The Masters

by Christopher Nicole

  “Mom thinks I’m on my way back to the States.” Alexei glanced at him.

  “Ah,” he said.

  “I assume you’ve heard all the news?” Duncan asked.

  “Yes,” Alexei said. “We’ll talk about it at the house.”

  *

  “It should really have affected me more than Peter,” Alexei said, as he and Duncan sat in the winter parlour before a roaring fire, smoking cigars and drinking brandy. “I mean, I’m Trisha’s full brother. But poor Peter, as head of the family, has to carry the can. Together with your mother. They’re stuck in that remote hell-hole, while I live on Bolugayen in the lap of luxury, playing the squire. Indeed, playing the prince.”

  “What of your military career?”

  “Oh, that’s gone.” Alexei grimaced. “Together with Aunt Anna’s dreams of a profitable marriage. The family is quite destroyed. Sophie lives with a woman in the Ukraine...God knows what they find to do to each other.”

  “But what about Patricia?” Duncan said.

  Alexei raised his eyebrows. “What about Patricia?”

  “I came to you to help me find her.”

  Alexei sat up and stubbed out his cigar. “You did what?”

  “You know that she and I...well, had something going for each other?”

  “Aunt Anna mentioned something about a flirtation.”

  “It was much more than that, Alexei.” The two men gazed at each other. “I am perfectly prepared to meet you, if you think it is necessary to call me out,” Duncan said. “But I hope you will not, because it would not help Patricia in the least.”

  “My dear fellow, my family has sufficient problems to cope with without a duel between cousins. Anyway, as you say, nothing can help Trisha now.”

  “Surely we can. I told you, I came here to enlist your help in looking for her.”

  “You must be mad.”

  “She is your sister, Alexei.”

  “I did not mean that you are mad to wish to look for her. You are mad to imagine that we could possibly find her. In the first place, she is in Siberia. Do you have any idea what we are talking about? How big is the United States?”

  “Well...three and a half million square miles, roughly speaking.”

  “Siberia is upwards of fifteen million square kilometres, that is something like ten million square miles. In all that wilderness there are perhaps a dozen towns, hardly any roads, and a single rail track. And the entire area freezes for eight months of the year and boils for the other four. It is a death trap.”

  “We do not know she is still in Siberia,” Duncan argued. “As I understand it, she and her companions escaped last summer. It is now February. They could be back in European Russia.”

  “Which leaves us a small matter of five million more square miles,” Alexei pointed out. “In any event, as you say, it is several months since they escaped. If they escaped at all and were not merely shot trying to escape. If they managed that, they will certainly have perished in this winter.”

  “You can speak like that of your own sister?”

  Alexei sighed. “Living in Russia helps one to become a realist, Duncan. Trisha brought all her problems on herself.”

  “What you mean is,” Duncan said, “that you are jolly glad to have seen the back of someone who has made so much trouble for the family.”

  Alexei regarded him for several seconds. Then he said, “You are both distraught and in love. And my cousin. I will not take offence, Duncan. However, if you came to Bolugayen simply with the intention of raising a search party, I strongly recommend that you leave again as soon as possible. Quite apart from the impossibility of finding a wanted criminal without being required immediately to hand her over to the police, I have sufficient problems here. You must know that there have been considerable riots in the Ukraine and indeed all over the south. There has been no unrest in Bolugayen as yet, but it is all around us. There is no way I could leave here at this time. Even if it would not mean disobeying the Tsar’s decree.”

  “The Tsar,” Duncan said contemptuously. “Cannot you see that it is your precious tsar who is the root of all your trouble? Him and his secret police, torturing, executing...”

  Alexei’s face had stiffened. “Now you are speaking treason, on top of everything else. Your mother would be appalled to hear you talking like that. Now I do not request. I instruct you to leave Poltava tomorrow morning.”

  Duncan bit his lip. It had been stupid to offend Alexei. He stood up, and bowed. “I apologise for my intemperance. I love your sister, and I am prepared to hate any man, be he tsar or peasant, who does anything to harm her. Do you have any objection if, when I leave here, I go to St Petersburg?”

  “Of course I do not. You may use our house there. But Duncan, I would advise you to keep your radical thoughts to yourself. Else you may find yourself deported...after a very unpleasant session with that secret police which so upsets you.”

  *

  Alexei stood on the porch of Bolugayen and looked out across the snow-covered drive. But the end of winter was in sight; it was April, and the first green shoots were peeping through wherever the snow had melted. Mail and newspapers had arrived the previous day. There had been a letter from Duncan, who had had the sense not to hang about in Petersburg; he was in England. Cromb Shipping Lines had a London office, and Duncan had apparently wangled an appointment there out of his elder brother, but Alexei could not help but suspect he was there so as to be able to reach Russia in a hurry should Patricia ever turn up.

  *

  He dined alone, as he always did; Aunt Olga nowadays took most of her meals in her own apartment — they had nothing to say to each other — and neither Father Sviatoslav nor Captain Antonov came up to the house very often: neither man had been able entirely to come to terms with a situation where their master had been exiled, and their acting master had been cashiered. When the meal was finished, he retired to the winter parlour and smoked a cigar while he drank his brandy, gazing at the wall opposite, and feeling peaceful well-being spreading over him. “Ahem!” Gleb said from the doorway.

  Alexei turned his head. Gleb was the most faithful servant of all. The butler knew that Rurik had been dismissed for flirting with Patricia, but being a Bolugayevski servant, he put the blame on his brother’s shoulders. That he was also required to act as the Count’s procurer did not seem to bother him in the least. Every night that the Count wished, a girl was brought up from the village for his bed. “I am not in the mood, tonight, Gleb,” he said. “But thank you.” Gleb did not move. “Is there something the matter, Gleb?”

  “There is someone to see you, Your Excellency.”

  “At this hour?”

  “I think you should see this person, Your Excellency.” Alexei frowned. “Very well. Show him in.”

  “With respect, Your Excellency, I think it would be best if you came downstairs.”

  Alexei’s frown deepened. “I dislike mysteries, Gleb.”

  “It is not a mystery, Your Excellency. But it is urgent.”

  Alexei finished his brandy, stubbed out his cigar, and got up. “Should I be armed?”

  “That will not be necessary, Your Excellency.”

  Alexei followed the butler across the hall to the stairs leading down to the cellars. The two men went down to the foot of the stairs. It was chill down here, although nothing like as cold as outside. Gleb opened the door to one of the wine cellars, and switched on the electric light, but there was only one bulb in the wine cellar, and it remained gloomy. Alexei peered at movement in the gloom. “Who is in there?” he asked.

  “Alexei?” a voice whispered.

  “My God!” He stepped forward.

  “Please help us, Alexei,” Patricia begged. Alexei looked at the other woman. Both were huddled in blankets, and shivering. “This is my friend,” Patricia said. “Sonia.”

  Alexei looked at Gleb. “They came some hours ago, Your Excellency,” Gleb explained. “But I deemed it best to keep them here until the
servants had retired.”

  “Who knows of their presence?”

  “Myself and Madame Xenia, Your Excellency.” Xenia was the housekeeper.

  “Please don’t turn us away, Alexei,” Patricia said. “We are cold, and starving, and my baby will die.”

  “Your baby!”

  “He is a boy.”

  The last male Bolugayevski, Alexei thought. “Help me,” he told Gleb, and lifted his sister from the floor. Gleb lifted Sonia, who gave a little moan of discomfort, and the two men carried the women up the stairs. Alexei took them into Patricia’s own apartment, and laid them on the bed. “They must have hot baths,” he said. “Where is Madame Xenia?”

  “I sent her to bed, Your Excellency.”

  “Well, get her up. We need hot water. And we also need food and wine. Fetch it up, Gleb.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency.” Gleb hesitated. “Shall I summon any more of the servants?”

  “No,” Alexei said. “Not yet.” He needed time to think, as he looked at the two women. Patricia was sitting up, still shivering, for the fire had not been lit. Her face was pale, and her hair was tangled, and, he saw, contained a few gray streaks. At twenty-two? The babe, still clutched against her breast, was almost invisible. He looked at the other woman, who was altogether smaller than his sister, black-haired and crisp-featured. As far as he could tell, both of their clothes were in rags. Embarrassed, he knelt on the hearth rug and began setting the fire.

  “May we stay here?” Patricia asked. “For a while?”

  “For a while, perhaps,” he said, and struck a match. The kindling was dry, and caught immediately.

  “Oh, how marvellous.” Patricia knelt beside him on the rug, still holding the baby.

  “How old is it?” Alexei asked.

  “Nine months.”

  He turned his head. “But...”

  “Yes,” she said. “I left Irkutsk when he was at my breast.” She made a move. “He is still at my breast. Not that there is much there.”

  “There will be.”

  “You mean you will help us?”

  “I...” He turned his head. Sonia Cohen was kneeling on his other side, holding out her hands to the warmth as the fire blazed. “We will speak of it, later.”

  *

  Alexei was surprised that he had slept so soundly. Patricia had come home to him in dire extremity, and he had still slept. I am either a monster, he thought, or I am selected by God and nature for greatness.

  But if he was a monster, then he had severe problems if he was going to maintain that position. His valet was waiting to shave him while he had his bath. There was problem number one. No man can keep a secret from his valet. “Will you go into the town, today, Your Excellency?” Rotislav inquired.

  “No,” Alexei said.

  “May I ask if the new young lady is satisfactory, Your Excellency?”

  Alexei’s head jerked. Then he realised that he had just been given a possible answer to his problem. “Very satisfactory, Rotislav,” he said. “I think I may keep her for a while.”

  When he was dressed he walked along the gallery to Patricia’s apartment. Gleb stood guard outside the doors. Housemaids moved to and fro about him, and there was undoubtedly a great deal of gossip going on below stairs, but there was no member of staff prepared to cross swords, even mentally, with Gleb or Madame Xenia. “Are they awake?” Alexei asked.

  “Oh, indeed, Your Excellency. I have served them breakfast. And I think I heard the baby cry, a little while ago.”

  Alexei nodded. “Well, you had better go and get some rest, Gleb. But first, I wish you to send someone into town for Dr Geller.”

  “Do you think that is wise, Your Excellency?”

  “There is no need to tell the doctor, or anyone, why he is needed, at this moment, Gleb. Just have him fetched. As to whether it is wise, it is certainly necessary.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency.” Gleb hurried down the stairs.

  The sitting-room was empty. He walked across it, and knocked on the inner door. “Who is it?” Patricia asked. “Alexei.”

  “The door is open.” He went in. The clothes the women had worn had been taken away by Madame Xenia to be burned, thus she now sat at the table in the window wearing a brocade dressing gown, feeding her baby from a bottle. “I do not have enough milk,” she explained. “And the poor little chap is half-starved.”

  She had had a bath the previous night, and a square meal, and she had slept in her own bed. Now she smelt sweet and she had breakfasted this morning and regained much of her composure...but she did not look like the Patricia he remembered. Her magnificent hair, which he always recalled as a straight red stain on her shoulders and down her back, had at some time quite recently been cut very short; it had started to grow out again, but yet hung in untidy tails around her neck. Her face was as beautiful as ever, but the expression had changed; now she looked more like her mother, the eagerness to get on with life having been replaced by a watchful, weary suspicion. And her figure, however emaciated with malnutrition, had been filled out at breast and buttock; the slender girl he remembered had become a voluptuous woman. And mother! “What is he called?” he asked.

  “Joseph. That is the name of his father,” she explained. There was movement, and Alexei’s head turned. The other woman was still in bed. Presumably Patricia’s clothes were too large for her to wear; he saw only her head, for the covers were pulled to her throat. Her hair was black, and it had not been cut; it curled in profusion on to her shoulders. Her face was intensely attractive, with small, but crisp and strong features. He had no doubt at all that she was Jewish, and he knew she was a fugitive. “Her feet are very bad,” Patricia said.

  “I have sent for the doctor.” He sat down at the table. “This man, Joseph, his name was Fine?”

  Patricia frowned at him. “How do you know that?”

  “The news of your escape was sent here. I imagine it was circulated throughout Russia. There was Joseph Fine, a man named Ulianov, a woman named Krupskaya...and a woman named Cohen.” He looked at the bed.

  “I am Sonia Cohen, Your Excellency,” Sonia said.

  “I see. And this Joseph Fine, he was your husband, Patricia?”

  “No,” Patricia said.

  “Then where is he now?”

  “Joseph is dead.” Her voice was low.

  “And the other two?”

  “I don’t know. We separated.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “We walked.”

  “You walked, three thousand miles, in the winter?”

  “In the beginning, it was summer,” Patricia pointed out.

  “And sometimes we got a ride,” Sonia said.

  “How did you live?”

  “We sold things,” Patricia touched her hair. “We sold my hair.”

  “My God,” he said. “But...you only have one head of hair.” He looked at Sonia.

  “They would not take my hair,” Sonia said. “I am a Jewess.”

  “So we had to sell other things,” Patricia said.

  Alexei got up. “Dr Geller is coming up from the village to examine you.”

  “That is not necessary.”

  “I think it is,” Alexei said. “You will be examined. Geller will certainly recognise you, Trisha. But you must not speak to him. That goes for you too, Mademoiselle Cohen. Answer no questions. Tell him none of your plans.”

  “What are our plans, Alexei?”

  He went to the door. “We will talk about them after the doctor has been.”

  *

  He waited in the study. He could not rid his mind of the image of that dark-shrouded face, so piquant and so attractive, staring at him from his sister’s bed. He could not keep himself from remembering that she had probably been naked beneath those covers. And he could not forget Rotislav’s inadvertent suggestion. She was absolutely in his power. He could do what he liked to her, and then...he had the power to execute her, as an absconded felon, without reference to any high
er authority, or the police. And she had sold herself, time and again, as they had made their way across Siberia and then Russia. What courage they must possess. He looked up at the knock. “Enter.” Geller came in, placed his bag on the floor. “Sit,” Alexei invited.

  Geller sat before the desk. He looked frightened. “Will they live?”

  “Oh, yes, Your Excellency. The Countess Patricia...” He paused, and gave his employer an anxious glance. “Go on.”

  “She has survived her ordeal amazingly well. So has the babe. There are small areas of frostbite, but none that need affect her general health, although she should avoid strong direct sunlight. The babe is amazingly strong and well. I would estimate that whatever permanent damage the Countess has suffered was because she devoted all her time and energy to protecting and caring for her child. She is a very courageous young woman.”

  “Can she travel?”

  “Oh, indeed, Your Excellency.” Geller attempted a smile. “I would not recommend that she do a great deal of walking, for a while.”

  Alexei nodded. “And the Jewess?”

  Geller’s shoulders hunched. “She is not so strong, you understand, Your Excellency. She has suffered badly from frostbite.”

  “Where?”

  “Her fingers and toes. And her...well...there are some marks on her buttocks.”

  “I see. Now tell me, will Mademoiselle Co...the Jewish lady, lose any part of her anatomy?”

  “I have treated her with antiseptic, and bound her up, but I believe she may lose at least one toe.”

  “Then obviously, she cannot travel.”

  “It would be unwise, Your Excellency. It will take several weeks for her to regain both her strength and her health, and for her feet to heal.”

  “Very good.” Alexei leaned across his desk. “Now, Geller, I wish you to listen to me very carefully. My sister will be leaving Bolugayen in the very near future. I wish you to forget, now, that she ever came here. Do you understand me?” Geller’s head jerked up and down. “Good. Now, as to the Jewess, she will have to remain here until she is fit enough to travel. Until then, you will have to attend her. But as far as you or anyone is concerned, she is my current mistress. I picked her up in Poltava. Unfortunately, she has been taken ill, and will have to remain here for a while.” At last he smiled, but it was a grim smile. “That will not be a very great lie. Do you understand that, too?”