“Lie back," he ordered.
She was powerless, will-less, too frightened to resist. She lay against the pillows and stared up at him, her head spinning.
“You are magnificent, Katia,” Oleg’s voice was throaty and broken. He knelt at her side and kissed her forehead near the eyes, the hairline, her throat. “You cannot know how I have longed for this moment, how I have dreamed of having you.” He was unlacing the bodice of her gown. She felt his cold fingers shaking as they touched her flesh. A strange paralysis held her; and though her mind screamed out against his assault, she could not move to stop him.
A POCKET BOOKS / RICHARD GALLEN Original publication
POCKET BOOKS, a Simon & Schuster division of GULF WESTERN CORPORATION
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y.
Copyright © 1980 by Drusilla Campbell
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020
ISBN: 0-671-83366-9
First Pocket Books printing May, 1980
10 987654321
POCKET and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster.
Printed in the U.S.A.
Contents
The Frost and the Flame Prologue 1820
BOOK ONE Chapter One: 1825
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
BOOK TWO Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
BOOK THREE Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Epilogue
For Art
Here’s shares in the fun
And not-all-roses,
For there’s more to the loving
Than one supposes.
Prologue
1820
To the rear of Troitza Convent, behind the courtyard and the big kitchen, in the back of the orchard where the trees were old as Moscow herself and the apples bitter, in a place where honeysuckle clung like a lover to the branches of the trees, there was a bit of crumbling stone wall.
The pretty dark-haired convent girl with sky blue almond eyes stared at the space for only a moment before she threw down her apple basket, scattering ripe fruit everywhere, and scrambled over the broken stones.
She was free!
Hours later when the sun had passed its zenith and the trees cast long graceful shadows on the meadow grass, she had torn the sleeve of her Troitza scholar’s uniform; there were bramble scratches across her nose, and blackberries and wild plums had stained her lips purple. The hem of her skirt was bordered with mud from when she crouched beside a stream to search for her reflection in a still pool. She had chased rabbits across a meadow and twisted lilies into a garland for her neck. She climbed the tallest tree on the knoll and saw as far away as Moscow.
Still later in the afternoon, in another part of the woods, she saw a boy and girl walking hand in hand and followed after them secretly. The boy had hair the colour of autumn, a rusty red; and the girl was pretty, graceful, and young. She seemed happy; and the convent girl—who had known only women and girls all her life—was strangely envious. She made a hiding place in some prickly bushes and watched as the boy spread a rug on the grass and urged his girl to sit beside him. But she was kittenish. Clearly, through the brambled bushes, the convent girl could see the look of impy mischief on her pretty face as she ran in and out between the beech and oak and maple trees. When they were exhausted, they laughed and fell back on the rug together.
The boy rested on his elbow, looking at his girl. Playfully, he pulled at the cinnamon curls escaping the band of her babushka headdress. When he tugged a little hard, she yelped and tried to punch his arm as punishment. He held her off, and their laughter filled the lonely woods and ended in a long and lingering kiss.
The observing girl watched the kiss and saw the peasant place his hand like a shield over his lover’s breast. She knew she ought to look away. Not all Troitza scholars were as ignorant of the world as she, and from them she had heard alarming stories Of men and women that she had only half believed. At the time. But now…
She told herself she had to look away. The nuns had taught her that to be purposely in the presence of sin was itself a sin. But her sense of right and wrong was affronted by this religious maxim. Surely the boy and girl were not sinning! They seemed to love one another tenderly, joyously. How, she wondered, could this be sin?
When he fumbled with his lover’s laced weskit, the peasant’s fingers were clumsy, and the convent girl heard him grunt with frustration. As he undressed himself, she strained forward in her hiding place to see if the convent scholars’ gossip about men and boys was true. She could hardly believe her eyes! Of all the stories she had heard in deep-night whisperings between scholars, this she had never believed! His manliness frightened her, revealed like a weapon of attack, until she saw the boy’s face and read the loving expression as he caressed his lover’s sun-warmed skin with his hands and lips.
The convent girl’s heart hammered. The bramble cave was stuffy, and she was out of breath and agitated. She didn’t want to watch! She mustn’t watch! ‘It is a sin…!’
She emerged from the brambles so hastily her face and arms were badly scratched. Despite the pain, her feet sped up the hill through the tall autumn grasses, along the broad scenic ridge to the edge of the convent lands. Only when she was within sight of the crumbling wall did she pause to catch her breath. Her face was rosy, recalling the passion she had witnessed, but there was a lilting singing in her heart that she hoped would never be still. Through the years of her captivity, it would remind her of both liberty and love.
BOOK ONE
Chapter One
1825
Five years later, as she stood in the musty convent schoolroom, eighteen year old Katiana Danova remembered her day of freedom vividly. On her return to Troitza, she had been severely punished; but the pain and humiliation was forgotten now. She had not realized it at the time, but that day had marked and made her different from her convent schoolmates. It had firmed to iron her desire for independence. For love. In her memory, she heard the girl’s throaty laughter and recalled the look of love on the boy’s face.
One day, someone will look at me that way,’ she vowed to herself. ’One day…’
Her thoughts were interrupted by Sister Beatrix standing in the schoolroom door. “I have been looking everywhere for you, Katia. The sleigh is waiting to take you to your aunt in Three Rivers. It is time for you to go.” The old nun’s face was lined and humourless, and she looked at Katia with scarcely disguised malevolence. Katia had been enrolled as a Troitza Convent scholar at the age of five; and from the beginning Sister Beatrix, the Mistress of Scholars, had disliked her. “Well, wh
at are you waiting for? Isn’t this the day you have yearned after for thirteen years?”
Knowing that she would soon be free of Troitza forever made Katia unusually bold. “What did I ever do to warrant your insults. Sister?”
“I have only spoken my mind.” Sister Beatrix moved about the schoolroom straightening the wood plank benches, hanging each scholar’s slate on its appropriate hook. “You never should have been permitted to enter Troitza. Even as a little girl you were willful and worldly; and I told Mother Agnes no good would come of your being here. With blood like yours, you have no right…”
“You speak of my blood as though you know who I am.” Katia’s voice trembled with hope. “Is it true? Do you know who I am?” She reached for the nun’s arm, but Sister Beatrix shook her away with disgust.
“I have no more to say to you. I want you out of Troitza, gone from my classroom.” When Katia made no move to obey, Sister Beatrix became angry. “Get out! Go to the world you have hungered for, but don’t come back to Troitza when you find your freedom bitter.”
The atmosphere in the dusty schoolroom was stifling, unbreathable. Katia knew she must escape it now before anger and resentment—emotions she had only barely held in check for thirteen years—spilled out of her in a violent eruption. With a cry, she pushed past Sister Beatrix and ran from the schoolroom, down the long hall toward the cavernous stone foyer of Troitza Convent.
Sister Dimitria was waiting for her by the high brass-strapped oaken doors leading to the outside. “Here you are at last, child. Your boxes have been loaded these twenty minutes, and Madame Minin, your chaperone, is already within the sleigh. You must hurry, Katiana.” The portly little nun, almost as wide as she was tall, clicked her ugly wooden false teeth in nervous agitation, and hurried Katia through the doors. At the top of the wide marble outside stairs, she said, “Now, remember, child: your traveling documents are sewn here—inside your cloak—for safety. On a trip like this, there is always the possibility of danger so you are to mind Madame Minin and stay within the sleigh at all times. And see you remember, you’re a baryshna, a young woman of quality. And always act accordingly.”
The moment that followed was awkward. Though she was anxious to be gone from Troitza forever, Katia held back, momentarily fearful of the challenges ahead. Thirteen years cloistered within convent walls had done nothing to prepare her for the complexities of life outside. For the most part, Troitza life had been calm and unchanging, regulated by the demands of the church calendar. It had been a life purposely without novelty or contradiction, and Katia had bridled under this dully ordered regimen like an animal caged. She had craved excitement, challenge, a chance to live a full life. Now at last the time had arrived. And she was panic-struck! But she was also proud, and determined not to let her fear show. She told herself that whatever lay before her could not be worse than imprisonment in Troitza.
‘And,’ she thought as she descended the steps to where a handsome maroon hooded sleigh awaited with its champing team of horses, their breath white in the icy air…only in the world will I discover who I am and why I have been locked away for all these years.’
At the door of the sleigh, she turned to look a last time at Troitza. In the grey March light, its massive stone facade loomed over her like a threat. She turned quickly away and entered the sleigh.
Katia knew that her destination—a busy trading and fishing village located at the confluence of three rivers—lay to the north and slightly west of Moscow. To reach the North Road from the convent, the yantchik had to maneuver his sleigh and horses through the hectic brawling streets of Moscow. Katia, bridling at the lack of windows within the enclosed hood of the sleigh, insisted on sitting forward where she could absorb the tumultuous life of the mid-morning city.
For most of her life, Katia had been dreaming, anticipating these moments; and yet nothing and no one had prepared her.
The world was so much more wondrously varied than she had expected. Its possibilities richer than her imagination—limited by the convent walls—had dreamed. Her convent fantasies were drab by comparison to the reality of the bustling city. For Katia, the ride through Moscow was joyous, and she savoured it like the hedonist she was. Every inch of her tingled with excitement and a pleasant sort of fear. She was crying, but the tears rose from a joyful fountain. Knowing herself to be on the edge of discovery, she gave herself over to the thrilling moment, let it rule and use her emotions.
Never had she seen such variety and size and shape of face! In the space of an instant she saw a humpbacked woman begging, twin boys on horseback, a regiment of soldiers on foot and horseback, uniformed magnificently in Imperial red and gold. The urban scene flowed around and into her and she was like one born a second time, wondrously gifted.
They passed the Cathedral of St. Basil with its colorfully tiled cupolas, onion shaped; and in the distance she saw the high stone walls of the Kremlin. The horses slowed to a walk at the busy outdoor market where merchants in their fur-lined hats and muffs, their bodies shrouded in long woolen kaftans, haggled and argued with one another over the price of hogs and sheep and rabbits frozen solid by the icy climate and piled on barrows in tall pyramids.
“Come inside, Mademoiselle Katiana.” Madame Minin opened the hood curtains only enough to let her sallow, moon-shaped face stare out. “It is most unseemly for a baryshna to draw attention to herself. Come back inside before the scandal kills us both.”
Katia laughed, but she had no intention of going inside. “I am alright, Madame Minin. Really I am. And I cannot possibly draw attention to myself since the nuns have made sure to dress me as inconspicuously as can be.”
They had prepared a simple traveling costume for her; and although it was unimaginatively made of somber grey wool, it was warm and exceedingly comfortable to wear. The design was strictly orthodox even to the high round-fronted headdress that covered her hair entirely and hid the back of her neck with a decorous drape. Layers of clothing disguised the shape of her body and protected her from the penetrating Muscovy cold. Over a long sweeping kaftan and underblouse, she wore a shorter garment called a sarafan as well as a voluminous semi-circular cape lined, as was the muff that warmed her hands, in fox fur.
‘Who is responsible for such expense on my behalf?’ That question and others like it plagued her mind once they were through the city and into the snowful countryside. Who had paid for her traveling costume and the simple but well-appointed sleigh? Who was paying for Madame Minin, the yantchiki, and the dozen armed outriders who protected the sleigh? ‘And why must I be protected?’
“Because nowhere is safe these days,” Madame Minin told her when she asked about the many guards. “No baryshna dare go out alone unless she means to be murdered or taken hostage. Or worse.” Madame Minin raised her tufty eyebrows suggestively. She was a thin homely old woman with small round eyes inclined to cross behind her metal spectacles and a fleshy bulbous nose that glowed rosily in the cold.
Katia had temporarily resumed her place within the sleigh and was taking a simple noonday meal of pirogy—savory pastries stuffed with meat and vegetables—and scalding sweet tea prepared in the samovar that was, along with a brazier and pillows and heavy fur rugs, part of the sleigh’s comfortable appointments.
“Meals are the worst of a trip like this,” Madame Minin was complaining as she fastidiously touched her lips with the corner edge of a linen serviette. “We must eat and sleep in this sleigh for days. In these angry times there are few inns suitable for women of quality.” Though neatly and primly attired, Madame Minin bore the unmistakable signs of genteel shabbiness, obvious even to Katia’s inexperienced eye. The lace on her cuffs had been added to cover fraying, and her black broadcloth kaftan was shiny in places. Katia wondered how much Madame Minin was being paid to act as her chaperone in such “angry times.”
“There’s a lawless element abroad these days,” said Madame Minin. “Renegades and highwaymen, beastly creatures with respect for nothing and no one. Why
, only a few months back, there was a frightful case involving a grain merchant’s daughter. I knew the family from the church.”
Madame Minin told a violent story involving rape and disfigurement; but while the widow seemed almost to relish frightening herself with the gruesome details, Katia found the tale easy to disregard.
“The girl should have screamed,” she suggested matter-of-factly. “She should have fought and screamed and kicked…”
Madame Minin shook a reprimanding finger at Katia. “There’s much you don’t know so you would be smart not to offer up advice so brazenly. I won’t hear you speak lightly of that sainted child. In her grave these six months, not more.” Madame Minin sniffed loudly as she glared at Katia. She had been a widow for many years but lived comfortably in the home of her son, a prosperous merchant. Last year he had died suddenly and, almost immediately afterward, her daughter-in-law ordered her out of the house. Now she was forced to live on the charity of the Troitza nuns. Were it not for dire necessity, she would never have agreed to chaperone this feisty-tongued baryshna. Katia ignored the look. “Was she pretty?”
Madame Minin blew her nose and glared at Katia once more. “She had a sweet refined way about her, and, yes, she was pretty as you. You could have learned some manners from the likes of her, I must say.”
Katia wasn’t listening. “You said I am pretty?”
“A little less pretty and your manners might improve.”
“Tell me what I look like, Madame Minin. Please.” Her delicate hands reached out in supplication, and her voice held a note of urgent excitement.
“Mercy, child, what do you mean? Don’t you know your own face?”
“Mirrors were forbidden at Troitza. To speak of appearance was called vanity and pride.” Katia remembered the harsh punishments Sister Beatrix had administered when she was caught peering after her reflection in all the convent’s polished wood and silver and brass. The sister had called her proud and vain and sentenced her to hours of prayer and fasting. “Have you a looking glass, Madame?”
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