“I must keep my wits together somehow,” she told herself. She said the words aloud because they seemed to carry more conviction that way. She tried not to think about the rodent inhabitants of the hole or of the bloodshed she knew was taking place above ground But she dared not think too deeply on the perplexing disclosures of the evening either. Aunt Nikki had admitted lying to Prince Oleg. That much was astonishing beyond Katia’s understanding. But there was more. Nikki had spoken of a promise, an unbreakable oath of silence.
‘Who am I?’ she asked herself. She knew the familiar unanswerable question would keep her company in the black pit.
The time passed slowly.
When the trap door finally lifted, Katia was dazed by the sudden knife of light as it pierced the hole. Shielding her eyes, she looked upward. The bulk of two men was framed by the opening above the hole.
“Your Highness, I had begun to fear…”
An unfamiliar voice chortled and called out from above, “What have we here? Look, Yuri, the baryshna.”
Katia heard a few seconds argument, then a pair of heavy-booted legs in homespun trousers descended the ladder into the hole.
“Aunt Nikki!” cried Katia, shaking the prostrate woman roughly. But Natasha Filippovna huddled on the floor in fear. Her only sounds were muttered prayers and supplications. Katia spun, and an iron hand shot out and gripped her arm painfully tight. She opened her lips to scream, but another hand clapped over her mouth and muffled the sound.
The man in the laundry room called down to his comrade, “Is there wine, tovarich?”
“Better, my friend. Keep watch for me now. I won’t be long about this pretty business.” The man spoke the harsh gutteral dialect of the region. Katia strained to understand his words.
The light from the laundry room was pale and inefficient. Katia could make out nothing of her assailant’s appearance, but she recoiled from the drunken stench of his breath. Only escape was important to her now, and she struggled to be free. Undulating and twisting like a serpent in his grasp, she alternately tensed and relaxed her body in an effort to slip free. The more she struggled, the worse became the pain in her arm. The peasant held it twisted behind her back, wrenched high up the shoulder blades.
“It’s no good to struggle, baryshna,” he whispered hoarsely. His thickly bearded face was close to hers. She wanted to rip the bearlike whiskers from his cheeks and dig her nails into the raw flesh. But she could do nothing. He was right, it was senseless to struggle. Her body went limp, and the peasant relaxed his grip. For an instant, her mouth was free of its gag. Her call for Alexei—uttered from her heart without thought— ended in a scream as the peasant yanked and twisted her long silken hair around the captive arm, binding the two together tightly. He threw her to the ground; and she scrambled frantically, like a cripple, toward her aunt.
“Nikki,” she was sobbing, “help me.”
Katia heard only the whispered words, “Holy Lady, guide my way.”
“Me! Help me!”
A heavy boot slammed down on her fingers. The pain stunned her. Her supporting arm gave way and she fell forward onto the floor. The laughing peasant grabbed her wrist and dragged her to one of the dark corners. The daggers of pain in her arm obliterated all thought or plan or even hope of escape. She let her captor turn her over on her back. She winced at the pain, but lay still and made no sound.
“That’s more like it,” the man said with satisfaction. He straddled Katia’s slim body. When he removed his gloves, his hands were broad and meaty. She felt their callousness as he tore at the jewelled rosette on the shoulder of her gown. His laughter had become a low snicker, a self-satisfied sound that continued as he fondled her breasts, pulling at the tender exposed nipples made hard by the cold. With his other hand he loosened his clothing, then fell upon her, the terrible mirth at last silenced as he sucked and bit at her breasts.
The touch of his foul-smelling body seemed to detonate some last charge in Katia. At a moment when he raised his weight, she lunged forward, bringing her knees up bent. With a cry, the peasant fell back from her body, clutching his naked groin.
At the sound, Yuri, the second peasant, called from above, “What’s happening down there? Ain’t you be done yet?”
Before Katia could recover from the shock of her surprising success, Yuri had swung down into the priest’s hole. Raising his lamp, he saw his half-naked comrade curled like an infant, moaning and clutching himself. The peasant snorted disdainfully.
“What manner of man be you, tovarich? Watch how a real man has his way.” He placed the lamp on the ground, and with slow measured steps approached to where Katia crouched, feral and alert. She watched him loosen the rope on his tunic, then flick the end of it hard against his gloved palm.
“You won’t be so smart with Yuri, baryshna,” he muttered, roughly pushing her onto her stomach. She had managed to loosen some of the hair that bound her wrist so painfully, but Yuri made sure she was held securely. He pulled her arm up high, against the nape of her neck.
She cried out one last time. It was a soul-wrenching scream of desperation and rage.
Prince Oleg with four of his men heard the scream from the hallway beyond the laundry room. In seconds, he was standing at the open trapdoor, staring into the lighted priest’s hole.
Yuri looked up to see four muskets trained into the hole. He moved quickly to put Katia between himself and the Romanov weaponry.
“You let me go, no harm befall the baryshna. But remember, I have a knife, Lord. If I am to die, I will take her with me. So I swear.”
Oleg Romanov believed the man’s sincerity. Knowing their cause to be hopeless, the peasants killed avidly. The carnage in the courtyard was a bloody testament to that. A brief shudder of nausea passed through Oleg, but he was exhilarated too. It would give him pleasure to gut this peasant rapist. He noted how Yuri held the girl, her right arm twisted high behind her. The left was tied behind somehow, leaving the peasant with one free hand in which he held a short broad-bladed knife.
Oleg’s gaze moved downward. The bodice of Katia’s gown hung in shreds. With her arms held, she could do nothing to cover herself. Bare-breasted, her gown tattered and hanging, her hair disarrayed like the mane of a wild creature, her tartar eyes flashed. Her mouth was pulled tight in a snarl of anger; and, flushed as she was with shame and terror, Oleg thought her exquisite. All at once, no effort seemed too great to him. He would not let some lunatic peasant…
“Alright, peasant, I agree to your terms. You won’t be hurt if the girl is not.”
“You think to outsmart me, Romanov. But I am cunning, and I will kill her.” Yuri yelled his demands. “Tell your men not to go for me. Let me hear you say the words.”
“Nothing is to be done to endanger the baryshna,” ordered Oleg. He spoke softly, calmly, yet his voice held ominous overtones. “I do not wish you to shoot. Is that understood?” This stupid peasant with his arrogant demands! He had but seconds of life remaining if all went according to Oleg’s plan. The Prince was quite calm now. He was even enjoying himself.
Pushing Katia before him, Yuri scrambled up the ladder. At the top, he shoved her toward the laundry room door. She had long since ceased to feel any specific pain, and she moved like one condemned to die. The laundry room was dimly lighted by the smoky lamp set on the floor near the Prince. Katia’s skin blushed crimson under the lecherous eyes of Prince Oleg’s men.
Suddenly, there was a splintering crash as the oil lamp shattered. The room went dark, and only a pale glow issued from the priest’s hole. Katia felt herself torn from Yuri’s grasp. Someone dragged at her. The events of the past several hours swirled and turned in her mind like a lurid watercolour. Who held her now? What brute was pulling her, lifting and dragging her? Somewhere to her left, behind her, there were sounds of struggle and then a ghastly gurgling scream.
“Go down and get the other one. And save the bodies. I have uses for them.” The voice came through the haze of her consciousness
, and Katia realized it was the Prince himself who held her now.
Chapter Seven
Long after this she was rising out of unconsciousness, swimming upward, into a pool of suffused light, yearning toward the day. But whenever she seemed near to breaking the surface. Aunt Nikki was there with Prince Oleg. He gave her something to drink and then she was slipping down again…down…down…
The dreams that came with the potion were murderous. She was in the hole again. Yuri’s hand groped between her legs. His thick fingers were inside her, rasping her tender womanhood. She was kicking at him, but his body seemed insubstantial. She was kicking at nothing, but Yuri was laughing and laughing all around and everywhere at once. Then she was swimming toward the light again.
“You should not be here,” she heard a woman saying. “Prince Oleg has left orders she is not to be disturbed.”
Katia recognized Alexei’s voice. “I won’t trouble her, Natasha Filippovna. No more than already seems the case. She sleeps so fitfully.” His hard cool hand lifted away the dark strands of hair that lay across her cheek. She wanted to smile at him, but couldn’t seem to concentrate her energy in the right way. He spoke and she heard concern in his voice and wanted more than anything to reassure him.
She felt herself slipping back into the dreams, and tried to fight the pull. Using all her will and determination to overcome the enervating effects of the potion, she pushed frantically against the bed, trying to sit up.
Natasha Filippovna spoke scoldingly. “Prince Oleg was right. She should not be permitted visitors. See how she struggles in her sleep. His Highness ordered this potion for times like this. She doesn’t like it, but you see how she is when the sedative effect begins to wear off.” Bony fingers pried at Katia’s mouth, forcing it open. She bit down hard, and Nikki screamed.
Alexei laughed. “She’s angry. That’s a good sign. Here, give me the cup.” He touched Katia gently, slipped his arm behind her shoulders and helped her to sit. She leaned against him and thought how wonderful his body felt. She could feel the power and energy in him, protecting and enclosing her.
“Drink, Katia, drink and sleep well. Leave your terrors.” His powerful voice soothed her with surprising gentleness.
She didn’t want any more of the potion, but she did not think of fighting Alexei as she had her aunt. Obediently, she sipped the cloying mixture. Closing her eyes then, she rested in Alexei’s arms. If only this moment could last forever! It was as if she began to share his strength, his confidence. She was unafraid, and when the dreams came they were not of Yuri and the priest’s hole. Instead she was carried back to the long-ago day when she escaped from the convent and observed the lovers in the clearing. She was running in and out among the trees as the peasant girl had. Alexei was pursuing her, and they were laughing. The sun was warm, and the earth smelled of moss and wild peppermint.
How many days had passed since Alexei’s visit? Try as she might, Katia could not think clearly. The potion kept her half in the real world and half in a place of dreams. She didn’t want anymore of it. She wanted to think, to see clearly. To feel alive again was all she longed for. If only she were not so weak! She raised herself on the pillows, and the effort left her breathless. Her arms trembled, and from shoulder to elbow they turned with pain.
‘But at least I can see something now,’ she thought with some pride as she looked around her. It was good to be caring for herself once again, to feel strength— and with it confidence—returning. She saw her aunt sewing on a bench near an uncurtained window. For an instant, Katia was torn between two needs. More than ever in her life, she wished for the loving mother fate had deprived her of. A part of her yearned to make of Aunt Nikki a surrogate and weep against her breast. But another and stronger part of Katia’s mind was determined not to take more of the potion. If she wept openly, if she showed but half the pain she felt, Katia knew she would be forced to drink more of the concoction.
‘Now I would refuse it even from the hand of Prince Alexei himself,’ she thought with determination and shook her tousled curls to clear her mind.
As if Katia had spoken aloud, Natasha Filippovna looked up from her handwork. “Are you alright, my dear?” She came to the bedside, still clutching her embroidery in one hand. With the other, she felt Katia’s temples. “You’re flushed, Katia. It is time for your medication, I think.”
“No, Auntie, please.” Katia gripped her aunt’s wrist. “True, I have a little pain. But I am much improved. Only tell me how long have I been an invalid? The potion dulls my thinking.”
“Mercy, Katia, it’s been four days! You must thank God that His Highness rescued you before…” Nikki stammered a bit over the indelicate subject, blushed, then suddenly burst into tears. She sobbed pitifully as she clasped Katia’s hands. “Four days you’ve lain here, and every waking moment I have blamed myself. I don’t know what happened to me in that horrid place, Katia. I truly do not. I think of how close, how very close those men came to ruining you and I start to tremble all over again.” Her wet eyes pleaded. “Can you ever forgive me, child?”
“It is past, Aunt,” replied Katia gently though she knew she would never forget what had occurred.
“You do forgive me?” Not waiting for an answer. Nikki continued hurriedly as if a flow of optimistic words might obliterate the ugly past. “Prince Oleg has asked again that we accompany him to St. Petersburg as his guests. And after what has happened, we really have no other choice. We are not safe in Muscovy now. Katia. Once His Highness is gone we will be entirely without protection. And after all, it is not a large change of plan. I was intending we should travel to Petersburg in August anyway.”
“Will Prince Alexei ride with us?”
“Who can say about a man like that?” Natasha Filippovna’s lips were closed in a tight condemning line as she straightened the silken bedclothes.
“I hear them arguing.”
“Who? Those Romanovs? I shouldn’t wonder! Half the house hears them. Since the fire, the big salon next door has been used as gornitza. The damage to the other wing is something terrible, I can tell you. But never you mind. And don’t you know better than to eavesdrop? I am shocked, Katia, I truly am.” Nikki’s reprimand lacked conviction, and Katia found it easy to dismiss.
“I never hear their words, or if I do I don’t remember them. Just noise. They yell a lot. Why do they hate each other so, Aunt? You know the family. Won’t you tell me please?”
At first Nikki was reluctant to speak. To Katia it was as if she were debating something in her mind and could not come to a satisfactory resolution.
“Well, I shouldn’t,” Nikki replied at last, drawing up the red-cushioned wrought-iron chair beside Katia’s bed. “But, bless me, half Russia knows the story of Alexei and Oleg Romanov. Why not you as well?” She took a moment to rethread her needle. “They were born about the same time. Their mothers were sisters, their fathers brothers. But no more different brothers ever lived. They hated one another—Prince Ivan and Prince Stephan—though in the early days they hid their bad feelings. It was back in Catherine the Great’s reign, and her Imperial Majesty disapproved of family quarrels. Prince Oleg’s father, Ivan, was notorious for his mean ways. The more his fortune grew, the crueler he became. With his servants, his labourers, he was ruthless. Anyone who came in contact with Prince Ivan was made to suffer one way or another.” Katia heard the loathing in Nikki’s voice and wondered at the intensity of it.
Nikki was saying that Alexei’s father was entirely the other way. “He was always known to be just with his serfs. Way back, in the days when Czarina Catherine was considering a constitution for Russia, Prince Stephan was somehow involved. He travelled far and wide for her, to France and England. But Catherine changed her mind about the constitution; and after Stephan’s wife died, he was a changed man. He lost all interest in business and government and the like. He let his farms go so the wheat and rye went unharvested. He did nothing to stop poachers and squatters on his land. Prince Ale
xei was in school in England when his father died; but since the estate left him was very small, almost nothing, he didn’t return to Russia for a long time. I was living in Three Rivers then, of course, and I heard little of royal doings. All I know is that Prince Alexei is a very rich man now.”
The romantic story held Katia enthralled. With every word, Prince Alexei grew bolder and more attractive in her estimation. Where was he now? Would he visit her today?
“The cousins inherited their fathers’ quarrel.” Conspiratorially, Nikki bent her head toward Katia’s and spoke softly. “The rumour is that Prince Oleg despises Prince Alexei for getting rich outside Russia. He calls that treason. That and the other matters, of course.”
“What other matters?”
“I will not gossip, Katia,” said Natasha Filippovna sternly.
“But if, as you say, all Russia knows the story, why not I?”
Natasha Filippovna considered for a moment. “Why not indeed? But remember, I have this from the dressmaker. It is only rumor.” She stopped embroidering. “The late Czar, Alexander, was a moderate man. not at all suspicious like his brother, Nicholas. He was willing to overlook Prince Alexei’s faults and used him as a kind of special diplomatic courier a time or two. You see, it is said that Prince Alexei has the ear of the English King. They are thought to be great friends. But now Alexander is dead and Nicholas is Czar of Russia. He has no great fondness for Alexei Stephanovich. He, like Prince Oleg, calls him a traitor.”
Katia was indignant. “Since when is making money and talking to a British king considered treason?”
“But Alexei Stephanovich is a known supporter of the Constitutionalists!”
“Is it treason to desire that our country have a constitution guaranteeing liberties?”
The Frost And The Flame Page 6
