Around Caroline, the crowd crossed themselves and prostrated themselves. She was startled when, without warning, Grigori tilted her face and kissed her—a light, restrained, gentle caress.
‘The customary triple kisses of the Trinity,’ he explained, and kissed her twice more.
All about them people were exchanging kisses. A complete stranger claimed Caroline; at first she stiffened with involuntary outrage, but there was something so joyous and spontaneous in this mass exchange of Resurrection kisses that she relaxed, and allowed herself to be carried along with the tide. The kisses were no more than a simple human expression of rejoicing.
She exchanged kisses with Aunt Natalia and with Katya. And then, all at once, she found herself face to face with Sacha. He hesitated for a moment before touching her cheek with his mouth. Quite deliberately, swept along by the tide of celebration and without stopping to think, Caroline moved her head so that her mouth found his instead.
Just for an instant his lips moved beneath hers in fierce, involuntary response. Then he pushed her away from him, his eyes dark with despair and anger. He completed the trinity of kisses by touching her forehead with his lips, and this time she stood in numb, unresponsive misery. She closed her eyes in pain as he let her go and reached for Katya instead, pulling her almost savagely into his arms.
The crowd was beginning to disperse. Caroline knew that they were bound for the traditional gargantuan feasts to break their Lenten fast. The Antonov family, together with a large party of others, had been invited to the Winter Palace for the celebration.
Suddenly she could not bear the thought of another stultifying formal Imperial occasion. With the memory of Sacha’s lips warm and passionate against her own, how could she be sure that she would not be driven to acting out her recurring nightmare, and run through the corridors of the Palace, shouting that he was not her brother?
Blindly, she thrust a path through the crowd, towards Grigori. ‘It will have to be now,’ she said in a tense undertone.
‘What do you mean, Caroline?’
‘I can’t—can’t face the thought of feasting in the Winter Palace,’ she said unevenly. ‘And in this crowd, we wouldn’t be missed. If we went now, this very minute, Sacha could not pursue us until after the feast. However much he may want to, protocol would force him to remain at the Palace instead until the Czar signalled that his guests might leave.’
Grigori considered for a moment. ‘Very well,’ he agreed. ‘Follow me. I’ll find a troika.’
No one noticed them leaving. The troika raced over the packed ice towards the Antonov home. The driver waited outside, impassive and incurious, while Caroline threw her possessions into a trunk. She was glad that she had been spared the agonising decision whether or not to say goodbye to Michael. He would be fast asleep, and there could be no question of arousing him.
The moon had broken through the clouds when they left the house, and she looked back for the last time at the haunting beauty of St Petersburg, at its colonnades and onion-domes and massive statues.
At dawn the troika set them down at a lonely railway station. Grigori had decided that they could best cover their tracks by not taking the train directly from St Petersburg. But as they waited for the locomotive to arrive it struck Caroline for the first time that Sacha could not fail to realise who it was who had helped her to run away. He already disliked Grigori, and he was the head of the family, the one who held the purse-strings. Would he banish Grigori from the family home as a punishment?
Caroline felt both humbled and appalled by the enormity of Grigori’s sacrifice, and ashamed of herself for not recognising it before. She was still trying to find words with which to express her feelings when the train steamed into the station.
They settled into their compartment, and Grigori went in search of tea. Left alone, Caroline reflected on the difference between him and Sacha. She had to accept that Grigori loved her too, but his love was generous. Unlike Sacha, he was prepared to let her go, even to help her to that end. And he asked for nothing in return.
On the thought, she fell into an exhausted sleep, from which she did not awaken until Grigori shook her by the shoulder.
‘Time to alight, Caroline.’
‘Oh...’ She rubbed her eyes, and stared out of the window as the train entered a rural station. Practical considerations, to which she had given no thought before, began to trouble her. ‘Your friends—will they mind our unexpected arrival?’
‘Not in the least,’ he assured her.
Outside, he engaged a droshky and said something to the driver. Snow flew from beneath the hooves of the horses, creating a minor blizzard around them.
Beyond a winter-bare forest they entered an avenue leading to an imposing country house. Grigori’s friends appeared to be very wealthy folk. He did not pay off the driver of the droshky, but asked the man to wait while he and Caroline climbed the steps to the front door.
It was opened to them by an austere-looking woman of early middle age. Her face softened momentarily when she saw Grigori. ‘So it is yourself, Excellency,’ she observed.
‘As you see, Irina. The young lady is Mademoiselle Kearley. She has come to stay for a few days.’ He switched from French to Russian, and Caroline stood by, listening to their exchange without comprehension.
Grigori turned away from the woman, Irina, and said apologetically, ‘Her French is not very good. Caroline, it appears that my friends, the Maximovs, have gone to Moscow for Easter. I shall return via Moscow and see them, and explain the situation to them. In the meantime Irina will look after you.’
‘But—wouldn’t they mind my staying here in their absence?’
‘Not at all. You will be comfortable here while I arrange your passage to England.’ He kissed her lightly on the brow. ‘I shall see you once more before you leave.’
He turned away, back to the waiting droshky. Caroline’s luggage was brought into the house, and Irina, stiff-backed and impassive, led the way to a sumptuously furnished bedchamber. She scarcely spoke to Caroline, but when the latter caught her glance unexpectedly she was astonished, and shaken, to discover that the woman’s eyes held hostility and malice.
Caroline shrugged mentally. No doubt the housekeeper was annoyed at the intrusion of an unexpected guest. Compared to the warring cauldron of different emotions in Caroline’s breast, the woman’s hostility seemed of little account. She wondered what Sacha was doing about her disappearance, and whether she would ever see him again. But that, she reasoned bleakly against the desolation in her heart, was precisely the object of the exercise—never to see him again.
A housemaid knocked, and entered the room with mint-flavoured tea and small, sweet cakes. After she had refreshed herself and unpacked a few of her immediate necessities, Caroline decided to go for a walk. Outside, the air was cold and clear and bracing, the snow crisp beneath her feet.
Caroline had walked only a few yards when she caught sight of movement from out of the corner of her eye, and realised that she was being followed. She walked on a few yards more before she stopped abruptly, and turned to face her pursuer.
It was an old woman dressed in rags. Caroline had not expected to find a beggar on this rural estate, but she fumbled in her reticule for small coins, and waited.
Instead of uttering the usual wretched whine for alms, however, the old woman approached her with an expression of joy. ‘Barinya!’ she cried. ‘Ah, Barinya!’
Caroline knew that the word meant ‘mistress’. Clearly, the poor old woman’s mind was wandering, and she thought she had seen a familiar face.
Before Caroline could stop her, she had grabbed hold of her hands and was kissing them, while tears rolled down the seamed old cheeks.
Gently, Caroline withdrew her hands. ‘I am so sorry,’ she began, speaking slowly and clearly in French. ‘I think you are mistaken.’
The old woman put her finger to her lips in a conspiratorial gesture. Speaking in poor and halting French, she said, ‘Have no
fear for our secret, Barinya. I watched your arrival with the Count, and I was relieved when he left again. I waited, hoping to speak with you.’
The old woman had confused Caroline—and Grigori—with other people. But before Caroline could attempt to explain this to her, she went on, ‘Ah, but you are so young and pretty still, Barinya. It is like a miracle. But, of course, you have not had my troubles.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you have had troubles,’ Caroline agreed helplessly, wondering what to do about this poor, half-crazed old woman.
‘Oh yes, troubles ... My new master took me to Siberia, you understand. He was an officer in the garrison there. Ah me, what a place Siberia is! And then they told us that the serfs had been freed, but my master would not allow me to go, and who was to gainsay him, there in Siberia where he was a king? I tell you, Barinya, Siberia is a cruel, cruel place. It makes a woman old before her time.’
Her gaze clouded, and she gave Caroline a piteous look of bewilderment and doubt. ‘But I am an old woman. All those years No, they must be something I dreamt.’
To humour her, to drive that pitiful look of bewilderment from the old eyes, and also because she was curious about the place to which the Dmitris had been banished, Caroline said, ‘Tell me about Siberia.’
The old woman sighed. ‘Ah, Barinya, it is a place where people are buried before they are dead. I swore to leave it some day. When my new master died I began to walk; sometimes folk pitied me and took me up in carts. And sometimes they thought I was an escaped exile, and flung me in a cell and flogged me until they were satisfied of my innocence. But no matter, no matter. I am here, back again at last. Tell me quickly—is the boy well?’
‘The—boy...?’ Caroline echoed faintly.
‘Our boy, Barinya. You did not bring him with you. I must see him once more before I die.’ Again bewilderment and doubt suddenly clouded the woman’s eyes, and she said uncertainly, ‘But I remember now. You left him. You went away and left him, and he was mine once more for a while. Why have you come back, Barinya?’
With a blinding flash of understanding, Caroline found the old woman’s ramblings making a distorted kind of sense.
This was Anna Barovska, Sacha’s true mother.
Because Caroline’s tell-tale hair had been completely covered by a fur hood, and because Grigori doubtless bore a strong family resemblance to the late Count Antonov, Anna’s poor old mind had telescoped the intervening years so that she now believed she was talking to Euphemia, Caroline’s mother.
Surely, Caroline thought, her mind reeling under the implications of her discovery, surely it was the wildest and most improbable coincidence that they should meet one another here, on the estate of the unknown Maximovas?
‘Anna,’ she asked, ‘why did you come here in the hope of seeing the—the boy?’
‘Where else would I go, Barinya?' Anna shrugged. ‘I knew he would not be here until the summer, but how could I go to St Petersburg?’ Her face puckered. ‘I found the village all gone, with trees growing on the spot where the boy was born. But the servants allowed me to sleep in the barn, and they feed me scraps from the kitchen. They think me a poor, mad old woman. They do not know that I am waiting for the boy.’
Clearly, Anna’s confused old mind had mistaken this estate for Ivaskara, the country estate of the Antonovs. That part of the mystery was explained, but it was still an incredible coincidence that she should have come to this particular place. But perhaps it was not so incredible after all, Caroline argued with herself. Perhaps this estate bordered on Ivaskara, and time and old age had blurred the geographical boundaries in Anna’s mind.
Caroline touched her shoulder. ‘Come, I am taking you to the house.’
The old woman hung back. ‘I fear the Count may return—’
‘You need have no fear. Come with me, Anna.’ When they reached the house Irina looked with horror and distaste at Caroline’s companion. ‘Mademoiselle, I cannot allow the creature to enter! She has been given some sacks in the barn, which is more than adequate. And she is always given such food as cannot be consumed by the servants or animals.’ Tears stung Caroline’s eyes at this account of the indignities suffered by Sacha’s mother. She blinked them away, and addressed Irina in a quiet voice.
‘This woman used to be the much-loved nurse of the Count Antonov. She is old and confused, and believes herself to be at Ivaskara, the Antonov estate. She is clearly in a starving condition, in spite of the scraps you have been allowing her. I must ask you, please, to take her to the kitchens so that she may be fed.’
An odd, unreadable expression flitted across Irina’s face. But she merely said, ‘Very well, Mademoiselle.’ She turned to Anna. ‘Come, old one.’
Anna shrank away, as fearful and timid as a wild creature, and Caroline took her arm. ‘I shall go with you. You need not be afraid.’
Irina shrugged, and led the way to the kitchen quarters. Anna was made to sit down at a table, and a servant girl brought a bowl of broth, together with black bread and cheese. For a moment Anna hesitated before she began to eat ravenously.
Caroline had sat down beside the old woman, to lend her reassurance. She glanced at Irina. ‘I shall write to the Count that his old nurse is here, and I have no doubt at all that he will send for her immediately. In the meantime, he would wish her to be made as comfortable as possible. I think the next necessity is a hot bath, and a change of clothing for her.’
Irina smiled austerely. ‘As you wish, Mademoiselle. I shall also have a room prepared for her.’ She added, with something sly in her voice, ‘The servants will all be kept quite busy for some time, in different parts of the house.’
Caroline frowned as Irina withdrew from the kitchen. What had that last remark meant? And why had Grigori said that Irina scarcely understood French, when the housekeeper was quite fluent in that language?
No doubt, Caroline decided after some thought, Irina liked to appear enigmatic. And it probably suited her to pretend that she had a poor understanding of French; in that way she could learn far more of the household’s secrets than she would otherwise have done. And today she had momentarily forgotten about her facade, that was all.
Then Caroline dismissed the housekeeper from her mind as she glanced at Anna Barovska. Now that the old woman had eaten, the half-crazed look was disappearing from her eyes, and she was staring at Caroline with puzzlement and something like dawning horror.
‘You—you are not that Barinya,’ she whispered. ‘Are you?’
‘No, Anna,’ Caroline said gently. ‘I am not the Barinya. She was my mother. And you need not fear; all my life I have known the secret of—of the boy. I know that he is your son. You and I are the only people left alive who do know it, and the secret is as safe with me as it is with you.’
There was no time for Anna to respond, for a servant girl entered the kitchen to announce that a bath had been prepared for her, and bore her away.
Caroline went to her room, certain that Anna Barovska would take the secret of Sacha’s birth to the grave with her, no matter how old and confused she might become. No one would ever know that he was not entitled to the privileges which he looked upon as his right.
Caroline began to compose, in her mind, the letter she would write to Sacha, informing him of the old woman’s whereabouts. It would have to wait until she herself was safely on her way to England, of course...
Then she decided that there was no harm in writing the letter immediately, and despatching it when it was too late for Sacha to come after her. She sat down at the small escritoire with which the room had been furnished, and pulled open a drawer in search of writing materials.
The embossed heading on the sheet of note-paper which she had pulled from the drawer leapt out at her, and swam before her gaze. What a fool she had been not to realise the truth before!
Of course it was too wildly improbable that Anna Barovska should have mistaken some other estate for Ivaskara. She had, after all, been born there, and she had been called ba
ck to it by the strongest and truest of instincts—the maternal instinct.
This was Ivaskara. The embossed address on the note-paper proclaimed it, and common sense confirmed it.
Why had Grigori lied, and why had Irina tacitly conspired in that lie? Caroline rose angrily. Grigori would be in Moscow by now, but Irina could be—and would be—made to explain.
She pulled at the bell-cord, and waited. No one answered her summons. Then she remembered that obscure remark of Irina’s about the servants being kept busy in a different part of the house. She had decided to go in search of the housekeeper when someone knocked on the door, and she called out a summons to enter.
It was not a servant, but Grigori himself, carrying a hamper. He gave her his slow, sweet smile. ‘My friends, the Maximovs, would not hear of your being left here alone with only the servants, Caroline. They insisted that I return, and bring you to Moscow in the morning. In the meantime I have brought with me a few provisions for our supper. Rather than trouble Irina, I suggest that we wait upon ourselves in your sitting-room.’
As he spoke he had moved aside some velvet drapery, revealing a communicating door between Caroline’s room and the next one. It was only when he flung open the door, and she saw the elegantly furnished sitting-room with its easy chairs and small tables and brightly glowing fire, that she realised she had been given what must be the master suite in the house.
She faced Grigori. ‘Why did you not tell me that you were bringing me to Ivaskara?’ she asked quietly.
For a moment he was very still. Then, with a deliberate gesture, he placed the hamper down on the escritoire, and moved to the outer door.
‘Because,’ he said, ‘you might have guessed my intention, and you would not have come with me.’ Before she realised what he meant to do he had locked the door and slipped the key into his pocket. He turned to face her. He was smiling again, but this time his teeth were bared in an almost vulpine grin.
‘Grigori, why did you bring me here?’ she demanded.
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