Zadruga

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘It isn’t a triviality, Papa.’ Her eyes still held Natalie’s, pleading for forgiveness and support. ‘Natalie knows a young man named Gavrilo Princip. He’s a Bosnian Serb and …’

  Alexis swung his head back to Natalie and at her terrified, corroborating expression the blood drained from his face. ‘Holy God,’ he whispered, suddenly looking prematurely old. ‘Holy, holy God.’

  It was Zita who took command of the situation. ‘How?’ she demanded fiercely. ‘How can Natalie possibly know a Sarajevan?’

  There was silence. Katerina’s eyes held Natalie’s. At last, realizing the terrible situation in which she had inadvertently put her father, Natalie said falteringly, ‘He’s been studying in Belgrade, Mama. I met him at the Conservatoire and…’

  ‘You saw him shoot the Archduke?’ Alexis interrupted harshly. ‘You recognized him?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, I …’

  ‘No more!’ Alexis, immediately aware of implications that had not yet occurred to either his wife or daughters, was again in control. ‘Not another word while there’s the remotest chance of our being overheard. I’m ordering our bags to be taken down to the car and this subject has not to be discussed again until we’re safely in Serbia, is that understood?’

  They left the hotel virtually unnoticed. The Duchess’s maids were in a state of near hysteria, the hotel maids, who had been as charmed by the Duchess as Natalie and Katerina had been, were openly crying.

  The Vassilovich train, which had been ready to leave for over an hour, steamed out of the station at Ilidze, the window-blinds down.

  Not until the border formalities had been completed and they had crossed into Serbia did Alexis reopen the subject. Sitting in a leather winged-back chair in the parlour-car he said to Natalie, ‘Now tell me everything you know about Gavrilo Princip and tell me every single detail of your acquaintance with him.’

  Natalie clasped her hands together tightly on her knees. ‘I met Gavrilo and Nedjelko at the Conservatoire,’ she began unhappily.

  ‘Nedjelko?’ Alexis had thought he had suffered every shock he could possibly suffer. Now, incredibly, there were even further horrors. ‘Nedjelko Cabrinovich?’

  Natalie nodded and Zita gave a low moan and covered her face with her hands.

  ‘I liked them,’ Natalie continued with frank artlessness. ‘They were full of enthusiasm for Slav unity and…’

  ‘They were terrorists!’ Alexis’s voice was a whiplash. ‘Subversives! The scum of the earth!’

  Natalie’s face became very still. Despite everything that had happened she could not think of the friends she had so liked in those terms. She struggled to think how best she could portray a true portrait of them and said, ‘Gavrilo and Nedjelko are idealists, Papa. And they are educated.’ She remembered that Nedjelko had not been a student, like Gavrilo and Trifko, but worked in a print shop. ‘At least Gavrilo and Trifko are educated. They are students and …’

  ‘Trifko?’

  Natalie’s stomach lurched sickeningly. Was she saying far more than was necessary? Was talking to her father going to help her friends or harm them further? And after the bloody crime they had perpetrated did she want to help them? She didn’t know. Her head ached and she felt sick.

  ‘Gavrilo and Trifko have been friends since they were children. They are the same age and…’

  ‘And they’re Bosnians? They’re citizens of Austria-Hungary?’

  Natalie remembered how they had always described themselves and said with a flash of her old fire, ‘Legally they are citizens of Austria-Hungary but they are Slavs and their loyalty is to a united South Slav state.’

  Knowing only too well now where Natalie’s fervour for Slav unity had come from he said grimly, ‘Did you only ever meet at the Conservatoire? Were you ever seen with them anywhere else?’

  ‘The Golden Sturgeon,’ Natalie said reluctantly. ‘It’s a café in the old part of the city.’ She leaned forward in her seat. ‘They never talked of assassinating anyone, Papa. I’m sure Gavrilo didn’t know his gun was loaded. He’s a gentle person. He’s quiet and well-mannered and though he has very little money he’s always lending what he has to friends …’

  ‘Don’t dare eulogize him!’ Alexis’s face was so contorted with fury it was barely recognizable. ‘He’s an assassin whose act will very likely plunge our country into war!’

  Natalie shrank back in her seat, appalled at the anger she had unleashed. ‘I didn’t know what he planned to do. I didn’t even know he was still in Bosnia…’

  There was a long, terrible pause and then Alexis said in a voice dangerously flat and unexpressive. ‘You knew he had left Serbia for Bosnia? He told you his plans?’

  Natalie’s hands were now clasped so tightly her nails were scoring her flesh. ‘He said it was to be a training exercise…’

  The word Alexis uttered was one not even his wife was familiar with. ‘Thank God,’ he said, when he had himself under control again. ‘Thank God you didn’t know he was in Sarajevo. Thank God no-one saw you with him.’

  Natalie remembered the Oriental bazaar; remembered the Austrian officer forcing his way through the crush to reach her side; remembered the expression of relief and then annoyance in his eyes; remembered the way Gavrilo had been holding her arm, how urgently he had been speaking to her.

  ‘I was seen with him, Papa,’ she said, her lips almost bloodless. ‘I met him by accident in the Oriental bazaar. One of the Archduke’s officers came in search of me, to help me through the crush, and he saw me with him.’

  Alexis’s ability to speak abandoned him. The situation was far, far worse than he had first assumed it to be. The instant the Austrian officer recognized Princip as being the youth Natalie had been talking to, the Austrian government would issue a warrant for her arrest. As he thought of what would follow, not only for Natalie but for Serbia, he felt physically ill.

  On her mother’s side of the family Natalie was a Karageorgevich. The Austrians would have no further to look for proof that the plot to kill the heir to the Habsburg throne had been hatched in Serbia and at the highest possible level. They would have all the excuse they needed to launch an attack against Serbia and to crush her, and Serbia, perceived by the rest of Europe as being the villain of the piece, would be friendless. Not even Russia would come to her aid if it was believed the ruling House had connived at the Archduke’s and Duchess’s deaths.

  Alexis released the window-blind, staring out at mountains and valleys, at a village clustered around its onion-domed church, at a group of distant figures working in the fields and at gaily dressed women laundering clothes by the banks of a river. It was a scene of peaceful peasant life that could be seen all over Serbia and war would ravage and end it within days. All because his lovable, unthinking, foolish daughter had become acquainted with two nationalist fanatics and been seen with one of them shortly before he had committed his monstrous crime.

  ‘What are we to do?’ Zita asked, putting all her trust in him, certain that he would never allow Natalie to be arrested.

  Alexis dragged his gaze from the window. He had been considering and rejecting decision after decision and he was left with only one. He had not the slightest desire to put it into words and when he finally spoke it was with the very greatest reluctance. ‘Natalie must leave Serbia before Princip is questioned about his friendship with her. You must accompany her…’

  ‘Leave Serbia?’ Natalie’s voice was dazed with incredulity.

  ‘… and travel immediately to Switzerland,’ Alexis continued, disregarding her interruption. ‘You must travel on the night train to Budapest and then on the Orient Express as far as Munich and then…’

  ‘Leave Serbia?’ Natalie was staring at him as if he had taken leave of his senses. ‘I can’t leave Serbia, Papa! I shall never leave Serbia!’

  Until now Alexis had been looking directly at Zita. Now he turned his full attention towards Natalie. ‘You have no choice,’ he said grimly. ‘You were seen with Princip b
y an Austrian officer. It will be assumed by the Austrians that you were well aware as to why Princip was in Sarajevo. The charges they will bring against you will be that of an accomplice to his crime and in Bosnian law an accomplice is as guilty of the crime committed as the perpetrator.’

  ‘You mean that Natalie will be charged with murdering the Archduke and the Duchess?’ Katerina asked disbelievingly. ‘But that’s not possible, Papa! It can’t be!’

  ‘It’s very possible,’ Alexis said, looking ten years older than he had when he had first left the hotel that morning.

  ‘Uncle Peter would never allow it!’ Natalie’s eyes were black pits in a chalk-white face. ‘He would never agree to my being returned to Bosnia to stand trial in an Austrian court!’

  Outside the carriage window the scenery had changed. There were no longer wooded hillsides and turbulent, rushing streams.

  Instead there were orange-tiled, verandahed houses and dusty, mud-baked streets.

  ‘He might have to,’ Zita said, deep circles carved beneath her eyes. ‘If the Austrians once believe the plot to kill the Archduke was hatched in Serbia they may very well declare themselves at war with us. In order to prevent that happening Peter will have to do everything in his power to convince them that neither he nor his government knew anything about it and part of that convincing will be having to co-operate with Austrian demands regarding the arrest of suspects.’

  ‘Even if the suspect is a member of his family?’ Katerina asked, hardly able to believe her ears.

  ‘Especially if it’s a member of his family,’ Alexis said with stark brutality. ‘For him to shield a Karageorgevich would be tantamount to admitting the assassination was hatched with royal connivance. War would then be inevitable. It’s a choice Peter would never make. Not even for Natalie.’

  ‘For how long will I have to go away?’ Natalie asked, barely able to force the words past her lips.

  ‘If the officer in question doesn’t recognize Princip as being the youth with whom you were in conversation at the bazaar, if no other witness steps forward to say that Princip was talking to a young female member of the Archducal party and if Princip volunteers no information about you when questioned, then it may only be for a few months.’

  Their train was easing into Belgrade station.

  ‘And if not?’

  ‘If not? Then it might be for years.’ His voice was so distorted by pain it was almost unrecognizable. ‘It might be for ever.’

  That evening Katerina knocked on her father’s study door and when he opened it to her she said unhappily, ‘I have to speak with you, Papa. There’s something else you must know.’

  Without a word he waited for her to enter the room and then closed the door. ‘About Natalie?’ he asked tautly.

  She nodded. ‘Cousin Max also knows Gavrilo Princip. He saw Natalie with Gavrilo in the Golden Sturgeon and told Vitza about it. Vitza told me.’

  ‘Dear God in heaven! Does Vitza know him as well?’

  ‘No. She only knew his name because Max had told her it.’

  Alexis’s mind raced. If Max Karageorgevich knew Princip it might mean that Max was also one of Apis’s dupes. Though he had no way of proving it, he was certain Princip and Cabrinovich were Black Hand members who had acted on Apis’s instructions. Was Max Karageorgevich a member of the Black Hand also? Was it perhaps Max who had suggested to Princip that he strike up a friendship with Natalie? A friendship that might lead to contact with Prince Alexander?

  Another thought struck him and his blood ran cold. What if Vitza began to talk of Natalie’s friendship with Princip? What if she told her grandmother? If Eudocia once knew, the whole world would know.

  ‘Don’t talk of this with anyone else,’ he said, striding for the door. ‘I’m going to talk to both Max and Vitza now.’

  The door rocked on its hinges after him. She heard him shout for a carriage to be brought round to the door. Weakly she sat down on the nearest chair hoping fervently that neither Max nor Vitza yet knew it was Princip who had shot the Archduke and Duchess; hoping that when they did know they would never breathe a word about Natalie’s friendship with him.

  ‘You’ve been recalled,’ the British minister said to Julian bluntly. ‘I’d be grateful if I were you. The Austrians aren’t going to take the assassination of Franz Ferdinand lying down. God alone knows what the repercussions are going to be. Reports are already coming in of Croat and Moslem anti-Serb demonstrations in Sarajevo. That will give the nationalists something to think about.’

  Julian didn’t give a damn about the nationalists. He was reeling beneath the news that he was to leave Belgrade.

  ‘When am I to leave, sir? Was any reason for the decision given?’

  ‘Leave? What? Oh yes.’ The minister dragged his thoughts away from the disturbing reports coming in from Sarajevo and said, ‘By the end of the week. No sense in wasting time. And don’t worry as to reasons. You’ve performed brilliantly during your time here. London knows that and it’s probably the reason you’re being recalled early. No doubt you’ll be speedily en route to a far more coveted post. Paris perhaps, or Petersburg.’

  Six months ago, before he had fallen head over heels in love with Natalie, Julian would have been delirious with joy at the prospect of being given a post in either city. Now he said, ‘If there’s any chance of the decision being overturned I’d be very grateful, sir. The only place I want to be at the moment is Belgrade and…’

  ‘Decisions from London are always final.’ The minister rose to his feet, signalling that the interview was at an end. ‘Even if they weren’t, it would be senseless questioning this one. The Balkans are Europe’s powder keg and this damn fool assassination could be the spark that ignites it. If it does, and if there’s war again in Europe, every member of the Legation staff will be hard on your heels, haring back to London. Your advantage is that you will at least have a seat on the train.’

  Julian didn’t return to his office. He walked straight out of the Legation and into the Kalemegdan Gardens. If he left Belgrade without there being any kind of understanding between himself and Natalie, he might never see her again. The thought was unimaginable. Obscene. He walked without seeing anything around him. He had only days left in which to propose to her again. And if she still refused him?

  He came to a halt in a corner of the garden that dropped steeply towards the point where the Sava river merged with the Danube. If she refused him it would only be because the proposal had come too soon after his first proposal to her. She needed time to get used to the idea that she was old enough to fall in love and marry. She needed to grow up a little. If he had remained in Belgrade he would have known when the time was right to propose to her again and to be accepted. But he wasn’t going to be in Belgrade.

  He stared down a bank awash with tamarisk trees towards the fast moving Sava and the majestic, glittering Danube: He had to keep in contact with her. He had to be able to write to her. And to do so he had to have Alexis Vassilovich’s permission.

  With his mind made up as to the course of action he was going to take he turned away from the magnificent view, striding purposefully through the Gardens towards Prince Milan Street and the Vassilovich konak.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the footman said to him distractedly. ‘Madame Vassilovich and Mademoiselle Natalie are leaving for Switzerland tomorrow and no-one is being received.’

  For the second time that day Julian felt as if he had been pole-axed. ‘Switzerland?’

  For a dazed moment he wondered if, in the wake of the Archduke’s assassination, Alexis Vassilovich was so apprehensive of Austrian reprisals against Serbia he was sending his family as quickly as possible to a safe haven. He dismissed the idea as ridiculous. If that had been the case Katerina would also have been leaving for Switzerland and besides, Alexis Vassilovich was not a man to panic in such a manner.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the footman said again apologetically.

  In the circular, marble-floored entrance
-hall Julian could see travelling trunks with labels clearly marked Geneva. It was then, as the footman began to close the door on him, that he heard the harrowing sound of sobbing.

  He didn’t hesitate. It was against all rules of good manners and etiquette but he strode past the protesting footman certain that something was dreadfully wrong, utterly determined to find out what it was.

  As the footman called for assistance in order to eject him, Katerina came running into the entrance hall.

  ‘Laza … what on earth …’ She came to an abrupt halt, her cheeks flushing scarlet.

  ‘It’s not the footman’s fault I’ve gained entrance,’ Julian said, striding quickly towards her. ‘He told me no-one was being received.’

  Above their heads, from the direction of the bedrooms, the sound of heart-broken sobbing continued.

  ‘What the devil is happening?’ he asked urgently. ‘Why isn’t your father receiving anyone? Why are your mother and Natalie leaving for Switzerland in such a hurry? Is it Natalie who is crying?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’ Her voice cracked slightly and he realized that she, too, was near to tears.

  ‘Then I’m going to speak to your father,’ he said, turning away from her and walking determinedly across the entrance hall in the direction of Alexis Vassilovich’s study.

  ‘No! Please don’t!’ She ran after him, catching hold of his arm. ‘Papa is so worried and…’

  He halted, staring down at her, ‘Worried about what?’ he demanded. ‘About the assassination in Sarajevo?’

  ‘Yes … No …’

  Her distress was so deep she looked as if she were about to faint.

  ‘Katerina, for heaven’s sake …’ He slipped an arm comfortingly around her shoulders as he would have done if she were a cousin or a close family friend. ‘What’s happened? Please tell me. Does it concern Natalie?’