The Masters

by Christopher Nicole

  “Of course they do not,” Anna said. “He is the Prince Bolugayevski.” Was, she reminded herself. Oddly, she thought, she did not feel like weeping. He had wanted to see her again, before he died. And she had not got here in time. But while she regretted that, bitterly, she would not lose sleep over it. Now she wanted to continue with this journey, and see Bolugayen again, and indeed, all Russia...and discover what life still held for her. She regarded the Boston episode as equally finished, now that all her children, even Duncan, were adults.

  “Will you send the body home with Prince Peter?” she asked.

  “No,” Jennie said. “I will take it with me, when I go.”

  “Which could be several months yet.”

  “I do not believe it will be that long,” Jennie said, as they returned up to the house. “In any event, I wish to be present when he is buried.” She glanced at her friend. “Do you not?”

  “I would like to be there, yes. I am afraid of being trapped in this place. Is there no news from the town?”

  “Oh, war has been declared, and I believe there is fighting in Korea.”

  Anna nodded. “We saw Japanese troops being sent there.”

  Peter was waiting for them. “Alexei and I are ready to leave,” he said. “In fact, we are commanded to. The order came through on the telegraph today.”

  “Oh!” Jennie commented. “Was there nothing for me?”

  “I am sorry, Stepmama, but no.”

  Jennie looked at Georgei. “The girls and I will remain with you, Mama,” he said. “My partners will not expect me back until we can take Stepfather home.”

  “Thank you,” Jennie said. “I would not like to be left alone.”

  Anna squeezed her hand. “You have me. And Duncan.”

  Peter followed her on to the terrace. “I am sorry to be leaving so soon,” he said.

  “But duty calls.”

  “Duty can be a nuisance.” She sat down, and he sat beside her. “There is so much I wish to say to you, Aunt Anna.”

  She turned her head. “To me?”

  “We are the two last real Bolugayevskis. Russian Bolugayevskis, left.”

  “And you are now Prince. Will you stay in the army?”

  “I wish to. I wish to be a general.”

  She squeezed his hand. “I am sure you shall be a general.”

  He licked his lips. “There are so many other things I wish.” She frowned at him, and he flushed. “Will you be coming to Bolugayen?”

  “I mean to. Do you object?”

  “No.” She had left her hand resting on his, now he squeezed her fingers in turn. “I want you to. Very much.”

  She studied him. He would not lower his gaze, although the pink spots remained in his cheeks. When last she had seen him, he had been a boy of seven, and his mother had just been torn to pieces by a mob. Now he was a very handsome man, and a widower, who had never remarried. But he was also her nephew. “I meant,” she said softly, “do you think I should.”

  *

  The two soldiers left after luncheon, to join the ship. Anna and Jennie and the girls went down to the port to see them off, and Anna went on board to have a word with Captain Robbins. “You sure you want to stay here, Mrs Cromb?” he asked. “Seems to me there’s one whole heap of trouble on the way. There are Japanese warships out there, patrolling. I reckon they mean to blockade the port.”

  “Will they try to stop you leaving?”

  He grinned. “Not if I can help it.”

  “Then I will wish you Godspeed, Captain. But I must stay with the Princess, for the time being. Take care of the two young men.”

  “Oh, I shall do that. Actually, we’ll be off the mouth of the Pei-ho by tomorrow morning. It’s you I’m worrying about.”

  Anna squeezed his hand. “No Japanese is going to trouble Anna Cromb, Captain.”

  *

  “You should’ve gone with your brothers,” Duncan said, as he and Patricia watched the steamer disappear into the Tiger’s Tail.

  “Why?” Patricia asked.

  “Because this place is likely to become a front line, that’s why. No place for young girls.”

  She raised her eyebrows. She had in any event received the impression during the past twenty-four hours that he was a male chauvinist, which was a pity, really, because he was a good-looking young man. Although, of course, it did not really matter, as he was a plain mister, and she was a countess. But he had promised some relief from purely close family; Patricia could hardly wait to get back to Russia, and she wasn’t thinking of Bolugayen either, much as she adored her home. She had been fourteen when Papa had been sent to Port Arthur. Then she had truly been a girl. But now she was old enough to come out. She should, indeed, have come out already. The very moment they returned Mama would have to find her a suitable escort to be introduced into St Petersburg society. As for this American lout... “You are wrong on two counts, Cousin Duncan,” she said. “One, I am not a girl: I am a woman. And two, I am not the least afraid of the Japanese, because I am not Chinese, I am Russian.”

  He grinned at her. “You are not Russian at all, except by naturalisation. Both your mother and father are English.”

  Patricia tossed her head. “Well, then,” she said. “I am even less afraid of Japan. Those are waves out there, Duncan. And Great Britain rules them.”

  For the next week Port Arthur was shrouded in low cloud and mist. The family was confined to the house, or sat on the verandahs beneath the overhangs, watching the water teeming down a few feet away. “This can be the most miserable place on earth,” Olga grumbled.

  “What will you do?” Anna asked.

  Olga gave a little shrug. “I do not think the Princess will turn me out.” She gave Anna a sidelong glance. “It is several years since the master took me to his bed.”

  “But what of Catherine?”

  Olga returned to her needlework. “She is content to be with me.”

  “Why is Sophie not married?” Anna asked, casually.

  “She was married, eight years ago,” Olga said. “The year she was presented at court. But it was annulled almost immediately.”

  Anna frowned. The marriage of a Russian countess was not something one swept under the carpet. “Can you tell me why it was annulled?”

  “I believe the young man was found to be unsuitable, your excellency,” Olga said carefully.

  *

  When the rain finally stopped, several days later, Patricia took her aunt for a look at the Peninsula, as she had promised. Rurik the groom drove them, as apparently he drove the Bolugayevska ladies everywhere. “He came with us from Bolugayen,” Patricia explained. “He was born there, and has always worked for us. But you had already left by then.”

  “I am sure I must have known your father, Rurik,” Anna said with polite interest to the broad young back.

  “Indeed you must have done, Your Excellency,” Rurik replied, without turning his head. “He was your butler, Igor Bondarevski.”

  “Good heavens!” Anna said, feeling the heat gather in her cheeks.

  Patricia leaned close. “Did he know any of your secrets?”

  “He knew all of them,” Anna whispered back.

  Patricia’s mouth formed an O, then she laughed, disbelievingly. She waved her hand. “These are the forts defending the port. I can’t imagine what they are defending it against. Port Arthur is impregnable.”

  “From the land as well as the sea?” Anna tried to be interested, but her brain was spinning. Igor Bondarevski’s son! She had certainly not expected ever to meet anyone like that! Just what had his father told him about the terrible days when Dagmar had ruled Bolugayen?

  “Oh, yes,” Patricia said. “We’ll show you.”

  The trap had been slowly climbing a winding road up the hillside behind the town, and now emerged on to a plateau, where Rurik reined in. The forts to either side were very modern constructions, with little showing above the ground, and surrounded by glacis, smooth slopes which would hop
efully both absorb any enemy gunfire and make a physical assault more difficult.

  To the north, the peninsula stretched for some twenty-five miles, falling away to the sea on either side. It did not look particularly difficult country for an army to traverse, even if under fire from the forts. And the forts were certainly full of soldiers, who marched to and fro on every side. They did not exactly coincide with Anna’s idea of what professional soldiers should look like. Their brightly coloured pants and tunics were roughly similar, but they could hardly be called uniforms, and although they all had rifles slung on their backs, they moved without any attempt at drill or discipline. To crown it all, when it again came on to rain, she watched them, to her consternation, stop whatever they were doing and each man raise a brightly-coloured parasol above his head to keep out the wet.

  At the first drops Rurik jumped down, and erected the folding roof above the ladies. Then he resumed his place on the driving seat, and flicked his whip.

  They drove through the drizzle for upwards of an hour. “This is really most annoying,” Patricia said. “Where on earth are we to picnic?”

  Rurik was pulling on the reins again, and Anna realised that they had come to the northern end of the peninsula. Beneath them the land dwindled to the thinnest of isthmuses, barely a hundred yards wide. North of that the roadway continued into the mountains; on this side, there was another fort, bristling with guns, all trained on the narrow roadway. “Now you understand why the peninsula is impregnable, Aunt Anna,” Patricia said. “They call that the Neck. Any enemy would have to approach virtually in single file, overlooked by that fort.”

  “I see what you mean,” Anna said. “Somehow, that greatly relieves me.”

  “Now,” Patricia said. “Our picnic.”

  “We could cross the Neck, Your Excellencies,” Rurik suggested. “There is that stand of trees over there...”

  “That will do capitally,” Patricia cried.

  Rurik flicked his whip, and the trap descended the road towards the Neck, passing as it did so under the guns of the fort, from which there now emerged several men, commanded by an officer, who waved a sword at them and shouted.

  “Oh, really!” Patricia exclaimed.

  Anna did not speak Mandarin, or indeed any of the several hundred Chinese dialects. “What is he saying?” she asked.

  “He says we cannot cross the Neck,” Patricia said. “He has no right to order us about as if we were coolies. Drive on, Rurik!”

  Rurik again flicked his whip, and the little snap was followed by a succession of clicks, as the Chinese soldiers levelled their rifles. “I think he means what he says,” Anna suggested quietly.

  “He would never dare fire on two Russian ladies,” Patricia declared, angrily.

  “I would really not like to put him to the test,” Anna said. “Turn round, Rurik.” The groom had already drawn his reins. Now he wheeled the trap. “I am sure we can find somewhere else to picnic,” Anna said.

  Patricia’s cheeks were pink with anger. “I had never thought to discover you, of all people, Aunt Anna, afraid of a bunch of Chinese. When I think of the tales Mama has told me of your adventures...”

  “Perhaps I was younger then,” Anna said. “And had less responsibilities.”

  Patricia considered this. “And where shall we eat?”

  “Will not those trees do?” Anna pointed.

  “They are few, and windswept. Oh, I am so angry.”

  Rurik guided the horses into the shelter of the few stunted pines, not more than a hundred yards from the fort. “Do you really expect us to eat, overlooked by all those soldiers?” Patricia demanded.

  Anna smiled. “I think it is an excellent idea. We shall make them sorry that they are they, and we are we. Rurik?”

  Rurik assisted them down, and spread the blankets on the ground. This was dry, and the trees sheltered them from the drizzle, but it was a thoroughly miserable afternoon. “I am so sorry,” Patricia said. “I had hoped we would have a really enjoyable day.”

  “I am having a really enjoyable day,” Anna said, and watched Rurik laying out the cutlery and unpacking the hamper. Almost as if he could feel her gaze, he raised his head, and they exchanged stares for several seconds, before he flushed and resumed his work. He knows, Anna thought. My God, he knows all about me.

  Patricia said nothing, but as soon as the lunch had been served and the wine opened, she waved her hand. “Thank you, Rurik. Leave us.”

  “But where is he to go without getting wet?” Anna asked.

  “I have no idea. Yes, I do. You may sit in the trap, Rurik.”

  “Thank you, Miss Patricia,” the groom said, and left the shelter of the trees, while Anna reflected that once she had been quite as arrogant, or perhaps, even more so. She thought a few years living in the egalitarian atmosphere of America might do this young lady a world of good.

  “Now, Aunt Anna,” Patricia said, as she poured champagne. “You were going to tell me about…those men.”

  “Yes,” Anna said thoughtfully. She would far rather have been having a tete-a-tete with Rurik, although now she wished she had taken the steamer with Peter and Alexei. But that was foolish, cowardly thinking. If she intended to return to Bolugayen she would have to step back into the past. She had carelessly assumed that all the spectres from her youth would now be dead. But they would all have had children, to haunt her. Or be faced down! She was Anna Bolugayevska, however well disguised as an American widow. She had never been afraid to face down anyone. “Well,” she said, “as your mother has probably told you, there was a time when my sister Dagmar, your father’s first wife, and your father, who was then her husband, fought each other for control of Bolugayen.”

  “Mama has told me some of it,” Patricia said.

  “Well, I am sure she will tell you all of it, when she considers you are old enough to understand it. As it happens, there was a period, fortunately a brief one, when Dagmar gained control. She thought that your father had been arrested for treason, and would not be able to interfere. And she hated me.”

  “Because you and Papa were lovers,” Patricia said.

  Anna glanced at her. “Your mother told you this?”

  “She does not bear a grudge.”

  “I know that. Well, for a season, then, I was Dagmar’s prisoner. I can tell you that she bore a grudge, and she was determined to make me suffer. She said I was a whore for having slept with Colin, so every day she sent me a different man.”

  “Gosh!” Patricia said. “But...”

  “I survived. Colin and my future husband rescued me. So there you have it, Trisha. And that is very confidential. I would not wish Duncan to know of it.”

  “He shall not. But...oh, Aunt Anna, how you have lived!”

  “Something I propose to go on doing for the foreseeable future,” Anna told her. “Now, you can tell me what went wrong between Sophie and her...whatever can be that hullabaloo?”

  Both women stood up, while Rurik got down from the trap and ran out into the rain the better to see what was happening. Equally careless of the wet, Anna and Patricia joined him, to watch a group of men crossing the Neck, driving four others before them. The four were clearly prisoners, for their wrists were bound behind their backs, and they were hatless. They wore civilian clothes, but could be seen to be smaller than the Chinese around them. “Those are Japanese, Your Excellencies,” Rurik said.

  “How can they be Japanese?” Patricia asked. “There is a war on. Anyway, they’re not in uniform.”

  “I think they will wish they were, Miss Patricia,” Rurik said. “The Chinese will treat them as spies.”

  Anna gazed at the men, who had been marched before the same captain who had shouted at them earlier, and who was obviously in command of the fort. “Do you think they are spies?” she asked.

  “I think the Chinese regard them as spies, certainly, Your Excellency. Perhaps it would be better for us to leave.”

  “No,” Patricia said. “This is exciting.�
�

  Rurik looked at Anna, and she opened her mouth to agree with him, but was distracted by shouts from beneath her. She turned back, and saw that the four men had been made to kneel, and that the Chinese officer had drawn his sword.

  “No!” Patricia cried. “He can’t do it!”

  But the sword was already whipping through the air, and the first man’s head was rolling in the mud.

  CHAPTER 2 - THE CHILDREN

  “Much ado about nothing,” Georgei said. “My grandfather executed his serfs for the slightest reason, after torturing them first, in many cases. And that was only forty years ago! As for these people, they are always chopping off each other’s heads. Have you never seen an execution?”

  “Well, no,” Duncan admitted. “They aren’t too common in the States. At least, in Boston. I guess they have some in the west and the deep south. But it’s always by hanging.”

  Georgei grinned. “The Chinese believe a man, or a woman, isn’t dead unless he’s in two parts. They are a fascinating people.”

  Duncan was prepared to take his cousin’s word. He found Georgei himself fascinating.

  Well, he thought, perhaps they all were. Mother had conformed to what had been expected of her as an American housewife, but this lot...they, like all the Russian aristocracy, might have lost their serfs, but they remained enormously wealthy, and it was they who ruled the country, under the direction of the Tsar, of course. It was not a situation which would be accepted for a moment in America. Or was it not, at least tacitly, accepted there as well? There might be no prince and no tsar in the United States, but there could be no question that the country was ruled by a wealthy elite.

  Of which he, or certainly his mother and brother, were members.

  The true difference was that there was no wealth in America much more than three generations old: the Bolugayevskis traced their wealth and power back three hundred years. And he was a member of that tradition as well. He found that a curiously exciting thought. But then, he found this entire trip exciting. Now here was Mama calmly proposing to take a year out of his life, at least, a year away from his friends and his studies and his ambitions...but one did not argue with Mama.