“Slow down, slow down! Relax, Therese, no one’s going to hurt you. Would you like to take your dress off?”
Dumbly she stood and pulled her dress off. Underneath she had dressed as Mefist required, with no underwear except for her suspender belt and stockings. She knew she was beautiful; Mefist had said so many times, and she believed him. Still, it was a hard thing to stand naked under Strelnikov’s impassive gaze. “Turn around, please,” he asked.
She pirouetted slowly but when she looked into his eyes again, she could see he was still studying her. He seemed to be considering her, comparing her to some unknown paragon of female beauty. He was in no hurry to throw her onto the bed and take her.
“Very, very beautiful, my dear. Mefist had nothing but superlatives when he was describing you, and I can see he did not exaggerate. You are very lucky and so is he, but sit down. Sit down and enjoy your drink.” He was resting his own drink on his stomach and not looking at her anymore.
“Therese, I have a confession to make. Or should I say a secret to share. I’m not interested in women. I’m sorry, but that’s how I am. Oh, I enjoy female friends. I enjoy beautiful women, and like spending time with them. Women like you, who have both beauty and brains, I could spend all my time in their company. Only not in bed. That just doesn’t interest me.
“It’s always been a problem for me. I think the Imperial Army might show a little more tolerance, but in our society the prohibition is absolute. It is just not possible to be a General who enjoys young men in bed. Totally impossible, except that’s what I am. I hope I haven’t disappointed you too much, my dear?”
“No, not at all. I mean, I’d have been happy, but… Do you want me to put my dress back on?”
“Not unless you insist, my dear. It’s not every day I am allowed to share such a picture, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t snatch it away too quickly. You understand why I’ve invited you here, I suppose? Not that I want to poach in Mefist’s woods, but I need a little camouflage to keep people like Stumpfl at bay. I hope you don’t mind.”
Waves of relief ran down to her toes. “Actually, I’m very happy. I’ve only been with Mefist before, so I really wasn’t looking forward to it. But now–I’ll be happy to come and sit with you as often as you like.”
“Good. In fact, excellent! I’ll protect you–the men are already wondering if you’re on offer or not–and you can protect me. And you don’t mind if I take Othello as my personal servant? He’s inclined the same way, you know, although I get the impression he would take anything that’s offered.”
“No, I don’t mind. If he’s truly willing.”
“Oh, he’s a very willing young man, and good company too. Just what I need. Speaking of which, Rebecca’s a very sharp young lady. She’s just what I need as well, but it’s my office for her. Did you know she turned up with a box of Dutch cigars yesterday? How did she know? Oh, you told her of course. Stupid of me, but thank you anyway. It was kind of you both.”
“It always pays to know what your lord and master likes, Benedikt.”
“Lord and master! I hope Mefist doesn’t imagine he’s your lord and master. Or he’s going to wake up one morning a very disappointed man. Now what are we going to do while you’re here? We can’t just sit and drink at this time of day. We’d be finished before nightfall.”
“We could talk. Tell me about yourself, where you come from, what you have in your book chests.”
“Me? I came from nowhere, a little town call Mezö-Laborcz in the Carpathians. I’m half-Ruthenian and half-Ukrainian and my family was stranded in the Ukraine by the Great War. We’ve been there ever since, but my parents still speak Ruthenian at home. If I’m lucky I may get a chance to visit Mezö-Laborcz on the way north; the railway line runs through it on the way to Sanok and Przemysl. I shall plan a day or two to look around again. Look at the icons, they’re unique up there.
“To answer your other question—that’s what my books are about. Icons. I’ve always found them fascinating, and I look for them wherever I go. Do you have many here, in Krasna Dolina? I can’t find anything in my books. I suspect the old German professors passed you by. Perhaps they were suspicious of the name—it sounded too pleasant for them.”
Therese was surprised at this latest confession. A love for icons was the last thing she expected to find in him. “We don’t have much in Montebello. Roman Catholics were never so fond of them. There are some interesting churches around, wooden ones in the smallest places, and they can be very pretty. I don’t know about the icons, though; I’m sure you’ll find them very primitive.”
“Ah–ha! Primitive is not necessarily bad when it comes to icons. Some of the most impressive artists have worked all their lives in small villages. Let me show you…”
They spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the bed with Strelnikov’s books open between them. Therese listened with increasing fascination as his enthusiasm for the beautiful pictures dissolved his hard shell.
“Try and keep your afternoons free, my dear,” he said as she left. “When we’re not hiding in here, we can look at all the churches in the valley. To assess their possible use by enemy forces, of course!”
Chapter 45
Strelnikov’s car slid to a halt, blocking the only lane of Maly Zverkov, and Therese stepped out onto the packed ice surface. It was a still, grey afternoon, and wood smoke from the closely packed houses filled the air. Strelnikov negotiated the ice carefully. She did not dare offer him an arm for support; he probably did not need it and would certainly resent it.
The car reversed away and they looked around. Curtains moved in the small windows of the cottages as Therese tried to guess which was the priest’s house. When they found him, she was surprised by his youth. He was a tall handsome man, a little forbidding in his long Orthodox robe, and his beard was not yet touched by priestly grey. He looked frightened at first by the uninvited and sinister ambassador of the satanic Coalition now standing at his garden gate, but soon gathered himself and agreed to show them his church.
The path wove up across the face of the rocky knoll on which the church stood. It was dark, shaded by the pine trees that covered the slope and cut the church off from the village below. The snow piled in long mounds showed that this part of Maly Zverkov had been kept clear of ice and snow all winter. Therese watched Strelnikov as he limped up in front of her. The mishap that had taken his left hand had presumably been responsible for the rest of the damage to that side of his body. His right leg seemed intact, and it was a shame he had to hold his stick with his good hand, on the wrong side of his body. She found herself wondering if it would be possible to provide him with some kind of stick he could use with his left arm instead. She would see Mikhail about it. He had the sort of engineer’s eye that could get to the root of practical problems.
When they reached the rounded summit on which the church stood, Therese turned back to look over the village. The long narrow cottages butted up against the lane, living accommodation at the front and their back parts exclusively barns and stables. Behind them the villagers’ strips of private gardens and orchards stretched back to the edge of the communal fields. In summer the gardens would be green and busy, with people working and living in them. Now they were white and quiet, and the vegetable patches were dotted with small heaps of manure brought from the barns day by day throughout the winter. Further away lurked the forest, dark and ominous, climbing up to Tergov Saddle.
The church was traditional, built entirely of timber and clad in narrow pine shingles. Its three ornate spires were topped with onion domes also crafted from timber and shingles. Strelnikov stood at the gate of its low enclosure and stared up at the building. “This is very like home,” he said. “I was brought up with a church just like this.”
“Your Honour is from this area?” asked the priest diffidently.
“Mezö-Laborcz. The same but different. Will you show us inside, Father?”
The priest pushed back the double doors t
o allow as much light as he could inside. The interior was of dark, heavy timber, and the low ceiling given by the gallery above the entrance made it cave-like. A few steps inside, the nave opened up and Therese could see the roof beams dim above her. They stood for a moment in the bare room the villagers used every day, looking at the thick, carved screen that cut off the other half of the church. The figures of saints, old and unrecognizable to Therese, peered down at them from the walls and the screen. Through the ornate carving in front of them, they could catch glimpses of gilding and the shuttered icons surrounding the altar.
The priest swung the inner gates open and gestured them in. Therese eased Strelnikov’s cap out from under his arm and let him go on with the priest. She stood in the entrance and watched as the priest deftly opened the icons for display. Strelnikov stood in front of them one by one and studied them, as if trying to commit each one to memory in all its shining beneficent glory.
Therese knew as she watched him that this man was no mere cataloguer, no dry professor comparing and contrasting. He loved icons.
At the doorway, Strelnikov replaced his cap and shook the priest’s hand. “Thank you, Father. You’ve been most generous.”
“You are welcome, General. It’s always a pleasure to show our church to a believer. Come back whenever you wish.”
The priest and Therese watched as he started back down the steep path. “There goes a very lonely man, I believe,” he said.
“You’re right, Father. Perhaps when this war is over he can let himself be a little more human. I wish we could give him something to help.”
“We have a painter in the village. He paints icons in the winter; I have one in my own house, and I’ve sent others to my Bishop. I could ask him.”
“That’s it! Yes, please ask him. A small icon, perhaps St Martin or a soldier saint, one that he can take with him. When it’s ready, call me, please. Therese von Falberg at the castle.”
“Oh, we all know you, Madam. You are not what I’d expected. I won’t come down with you. My people will be here soon for the evening service.”
As Therese walked back down, she was thinking of the priest’s words. What had he expected her to be? She passed old ladies climbing up to the church and returned their quiet greetings.
As their car returned to the main road, Strelnikov said, “If you don’t mind, my dear, we’ll carry on up to Tergov. I might as well see what’s happening now we’re so close.”
The road became increasingly steep and wound tightly around the ridges and gullies that led up to the pass. The trees closed in and hung darkly over them as the road started to flatten out. The marks of military occupation were around them, crudely painted signs on the trees and footpaths leading away from the road. Through the trees she saw an antiaircraft gun, its barrel reaching up blackly into the empty sky. As they slowed at the summit, Therese could see soldiers in the trees and a truck parked beside the road.
Suddenly a violent explosion ahead of them thumped against the car, and the windscreen shattered and bulged inwards towards them.
Therese opened her eyes again and stopped flinching. “My God! What was that?”
“A mine, I’d say. I hope it’s not an accident, but... It’s probably better if you stay in the car.”
“I’m a nurse,” she said, climbing out and following him. He walked down the road, to the group of soldiers ahead of them standing on the road and looking into the trees.
“Attention!” ordered someone, and the soldiers stood rigid as they came up. They had been looking under the trees where the snow lay quiet and thick. The whiteness had been destroyed by the bloom of an explosion radiating dark destruction from its centre. Beside the pit lay a soldier, his legs blown off. Therese could not see if he still lived. No one was following him off the road.
Therese was filled with remorse and with loathing for the men who did not help him. Without thinking of herself, she looked for the path he had taken to his destruction and followed it. “Stop, Miss, stop!”
“Shut up!” roared Strelnikov. “Don’t miss the footsteps, Therese. Get some rope, soldier. At the double!”
She took big steps, following his marks in the snow until she could stand at the centre of the explosion. Blood melted into the snow around the stumps of the soldier’s legs, and now she could see that his body had been ripped open. His face was white but unmarked. Therese knelt beside him and put a hand beneath his head. Automatically she started to say the last words over him. She thought she saw his eyelids flutter as she touched his forehead, and perhaps he heard some of her words before he slipped away. She stood beside him in the snow. She did not know what to do next.
“Therese, we’re throwing you a rope. Tie it onto his belt.”
The rope stretched out and fell across the body. She found the end and tied it to the soldier’s belt. Shivering now, she picked her way step by step back to the road. The soldiers helped her back over the bank of snow beside the road and steered her back to Strelnikov.
“Follow the Sergeant, Therese. He’ll get you something warm to drink. Wait for me; I’ve got to have a word with Captain Stumpfl when he gets here.”
The sergeant led her along one of the paths into the trees. He was taking the death of his comrade calmly. He had probably seen many more on his journey to Tergov. After a few minutes, he turned abruptly aside and stepped quickly down into a hole in the ground. When he pulled aside the curtain at the bottom, candlelight fell out from the bunker beyond. She bent to enter and stepped down into a low room roofed with pine trunks.
To one side a crude table was squeezed between benches built against the walls, and the sergeant laid a greatcoat for her to sit on. A small pot stove kept the cold away, and on top of it a saucepan steamed. In the darkness beyond, Therese could make out bunks against the walls and clothes hanging to dry. The atmosphere was close and smelly.
“You’re in luck, Your Honour. We got some beetroot sent up today. No pierogi to go with it and make it proper-like, but it’ll warm you up anyway.”
He ladled the blood-red borscht into a large enameled mug and gave it to her with a hunk of bread. It was hot and rich, and flattened drops of fat floated on its surface. She sipped at it eagerly. The sergeant sat opposite her in silence. She presumed he would be eating later, after the General had left.
“Where are you from, Sergeant?”
“Me? A long way from here, Your Honour. I come from a small place near Yegorlykskaya, on the other side of Rostov. It’s a different world, Your Honour. None of these mountains there.”
She sat and pondered his answer. It seemed strange to her that a young man from so far away should find himself sitting in a bunker in the forests of Krasna Dolina. Strange that another young man should have just died in the snow for no sensible reason. Strange that she should be here, her world turned upside down. There was a noise outside and Strelnikov pushed his way in. The sergeant writhed out from his bench and let Strelnikov sit down.
“Are they taking care of you?”
“Oh, yes. This borscht is good–try it.” She pushed the mug across to him.
The sergeant started to fetch another mug, but Strelnikov stopped him. “No, Sergeant. Save it for the men. I know they love it, and there’s never enough on a cold night. We’ll share this one.” They finished the soup turn and turn about, sitting in a bunker on a frontline that had never been fought over but was still lethal for the unwary.
As she followed Strelnikov out of the bunker, the sergeant stopped her. “The boys would like to say thank you, Your Honour. For what you did for poor Piotr. There’s none of us would have done it, not when you could see there was no hope for him. At least he died shriven, poor bastard, begging your pardon. We can tell his mum, and it’ll be some comfort.”
It was a bitterly cold trip back to Montebello. The driver had punched a hole in the shattered windscreen. Big enough to see through, and big enough to let the wind in and drop the temperature far below freezing.
The Genera
l said nothing for most of the trip, but as they reached the village, he said, “I hate losing men like that. It’s so stupid and a waste. That idiot Stumpfl should have taped the minefields off by now, but I doubt we’ll ever make a real soldier of him. I’m going to demand we get some of the troops that laid those mines back again. At least they should know where to look when the snow melts.
“It was very impressive, what you did up there. Very impressive. If you’d been stupid about it, we might have lost you as well. The men were pleased with you, but don’t do it again!”
“I never want to be where I might have to,” she said with a shiver.
Chapter 46
Therese missed Mefist. Life in Montebello was sterile and pointless without him. The accident with the young soldier had shaken her, and she realized that Montebello had lost its hold on her. She wanted to move on, to roll up her sleeves and rejoin the world. Before she could change her mind, she sat at her desk and wrote to Bishop Adler. She tried to explain herself, but the words would not come, and she contented herself with a simple statement of resignation.
One thing bothered her. She could not leave the nuns in the hands of Sister Brigitta. She begged the Bishop to take her into his household, and send instead a Mother Superior who was used to responsibility and whom the sisters could respect. As an afterthought, she slipped into the envelope the telegram about his Swiss bank account. It would reinforce her recommendations.
Mikhail made Strelnikov a new stick, and Therese persuaded him to use it. It clipped around his injured arm just below the elbow and had a handle that he could force into his false hand. He could walk more easily now, with an upright stance and above all a free hand to hold or carry with. The change seemed to make him happier.
The Prince and the Nun Page 29
