Kalitkin sprang to his feet. 'Mother of God! What have you there, Khudoznik? A Frenchman?' Kalitkin addressed the prisoner in French: 'Are you a French officer?'

'God damn it, no, sir!' the man exclaimed. 'Tell this ruffian to let me go! I am Colonel Wilson, a British Commissioner attached to General Bennigsen's headquarters. I was reconnoitering when this stinking louse picked me up. Who the devil are you?'

Kalitkin ordered the Cossack Khudoznik to return to his post and introduced himself. 'I am Count Piotr Kalitkin commanding two squadrons of the Hetman's Don Cossacks. So, you are a spy of the British are you?' Kalitkin grinned and made room round the fire.

'You Russians are a damnably suspicious lot,' said the mollified Wilson, rubbing his hands and extending them to the warmth of the fire.

'But you have come to see we don't waste your precious English gold, eh?'

'To liaise with the headquarters of the army, Count, not to spy.'

'It is the same thing. Where are your English soldiers, Colonel, eh? Your gold is useful but it would have been better if some English soldiers could have helped us today, would it not? There would be fewer widows in Russia tomorrow.'

'My dear Count,' replied Wilson with a note of tired exasperation creeping into his voice. 'I am plagued night and day with pleas for which I can offer no satisfaction until the ice in the Baltic thaws and His Majesty's ships can enter that sea. Until then  we shall have to rely upon Russian valour.'

'So, Colonel,' said Kalitkin, still grinning in the firelight, 'you are a courtier and a spy. I congratulate you!'

'I hope,' said Wilson with a heavy sarcasm, 'that I am merely a diplomat.'

A stir on the outskirts of the fire lit circle among the half-sleeping, half-freezing men caused both Kalitkin and the Englishman to turn.