Count Antonov's Heir

by Christina Laffeaty

  ‘Your new husband?’

  She nodded miserably, ‘The Czar has decreed that the normal obsequies and period of mourning shall be cut short so that—so that you and I may be free to announce our forthcoming marriage, Alexander.’

  Sacha made an involuntary sound.

  ‘My dear,’ Katya said in a wretched voice, ‘I am so very sorry. I wouldn’t have had this happen for the world.’

  No one spoke for a moment. Even Uncle Viktor was too stunned to derive any cruel pleasure from the situation. Caroline moistened her dry lips, and broke the silence.

  ‘But—this is incredible! How can the Czar—how can any third party—order two people to marry?’

  ‘The Czar,’ Katya explained wearily, ‘can order whatever he chooses. Not that this was anything as crude as an order. It was put to me as a request, as an arrangement which would please the Czar.’

  Caroline had been in Russia for long enough to know that there would be little significant difference between an Imperial order and a request. She waited numbly for Katya to go on.

  ‘The Czar stressed that his main concern is to prevent an ancient title from dying out, but I believe the truth is that he has been influenced by the Czarina. My marriage to Stanislaus connects me, however distantly, with her family, and she—’

  Katya flushed, and continued, ‘She, in common with the rest of Russian society, knows that Alexander and I have been—friends—for several years. She is a deeply religious woman, and her sense of moral rectitude will only be appeased if we marry now that Stanislaus is dead.’

  She turned a brave but pitiful gaze on Sacha. ‘My dear, I shall not allow you to be trapped in this way. I shall go into exile, or enter a convent.’

  Even though Caroline’s mind acknowledged that what Sacha did next was no more than any chivalrous, honourable man could have done in the circumstances, it still came as a knife-wound in her heart.

  He moved forward, and lifted Katya’s chin with his hand, kissing her gently on the lips.

  ‘My dearest Katya, please don’t talk nonsense. The Czar has simply precipitated something which I’d had every intention of doing in my own good time. Let us forget the Imperial Ukase for the moment. Will you do me the very great honour of marrying me?’

  Tears filled her eyes. ‘I refuse to allow you to sacrifice yourself—’

  ‘Come, let us discuss this in private.’ He had led her from the room, and as the door closed behind them, his family found their voices for the first time since Katya’s news had stunned them into silence.

  ‘He’ll persuade her, of course,’ Uncle Viktor said, and added one of his typical barbs. ‘Apart from Katya’s personal charms, there is also the consideration of inheriting a princely title and the Vezenski estates. Fortune does indeed seem to smile on the privileged!’

  ‘To those who have, shall be given,’ Grigori quoted in an undertone, and perhaps only Caroline understood the reason for the cynical bitterness in his voice.

  Aunt Natalia and Aunt Maria began to discuss plans for the wedding, and Caroline, unable to bear any more, excused herself. In her own room she stared unseeingly ahead of her, and wondered how she could possibly endure this new development. Because, of course, Sacha would override all of Katya’s objections.

  The very next day the announcement of their forthcoming marriage was made public. The ceremony would take place in the summer, and in the meantime Katya was to remain a guest of the Antonovs.

  Caroline was, increasingly, beginning to feel like a human sacrifice caught up in the chariot wheels of some relentless Juggernaut. The whole house hummed with wedding plans, and no one seemed to spare a thought for the fact that, a relatively short time before, other wedding plans had been in the air. Hers and Sacha’s. But perhaps no one wanted to admit to these thoughts; perhaps it was safer and more comfortable to slot her firmly into place as Sacha’s sister, as if she had never held any other position, however fleetingly.

  Katya tried valiantly to gain young Michael’s confidence, but she was not a maternal woman; she did not understand children, and she was as uneasy in his company as he was in hers. One evening, when Caroline had gone up to the nursery to say goodnight to him, he threw his arms about her neck and clung to her.

  ‘I want to tell you something wicked,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t want the Princess to be my Mamasha.’

  ‘Michael dear, she is kind and good and very beautiful—’

  ‘But not as beautiful as you are, Marisha,’ he contradicted with tearful loyalty.

  She sighed, and picked up a storybook. ‘I’ll read to you about another princess, Michael. A princess who kissed a frog.’

  ‘What did she want to do that for?’

  ‘Hush, and listen!’

  Caroline began to read, and the child followed the story with wide-eyed absorption. She was equally engrossed, until she saw his gaze move to the doorway.

  ‘Shh, Papa!’ he hissed. ‘Marisha is reading to me about a princess and a frog, only he wasn’t really a frog.’

  Sacha entered, and drew up a chair. ‘Why do you call her Marisha, Michael? What does it mean?’

  The child shifted uncomfortably in bed. ‘It—doesn’t mean anything, Papa. It’s just my secret name for her...’

  Sacha did not press him, but sat in silence while Caroline continued with the story. She was very much aware of him as he sat there, his eyes shaded by his hand so that she could not read his expression, and she couldn’t help thinking, with an agony of loss and pain, that but for a pitiless twist of fate it would have been their parental right to share Michael’s bedtime like this each evening. As it was she would have to abdicate, as gently as she could, from her role as the child’s surrogate mother. It was a position which would rightfully belong to Katya in the future.

  ‘... and they married, and lived happily ever after,’ Caroline finished the story. At the trite but evocative words Sacha made a harsh sound, and walked out of the room.

  ‘Papa did not wish me goodnight,’ Michael said in a hurt voice.

  ‘He’ll—probably come back later. She kissed him swiftly, disentangled his arms from about her neck, and left the room.

  If only, Caroline told herself desperately as the days passed, it were possible to hate Katya. There would have been some satisfaction, however warped, in that. But Katya was good and generous and unselfish, and what made matters worse, she alone of everyone in the house seemed to have an inkling of how Caroline felt.

  One evening she knocked on Caroline’s door, and entered. The nervous movements of her hands betrayed the fact that she had come on a delicate mission.

  ‘My dear Caroline,’ she began. ‘I have been trying to pluck up my courage for days—may I sit down?’

  ‘Please do,’ Caroline said, and waited.

  ‘I hate to broach the subject.’ Katya swallowed. ‘If there had been anyone else ... But there isn’t. And you are the logical choice. It would cause so much comment if you did not fill the role...’

  ‘What role, Katya?’ Caroline asked, frowning.

  ‘As—my bridesmaid,’ Katya said unhappily.

  ‘No!’ It was an anguished, animal sound which escaped Caroline.

  Katya dropped her head in her hands. ‘Oh, my dear ... Perhaps it will help if I tell you that—that Alexander does not love me. He will never love anyone again as he—once loved—a girl who was bound to him—in every way—including blood...’

  Caroline scarcely registered the fact that Katya was weeping. She paced the floor, her arms hugged to her breast, hopeless rage and pain pounding inside her.

  Not Katya’s bridesmaid ... Not forced to take an active part in the wedding. No one could ask it of her. It was inhuman, barbaric...

  Katya had conquered her tears. Caroline could hear her voice—gentle, pleading, apologetic.

  ‘I do understand, Caroline. But the aunts have taken it for granted that you will be attending me. Everyone has taken it for granted—’

  ‘Sacha—Sacha ca
nnot have taken it for granted!’

  ‘He had not given the matter any thought until I discussed it with him. He said the decision must be yours. But you are the obvious choice. I have no sisters of my own.’

  ‘I can’t, I can’t!’ Caroline cried desperately. ‘Ask someone else. One of your friends—’

  ‘My dear,’ Katya’s voice was quietly firm now. ‘You and I know why you don’t wish to attend me, but consider how it will seem to the rest of society—’

  ‘I don’t care!’

  ‘Forgive me,’ Katya persisted, ‘but you are known to be Alexander’s base-born sister. People will think that I have deliberately snubbed you by excluding you. It will make your position in society very difficult.’

  ‘I care nothing for my position in society!’

  ‘Perhaps not. But I believe you do care for Alexander’s. If it seems that I have snubbed you, Caroline, people will split into two different camps. There will be those who imagine themselves to be my allies, who will snub you too, and others will be on your side and will exclude me from their invitations. And the main victim of all this will be Alexander, for he will be in the middle. Now do you see why there is no alternative but for you to attend me as my bridesmaid?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know!’ Caroline cried wretchedly. ‘I hate this stultifying Russian society, where appearances must be kept up at any cost, and where one’s social position is all-important!’

  ‘Think about it,’ Katya said, and rose, moving to the door. ‘Oh, and Caroline—if you should break down, and shed tears at the wedding, no one will think it strange. In this stultifying society of ours, weddings and funerals are two occasions when one is permitted to show emotion.’

  Caroline could do little else but think about the matter. Before, she had deliberately closed her mind to the actual wedding day. If she had had any plans for herself on that day, however vague, it would have been to remain hidden in her room like a wounded animal.

  But now it seemed inevitable that she would have to participate in all the pomp and ceremony. And it wouldn’t only be confined to the actual wedding day. There would be the preliminaries; the choosing, fitting and making of her gown; the endless discussions upon every detail of the ceremony, until she felt that she would go mad.

  One night as she lay wide-eyed and sleepless in bed, she faced the fact that she couldn’t go through with it. No matter how hard she tried, she would never be able to stand at the altar by Katya’s side, and take an active part in her marriage to Sacha. She would be driven to some desperate action.

  Katya had said that no one would think it remarkable if she shed tears. But neither Katya nor anyone else knew that there was a grave danger of Caroline spilling something far more shattering than tears.

  How, she wondered in anguish, could she be certain that she would not be driven to blurting out in front of everyone the fact that Sacha was not her brother? That he was a peasant changeling, born not to Euphemia, Countess Antonov, but to Anna Barovska, serf? How did one know beforehand how much the human spirit could endure without cracking?

  The thought became an obsession with her. At night, when she did succeed in sleeping, she had a recurring dream in which she was running through the corridors of the Winter Palace, laughing wildly and shouting that Sacha was not an Antonov, and that he should be marrying her instead of Katya.

  She grew thin and introspective and quiet. If Sacha noticed the change in her, he made no comment. But one morning Grigori cornered her in the library, and said gently, ‘My dear Caroline, something is troubling you. What is it?’

  Sacha’s marriage is troubling me. He is not my brother, and I love him.

  Her heart began to hammer in her breast. Had she spoken the words aloud? She couldn’t be sure. Dear God, she was going mad...

  ‘Are you ill?’ Grigori’s voice, sharp with anxiety, reached her. ‘You looked—quite dreadful—for a moment!’

  Relief flooded through her. She had not spoken the fateful words aloud after all. But for how much longer could she restrain the compulsive need to betray Sacha?

  ‘Caroline,’ she heard Grigori say softly, ‘tell me what the trouble is. I should like to help you.’

  As if one mad impulse could effectively prevent her from giving way to another, she unbuttoned the top of her bodice and reached for the silver and sapphire necklace which Sacha had bought for their wedding, and which she always wore like a hair-shirt next to her skin.

  ‘If you wish to help me, Grigori,’ she said wildly, ‘then sell this for me! I need money. I can’t bear to remain in this house, in St Petersburg, in Russia, any longer!’

  He turned the necklace around in his hands, and then slipped it back over her head.

  ‘Keep it, Caroline,’ he said. ‘Tell me why you wish to leave, and if you can convince me that this isn’t some impetuous whim which you’ll later regret, I’ll help you to get away.’

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  With a cunning born of desperation, Caroline sought for the most effective means of persuading Grigori to help her. She sat down, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes downcast as she thought rapidly.

  The truth could not be told, and so she would have to find some other way. To win his sympathy perhaps it would be well to convey, obliquely, sympathy for his own cause—that of Nihilism.

  ‘It is no impulsive whim,’ she began. ‘I have been growing increasingly disillusioned with Russian society. The gross inequalities, the lavish balls in the fine houses while outside the beggars starve ... Why, Grigori, I read recently in the Journal de St Petersbourg that the Czarevich’s youngest son has a table allowance of what amounts to almost three-and-a-half thousand English pounds! And he is only four months old! All that money to feed an Imperial baby and his nursery servants, while millions starve!’

  ‘It would not be wise to voice such criticisms aloud, Caroline,’ he warned.

  ‘I know that! It’s one of the reasons why I find the life here so suffocating. And since my friends, the Dmitris, were arrested it has become more and more difficult for me to hold my tongue while I’m faced with examples of corruption or oppression. I fear, Grigori, that if I do not leave soon I shall say or do something to incur the Czar’s wrath.’

  She looked at him with desperate pleading in her eyes. ‘Sacha won’t let me go. He doesn’t understand how I feel—’

  ‘No,’ Grigori agreed. ‘My cousin has never understood the feelings of others less fortunate than he is. Tell me, Caroline, what will you do if you leave Russia?’

  ‘I shall do what I did before—give lessons in French and Italian. I am quite capable of earning a sufficient living for myself.’

  It was a lie, of course, but she had uttered it with as much authority and confidence as she could muster.

  Grigori gave her a wry smile. ‘You would not consider marrying me instead? No,’ he added quickly as she flushed with embarrassment. ‘You do not love me, and you hate Russia. Very well, Caroline. I shall help you to leave.’

  ‘Thank you, Grigori.’ She did not meet his eyes. If he was in love with her, as he had hinted, then it was noble indeed of him to help her leave the country, and she did not quite know how to respond to such selflessness.

  He helped her by saying in a prosaic voice, ‘It will not be an easy matter to arrange a passage at this time of the year, so I think the best thing would be for me to take you to stay with friends of mine in the country while I make the necessary arrangements.’

  ‘How soon can we go?’ she asked urgently. ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘By all means,’ he smiled, ‘if you wish my cousin to come after us! Some guile will be needed. And have you forgotten that tomorrow is Easter-eve? The day is meant to be spent in fasting and penitence. What excuse could we possibly give for leaving the house together?’ He flicked his fingers lightly against her cheek. ‘Have patience. I already have a plan. The Roskolnikovs are arranging a large skating party a week after Easter. You and I will not be notice
d if we slip away from that crowd, and make for the railway station. It will be hours before my cousin even realises that we have gone.’

  With that, Caroline had to be content. She fixed her mind on the skating party as if it were a beacon, planning ways and means of smuggling her possessions out of the house on the day in question.

  But in the meantime the rituals of the Russian Orthodox Easter had to be observed. Towards midnight on Easter-eve the streets of St Petersburg were alive with a mass of worshippers bound for the bronze-domed Cathedrals.

  Experiencing it for the first time, Caroline found the symbolism of the Russian Orthodox Easter service impressive and moving. Inside the cathedral silence and darkness reigned as priests and congregation awaited the moment when Christ would be proclaimed to have risen.

  Then candles were lit and Caroline joined the rest of her party to place her own candle before one of the beautiful, sacred ikons. She found herself being carried along with the crowd, outside the Cathedral, to witness the ritualistic procession circling the building in a symbolic search for Christ.

  Grigori, who was crushed against Caroline in the crowd, placed his arm about her for protection, and explained, ‘The circling of the cathedral is an expression of the doubts of the Disciples, finding Christ vanished from the Sepulchre. Then the procession accepts the miracle, re-enters the cathedral, and proclaims the Resurrection.’

  They waited, and watched the procession of gold-coped priests and acolytes swinging censers and carrying banners and ikons, tapers lighting their way. The flickering of the tapers in the darkness and the solemn chanting of the procession lent a tense mysticism to the occasion.

  At last the procession re-entered the cathedral, and the bells rang out, accompanied by the rapturous cry, ‘Christ is Risen! Yea, verily He is Risen!’