A Portrait of Loyalty

by Roseanna M. White

  “Can’t. We can’t set anything in stone until Ara’s father gets back from Mexico.”

  Zivon moved toward the door, rather eager to get to work himself. Though he didn’t mind when Adcock shot him a parting smile, along with, “I heard what you said to that bank clerk yesterday. Good one, old boy!”

  Apparently Blackwell had already made good on his promise to share the story. Zivon smiled back and slipped across the corridor without another word.

  He would always be Russian. Never really be English. But for the first time, the thought of staying here didn’t feel entirely like a sacrifice. Not if he could find a place like this one.

  5

  Evgeni sank onto a bench across the street from the church, not sure he could move another step if he had to. Every muscle and joint ached. Well, no. Some screamed, especially his ribs. Ache was far too benign a word for his ribs.

  From somewhere in the distance, a boom sounded, making Evgeni wince. It seemed he’d arrived in Paris just in time for the Germans to unveil a new siege gun, one so massive that it had put the whole city into a panic. Every twenty-odd minutes, a new shell crashed down, and they could never tell where it would strike. It made for a restlessness, a slick of fear always under everyone’s feet.

  How well Evgeni knew that feeling, even without the added threat. When he blinked, darkness bombarded him. A darkness filled with all he should be doing, all he’d failed to do. The man cloaked in shadow in France. The train, twisted and prone. The hospital, where he’d realized he’d lost everything.

  Everything.

  Zivon. Gone. Where had he gone? Was he alive? He had to be. He’d had his passport in his pocket, as always, so if he’d been killed, the queries Evgeni had put out would have yielded an answer.

  He winced at another dark image—the expression on the face of his host. Paul was a fellow Russian, but he’d made it clear from the start that he wasn’t helping Evgeni from any real feeling of camaraderie. He was helping solely because their mutual friends expected it.

  Or mutual friend, anyway. He pressed a hand to his pocket, where the telegram rested. Nadya. Just thinking of her name called to mind the riot of gold curls, the deadly flash of her dark eyes. The way her arms wrapped around him when they kissed. He ought to be sorry she was coming—that she needed to. That he’d managed to fail so spectacularly. But he couldn’t ever be sorry to see her.

  He’d only known her a year, but it was enough to admire every single thing about her. She was not one of those girls who thought her sole purpose in the world was to marry and have enough babies to guarantee a few would survive the harsh Russian life. Who waited at home in a village of dirt and snow while her man fought and died on the front.

  No. Nadya had been on the front too, a rifle in her hand and a look on her face that had no doubt terrified any Central Power soldier who got in the way of the First Russian Women’s Battalion of Death. They’d served alongside each other during the Kerensky Offensive near Smorgon. He’d seen firsthand her ferocity. Her strength. And yes, the beauty that peeked out beneath the mud and gunpowder.

  He could think of no one in the world he’d rather fight beside.

  Matushka wouldn’t have liked her. His mother had been a staunch believer in tradition, in the old ways, in the certainty that faith and family were the only things worthwhile. Zivon had gotten that from her. But Evgeni was more like Batya. He’d seen enough to know that sometimes the old ways only led to death, starvation, and the obliteration of the very way of life they were supposed to be upholding. Sometimes the czar who was supposed to be leading them went into hiding instead of trying to help his people. Sometimes the war that was supposed to end an atrocity just made a dozen new ones.

  Sometimes tradition led to death—and so tradition had to die.

  He settled back on the bench, eyes tracing the sidewalks. It wasn’t their Good Friday, but knowing his brother, Zivon would attend a Mass today anyway. If he was in Paris, as he surely was, then he’d be in this neighborhood, the one they’d agreed to meet up in. He’d have found a cheap little room, and a neighbor would have invited him to join him at the local parish. Zivon, always happy for a little more religious activity, would have accepted.

  Evgeni had never understood it. How could his brother not see how archaic religion was? How it tried to force outdated traditions onto a humanity that had outgrown it? He’d never understood it, but he appreciated it now. It made Zivon predictable, and that was exactly what he needed in order to find him.

  His eyes passed over the parishioners aimed for the church to the street corner beyond. His next stop—if he didn’t find Zivon here at the Church of St-Gervais-et-St-Protais—would be the bookshop a few streets over. It would have been Evgeni’s first stop, had it not been farther from the métro. But he’d come upon the church first, and the bench had beckoned, and his ribs had been screaming, so . . . If Zivon had left him a note there, then another half hour would not change its presence. And if he could just find his brother directly, that would be better.

  Find your brother. He hadn’t needed the instruction from Nadya to know that was the most important thing he could do, now that he was out of hospital. Find Zivon. Hope he had possession of Evgeni’s belongings, including the photograph the Prussian had pressed to his hand at the water stop. Keep his brother from doing anything stupid.

  Why hadn’t Zivon just left on his own? Why had he stopped first to locate Evgeni and convince him to flee as well? A breeze blew, and he turned his face into it, but it couldn’t wipe away the frustration. Zivon could never just trust him, leave him to his own devices. He always had to play the big brother, telling Evgeni where to go, what to do, how to think.

  Never listening. Never entertaining the notion that he could be wrong.

  But it didn’t matter, did it?

  The church door swung outward, a black-frocked priest pushing the massive wooden slab wide in invitation. It was a lovely spring day; it seemed he’d decided to prop it open. And just in time too. When the father looked up, it was with a hand lifted in greeting to a couple walking his way.

  Parishioners, obviously, as they turned up the stairs and soon vanished into the building. A moment later, more people joined them. Evgeni sat up straighter, casting his glance down the street first one way, then the other. Watching for that familiar stride—the one Zivon would never call graceful, but which was. It came of all the running he did, or at least that was Evgeni’s theory. When one loped mile after mile like an animal of the steppe, one’s walk was even, smooth, and strong.

  What hat had he been wearing on the train? Would he still have it, or would he have gotten another here in Paris? What of his coat? It had been his heavy one—too heavy for a Paris springtime, but it had still been cold in Russia when they left. Would he have exchanged that too?

  Evgeni leaned forward, resting his forearms on his legs to provide a bit of reprieve to his ribs. It didn’t matter whether he’d recognize his brother’s clothes. He’d recognize his brother. Anywhere, in any crowd, from any distance.

  And his brother was not among the hundreds of people who filed into the church. Evgeni let out a huff of defeat as a woman trotted briskly up the steps with a toddler in her arms, clearly thinking she was late—as she probably was.

  But Zivon was never late. Never. Not to anything, but especially not to a church service. All of Matushka’s teachings over the years about showing the Lord the reverence and respect He was due guaranteed that.

  Well. To the bookshop, then. It ought to be open still, since the owner was Jewish. He wouldn’t close for the Christian holiday, though it was a Friday, so Evgeni had better get back on his feet to be sure he made it there before sundown.

  He pushed himself up, his mind racing ahead. He would find Zivon. See what of Evgeni’s possessions he had—hopefully the entirety of the bag he’d been clutching when the train derailed. And then he’d have to find anything that was missing. Preferably before Nadya arrived.

  Mentall
y cursing the weeks he’d lost to the injuries, Evgeni took a deep breath. A strange noise made his every muscle freeze, tense. He was only vaguely aware of the shadow that passed him overhead. He hadn’t time to think about what it might be—too large for a bird, moving far too quickly to be an airplane—before it blasted into the church across the street.

  Instinct had him diving for cover under the bench, though it did little to shield him from the dust and debris. The ground shook under him, and a blast of something swept over him, making his injured bones feel like they might rip apart. But worse—far worse—was the sound. An earsplitting pounding of noise and then a moment of utter silence that stretched into eternity.

  Slowly, ringing replaced the silence. And then came the noise of falling pieces of rock and stone and slate and glass.

  And screams. So many screams.

  He couldn’t move. He tried, or might have tried, but the pain was a blinding white fire that blended with the screams and the shouts and the sirens and the continued crash of falling debris. Time shattered. And then the world went utterly black again.

  SATURDAY, 30 MARCH 1918

  Lily placed the last of the rolled bandages in the cupboard where they belonged, checked the clock on the wall, and reached a hand down to her pocket. Her camera was there, as always. She’d used it this morning to take a few snapshots of patients who would soon be released and a few more of soldiers bound to call Charing Cross Hospital home for weeks yet, but who were eager to send something home to wives or mothers.

  It was a little thing. But it brought a smile to their faces. It brought one to hers, too, as she turned toward the office at the end of the fourth-floor ward, where she’d just seen Arabelle go. Lily followed with a loud enough step to warn her friend that she wasn’t alone.

  Ara turned at her desk, which was stacked so high with papers that they looked about to topple, and grinned. “Come to do all my paperwork for me?”

  Lily laughed and leaned into the doorframe. “Not a chance. You’re the one who agreed to take your old position back.”

  Though she made a show of grumpiness—hands on hips and an admirable scowl—there was no covering the pleasure in Arabelle’s eyes. She loved her job here in the same way that Lily loved her work at the retouching desk at the OB. It must have broken her heart to resign a few weeks ago in the face of her fiancé’s supposed legal trouble, but the board of directors had been quick to offer her position back to her after his name had been cleared. And praise the Lord, she’d accepted. Lily enjoyed working under Ara the most.

  “Had I realized no one was keeping up with it while I was gone, I may have reconsidered their apology.” Arabelle shrugged and pulled out her chair. “I imagine your shift is over?”

  Lily nodded. “But I wanted to catch you before I left. Mama asked me to invite you and your fiancé to dinner at your earliest convenience. Perhaps next Saturday?”

  The light in Ara’s eyes was bright as a flash now, and her smile pure joy. Not at the prospect of dinner, but at the words your fiancé. Ara had been engaged before, and it hadn’t ever made her glow like this. It had just been the status quo. But Major Phillip Camden had made something altogether new come to life in her. “That sounds lovely. I’ll ask Cam if the date is convenient.”

  Lily darted a glance toward the framed photograph of Arabelle and Camden that proudly hung on Ara’s wall. It had been the first thing Ara had brought back in with her. Hanging the picture was more statement to the administrators than anything, Lily knew. A clear declaration that people were more important than any position.

  She was glad to have provided Ara with the symbol. She’d taken it without Ara and Cam knowing it, weeks before their engagement. She’d wanted to do something to congratulate her friend on the promotion from nurse to ward matron, so she’d taken the snapshot of them smiling at each other and put them on a prettier background—London still, but in the springtime, with trees in bloom all around them and the sunlight at the perfect angle.

  Mama never minded that sort of change to a photograph, one meant to better display the subjects. It was much like what she did in her paintings. It was, she would say, the use of art that she took issue with. Pleasing a friend—that was lovely. But deceiving someone, even if that someone was the enemy . . .

  Lily shook off that thought and refocused on the framed picture. It made her heart happy to see it so boldly on display, no matter Arabelle’s purpose in hanging it. “If Saturday doesn’t work, just let us know when will. My mother is always happy to have dinner guests.”

  Arabelle smiled and leaned against her desk. Her gaze, however, she kept leveled on Lily. “Lil . . . I haven’t had a chance yet to thank you. For what you did to help Cam.”

  Lily glanced over her shoulder. There was no one about to overhear, as far as she could tell. Even so, it wouldn’t do to mix her two worlds. She slipped fully into the office and clicked the door shut. Her answering smile felt weak and shaky around the edges. “It was nothing, Ara. A simple task from the admiral. It took me but an hour.”

  “Even so.” Arabelle was nothing if not discreet. She pitched her voice to a whisper. “Without your help—without everyone at the OB acting as you did—Cam could well be standing before a firing squad even now.”

  Lily shook her head. “They’d never let that happen. They’re a family, and he’s one of them.”

  “They are?” Ara had the most annoying habit of seeing the slightest hurts in a glance. And knowing just how to call someone on them. “You’re one of them too, are you not?”

  Lily sighed and sank into one of the chairs in front of Ara’s desk. “I don’t know what I am. I’m there nearly every day, but only in the basement, where the admiral has set up my workroom. Once in a while I’ll have to run something up to his office, but no one really knows me. Usually all my communications are with Admiral Hall himself or Barclay Pearce. I believe you met him the other week?”

  Her friend nodded. Tilted her head. “So you want to be more among them? You seemed a bit panicked when you saw me there. Or when I saw you there, perhaps.”

  Yes, Ara was always far too adept at seeing the heart of a matter. Lily let her attention wander over the clutter of papers. “I love what I do there. And I’m so happy to do it—to get to do it. But if Mama found out . . .” She shook her head. “At the start of the war, Daddy approached her about creating propaganda—rather excited, I might add, about this new work he was helping to spearhead—and expecting her to be equally excited to take part with her talents. You’d have thought he’d asked her to sacrifice her pug to the war effort.”

  “Your work with photographs isn’t exactly propaganda, though, is it?” Ara turned to study the photograph on her wall. “It isn’t meant to convince the masses of something the government wants them to believe.”

  “Sometimes it is. It’s just that the masses aren’t usually English.” She paused. “I think Mama would say it’s even worse. Because at least with the posters and adverts, everyone knows it’s just an artist’s rendering. With photography, I’m rewriting the facts. Deliberately lying.”

  Arabelle’s lips turned up. “It’s war, Lily. A nation must lie and spread disinformation to protect its secrets. I daresay your mother understands that.”

  When it was a matter of mere intelligence—where troops were located, when an advance was planned—then yes, of course. But her mother had very strong opinions on the role of art in the world. And deception was not an approved use.

  “Well, I can see I’ve not convinced you. And I promise I won’t say anything to your mother when we join you for dinner.” Arabelle smiled. “Your secrets are your own to guard, my friend.”

  “Thank you.” She’d expected nothing less, really. As a nurse, Ara was well versed in discretion. But a bit of anxiety must have been clinging to her at the thought of having Arabelle and Camden, two of the only people who knew of her work for the Admiralty, at her table. Well, aside from Daddy and Admiral Hall, but they would certainly never
let the truth slip out.

  She pushed herself to her feet again. Daddy said he’d asked both Mr. Marin and Lieutenant Clarke to share Easter dinner with them, which was lovely. But she’d have to be careful to remain unseen at the office. She could always explain her presence in the building easily enough, saying she was there to see her father. She’d done so, in fact, other times when acquaintances Daddy had invited to their table had later spotted her and said hello. But on Room 40’s floor? That would be a bit trickier to excuse.

  She’d have to have a story ready to tell if it happened. That Daddy had asked her to run something down to Admiral Hall for him on her way out, perhaps.

  Or perhaps it would be wiser to simply let someone else deliver her finished photographs to the admiral. Keep to the basement entirely.

  Lily’s shoulders sagged. If Room 40 was a family, then she was naught but a Cinderella of her own making—hard at work but self-banished to the fringes where no one could see her. A situation she had crafted rather carefully. Why was it only now beginning to chafe?

  “Lily?”

  She paused midway to the door and looked back at her friend, who had straightened as well. Ara’s tall form had angled toward the framed photograph on the wall, and her lips had turned again into a smile. She nodded to the photo. “I’ve been meaning to ask you if I could get another print of that. I’d like to send one to my father in Mexico.”

  That, at least, was easy. Lily grinned. “Of course. I can have it for you when I come in on Monday.”

  “You’re a gem. Now go, enjoy your Easter. I’ll tackle Mount Paperwork.”

  With a laugh, Lily opened the door and slipped out, closing it again behind her. It wouldn’t stop the other nurses and VADs from interrupting Ara for serious matters, but perhaps it would deter those who wanted an idle chat. Because it was going to take a rather large swath of uninterrupted time for Arabelle to turn that mountain into a reasonable molehill.