What am I doing? she asked herself. What have I done? I have plunged headlong into hell. But how long ago did I do that?
She could not resist him. Her only aim was survival. “You are already exhausted,” he commented, when he was temporarily sated, and lay across her, his head on her shoulder. “What did the Okhrana do to you?”
“They exhausted me,” she said.
“How long were you in their cells?”
Sonia did a hasty calculation. She did not think it would be a good idea to tell Trotsky either about being Rasputin’s housekeeper or her stay at Tsarskoye Selo; of course he would find out about Rasputin soon enough, but she did not intend to be here when he did. “Over a year.”
“God, the thought makes my blood boil. Well, most of the scum have been destroyed.”
“Michaelin?”
“I do not know for certain. But we will find him out, you may be sure of that.”
“We? Is Lenin with you?”
“No. He wishes to be with me. But I do not know how he is going to get here. When he heard of Rasputin’s death, he wired me to enter the country and see what I could do. I was in Helsinki. But as he is in Switzerland, there is all of Germany between him and us.”
“And now you will lead another revolt? Against men like Prince Lvov and Kerensky?”
He grinned, and began kissing her breasts. “Not immediately. They suppose that by removing the Tsar they have cured all the evils of this country. They propose to continue the war with Germany and Austria, and hope to gain Russia a seat at the peace conference. Well, let them try. The Army is already in a state of near mutiny. When they have lost a few more thousand men they will mutiny, and that will be the end of Prince Lvov and his demagogues. Then it will be our opportunity.” He chuckled. “We’ll shoot the lot.”
“What about the Royal Family?”
He raised his head. “There is no such thing any more, my dear Sonia. You should forget that you were ever an aristocrat. In fact, you must, if you are to survive. But you will always survive, my dearest Sonia, because I have said that you will. I love you. I adore you. I will love you, always, and forever. Listen: I swear this.”
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you. What will you do with the Royal Family?”
Trotsky put on his glasses. “We will shoot them too. Every last one of them.”
It was mid-afternoon before he was ready to leave. By then she had fed him, and he had dragged the two bodies together by the front door. “I will send people to take these out on to the streets, when it gets dark,” he said. “They will clean up this blood, too. You do not have to do it. You do not mind a few more hours?”
“No,” Sonia said. “I do not mind.” As there were no fires, inside the house it was very nearly as cold as outside, and the bodies were not offensive, so long as one did not look at them. Or thought about them. She had lain naked in Korsakov’s arms as she had just lain naked in Trotsky’s. Now one was a bloody apparition. And Trotsky...
“You must stay here until I can come for you,” he told her. “It is not safe on the streets. I will come later this evening, and take you to a place where you will be safe and we can be together.”
“I have no money.”
He kissed her. “You do not need money. I will look after the money. I will look after everything. Just go upstairs and stay in your bedroom until my people come. They will be absolutely trustworthy.” He kissed her again, and left.
Sonia went upstairs immediately, dressed herself as warmly as she could. She knew she could not take anything apart from what she could wear. Then she stood at the window and looked out. The evening was already drawing in and in an hour it would be dark. Then Trotsky’s people would come. She dared not risk waiting for them. Where Korsakov had been a cad, Trotsky was a monster, who thought nothing of shooting people out of hand, and who planned to shoot a lot more. Including those lovely girls, if he could ever get his hands on them.
She opened the front door and stepped outside, closing and locking the door behind her. She wondered if they would break it down. More likely they would report back to Trotsky for orders. Well, then, what would he do? The important thing was that he should not know where to look for her. She hurried along the streets. Some were crowded, some were empty; few people paid any attention to the lone woman who, wrapped up in a coat and with her head encased in a scarf, could have been any age and any class. The burning buildings still glowed, and the air was heavy with smoke. Every so often there was a gunshot or a scream, but in the gloom there was little evidence of revolution or atrocity to be seen, save for the burning buildings.
She refused to allow herself to consider what would happen if the Bolugayevski Palace had been burned, or if Nathalie was not there, or if...there were so many ifs. But Nathalie was now her only hope. Nathalie! The palace stood, foursquare and undamaged, so far as she could see, although the gates were open. She looked left and right, then hurried through them and up the drive. The palace was also in darkness. Her heart began to sink, but to her amazement, and relief, the front door was also open. Whoever had left had left in a hurry. They must have left something of value behind.
She entered the open doorway, her boots clicking on the parquet. She stood still, and listened. She knew this house very well, and had no need to use a light, not that she supposed, as there had been no electricity at her house, there would be any here. There was not a sound. She closed the front doors, discovered that the lock was undamaged, and carefully locked them. She walked across the parquet and up the grand staircase. Above her head the great crystal chandelier still hung, undamaged. Nothing was damaged.
She reached the first floor gallery, and again stood still to listen. And heard a sound. The merest suspicion of a noise. There was someone, or something, in the house with her. For a moment the hair on the nape of her neck prickled, then she drew a deep breath. “Nathalie!” she said. “Is that you?”
“Sonia!” Nathalie squealed, from behind her.
Sonia turned, sharply. Her eyes were accustomed to the darkness, and she could just make out the two figures standing in one of the reception room doorways. She also saw that Nathalie was holding a revolver. “For heaven’s sake stop pointing that thing at me,” she requested.
“Oh, Sonia!” Nathalie lowered the gun and hurried forward to embrace her.
Then it was Dagmar’s turn. “We have been so afraid!” the girl sobbed.
“It’s a common complaint right about now,” Sonia agreed. “What happened here?”
“The servants left,” Nathalie said. “Even Dimitri and Rykova. They just left.”
“I think you should say, good riddance,” Sonia suggested. “They would only have got in the way. Have you any money?”
“Of course I have money,” Nathalie said. “But there is nothing to spend it on.”
“Get all your money together,” Sonia told her, “and all your jewellery. You too, Dagmar. We have got to get out of Petrograd, and the only way we are going to do that is bribe and buy our way. But it must be done now, before things get any worse.”
*
“What do you think?” Joseph Cromb asked his mother, taking a turn up and down the drawing room carpet before her.
“I think you look tremendous,” Patricia said.
Joseph had been commissioned into an infantry regiment, and certainly looked very smart in his new khaki uniform, even if Patricia’s romanticism would have preferred to see him wearing proper boots rather than puttees. Jennie ran up to her big brother to throw both arms round him and give him a hug. “I wish I could come with you.”
“Well, you can, as a nurse. Whenever you are old enough.”
“Oh, can I, Mom?” At thirteen Jennie was a most attractive child, who had inherited the auburn hair and pale complexion of both her mother and her grandmother.
“Whenever you are old enough,” Patricia agreed. This war had to end some time. “Here’s Daddy. He’s home early!”
Duncan Cromb burst into the
room, waving various papers, and checked at the sight of his adopted son. “Hello, Joe. I didn’t expect you to be here.”
“Embarkation leave,” Joe explained.
“Heck. When do you go?”
“Tomorrow.”
Duncan looked at his wife, and Patricia shrugged. “Had to happen, darling.”
“Yes.” Duncan absently put his arm round Jennie’s shoulders to give her a hug. “If you could’ve waited a couple of months, you would have found yourself in another uniform. Seems even Woodrow Wilson is prepared to go to war, now.”
“Duncan!” Patricia cried. “That would be terrific.”
“Yeah,” Duncan said thoughtfully. “We’ll be with you in a moment, kids, but your mother and I need to have a word.”
Patricia raised her eyebrows as her husband held her arm and almost pushed her into the study. “Are you bothered about the news? I think your people coming in is the best thing I’ve heard in a long time.”
“I agree with you. But it’s obviously going to be some time before they can have any effect. We don’t really have an army, you know. We have to create one.”
Patricia frowned. “You won’t be involved, will you? For heaven’s sake, Duncan. you’re forty-one years old!”
“I don’t think I’ll be drafted, if that’s what you mean. But I’m going to be pretty damned busy. The Navy Department wants every ship they can lay hands on for convoying troops, and Charlie’s been on the wire; we’ve volunteered our entire fleet.”
“I hope you’re being paid for them,” Patricia remarked. “So what’s eating you?”
Duncan dumped the various papers on the desk. “Things aren’t good in Russia.”
“You mean the Tsar abdicating? I can’t believe that’s a bad thing. This fellow Lvov declares he intends to continue the war on our side.”
“I believe he means to try. But there’s horrendous news coming out of the country. Petrograd is a charnel house, by all accounts.”
“Oh, gosh, I hope Sonia’s all right.”
“I thought your friend Lenin was going to find out about her?”
“I haven’t heard a thing from that bastard. I went to the bookshop a couple of weeks ago, and was told he and Olga had gone back to Switzerland.”
“Yes. Well, if Sonia was really arrested by the Okrana, then she’s all right now: according to these, the Okhrana no longer exists.”
“Gee, I wish I could be there!” Patricia’s eyes gleamed.
“And I am damned glad you’re not. But I’m not bothered about Petrograd, or even Sonia. It’s down south. Seems there are mutinies and riots and God knows what going on. The peasants are burning manor houses, looting and murdering...”
“Is there word from Bolugayen?”
“Nope.”
“Well, I should think they’re all right. Our people have always been utterly loyal.”
“Maybe. But Mom’s too old to get involved in a revolution.”
Patricia kissed him. “Then we must get her out of there, just as quickly as possible.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more. The problem is, how?”
“She can take a ship from Sevastopol.”
“Of course she can’t. Russia is at war with Turkey, and the Dardanelles are closed.”
“Well, then, she can take the Trans-Siberian train and go to Vladivostock. That would be best, anyway, because there are no submarines in the Pacific, and she can go back to Boston and total safety.”
“God, that would be a relief. The real problem is, how are we going to persuade Mom to leave Bolugayen, darling? She certainly isn’t going to do that if we just ask her to by wire.”
“I see what you mean.” Patricia appeared to consider. “Well, I suppose we’ll just have to go and get her. There’s no Tsar or Okhrana to keep me out of Russia now. We’ll just go in, and come out, with Mom, even if we have to carry her.”
“But...that’d mean crossing the Atlantic and then the Pacific.”
“Sounds enormous fun. I’ll make arrangements right away.”
“What about the shipping line?” Duncan’s voice was almost a wail. “Charlie says I must run the operation from here.”
“I know,” Patricia said sympathetically. “The war must come first. But not to worry, my dearest. I’ll get Aunt Anna out.”
“You?”
“For heaven’s sake, I know my way in an out of Russia, and Poltava.”
Duncan looked as if someone had hit him on the head. He sat down behind the desk. “You can’t go into a country filled with anarchists and revolutionaries, all by yourself.”
“Oh, come now, don’t you think I know how to deal with anarchists and revolutionaries?” Patricia bit her lip, and then hurried on, realising that she might have said too much. “If you’re worried, let Morgan come with me. I’ll take Giselle as well,” she added, just to square propriety. Remarkably, although both valet and maid knew all about her adventure with Rasputin, since then they had been more loyal to her than ever.
Duncan gazed at her. “You want to go back, don’t you?”
“Well...I always want to go back to Russia.”
“And the children?”
“Oh, really, Duncan, darling, Joe’s going off to war. And you’ll be here to look after Jennie.”
He pointed. “You’re dreaming of finding Sonia and joining in whatever absurd activity she’s up to. Tell the truth, now.”
“I am going to Bolugayen to get your mother out of Russia,” Patricia said with dignity. “To get Priscilla and the children out as well, if they’ll come. I have no intention of going near Petrograd. Or any revolutionary.”
“Will you give me your word on that?”
“Absolutely,” Patricia said, eyes gleaming with excitement.
*
“What are we going to do, Grandma?” Priscilla asked.
“Oh, they should be hanged, all of them,” Sophie declaimed, somewhat shrilly. Janine Grabowska leaned across the breakfast table and squeezed her lover’s hand, while little Anna looked from one to the other of the four women with enormous eyes. She did not really understand what was happening, although she did realise that it was an earth-shaking event.
Anna also looked from one to the other; she included a glance at Gleb, standing as immobile as ever by the doorway to the breakfast room. “What do you propose we should do, Your Highness?” She directed her question to Priscilla. “We shall do what we have always done, sit it out.”
“But if the Tsar...”
“Do you not suppose tsars have been forced to abdicate before? Abdication is at least a civilised way of giving up the throne. This Tsar’s grandfather was murdered. So was his uncle. So was his great-great-grandfather.”
“Yes, but they were always replaced by other tsars,” Priscilla argued. “Not by Socialist governments.”
“There will be another tsar,” Anna said firmly. “Things are in a state of turmoil at the moment, because of the war. But there is no possibility of a country like Russia being ruled by a committee. It has to have a tsar. And it will have a tsar.”
“Oh...you always talk as if you were giving an historical lecture,” Sophie said. “It’s the here and now that matters. What’s going to happen to us. Poor Janine’s house has already been burned. She doesn’t know what’s happened to her husband...” She burst into tears, while Janine looked at the other two in embarrassment.
“I hope you will forgive me, Countess,” Anna said — despite the close social circle into which the four women had been thrown over the past few months she remained stiffly formal — “but I feel I must point out that your house was burned entirely because you abandoned it.”
“If we had stayed we would have been murdered,” Janine protested.
“Again, I feel I should point out that if you feared being raped and murdered by your own servants and tenants, then you cannot have been a very good mistress.”
Janine got up and left the breakfast room. “Oh, Grandma,” Priscilla prote
sted. “Now you’ve offended her.”
“Someone should have offended that woman years ago,” Anna declared.
“Oh, you...you wicked old woman,” Sophie shouted, and ran behind her friend. Anna snorted.
“Darling, I think Mademoiselle Friquet is waiting for you,” Priscilla told little Anna, who promptly rose, bowed to the Princess and the Countess, and left the room, Gleb gravely bowing in turn as he held the door for her. “Thank you, Gleb,” Priscilla said. Gleb bowed again, and left the breakfast room. “What are we going to do, Grandma?” Priscilla asked again.
“I meant what I said, Priscilla. We are the Bolugayevskis. This is our house, and our land. We are surrounded by our people. We have been here for three hundred years. We will be here another three hundred years.”
Priscilla shivered. “The Romanovs were on the throne three hundred years.”
“Do you not suppose they, one of them, will be back on the throne in short order? That they are not there now is because Nicholas is a weakling. He would not lead. We have always led our people.”
“If Alexei were here, or even Colin...”
“You will lead, because you are the Princess Bolugayevska,” Anna told her. “You will never reveal the slightest sign of weakness, or uncertainty. Promise me this.”
Priscilla looked at her for several seconds. “I promise, Grandma.”
“Then go into the village. It is time for your morning ride. Get dressed, and go into the village.”
Priscilla was dressed by her maids — since being told by Rotislav that Alexei was alive she had abandoned black and today wore a pale blue habit — and then stopped by the nursery to say good-morning to Alexei. His nurse was a young woman from Poltava, named Constantina, cheerfully ugly, squat and heavy, but she clearly adored the little boy, and he adored her. Priscilla went downstairs. listened to the sound of the piano coming from the music room, where Anna was doing her scales. There was no sign of Sophie or Janine; they were probably solacing each other. But there was a row of footman bowing as she walked past them, smiling at them, to where Gleb waited on the porch.
Everything was so perfectly, reassuringly normal. If only those newspapers hadn’t arrived yesterday, there would be nothing to worry about, because nothing would have changed. But today, everything had changed. There was no tsar, any longer, and everyone on Bolugayen knew that. And, for all of Grandma’s bold words, that left the ultimate question to be answered: did the boyars hold up the tsardom, in which case there was nothing to worry about, or did the mystique of tsardom hold up the boyars, whom the tsars had created in the first place? If the latter were true, then she and Grandma, all the Bolugayevskis and indeed all the two thousand odd princes in the Russian Empire, no longer had any reason to exist. She wondered if her people were considering that at this very moment?
The Red Tide Page 26