Zadruga

by Margaret Pemberton

  In December came news of another death.

  ‘Rasputin’s been murdered,’ Diana said as she entered the nursery.

  Natalie was impatiently waiting for Stephen’s nurse to finish dressing him in his leggings and coat so that she could take him for a walk.

  ‘Murdered?’ Her exquisitely winged eyebrows rose nearly into her hair. ‘Who on earth by? The Bolsheviks?’

  ‘Nothing so boring!’ Diana said, her eyes alive with their old sparkle. ‘It says in The Times that he was murdered by two close relatives of the Tsar.’

  Stephen had struggled free of his nanny and was tottering gleefully towards her on chubby legs.

  ‘Noblemen?’ Natalie was incredulous. ‘But who? Who would dare?’

  Diana bent down and scooped her nephew into her arms. ‘The murder took place at the home of Prince Felix Youssoupov, so I assume he is one of them. I can’t think of a more glamorous murderer, can you? He was in London some years ago and everyone fell in love with him. At fancy-dress balls he wore an eighteenth-century Russian dress of gold and pearls and sables, with embroidered boots and jewelled scimitar. Even Mama thought him eligible.’ She gave an exaggerated shiver of horror. ‘I wonder if he used the scimitar to murder Rasputin?’

  At such unsuitable talk in front of a small child Stephen’s nanny drew in an outraged hiss between her teeth. The ladies of the house ignored it.

  ‘Does it say in The Times how he was killed?’ Natalie asked with unashamedly prurient curiosity. ‘Does it say what the empress’s reaction has been?’

  Diana eased Stephen a little more comfortably on her hip. ‘It does indeed say how he was murdered. He was …’

  Stephen’s nanny interrupted her, her voice agonized. ‘Mrs Fielding! I must protest! This is a most unsuitable conversation to be conducting in front of an eighteen-month-old child!’

  Natalie regarded her balefully. Ever since Stephen had been born, nanny had been a thorn in her flesh. British mothers, apparently, did not take their children for walks in the park. That was nanny’s province. Nor did they romp and play with their children at bedtime. That was no-one’s province as, according to nanny, children made giddy and excited at bedtime would then be unable to sleep. Nor did they sing foreign, incomprehensible songs or tell stories about heroes with unpronounceable Slavic names.

  Well aware of the deep disapproval in which she was held, Natalie said with remarkable patience, ‘I think you’re worrying unnecessarily, Nanny. At eighteen months old, Stephen is far too young to understand our conversation and…’

  ‘Murdra! Murdra!’ Stephen chanted merrily, pulling at the carefully arranged blonde kiss-curl lying against Diana’s cheek.

  Diana made a strangled sound as she tried, unsuccessfully, to turn a giggle into a cough. Bright spots of angry colour appeared on Nanny’s cheeks.

  Natalie said, keeping her own giggles under control only with the greatest difficulty, ‘I shall take Stephen for his walk now, Nanny.’

  Nanny knew when she was beaten but had no intention of accepting defeat without a last salvo of shots.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Fielding. If you insist on doing so, Mrs Fielding. I would be negligent in my duty, however, if I didn’t point out to you that it is a bitterly cold day; that there is an influenza epidemic; that…’

  ‘I appreciate your concern,’ Natalie said, walking towards the door, ‘but Stephen is warmly dressed and though you think the day cold, it is nothing like as cold as a Serbian winter day.’ She paused at the door as Diana carried Stephen out into the corridor, knowing very well that her next few words would very rapidly find their way back to her mother-in-law. ‘And as Stephen will one day have to become accustomed to Serbian winters, he might as well start by becoming accustomed to London ones.’

  Later, in the frost-bound park as Stephen clutched hold of the railings edging the lake in order to watch the ducks being fed and as Bella skittered around their ankles, Diana said curiously, ‘When the war is over, you don’t really intend Stephen spending long periods of time in Belgrade, do you?’

  Natalie pressed her fox-fur collar a little closer to her chin. One of the disadvantages of her affair with Nicky was that she could no longer confide whole-heartedly in Diana for fear of revealing more than she intended.

  She said obliquely, ‘Belgrade is my home,’ then, changing the subject, she said, ‘You haven’t finished telling me about Rasputin’s murder. How did he die?’

  ‘I think he must have died quite horribly,’ Diana said with unladylike relish. ‘The newspaper report said he was poisoned, shot and bludgeoned before being dumped in the River Neva.’

  Natalie shuddered. ‘Prince Youssoupov and his accomplice didn’t leave anything to chance, did they?’ Another thought struck her and she stopped walking, her green cat-eyes widening. ‘Goodness! I wonder if Hélène’s husband was involved in the murder?’

  ‘Hélène?’

  ‘Sandro’s sister. She married one of Grand-Duke Constantine’s sons and it was while Sandro was in St Petersburg attending the christening of their first child that the Tsarevich gave him Bella as a present.’

  Diana began asking her if she knew the Grand-Duke personally but Natalie didn’t hear her. She was lost in a reverie of a world that was no more: Sandro teasing her at an afternoon tea party; Bella tumbling over their feet; her mother and Katerina walking the length of the Konak’s grand drawing-room arm-in-arm, deep in conversation; Vitza in an incredibly unflattering royal-blue dress; her uncle proudly announcing that Sandro was to marry the Grand-Duchess Olga.

  Homesickness, so acute she didn’t know how she was going to survive it, swept over her. She hurt with the longing to have her mother’s arms around her again; to be in the bedroom she had shared with Katerina, drinking cocoa and sharing secrets and confidences; to smell the heady fragrance of plum blossom and to hear the familiar rattle of trams in Prince Milan Street.

  ‘… I do think Russian men extremely handsome,’ Diana was saying dreamily, ‘don’t you?’

  Natalie made a non-committal reply and before Diana should see the unshed tears glittering on her eyelashes she walked across to Stephen, lifting him away from the railings, pressing his rosy, chubby cheek against her own.

  Spring was even grimmer than it had been in 1915 and 1916. Julian’s public-school classical education was finally put to use by the army and he was posted to Salonika in the belief that his knowledge of Greek would be more useful there than it was in Flanders.

  Natalie’s euphoria at the thought of him fighting within hailing distance of Alexander and her father was short-lived. All the gains Alexander and his army had made the previous autumn had been reversed. Winter had put an end to the drive into Serbia and now the Serbian army and its allies were marking time in Salonika, enduring a stalemate every bit as bitter as the one being suffered in Flanders.

  The news from Russia was even worse. In Russia there was revolution. Natalie was distraught.

  ‘The newspaper reports say nothing as to the whereabouts of the imperial family or what is to happen to them,’ she said to Nicky, deeply distressed. ‘How can Russia function without a monarchy?’ She thought of Serbia without a Karageorgevich king and a cold shiver ran down her spine. ‘How can any country function without a monarchy?’

  Nicky merely grinned. They were in the café in Camden that had become a second home to them both. The friends they met with there had not yet arrived and apart from an elderly man with a shabby mongrel dog at his feet, they had the place to themselves.

  ‘Russia will function a damn lot better without the Romanovs than it ever did with them,’ he said, shocking her unutterably.

  ‘You don’t mean that!’ It was the first time he had ever expressed an opinion with which she had not been in total agreement. ‘You can’t!’

  He shrugged, amused by her dismay, knowing it was occasioned by the fear that if Russia could so easily dispense with its ruling dynasty, other countries might also seek to do so. ‘How can you be so surprised
by what has happened?’ he asked reasonably. ‘All winter the newspapers have been full of reports of Russians queuing for hours, days sometimes, for bread. There’s been no coal either. Factories are standing idle and those who aren’t starving to death are freezing to death. In those circumstances it’s only natural there’s been revolution. The miracle is, that it didn’t happen months ago.’

  ‘I don’t agree,’ she said mutinously, thinking of the glorious wedding that was to have taken place in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan between Sandro and the Grand-Duchess Olga and that now would not happen. ‘The Tsar could have abdicated, the throne could have passed to the Tsarevich…’

  From beneath the table there came a whine as, perfectly on cue, Bella tugged at her lead in an effort to reach the mongrel and to socialize.

  ‘I sometimes wonder if you read anything through to the end,’ Nicky said, an edge of impatience in his voice. He dragged a crumpled copy of The Times from his pocket and laid it on the table, smoothing the creases. ‘It says here, at the end of the article about the revolution, “the first abdication form prepared by the generals passed the throne to the Tsar’s son, aged twelve. This was changed at Nicholas’s request, in favour of his brother the Grand-Duke Michael. The grand-duke has since renounced the throne as there is so much hostility towards the Romanovs that the provisional government could not guarantee his life.”’

  Nicky was wrong in thinking she hadn’t read the article through to the end. She had. Many times. And she still couldn’t comprehend the enormity of it. How could a dynasty as mighty as the Romanovs be removed so speedily and totally from power? And what would now happen to them? She stroked Bella, wondering if they still had their dogs with them. She wondered, too, what would now happen between Sandro and Olga. Would they still marry? Would Sandro be kept informed of her whereabouts? Another thought struck her and she gasped, her eyes widening.

  ‘Perhaps the imperial family will seek exile in Britain!’ Her mind raced ahead to all kinds of possibilities. ‘Perhaps Hélène and her husband will come with them? Perhaps there will be a wedding between Sandro and Olga here, in London?’

  Nicky snorted derisively. Natalie ignored him. If Sandro married Olga in London then she would undoubtedly be asked to be a bridesmaid. A smile of deep relish touched the corners of her mouth. Vitza would be so jealous she would never, ever, forgive her.

  The summer came and went and the imperial family remained immured in Russia. In September there came news that they had been moved from what had once been St Petersburg and was now Petrograd, to Tobolsk, a small town in Western Siberia. In November the Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government and Nicky told Natalie that not only would Russia now negotiate a separate peace with Germany, but that in his opinion the imperial family were now doomed.

  ‘And Hélène and her family too?’ Natalie had asked, white-faced.

  He had nodded, tight black curls tumbling low over his brow and she had turned away from him, knowing that he didn’t care as she cared; knowing that he couldn’t comfort her as Julian would have comforted her.

  If the news from Russia was of unrelieved grimness, the news from Serbia’s government-in-exile in Corfu was, to Yugoslav Committee supporters’ears, headily optimistic.

  The leader of the Committee, Ante Trumbich, had met with Premier Pasich and a formal agreement had been reached concerning the future formation of a Kingdom of all South Slavs. It was agreed that it would be a constitutional, democratic and parliamentary monarchy headed by the Karageorgevich dynasty, that there was to be equality among the three national groups, Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and that the Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Islamic religions were to be exercised freely and publicly.

  Though the dream couldn’t come into existence until the war was over, and only then if the Allies were the victors, it was a hundred times nearer to becoming a possibility than it had been when Natalie had met Gavrilo and Trifko and Nedjelko in the Golden Sturgeon and schemed of somehow bringing such a day about.

  Again and again, as 1917 merged into 1918, Natalie found herself thinking of Gavrilo. Never, in a million years, could he have imagined the devastation and slaughter that his murder of Franz Ferdinand had occasioned and was still occasioning. She wondered how he would endure the burden on his conscience and if, when all the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes who had lived in vassalage in the Austro-Hungarian empire were living freely and equally in a Kingdom for all South Slavs, he would find in their freedom a measure of solace.

  Her own solace as the war dragged on into its fourth year were Julian’s letters from Salonika and her mother’s and Katerina’s letters from Corfu. When the first letter from Corfu had arrived in the spring of 1916 she had sobbed with sheer relief.

  ‘They’re safe!’ she had said to Diana, tears streaming down her face. ‘My mother and sister are in Corfu and they’re safe!’

  Minutes later she had said incredulously, ‘I don’t believe it! It isn’t possible! Katerina is married!’

  She had raised her eyes from the letter and stared at Diana with such a dazed expression on her face that Diana had laughed.

  ‘Why shouldn’t she be? She’s older than you, isn’t she? Who has she married? Does he have a wonderfully exotic title?’

  Feeling totally disorientated Natalie had lowered her eyes again to the letter. After a moment or two she had slowly shaken her head. ‘No. His name is Zlarin. Major Zlarin.’

  Diana had hoped for a minor royal princeling but had had the good manners to hide her disappointment.

  ‘Mama says he is a hero,’ Natalie had said, continuing to read. ‘She says he and his men protected Belgrade for weeks, holding massive Austro-Hungarian forces at bay across the Sava.’

  She had looked up again from the letter, her eyes huge in the delicate triangle of her face. ‘There’s a baby!’

  Diana had giggled, ‘There often is when people marry. Is it a boy or a girl?’

  ‘It’s a boy.’ Her shocked eyes had held Diana’s. ‘Mama says he was born in September 1915, only two months after Stephen was born! How could he have been? It would mean Katerina married Major Zlarin in 1914 and she didn’t even know a Major Zlarin when I left Belgrade in June 1914! Her having a baby in 1915 is an absolute impossibility! Mama has written the year wrongly. She must have intended to write 1916 or even 1917.’

  Diana had taken the letter from her. It had been written in English, flamboyantly in purple ink and the handwriting was not that of someone liable to make an error. It was large and flowing and self-confident.

  ‘Your mother hasn’t made a mistake,’ she had said a few seconds later. ‘She says the baby’s name is Peter and that he was born shortly before they made the nightmare trek across the mountains to the Adriatic.’

  She had lowered the letter to her lap and looked across at Natalie. ‘The Serbian army retreated in the winter of 1915, so your nephew must have been born in September 1915.’ She made a quick calculation on exquisitely red-lacquered nails. ‘Katerina could have married him as late as December 1914, which means that if she met him immediately after you and Julian left for England she would have known him for six months.’

  She had frowned slightly. ‘Six months wouldn’t be considered a respectable length of time for an English debutante to meet, become engaged and married to someone, but perhaps things are different in Serbia?’

  ‘They are not,’ Natalie had said, her voice still thick with shock. ‘Engagements are very long and formal and the bridegroom is nearly always someone known to the family.’

  ‘That wasn’t the case with you and Julian,’ Diana had pointed out as a waiter had assiduously refilled their coffee cups. ‘Perhaps your sister’s and Major Zlarin’s love story is as unconventional as yours and Julian’s. Perhaps they fell in love at first sight just as you and Julian so obviously did. Perhaps they married without ever being engaged. Perhaps they even eloped.’

  She had poured a small amount of cream into her coffee cup and waited for Natalie’s commen
ts. Natalie had been unable to make any. For the first time in her life she had been rendered speechless.

  Before she had recovered from the shock of her mother’s letter another letter arrived with the same postmark. This time the handwriting was Katerina’s and she had torn it open with trembling fingers, glad that Diana was not with her.

  Dearest, dearest Natalie, I can’t believe that I’m really able to write to you at last! So much has happened since you left for England that I don’t know where to start. I know that Mama has already written you with news of my marriage and so I must begin this letter with the news Sandro broke to me himself only a few hours ago. Ivan is dead. He died in the fighting near Shabatz but Sandro only received confirmation of his death after we arrived here. Helga, also, is dead. Her death was terrible and I find it nearly impossible to write about. She was nursing with us at the hospital when Belgrade first fell to the Austrians…

  As Natalie had read of Helga’s death; the suffering Katerina and her mother had witnessed during the Austrian occupation; the horrors of the typhoid epidemic; the fall of the country to Austro-Hungarian forces; the hellish trek across the mountains of Montenegro and Albania, she had felt as disorientated as when she had first learned of Katerina’s marriage. If she hadn’t left Belgrade when she had, she too would have suffered and witnessed untold horrors. And she hadn’t done so. She had suffered nothing worse than agony of mind over Julian’s safety, first in Flanders and now in Salonika.

  The knowledge of all she had been spared had filled her with irrational guilt. With all her heart she had wished she had been with her mother and Katerina during their dark, dreadful days in Belgrade and during their epic crossing of the snow-bound mountains. And she had wished that she was with them now, in Corfu.

  In March, Nicky’s prediction that the new Bolshevik government in Russia would seek a separate peace with Germany, was fulfilled. In May came newspaper reports that the Tsar and his family had been moved from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg, a place of which Natalie had never heard. In July came reports that the entire family had been murdered.