominique twisted in the man's grasp, found himself again facing Captain Feraud. The officer's once blue and white uniform was now black with soot and ash. Unexpected tears cut a runnel through the man's grimy face.

        "Think of it as surgery," Feraud said. "I take no pleasure in the loss of brave men, but we are overrun. These creatures must not leave Moscow. The fire is our ally in this."

        Feraud hailed a soldier engaged in bayoneting the brains of men who had dashed themselves upon the cobblestones. "Escort the good doctor to the Kalaga gate. Keep him safe."

#

Moscow, 18 October, 1812

My dearest Charlotte,

        The city burned for days. I am sorry to say my good friends Hippolyte and Gabrielle perished in the flames. Though I grieve for them, their devotion to one another in the face of greatest adversity cannot help but inspire me.

        I did contrive to save their newborn son. I have named him Hippolyte-Gabriel in honor of his parents. A pledge to a dying woman is not taken lightly and so the infant is with me most constantly. A strange, silent boy, he frets only when hungry. His needs are peculiar, but against all expectation, I have experienced no difficulty finding nourishment for him.

        I have done what I can for my wounded. So many lost. So many I could not save--I fear it has broken me. The army leaves the city tomorrow for Smolensk, with considerably less enthusiasm than when our enterprise began.

        Reassure yourself that I am well, though my dreams of late are fraught with shambling things. And I dread the onset of winter.

        Dominique glanced up from his letter, The baby, wrapped securely in a blankets against the cold of  a bare, unheated room, suckled contentedly at the shredded base of his mother's finger. The infant's grip remained firm, for the finger wriggled and tried to escape at every opportunity. Had his own children ever been so small and determined? Pity he'd not been home to enjoy them at this age.

        And it would be interesting to note if the child grew. Dead things did not typically grow or eat or excrete. But there was hardly anything typical about young Hippolyte. Would the child sprout teeth as normal babies did? Dominique would have to be cautious, to guard against accidental infection.

        He paused a moment to glance at the small thermometer he wore pinned, upside-down, to the lapel of his coat. He dipped his pen into ink and resumed writing.

         Here it is only October and already the temperature is at the freezing point. Still, I should have an opportunity to study the effects of frostbite on men on the march and perhaps discover the most efficacious treatment. I will write a book about it--it may distract me from all my failures.

        You must not fret over me. Do give my love to the children I begin to fear they will be grown up before I see them again.

        Your loving husband,

                Dominique