The trip from Beloostrov across Finland to Turku took two full days, and by the time they arrived in Turku late at night, Zoya felt as though she would be numb for the rest of her life. Her whole body seemed to be frozen into the position she'd been in, in the troika. Her grandmother could barely walk when they helped her out, and even Feodor seemed exhausted. They found a small inn where they took two rooms, and in the morning Feodor sold the horses for a ridiculously small sum before the three of them boarded an icebreaker to Stockholm. It was another endless day on the ship, moving slowly amidst the ice between Finland and Sweden, and the three companions barely spoke, all were lost in their own thoughts.
They arrived in Stockholm late in the afternoon, just in time to catch the night train to Malmo. And once in Malmo, they took the railroad ferry the next morning to Copenhagen, and there they went to a small hotel, and Evgenia called the Tsar's aunt's friends, but they were away, and the next morning they left Copenhagen for France on a British steamer. Zoya seemed to be almost in a daze by then, and she was desperately seasick the first day on the ship. Her grandmother thought she looked feverish, but it was difficult to tell if she was ill or just exhausted. They were all exhausted after the six-day journey. It had been grueling to travel on day after day, by ship and by train and by troika. Even Feodor looked as though he had aged ten years in the single week, but they were also suffering from the sorrow of leaving their homeland. They spoke little, rarely slept, and none of them ever seemed to be hungry. It was as though their very bodies were filled with grief, and they couldn't have borne any more. They had left everything behind them, a way of life, a thousand years of history, the people they had loved and lost. It was almost too much to bear, and Zoya found herself hoping the ship would be sunk by German U-boats on the way to France. Far from Russia, it was the Great War and not the revolution people were afraid of. But Zoya found herself thinking that dying at anyone's hands would have been easier than facing a new world she didn't want to know. She thought of how often she and Marie had talked dreamily about going to Paris. It had all sounded so romantic then, so exciting with all the elegant women and the beautiful gowns they would buy. Now there would be none of that. They had only the small amount of money her grandmother had borrowed from the Tsar before they left, and the jewels sewn into their clothing. Evgenia had already made up her mind to sell as many of them as she had to once they reached Paris. And they had to think of Feodor as well. He had promised to look for work as soon as they arrived, he had vowed to do everything he could to help them, but he had refused to let them make the trip alone. He had nothing left in Russia anymore, and he couldn't imagine a life without serving the Ossupovs. It would have killed him if they'd left him. He was as ill as Zoya was on the trip to France, he had never been on a boat before, and he was terrified as he clung miserably to the railing.
“What are we going to do, Grandmama?” Zoya sat watching her grandmother unhappily in the tiny cabin. Gone the grandeur of the imperial yachts, the palaces, the princes, the parties. Gone the warmth and love of family. Gone the people they had known, their way of life, even the security of knowing they would have enough to eat the next day. All they had were their lives, and Zoya wasn't even sure she wanted hers. All she wanted was to go home to Mashka, and Russia, to turn back the clock and return to a lost world, full of people who no longer existed. Her father, her brother, her mother. And Zoya wondered, as they pressed on, if Marie was getting better.
“We will have to find a small apartment,” her grandmother answered her. She hadn't been to Paris in years. She had traveled very little since the death of her husband. But now she had Zoya to think about. She had to be strong for the girl's sake. She had to see her safely settled. She prayed that she would live long enough to take care of her, but it wasn't Evgenia who seemed in danger now, but Zoya. The girl looked very ill, and her eyes seemed larger than ever in her pale face, and when the old Countess touched her, she knew instantly that she was blazing with fever. She began coughing late that night, and the Countess began to fear pneumonia. By the next morning, her cough was even worse, and as they boarded the train to Paris in Boulogne, it became obvious what she was suffering from. The spots began appearing on her face and hands, and when her grandmother forced her to pull up her wool shirt, it was clear to both of them that Zoya had the measles. Evgenia was less than pleased, and now even more anxious to get the girl to Paris. It was a ten-hour trip to Paris by train, and they arrived just before midnight. There were half a dozen taxis outside the Gare du Nord, and Evgenia sent Feodor in search of one, as she helped Zoya down from the train. She could hardly walk as she leaned heavily against her grandmother, her face suddenly as flushed as her bright red hair. She was coughing horribly and almost incoherent with fever.
“I want to go home,” she whimpered as she clutched the little dog. Sava was bigger now, and Zoya could hardly carry her as she followed her grandmother out of the station.
“We're going home, my love. Feodor is finding us a taxi.”
But Zoya only began to cry, the woman she had become seeming to melt away, as she looked up at her grandmother like a lost child. “I want to go back to Tsarskoe Selo.”
“Never mind, Zoya … never mind. …” Feodor was signaling frantically as he juggled their bags, and Evgenia gently led Zoya from the station and helped her into the ancient taxi. Everything they still owned was piled in beside Feodor and the driver, as Zoya and her grandmother slid onto the backseat with tired sighs. They had no reservations anywhere, no idea where to go, and the driver was deaf and ancient. All the young men had long since gone to war, only the old and the infirm were still in Paris.
“Alors? … On y va, mesdames?” He smiled into the backseat and looked surprised when he saw that Zoya was crying. “Elle est malade?” Is she sick? Evgenia was quick to reassure him that she was only very tired, as they all were. “Where have you come from?” he chatted amiably as Evgenia tried to remember the hotel where she'd stayed with her husband years before, but suddenly she could remember nothing at all. She was eighty-two years old and utterly and completely exhausted. And they had to get Zoya to a hotel and call a doctor.
“Can you recommend a hotel to us? Something small and clean and not very expensive.” He pursed his lips for a moment as he thought about it, and Evgenia instinctively pressed her bag close to her. In it she carried her last and most important gift from the Empress. Alix had given her one of her very own imperial Easter eggs, made for her three years before by Carl Fabergo. It was an incredible piece of work in mauve enamel with diamond ribbons, and Evgenia knew it was the most important treasure she had. When all else failed, they could sell it and live on what it brought them.
“Do you care where it is, madame? … the hotel….”
“As long as it's in a decent neighborhood.” They could always look for something better afterward, tonight all she needed were rooms where they could sleep. The niceties, if any were still possible, would come later.
“There's a small hotel off the Champs-Élysées, madame. The night porter is my cousin.”
“Is it expensive?” she asked sharply, and he shrugged. He could see that they were not well off, their clothes were simple, and the old man looked like a peasant. At least the woman spoke French, and he thought the girl did, too, although she cried most of the time, and she had a fearful cough. He only hoped she didn't have tuberculosis, which was currently rampant in Paris.
“It's not too bad. I'll have my cousin speak to the desk clerk.”
“Very well. That will do,” she said imperiously, and sat back in the ancient cab. She was a spunky old thing and he liked her.
The hotel was on the rue Marbeuf, and it was indeed very small, but it looked decent and clean as they walked into the lobby. There were only a dozen rooms, but the night clerk assured them two of them were vacant. They had to use a common bathroom down the hall, which was something of a shock to Evgenia, but even that didn't matter now. She pulled the sheets back in the bed
she and Zoya would share, and they were clean. She pulled Zoya's clothes off, after concealing her bag under the mattress, and Fe-odor had brought in the rest of their things. He had agreed to keep Sava with him. And the Countess went back downstairs as soon as Zoya was in bed, and asked the desk clerk to send for the doctor.
“For yourself, madame?” he asked. He wasn't surprised, they all looked tired and pale, and she was obviously very old.
“For my granddaughter.” She didn't tell him that Zoya had the measles, but two hours later when the doctor finally came, he confirmed it.
“She is very ill, madame. You must tend her carefully. Do you have any idea how she caught it?’
It would have been ridiculous to tell him that she caught them from the children of the Tsar of Russia. “From friends, I believe. We have made a very long journey.” Her eyes were wise and sad as he looked at her and sensed that they had been through a great deal But even he couldn't dream what misery they'd seen in the past three weeks, how little they had left, or how frightened they were of the future. “We have come from Russia … through Finland and Sweden and Denmark.” He stared at her in amazement, and then suddenly he understood. Others had made similar journeys in the past weeks, fleeing from the revolution. And he guessed easily that there would be more in the ensuing months, if they were able to escape at all. The Russian nobility, or what was left of it, was fleeing in droves, and many of them were coming to Paris.
“I'm sorry … very sorry, madame.”
“So are we.” She smiled sadly. “She doesn't have pneumonia, does she?”
“Not yet.”
“Her cousin has had it for several weeks, and they've been very close.”
“I'll do my best, madame. I'll come back to see her in the morning.” But when he did, she was worse, and by nightfall she was delirious with the fever. He prescribed some medicine for her and said it was her only hope. And the next morning, when the desk clerk told Evgenia that America had just entered the war, it seemed almost irrelevant. The war seemed so much less important now, in light of everything else that had happened.
She ate her meals in their simple room, and Feodor had gone out to buy medicine and fruit. They were rationing bread, and it was difficult to obtain anything, but he was ingenious at finding whatever the Countess needed. He was particularly pleased with himself, for having found a taxi driver who spoke Russian. Like them, he had only been in Paris for a few days, he was a prince from St. Petersburg, and Feodor thought he had been a friend of Konstantin's, but Evgenia had no time to listen to him. She was deeply concerned about Zoya.
It was several more days before the girl seemed to know where she was. She looked around the small, unadorned room, and looked into her grandmother's eyes, and then slowly she remembered that they were in Paris.
“How long have I been sick, Grandmama?” She tried to sit up but she was still too weak, at least her fearsome cough was finally a little better.
“Since we arrived, my love, almost a week ago. You had us all very worried. Feodor has been running all over Paris, trying to find fruit for you. The shortages here are almost as bad as they are in Russia.”
Zoya nodded, her thoughts seeming to drift away as she stared out the room's only window. “Now I know how Mashka felt … and she was even sicker than I was. I wonder how she is now.” She couldn't bring herself to think of the present.
“You mustn't think of it,” her grandmother reproached gently as she watched the look of sadness in her eyes, “I'm sure she's well by now. We left two weeks ago.”
“Is it only that?” She sighed as she looked into her grandmother's eyes. “It seems like a lifetime.” It did to all of them, and her grandmother had barely slept since they left Russia. She had been sleeping sitting up in a chair for days, afraid to disturb Zoya's sleep by sharing the bed with her, and afraid she wouldn't be awake if the girl needed her, but now she could relax her vigil a little bit. That night she would sleep at the foot of the bed, and she needed the rest almost as badly as Zoya.
“Tomorrow we'll get you out of bed, but first you must rest and eat and get strong again.” She patted Zoya's hand, and Zoya smiled weakly up at her.
“Thank you, Grandmama.” Her eyes filled with tears as she pressed the once graceful gnarled hand to her cheek. Even that brought back painful memories of her childhood.
“For what, silly child? What have you to thank me for?”
“For bringing me here … for being so brave … and doing so much to save us.” It had only just dawned on her how far they had come, and how extraordinary her grandmother had been. Her mother could certainly never have done it. Zoya would have had to carry Natalya all the way out of Russia.
“We'll make a new life here, Zoya. You'll see. One day we'll be able to look back, and everything won't be so painful.”
“I can't imagine it … I can't imagine a time when the memories won't hurt like this.” She felt as though she were dying.
“Time is very kind, my dear. And it will be kind to us. I promise you. We'll have a good life here.” But not the life that they had known in Russia. Zoya tried not to think of it, but later that night as her grandmother slept, she crept softly out of bed and went to her own small bag and found the picture Nicholas had taken while they were clowning at Livadia the previous summer. She and Anastasia and Marie and Olga and Tatiana were leaning backward until they hung almost upside down, grinning after the game they'd played, while their father took the picture. It looked silly to her now … silly … and so sweet … even at that odd angle, they all looked so beautiful to her, even more so now … the girls she had grown up with and loved … Tatiana, Anastasia … Olga … and, of course, Mashka.
CHAPTER
9
The measles left Zoya painfully weak, but much to her grandmother's relief, she seemed to revive amidst the beauty of Paris in April. There was a seriousness about her now that hadn't been there before, and a slight cough that seemed to linger. But now and then there was laughter in her eyes almost the way there had been before, and it made her grandmother's heart a little lighter.
The hotel on the rue Marbeuf was becoming expensive for them, though, as simple as it was, and Evgenia knew they would soon have to find an apartment. They had already used a good part of the money Nicholas had given them, and she was anxious to safeguard their meager resources. It was clear to her by early May, that she was going to have to sell some of her jewelry.
On a sunny afternoon, she left Zoya with Feodor and went to see a jeweler the hotel referred her to on the rue Cambon, after carefully cutting a ruby necklace out of the lining of one of her black dresses. She put the necklace in her handbag, and then took the matching earrings out of their hiding place in two carefully covered and rather large buttons. The hiding places had definitely served their purpose. She called for a taxi before leaving the hotel, and when she gave the driver the address, he slowly turned and stared at her. He was a tall, distinguished-looking man with silver hair, and a perfectly groomed white moustache.
“It's not possible … Countess, is it you?”’ She looked at him carefully then, and suddenly felt her heart beat a little faster. It was Prince Vladimir Markovsky. She recognized him with amazement, he had been one of Konstantin's friends, and his eldest son had even offered to marry the Grand Duchess Tatiana, and had been summarily refused. Tatiana thought him far too frivolous. But he was a charming boy, as was his father.
“How did you get here?”
She laughed, shaking her head at how strange their life was these days. She had seen other familiar faces in Paris since they'd been there, and on two other occasions she had called for taxis and discovered that she knew the drivers. The Russian nobility seemed to have no other way to earn a living, skilled at nothing at all, handsome, well born and extremely charming, there remained little that they could do, except drive a motorcar, like Prince Vladimir as he gazed happily at her. It brought bittersweet memories of better days back to her, and she sighed as she began to exp
lain to him how they had left Russia. His own tale was much akin to hers, although far more dangerous when he crossed the border.
“Are you staying here?” He glanced at her hotel as he started the car, and headed toward the address she had given him of the jeweler in the rue Cambon.
“Yes, for the moment. But Zoya and I must look for an apartment.”
“She's here with you then. She must be hardly more than a child. And Natalya?” He had always thought Konstantin's wife extremely beautiful, although nervous to be sure, and he had obviously not heard of her death when the revolutionaries stormed the Fontanka Palace.
“She was killed … only days after Konstantin … and Nicolai.” Her voice was low as she spoke. It was still difficult to say their names, particularly to him, because he had known them. He nodded sadly from the front seat. He had lost both his sons too, and he had come to Paris with his unmarried daughter.
“I'm sorry.”
“We are all sorry, Vladimir. And sorriest of all for Nicholas and Alexandra. Have you had any news of them?”
“Nothing. Only that they are still under house arrest at Tsarskoe Selo, God only knows how long they will keep them there. At least they're comfortable, if not safe.” No one was safe anymore, anywhere in Russia. At least not the people they knew. “Will you stay in Paris?” They had nowhere else to go, any of them, and other Russians were filtering in day by day, with amazing tales of escape, and their terrible losses. To an already burdened city they were adding ever growing numbers.
“I think so. It seemed better to come here than anywhere else. At least here we're safe, and it's a decent place for Zoya.”
He nodded in agreement and darted the taxi in and out of the traffic. “Shall I wait for you, Evgenia Peterovna?” It made her heart sing just to speak Russian again, and to speak to someone who knew her name. He had just pulled up in front of the jeweler's.
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