The Secret Wife

by Gill Paul

  The most recent letter told him that in October she and Olga would be joining their father at Stavka, the army headquarters in Mogilev, where Alexei was visiting the troops. It was her fondest hope that Dmitri might be close enough to ride over for even an hour: ‘To see your face and hear your voice would be bliss, even if we cannot be alone together. I will only be assured that you are well when I can see it in your eyes.’

  Dmitri cursed. Mogilev was several hundred miles south of his current position. He went to ask his commander if there might be some mission that could take him down that way, perhaps delivering a message to the Tsar, but was told that he could not be spared.

  It was unbearable to think of Tatiana coming comparatively close yet not be able to see her. Mogilev was not on the front line but if the Germans made a sudden push forwards it was not unthinkable that their shells might penetrate so far. What was Tsar Nicholas thinking? It proved he had no concept of how strong this German opponent was or he would not have considered bringing his family to the area. Dmitri tortured himself with images of Tatiana being torn apart by a howitzer shell and knew he would not sleep easy till she was in St Petersburg once more.

  Chapter Ten

  Lake Akanabee, New York State, 20th July 2016

  The morning after her arrival at Lake Akanabee, Kitty drove into the nearby town of Indian Lake to buy tools and provisions. A row of purply-red clapboard houses and shops with white eaves and sloping roofs were set along a dusty main street, with skeins of overhead wiring looping from lamppost to lamppost. There were no traffic lights and she hardly saw another car as she crawled along looking for a hardware store.

  The road was lined with fast-food outlets, camping equipment stores and adventure sports shops with racks of canoes outside. She drove straight past ‘Lakeside Country Stores’ first time and it was only on the way back that she noticed their sign advertised hardware, plumbing and decorating materials as well as camping gear. She pulled into the yard and dug out the list she’d scribbled. She needed a battery-powered chainsaw, a drill, woodworking tools, a spade, and a brush and shovel; she also needed a gas cooking stove, an oil lamp, and some cups, plates and cutlery. The man behind the counter piled up her purchases, obviously delighted to make such a substantial sale.

  ‘Do you have a sliding bevel?’ she asked, checking against her list.

  ‘You sure you need one?’ he asked, an eyebrow raised in a manner that indicated he didn’t think women knew about such things.

  ‘Yes. I have some steps to rebuild and need to get the angles right.’

  He shrugged and began searching the shelves. ‘Just arrived?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Your husband with you?’

  Kitty bristled. Why did men in DIY stores always assume there must be a man behind the scenes? ‘Nope,’ she said shortly.

  He produced a bevel and she unfastened then retightened the wing nut before adding it to her pile.

  ‘You’ve come at the right time,’ the storekeeper said. ‘We’re nearing the end of bug season. A couple of weeks ago you would have had to fight your way through swarms of them.’

  ‘I did get a couple of bites last night,’ she admitted, scratching her neck. ‘Is there anything you recommend?’

  ‘Yup,’ he said, and added a large bottle of insect repellent to the pile. ‘Round here we wear this twenty-four seven, April to October.’

  The chip and pin machine wasn’t working so she had to sign for her purchases.

  ‘Is there a supermarket nearby?’ she asked.

  He directed her to one further down the main street. ‘You can’t miss it.’

  ‘How about a jeweller’s?’ She fingered the pendant she’d found, which she’d slipped inside her purse. It would be interesting to get it valued.

  ‘Lake George is the nearest jewellery store, but my brother-in-law used to work in the trade and he still keeps a stock of gift items. You’ll find him down Bennett Road.’ He wrote the name and address for her on the back of his business card. ‘Say Chad sent you.’

  Kitty went to the supermarket first and stocked up on the type of tinned foods that could be heated over a camping stove, as well as crackers, cheese, apples, coffee and a few bottles of wine. The car was full to bursting as she drove down to Bennett Road, which was easy to find as there were hardly any other cross streets off the main road. When she rang the bell, two Great Danes came bounding across the yard, followed by a bearded man in a disconcertingly bright cerise shirt.

  ‘Hello,’ she began. ‘Chad said you used to work in the jewellery trade. I was hoping to get a valuation on a pendant.’ She took it from her purse and handed it to him.

  He had a quick look. ‘Sure. Come inside.’

  She took a seat at his kitchen table, which was covered in a floral waxed tablecloth. The man fetched a jeweller’s loupe from another room and held the pendant up to the light of the window before giving a low whistle. Kitty waited. He examined the setting of the stones then turned it over and squinted at the back. There was silence while he concentrated, then finally he turned to Kitty.

  ‘This is Fabergé! It’s one of the most beautiful pieces I’ve come across.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’ Kitty was not a jewellery expert but Fabergé was probably the world’s best-known luxury brand. Her grandfather must have been wealthy; or perhaps it was a family heirloom.

  ‘If I’m not mistaken, it’s rose gold set with a sapphire, a ruby and imperial topaz. The engraving on the back is a maker’s mark. It’s a little worn but it looks as though the workmaster’s initials were H.W.’

  ‘Can I see?’ Kitty peered through the loupe but couldn’t make out anything that looked like either ‘Fabergé’ or ‘H.W.’

  ‘It’s the Cyrillic alphabet,’ the man told her. He produced an iPad from a drawer and typed in a password then looked something up. ‘As I thought … it’s Henrik Wigström, who was their head workmaster from 1903 through to 1918.’

  ‘Was he Russian?’ Kitty asked, wondering if Dmitri had brought the object over from Russia with him.

  ‘Wigström was from Finland but he worked at the company headquarters in St Petersburg, under the great Michael Perchin, the most famous Fabergé workmaster.’ He glanced up to see if she recognised the name, but she looked blank. ‘The company was so popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that they used independent artisans to make up orders based on sketches supplied to them by Fabergé’s designers. You’ll have heard of the famous Fabergé eggs …’

  ‘Erm … I think so.’

  He seemed disappointed by Kitty’s ignorance. ‘They were extraordinary jewelled creations that the royal family gave each other for Easter, with hidden surprises inside. Only sixty-five of them were ever made and recent prices at auction have reached close to ten million dollars each.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ Kitty was stunned. ‘For an Easter egg?’

  The jeweller laughed. ‘Yeah, well, the one Tsar Nicholas gave to his mother in 1913 was made of platinum and gold, studded with’ – he read from his iPad – ‘1,660 diamonds on the outside and 1,378 in the little basket inside. Not your average Easter gift, I agree, but they were by far the richest family in the world. It was an absolute monarchy for three hundred years and the Russian people were serfs, so all the country’s wealth flowed into the family coffers.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Does that mean my pendant is valuable?’

  ‘It’s only small but I reckon it would fetch several thousand dollars at auction. Do you want to sell?’ He weighed the object in the palm of his hand. ‘I still have contacts in the business.’

  ‘Sorry, no. It’s a family piece. I just wondered …’ He looked disappointed so she continued: ‘Perhaps you could sell me a gold chain to wear it on?’

  He padded off and came back with a small tray of neck chains. She chose one with fine links that complemented the filigree setting of the stones and paid cash for it.

  ‘If you change your mind about sell
ing, you know where I am,’ he called after her.

  As she drove back towards Lake Akanabee, with the pendant resting on her breastbone, Kitty was overcome with curiosity about her great-grandfather. If he could afford a Fabergé jewelled pendant, he must have been rather a good writer. Why had she never heard of him?

  A mile or so before the track to her cabin, she passed a vacation park with a coffee shop and reversed to have a look. On the sign it read ‘Free Wi-Fi’, so she parked and went inside with her laptop tucked under her arm.

  ‘Hi, can I be cheeky and ask for your wi-fi code and some electricity?’ she began, explaining that her cabin, a few miles up the road, had no electric hook-up.

  ‘Be my guest,’ the lad serving the coffee said, pointing to a socket where she could charge her laptop. His name was Jeff, he told her, pouring her a latte, and he worked there for the summer then went back to college in the fall. She explained about her inheritance and Jeff was amazed when he heard which cabin she was renovating. ‘I thought that was a goner. You must know what you’re doing.’

  ‘I’ve never taken on a challenge quite like this,’ she told him, ‘but I’ll work it out as I go along.’

  When her laptop had charged sufficiently, she opened her browser and googled the name Dmitri Yakovlevich. First of all she found biographies for a Russian Arctic explorer, a Jewish composer and a Constructivist artist, but none of their dates seemed to fit. She added ‘writer’ after her search term and up came a short Wikipedia page about a man who had been born in 1891 in Russia and had written five novels: Interminable Love (1924), Exile (1927), The Boot That Kicked (1933), In the Pale Light of Dawn (1944) and Toward the Sunset (1947). There was nothing else about him, not even a date of death.

  Next she went to the site of a second-hand book dealer and entered Dmitri’s name in the search facility. The only book of his in stock was Interminable Love. Kitty ordered a copy, paying for it with her credit card, and Jeff said she could have it delivered to their office, since the local mailman was unlikely to trek down to her cabin.

  Next she hovered over the icon for opening her email account. It was tempting to click on it and see what mails came in. She had texted her editor at the newspaper to say she’d been called away on family business, so she wasn’t expecting any work emails. There would almost certainly be some mails from Tom – either pathetic attempts at self-justification or perhaps he would be asking for a divorce. The thought made her shudder. She was sure Amber would have been in touch as well, but if she contacted Amber she would have to discuss Tom’s infidelity and that would mean thinking about it and she simply did not feel ready. Out there in the wilderness, on a separate continent, she had already begun to feel like the independent, capable person she used to be before she got married. To get back in touch with Amber and Tom – with anyone from her old life – would make her feel sad and anxious and needy.

  So many questions would have to be considered. If Tom wanted a divorce, what would happen about money? She couldn’t live on the pittance she earned writing theatre reviews and the money she’d made doing up properties had been swallowed up by the house they lived in now, but her pride wouldn’t let her take a penny from Tom. They’d have to sell the house and she’d need to get a proper job doing God knows what. But if he wanted to save the marriage, would she ever be able to trust him again? Would she be able to make love without thinking about ‘Karren’ with the double ‘r’? Memories of the naked woman on Tom’s phone made Kitty’s gut clench and tears welled up in her eyes. She took her last sip of coffee.

  Let him wait. Maybe it would give him time to get Karren out of his system. Meanwhile she would fix up her cabin. When she had woken that morning, she’d gone for an early swim in the shimmering crystal water, listening to the noisy chatter of birds disputing their territory. There was dense green forest, sparkly blue water and hazy blue sky for as far as the eye could see. The sense of being part of this awe-inspiring landscape brought a kind of clarity in the midst of her emotional turmoil. After one night there, she was already falling in love with Lake Akanabee.

  Chapter Eleven

  Eastern Front, Lithuania, 5th March 1916

  Time weighed heavy for Dmitri during the winter of 1915 to 1916 and made him yearn for Tatiana more than ever. Both the Russian and German armies had dug into the earth, trying to find shelter from the brutal blizzards that obscured their vision two feet ahead and made it impossible to venture out of the trench for fear of accidentally wandering into no man’s land. Dmitri still rode out on reconnaissance missions but it was clear that cavalry would play little part in the next stage of the war so he also took lessons on how to position the big guns that were just beginning to arrive from Russian armaments factories, guessing that this would be the only way to drive the Germans back from the territories they had captured in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus.

  He got through the days by dreaming of the life he and Tatiana would lead together once the war was over. Would they stay in St Petersburg in a wing of one of the palaces? He would prefer to be in the country; he was more at home in wide open spaces. Still it didn’t feel real; he couldn’t allow himself to believe they would be married until her parents had given consent. In truth they had not known each other long. They’d had less than three months together before he came back to the front, and he could sense Tatiana had changed while he was away. Before she had been light-hearted and almost carefree; now she had grown up. She said as much in her letters:

  Malama sweetheart,

  Can you believe it is fifteen months since that December day when I waved farewell to you outside the Catherine Palace? I was a mere child in those innocent weeks at the start of the war, with no idea of what I would have to confront. Now I often assist as surgeons amputate men’s limbs; I dress stinking gangrenous wounds; I give injections and distribute medicines; I comfort those who are dying; and yesterday I was even able to calm a man who had some kind of fit of terror. He was staring straight ahead, rocking backwards and forwards and uttering a moaning sound that disturbed the other patients. At first I just talked in a low voice but he didn’t seem to hear or see me. Finally I began to sing, upon which he stopped moaning to listen, and at last he fell asleep for the first time since he arrived on our ward. I think my singing must be particularly soporific!

  The patients give me a little insight into the life you are leading at the front and I am terrified on your behalf. I know that you are holding the line somewhere in Lithuania and are not currently in battle, but that shells pound the earth and snipers watch for any careless movement. Malama, I beg you to be extra-cautious and avoid any heroics. Souvenez vous que vous tenez mon coeur entre vos mains.

  Tatiana’s endearments still amazed Dmitri after all this time. He was loved by his mother and sisters – perhaps his father even loved him in his own strict, old-fashioned way – but they were family and were supposed to love him; Tatiana had chosen to love him and he couldn’t understand why. What was special about him? He could list a thousand reasons why he loved her but they only made him feel even more unworthy: her gentle nature, her quiet dignity … he loved the way her eyes sometimes seemed to be gazing from a place deep inside her and focusing somewhere far in the distance, hinting at the intelligence of her inner world.

  He glowed with pride when she sent him a newspaper clipping describing Olga and her as ‘The White Sisters of the War’. As well as nursing, Tatiana told him she headed a committee that helped to provide aid for the refugees who had poured into Russia from German-occupied territories, and she travelled the country inspecting facilities. Dmitri knew she was being modest in her letters when she wrote that she felt shy at committee meetings and wanted to dive under the table. He heard from other soldiers that Tatiana’s was by far the most popular of the picture postcards of the grand duchesses being sold to help fund the war, and surely that spoke volumes about her achievements as well as her beauty.

  Her mother, on the other hand, was increasingly criticised in the pre
ss. ‘Rumours Spread that Rasputin urges Alexandra to Broker Peace with Germany’, ran one headline that reached them at the front, followed by: ‘A Third Government Minister Sacked by the Tsarina for Daring to Criticise her “Close Friend”’; ‘Tsarina will not Believe Stories of Rasputin’s Corruption’. Perhaps it was inevitable that the populace would be suspicious of Alexandra, as she had been born in Germany and still had family there; certainly it had been short-sighted of Nicholas to leave her in charge when he went to take command of the troops, allowing the disreputable Siberian to stay by her side.

  One day Dmitri overheard a group of soldiers speculating that Alexandra was having an affair with Rasputin. This was treacherous talk and he could have disciplined them for it but he knew such sentiments were widespread and decided to pretend he hadn’t heard. He couldn’t discipline every soldier who thought that way, although he didn’t believe the rumour for one second. Alexandra was too proper, too insistent on recognition of her exalted position to entertain such a scruffy fellow in her bed. She seemed to him rather a cold mother, although Tatiana always sang her praises.

  He wondered if Alexandra ever read the newspapers? Certainly Tatiana could not, because she seemed oblivious to the criticisms of Rasputin’s relationship with her mother. Since their argument she was cautious when she mentioned him in letters and there was no more ‘Uncle Grigory’. Still she maintained that Rasputin increased her understanding of God and Dmitri felt sure that her rather eccentric views on spirits almost certainly came from him. One day she wrote of a woman who came to the hospital to read soldiers’ palms:

  She was a hearty type, like any farmer’s wife, but there was a mysterious look in her eyes when she communed with the spirits. Every soldier she spoke with seemed convinced of her powers, so I asked her to read my palm. She wondered if I had a question to which I sought the answer, so I asked if she could see when I would marry. She held my right hand and pored over it for some time, tracing the lines with the tip of her finger, then she said that my love line is strong and I will marry someone I love truly. She hesitated before adding that the line of fate is interrupted, making a sharp turn off to the right, and that this means I will pull off something extraordinary in the future. She would tell me no more, but I am greatly cheered that we will marry, Dmitri, because it must mean you will survive this war.