by Paul Park
They led her down to the river bank where Splaa stood. He wouldn’t look at her as Raevsky pulled her down to the gravel beach where four boats were drawn up in a line. There was the fire pit and bundles of supplies. A shelter of tarpaulins was slung on ropes between the trees. Splaa’s pack lay where he’d dropped it.
Blind Rodica was dead, and he had led them straight into this camp. Was it possible he’d betrayed them deliberately, engineered all this? But if so, why did he look so unhappy and defeated now? No, it was stupidity pure and simple, hers as much as his. She hoped he was just as wrong about the firing squad.
They stood in the middle of the camp beside the flat, flowing river. The Asian man climbed onto a boulder and sat down, the barrel of his gun pointing up between his knees. Raevsky started to pack up camp. He stowed the rolled-up ground cloths and tarpaulins. He was staving in the flat bottoms of the boats—pirogues, Splaa had called them—drawn up in a line. He had an axe, but it looked as if he could have used his hand, the thin wood broke so easily.
Two he left undamaged. He rolled them over and slid them to the water. Then the man with gold spectacles brought down some canvas bags, which meant the other one had stayed with Peter. No one spoke. The soldiers were in a hurry. Splaa wouldn’t catch Miranda’s eyes. He muttered, “I worked in the stables. They might have sent a proper soldier. If Prochenko…”
Blind Rodica’s death had robbed him of all strength. He spoke in a frightened squeak. “If you’re going to do it, please. Don’t make me wait.” This to Raevsky, who turned, came toward him with his revolver in his hand.
“If you were a soldier,” Raevsky said, “you would not think so I would waste such lives.”
There was a gap in his teeth on the right side of his jaw. “Last night I lost four men, dead as kittens. Boys from my village. You are the murderers, I think.”
Then to Miranda, “Miss Popescu, I remind you—nothing of this was necessary. You will remember how I warned you yesterday. Look what is happened. I tell you again, you have not to fear from us. I do not understand.…”
Now the bright day had disappeared. The soldiers were stowing their canvas bags in the two boats, including, she was surprised to see, her leather backpack, which she had dropped beside the path. In a moment it was done. Raevsky came toward her with his hand held out.
“Get away,” she said.
“Miss Popescu,” he said, “there is no choice for you.”
“I won’t go,” she said.
He shrugged, and then he pulled her down the gravel strand alone to the boats. Her hands were tied together at the wrists. He was relentless, but again she struggled, tried to break away, because she could not allow herself to be tied and led like this. Andromeda was gone, and Peter—now she saw Peter on the bank above her. The yellow-haired soldier from the hut was backing down the slope. He kept his rifle pointed toward the middle of Peter’s chest.
So what could she do but let herself be tied and led? Peter didn’t look at her, but at the mouth of the long rifle. Miranda could see the red stripe on his forehead where they’d hit him. “Wait for me,” she said, so he wouldn’t do anything stupid. “I’ll find you,” she said, but he didn’t look at her. He was staring at the rifle’s mouth, and when he turned it was to look at Raevsky’s long revolver, also pointed at his chest. At the same time the Asian man floated the boat in the water. The water was around his legs.
The soldier with the rifle walked backward down the beach. And the one with gold spectacles held the other boat. He laid his paddle along the gunnel and prepared to hoist himself aboard—in a moment, Miranda understood, there’d be a race. The Asian man was in the front of her boat, and now Raevsky had to put down his gun to force her aboard, scramble aboard. They splashed through the icy water, and Miranda was over the thin side. Raevsky forced her over, and then their boat was away, and it found the current of the river and headed off downstream.
But she got her head up in time to see the yellow-haired soldier throw his rifle in his boat and spring aboard. The one with the gold spectacles guided the boat out, and at the same time Peter came charging down the slope and jumped into the water. Raevsky fired his pistol as their pirogue swung round, and for a moment his body was between Miranda and the other boat—she couldn’t see. But she heard a cry like a wounded animal and felt a spasm of nausea—no, it was all right. The man with gold spectacles had pushed the boat away and scrambled aboard. Peter stood roaring and shouting with the water around his waist.
“Wait for me,” Miranda whispered as the boat pulled away. She found she couldn’t make a louder sound. She thought that with Raevsky busy she might sink the boat, unbalance it, and so she struggled to her knees. But Raevsky dug his fingers through her hair, and as the Asian man paddled their boat, he forced her down against the thin boards. Raevsky had his gun in his right hand, and with his left he dragged her by her hair, and with his fingers tangled in her hair he pushed her ear to the varnished wood. She heard the pebbles grind along the bottom of the boat, and then the flapping of the water.
Then Raevsky let go. He needed both hands for his paddle now. She couldn’t see his gun. She sat in the bottom of the boat, and she watched Peter roar and struggle in the water while Splaa stood on the shore, surrounded by abandoned bags and baggage and the wrecked boats of the soldier’s camp.
Peter was still bellowing in the water. The boats had scraped across a sandbar, and now Peter waded out to it and climbed onto it, so that suddenly he seemed enormous, as if walking on the surface of the stream. She didn’t think he’d been hurt. He raised his arms above his head, his boy’s arm and his big man’s arm. And he looked at her now, and she saw in his face an expression she had never seen before on him or anyone. His face was distorted almost beyond recognition. And he called out like a wounded beast, and raised his arms as if he meant to fight the world.
The boat swung round a bend in the stream, and she lost sight of him. Because she couldn’t bear to see his terrifying face, his splayed teeth and his shouting mouth, at that last moment she looked away at the trees rushing past, the undercut bank, the stones at the bottom of the stream. She didn’t want to think he’d changed from the boy she’d known. She felt conscious of every little thing. The soldiers pulled the boat into the center of the stream. Miranda sat between Raevsky and the Asian man in front. The other boat pulled past them and went on ahead.
After ten minutes of work, Raevsky took his paddle out of the water. “So, he is not the man his father was, not yet. Because his arm is hurt, maybe.”
What did he mean by that? She was too dazed to ask. She sat huddled in the bottom of the boat and she said nothing. Then, after a few more minutes, “You see it makes no difference. Where are you going through the woods? Home—is it not so? We will take these boats to Albany in some days, and then New York on the paddle steamer. Then the Carpathia will wait for us—you have never seen such a boat. So,” he said, gesturing toward shore, “Don’t cry—it doesn’t matter. We all go to the same place, to Roumania.”
She had no intention of crying. She pressed her lips together while Raevsky looked into the tall trees and mumbled something. When he turned back, he tried to avoid her eyes. “Prayer to dead,” he muttered finally. “They are on the river of the dead.”
Miranda sat in the bottom of the pirogue between some canvas bags. There were some long guns, and she wondered if they were loaded. She was looking at Raevsky, trying to read his face, trying to control her own.
“So, you will tell me. Was it the demon of this forest? That old Gypsy—where is she? My boys were cold as snow. White faces. God help me, I ran away.”
Now he seemed eager to speak. “And you will tell me about Pieter de Graz?” he asked. “It is his son—is not so? Is maybe sixteen years, I think. The right age, and that is de Graz’s face. He was in Constanta with Aegypta Schenck, but we heard Antonescu murdered him with all the prince’s men. This boy—I could not recognize him in the Gypsy’s house. Never could I shoot a boy, de
Graz’s son. But I was with the army when the Chevalier de Graz went down to Adrianople to fight the Turkish champion. Three falls with the sultan watching! We all drank his health that day!”
She had heard this name before in many contexts. Was it Peter’s name in this new world?
Raevsky looked behind them to the riverbank and then continued. “You think I am a monster. So—listen—ground too hard to bury them, I tell myself. Shall I go back now? Spirit death—I take you to the steamship, then return. I will not go home with you. Alexandru will take you home. For me is too much shame. Stay here in this damned country. I will not see my lady Ceausescu after this. Maybe I join de Graz’s son. It is my fortune.”
The river was broad but not deep. Miranda could see the gravel bottom. Occasional large stones broke the surface. Peter and Splaa were long out of sight. The river cut through a forest of tall pines. Numb and sad, trussed up in the bottom of the boat, Miranda imagined a yellow dog upon the southern bank, running through the trees. She imagined Peter trudging through the underbrush. When the land changed and outcroppings of rock appeared along the shore, she imagined Peter keeping pace with them. But when he jumped onto a boulder by the shore, in her thoughts she had to turn away from his roaring face.
What would he do? she thought. Where would he go to find her? What had Splaa said—a hunting camp? No, but she would find the trail on the south bank and follow it back, and Peter and Andromeda would wait for her.
The first thing was to escape. She could not let herself be bound and tied. She raised her wrists toward Raevsky. When he shook his head she pulled her forearms apart, searching for some slack in the cord, at the same time looking in the bottom of the boat for some sharp object. The strands were a rough hemp, tight and strong.
Captain Raevsky sat in the stern. Miranda studied the man in front of her, the Asian man in the leather shirt, who was different from the other three. His long black hair was braided behind him and tied with a leather thong, to which was attached five coral beads. A necklace of shells was around his neck. And when he turned back toward her from time to time, she could see his long black goatee, his flat, heavy face. Though he took enormous cuts at the water with his paddle, he was not, like Raevsky, out of breath.
In time Raevsky stretched his paddle across the gunnels of the boat. “A wind came without noise,” he said. “It broke trees, but I hear nothing. I could not breathe. I feel a crushing on my heart, but I said the prayer to Mars. Then I run away.”
Up ahead the land was rising on either side of the stream, which was narrower here, deeper and faster. Miranda pictured Peter on the shore, shaking his arms, but then she turned away. She understood the captain was confessing cowardice to her.
It was no consolation. “Where are you taking me?” she asked.
“Don’t you hear? This stream comes to the Henry Hudson River and then down. Ferenc and Alexandru will take you on the ship from New York to Bremerhaven, then to Bucharest. Did you read the letter I gave? My lady Ceausescu, you will see her.”
Miranda said nothing. After a moment, Raevsky went on. “You must trust my lady. She will protect. The empress does not fight against a woman because her father sold us to the Germans. That was twenty years ago.”
“My father…” Miranda said. How could she feel protective of the reputation of Prince Schenck von Schenck, whose name she’d heard for the first time the day before? That wasn’t it.
But she didn’t want to hear that Captain Raevsky was her father’s enemy. There was no comfort in hearing that, because she was alone and in his power and close to tears.
She had an idea. There were tears on her cheeks, and her nose was running. She brought her hands up to touch her face. She turned aside and took one of the strands of twine between her teeth.
Raevsky stared at her a moment, then put his paddle down. He reached into his pocket and produced a handkerchief, which he dipped over the side. Then he was dabbing at her cheeks and nose with the cold, wet cloth. The handkerchief was clean, the linen soft and fine. A red pig was embroidered in one corner.
He sat upright again. “Miss,” he said, “I know is hard. I don’t know what they do. But my lady will not hurt you. Your place is your own country. You are loved there, you will see. Maybe the Baroness Ceausescu will take you to her house. If so, you will be lucky, because she is beautiful and kind. She knows what it is to be alone without friends.”
This was not comforting. “She lives in a rich, tall house,” Raevsky said. “She goes everywhere to all the parties and the palace. I think you are luckier than me, because I won’t see her again.”
This was not comforting to Miranda. Baron Ceausescu had betrayed her father—Splaa had told her that much. How could what Raevsky said be true?
She bowed her head into her aching hands, and worried at the twine with her teeth. The Asian man in the front was talking now. He said some words in a strange language, then pointed. “Look.”
On either side of the stream, the rocks had risen into granite cliffs fifty feet high. Miranda was familiar with the Hoosick River, which ran west out of Williamstown toward New York State. It followed Route 346 and joined the Hudson somewhere north of Albany. But this river was three times as broad, and she had never seen this place, this forest of pines, these walls of rock. Now above them where the man was pointing, she saw a movement in the trees. A woman came and stood on the rocks over their heads.
She had long yellow hair. She went down on her hands and knees and peered over the boulders at them. Miranda could see her face was smudged with color, charcoal or black paint. There were stripes on her cheeks and neck. She opened her mouth. From fifty feet away Miranda could see her teeth, her tongue sticking out.
Now the man in the front of her boat was shouting in a mixture of languages. “Back,” he shouted, “back,” which Miranda understood, and Raevsky too. He put the blade of his paddle in the water to turn the boat around, while at the same time he was calling to the other boat ahead of them. But it was too late, for now from both sides of the gorge men appeared under the trees. They were dressed in skins, like old pictures of American Indians, except for the yellow hair. Some had big stones in their hands, which they raised up.
The stream was narrow in the gorge. As their boat turned, Miranda could see the other boat trying to steer into the middle, the men paddling hard. Then it flipped over in a trough between two rocks as their own boat came around in a circle. Raevsky had turned it, but when he saw the others go down, he brought it around again. Two men were floundering in water above their waists. One lost his footing and was swept downstream, while the other struggled into shallower water on the right hand side. But he was pelted with rocks from above. Miranda could see a gash over his eye.
The lead man in her own boat, who had first pointed to the wild woman and told them to go back, now flung himself over the side. The water was not deep where they were. He held his gun and his bag above his head as he stumbled toward shore. He never looked around, but climbed up through the rocks and disappeared, while Raevsky steered the boat into the gorge. The light pirogue was overbalanced by the sudden shift in weight, so Miranda crawled into the lead seat while Raevsky grunted and cursed. Still he managed to guide the boat to where his man stood bleeding and confused, the water about his waist. It was the soldier with gold spectacles, and Raevsky dragged him into the boat. Then they were off downstream through the shower of stones, which struck the water all around them, struck Raevsky too upon his shoulders and his head. Miranda was not touched.
“English! Savages!” Raevsky shouted. “No—”
Past the gorge, the land opened up again, a wide strand of gravel on the right hand side, where the river made a turn. Wild men stood there. Miranda could see they had dragged the yellow-haired soldier from the river and were beating him. One had stripped off the green jacket. He held it on the end of a stick, shouting as the pirogue swept around the turn and Raevsky brought it ashore. He leapt onto the strand carrying three of his long guns.
He shot one of the wild men who had rushed toward him brandishing a club.
The men had yellow hair knotted with feathers or pieces of bone. Now they scattered into a thicket of saplings. They dragged the soldier into the shelter of the thicket, together with some bags they had salvaged from the water. Others came from the woods on the other side of the river.
Miranda sat in the boat with the wounded man. One of the lenses in his spectacles was broken. His clothes were sopping wet. He lay without moving.
The sharp, brass gunnel of the boat had a break in it, and she was rubbing her hands along the break. There was a weak place in the rope where she had bitten it. One by one, the coarse, loose strands of hemp gave way, and then her hands were free.
Raevsky was walking slowly toward the thicket carrying his bundle of guns. But on the other side of the stream a man had jumped down into the water and had started to wade across the shallow water toward the boat. Though the air was cold and there was ice in the crevices of the rocks, he was bare-chested, a big man with painted skin, carrying a club that ended in a lump of quartz.
Miranda stepped over the side of the boat onto the wet strand. Raevsky had pulled it into a trough of fist-sized rocks. She drew it out into the water until the keel came off the stones.
All she had to do was jump aboard. Raevsky had found the soldier in the thicket and was standing over him. But when he looked up and saw what she was doing, his face took on such a naked, wide-eyed, horrified expression that she paused. He threw down his guns, then stumbled back toward her over the rough stones.
The man with the quartz-headed club was shouting from the stream, which rose around his thighs. Others were behind him. The current was tugging at the boat, and Miranda couldn’t see how she could hold it steady and climb aboard. The men had almost crossed the stream now, and one was reaching for the boat—not the man with the club, but another one with feathers in his hair. But then there was a shot and he staggered backward, and Raevsky was running with his long pistol in his hand. Then he was beside her holding the boat into the current, forcing her over the side.
