Nest of the Monarch

by Kay Kenyon

  A rivulet of sweat ran down her side. “I had to make beds. I left my sack.” She made a gesture as though carrying a heavy bag.

  Gazing at her, expressionless, his nostrils flared. “You . . . are . . . ,” he began in English. “Nervous. For a maid.” He smiled, a terrible thing to see on the long, gaunt face. “Is this word? Nervous?”

  She didn’t know what to say, afraid she would confirm that she was nervous, afraid he would not understand her. Then, as the seconds ticked away, she managed to say: “I am not nervous, Lieutenant, sir.”

  He stared at her with distaste. Then he continued on his way, leaving her behind, feeling an acute relief. Get ahold of yourself. This is only the beginning.

  At cabin 4, she saw that smoke trailed out of the chimney.

  When she knocked, the door opened immediately. Evgeny. “I have been waiting for you,” he said.

  43

  THE AERIE

  A FEW MINUTES LATER. They sat in front of the fire drinking strong tea. Evgeny seemed anxious for company, asking if she would like bread and butter, more tea, and if she heard the owls.

  Kim listened. Scrabbling sounds on the roof. Perhaps birds or squirrels. “Do you hear owls, Evgeny Feodorovich?”

  Now and then his glance flicked to the envelope in her lap. “Owl tells me. I die soon.”

  Perhaps, as war loomed, he told everyone the same vision, and she wondered for how many it would be true.

  Talking with the old man was difficult. She had not planned what to say, knowing she would have to follow what logic threads might appear.

  “Evgeny,” she began. “In your visions, you don’t see Nikolai ruling Russia, do you.”

  He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. “My Irina. My Nikolai,” he moaned.

  “You told me a terrible thing happens to St. Petersburg. And also who brings this terror to the city.”

  Shaking his head, he whispered, “I cannot tell her what comes. Break her heart, she who is broken all life long.”

  And what would happen? Hitler takes over Russia? Another White Russian supplants the Bolsheviks? St. Petersburg in the frozen winter, stacking the bodies? But all that mattered was what Evgeny believed would occur.

  “You must tell her.” She leaned forward. “Evgeny, listen. She’s too strong to break. And she has to leave this place, before she helps Hitler destroy your country.”

  He sat up, leaning back in his chair, gaining a semblance of dignity. “You and friend,” he said. “Woman who is truly broken.” He nodded. “Da. She bring you here for killing.”

  Referring to Hannah. What Evgeny knew and did not know was a chaotic tangle.

  “But I won’t kill the tsarina. I want to save her. And you. Evgeny, leave this place. Don’t help Hitler. That’s why I’ve come.”

  Then, with dignity, as though he already knew what it said, he held out his hand for the envelope. She slipped the paper out of its sleeve and handed it to him.

  He glanced at it. It did not seem to trouble him. “I know these things. I see clearly.”

  “Her Majesty thinks they will send you to a rest home. But you wouldn’t get that far. A soldier. A gunshot. It’s not her wish.”

  A scrabbling sound on the roof. He pointed upward, smiling. “They try speaking. I listen. No one listen, but Evgeny Borisov.”

  “I listened to you about St. Petersburg. Now it is the tsarina’s turn to listen. And when she understands, I’ll take you both out of here.”

  “Nyet. Does not happen.” He still held the German orders, his fingers trembling.

  Don’t tell me we fail. Don’t tell me. It might not be so. “We must leave,” she said, trying not to sound desperate, trying not to trigger any extreme reactions. “Will you tell her? Tell her the Wehrmacht will ravage the city where you were born?”

  He looked past her shoulder, a blank expression. She was losing him. She plodded on. “You know the tsarina. What would break her are her own actions, her purifications on Christmas Day that would help to destroy her people.”

  He watched her for so long she thought they were done; he could not track what was expected of him. But at last he whispered, “Da, Nora Copeland, I tell her.”

  Yes, Evgeny, yes.

  Something changed in his expression. “Maybe we go ourselves, down secret way, leave you here.” His truculent expression cooled Kim’s heart.

  “I will help you find a home in England,” she said soothingly. “We should go together. And when we do, it means that the tsarina will no longer help the Nazis. Her hands will be clean of this death you see in St. Petersburg.”

  He stood, smoothing his waistcoat, straightening his shoulders. He walked to the fireplace, bending down to throw the document in.

  Kim leaped from her seat, rushing over to him. “No, Evgeny!” She snatched the paper from his hands. “You can’t burn this!”

  Evgeny stared at her, wild-eyed.

  “Show it to Her Majesty. Show her. So she will see how the Nazis are lying about everything, even about her good friend Evgeny Borisov.”

  He cocked his head, as though listening to something. “I hear big, long guns,” he murmured. “Pound day and night. I see grandchildren asleep in snow. Too cold to bleed.”

  They stood for a long time as the fire burned, popping and hissing.

  Kim folded the document and handed it back to him. Evgeny put it in an inside pocket of his jacket. “I go to her.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Ask her to send for me. I’ll tell her of England. I’ll help you escape.”

  A look crossed his face, registering a new thought. “You do not believe Evgeny’s visions.”

  “But I do. I have the gift of the spill. I can hear the truth. I don’t see the future, but I see what’s in the heart.”

  “Ah,” he said. “The heart. Heart missing here.” He looked around him, perhaps seeing the Aerie with its dark purpose. “Heart is Russian people.”

  Heart is what you have left when everything else is taken.

  He put a hand on her arm, gripping it. Tears came to his eyes. “You not die by bullet.”

  “I know. Not this time. Nikolai missed. But everything you see, it is true somewhere.”

  “Da. Is truth.”

  Clasping her hand over his, she squeezed it and then pulled gently away.

  They were talking about things beyond reason, beyond what they could ever know. Things that seemed true, seemed to be so, but just out of reach in a world tinged with power, faith, and magic.

  “I’ll wait in my room. Send for me, Evgeny Borisov.”

  She slipped out the door. The first lungful of frigid air hurt, but she pulled it deep to steady herself.

  THAT EVENING. Polina left the polishing of the silver and went into the hall at the foot of the stairs. In the upstairs bedroom, the tsarina’s voice, shrill, distressed. Evgeny Feodorovich was with her, his voice droning.

  And so Evgeny Feodorovich comes again to disturb our peace, the poor, filthy thing who slurps his food and tried to kill himself over his mad visions.

  He had come after dark looking sunken and exhausted. He would see Her Majesty. Alone. But he had been in her room for an hour, and now the tsarina was crying. Polina went up the stairs to see if she was needed.

  Outside the tsarina’s door, she stood, hesitating to knock. Then, deciding not to disturb, she leaned in to hear.

  Irina sobbing, muffled but deep-throated. At last she quieted. “England? Do you say so, Evgeny?” His answer, indistinguishable. Then again, “What about my son.”

  His voice, a steady murmur. Hers, indistinct. They had moved, turned away. Polina could make out nothing.

  The old man was unstable, and now he had upset the tsarina, as he always did, the old fool. Her Majesty indulged him intolerably, letting him summon her day or night, coming to her rooms to alarm and stir ancient memories. How he would go on and on about the days in hiding with the tsarina, as though they
were the only ones who had suffered, who had starved, endured prison, lost everything. Polina shook her head and crept down the stairs. She thought of Tatiana Nazarova, her former mistress, Her Majesty’s aunt, who had been driven from her grand home into the streets while the rabble took over, stripping furniture, shattering the porcelains, throwing the silks and velvets out the windows.

  She shuddered. What good to remember the bad days? Now Her Majesty and Nikolai were safe, protected by the might of the Nazi government. And Evgeny Feodorovich, disrupting, complaining, predicting, as was his wont.

  At last Evgeny came down the stairs and left, closing the door behind him.

  Her mistress would need tea and soothing. A nice hot bath and her bathing salts. Polina finished the silver and placed the flatware in their felt sleeves.

  When the tsarina did not summon her, she went up to knock on her door. Opening it, she found her sitting in a chair, staring at the remains of the coal fire in the grate.

  “Go away,” the tsarina murmured. When Polina hesitated, her mistress snapped a look at her, and she softly pulled the door shut.

  Descending the stairs, she shook her head. What good did visions do, except to ruin one’s sleep? At the bottom, she put her hand on the newel post, looking back up. The thought had been nagging at her: What could they possibly have been speaking of, when her mistress had said England?

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23. 8:15 AM. Kim’s book lay open in her lap. Conversational German. It was the only book she had, but she couldn’t concentrate on it. It had been twenty-four hours since she’d talked to Evgeny.

  Sounds of the outside door closing, and then Hilde and Erika came into the room, Hilde leaning against her roommate.

  Erika helped Hilde to her bunk, where she lay down.

  “What happened?” Kim asked.

  “She is sick,” Erika said without empathy. Hilde turned her back to them, curling up, facing the wall. “If it is influenza,” Erika went on, “they should put her in another room.”

  Sick. Kim rose from her bunk and went over to Hilde. “Can I get you something? Water? Juice?”

  Hilde moaned, turning over to look up at Kim. Her face, milk white, her eyes, unfocused.

  She doubted it was the flu. Hilde might well have been poisoned—Adler making sure the woman could do no harm to their plan.

  “If there’s anything at all I can do,” Kim said to her, putting her hand on Hilde’s shoulder.

  44

  TOLZRIED, BAVARIA

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23. Outside the small pension, Hannah crossed the car park to the truck that, even though it was ten years old, had taken the last of her money. The yard’s brown snow, packed down and mixed with mud, had frozen during the night after a brief melting at midday. The cold at this early-morning hour was bitter, reminding her of the challenge she would face, spending the night in the shack by the lake without a fire.

  She started the truck, and the engine kicked over in a satisfying rumble. It had spent the night outside the warmth of a garage and still started. Satisfied, she switched the engine off and stood outside for a few minutes longer, looking up at the sky, gauging the weather. Clouds charged across the sky in the wind that tore off the Alps. Intermittently, the sun leaked through, shedding a gloaming light over the yard and distant fields.

  Tomorrow she would drive to the lake, following a service road that the Oberman Group had long known about, one that was used by the hearty souls who went to the lake for ice fishing.

  A few flakes of snow came down in slow motion, catching the sun. But no heavy clouds, so it was not likely to snow harder tomorrow. She hoped it would not, for the sake of their flight out on Christmas Day. She didn’t relish fleeing down backroads in an old truck. The airplane was a better way, if the English sent one. If they could land. All they needed was a little luck.

  A little luck, God. Would that be so much skin off your nose?

  THE AERIE

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23. Sitting in his wingback chair, a pot of tea on the table at his side, Evgeny watched as Kim paced.

  He sat stiffly in his chair, dressed formally but his hair disordered, sticking out on one side. He poured himself tea, not offering any to her, but then seeming to lose interest in his own cup.

  She paced the small perimeter of the cabin, her stomach knotted and churning. The clothes she’d worn since she arrived at the Aerie now bagged on her frame. It seemed her body fed on the unseen fuel of purpose and drive. In the past few days, she had taken two meals of venison, served steaming, but cool in the middle, easy enough to ingest, but afterward, nausea.

  She wished Evgeny would speak to her, tell her more about Annakova’s reaction to their meeting, but he was strangely subdued. He had only said that Kim should come midmorning, and that Annakova would join them. And if Annakova was willing to listen to her, that meant success was within reach.

  “Do you know the time, Evgeny?”

  He pulled out a watch on a chain, gazed at it, replaced it. “Nyet. Time, it lies.”

  She hated being without her Helbros. But how absurd. The least of her worries. Kim asked him again, “What did Her Majesty say?”

  “She say she comes. Talk with you, but is secret.” He picked up his tea, then put it down again, hand shaking. As nervous as she was.

  The window curtains, though drawn tight, let in the light at the edges, little glaring flickers that stung her eyes. The day had begun to cloud over, but the snow made everything bright.

  Someone at the door. Kim glanced at Evgeny, who gestured for her to answer it. She picked up her sack of Evgeny’s sheets—her excuse for being there—and opened the door.

  Irina Annakova stood on the porch in a hooded cape. Kim looked around for an SS escort, but the tsarina was alone.

  Annakova entered and Kim closed the door behind her.

  They faced off.

  The tsarina let her hood fall. Her face, wan with creases between her eyes and down the side of her mouth, lines that Kim had not noticed in the more flattering firelight of Annakova’s parlor. Three days ago, the day she became a 10.

  As Kim put down the linens on the bed, Annakova went to Evgeny and they spoke in Russian. She moved to the back of his chair, placing a hand on the top, hovering over Evgeny like a dark angel. She looked at Kim. “And so?”

  “I came to help you. You and the tsarevich. I have come all this way, Your Majesty.”

  “Come from where?”

  “London. The British government.” Now it was all out, the damning truth.

  “Coming for purpose. What purpose?”

  “To stop the Nachkommenschaft.”

  “You mean destroying us.” She did not remove her cape, did not sit. Kim felt she had only a minute or two to convince her.

  “Your Majesty, the Nazis are not friends to Russia.”

  Annakova’s mouth flattened in displeasure. “Everyone knows. No love between our countries. Except hating Bolsheviks.”

  “But to overcome them, the Wehrmacht will bring destruction on your people. As Evgeny Feodorovich foresees. As you must know will happen, because Stalin won’t give up without a terrible fight. A million dead, so Evgeny says.”

  “You come to tell me this Nazi treachery. But they promise how Russian armies lay down arms. When they face . . . discipline . . . from German army. Is lies? You say so?”

  “Yes, I say so. Because of orders for Evgeny to be shot. Which they have lied to you about.”

  Annakova went to the window at the front of the cabin, peering out. Evgeny watched her every movement as though waiting for something terrible to occur. And did he know, did he see, something terrible?

  The tsarina turned back from the window and removed her cape, placing it on the extra chair.

  Her gown was a rich ivory color, in a decades-old style, with high lace collar. From a pouch in her cape she pulled out a small pistol, pointing it at Kim. “Your name,” she said. “Is not Nora Copeland. And not American? This also, a lie?”

 
“My mother is American. My father, English. I had to lie to come here.”

  “And you would like to kill me. Is why you came, after all.”

  Evgeny said something to her in Russian. She looked at him with a mixture of sadness and affection, seating herself in the chair across from him. She waved at Kim to stand in a place where she could see her clearly. “But I tire to talk of death.”

  “Your Majesty. Do you have to point the gun at me? I know what it feels like to be shot.”

  A tiny smile, conceding the point. She put the pistol on the table next to her.

  “You tell me things,” Annakova said. “Now I tell you. They do not dare to kill my Evgeny. I am tsarina.”

  “But Your Majesty, you saw the execution order.”

  “How you could get such papers that Evgeny shows me?”

  “I’ve been working hard to uncover the Nazi lies. The orders were on file here in the SS offices. It was very dangerous to get them.”

  Annakova cast her glance around the cabin, as though searching for an alternate explanation, so that she did not have to believe that her and her son’s future in Russia was a mirage.

  “And more lies,” Kim went on. “There is a hospital called Treptow. A Nazi prison for SS-Nachkommenschaft who have been purified too many times.”

  “You do not know this thing!”

  “I was there. I do know. They tie them in beds by straps, behind locked doors. The Progeny beg to die.”

  Annakova became very still.

  “I saw it. I would not believe what people told me, that the Progeny went mad at the end. That they must be caged like dangerous animals. So I went to see for myself, how those who are touched by you end.”

  “Strapped to beds?” Annakova’s face went dark. She flicked a glance at Evgeny, who raised his hand from his lap, allowing the point.

  Annakova watched her for a second, thinking. “How many?”

  “A dozen. Treptow Sanatorium is near Berlin. I got in to look.”

  “You are so good at this. Getting in,” Annakova said, bitter.