The Red Gods

by Christopher Nicole

  The Red Gods

  Christopher Nicole

  © Christopher Nicole 1996

  Christopher Nicole has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1996 by Severn House

  This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Part One - The Triumph

  Chapter 1 - Return To Fury

  Chapter 2 - The General

  Chapter 3 - The Reconnaissance

  Chapter 4 - The End of a Dynasty

  Part Two - The Victor

  Chapter 5 - The Tentacles of Fate

  Chapter 6 - The Lovers

  Chapter 7 - The Gods Reach Out

  Chapter 8 - But Even Gods Die

  Chapter 9 - The Gods at Play

  Part Three - The Tragedy

  Chapter 10 - The End of a Dream

  Chapter 11 - The Cruel Gods

  Chapter 12 - The Quest

  Chapter 13 - Escape From the Gods

  Epilogue

  Extract from The Seeds of Power by Christopher Nicole

  Part One - The Triumph

  ‘When civil fury first grew high,

  And men fell out they knew not why.’

  Samuel Butler Hudibras

  Chapter 1 - Return To Fury

  Joseph Cromb walked up the stairs to his family’s flat in Sloane Square. It was odd, he thought, how everything was as he remembered it and yet nothing was ever going to be the same again. In this spring of 1919 Joe Cromb was twenty-one. He was tall, but somewhat thin, his features aquiline, a strange amalgam of the big, handsome Bolugayevski nose and mouth and chin he had inherited from his mother, chiselled into crispness by his inheritance from his real father, Joseph Fine. A man he had never known.

  He reached the first floor, rang the bell. The door was opened by a thirteen-year-old girl. For several seconds the pair stared at each other, then Jennie Cromb gave a screech of delight and hurled herself into his arms. “Joe! Oh, Joe! What on earth are you doing here?” Then she held her half-brother at arm’s length, the better to look at him. “You’re not in uniform!”

  When last she had seen him he had been wearing the khaki of a British army officer. “I’ve been demobbed.”

  “So soon? The papers said it was going to take months.”

  “It will. But they had to start somewhere. Aren’t you going to let me in?”

  “Oh, Joe.” Jennie stepped aside to allow her half-brother into the drawing room, and closed the door behind him, while she watched him gazing at the man who had appeared in the doorway from the pantry. “This is Harmon,” she explained. “Daddy’s butler. He took the place of...” she bit her lip.

  “Hello, Harmon,” Joseph said.

  Harmon hurried forward to relieve his employer’s stepson of his bag. “Welcome home, sir.”

  “My pleasure.” Joe turned to Jennie. He didn’t want to think of Morgan, the man Harmon had replaced. But he had come here to do that, to think of all the tumultuous and tragic events of the past few years. “I guess Dad’s at the office.”

  “No,” Jennie said. “Dad doesn’t spend too much time at the office, nowadays.”

  “Joe!” Joseph turned sharply, and swallowed. It was two years since he had stood in this room and bade farewell to his mother, stepfather and Jennie, before going off to France. He remembered a tall, handsome, fair-haired man, with square shoulders and strong, Bolugayevski features, just as he remembered an almost equally tall, red-haired, beautiful woman, coming forward to kiss him; his mother and stepfather had been cousins. Now he gazed at a white-haired wreck, whose shoulders were bowed and whose movements were hesitant. Duncan Cromb was only forty-four and he was a very old man. While Patricia...but at least, Joseph thought, she perhaps lived on in the person of her daughter, already the image of her mother, as she hurried forward, loose auburn hair floating behind her, to hold her father’s arm. “Good to see you, boy. Good to see you,” Duncan Cromb said. “As they say, only the good die young.” Then he realised what he had said, and tears sprang to his eyes.

  “Papa needs a drink,” Jennie said. “You’ll join him, Joe?”

  Joseph hesitated; he would have said part of his stepfather’s problem was drink. But he saw the desperation in Jennie’s eyes, and nodded. “I’d enjoy that.”

  “Harmon!” Jennie commanded, and the butler hurried to the sideboard. Thirteen years old, Joseph thought, and forced to run this household as if she were at least ten years older. “Come and sit beside Father, Joe,” Jennie ordered, guiding Duncan to a settee. “Joseph has been demobbed,” Jennie explained. “Well, you can see that, can’t you, Father?”

  Duncan Cromb looked at his stepson. “You should’ve stayed in the Army,” he remarked. “There’s not much doing outside. But I imagine we can get you a job with the Line, if you’re in the mood for a desk.”

  Cromb Lines’ ships had played an important part in winning the war for the Allies. But that was Cromb business, and he was only a Cromb by adoption. “I have something to do,” he said.

  Harmon had produced a bottle of champagne. He might not be Russian, but he knew this was basically a Russian family, and there was a reunion to be celebrated. He had also, Joseph noted, produced three glasses, which he proceeded to fill. Jennie raised hers. “I drink to us,” she said, meeting her half-brother’s disapproving gaze, and drinking deeply. She might be an American citizen by virtue of her father, an English young lady by virtue of her grandmother, and she might only have been to Russia once, but she was a Bolugayevska to the toes of her white cotton stockings.

  “Absolutely,” Joseph agreed.

  Duncan Cromb also drank; he drained his glass, which Harmon immediately refilled. “There’s nothing left to do,” he said. “Unless you mean to join your Uncle Alexei in the Crimea. Fighting the Reds.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean to do, sir,” Joseph said.

  Duncan raised his head. “The war is over, boy,” he said, with a touch of long-forgotten energy. “They’re saying ten million men died. That’s enough. Now it’s over. If a few fanatics like your uncle want to keep on shooting people in the name of a dead tsar that’s their business. It’s not your business.”

  “And Mother?” Joseph continued to speak quietly.

  “Your mother is dead.”

  “How did she die, sir?”

  Duncan Cromb sighed. “She was killed by the Reds when they overran Bolugayen.”

  “Does that make sense to you, sir?” Joseph demanded. “My mother, as you know, was a Red herself. She was sentenced to death for terrorism. It was after her sentence was commuted to exile in Siberia that she met my father. She was a friend of Lenin’s, sir. And you believe she was killed by her own people?”

  “I do not know,” Duncan muttered. “I only know what I was told.”

  “And you have not sought to find out,” Joseph accused.

  “Joe!” Jennie tugged his arm. “Father really isn’t very well...”

  Duncan Cromb held out his glass for a refill. “So, you want to go to Russia. To find out how your mother died? Or to avenge her?”

  “I mean to do both,” Joseph said, quietly.

  “You shall have whatever money you need,” Duncan Cromb said over dinner. “And I will arrange passage for you to Sevastopol.” He sighed, while Jennie watched him with anxious eyes. “You despise me, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do not, sir,” Joseph protested.

  But his tone had not been convincing. “I let Patricia return to Russia in 1917,” Duncan said. “None of us knew how bad it was then, and we both wanted to get my mother out...and the rest of the family, if they would come. Patricia thought it would
be nothing more than an adventure. You know how your mother was, Joseph.”

  “Yes, sir, I know,” Joseph said.

  “I should have gone with her,” Duncan said. “But America had just entered the war, and all our ships were needed to get the boys over here. I had a mammoth task on my hands and we had no idea how bad things were. Oh, we knew the Tsar had abdicated, and that he and his family were virtually imprisoned, but that fellow Kerensky seemed to be on the right side. He said he’d keep Russia in the war, he’d protect the Romanovs and get them out of Russia, and he’d keep the Bolsheviks under control.”

  “And he failed on all three counts,” Joseph said. “Whatever happened to him?”

  “Oh, he escaped Russia. I believe he’s in Paris now. Maybe he hopes to get something from the Peace Conference.”

  “Yes,” Joseph said grimly. “While Mother was murdered by the people she had spent her life supporting. With your permission, sir, I’ll stay here until my passage is ready.”

  “My dear boy,” Duncan protested. “This is your home.” He was actually as fond of the young man as if he were his own son. He had been in love with Patricia Bolugayevska long before she had got caught up in anarchy and Bolshevism and been sent to Siberia. He had supposed he had lost her forever, then had been unable to believe his fortune, or hers, when she had so mysteriously turned up in London in 1898, an escaped exile. To accomplish so much she had had to form some very unlikely relationships with people like Vladimir Ulianov — who now called himself Nicolai Lenin — and his wife, who had been exiled with her, and men like Joseph Fine, another exile, and she had had a son by Fine. He had willingly adopted the boy and brought him up as his own.

  But he could also understand that young Joe had never really belonged to the glittering circle of the Bolugayevskis, or their American cousins, the Crombs. For one thing, Joe was half-Jewish. Russian princes and counts did not recognise Jews, even of their own blood, and certainly when they were illegitimate. Young Joe’s whole existence had been centred on and around his mother. Duncan could not blame him for being at once angry and vengeful, that so beautiful, bubbling a life could have ended so early, and in such a tragic fashion.

  But he also knew that the boy, however experienced a soldier he might have become after two years in France, was taking on nothing but grief, hardship and peril in seeking to avenge his mother. Yet there was no adequate way he could prevent him: he felt too guilty himself, both that she had died on a mission to rescue his mother — that the Countess Anna Bolugayevska had also happened to be Patricia’s aunt was irrelevant — and that he had never done anything about it. He was too good at seeing difficulties. Joseph saw only the shining light of knight errant hood.

  “You really must not be hard on Father,” Jennie remonstrated, Duncan having retired.

  “Has it been very bad?”

  “He was very upset when the news arrived.” She gave a little shiver. “I think what got him worst was the fact that Mom had been dead for nearly a year before he knew. During that time he had been sending wires in every direction, trying to find out what had happened to her. When the news finally arrived, he just kind of collapsed.” She had been no more than twelve.

  “But you coped,” Joseph said.

  “Well...I wired Uncle Charlie.” Charles Cromb, Anna Cromb’s eldest son, was president of Cromb Lines from its home base in Boston. “He came over himself, with Aunt Celia. Well, as you can imagine, he didn’t know what had happened to the Princess.” Priscilla Cromb, the Princess Bolugayevska, was actually the daughter of Charles and Duncan Cromb’s late sister; she also had married her cousin, Prince Alexei Bolugayevski.

  “And what has happened to Priscilla? Was she murdered too?”

  “No, she survived the sack of Bolugayen. Along with that friend of Mom’s, Sonia Cohen.”

  “Don’t you mean Sonia Bolugayevska?” Joseph asked.

  It was a long time since he had met the Princess Sonia Bolugayevska, but when he had, she had been married to his Uncle Alexei — Priscilla at that time still being a schoolgirl in Boston — and he had liked her. Besides, like him, she was Jewish. Which had led to her downfall.

  “Well, I guess so,” Jennie conceded. “But after the divorce and everything...anyway, she’s disappeared. We believe she’s dead too, now. But the Princess is living in Sevastopol. You know Uncle Alexei is a general in the White Army?”

  Joseph nodded. “It is to him I am going.”

  “To start fighting all over again. I should hate it if you were to be killed, Joe.”

  “I don’t intend to be. But I’m worried about you. Living here, all by yourself...”

  “I’m not by myself. I have Father.”

  “That’s what worries me most. Why didn’t Uncle Charlie do something about that?”

  “He thought of taking Dad back to the States, but decided against it. That would have been kind of a condemnation, don’t you see? Dad may be shattered, he may drink too much, but he can still hold down the London Office.”

  “And they were happy you should stay here? You do go to school?”

  “Of course I do. And we have a very efficient housekeeper. She really looks after everything. All I have to do is keep Dad company from time to time.”

  “Like every evening.”

  “Well...” she shrugged, and smiled. “I don’t have all that much else to do.” She held his hand. “I wish I could come with you to Russia. But as I can’t...do hurry back, Joe, dearest.”

  The last time he had landed at Sevastopol, Joseph remembered, had been in the autumn of 1911, just eight years ago — it had been an entirely different world. Then Sevastopol had been a bustling seaport, filled with commercial ships, several flying the Bolugayevski house flag; now the harbour was less than half full and what ships there were were unloading military supplies — and there was no evidence that anyone named Bolugayevski had ever been here. Then, because he had been travelling with his parents who were known to be Bolugayevski relations, they had been ushered off the ship with not a customs or immigration official in sight; now he had to join a long line of men, mainly journalists, to have his papers scrutinised by armed and disrespectful officials. Then he had been taken straight from the ship to the Bolugayevski carriage on the train to Kharkov; now there was no seat on the train at all, it was packed with soldiers. He had been struck by the resort-like air of the Crimean city, its cleanliness and efficiency; now he was equally struck at the evidence of neglect, the dirty gutters and littered streets, the peeling paint on the building. Some of the people were still well-dressed but most were shabby and looked hungry.

  And eight years ago he had been disappointed not to be able to visit the Battlefield of Balaclava, where his immortal grandfather Colin MacLain, wounded and taken prisoner in the Charge of the Light Brigade, had first set down his roots in Russia by marrying stepgrandmother the Countess Dagmar Bolugayevska. Now he only wanted to be out of the Crimea as rapidly as possible. “You will have to have the necessary permits,” the stationmaster told him, “before you can travel north to the army. This will take time. But...” he peered at Joseph’s passport, then raised his head to look at the young man, “It says here your mother was the Countess Patricia Bolugayevska. Was she not the sister of General Prince Bolugayevski?”

  “My uncle is the man I am trying to join.”

  “Well, his wife is resident in the city with her children.” He peered at Joseph. “She may be able to help you. Do you not know her?”

  Joseph had never met Priscilla Cromb. Although as the daughter of his stepfather’s dead sister, and as the cousin of his mother, she was some sort of cousin of his as well, their paths had never crossed. But he was well aware that she had still been a Boston schoolgirl when Prince Alexei had met her and fallen in love with her, and, following his divorce from his first wife Sonia, had married her notwithstanding that he was old enough to have been her father. She had thus been elevated to a height she could never have supposed possible. Joseph did not r
eckon that the fact that her estate had been overrun by Red revolutionaries, and she herself driven into an exile she would certainly believe was temporary, would have done much to temper to arrogance she would have accumulated as one of the premier princesses in Tsarist Russia. He had not even intended to call upon her, assuming that he would be immediately whisked away to the front. But if she could perhaps help him to achieve that aim... “I will give you her address,” the stationmaster offered.

  The Princess Bolugayevska lived in an apartment overlooking the harbour. Joseph was admitted by a suspicious-looking concierge, who insisted upon accompanying him up the stairs to the first floor and herself knocking on the door. A few minutes later it was opened by a stern-looking, middle-aged woman whose Tatar origins were displayed by her high cheek-bones and strong chin. “Grishka!” Joseph exclaimed.

  The maidservant, who had been in the employ of the Bolugayevskis before he had been born, blinked at him. But he had lived on Bolugayen for some weeks and she had a good memory. “Mr Joseph?” she queried, incredulously.

  “You know this man?” the concierge inquired.

  “Oh, yes,” Grishka said.

  “Says he has business with the Princess,” the concierge growled, and tramped back down the stairs.

  “Aren’t you going to allow me in, Grishka?” Joseph asked.

  For reply, Grishka leaned forward to take the suitcase from his grasp, then stood back.

  “What is it, Grishka?” asked a voice. Joseph gulped, and instinctively stood to attention as the Princess Bolugayevska appeared. He remembered his mother telling him that she was the most beautiful in a family of beauties. In fact, she closely resembled the most famous female Bolugayevska of them all, the Countess Anna. He had been fifteen then, Joseph recalled, and although he had met Grandma Anna and been impressed by her, and even more terrified of her, as she had then been in her seventies he had not really related her to beauty, although the portraits of her scattered about the house had certainly been spectacular. Now he gazed at one of those portraits come to life.