They had been driving towards a lonely, flickering light in the enveloping darkness. Sacha explained that it was the home of friends, and that they were to spend the rest of the night there. Caroline thought thankfully of the prospect of sleeping in a bed again, and then her feelings turned to guilt when she thought of the less fortunate women she had left behind in the procession of exiles.
Sacha’s friends were kind, humble people who hurried outside as soon as the troika stopped, to welcome them. Michael had awakened and was querulous.
‘I want my bed in St Petersburg,’ he wailed as he was lifted from the troika by Sacha.
‘How very uncivil to our hosts,’ Sacha admonished. Michael stopped crying. With a yell of unquestioning joy he flung his arms about Sacha’s neck and clung to him. ‘Papasha! Oh, Papasha!’
Their hosts, the Gergovs, welcomed them into their unpretentious little home. As the candlelight fell upon Sacha and Caroline saw him clearly for the first time that night, she drew her breath in sharply.
With his shaven skull, his traditional saffron robes and Torghut boots, he might have stepped out of the pages of history. Just like this his Tartar ancestors must have looked as their Golden Hordes swept down the steppes to conquer Moscow. By sheer coincidence he had chosen as his disguise a costume which instantly proclaimed him to be what he really was—a vital, indomitable smouldering Tartar instead of an effete member of the aristocracy.
He smiled faintly under Caroline’s stare. ‘A feminine costume to match awaits you in the bedroom you will share with Michael. And he will be relieved to know that from tomorrow he may discard his skirts. We shall merge into the countryside as a family of Tartar peasants.’
Michael was quickly fed hot milk and bread, given a cursory wash and put to bed by Caroline.
‘Papasha has come alive again,’ he said with drowsy contentment as she tucked him in. ‘In the morning I shall ask him if we may go and stay at Ivaskara.’ Caroline said nothing, but her thoughts were racing. She returned to the kitchen where their hostess had prepared a meal of salted fish, pickles and cheese. Caroline and Sacha were tactfully left alone while they ate.
‘What are your plans for us?’ she wanted to know. ‘Are we to make for Odessa?’
He shook his head. ‘There are security checks at the conventional ports. We shall go to Arkhangelsk instead, on the White Sea. Vessels exporting hemp and tallow and fish oil sail from there, and we shall obtain passages on one of them. Not the most comfortable way to travel, but it will take us safely to our destination.’
‘And that is England?’
‘England initially, and from there we will journey to Switzerland. I foresaw years ago that it might one day be necessary for me to go into exile, and I decided to make provision for such a future in a neutral country. I used the money which Michael’s mother had left me to buy a farm in Switzerland. We shall go there, and I will farm the land while you take care of the house and of Michael.’
‘As your sister?’ Caroline asked, very deliberately.
He glanced at her, his eyes darkening with suppressed emotion. ‘What else?’ he returned, his voice almost a snarl.
‘That you know very well. Sacha, Anna Barovska is at Ivaskara. Let us make a detour and go there, so that she may tell you in her own words how you were substituted for the dead Antonov baby ’
‘No.’
Caroline’s voice rose passionately. ‘It’s our only chance of happiness, and you refuse to grab it—’
He stood up with a violent movement and looked down at her, his gaze smouldering, his arms folded across his chest. ‘You are asking me to step into a fool’s paradise, and the answer is no. I do not need to talk to Anna Barovska or anyone else, to know that nothing could explain away the fact that I have the same birthmark as the sixth Count Antonov.’
‘There must be an explanation. I have discovered that the sixth Count had no direct heir, but passed the title on to a cousin—’
‘And that simply adds to the proof that the birthmark must be a family trait,’ Sacha said with finality.
Caroline changed her tactics. ‘Even if you do not accept that Anna Barovska is your mother, Sacha, don’t you think that you owe her something? She walked almost all the way from Siberia to see you. Can you deny her the opportunity of seeing you for the last time?’
His arms fell limply to his sides. ‘I am fleeing for my life. I cannot afford sentimental indulgences. I would be recognised by the servants at Ivaskara.’
‘What would that matter?’ Caroline countered. They are cut off from communication with St Petersburg. They can know nothing of the trouble you are in. And by the time the family take up residence there in the summer, you will have left the country. So what harm would it do if the servants recognised you?’
‘I am not going to Ivaskara!’ Sacha said forcefully.
‘Very well.’ Caroline rose. ‘You leave me no choice. I cannot contemplate the kind of life you pictured for me in Switzerland. Since you refuse to go to Ivaskara, I refuse to accompany you and Michael to Switzerland.’
‘Caroline, be sensible! What will become of you unless you go with us?’
‘I neither know nor care,’ she said simply. ‘But unless you change your mind, Sacha, I shall part company with you and Michael when we reach England.’
He muttered an oath under his breath, and began to pace the floor in frustration. After a few minutes’ silence he whirled around.
‘Very well,’ he said tersely. ‘We go to Ivaskara.’
They took their farewell of the Gergovs at dawn the next morning. Caroline understood from Sacha that they would be given shelter and hospitality along the way by other like sympathisers, and Sacha dourly expressed the hope that the futile detour to Ivaskara would not delay them too much.
Caroline said nothing, but her fingers were crossed in her lap. The detour to Ivaskara could not, must not, turn out to be futile...
Towards noon they reached the lodge where Ivaskara’s estate manager lived with his wife and children. ‘I am leaving you and Michael here with the Kolchaks,’ Sacha told Caroline. ‘I want to see Anna Barovska alone, without you putting words into her mouth. Tell Nadya Kolchak whatever story you please, to explain our arrival.’
In her husband’s absence from home on estate business, Nadya Kolchak was too diffident to ask awkward questions. Caroline introduced herself, and muttered something about Sacha having to make a fleeting call at the big house. Michael went off to play with the Kolchak children, who were old friends, while Caroline sipped mint-flavoured tea with her hostess. But her mind was entirely on what she imagined was happening between Sacha and Anna Barovska.
Nadya Kolchak, too, was finding difficulty in carrying on a conversation in her rather limited French. But suddenly she brightened as if she had remembered something with which to fill the silence, and she said, ‘Without a doubt His Excellency has a rendezvous to keep with his cousin at Ivaskara.’
‘His cousin?’ Caroline frowned at her. ‘Which cousin? You can’t mean—Grigori?’
‘But yes, mademoiselle. He sent word to Irina yesterday. He and five brother-officers are travelling, on the Czar’s command, to the Summer Palace to relieve the present guards. M. Grigori wishes to break their journey and spend tonight at Ivaskara.’
Caroline stared at her, and then clapped her hands to her head in a frenzy of foreboding, fear and self-blame. Once again she had led Sacha into a trap.
Nadya Kolchak looked at her in concern. ‘You feel unwell, mademoiselle?’
‘No. No ... Listen—please ask someone to have a horse saddled for me, quickly. And look after Michael while I am gone, will you?’
A few minutes later she was galloping away from the lodge, through the woods and then through the park with its lawns and artificial lakes, towards the house. Already she might be too late; Grigori could have reached the house without passing in sight of the estate manager’s lodge. For all she knew Sacha had blundered straight into the presence of his cous
in and five other armed officers...
But all seemed serene and calm when Caroline dismounted, and ran to the front door. Her frenzied hammering was answered by Irina.
‘Where is—Count Antonov?’ Caroline gasped.
‘In the servants’ quarters, with the old woman,’ Irina’s expression was sullen.
‘Take me to him!’
As Caroline followed the housekeeper along labyrinthian corridors, Irina’s morose voice broke the silence. ‘If I had known, mademoiselle, what trouble the old one would bring me, I would have turned her away from Ivaskara when she first set foot here. It does not profit one to have a kind heart, I find.’
Caroline glanced sharply at her. ‘What trouble?’ Irina shrugged.
‘The old woman is ailing, and His Excellency seems to lay the blame at my door. In here, mademoiselle.’
The housekeeper had opened a door, and simultaneously Sacha’s harsh angry whisper reached them. ‘Get out, damn you!’
He hadn’t glanced up. He was seated beside a bed in which the shrunken figure of Anna Barovska lay, and was holding the old woman’s hand in his. Irina rolled her eyes expressively and began to withdraw, but Caroline slipped inside the room.
‘Sacha—’
He saw her then for the first time. ‘What are you doing here, Caroline? I told you to wait with the Kolchaks!’
‘You must leave here at once, Sacha—’
Caroline’s voice was drowned as Anna uttered a whimper of suffering. The old woman began to speak in Russian, words which Caroline could not understand, but her broken utterances held a note of hopeless despair which needed little translation.
‘She is reliving the hardship of her years in Siberia,’ Sacha explained quietly.
‘She has a fever, of course ’ Caroline began.
‘No, this is no ordinary fever. She is dying. She has been dying for three days, alone and so grossly neglected that one would think she had the plague.’
‘Dying! Oh, Sacha, you can’t be sure. Perhaps a doctor—’
‘It’s too late. She knows it too, and is resigned. She had a lucid moment soon after I arrived, and we talked. I don’t think she will regain consciousness again.’
‘You talked...’ Caroline echoed. ‘She recognised and acknowledged you—?’
‘She recognised me as Count Antonov, whose nurse she once was.’ Sacha’s voice held no inflexion.
There was no time, now, to face up to the implications of the situation. Anna Barovska was dying, and would take to the grave with her the proof of Sacha’s identity. There was no time, even, to accord Anna the pity, the solemn respect and the dignity of last rites which her dying demanded. Too much was at stake.
‘Sacha,’ Caroline said urgently, ‘we must leave here at once! Grigori is on his way to Ivaskara with five brother-officers. They will be armed, and you would be helpless against them. They must not find you here!’
He had listened to her, grim-faced. Then his eyes narrowed in thought. ‘I cannot leave. In the first place, I am committed to staying with Anna until the end.’
‘But that is madness! You cannot help her by staying—’
‘I gave my word, Caroline. I promised I would not allow her to die alone.’
‘She must release you from your promise!’ Caroline touched the old woman’s forehead. It was cold and clammy beneath her touch. ‘Anna—can you hear me?’ Anna muttered something, and her eyes opened. Her unfocusing gaze wavered and then came to rest on Sacha’s face, ignoring Caroline. But the latter said urgently, ‘Anna, it is necessary for us to leave immediately! Your son is in the gravest danger!’
With difficulty, the old woman uttered a few words in Russian. Caroline turned to Sacha. ‘What did she say?’
‘She called me Leonid,’ he answered quietly. ‘She thinks I am her dead husband. And she begged me not to leave her.’
Anna’s eyes closed again. Sacha reached with his free hand for Caroline’s and said, ‘Even if I could break my promise, there is another good reason why I must stay and await Grigori. Irina would certainly tell him that I had been here, and he and his fellow officers would set out to hunt for me if I fled now. That would endanger all three of us.’
‘Your danger is the greatest—’
‘You think so? Do you really think Grigori would spare you and Michael? It’s to his advantage to have my son dead, too, and he would not wish to leave an embarrassing witness like yourself alive. If I stay and face them, it will give you a chance to get away with Michael. You must leave at once.’
She flung a torrent of almost incoherent arguments at him, but he was immovable. In the first place he would not break his promise to Anna, and in the second he was determined to act as a decoy so that Caroline could escape with Michael.
Caroline paced the floor, and found herself at the window. Forcing Sacha to come here had been worse than futile.
Oh God, she prayed silently, if by some miracle he should come through this alive, I shall content myself to live for the rest of my life as his sister.
At that moment, in a gap through the distant trees, she saw the horsemen. She turned to Sacha, and said flatly, ‘They’re coming. Grigori and the others are on their way. They will reach the house in fifteen or twenty minutes. How do you imagine you could possibly get the better of six armed men?’
He ignored the question, and jumped to his feet. ‘You have delayed long enough!’ He pushed Caroline roughly towards the door. ‘Go! Slip out by the back way! Take Michael, and return to the house of the Gergovs. They will help you to reach Arkhangelsk. I shall somehow hold off Grigori and the others until you are safely under way. Go now, quickly!’
Caroline did not argue this time, for in her desperation an idea had struck her. She sped from the room, in search of Irina. The housekeeper, too, had seen the horsemen approaching and was awaiting her beloved Grigori with a smile of anticipation on her face.
‘Irina,’ Caroline said urgently, ‘When the plague first began to sweep through Russia at the beginning of winter, were you given some means by which to warn outsiders of an outbreak?’
Irina looked at her blankly. ‘The plague, mademoiselle?’ Then fear leapt into her eyes. ‘You cannot mean—the old woman—?’
Caroline ignored the question, and repeated roughly, ‘Is there some accepted and instantly recognised means of warning people to keep away?’
‘We were given a special flag to display, mademoiselle.’ Irina passed her tongue over her lips. ‘They said—I did hear tell—that it was no ordinary plague, but the Black Death. And you think—’
‘I think you had better show the plague flag very quickly, Irina. I saw some horsemen coming this way. It would be criminally irresponsible to allow them to approach any closer.’
Her face gaunt and parchment-pale, Irina hurried away. Caroline remained at the window, praying that her ruse would work. She watched the six horsemen galloping towards the house, and then saw them check. One of them, perhaps Grigori, pointed to a window of the house from which the warning flag was obviously fluttering now. Would they be suspicious because it had suddenly been displayed, just as they were approaching the house?
Several minutes went by while the men presumably discussed the matter. Then the horses were turned around, and tension drained from Caroline’s body as she watched them galloping away from Ivaskara.
She returned to Anna’s bedroom. Sacha rose, glowering, at sight of her but she forestalled him. ‘They’ve turned back. We’ll have a brief respite.’ Swiftly, she explained.
‘You’ve done well, Caroline,’ Sacha approved. ‘Once that flag has been raised, it will take days before Ivaskara is declared free of contagion. If I know Grigori he will put as great a distance between himself and danger as possible.’
She drew a chair up to the other side of the bed, and sat down. They faced one another across Anna’s prone body.
‘Is there any change?’ Caroline asked quietly.
‘She is slipping slowly away. I doubt if s
he’ll speak again before the end.’
Caroline reminded herself that she had all but promised God she would be content to be no more than Sacha’s sister if some miracle should save him from Grigori. The miracle had presented itself, but she wondered if she would ever be able to keep her own side of the bargain.
Anna stirred, and her eyelids fluttered open. ‘Sachenka,’ she whispered.
Some deeply-buried memory inside Sacha seemed to rise slowly to the surface. In all probability he had not heard that particular pet name spoken aloud since his very early childhood.
‘I am here,’ he told Anna, his voice thick with emotion.
‘Hold me, Sachenka.’
He placed an arm behind Anna’s shoulder, and lifted her slightly so that her head rested on his breast. Caroline leant forward, and said urgently, ‘Anna, tell him—tell Sachenka the truth—that he is your son!’ For a moment there was silence. Then, as if she were drawing on superhuman reserves of strength, because she knew that she could not, dared not die before making Sacha’s position unassailable, Anna lifted her head and said, ‘No! Not my son. How could he be? A peasant, a nothing? Not my son—Count Antonov...’
‘Would you swear to that on the Bible?’ Caroline challenged.
The eyes of the dying woman met hers unflinchingly. ‘If—need be.’
Caroline looked at her in desperation. Anna would even jeopardise her immortal soul for the sake of her son. And yet, she would somehow have to be made to admit the truth before it was too late. It was useless to try to explain to her that the Antonov title and estates were no longer of any use to Sacha; her poor old mind would never take in all the implications.
‘Anna,” Caroline said relentlessly, ‘you walked all the way from Siberia to see Sacha for the last time. Why, if he isn’t your son?’
‘Caroline, for the love of God!’ Sacha exploded. ‘You’re distressing her needlessly! She wanted to see me, of course, because she had nursed me from babyhood—’
‘I’m sorry,’ Caroline said, ‘truly sorry. But I have to do this.’ She addressed the old woman again. ‘Anna, why did you make the long journey from Siberia to see Sacha? It was a hazardous journey, and you suffered many hardships, did you not?’
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