The Frost And The Flame

by Drusilla Campbell

  Nikki waited a long time to speak, and Katia thought perhaps she had not heard the Prince’s question. “I did not do the choosing. My Lord,” she replied at last.

  Oleg pushed his pastry plate away and rested his elbows lightly on the table. “If not you, who then chose the Moscow house?” He looked at Natasha Filippovna, and she did not bother to conceal her look of mixed confusion and concern.

  Oleg raised one blond brow quizzically and rose from the table, offering his arm to Katia. In a tone of playful banter, he said as he guided her to a chair nearer the fire, “I sense a mystery. Mademoiselle. A blushing child has been hidden, nay locked, behind convent walls for thirteen years. Who could have asked that such a thing be done? And why?” He looked deep into Katia’s eyes. “Who are you, Katiana Danova?”

  “You must ask my aunt, Highness,” replied Katia softly.

  Chapter Five

  Lady Natasha Filippovna spoke like one condemned. “Katia was my niece’s child.” She crossed herself. “Her father was a boyer from the west. A dealer in furs.” She looked at Katia, her expression a mixture of pain and consternation and something else the girl could not decipher.

  “Go on, Aunt.” Unconsciously, her hand went out as a beggar’s might.

  “When Katia was an infant, her mother and father were struck by the fever. A long wet spring that year seemed to aggravate their condition, and they made me promise that if anything happened to them, I would carry out their wishes for their child, Katia.”

  Aunt Nikki spoke the words as if by rote. For Katia, her queer flat tone somehow deadened the impact of the story. ‘I am a boyer’s daughter. My Mama died of the fever.’ Katia repeated the words in her mind, but she could take no meaning from them.

  Nikki continued, “I was in a position to help because some years before Princess Anna Romanov had made me a present of a house and land in Three Rivers.” Again she crossed herself. “I took Katia there to live with me until she was five. Then in 1812 I placed her with the Sisters of Troitza in Moscow. As her mother wished.”

  A deep crease had come to mark Prince Oleg’s forehead. “The poor child is alone in the world then? An orphan?”

  “Yes, sir,” Natasha Filippovna said with a sigh. She glanced at Katia only once. Throughout the narrative, her gaze was fixed on the flames rising and darting in the great stone fireplace. “I promised to see her cared for, Your Highness. And I shall do ail that is required of me in that regard.”

  “Of course you will, my dear. Of course. And how fortunate Katia is to have an aunt such as yourself.” Oleg Romanov took Natasha Filippovna’s hand in his and then reached for Katia’s. He held each to his lips. “It is also fortunate that our paths have crossed. Though of course one would wish for pleasanter circumstances.” With a look full of meaning, he glanced toward Prince Alexei, who stood apparently lost in thought beside one of the large courtyard windows. “I will do everything I can to assist you in achieving what is best for this lovely girl. You must be my guests at the palace in St. Petersburg.”

  Though he spoke to Natasha Filippovna, Katia knew Prince Oleg’s words were directed toward her. Suddenly, she wished that Prince Alexei and not Oleg had been her rescuer. She was instantly remorseful for her ingratitude, but the feeling did not go away. Why, she wondered, did she distrust Prince Oleg? Was it his rapid and unpredictable mood changes that made her certain he was hiding his true thoughts and feelings? Or was it his milky blue eyes, eyes that seemed veiled, disguised? Beneath Oleg’s sophisticated graces and silky words, she sensed something savage that, once unleashed, would be impossible to thwart.

  ‘We must not go to St. Petersburg with him!’ her thoughts screamed.

  Almost as if she had read Katia’s thoughts, Natasha Filippovna was in a state of extreme agitation. She took a glass of ruby port, and Katia saw that her beringed hand was shaking. “I don’t see how we can be your guests, Prince Oleg. I truly don’t. Unless perhaps in the late summer. I fear flooding in the spring.” The middle aged woman’s protestations sounded hollow.

  Alexei Stephanovich spoke from where he stood near the window. “The countryside offers more danger than the thaw, Natasha Filippovna. It is no longer safe for you and your niece in these parts. You would be wise to leave now, while it is still possible.”

  Nikki tried to dismiss his words with an airy laugh. “You are teasing me, Prince Alexei. You’re trying to alarm me. I’ve lived on or near Romanov lands these eighteen years. The peasant folk know me. We are friends.”

  “Of course. And after tonight, they know you as a friend of Prince Oleg Romanov. Their beloved master.”

  Natasha Filippovna looked back and forth between Katia, Oleg and Alexei, trapped in an agony of indecision. Katia was only half aware of her aunt’s discomfort, however. Her aunt’s story had only just begun to impress itself upon her.

  ’The mystery is over. I know who I am,’ thought Katia. But instead of feeling the expected pleasure in knowledge, she was stunned by the sudden revelation; shocked and angered by the flippancy with which her aunt had treated so serious a matter. Katia had been waiting her whole life to know who her parents were. To hear the story told as dinner table chatter was cruelly insensitive.

  She hardly had a chance to consider the substance of the story or the import of Prince Oleg’s offer and Prince Alexei’s dire warnings. The sound of musket fire alarmed the night. Both men leapt to the window, tearing away the heavy drapes and flinging open the double shutters. Screams and cries and a strong smell of smoke came from the courtyard and filled the amber-lit gornitza.

  Katia ran to join the cousins, her personal confusion forgotten for the moment. From the high casement, she had a clear view of the flaming stable. She heard the lows and screams of animals caught in the inferno. The entire edifice was engulfed. Blinding in their fury, whipped to fresh power by an icy wind, the flames filled the courtyard with hell-light that seared the night sky. More musket fire! And fighting near the inner wall! In the bright firelight Katia now saw the reflected glint of killing metal. The invading peasants had come with knives and scythes whetted murderously. The gornitza had begun to fill with acrid smoke and the smell of burning animal flesh.

  Prince Alexei spoke rapidly. “Take the women somewhere safe, Oleg. If you have a priest’s hole, that should do nicely.” Without a word to Katia, of even so much as a nod of farewell, he departed the room.

  Prince Oleg said nothing. He stared after his departing cousin; and Katia searched his face, seeking a clue to the thoughts which must churn within him. But his face was a mask so totally empty of expression that the absence itself chilled her.

  Natasha Filippovna was sobbing violently. “I knew I should not have come. We should not be here. No good will come of this,” she cried, collapsing into a chair.

  Katia pulled her to a standing position and embraced her. “We have no time for regrets, Aunt,” she said, looking to Prince Oleg whose face still wore that blank expression. “Should we not leave the gornitza, Your Highness? As Prince Alexei directed?” Katia joined him at the window. “See there: the flames have spread to the kitchen now! And the wing!”

  Though she was determined to be brave in time of trouble, Katia heard her voice shake. The sense of danger was everywhere and terrible, and she knew they must move immediately. At any moment, the house itself could be attacked; there was no telling what might happen then. Despite the firepower of the Prince’s men, Katia knew the Prince himself to be unpopular with even his own house servants. She felt threatened from all sides, and yet the Prince delayed.

  ‘He enjoys my fear,’ she realized suddenly.

  “I assure you, we are safe, my dear,” he said with a narrow smile. “There was no need for Prince Alexei’s melodramatic exit when he knows I have dozens of armed men here on the grounds to protect us.” Prince Oleg pointed. “There he is.”

  “What is he looking for?”

  Katia watched as Alexei ran first to the stable and, realizing the impossibility of enter
ing, whirled around.

  “Was his horse…?” She watched Alexei grab the stableman by his lapels and lift him up until his toes left the ground. The old serf was fast gesturing, nodding, shaking his head. He pointed away from the stable in the direction of the tanner’s shed. Katia saw a horse, a fine large beast, and beside it, made small by comparison, was a man. “Who?”

  “Black Jake. My cousin’s scurrilous bodyguard.” The flames were raging higher and brighter. They shed a demonic light on Jake, and Katia shuddered.

  “You are frightened, my dear Katia. Do not be. My servants are well-trained in fire fighting. I assure you, there is absolutely nothing to fear. However, he touched her hair lightly, lingeringly, and smiled again, “I see that both you and Lady Natasha are terrified. If it will make you happy, we will go to the priest’s hole.” He led Katia and a still-sobbing Aunt Nikki along the narrow passageway connecting the gornitza and the rooms in the east wing. At the end of the hall, they descended by narrow stairs to the labyrinth of storerooms on the courtyard level. Without light, they picked their way cautiously. Once, Oleg stopped at a window and gestured into the courtyard. The fire had spread from the stable to the outhouses to the manor itself now. The west wing was ablaze, a checkerboard of char and flames. Here and there, timbers of the gornitza had begun to smolder despite the crowd of efficient serfs wetting it down, bucket by bucket.

  Katia scanned the hellish scene for some sign of Prince Alexei, but he and Black Jake had been engulfed by the mêlée. Her attention was caught by sounds near the gated entrance to the courtyard. A mob of fifteen or twenty screaming peasants thronged over the gate and wall, brandishing pitchforks and flaming torches.

  Oleg hurried the women along the passageway, his manner becoming increasingly agitated. At the end of the passageway, they stepped into the dark laundry room. Katia had known the same biting smell of harsh lye soap during her years at Troitza, and her fears were comforted by the homely familiarity. In the darkness. Prince Oleg dropped to his knees and began searching with the flattened palm of his hand for the handle to the trap door.

  The priest’s hole had been dug in the late seventeenth century, more than one hundred years before, as a place of sanctuary for wandering holy men, religious hermits and cultists. But that was long ago. For the past one hundred years it had been used as a sometimes storeroom and hidey hole for mischievous servant children. Without light, it was not easy to find the iron loop on the trap. Prince Oleg’s breath was coming fast, and he muttered something to himself. Despite his elaborate show of confidence in the gornitza, Katia knew he was afraid now. He too could hear the screams and cries echoing from the courtyard. At last, his fingers found and closed upon the iron loop. He strained with the weight of the door, and finally drew it open.

  “There are steps.” He spoke quickly as he pointed downward into the inky darkness of the hole. “You must be careful as you descend. I wish now that I had risked a light for you, but there is not time to go back for one now. When I close this door, you will be in total darkness.”

  Natasha Filippovna swooned, and only Katia’s strong embrace kept her from sinking to the ground.

  “My dear,” whispered Oleg to Katia, “this will not be easy for you. I regret having to bring you to this place.” He lowered his voice still further as if this would make his news less frightening. “Truly, these peasant disturbances can be bloody things. The priest’s hole is your only safety until we quell this riot. As soon as I can, I shall return for you.”

  Suddenly, Katia feared Oleg more than the peasants. She shrank from the heat of his whispered breath. Almost eagerly, she descended the steep ladder into the priest’s hole. Quaking and whimpering, Natasha Filippovna followed after. A moment later, the trap door thudded down; and they were bound in blackness.

  For Natasha Filippovna, it was the worst moment of her life.

  “Child, are you there?” she whispered tremulously. “Give me your hand to hold, child.”

  They groped, caught hands and then embraced. The older woman clung to Katia for strength and courage. The horror of the priest’s hole was more than just the impermeable darkness, the coffin coldness of the place. It was the smell that terrified her. The unmistakable stink of rats! She knew she heard them skittering round her. She imagined them nibbling at the hem of her gown.

  ‘Surely this is hell!’ her heart cried. Now Natasha Filippovna knew God was punishing her for having been a vain and indulgent woman all her life. Guilt assailed her, and she prayed for a chance to be a better person. She swore to reform herself completely if only she survived the night. Without being aware, she had begun to whisper her prayers aloud. Over and over, the words came like an incantation. “Holy Lady, guide my way. Holy Lady, guide my way.”

  Then Katia was speaking to her. At the sound of the girl’s voice, the rats’ chattering ceased. Natasha Filippovna imagined their tiny pointed ears alert, every sense assessing the human invaders.

  “We should talk, Aunt. In this dreadful place it is our only hope for sanity. If we talk, we won’t think about…things.” Katia’s voice quivered lightly. “We cannot stand here in silence,” she continued. “Pray use this time to speak about my dear Mama and Papa.”

  When Nikki said nothing, Katia continued. “When you told Prince Oleg at dinner, I could hardly believe my ears. I was astonished to learn the story in that way.” Katia managed a small laugh and squeezed Aunt Nikki tightly. “I’ll tell you the truth, though, Aunt. At first, I was most awfully angry with you. After all the years I had waited, it was a shock to hear the news told in such a public and casual fashion. It was unfair of you to tell the story publicly. But I forgive you now,” she paused for a moment, then hugged her aunt once more. “Tell me now. Was she very beautiful, my Mama?”

  “Child, don’t dwell on what I said upstairs.” The sound of her own voice did not comfort Natasha Filippovna. She was feeling worse and worse. She knew God was punishing her! “We should be down on our knees right now, begging the Almighty…”

  “But I have a right to know!” Katia’s voice had a firmness that belied her youth and inexperience.

  “Oh, you and your rights! You sound like Prince Alexei.” Natasha Filippovna swallowed the fetid air in nervous gulps.

  “Am I to know nothing further then?” Katia was incredulous.

  “As God is my witness, you are obsessed with self! Take my hand and we will pray. Come Katia, say the prayer with me.”

  “May I not even know my parents’ names?” Katia stepped back, away from her aunt, into the darkness. “What kind of person are you? Don’t you care about me at all, Aunt Nikki? Am I nothing to you?” She stepped further back.

  Frantically, Nikki waved her hands before her and felt nothing but the clammy air. Through her rising hysteria, she understood that Katia hated her at that moment. Her heart hammered. When she spoke she raised her voice over the noise of it. “Since you insist on knowing things before their time, I’ll say to you that none of what I told the Prince was true. I lied to Prince Oleg about your parents.”

  Chapter Six

  The silence was long after Natasha Filippovna spoke. Cautiously, the creature sounds in the blackness began again. A timid squeak from somewhere, a rustle of dry leaves. As if it were a malignant presence in the pit of her stomach, Nikki felt the terror growing. She was weak at the knees and dizzy, fearfully disoriented in the total darkness.

  “Where are you, child? Take my hand.” She pawed the darkness. “Please let us forget our differences for now. Later, you will understand. I promise you will not always be kept in ignorance. There will come a time…”

  “You are sworn to silence. Why?” Katia’s voice was cold and came from somewhere to Nikki’s right.

  She turned toward the sound. “Don’t leave me, Katia.”

  When there was no answer, Nikki begged and wheedled the girl with pet words and endearments. “Are you so angry with me, galoubchik? How can you be? I cannot break my word when I am sworn. Come to me, deare
st child. Please. As God is merciful.” In the silence, Nikki heard her teeth chattering. She struggled for each ragged breath.

  “You are a cruel child, Katia. You were sent to Troitza to learn the love of God. Instead you have a devil inside you.” Her sobs were hysterical now. She was losing control and could do nothing to stop it. She was exhausted to the point of fainting, and a terror as black and deep as the pits of hell was in her. Katia was pushing her toward the edge, nearer and nearer the brink of madness. “Holy Lady…” she could not even finish her prayer. The hem of her gown rustled at the touch of some small skittering body. The rats were noisier, as if they sensed her weakening. Was it possible? Did she see their blood-red eyes gleaming from the corner of the priest’s hole? Her knees collapsed beneath her and she fell to the cold ground. Sprawled on the clammy stone floor, she was overcome by gagging sobs.

  In an instant, Katia was beside her, loving and contrite. “Forgive me, Aunt. I was cruel, and I used you ill. You are right that I am sometimes obsessed with self. Forgive me, and try to understand that I cannot always quell the anger. If only I could understand why…

  “I promised your Mama,” Natasha Filippovna wailed. Half-demented as she was now, her voice had a repetitious sing-song quality. She spoke more for herself than to Katia. “I promised and I mean to keep my word. I promised and I will not break my oath. Holy Lady, guide my way.” She repeated her short prayer over and over, mindlessly.

  Katia sighed and cradled her aunt more closely. For the moment, pity and remorse drove the fear from her mind. She would learn nothing more from her aunt while they remained in the priest’s hole. The woman was crazy with fear, and Katia knew she could only blame herself. What had possessed her to frighten her in that horrible way? She was deeply ashamed of her insensitivity; and as she crouched beside her aunt, rhythmically stroking her bent and shaking back, she wondered guiltily if there was anything she would not do to learn her identity.