“I have come to say goodby, Katiana.” He saw hurt and surprise cross her face, but he steeled himself against her. He told himself he was not going to risk Siberia for a little girl with azure eyes. Yet he longed to kiss the eyes brimming with tears and cradle her beside him. Instead he said, “I will be gone a long time.”
“A week?” she asked in a faintly hopeful whisper, not yet daring to meet his eyes.
His face betrayed no emotion. “I may never return to Russia, Mademoiselle.”
’Oh God,’ she was praying, ‘don’t let me cry and make myself foolish before him. He doesn’t feel anything for me so make me seem not to care for him either. Help me not to show how I feel.’ Her hands trembled in their muff.
But Katia could not pretend; she didn’t really try very hard. Life was too harsh, and the sorrow too great. “I wish you would not go, Your Highness.'” Her exotically shaped blue eyes shone with unshed tears.
“My name is Alexei, Katia. And I too have my wishes.” Though he tried to hide it, Katia heard the longing in his voice. All at once the space between them was charged with a passionate intensity.
“Are you in trouble, Alexei?” She lowered her voice and glanced toward the curtained opening into the sleigh. “I heard from Aunt Nikki who had it from the dressmaker…”
Alexei smiled and raised his hand to silence her. The romantic mood was broken. Katia had become a child, prattling backstairs gossip at him.
“Believe only half of what you hear of me, Little Angel. That goes for everyone you meet in life, I think.” He paused, stroking Alladin’s shoulder as he sought the right words. “You are so much an innocent, Katia. And innocence is a beautiful but fragile thing. Your trust is precious. Don’t you know you give it much too freely?” He found it hard to speak. And yet he knew that he must warn her, prepare her for a life she knew nothing about.
But the wise, fatherly words eluded him. Finally, he swung down from his horse and walked to the sleigh. He drew her hand from its muff and held it in his. The simple gesture spoke more eloquently than he could.
“Will we meet again?” whispered Katia, inclining her head toward his. A lock of her hair touched his cheek. His breath was warm.
“Go to St. Petersburg. Marry and have a family, Katia. Have a good life.” His voice broke; he would not look at her. “Let me imagine you happy and safe in a walled garden.”
“I’ve had enough of walls, Alexei Stephanovich,” she was weak, overcome by an emotion that warmed her body into melting. Their heads were bent so close…
“Katia,” he whispered huskily.
She couldn’t stop herself. Without thinking, she reached for him. His mouth was there and so she kissed him, and what began as a feather-touch of lips turned into something much much more. Katia was frightened when she pulled away and deeply shamed as well. The color blossomed in her cheeks, and she was angry and humiliated all at once.
With a little cry of exasperation she tossed her head and pushed Alexei away. “If you must go, pray do so without further hesitation! I shall be fine, just fine without you. So shall we all!” She turned to hide the tears of shame and heartbreak she could not stop.
When she looked again, he was reaching up to mount his horse. How could he leave her in this way? Their kiss had told the story: he cared for her. She knew he did not truly wish to leave. She had to call him back.
“Alexei,” she cried.
But he did not turn. In moments he was gone, into the tangled woods lining that part of the track. Katia stared at the beech grove even after it had ceased its rustling from his passage. From behind her came the sound of men working: hammers and axes, metal ringing against wood. But she paid no attention. Even Aunt Nikki’s continuing snores from within the curtained sleigh did not shift her concentration from the tangle of bracken and old growth that muffled the border of the beech grove.
‘Alexei, come back. Come back.’
The cold settled in against her and seeped into the pores of her skin; but she did not take her eyes from the trees. She told herself that she could make him come back if she only prayed and wished for it hard enough.
When Nikki awoke some time later, she demanded to know why their progress had been delayed. Her calls and queries did not distract Katia, however; and the maid, Tata, was sent to bring her in. Katia let herself be urged, mute and shivering, into the sleigh. Her body, still bruised and delicate after the ravages of the priest’s hole, was burning up with fever; and she did not listen to her aunt’s stern reprimand or her grim predictions about her health. Inside Katia something had broken at last, and in its place a terrible resignation was growing. She had prayed for Alexei with all of her will, but nothing had happened. He was gone; and she knew that once again she had been abandoned like an unwanted burden, deserted at the march of a tangled wood.
While Natasha Filippovna stripped her of her fine European clothes, now clammy through to the soft flannel undergarments, Tata rummaged through Katia’s boxes and found a pale blue cashmere nightgown and its matching wrapper appliquéd in darker satin. She was dressed in these and put to bed between sheets carefully warmed by a pan of coals from the brazier.
But nothing could melt the block of ice her heart had become. Katia’s whole life suddenly appeared littered with betrayal. She recalled Alexei’s criticism of her trusting nature, and bitterly she saw that he was right. She had trusted Alexei and gotten only pain and disappointment in return. Katia shivered beneath her furs, and swore she would not believe in anyone ever again.
It was three o’clock before the sleigh was repaired and dusk when the sleigh train finally entered the tiny village called St. Olaf’s. When the sleigh stopped, the sudden stillness awakened Katia from a fitful and fevered sleep.
“Rest, child,” soothed Natasha Filippovna who was bathing her fevered temples with a cool cloth. “You’ve taken a frightful chill, and now you must rest or you will be a very sick little girl. How could you be so thoughtless, Katia? You must learn to come out of the cold, child, or people will think you dull-witted. Prince Oleg will want you to take more of the potion, and I don’t think he will listen to any of your arguments either.”
As if on command, Prince Oleg came through the curtains at the head of the sleigh. Stooping beneath the low hood, he stood before the two women. Half-delirious from fever, Katia saw him as deformed and fearful; a gigantic hump seemed to rise from his back at the base of his thick neck.
“Forgive this further delay. Lady Natasha; but there is something here in St. Olaf's that I wish Katia to see.”
“She is quite ill, Highness. Her temples are flaming and…”
“My dear, we have come several miles out of our way to reach this village. Our business here will only take a few moments.” Even in the dimly lit sleigh, it was plain to Oleg that Katia was ill. But he was not inclined to feel any sympathy. Already too many things had gone awry on this trip; he wanted no more trouble from Katia to add to his burdens.
He had prepared a small demonstration for her in this village. He thought of it as a demonstration of power and commitment. A display intended to frighten Katia and bind her closer to him.
“Pray do not disappoint me, Katiana. Surely you have enough strength to come to the head of the sleigh for a moment. It will afford your aunt and the maid an opportunity to freshen your bed and prepare the potion which I insist you take for sleeping.” He held out his hand; and Katia—without strength to argue— permitted him to help her up into a sitting position.
Then he retired discreetly to the front of the sleigh, and she rose from her bed and wrapped herself in a sable comforter. She walked unsteadily to where the Prince waited, rubbing his gloved hands together and smiling to himself.
The selo was a rough collection of sod and wood hovels deep in snow, clustered near a community well. It was small and dreary, undistinguishable from hundreds of others; and it was obviously deserted. Katia’s surveying glance froze at the well. In the dusky twilight, her mind a cloud of pain and
sorrow, she saw the two men quite clearly and recognized them. The gory heads of her attackers were staked on either side of the well, frozen in a state of half decay. Their eyes were hollow sockets picked away by hungry birds, pits of blackness staring, unblinking, at her. She saw the mouths like rotten caves and could almost feel their fetid breath waft about her. She clutched the rail of the sleigh, her head swimming.
“Why have you done this?” she gasped.
“Your honour is worth the blood of hundreds of men like these, Katia.” Oleg admired Katia’s control. Most women would have fainted at the sight beside the well, but not this steely convent girl. Though he had hoped to frighten her into easy submission, her unexpected reaction pleased him.
“You did this for me?” She was incredulous.
Oleg nodded slowly, satisfied by the look of horror on her face. He was thinking, ‘Now you are completely in my debt. You owe me twice for your own life, for the life of the znakhara and now for the lives of your assailants.’
There was a sudden clamour of excited voices from behind. Katia turned and saw a man—heavy set and awkward in his bulky peasant garb—frozen against the wall of an izba. He held a small child by the hand. Clutching a battered straw doll, the girl tried to hide behind the man’s leg. Two of Oleg’s guards approached cautiously, and the man bolted. Wrenching the child along, he ran for the shadows beyond the huts. He had almost made it when a musket fired, and Katia watched in horror as the man’s knees buckled beneath him. His hands, clutching his torn stomach, could not staunch the gushing crimson that burst from his body and stained the snow before him. With his other hand, he gestured the child to run.
He fell face forward in the snow; and instead of running, the child stood as if paralyzed. She dragged at his clothes, and her silent panic stabbed Katia. It was as if all her anger, hurt and resentment boiled to the surface and demanded release. Later, Natasha Filippovna would blame her behavior on the fever; but it was more than delirium that made her act. The eyeless skulls, the senselessly murdered peasant, the abandoned child, were more than she could sustain. She leapt from the sleigh and ran, half stumbled, through the snow to where a guard struggled with the frantic child. He had his arm raised to hit the child.
“No!” screamed Katia putting herself between the child and the guard. “What kind of animal are you?” She embraced the little girl, felt the tiny body trembling against her own. “Don’t touch this child,” she cried, raising her voice to include everyone in the sleigh train, even Prince Oleg. “Don’t anyone come near her. If you touch her, I’ll kill you. I swear I’ll kill you!”
BOOK TWO
Chapter Eleven
Alexei and Black Jake traveled due south toward the Black Sea and the Russian springtime. It was Alexei’s plan to sail from Odessa or Sevastopal to some western European port where he had friends who would assist him in reaching England. After settling business matters in London, he intended to return Black Jake to his home and people. Alexei knew a long sea voyage would do him good. He imagined he heard the gusty flip-flap of the sails, the creak of wood at work. He believed such natural delights would be sufficient to make him forget Katiana Danova.
But it was many weeks—weeks of snow and ice and blackest cold, weeks of sleeping in stables and holes and abandoned churches, arduous monotonous weeks—before the air quickened and the sea smell came with the dawn mists. Along the way, Jake and Alexei joined a band of gypsies who were also moving south. They fitted easily into the life of the road, and the gypsies asked no questions. Alexei with his thick black hair, ruddy complexion, and dark eyes had no difficulty passing for one of the gypsy men. And Black Jake, wearing the hooded costume of an Arab trader, aroused more fear than curiosity. Three times on the road they encountered troopers in Imperial colors who said they were looking for traitors on the run. One a Russian, the other black and mute as death. The gypsies eyed the strangers in their midst curiously after such interviews, but kept their silence.
The days on horseback through a flat and featureless terrain gave Alexei too much time for thinking. He filled his mind with anything that might engross him sufficiently to drive away the memory of Katia. But like a song that catches in the memory and lingers, he recalled her last words to him: “I shall be fine, just fine without you.” There had been something heartrending and vulnerable about the imperious tilt of her chin when she spoke those determined words. The flash of anger in her almondine eyes had been like lightning in a blue sky, but it did not hide the hurt and disappointment.
Damn the girl! He had avoided emotional entanglements all his life; why, now, should an eighteen-year-old convent child have the power to distract and disturb his mind where coquettes and sultry courtesans had failed to do so? He told himself he must not think of Katia, and so he thought of other things. He thought of anything that would drive away the memory of the beauty and innocence he had abandoned on the track to St. Petersburg.
In his mind he traced the unpredictable events and bittersweet fortune which had brought him to this place in life. He, a Romanov prince, was sought by the Czar for treason in his own land while in England he was regarded as a friend of the Crown and a valuable ally. In lands as distant and alien as Australia, he was respected as a successful trader and an honorable man. As Alladin jogged steadily southward, Alexei, half-hypnotized by the plodding, found himself recalling the early days as vividly as if time were repeating itself for him.
Prince Stephan Alexandrovich Romanov had insisted that Alexei, his only son, be educated in Great Britain. The Prince held the English in high esteem and especially respected how, in that country, a common code of laws had evolved which gave to all the right of citizenship and liberty. He had hoped his son would bring these enlightened Western ideas home to Russia when his education was completed. Alexei had been a student at Eton Grammar School in England when his father died. He was just fifteen when the mail, as always unreliable across Central Europe, brought the news of Prince Stephan’s demise and the documents of inheritance in the same delivery. Prince Stephan left a mountain of debts to his son. In one short afternoon, Alexei learned he had lost both his father and the fortune he had hoped for.
A day or two later, Eton’s headmaster had called Alexei into his office and told him, “Your tuition is paid until the end of the term, Your Highness. After that what will you do?”
“I shall make my fortune, sir,” Alexei had replied without faltering a moment.
But despite his bravado, Alexei had been assailed by doubts. How did one begin to make a fortune? He put the question to his closest friend, the young man with whom he had shared rooms at Eton for several years.
“I shall speak to my Governor on your behalf, Old Boy,” declared David Huntington-Seward, the only child of the Duke of Annandale. “You know he likes you! Didn’t he call you the hope of dear old Mother Russia?” Alexei recalled how Hunt had stretched his long legs to the leather footstool and reclined comfortably. As always he was the picture of nonchalant self-confidence. The pipe in his hand had long since gone out, but Hunt liked the adult feel of the bowl in his fist. “You’re coming down for a bit of shooting next week aren’t you? Annandale will be there, and you can speak to him then.” Hunt slapped his knee enthusiastically. “We’ll have you on the road to high finance before you know it, tovarich!”
So many crowded years had passed since that day; there had been so many adventures and misadventures; and yet the memory of Hunt’s loyalty and careless good humor were fresh in Alexei’s mind as he rode beside Jake, fleeing the wrath of the Czar.
Hunt had assured him his worries were over. Nevertheless, Alexei was as nervous as a guilty servant on the bleak May morning when he was escorted into the Duke’s study at Deer Creek, one of Annandale’s several comfortable country homes. A half-dozen small quarterpaned windows along one wall let scant light into the booklined study filled with heavy ornately carved oak furnishings. Without a fire, the room had been cold and dreary that morning. The portraits of Annandale’
s ancestors stared grimly down upon the young man. Alexei had supped with the Duke of Annadale many times during his eight-year friendship with the Duke’s only child. He had shot with him, ridden beside him at the hunt, and once the Duke had taken the two boys to the Isle of Skye where they went climbing and slept under the stars without servants to see to their wishes. Despite this familiarity, in the low-ceilinged study that morning long ago Annandale had seemed like a gigantic stranger.
Unexpectedly, the Duke’s voice had been warm. “Come in Alexei Stephanovich. My sincere condolences, my boy. But perhaps I should call you Your Highness now, eh? Or would you prefer simply Romanov?” The fifteen-year-old youth and the old Duke had shaken hands like equals, and Alexei relaxed. A little.
“Sir,” he said, “if being a Prince means bearing a troubled mind, then I am surely one!” Alexei stood tall and straight with the dignified royal bearing that came naturally to him; but his voice quavered, and he blushed with embarrassment.
Annandale cleared his throat. He seemed slightly embarrassed as well. “You have had a rather rough go of it, Romanov,” he said quietly. “I could not be more sympathetic, I assure you. Nevertheless, I hope you have learned from this tragic turn of events. Dear though your father was to you, I hope you have learned a lesson from his profligate ways.”
Alexei could not think of anything to say and so he kept quiet, standing straight and ill at ease. He was proud of his noble heritage but shamed by the truth of the Duke’s words. His feet were cold and his stomach growled at having been denied that morning’s breakfast. Inwardly he cursed the poverty, the need, that made this appointment necessary. Annandale cleared his throat again and thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his doeskin trousers; he paced a little, his discomfort obvious.
“Never forget,” he said, “that such are the trials that make a man of substance. We don’t always like what life brings us, Alexei Stephanovich, but it is how we react to adversity that really counts. That is what tells the world what kind of men we are.” Annandale shifted his weight uncomfortably and stared at his reflection in the polished wood floor.
The Frost And The Flame Page 9
