The Russian Cage

by Charlaine Harris

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “The priest is coming over. While he’s here, he can bless the house to cleanse it of violence and ill will. That will make our family happier,” Veronika said very firmly.

  “So I’m guessing you and your mom have been talking about this all morning,” I said, while Veronika went back to work on her grocery list.

  “Since after breakfast,” he said gloomily. “With breaks to worry about Alice. This is very important to Mother. I’m sorry if it… offends you.”

  “It does not,” I said. “I would just as soon start out a life together with your mom happy, thanks very much.”

  Eli took my hand and squeezed it, and we had a happy moment.

  It was good we shared that.

  Without looking up from her list, Veronika said, “Would you like to call your mother and stepfather, Lizbeth?”

  That seemed silly, since of course they couldn’t be here. But she wouldn’t have brought it up if she hadn’t thought it was important.

  “I guess I could call the hotel,” I said. “I might catch Jackson there.”

  “Then please, feel free.”

  I knew it was expensive, calling long-distance. Eli had to walk me through it. Far, far away, on the counter of the Antelope in Segundo Mexia, I heard the telephone ring.

  “The Antelope, Jackson Skidder speaking.”

  I was so grateful he had answered.

  “Hey, it’s Lizbeth,” I said.

  “Girl, are you all right?” he said. You would have thought he was about to scold me for something. That was just Jackson’s way.

  “I got him out,” I said. “There’s been a lot of trouble, but today we’re getting married, looks like.”

  There was such a long silence I said his name.

  “Yeah, I’m here,” Jackson said, sounding even more gruff. “Well, all right, then.”

  “His mom wants their priest,” I said. “And we got to leave town pretty quick.”

  “I understand. He better treat you right. You coming back here?”

  “As fast as we can get there.” And to my own surprise, I said, “I miss you bad.”

  “Then we’ll see you in a few days,” Jackson said. “I’ll tell your mother. We miss you, too.”

  Another surprise.

  “Okay. See you soon.” And we both hung up, kind of overwhelmed.

  I sat for a moment, looking at the telephone. “That was real strange,” I told Eli.

  “You two really wallow in the emotion,” Eli said, his voice dry. “Let me get a handkerchief.”

  I grinned at him. “That’s me and Jackson.”

  “If you want to fancy up, this is the time,” Eli said. “My mother is looking through the clothes I have left here for something suitable. And she’s found things for you.”

  The front doorbell rang. Again. This time it was the priest. He was a short, heavy man with a thick beard, and he was wearing a black cassock like the Catholic priests in Segundo Mexia. But this priest’s was bigger, and he wore a strange black hat. He looked pretty grim.

  “Eli, Lizbeth, this is Father Kirill. Eli, I need to borrow Lizbeth. You talk to our priest.”

  My mother-in-law-to-be took my hand to drag me up the stairs. If she hadn’t been Eli’s mom, I would have pulled away. I know when I’m being railroaded.

  Veronika towed me to her room. It was as clean and neat as if there hadn’t been a war at her house the day before, with the exception of Captain McMurtry in her bed. He was bandaged and sleeping and needed a shave. McMurtry’s eyes opened a slit when we burst into the room.

  “Ford,” Veronika said, “I have to get Lizbeth changed into something more appropriate. You just go back to sleep.”

  Captain McMurtry muttered something that might have been “Okay.”

  “More appropriate?” I said, and even to my own ears I sounded stupid.

  Veronika was delving into the huge wardrobe. It only held women’s clothing; she’d gotten rid of her husband’s things. She made a triumphant sound and pulled out a clothing bag. “Here we are!” she said.

  “Where are we?”

  “Did you bathe this morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you worked out in the yard, I saw you. Jump into the tub and scrub off,” Veronika commanded. She handed me a dressing gown. I went out into the hall and found the bathroom empty. I washed my hair, and I was clean in no time. I carried my clothes under my arm as I retreated to her room, the dressing gown clutched around me.

  While I’d been out, Veronika had removed the dress from the bag and had hung it on the wardrobe door.

  It was a wedding dress. She had hauled her wedding dress with her all the way from Russia.

  The dress was white and silky and tight across the shoulders, though it fit right everywhere else. The veil was the silliest thing I ever saw. I could have started down the stairs, and by the time I got to the landing, it would still be up on the top step. I drew the line there. No veil.

  Veronika’s wedding shoes had not survived the years of wandering the ocean, so she loaned me a pair that wouldn’t show up too bad. The dress pretty much covered the shoes, anyway.

  Veronika stuck her head out the door to call her daughters and Felicia. I was a little uneasy about Alice, but the girl seemed just fine, even cheerful. Lucy offered to help with my hair, and as she tried to bring order to the curls, a tear trickled down her cheek. I froze.

  “You look so pretty, and I’ll have another sister!” Lucy said, blotting her face. She bent to give me a quick hug.

  I hugged her back and muttered something. She made my hair look orderly with a couple of pearl combs holding it back.

  “Is this like weddings in Texoma?” Alice asked. She’d left while my hair was being arranged and returned all dressed up, to huddle on a love seat by the closet. She did not look anything but happy, but I was keeping a sharp eye on her.

  Felicia said, “Here’s Eli’s ring.” She made to hand it to me.

  “No, you carry it down,” I said. “You be my bridesmaid.”

  “Oh, all right.” Felicia made a show of being bored, but then she grinned. “I am really, really happy and amazed you are in a real wedding dress.”

  I wanted to tell her to shut the hell up, but that didn’t seem right on my wedding day. “I’m fairly surprised by that myself,” I said. “I guess Eli has my ring?”

  “His mom took it down.”

  Lucy, who had ducked out, came back in, all gussied up. Felicia was wearing a dress I assumed was Alice’s, since she was the only one near Felicia’s size. It was a dusty sort of rose color. She looked real pretty.

  I wondered what Eli was doing. I’d heard him going up and down the stairs, and I’d heard Felix exclaim about something, and I’d heard people coming in the front door. I had no idea what was happening.

  I tried to rouse myself from the numb feeling, but the last few days had been a lot of rousing and not enough rest. I couldn’t shake it off.

  So I stood in the middle of the large bedroom, being combed and cinched and polished. I had on makeup. Perfume, too. I would have thought Veronika would have realized her son wouldn’t want his wife to smell like his mom, but she dabbed on her own scent behind my ears after she’d changed into her best dress.

  Mostly, Captain McMurtry slept, but sometimes he stared at me with narrowed eyes, puzzled. He was trying to figure out who the stranger was, the woman all in white.

  Finally, Veronika stepped out of her room onto the gallery and called down, “Are you ready?”

  Felix called up, “Ready and waiting.”

  “Peter’s acting as best man,” Lucy said, patting my hand. “Felix is giving you away. Come on, Alice, let’s get down there.”

  Eli’s sisters left the room, smiling. Veronika said, “I wish you much happiness with my son.” She hesitated, and then she said, “Eli tells me I should say I’m sorry for pushing you two into this.” She waved her hand at the dress I wore.

 
; “I was willing to be pushed,” I told her.

  “I’m going downstairs to wait in the parlor,” she said. “After I get down the stairs, you come down with your sister. Felix is waiting.”

  “Poor Felix,” I said, and I meant it… but I had not thought before I spoke.

  Veronika gave me a blank look, and then she understood. “Then how could he ask to marry Lucy?” she whispered.

  Then Veronika gave a kind of huff, as if she was blowing that problem away for right now, and she nodded at me, and she left. She did not close the door behind her. I heard the buzz of voices from down below.

  “Captain’s awake,” Felicia said.

  I glanced at the bed. His eyes were fully open.

  “You been playing possum?” I said.

  “Do you want to marry Eli?”

  “I’m already married to Eli.”

  “But not in their eyes. To them, you have to have the priest.”

  Most of the Catholics in Segundo Mexia believed that, too.

  “So if you pop the question to Veronika, you have to go through this yourself.”

  “If I ever get the courage,” the captain said.

  “You idiot. Ask her while you’re here.”

  His eyes came open then, for sure. “You think she’s going to say yes?”

  “I do, especially if you tell her you stand ready to defend Lucy and Alice.”

  “I do plan to do that. What you were saying to Veronika, about Felix? What did that mean?”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “Good luck with the proposal.” And I stepped out onto the landing and started down the stairs, Felicia on my heels.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I’d only had time pass by in such a slip-sliding way when I’d been badly injured. I came down the stairs slowly and carefully, with the clingy slithery dress holding on to my legs as though it wanted to trip me.

  Felix was waiting for me, his hair smooth and combed. That was what dressing up meant to Felix, that he brushed his hair. He looked real odd.

  Without looking at me directly, Felix took my hand and wrapped it around his arm.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  “I’m giving you away,” he said, with no meaning in his voice.

  I had never been Felix’s to give, but like everything else about this day, I seemed to be going along with it. This morning, picking up bits of bone and teeth in the yard. This afternoon, getting married.

  The priest was in the parlor, and there was a reading stand in front of him with a book on it. The priest looked less angry than before. When he saw me, he looked almost friendly—or maybe he felt sorry for me. It was a lot of dress.

  I’d seen everyone else prettied up. But they were nothing compared to Eli. I stopped dead when I saw him.

  His hair was all slicked back somehow and braided very neatly into a long plait. He had shaved. He wore a real suit. It was dark blue. That was all I could remember, later.

  I couldn’t read Eli’s face or posture; he seemed frozen after he saw me coming into the room with Felix. Felix led me up to Eli; we were both looking up at Eli as though we’d never seen him before. Then Felix let go, assumed a position by Lucy, and took her hand as though that were his regular habit.

  Eli’s eyes were wide and green and bright, and they were all I saw during the priest’s reading.

  Which took forever, let me say. In fact, the service took so long that I had time for my mind to wander, to realize there were people there I didn’t know, and a few I did. There were a couple of grigoris standing as far away as they could and be in the same room. They listened to the priest with polite interest. There was the blond woman from next door and her husband. (I later learned they were longtime friends of Veronika’s.) There were a couple of men in uniform, who’d come to take Captain McMurtry back to the base hospital, under the mistaken impression he was a burden on the Savarov household.

  I thought, suddenly and sharply, My own mother should be at my wedding. And Jackson. And… I came up with a few other people I would’ve liked to have seen in the little knot of witnesses. I regretted letting them know by a phone call. Not having them here. But there was no way around it: if we had to leave town to satisfy the tsar, and we had to be married Russian Orthodox, then we had to do it now. I couldn’t imagine trying to find a Russian priest anywhere in Texoma.

  Though the priest’s voice hadn’t changed, Eli’s hand tightened on my arm, and I looked up. “Your mother,” he mouthed, and all of a sudden I felt fine. He had thought of her, too. We would be okay. This wedding wasn’t the seal of doom. It was something we had to do to make Veronika happy. And making my husband’s mother happy was a good thing.

  Eli looked surprised when I smiled at him, but when he saw I meant it, he smiled back.

  After that, everything was okay.

  Normally, there would be a wedding lunch or dinner, Veronika explained later. But under the circumstances—blood and craters on the lawn, no cook, and no food—that couldn’t happen. However, we’d been married, it had been witnessed, and it was done. And now we ought to leave.

  Veronika didn’t exactly say that, but I understood: The tsar had asked that we leave, and then Eli’s name would be cleared. Therefore, the Savarov family would be back in favor. And Eli and I would be correctly hitched.

  Eli had to hurry back to his rooms in the grigori dormitory to get all the things he’d left when he’d been arrested. Felix took him.

  I had a talk with my sister, up in the room Eli and I had shared. Veronika insisted I take some of her clothes, though I had no idea where I’d wear them. I had the pants outfit and the jacket I’d bought, too. But as soon as I’d taken off the wedding dress and hung it up, I put on my jeans and my boots and my heavy shirt. I would put on my guns as soon as we were out of the Holy Russian Empire. And I was wearing my wedding ring on my finger, for the first time in months.

  I didn’t need to talk to Felicia about sex, because her father and her uncle had brought women back to the hovel in Ciudad Juárez, and Felicia was well aware of what happened, she had given me to understand.

  “What’s your goal?” I asked her, when I couldn’t see anything else that should go in my leather bag.

  “It’s enough to be safe, fed, and dressed,” Felicia said. “All I have to do is learn and be ready to give blood, otherwise.”

  She was sitting on the bed, so I took the chair. “I don’t believe you,” I said. “You got a plan, I know it.”

  Felicia grinned at me. “Maybe I do. Maybe I wanted to look younger for a while so I could get the lay of the land here. Maybe I know a lot of magic my teachers don’t. It’s the kind they despise, low-level stuff, but I’m really good at it. Our father’s gift came to me strong.”

  “So you want to learn more and more?”

  “I want to be a great grigori. I don’t want to be a blood donor forever. I want to think of a way the tsar can maintain his health and strength without having to rely on descendants of Rasputin.”

  “I knew the ‘safe, fed, and dressed’ was only smoke,” I said. “You got eyes for Peter or Felix? Or anyone else?”

  “Felix would never care for any woman the way he cares for Eli. Besides, he’s got his eyes fixed on Lucy. And Peter?” She looked thoughtful. “He’s too impulsive. I don’t really see Peter having a very long life unless he learns to think before he acts… and speaks.”

  “Have you been reading my mind?”

  “Nope, we both have common sense,” Felicia said. The smile flashed again.

  “I meant it about you coming to stay. I warn you, the way I live is closer to Ciudad Juárez than to this.” I waved a hand around me at the big house.

  “I’m not worried about it.”

  But I thought she was, a little bit.

  Eli returned an hour later with two crammed bags. Veronika had consulted a train schedule. We had just enough time to catch the last train out for the night. We’d have to piece our route back to S
weetwater, the nearest train station to Segundo Mexia. She had made a reservation for us for the night train.

  The Savarov women and my sister cried a little when the cab came, and even Peter’s eyes looked red, so we left pretty quick. (Felix had already said a really brief, hard “Good travels,” and taken himself away, to my relief.)

  And then we were in the cab alone.

  It felt strange to be going somewhere with Eli without a mission, without anyone trying to kill us or steal from us. I had nothing to guard, other than him and our luggage. We did not speak on the drive.

  At the train station, the one from which I’d walked into San Diego exhausted and terrified days before, Eli and I went to the ticket counter.

  “We have a reservation for a sleeping compartment,” Eli said. This was news to me.

  “Yes, sir!” The old man cackled and started to say something, but after a look at Eli’s face, he canceled that and simply took Eli’s money and gave us our tickets.

  I must have made some kind of noise—it was a lot of money. But Eli said, “We didn’t have a big wedding. We can at least have this,” which was the right thing to say, not boastful or wasteful. And he took my hand.

  We boarded immediately. Got shown to our compartment, which was really nice, two double seats facing each other. “How do we sleep?” I whispered to Eli, after we stowed our luggage and took one of the seats.

  “The porter will turn these seats into a bed at night,” he said. “There’ll be another one over our head.”

  The people across from us, I assumed, were a mother and her girl, who seemed to me to be about ten.

  The mom nodded at us. “We’ll try not to snore, won’t we, Pamela?” she said.

  Pamela looked anxious. Maybe her first train trip. “I don’t even know what that is,” the girl said.

  We all laughed politely, and then the mother fell to telling Pamela about what they would see out the window tomorrow, and I leaned against Eli, unable to count the things that had happened that day. It was a big runny blur in my head. The train got under way. As soon as we could, we made our way to the dining car. I didn’t think I’d gotten anything to eat since the ham sandwich, and that felt awful long ago. Maybe it wasn’t newlywed-like to be hungry, but Eli and I plowed through our food like horses after a long day’s work.