The Rose Stone

by The Rose Stone (retail) (epub)

  After tea the games were restarted on the lawn.

  “Now then,” said Trudy who, for her sins and to her disgust, had been left in charge of the proceedings while still more tea was served in the kitchen. “What d’yer want ter play? Somethin’ nice an’ quiet I should think, after what you lot ’ave just eaten.”

  “I Sent a Letter.”

  “Grandmother’s Footsteps.”

  “Sardines!”

  The suggestions, deafening, came from all quarters, but it was the last one that was taken up with enthusiasm.

  “Yes, Sardines. Let’s play Sardines!”

  “I’m ‘It’,” Anna bellowed across the pandemonium, “because it’s my party.”

  Such logic was irrefutable. Alex opened his mouth. Trudy put a quick hand over it. “Fair enough, Miss Anna. Off you go then. Come on, you lot. Hide yer eyes. An’ no peekin’ now. We’ll count together. One – two – three—”

  Anna flew off down the garden. “Nineteen – twenty.” Where to hide? She dashed to the potting shed, hovered by the door. It was so obvious. Where else?

  “Thirty – thirty-one—” Behind her the chant rose, simple and rhythmic. Excitement churned. Where?

  She ran along the garden wall, past the small gate, always bolted, that led out into the Square. Overhanging it was an old apple tree.

  “Seventy-nine – eighty—”

  Disregarding her party dress she scrambled up the tree and perched upon the wail.

  “Ninety-five – ninety-six—”

  Almost giggling with excitement, she hunched into a small ball, arms wrapped around her knees. They’d never find her here.

  “Ninety-nine – a hundred – coming!”

  It was a long time before anyone found her. They wandered beneath the tree, calling; Anna stuffed her hand into her mouth to stop herself from laughing aloud. Beyond the wall the life of the city rode by – a costermonger with his fish-barrow, calling his wares and swearing inventively at his undauntable escort of cats; hansom cabs and carriages. “Got you!”

  She nearly fell from the wall. It had to be Alex, of course. “Get up!” she hissed. “They’ll all see you.”

  Too late. “There she is!” several children gathered beneath the tree.

  “You’re supposed to hide with me,” she said, glumly.

  “We can’t, Anna.” It was Christopher Smithson, his brow furrowed, “We’d all get awfully dirty climbing up there.”

  “Oh, fiddle!” In their disgust, for once Alex and Anna were in accord.

  “Mother’s calling anyway.” Anna jumped from the wall. “Come on, we’d best go.”

  They streamed back on to the small lawn where stood Josef, Grace and several other parents. Josef was organizing chairs for the adults. “We’ve come to watch the fun—”

  The fun, after that, necessarily, was considerably tamer, the most excitement occurring when young Ralph, rushing enthusiastically back and forth in the game Nuts in May, was very sick indeed. That diversion over, it was decided that things should perhaps take a quieter turn.

  “One more game,” Grace held up a single finger, “and then it’s time to finish. What shall it be?”

  The pandemonium started again. Grace, theatrically, put her fingers in her ears. The riot subsided. Grace looked at her daughter. “Let the birthday girl choose – Anna, what shall it be?”

  Anna, not averse to having all eyes upon her, pondered. Truth to tell she was tired and would not now be sorry to see the back of her guests. She could not for her life think of a game that she really wanted to play. But she could certainly think of one that Alex had always detested, and that would do just as well. “In and Out the Dusty Bluebells,” she said, and smiled innocently into her brother’s black face.

  “What a good choice. Come along, children – Dusty Bluebells. Get in line—”

  The children linked hands, boys and girls alternately, Anna on the end. Grace began to clap and to sing in a high, tuneful voice, and the other adults as well as the children joined in.

  “In and out the dusty bluebells, In and out the dusty bluebells, In and out the dusty bluebells, Who will be my master?”

  Anna led the winding dance, in and out of the raised arms of the line of children, ducking and clapping. Then, as the others stood still, she skipped around the circle—

  “Tippety tip-tap on your shoulder, Tippety tip-tap on your shoulder, Tippety tip-tap on your shoulder, You shall be my master.”

  The boy whose shoulder Anna had tapped slipped out of line and, blushing, pecked her upon the cheek before taking his place at the head of the line.

  “In and out the dusty bluebells, In and out the dusty bluebells—” As the singing began again, Anna ran to the end of the line but stopped as a movement caught her eye. Sally, the little housemaid, was bustling across the lawn. Behind her came two young men in shabby, foreign-looking clothes. One of the lads was tall, handsome and with a mop of fair hair that seemed to Anna somehow familiar, though certainly she had never seen its owner before. The other was smaller, slighter and dark. Unlike the fair boy, he was unsmiling. He had the darkest eyes Anna had ever seen in a thin, intense face. No one else had yet noticed the newcomers. Anna watched them. The fair boy caught her eyes upon him and winked gaily. The dark one looked through her, his straight mouth tense.

  “—Who will be my master?”

  Josef had turned now and was staring at the approaching boys. The dark one stepped to him. Anna heard him speak – the language was strange, rapid, difficult to the ear.

  “Tippety tip-tap on your shoulder, Tippety tip-tap on your shoulder—”

  The dark young man was still talking, still unsmiling, using his hands to punctuate the words. Tanya had glanced up and, seeing them, had stilled, her face white. Then Josef let out a great shout and flung his arms wide. The two young men stepped into them and were enfolded in a bear-hug of delight. Anna saw the gleam of tears on the face of the dark lad.

  “—You will be my master.”

  Tanya’s brothers. Against all hope, here, ten years after the massacre, were two of Tanya’s brothers, Josef and Boris, the one a year older than Tanya, the other a year younger. Much later, when the over-excited young guests had at last departed and the first ecstatic excitement had died down, the bare bones of their story emerged, told in Russian to Josef and translated for the rest of the family. Over the weeks and months that followed, the tale was enlarged upon, but on that first night enough was told clearly to show what the two boys had suffered over the past years.

  A short while before the Cossack attack on the house in Charnov Street seven-year-old Boris – always in mischief even then – had disappeared. His mother, as so often before, had sent the more responsible Josef to find him. After much fruitless searching Josef had discovered his brother at last, a skull cap upon his fair head, singing songs he had no right to know and even less to understand, to an enthralled audience of Jewish children. Before Josef could persuade him away the Cossacks had swooped and murder was being done. Terrified, they had watched the slaughter of their kin from an upstairs window. The Jewish family with whom they had thus accidentally taken shelter knew only too well that the bloodlust of the killers, once aroused, would not be satisfied with the victims they had cornered in the Rosenberg house: a well-rehearsed plan had been put into action and they had escaped across the roofs of Charnov Street to the river.

  “The Abrahams,” Josef said, his voice quiet. Then, “They took you with them?”

  Young Josef shook his head. Boris snorted. “They wouldn’t. They drove us off. Said we were trouble-makers; that we’d brought the Cossacks on them—”

  “They were not to be blamed for that.” His brother said softly.

  “What did you do?”

  Josef Anatov’s thin face showed remembered pain. “At first? We watched. What could we do? We were two children, unarmed—” His voice died. His brother reached a hand to him and rested it for a moment upon his arm before taking up the story himse
lf.

  “Josef it was who saved us. We knew the others had gone over the roofs – we followed them. He found the way. Behind us we saw fire.” He glanced at Tanya, quiet and pale in her corner, “We didn’t believe that anyone else could have survived.”

  Josef gestured. “Of course not. And then?”

  “We made our way home. We couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. It was terrible – no one came near us – no friend – no servant—” A short silence, an expressive shrug, long fingers, uncannily like Tanya’s, spread. “The next day the soldiers came. They beat us, called us names, turned us from the house. They said the house and land belonged now to the Tsar – that the Anatov family were attainted traitors and that we were lucky to be allowed to live—”

  As Boris spoke Josef glanced at the older brother’s face. The dark eyes were suddenly bleak with hatred, the line of the straight mouth harsh. Involuntarily, the thought passed through Josef’s mind – God help the man who crosses this one.

  “What did you do?” He asked the question directly of Josef, the son his best friend had named after him.

  With an obvious effort the young man broke his brooding silence. “We went to the city. Joined the other beggars.” His voice was deeply bitter.

  “That’s how you lived?” Josef’s probing was gentle.

  Young Josef shrugged. “That and other ways. There are always ways.”

  “Yes.”

  “We learned most of them.” In his own self-absorption the boy completely missed the significant note in the older man’s tone.

  Boris, unable to remain silent for long, took up the tale again. “It was Josef’s idea that we should leave Kiev. He said there was no place for us there – that one day the Tsar’s soldiers would come looking for us, too.”

  “We went south first of all – to Bucharest. Then,” Josef shrugged, “Budapest. Vienna. Prague—”

  “We got into trouble in Prague,” put in the irrepressible Boris with a grin, shaking his hand as if he had burned it.

  His brother grimly half-smiled. “We got into trouble everywhere. What else would you expect? Prague was just – a little more difficult. So, then we were on the move again. Westward this time. For I had remembered something—”

  “There was a Dutchman in the jail in Prague—” interpolated Boris “—who spoke of Amsterdam. And Josef remembered – our father’s cousin—”

  Light dawned. “Ah,” Josef said.

  “It took us almost two years to reach Amsterdam.” The dangerously hostile light had again appeared in the dark eyes. Josef remembered his own reception in that city and did not wonder at it.

  “And when you got there?”

  “We were not made welcome.” The words were flat.

  Josef nodded. “No more were we. But, at least, they did tell you that Tanya and I were alive and living in London?”

  “Yes.” Boris again, blue eyes bright and dancing. “And what a day that was, eh, brother? To discover after all this time that we had a sister—” His bright gaze flickered to Tanya, who had been watching him and Josef, her grave face absorbed as she tried to follow what they said in a language she had long forgotten. Meeting his eyes she smiled a little, racked dim memory. “Brother,” she said, softly, in her mother tongue.

  “That’s right! Brother!” Laughing, Boris caught her hands and swung her to her feet. “Brother! Sister! Uncle! Friend!” His exuberance was irresistible. Even the sombre-faced Josef smiled.

  “Sergei Anatov told you where to find us?”

  “Yes, and offered us money to get rid of us.” The hawk face lifted. “We did not take it.” The bitterness was back in the young eyes. Josef looked with compassion into the savage dark face. Nineteen years old, and the lad bore a burden of hatred that could destroy many a grown man.

  Anna, in her corner, quiet as a mouse in case someone noticed her and sent her out, watched the dark one named Josef after her father with wide, fascinated eyes. He looked so fierce.

  Josef stood up, moved to where the lad sat, laid an arm across his shoulders. Still in each others’ arms, Boris and Tanya stilled, watching. When Josef spoke, he spoke to his namesake alone, willing him to believe.

  “It’s over. You’re home. You’re wanted here. I promise you.”

  Anna thought she had never seen anyone’s face so transformed as was young Josef’s when he smiled.

  Her father turned to her. “Here’s a thing, my Anna. What a birthday present, eh? Josef and Boris – come to live with us.”

  Chapter Five

  Josef Anatov stood by the barred nursery window. The street below was bleak with winter. Black ice made pavement and roadway treacherous; horses clattered and slithered awkwardly upon the uneven cobblestones, their breath condensing in clouds of steam in the cold air. The tree outside the window where Josef stood, stripped by inclement wintry winds, reached bare, soot-darkened branches towards a leaden February sky.

  In Kiev the snow would be deep. Troikas would skim the packed surface, bells jingling in the frost-clear air.

  The young man smiled caustically at the pretty thought. And someone, somewhere, he added grimly to himself, is probably being butchered—

  Before the house stood a small gig, the blanketed horse between the long slender shafts held by a boy of about eight who was dressed in ragged trousers and a man’s jacket that reached to his knees. A cap that had certainly done past service for his father, or perhaps an older brother, kept slipping over his eyes. Every now and again the child stamped his ill-shod feet, blew on his fingers and looked longingly towards the closed front door, torn between his desire to escape the biting cold and his need for the penny the doctor had promised him for holding the horse.

  “Joss?”

  The doctor had been here too long. Much too long. Even Josef knew that babies should not take this long to be born; nor should the constant attendance of a man of medicine be necessary.

  “Joss!”

  Behind him Alex and James squabbled. Always, he thought with a touch of irritation, they squabbled. Did they not realize how lucky they were? How fortunate in their security, in the comfort of their lives?

  “Joss!”

  A small, bony hand caught his and tugged. He looked down into Anna’s thin, anxious face. Joss, she had called him – the pet name she had given him within a week of his arrival and which had been taken up by the rest of the household in order to distinguish him from the other Josef. In six months he still had not quite got used to it. “What is it, little one?”

  The small face was grave. The blue eyes within their nondescript fringe of light lashes showed a desperate shadow of worry. If the boys had not sensed the atmosphere of the house, Josef reflected, the same could not be said of their sister.

  He crouched down beside her, still holding her hands. On Nanny’s instructions Trudy had tried – not very successfully – to curl her fine, straight hair in the fashionable way and had tied it with wide ribbons on either side of her head, an inappropriate style for a child as thin-faced and peaky-looking as Anna. Unthinking now, she wriggled a finger into the tightly-pulled roots of her hair and loosened the bunches. Several strands of stubbornly straight tow-coloured hair escaped restriction and straggled down her bony neck.

  “What is it?” Josef asked again.

  Anna, chewing her lip, turned to the windows and pushed her face between the bars, her breath misting the cold glass. She looked down at the gig. “If,” she said at last, “the doctor is bringing our new baby in his black bag, why is he taking so long to give it to us? And why can’t I go to see Mama? Is she ill? Iller than she was yesterday? I was allowed to see her yesterday. But Grandmama won’t let me in her room today. I heard – I think I heard – Mama—” she stopped, and blinked rapidly. “I tried to ask Nanny but—”

  “But what?”

  The child looked hopelessly puzzled. “She slapped me and told me to stop asking wicked questions. Joss – why is it wicked to ask about Mama and the baby? And why, oh why, is it
taking so long?”

  “I don’t know, little one.” Unexpectedly touched by her miserable face he pulled her to him, tousled her untidy hair. The child looked pathetic, the unattractive blotchiness of unshed tears had reddened her face and her mouth drooped miserably. “I think – sometimes – the doctor has to look after the baby for a little while after he takes it from his bag.”

  “But why? Is the baby ill too? Is that why Papa has stayed home from work? He never stays home from work.”

  Behind them, Alex and James had for the moment stopped quarrelling and were laying out their fort and tin soldiers on the nursery floor. Ralph, as always, was curled quietly in a chair, his nose in a book.

  On impulse, Joss perched on the windowsill, lifted her bird-weight on to his knee. “It won’t be long now. I’m sure it won’t.” His English after six months, if passable, was nevertheless still heavily accented. Anna, however, understood him with the ease of a practised ear. He cast about for something to distract her. “What would you rather have – another brother or a sister?”

  She pulled a face. “Oh, a sister! I don’t want any more brothers!”

  “Bags I’m General Gordon,” Alex said loudly, right on cue. He was lying flat on his stomach on the floor, a small cavalry officer on a rearing charger galloping across the desert of the carpet between his fingers.