Natalia lifted her head. Looked from Anna to Volodya and back again. ‘Anna,’ she said, ‘Volodya’s right.’ Her voice was surprisingly firm. ‘You must go.’
‘But –’ Anna stopped, put her hand to her head.
‘Volodya and I have spoken about it.’ Very carefully Natalia settled the shawl more comfortably about her sleeping child’s face, resumed her rhythmic rocking. Lifted her head, pale-faced. ‘I agree with him. You mustn’t stay. The longer you leave it the more difficult and dangerous it will become. But, Anna, I have a favour to ask. A huge favour. Too huge, I suppose. If you think it too difficult – if you feel you can’t –’ She paused, biting her lip. Her red-rimmed eyes were steady and pleading. ‘Anna, I want you to take the children,’ she said. ‘’Tasha and Nikki. I want you to take them with you.’
‘Natalia, what are you saying?’ Varya’s voice was edged with hysteria. ‘Has everyone run mad? Anna’s going nowhere! She’s to stay here, with us!’
‘No, Mama! No.’ Astoundingly Natalia would not allow herself to be shouted down. ‘Volodya’s right. Anna is the only one of us who has a chance to get out. She should take it and go. I only ask – though I know I have no right – that she gives my children the chance to go with her.’ The words spoken, she was suddenly quite calm. ‘I can neither support nor look after them. God knows what will happen to them here. I have the little one – he takes so much of my time.’ She looked down at the child who slept in her arms, turned back to Anna. ‘They’ll have a better chance and a better life with you. Will you take them?’
Anna was struck wordless.
‘And what of me?’ Varya demanded. ‘Who consults me in all this? Ungrateful child, Anna! What of me? Will you take your poor mama to England with you – to your riches and your fancy house?’
‘No, Mama, she will not.’ It was Natalia who spoke again, still calm, still perfectly composed. ‘The journey will not be easy. There will be dangers and difficulties enough without your adding to them. It is enough if Anna is willing to take the children. To take you would be to put them all at risk. No, Mama, you stay here with us. The children must be kept safe.’ She looked back at Anna. ‘You will take the children?’ For the briefest of moments her voice betrayed her, ragged with grief and the pain of imminent loss.
Anna swallowed. ‘Yes, Natalia. Of course I’ll take them. If you’re sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘And if there really is a way?’ Anna looked back at Volodya.
‘There’s a way,’ he said. ‘I’ve made some contacts – spoken to some people. If you are to go you should make it soon, whilst the ice is still safe –’
‘The ice?’ Anna stared in surprise, confused at the suddenness of it all. ‘You mean – the Gulf? But – don’t you think – with the children – the train?’
Volodya shook his head. ‘Out of the question, my love. To try to travel to Helsinki by train would be far too dangerous – a woman alone, with children and with no protection. God alone knows what might happen. And, too, the situation in Finland is just as unsettled as it is here – there’s talk of armed uprising – the borders are as closely watched as any in the country. Your papers are British; the children have none at all. Even if the authorities let you go, they well might not allow the children to travel with you. No. The only way is Katya’s way.’ He smiled a little. ‘You’ll be in very grand company. The Gulf smugglers have fine customers nowadays. Many who are used to travelling a lot softer are pleased enough now with a rough sledge and a passage to freedom. And where aristocrats and their smuggled treasures can go, you and three small children can surely follow. It shouldn’t be too difficult; and once you get to Helsinki, and to Katya and Jussi, you’ll be at least a step closer to freedom. There are still routes open from there to Sweden – and there the Embassy will help you.’
Anna watched him for a long moment. ‘You’ve been planning this?’ she asked, suddenly.
He nodded composedly. ‘Yes.’
‘For how long?’
He shrugged.
‘Without consulting me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Might I ask why not?’ For all her relief, for all the sudden lightening of her heart at the hope, however slight, of freedom, she was obscurely resentful.
He took her hand. His smile was rueful. ‘If you think about that for a moment you’d answer it yourself,’ he said. ‘I had to wait. I had to wait for the right moment. If I had suggested it to you even a matter of days ago you would have been outraged. You would totally have refused to contemplate it. Isn’t that true?’
She hesitated. Then, ‘I – suppose so. Yes.’
‘So. I simply laid what plans I could and waited. Now, we need money, of course – we’ll sell the brooch your uncle left you – and I need a couple of days to set things up. Friday, I think. That should give us time.’
‘Friday,’ she said, bemusedly.
He smiled, that mild and quiet smile of his. ‘Friday. That is, of course, if you haven’t any other arrangements made for the day?’
* * *
They reached the edge of the Gulf in darkness. Volodya had laid the plans well; palms had been greased, permits written, they had left the city with no great alarms. It was here on the dark fringes of the frozen wastes of the Gulf that the danger started; there was no bribing the Bolshevik guards of Kronstadt, on the lookout for fleeing aristocrats and their transportable goods and valuables, which could as easily disappear into their captors’ pockets as into the coffers of the revolutionary government. The children, wrapped in almost every item of clothing they possessed, had been carefully briefed and warned. In so much terror of discovery were they that not a word had passed even lively ’Tasha’s lips since they had set out from the city in the ramshackle sledge that Volodya had hired. ’Tasha’s and Nikki’s farewells to their mother had been said before they left. Only Anna had cried. Natalia’s strength had been channelled into the saving of her children; the decision taken, she refused to grieve to see them go.
The children were settled now into the small, fast sledge with its restless horses whose hooves were muffled with rags, which was to take them across the ice. Volodya kissed them all swiftly. ‘Be good. Do as Aunt Anna tells you. Good luck, my darlings.’
’Tasha clung to him wordlessly for a moment. Nikki was too interested in the horses to think of anything else. Stepan clutched his cushion and wormed his hand from his mitten so that he could suck his thumb.
Anna faced Volodya on the icy shore. It was a dark night, with no moon. The only illumination was a guttering torch stuck into the seat beside the driver, a light that would be extinguished before they reached the danger of the Kronstadt fortresses. Its flicker threw shadows across their faces. The driver muttered, impatient to be gone.
Anna could find nothing to say. She stepped into his arms, laid her head upon his breast. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last, and lifted her face to his.
He smiled at her. ‘If you had loved me,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure I could have let you go. So perhaps it’s just as well that you didn’t.’
She lifted her head. ‘You could have come with me.’
She sensed the shake of his head. ‘No. My place is here. Natalia – your mother –’
‘– are my responsibilities, not yours!’ The agony of torn loyalties that she had suffered in the past days sounded in her voice.
‘No. Don’t think it. The decision is made. Go. And – be happy. Take care of the children. They are our link. Their safety and happiness is what you give me in place of love.’
She blinked, the cold air stinging her eyes.
He kissed her, gently.
Turning to leave him, she stopped. ‘Volodya – you won’t stop looking for Tonia? And poor Margarita?’
‘Of course not. If it’s possible to find them I will. Now go, Anna. Hurry.’
If there had been moonlight she might have seen his tears as she stepped into the sledge and as in ghostly silence it slid into da
rkness. But there was not. He waited a long time, until the only sound was the rustle of the icy wind amongst the frozen trees and battered reeds of the marshy shore. Then, tiredly, he climbed back into the empty sledge and turned it back towards the city.
Chapter Twenty-Five
They slipped past the searchlights in the hour after midnight. Anna could feel small Stepan tense and trembling beside her. She put an arm about the child’s shoulders; he turned his face into the fur of her coat, his thumb in his mouth, eyes tight shut against the eerie glow.
And then they were through, the sweeping lights throwing ghostly shadows upon the ice wastes and dark skies behind them. The driver whipped up the tough little horses and they sped on, towards the coast of Finland, safe at least for the moment.
In the relief from tension, lulled by the smooth, swift movement and the warmth of the dirty furs in which like small squirrels they nested, the children slept.
Anna did not.
Huddled against the bitter wind of their flight, the little boy curled tight against her, not daring to move her numbed arm in case she disturbed him, she looked into the cold and empty darkness, alone with her thoughts: of the past, and of the future. She felt no sadness at leaving Petrograd; the city she had once loved no longer existed. The sadness that lay heavily upon her was due wholly to the thought of those she had left behind in that miserable and uncertain prison of a place.
Her mother, poor Varya, bitterly deprived of those things which for all of her life she had taken for granted, never now to achieve those things to which she had so hopelessly aspired.
Volodya, brave and kind. Alone again, as he had been before her coming.
Natalia and her poor weakling child who surely would not survive the winter.
Margarita. Where was Margarita, who had betrayed her husband, her prince, to death in spite and hatred of another woman?
And Lenka. Lenka: dead and beyond torment, yet haunting her sister still. That Lenka should have died before the wounds of the past could be healed had hurt beyond measure; that Lenka’s daughter, Anna’s own image, had run to the foul and dangerous streets of the city rather than come to her was a burden of grief and of guilt that she would carry for ever. Her arm tightened around Stepan. She had him. And the other two children. Not hers. Never hers. But a trust; a trust she would not betray. Nothing would stop her from getting them to safety, from bringing them home to Sythings. Here was the future. Here was her reparation to Lenka, and yes, as he had himself said, to Volodya. As the little sledge sped on through a sudden driving flurry of snow gradually she felt her spirits lighten. If all went as had been planned there would be someone waiting on the other shore to take them to Helsinki. Once there, Katya would help, she was sure. Others had done it – the journey was perilous, but certainly not impossible. They were going home. All of them.
It was not, of course, as it turned out, anywhere near that simple.
* * *
They arrived at the village of Virojoki, just inside the Finnish borders, in the early hours of the morning.
There was no-one to meet them.
‘The man Petersen has gone,’ the sledge-driver said, brusquely, rejoining them after a quick trip into the village. ‘A day ago.’
‘But –’
‘Helsinki’s fallen. The Reds have taken it. The Government has gone north. To Vaasa, to Mannerheim –’
She had heard the name. ‘Mannerheim? The General?’
The driver executed an ironic salute. ‘Commander-in-Chief of the Finnish White Army. For what that’s worth.’ He was leaning into the sledge, rapidly unloading their pathetically few possessions. He avoided her eyes. ‘It’s civil war. The Russian army was supposed to have pulled out two or three weeks ago. It hasn’t. It’s supporting the Reds. It’s all over but the shouting if you ask me.’ He reached for the last of the bags. The children were watching, wide-eyed and uncertain.
Anna grasped his arm. ‘But, please! Wait a moment! What – what are we supposed to do?’
He shook his head. ‘Take your chances like the rest of us, lady,’ he said, baldly. ‘I was paid to get you here. You’re here. I’m sorry, but that’s the end of that. I’m not getting myself tangled in anything else.’
Oddly, the shock and disappointment were so great that they steadied her to an almost nerveless calm. ‘Wait. You can’t possibly simply dump us here and leave us. At least tell us where to go – who to talk to – to find another guide. You must know this place well enough for that?’
He looked at her for a moment, his weathered face closed and granite-hard, and she thought he would refuse even that. Then he said, ‘All right. I know someone, yes. But I promise nothing, you understand? Come.’
They climbed stiffly from the sledge, ’Tasha holding her small, sturdy brother’s hand, though whether to support him or to comfort herself would be difficult to say. Anna gave her a quick, encouraging smile, took Stepan’s cold little hand in her own, bent to pick up a bag.
God in heaven – supposing she were to be stranded here, in the middle of nowhere, with these three small, helpless creatines?
‘All right, Stepan, you can carry your cushion if you wish, but don’t let go of it whatever you do! I can’t hunt all over Finland for it if you lose it!’ She kept her voice light. Then, ‘There’s been fighting?’ she asked the man.
‘Not much. Not yet. But there will be. The Reds just walked into Helsinki by all accounts – no-one tried to stop them. The Government had already left, and anyone of any importance had gone with them, to the north. But it won’t be that easy from now on, I’ll wager.’
Anyone of any importance. Did that include Katya and Jussi? She did not know.
They trudged over rutted, frozen snow along the one, narrow, straggling street of the village. There were few lights. The small wooden houses crouched, huddled and quiet in the darkness. Only the smell of woodsmoke hinted at life behind the blank and shuttered windows. It was bitterly cold.
‘Here.’ The man had stopped outside what looked like a very large shed. A glint of light showed beneath the door.
From somewhere very close a sharp voice snapped a challenge. Startled, Anna caught her breath, felt Stepan’s hand clutch at hers in a spasm of fear. She pulled him closer to her. The challenge had been in Finnish, a language Anna did not understand. Their guide muttered a quick reply. A tall shadow detached itself from the deeper darkness. The two men spoke, briefly and rapidly. The tall shadow carried a gun.
Then the guard stood back, jerking his head.
Anna walked past him to the door.
Their entrance stopped a noisy conversation dead in its tracks. They stood, Anna and her three small charges, clustered by the door, the children leaning into Anna’s skirts, Stepan’s thumb firmly and nervously in his mouth.
Every eye turned to them.
‘What’s this?’ someone demanded into the silence, in Russian.
In the quiet Anna realized with a jolt that their reluctant guide, true to his word, had dumped the bags and left them. The question was addressed to her, and the tone was not friendly. She took a breath and lifted her head. She was aware of the smoke-hazed and dim interior of what looked like a fisherman’s shed. A hurricane lamp hung low from the rafters, illuminating draped nets, stacked oars, a small upturned rowing boat, two battered benches and a table, and upwards of a dozen men, rough-dressed, hard-faced, all of them looking at her, their expressions ranging from surprise to downright and wary hostility. All were armed. Two rifles lay upon the table.
‘Gentlemen, I’m sorry.’ Her brain was suddenly ice-cold and clear. She drew the children around her, Stepan in front, her hands upon his shoulders, his wide eyes fear-filled over the clutched cushion as he shrank back against her. It was a tableau, she thought, that surely must touch at least one heart? ‘We’ve come over the ice from Petrograd.’ She was amazed at the coolness of her own voice. ‘A guide was supposed to be waiting here to take us on to Helsinki, where we have friends –’
‘The man’s name was Lars Petersen.’
‘He left yesterday,’ someone volunteered in heavily-accented Russian.
‘Yes, I know. The sledge-driver told me. Please, we have to get to Helsinki. The children are cold and tired. Frightened, too. Is there someone who can help us?’ She paused, weighed advantage against risk, and then added, ‘I can pay.’
‘You’ll get no-one to take you to Helsinki, lady.’
She looked at the speaker, an older man, grizzled and moustachioed, who sat upon the upturned boat, elbows on knees, a long pipe smoking in his hand. He did not, she thought, look altogether unsympathetic.
She addressed herself to him. ‘There’s been some kind of trouble?’
A man at the back of the room laughed, short and sharp. ‘Nothing like there’s going to be, lady. Tell her, Toivo.’
The older man nodded. ‘The Reds took over Helsinki yesterday. The Government’s gone north. There’s fighting to the east of the city, we’ve heard. Cutting us off. The place is crawling with Red patrols. No-one knows what’s happening. It’s too dangerous to move at the moment.’
‘But I have to get to Helsinki,’ she said, doggedly.
The man Toivo moved his shoulders expressively and apparently dismissively. But still she thought she saw some small gleam of benevolence in the shrewd and narrowed eyes as he looked at Stepan.
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