The fact that my mother had family connections at all was news to me. I’d always believed that neither of my parents had any living relatives.
‘Ah!’ Viktor Ilyich said softly. ‘I see you do not know your own personal history.’
My heart began to beat more rapidly. There was something sinister in the way he spoke, and it made me afraid.
‘Your mother’s background is obscure, but I do know that her family cast her out in disgrace when she ran away with your father. Indeed,’ he continued spitefully, ‘as there is no certificate among your father’s papers, there is some doubt as to whether or not your parents were ever married.’
My parents not married! I looked at Dmitri in alarm. He was avoiding my gaze. Was it true? If so, then I was illegitimate!
‘Consider this, Nina. Why was it that, despite your age, your father never sought to see you married or encourage suitors? You cannot lawfully bear the name “Ivanovna” for there is no proof that you are indeed Ivan’s daughter. If you are the child of an unlicensed union, no respectable person would want you as part of their family, and so, in view of your circumstances, you must see that my offer is generous.’
I’d always thought Papa loved me too much for us to part. But if the lawyer spoke the truth, then it would have been impossible to make a betrothal contract for me without revealing that he and my mother were unmarried. As an illegitimate child I had no social status, and probably none legally as my father’s heir.
‘I will take my leave of you.’ The lawyer’s eyes lingered on my face and neck, and I saw an expression there that I’d never noticed before.
A greedy hunger.
I crumpled backwards, clutching at the gold chain my father had given me on his deathbed.
Viktor Ilyich nodded in satisfaction at what he took to be my compliance. ‘While I’m gone you may make yourself busy by stitching up a wedding dress. For upon my return we will be wed.’
Chapter 3
All that day, and late into the evening, I sat reading at my father’s desk. Outside the bees busied themselves among the flowers, and the sound and scent of it came to me through the window.
The lawyer was right. Over the last year the army’s requisition of our horses, grain and other goods had left us with nothing to feed our people or livestock. My father had borrowed heavily, using our home and the estate as surety for the loans that Viktor Ilyich arranged for him. There were half a dozen contracts to prove that this had happened. And despite thorough searching I found no marriage certificate among my father’s papers.
My father had told me very little about himself or my mother. I knew that they were both from St Petersburg and that his parents had left him enough money to attend the university there. But Papa brushed away any questions I asked him about his time in the city, saying the facts were too dull to recount. He referred to himself and my mother as ‘orphans of a storm’ and I’d pictured them romantically huddled together in a blizzard. Perhaps he’d been speaking metaphorically – Viktor Ilyich said that her family had forbidden the marriage. They must have eloped to this remote place as a sanctuary to share their lives. I was glad they’d had time with each other before I arrived, but their flouting of the rules of society meant that I was now disinherited and vulnerable.
The thought of becoming the wife of Viktor Ilyich, subject to his every whim, was repugnant to me. But what other option did I have?
When Dmitri brought my supper he spoke to me gently. ‘The passing of a person you love leaves a hole in your life. But we must allow that space to be filled with the memory of their wisdom, and act in a manner that shows we are living in the light of their spirit.’
I laid my head down upon my father’s desk and wept openly in front of him. I was not embarrassed to do this for our relationship was more than servant and mistress. When I was growing up Dmitri had been like a nanny to me in the absence of my mother. He’d held the reins of my pony as I learned to ride and bound up my knees when I scraped them falling from the apple tree.
‘Shush now, Nina Ivanovna,’ he murmured. ‘I have been thinking on the problem. You may have no relatives to give you shelter but your father had a dear friend, Konstantin, from his student days. Your father sent for him when your mother was nearing childbirth for he’d qualified as a medical doctor. He arrived too late to help her, but nursed you back to life when we’d given up hope and feared that we might lose both of you.’
‘I remember Dr Konstantin!’ I cried. ‘He lives in St Petersburg but would visit four or five times a year when I was small.’
‘You are his godchild and it may be that he would offer you assistance.’
‘But he hasn’t been in touch with us for a long time,’ I said. ‘It would seem he has no enthusiasm for being a godfather.’
‘There are reasons why he stopped all contact.’ Dmitri lowered his voice. ‘The State Secret Police had begun to follow him and investigate his friends because he is an adviser to the Duma Council of the People and speaks up for the poor and ill.’
‘Why should we worry about investigation?’ I asked Dmitri. ‘We are country mice. My father’s sole interest was collecting the traditional tales of the peasants.’ I looked around at the books and manuscripts we’d amassed over the years. ‘Stories, not politics, were Papa’s abiding passion.’
‘Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do, or do not do.’ Dmitri’s voice held fear within it. ‘One can be punished for even talking with a suspected person.’
‘There were old letters from the doctor among Papa’s correspondence,’ I said, ‘which have his address on it. I’ll write to him at once.’
The following day Dmitri rode into the nearest town, Yekaterinburg, to post my letter. When he returned he had a worried expression upon his face. ‘I don’t believe that you will receive a reply very soon. Transport is disrupted. The town is full of refugees and soldiers – the one lot fleeing from the war, the other travelling reluctantly towards it.’
‘What should I do?’ I paced the room in agitation. ‘Do you think I’ll be able to stall Viktor Ilyich past the end of the week?’
‘I don’t know,’ Dmitri replied. ‘He is a cunning man and may suspect you’ve sent for help so he’ll be inclined not to wait.’
‘Then I must go to St Petersburg and speak personally to the doctor.’
‘He was your father’s friend so I doubt he would turn you away,’ said Dmitri, ‘but let us make a plan in case that happens.’
We decided I should leave the next day, taking only what I myself could carry.
Dmitri prepared food while I packed a hairbrush and basic clothes. In the early hours of the following morning I went to my father’s study. It was my favourite place in the house, and where I felt closest to both my parents. From when I was young Papa had always involved me in his life’s work. In the warm weather he and I would travel the countryside, stopping to speak to villagers and townsfolk. Wide-eyed, I would listen to their stories as he scribbled them down in his notebooks.
‘Russia is the most ancient of lands,’ my father told me, ‘consisting of many peoples, each with their own language and culture. Our ancestors made up Folk and Faery stories as accounts of their fears and hopes, and their striving to explain their own nature and that of the wider world. Stories are what we are – and also what we might become.’
I loved these tales so much that sometimes Papa hardly needed to refer to his notes, for I could recite them by heart when we got home.
‘You are the child of a beginning’ – he patted my head – ‘born at the start of this new century. It is appropriate that you become a Keeper of the Old Tales.’
In the winter months we’d stoke the stove with apple wood, and the smell of it would fill the study as we sat through the dark days, sharing and shaping the stories.
I ran my hand along his books. The larger anthologies he’d had printed up into bound volumes. Smaller collections and single stories we’d sewn into thin pamphlets handwritten by one
of us. There would be space in my travel bag for a few of these. If I took them, then a part of my father would come with me on my travels. I selected my favourites: The Frog Princess, Kolobok, The Wooden Eagle – and some unfinished adventures of Masha and the Bear.
As I gathered them up they revealed an object, hidden from sight, lying at the back of the shelf. I drew it towards me.
It was a box. An oblong carved casket.
I examined it curiously for I’d never seen it before. The lid was locked. I set it aside while I packed my selection of pamphlets. It was only when I’d finished that it came into my mind that this might be the casket Papa had said I should not unlock unless I had to. Perhaps he’d hidden money there! I took the chain from my neck and put the key to the lock. With a click the casket opened.
Inside lay a dagger.
The handle was set with a huge round ruby. Fire blazed in its dark depths. Tiny seed pearls encircled the stone, lending it a false air of innocence. As I reached to pick it up I noticed the blade: curved and sharp. I hesitated. The polished steel was marked with spots …
Blood? Surely not! My father’s wild words – I stabbed a man – they couldn’t be right. In amongst that rambling nonsense were other flights of fancy. He’d also described himself and my mother skating on the frozen River Neva and him and his best friend dancing at a grand ball in the famous Winter Palace of the Tsar. I’d dismissed all these wanderings as fantasies – my father had been an unimportant university student and wouldn’t have been allowed inside any imperial palace.
I lifted up the dagger and the strangest sensation thrilled through me. A shiver of ice and fire. At once frightening and compelling.
I gazed on it, hypnotized.
The ruby’s light exploded like a firework in my mind. And instantly there was sound there too. Voices – men’s voices: one angry, shouting; the other reasoning … And then a woman, pleading … The howling of a wolf which changed eerily into a thin, distant, high-pitched scream.
The dagger dropped from my hand. My whole body was trembling. Fingers shaking, I replaced it on the bed of white silk, locked the casket and put the key and chain round my neck.
‘Lady, the sun is rising.’ The door opened and Dmitri’s voice brought me back to reality. ‘We must leave to catch the first train.’
‘I will be with you in a moment. Wait for me by the horses please, Dmitri.’
I stuffed the casket deep in the bottom of my travel bag then wrapped my Siberian shawl around me and tied it at my waist.
There was one more thing I wanted to do before I left my father’s study. In a corner of the room hung a holy painting; my father was not religious but he kept this near him for it had belonged to my mother. This Strastnaya icon had been her favourite portrayal of Mary and Jesus. It showed the mother holding her son as a toddler. Their dress was formal and sober, except that one of the child’s sandals was falling off his foot. Growing up, I had identified with this image, for often, in warm weather, I’d slip off my shoes to run barefoot in the long grass full of meadow flowers.
I knelt to ask my mother to watch over me and I lit the candle that was set in front of the painting.
By the time the candle burned down I would be far from here – perhaps never to return.
Chapter 4
Papa and I had often visited Yekaterinburg and the stationmaster knew me well.
‘I will get you a good berth,’ he said, ‘away from this riff-raff.’ He indicated the crowds of refugees sleeping on the station platforms.
‘What is the Government doing to help these unfortunates?’ I asked him.
He rolled his eyes. ‘The Government can scarcely do anything to help themselves. See there …’ He pointed to my ticket. ‘When the war began they decided that “St Petersburg” sounded too German so they changed the name of the city to “Petrograd”. But, two years later, have they issued us with new stationery or rubber stamps? Oh no! That would be too efficient for them.’ He laughed. ‘So please don’t get distressed, my lady; although your ticket says “St Petersburg”, you will arrive in the city of “Petrograd”!’
‘I suppose things are as bad as ever in the capital,’ said Dmitri.
‘The Tsar is at the Front, making a mess of running the war, while his wife, the Tsarina, is at home in Petrograd, making a mess of running the country.’ The stationmaster gloomily puffed on his pipe. ‘Government ministers are sacked and replaced on a monthly basis for she listens to the ravings of the Siberian monk Rasputin, who claims to be inspired by God.’
‘What are the Duma saying about this?’ Dmitri asked.
‘The so-called “people’s” Council of the Duma has been suspended, then reinstated, on numerous occasions – not that the Tsar or the Tsarina or the ruling elite in the State Council ever listen to them anyway.’ The stationmaster looked directly at me now, as he got into his stride. ‘We were allowed a Duma Council, my lady, in order to forestall riots and rebellion after the murder of peaceful protestors in 1905. But it has no real power. And with the ongoing war the workers’ conditions are even worse than before. So they strike; the army break up their marches and shoot a few protestors. The Okhrana – the Tsar’s Secret Police – under the orders of the Government, imprison and torture the ringleaders. So it goes … on and on.’ He spat a long squirt of tobacco juice onto the tracks and said more quietly, ‘If you want to cripple a country then you look to the transportation. If the trains stopped running, all Russia would grind to a halt. Whoever has the nous to seize control of the railway system will be the one who holds the winning cards.’
I could sense tension building in Dmitri while we listened to the stationmaster. He was beginning to rethink our plan of my travelling to Petrograd.
‘I’d like to get on the train now,’ I said firmly. I’d set out on this course in order to escape from Viktor Ilyich, but was now keen to venture out on my own and see the city of my parents.
‘The journey will last several days,’ Dmitri told me as he ushered me aboard. ‘I’d like to come with you, but I believe I should stay here and protect what is yours. Find a family group and attach yourself to them so that you’re not alone when stretching your legs or visiting the tea urn. Engage with the children and share your food, and they will be glad to take you under their wing.’
‘I am very comfortable with children,’ I said. ‘But my father made me independent. I don’t need to be under anyone’s wing.’
‘You are a lovely young woman,’ said Dmitri. ‘And there will be soldiers about. Dashing officers in gold-braided uniforms, with an eye for a pretty lass.’
‘Dressed in these clothes’ – I indicated the long plain grey dress and coat which Dmitri had insisted I wear – ‘I am definitely not a pretty lass!’
He sighed. ‘They will spot your flaxen hair a mile off.’ He adjusted my green and purple shawl so that it covered the curls which fell over my forehead. ‘It is good that you do not see how attractive you are.’
The sun had come up by the time the train chugged out of Yekaterinburg. The engine heaved and clanked. The houses and churches slipped past, and soon we were crossing the great flat plains of Siberia. I did as Dmitri advised and struck up conversation with a family. I told stories to the children and we passed an uneventful, if long and wearisome, journey to arrive in Petrograd in the late morning four days later.
I had never been in such a press of people before. I gripped my bag to my chest, remembering Dmitri’s dire warnings of pickpockets, swindlers, slave traders and a dozen other dangers a young country girl might encounter when visiting a big city. But I was ignored. Far from greeting each other as they passed, the citizens appeared to avoid eye contact. No one seemed to have any time to spare – being solely intent on their own business.
Dmitri had copied a route for me from a city map in one of Papa’s books and I’d studied it during the train journey. I made my way onto the main street: the Nevsky Prospekt. Filled with shops and traders and stalls selling goods of ever
y kind, its width and activity took my breath away.
There was so much to see that I was tempted to browse. But Dmitri said that as I was a girl alone in a strange place then I shouldn’t dawdle but go straight to Dr Konstantin’s house without delay. He was confident Papa’s friend would take me in and find me work. My father had taught me arithmetic, mathematics and scientific subjects. I had a wide general knowledge and my writing was neat and legible, and we expected a doctor to have some influence as regards getting employment. I would have endless days ahead to explore the sights, so I told myself that I mustn’t stop on one of the many bridges, or look at the expanse of the river teeming with barges and boats, or listen to the captains calling orders, or pause in wonderment when the bell tolled from the immense domes of the cathedral.
And I did try to obey Dmitri … until I reached a vast square.
Before me was the Winter Palace. The intensity of the light reflecting from the building hurt my eyes, and I had to shade them to look at it. I’d seen images of this residence of the Russian Tsars in books and journals, but no painting or photograph captured by a camera lens did justice to its magnificence and magnitude. Stretching the width of Palace Square with a splendour of three hundred rooms, the huge emblem of Imperial Russia blazed from the facade – a twin-headed eagle with wings outstretched and the Crown of the Romanovs resting on its head. There was the balcony where, at the beginning of the war with Germany, Tsar Nicholas and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra, had come out to greet a crowd of cheering thousands.
My shawl slipped back from my head as I walked forward and tilted my head to look up.
‘Good day to you!’
I hadn’t noticed the two young army officers approaching. Their eyes flashed mischief as they saluted smartly and bowed. My eyebrows flew up in confusion and my face went pink with embarrassment.
‘Oh, Anton!’ One of them nudged the other. ‘It’s so long since I’ve seen a girl blush when a lad simply says “good morning” to her.’
The Rasputin Dagger Page 2
