Not for several years had he come to her bed, and she had had to satisfy herself with fantasies and mortifying self-abuse.
It was this which made her hate him the most. She had loved him and he had rejected her completely, left her alone and aching for the touch of a lover yet unable to risk an indiscretion for fear of a scandal that would find her banished to the countryside for the rest of her life.
At the door of Katia’s sitting room, Princess Elizabeth paused. Strangely, she no longer felt any anger towards the girl. She was thinking of Oleg and the shocked expression on his face when she told him she knew of his affairs with other young women, child-women. She had promised him she would leave Katia alone and so for the moment she would. There would be time enough to make Katiana pay for her part in humiliating her.
Chapter Fifteen
It was later that same evening. Oleg and Katia had dined on succulent pheasant and fruits from the palace orchard, well chaperoned by servants all the while. But now the footmen and serving girls had been dismissed, and Katia was alone with Oleg Romanov. As she stared at him through the golden haze of the candles, she prayed that he would soon take his leave. A few hours earlier she had felt completely recovered from her illness, but too much wine and difficult conversation with a man she feared had worn her out. She felt faint and deep within her something whispered a warning.
Oleg was speaking—as he had been throughout dinner—of her certain popularity in society. “You will be a great success, my dear. Every gallant in St. Petersburg will desire you.”
It was the way he said “desire” that chilled Katia. She replied with girlish candor, “I would not know what to do in such a situation. Please, Your Highness, do not plan for me. I am already too much in your debt. And anyway, Aunt Nikki says the house on St. Crispin Place will be ready for us soon.” There was a dizzying buzz in her ears. She swallowed once or twice to make it go away; instead a wave of nausea went through her.
“Your aunt is wrong, Katia.” The prince said with assurance. “The labor force in St. Petersburg is still rebellious from the events of the winter. Why, last week only two men came to work on your house. At such a rate, it will be months before it is habitable. Until then, you must stay here as my guest. I will hear of nothing else. I have spoken with your aunt, and she is agreeable.” He leaned toward her, his eyes burning into her with cold fire. “Think of all I can do for you, Katia. In time you will meet a young man of suitable family and wish to marry. With my support and friendship, a boyar’s orphan might make a handsome connection. Would you like to be a countess, Katia?” He laughed as he refilled her glass with sparkling wine. “Imagine yourself a countess with a thousand ball gowns and precious gems for all of them. It is possible. Have I not told you how all the men in St. Petersburg will desire you for their own?”
Oleg’s enraptured gaze left no doubt in Katia’s mind that, whatever others might feel, he thought her most attractive. She was wearing a simple gown of appliquéd linen with a laced peasant-style bodice and fichu of Brussels lace. It was a girlish and innocent gown but for the deep neckline that enhanced the comely swell of her breasts. Oleg’s eyes glowed as he watched her every move.
Without the host of attentive servants, Katia’s bedchamber seemed particularly uncomfortable and empty. Except for the pool of light where she and Oleg sat and the fire a few steps away, the room was deep in shadow. She swooned slightly and pushed her glass away.
“I must stand. Your Highness. I’ve become quite dizzy from the wine.” Prince Oleg had pressed her to drink more than she wanted; and she had done so, thinking it a simple way to make herself agreeable. Now, suddenly, everything was swimming before her eyes; and the room seemed full of ominous intent. “I am terribly cold,” she whispered faintly. Her hands trembled and her vision blurred. She tried to stand, but could not and leaned back into the chair.
Then, for a moment, her shifting wavy vision steadied into focus. She saw Oleg standing over her and understood everything perfectly. The quantities of wine. The firelight. The absence of servants. She realized that the time had come at last when her fears would be realized and she must repay Prince Oleg for all his many kindnesses. And as surely as she knew this, she also knew that nothing would stop him from taking what he wanted. She recalled St. Olaf's and the rotting spiked heads and knew her own helplessness.
“You must warm yourself closer to the fire, Katia, and take no further chances with your health.” He helped her to her feet, then placed his hand on her shoulder and gently—but with unmistakable firmness— urged her down onto the black bearskin rug that decorated the floor near the fire. The long dark pelt was like silk against her hands. He brought an armload of pillows from the bed. “Lie back,” he insisted. 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.
When her breasts, rose-tipped in the firelight, were free at last, he caressed and suckled them eagerly, his tongue laving circles around the tender peaks, bringing them to unwilling hardness. His hand dug beneath her skirts and petticoats and grasped her inner thigh, found her center. She cried out at his touch, but he smothered the sound with his wet open mouth on hers. His tongue, thrust deep, seemed to drive the air from her. Beneath her skirts, his fingers dipped into the moist folds of her sex; and she struggled, her hands pushing against his shoulders as he stripped her clothing away.
“Prince Oleg, no. Don’t do this. Please.” Her innocent gown lay in a ruined pile. She was naked, her virgin body glowing with shame beneath Oleg’s hungry stare. “Please. No.” Her pleas were like wails as she beat her fists against his chest, but he only laughed at her. The fear in her eyes, the terrified trembling, seemed to stimulate him further as if it was for this demonstration of panic that he had planned the evening. Her blue eyes opened wide with terror.
“Don’t pretend you aren’t enjoying this, Convent Angel,” he snickered. “There is a wantonness in you, Katia. Confess to it, I knew it from the first. Now show it to me, Katia. Give yourself to me. Open your body for me.”
She drew her legs up for protection and tried to scramble backwards, but Oleg’s strong hand grabbed her ankle and pulled her back roughly.
“Hold your legs open for me,” he demanded. After a second’s hesitation, she obeyed. Mixed with lust, she saw murder in his eyes and dared not refuse him. He loomed over her, his body aimed and swollen by heat. She willed herself into mindlessness then, refusing to acknowledge what was being done to her as if by ignoring it she would deny the reality later.
He drove himself into her body, forcing her to fight again, despite her mind’s resignation. But the Prince was huge and stronger by far than she. His hands groped for her as he raped her cruelly, without thought for her tender, untried flesh. A maniacal single-mindedness seemed to command him. He was an animal, a brute beast energized by perverse passion.
When at last he had spent himself, he lay upon her, heavy and sweating, his chest heaving as he dragged for air. Beneath him, Katia turned her head and watched the firelight shadows dance against the wall of her bedroom. She closed her eyes and wished for death; but when it did not come, she prayed instead for a waking nothingness, the cessation of all feeling, all challenge, all need.
Unwittingly, at this most dreadful moment, her thoughts turned to Alexei. With him she knew it might have been so different. Suddenly, she recalled the peasant girl and boy she had watched from the bushes long ago. She remembered there had been affection and tenderness between them. The girl had been a lover then, not a victim.
/> In the morning, Katia stood naked before her looking glass. Her skin was flushed pink by a near scalding tub bath and the harsh soap with which she had scrubbed the skin where Oleg had touched her. She looked for some difference in her image, some outward sign of the terrible change within. Incredibly, there was none. Only the faint bruises where his hands had grabbed her hips to pull her toward him. Yet Katia knew she would never again see the world in quite the same way as before. Something in her that had once been pliant and warm had hardened and fixed, making her different for all time.
No decent man would have her now. If Alexei knew, he would despise her. “Damn you to hell, Oleg Romanov!” she cried aloud and threw herself across the bed. She thought she was going to cry, but the well of her tears seemed to have dried up. For the first time, she began to look at her anger, to acknowledge the awesome power of hate. “You will pay, Oleg Ivanovich Romanov,” she whispered as she beat her fists into the pillow. “You will pay dearly.”
She spent the morning in prayer and meditation before the icon corner in her room, and in the afternoon, dressed in a bright blue frock that belied her morbid spirits; she was sufficiently composed to leave her bedroom and go to the nursery to play with Mary. She prayed that Aunt Nikki would not appear for surely the older woman would question her about the night before. ‘She must not know,’ Katia thought. No one must ever know her terrible secret.
It was a cool, wet day; and she found Mary seated on a stool beside the iron stove that warmed the nursery. There were shiny new playthings in a box beside the small fourposter bed, but Mary turned her back on them. She held instead the straw doll she had carried with her from St. Olaf's. She kept it with her always. Each night when Katia crept in to kiss her goodnight, she found the battered poppet clutched like a lifeline in the child’s dimpled fist.
When she embraced and kissed her that afternoon, Katia felt no response from Mary. There never was any. Katia sighed. But she tried to speak as if nothing troubled her. “Isn’t it nice to have a warm stove on such a cold damp day?” she asked. “Nurse says you had a cough last night so we must keep you all cozy and warm so you don’t get a chill.”
As she fussed with Mary’s simple green wool frock and embroidered weskit, Katia wondered how she could ever escape Oleg without endangering the innocent child who was already so deeply scarred by tragedy that she had not spoken since the tragic night at St. Olaf's.
Passionately, she embraced Mary. Her frailty, her sweet-smelling flaxen hair, filled Katia with resolve. She held the child out from her and spoke fervently. “Try to understand something, Mary. I know you hurt inside. I know that you are lonely and angry and terribly confused and probably frightened too. I know how you feel because I feel the same. I am lonely and angry and frightened and confused just as you are. But don’t give up hope, Mary. I make you a promise: we will be happy one day. A time will come when all the suffering will be over and we will be happy. I promise you…”
“It doesn’t matter what you promise her, she won’t speak. I’ve tried a dozen tricks myself.” Natasha Filippovna stood in the nursery doorway.
“Were you listening, Aunt?” asked Katia accusingly.
“Mercy, I’m no eavesdropper! What do you take me for, child? I just this moment stepped in and heard you make some promise or another. Eavesdropping indeed! How could you think it of me?” Aunt Nikki was dressed that afternoon in a somber orthodox-styled grey costume. Her hair was entirely concealed beneath a high unadorned black headdress. “Anyway,” she said, not bothering to conceal her bad temper, “was your promise such a wonderful secret that it mustn’t be shared? I’m sure the sisters taught you that keeping secrets is in bad taste. And from one’s elders…”
“I told Mary that we would both be happy one day.” Natasha Filippovna looked surprised. “Mercy, Katia, what do you expect in life?”
Katia did not bother to reply. She was wondering if her aunt had been blind to Oleg’s intentions all this time, or if she had simply chosen not to see. She was about to ask Aunt Nikki this, but stopped herself in time. The worst had happened; and it no longer mattered that her aunt was a blind, self-indulgent woman, hopelessly remiss in her responsibility for Katia’s welfare. Now, Katia knew, she would have to protect herself. It was no good relying on others for whenever she trusted another, she found herself neglected and abandoned.
Natasha Filippovna was too self-absorbed to notice anything out of the ordinary in either Katia’s appearance or behavior that morning. “If you are unhappy,” she was saying as she opened the wicker sewing basket she carried on her arm and found the bit of lace she had been working, “you are unhappy because you have been ill. That’s perfectly normal. You’ll perk up when you’re feeling truly fit once more. I’m just sure of it.” The woman sighed. “Believe me, Katia, I know what it is to be ill and out of sorts because of it. You have no idea how this indigestion troubles me. Night and day, you have no idea of how I suffer.”
Katia bit back her angry retort, and for awhile the nursery was peaceful.
“His Highness has told me that the house on St. Crispin Place will not be finished for some months.” Katia said after awhile.
Natasha Filippovna appeared honestly upset. “But Josefinia Rupenskaya asked the Little Father and he said…”
“What does an itinerant priest know about carpenters?” Katia interrupted testily.
“He has friends throughout Petersburg, Katia, in every walk of life. And he is not an itinerant priest. He is well established in apartments on Kominski Park. An altogether respectable part of the city…You wouldn’t speak slightingly of him if you could hear what others who know better say. If you heard about the miracles as I did last night you would feel differently.”
Katia’s instinct was to ridicule, but she restrained herself. Aunt Nikki meant well enough. But she was no better suited to this complex royal life than Katia herself. In a way, Katia felt protective of her aunt. Puzzling over these contradictory emotions, she busied herself making a nest of cushions for Mary on the couch and covered the child with a down-filled satin comforter. Mary permitted herself to be moved about as if she were no more conscious than the straw doll she clutched.
Mary felt Katia’s hands on her and thought how wonderfully soft they were. For as far back as she could remember, she had been cared for by women with calloused hands who handled her roughly and whipped her often for her stubborn silence. Katia was from another race than these, a creature of gentle smiles perfumed with spring. She could not understand Katia and Natasha Filippovna when they spoke to one another in French, the language of St. Petersburg society; but in the privacy of the nursery or their sitting room the women reverted to comfortable habits and spoke the dialect of Muscovy which Mary had heard all her life. She listened intently to every word that passed between Katia and her aunt. Listened with wonderment. These women spoke of someone who could give her the power of speech. Was it possible that after so many years, her voice would be returned to her?
She lay against the pillows, almost as soft and smooth as Katia’s hands, and stared at the fire in the stove, the straw poppet cradled in her arms. The flames licked and bit at the grate and kindled an old memory, mercifully long forgotten. She was with her father and mother, her three older sisters and the baby sleeping side by side in their tiny hut in a clearing in the woods not far from St. Olaf's. They had all been warm together; the single room had smelled of good things: family and food and animals. She snuggled against her father’s broad back and dreamed of something pleasant. She was four years old.
When the rain drops began she was still dreaming. She didn’t hear the thunder, nor the first distant cracks of lightning. Then suddenly a huge bolt struck the tree beside the hut. She awakened screaming and bolted from her mat to the door. She remembered smoke and then an overpowering heat that fell from above as the thatched roof of the hut collapsed under the weight of flames. As she pushed against the oaken door with its heavy iron bar, the sounds of her screaming family wer
e in her ears; but not until she felt the iron slip and door swing open did she turn. Before a wall of flames forced her out the doorway and into the clearing, she saw them—Mama, Papa, the girls and even the babe— engulfed in fire.
Villagers had found her huddled in the clearing hours later. They had crowded around her asking questions and when she opened her mouth to respond she found she could not speak. The words were gone; burned from her, the znakhara said later, for some childhood sin against an angry god. The villagers shunned her, but for awhile she lived in St. Olaf's with her aunt. When she died of pneumonia, Mary wandered from door to door, her hand outstretched, her belly twisting with hunger. At last a man whose name and face she could not remember had been kind to her and fed her from his own plate though often there had been little enough to nourish one. He made her a poppet of fresh straw and bits of string.
Something had happened to him. Mary’s memories were confused and she only knew that at one moment he was with her and then he was screaming like Mama and Papa and there was blood, red like fire. Now she was here in this immense place full of shadows and whispers, with the lady called Katia and the agitated old woman who spoke of nothing but the priest whose powers were greater than silence.
“Josefinia says the Little Father might make Mary speak,” said Nikki when Katia resumed her seat.
“You told that gossipy old woman…” Katia’s retort was interrupted by a footman announcing Princess Elizabeth.
The statuesque princess swept into the nursery with all the haughtiness of a spiteful goddess. “Well, well, how nice to find all my houseguests together. Having a cozy chat, I’m sure.” She raised one brow as she eyed Katia quizzically. “And how are you feeling this afternoon, my dear?”
The Frost And The Flame Page 14