‘It’s the Dmitris!’ she cried. ‘We must help them, Sacha!’
He shook his head. ‘This is not our concern, Caroline.’
‘But Boris and Olga Dmitri are my friends! We were fellow passengers on board the Oriole. They were good to me, and now they’re in trouble. Tell the coachman to stop the carriage, Sacha! We must do something to help them!’
‘My dear,’ Katya began, ‘believe me, it’s best not to become involved—’
Caroline stared blindly at both of them for a moment, scarcely able to believe that they could be so unfeeling about the fate of her friends. Then she groped for the door-handle. Before they could react she had flung herself from the carriage, falling in a ball in the midst of the rumpus.
She scrambled to her feet, her only concern the fact that Olga Dmitri was being dragged by the hair by a Cossack while Boris and the two other men were pinned helplessly and obviously painfully to a wall.
Caroline hurled herself at the Cossack who had hold of Olga, and began to beat at his chest with her fists. ‘Let her go! Let her go!’ she shouted in French.
The man’s eyes narrowed. He did not relax his hold on Olga’s hair, and he seemed totally impervious to the tattoo of blows which Caroline was raining on his chest.
‘You know this person, mademoiselle? You are an associate of hers, perhaps?’
‘I most certainly—’
She was not allowed to finish the sentence. She felt herself being whirled around, and just for an instant stared into Sacha’s passionately blazing eyes. Then, as she opened her mouth to protest, he grabbed hold of her fur hood, pulling her against him in a gesture of apparent tender protectiveness. In reality his cheek was pressed hard and painfully against her mouth so that she could not utter so much as a whisper.
‘The lady,’ she heard Sacha explain to the Cossack, ‘is but newly arrived in the country. She does not understand about the Nihilists. She thought she was witnessing a fellow gentlewoman in distress, instead of the justified arrest of a treacherous wretch.’
‘Well...’ Caroline heard the Cossack respond doubtfully. Then, addressing Olga, he snarled, ‘You! Vermin! Do you know this young woman?’
‘I’ve—never—set eyes on her—in my life before,’ Olga gasped painfully.
Everything—the horrible scene, Olga’s denial, the warmth of Sacha’s cheek pressed against her mouth—culminated in a moment of faintness, and Caroline heard a roaring in her ears. Her knees sagged beneath her and she felt herself being scooped up in Sacha’s arms.
He had taken a few steps with her when she opened her eyes, and stared into his. ‘You may set me down now,’ she said quietly.
‘You’re—no burden,’ he muttered, his voice uneven. ‘To carry, I mean. In other ways—’ He did not complete the sentence, but he set her down on her feet.
She closed her eyes momentarily as, behind them, Olga Dmitri stifled a scream of pain. ‘Sacha,’ Caroline asked, ‘why did Olga deny knowing me?’
‘Because, in spite of everything, she appears to have a grain of humanity in her make-up. She saved you from involving yourself in her trouble.’
‘But what did they do? Why are the Cossacks arresting them?’
‘They were caught with illegal placards, which they had obviously meant to post in public places.’
She remembered the placard which had blown inside the carriage, addressed to the Czar and his family. She had had no chance to read its message. She was not to be afforded the chance to read it, either, for when Sacha deposited her inside the carriage and the coachman had whipped up the horses, she discovered that the placard had been torn to shreds and scattered to the winds.
‘It was garbage, my dear,’ Katya explained gently.
By peering through the window Caroline could just see the Dmitris and their friends being dragged away by the Cossacks. ‘What will happen to them?’ she asked with helpless anxiety.
Sacha shrugged. ‘They’ll be exiled to Siberia, I’ve no doubt.’
‘Only exile!’ she exclaimed with relief. ‘I thought—I feared they would be sent to prison—’
‘Now look,’ there was suppressed violence in his voice, ‘I’d better spell out for you what “only exile” means! At least that might prevent you from forming friendships with people like the Dmitris. They will be made to march to Siberia under armed guard, across some of the cruellest country in the world, and the journey will take about two years. They may never reach their destination; only the toughest of exiles do. And if they do survive they will be put to work in chain gangs and kept in iron fetters to prevent their escaping.’
‘Oh, dear lord...’ Caroline whispered, thinking of the well-educated, cultured Dmitris. She looked at Sacha. ‘How can you fail to condemn such brutality?’
‘They knew what their fate would be when they embarked on their illegal enterprise.’
Caroline shuddered. Yes, beneath the thin surface of civilisation in this country there lurked a primitive, pitiless barbarism, and Sacha was touched with it too, or he could not speak so impassively about the Dmitris’ fate.
‘You said they were Nihilists,’ she addressed him again. ‘What does that mean?’
‘That they are traitors,’ he answered shortly.
‘It must mean more than that,’ she protested. ‘What is their aim, their purpose?’
‘The less you know about the Nihilist movement, Caroline, the better,’ he told her, his voice grim.
‘Why?’
‘Because you are precisely the kind of misguided idiot who would express public sympathy for them. You already know all you need to know about the movement—that it is dangerous to be in any way associated with it.’
He would say nothing more upon the subject. Caroline’s anguished thoughts remained with the Dmitris, but she was both physically and emotionally exhausted, and to her shame she fell asleep almost as soon as she climbed into bed, her dreams untroubled by the fate of her friends.
When she awakened, just after noon, she immediately thought of them again, and she racked her brains for some means of helping them. On the ship they had told her about the rigid social structure in Russia, and that they did not move in the same circles as the Antonovs. That meant that they could have no influential friends—unless one counted Caroline herself. She, at least, had access to the Czar. Why could she not plead for mercy with him on their behalf?
But Sacha had said that the Nihilists were traitors. Unless she knew more about the movement itself she would not be able to judge the line of approach most likely to sway the Czar. The first essential, then, was to find out what she could about the Nihilists.
Aunt Natalia looked alarmed when Caroline broached the subject. ‘My dear, ladies of our class do not concern themselves with the politics of traitors. Pray don’t bring the matter up in public!’
Aunt Maria chuckled to herself. ‘I’ve heard they believe in free love. The Czar ought to agree with them there, for he himself is pretty free with his love. They say his mistress is in a delicate condition again.’
‘Really, Maria, you have acquired a shocking coarseness in your old age!’ Aunt Natalia reproved.
It was clearly useless to go on questioning the two old ladies, and Caroline was beginning to dislike Uncle Viktor too much to want to seek his company for any reason. That left only Grigori.
She found him in the library, and said bluntly—‘Grigori, two friends of mine were arrested by Cossacks this morning. Sacha said they were Nihilists, but he refuses to tell me about the movement. And I must know about it if I’m to help them!’
He gave her a startled look. ‘My dear Caroline, how could you possibly have friends who are suspected Nihilists?’
She explained briefly how she had met the Dmitris on board the Oriole. ‘I liked them very much,’ she ended, ‘and I refuse to believe that they can be traitors, as Sacha called them.’
‘People like my cousin, who have much to lose from the Nihilists, naturally regard them as traitors,’ Gri
gori explained. ‘You see, Caroline, they are opposed to the gross inequalities in Russian society. They want to change the system, and bring about reform.’
‘Then I certainly don’t regard them as traitors!’ Caroline cried warmly.
He gave her one of his dazzling smiles. ‘No more do I—although it would be unsafe to say so in public! They are brave men and women who put themselves at risk in an attempt to relieve the misery of the peasants.’ Here was irony indeed. Grigori, the nobleman, the true Antonov, regarded Nihilists as brave men and women. And Sacha, the peasant changeling, the son of Anna Barovska and one of the Antonov serfs, saw them as traitors. It brought home to Caroline the utter impossibility of ever telling Sacha the truth, and toppling him from his privileged position as a member of the Russian aristocracy into the wretched peasant world to which he truly belonged by birth.
‘What do the Nihilists actually do, Grigori, to bring about the changes they desire?’
He shrugged. ‘There is not much they can do, apart from preaching revolution and posting illegal placards. But there is such a sense of simmering resentment in Russia, Caroline, such despair among the peasants that the privileged classes fear the Nihilists will one day light the torch of revolution. For that reason anyone connected with the movement risks the harshest punishment, to deter others.’
She bit her lip. ‘So—you wouldn’t advise me to approach the Czar on behalf of my friends, the Dmitris?’
‘Most decidedly not!’ he said urgently. ‘It would not help your friends, and it would be disastrous for you. In fact, Caroline, you must never talk to anyone with the frankness and openness with which you and I have been discussing the matter.’
She promised to be discreet, and wondered why she could not transfer her love from Sacha to Grigori, when the latter was so much more in sympathy with her own instinctive beliefs and emotions. And then she thought of the Dmitris, totally beyond the help of any human, and offered up a silent prayer on their behalf. Now, for the first time, she understood the total selflessness and generosity which Olga had displayed in denying their friendship. She was beginning to understand many things about Russia, and she found them all disquieting.
Grigori had risen, and was holding out his hand. ‘We’ll shake on that promise, Caroline, and make it binding.’
She gave him her hand. He did not release it afterwards, but imprisoned it in both of his, and brought it to his lips. There was no mistaking the awareness and desire in his expression. She could only gaze back at him with unhappiness and regret.
At that moment the door opened, and Sacha entered. Rage, jealousy and despair smouldered in his eyes as he took in the scene. ‘So there you are,’ he addressed Caroline harshly. ‘I’ve been searching for you. You have a caller.’
‘A caller?’
‘Nikita Pavlovich.’ His voice was a snarl. ‘You must have encouraged him quite blatantly last night, for he would not otherwise have believed that you would welcome a call from him.’
‘I did nothing to encourage him,’ Caroline said mildly. ‘I scarcely spoke to him. But what do you have against him, Sacha? The fact that he takes bribes, perhaps?’
‘I could hardly hold that against him, for everyone in his position takes bribes,’ he was forced to admit. ‘I simply don’t consider him in the light of a possible suitor for you. But since he is here, you had better see him. I shall chaperon you myself.’
A tense and uncomfortable interlude followed in the drawing-room, with Nikita Pavlovich reduced to making nervous small-talk while Sacha glowered in the background and made it impossible for the young man to further his acquaintance with Caroline.
Oh, my love, she thought with anguish. This cannot go on. You must release me—release both of us from this intolerable situation...
But when she tried to voice her feelings, after Nikita Pavlovich had admitted defeat and left, Sacha said shortly, ‘I see nothing impossible in the situation. I am your brother, and your place is here, under my protection.’
You are not my brother! she wanted to scream at him. And in your heart of hearts you have never accepted that you are. For you are not protecting me: you are smothering me in a possessive stranglehold.
But she could voice none of this and so, despairingly, Caroline turned away. Soon after she had reached her room, Nurse Varna knocked on the door.
‘I am about to put the child to bed, Mademoiselle,’ the nurse said, ‘and I wondered—that is, I thought you might wish to read him a story.’
‘Why, I thought you disapproved—’
‘No, Mademoiselle, I behaved with spite in my heart. I have no real objection to a bedtime story, and to tell the truth, I would read to the boy myself if I was more of a scholar. The fact is that I have never had anyone of my own—neither husband nor child—and apart from my nephew I am alone in the world. So I am jealous of my small kingdom, the nursery, especially as I know that in a year or so I shall be replaced by a tutor.
‘No doubt,’ she went on, ‘you have thought me unaffectionate towards the child. The truth is that I dare not allow myself to become too attached to him, Mademoiselle. But he does need love, and you have shown yourself to be a generous and warm-hearted lady. So—please feel free to visit the nursery whenever you wish.’
‘Thank you, Nurse Varna,’ Caroline said gently, her heart touched by the woman’s speech, but she reflected sadly that she, in turn, could hardly afford to become attached to Michael.
In the nursery, she found the boy less than attentive as she began to read to him. He wriggled restlessly in bed, and several times felt for something under his pillow.
Caroline laid the book aside. ‘What is it, Michael? What are you hiding under your pillow?’
‘It’s a treasure, Marisha,’ he whispered conspiratorially. ‘The best kind of treasure there is—only, I know Nurse Varna will throw it on the fire the minute she sees it.’
Caroline smiled. ‘You’d better show me.’
He brought out something wrapped in a handkerchief, and as he proudly unfolded it Caroline thought, with a shudder, that for once she was in full agreement with Nurse Varna. Michael’s ‘treasure’ was the bleached skeleton of some small rodent.
‘Oh, Michael, it’s revolting!’ she cried.
‘It isn’t! It’s beautiful!’ he defended. ‘Konstantin—that’s one of the grooms—says it must be at least ten years old. I found it in the stables. It’s the best treasure I’ve ever found.’
‘But what do you want it for?’
‘Just to keep. It’s a treasure. Marisha,’ his voice turned wheedling, ‘would you hide it in the secret place for me? I didn’t have time to do it myself, and if Nurse Varna comes to look at me when I’m asleep, and she finds it, she’ll fling it straight on the fire. Would you hide it for me, Marisha?’
Caroline looked doubtfully at the skeleton. It was certainly old, and the passage of time and the elements had left it perfectly clean. Michael’s trophy seemed grisly to her, but in the manner of small boys he valued it highly, and it seemed harmless enough to indulge him. So, accepting the parcel gingerly, Caroline agreed to hide it for him.
In the unused wing of the house, she looked for the carved flower shape with seven petals instead of five. Even armed with the knowledge of its existence, it was astonishingly difficult to find, and perhaps only a perceptive and inquisitive child was likely to have discovered it in the first place.
But after some searching she found it, and manipulated it in the way Michael had demonstrated. She had placed the skeleton on a shelf with his other treasures and was about to close the door again, when it occurred to her that this was the ideal opportunity to explore the secret of the second door. The servants were busy; the aunts were resting before dinner as guests were expected, and no one was likely to miss her for a few minutes.
A close inspection revealed that she had been right. The shelved section of the cupboard was, indeed, a second door. But it had obviously not been opened for many years, for it required all he
r strength to move it on its hinges. At last it creaked open, revealing wooden stairs rotten in places.
It was quite dark below, so she closed the carved panel again and went in search of a branch of candles. Then, holding up the hem of her gown with her free hand, she prepared to descend the wooden stairs.
At the very least, she had expected to find a medieval oubliette complete with instruments of torture. The reality proved to be far more mundane. She found herself in an underground cellar, dank and musty with disuse, and containing not even so much as a discarded and broken piece of furniture.
Then, as she turned a corner she found herself in a longer underground chamber, in the centre of which stood a modern-looking piece of machinery. Caroline moved forward curiously to examine it.
It was a printing press. A sheaf of papers had been stacked on a bench beside it, and as she picked one up to study it by candlelight she felt a stab of shocked recognition.
The stack of papers were placards, identical to the ones which the Dmitris had been guilty of possessing. Addressed to the Romanov Dynasty and more particularly the Czar, its message read:
‘Your military forces are no more than a cruel and corrupt army of thieves; your tribunals make a mockery of justice, for a man’s innocence or guilt is judged by the number of officials he can afford to bribe. Those same officials, appointed by Imperial patronage, are luxury-loving tyrants who dominate the lives of the people in every sphere.
‘Under your rule the peasants have seen their supposed emancipation turn into a kind of slavery even worse than before, for they are crippled by taxes when they cannot even afford to buy bread for their families. Their poverty has increased a thousandfold, and still your government clerks rob them of the pitiful means that remain to them.
‘Think, you members of the divine Romanov Dynasty, where this state of affairs must eventually lead, and act before it is too late.’
Caroline’s hand shook as she replaced the placard she had been reading on top of the stack. She already knew enough about Russia to understand the implication of the printing press and the placards.
Count Antonov's Heir Page 8
