The Ice Swan
Page 1
Dedication
Kim
How dull my life would be without your sparkle.
Epigraph
We know what lies in the balance at this moment, and what is happening right now. The hour for courage strikes upon our clocks, and courage will not desert us.
—Akhmatova
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Epilogue
Discussion Questions
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Praise for J’nell Ciesielski
Also by J’nell Ciesielski
Copyright
Prologue
October 1917
Petrograd, Russia
The night burned red with the flames of revolution.
Shots ringing out. Cannons exploding. People screaming. The Bolsheviks came intent on death with anarchy in their iron fists.
Her Serenity the Princess Svetlana Dalsky hurried down the corridor of the Blue Palace carrying a travel case that had been packed for weeks should this very scenario arise, not daring to use a single candle lest it draw attention. The dozens of windows reflected the red sky, turning the drapes and carpets and ancestral portraits to stains of blood. The rebels would soon be at their front door, and not even her father’s protection unit of White Guards could hold them back. The time for that was over.
She slipped into her younger sister’s chamber still cloaked in darkness and moved to the bed. A weak candle on the bedside table illuminated Marina’s sweet face relaxed in worriless sleep.
Svetlana set her case down and shook her sister’s shoulder. “Get up, Marina.” Marina moaned and flipped over, her hair like dark honey across the lacey pillow. “Get up!”
“What for?” Marina rolled back and cracked open an eye. Taking in her sister’s dark travel clothes, she bolted upright. “It is happening?”
“Yes.”
Marina sprang out of bed and rushed to her wardrobe to change while Svetlana stuffed her sister’s personal items into the waiting travel bag. Father had told them this day would come and they had prepared well.
Svetlana scrounged through the jewelry box. “Where are the rubies?”
Marina patted her stomach as she jammed her feet into thick stockings. “Finished sewing them into my corset last week.”
Another preparation. Their carried items were bound to be searched or confiscated, but their most precious items, the ones that would keep them alive, would never leave their bodies and hopefully slip right under the rebels’ noses.
Dressed in heavy layers and thick coats to withstand the malevolent Russian weather, the sisters grabbed their two small cases and left the chamber, stealing down the corridor of their family’s home as swift as shadows. The light beyond the windows grew brighter as if a bonfire had ignited just outside the palace gates. Gunfire ricocheted off the surrounding buildings.
Soon. They would be here soon.
A cry of despair echoed down the corridor. “The day has come!” Their mother’s wail reached them a split second before she hurtled around a corner clutching her fur coat and kubanka hat. “They will kill us all!”
Marina gasped. Svetlana placed a steadying hand on her shoulder to ward off their mother’s hysterics. “They will not find us, Mama. Where is your travel case?”
“Well, I . . .” Mama looked around as if the bag would appear by sheer willpower. “I see no reason to pack as if we are leaving forever. Your father will fight. We’ll return in a matter of days. They have no right to be here!”
Svetlana stepped forward until she was inches from her mother’s pale face. “We may never return.”
“The tsar cannot abandon us to these madmen!”
Glass shattered.
Mama screamed, clutching her cross necklace. “Saint Peter preserve us!”
Voices shouted from the foyer. Boots pounded across the marbled floors.
A dark figure flashed around the corner leading up from the back staircase. “Svetlana! This way. Toropis!” Sergey. One of her brother’s oldest friends.
“No. This way.” Svetlana turned away from the front of the palace and down a twist of passageways to a small closet in the servants’ hall. She pushed a back panel to reveal a hidden staircase. “Go down. Quickly!”
Marina and Mama disappeared into the secret entrance. Svetlana and Sergey followed and sealed the door behind them.
“Sergey, what are you doing here? Where are Nikolai and Papa?”
“Called to defend the Winter Palace. The Bolsheviks have broken in. I knew it was only a matter of time before they came here. I’ve come to take you to safety.” His heavy breathing echoed in the tight space as they fumbled their way down the darkened stairs. The barest light seeped through the cracks to keep them from complete treachery. “Where is this leading us?”
“To the gardens.” If they weren’t caught.
The tunnel grew steadily brighter, but the night they emerged to was far from clear. It was red, exploding with horror and treason. Behind them, the palace, their home, shimmered with rage as dark figures raced along the windows. Their torches and guns refracted against the glass. Mama sobbed as Marina whimpered. Svetlana turned them away and out through a rusty gate. The street was quiet and slick with rain from the day before.
The day before their world ended.
Sergey herded them away. “We must hurry to the train station.” He took Svetlana’s hand and tucked her close to his side.
It was only a few blocks to the train station, but the distance seemed a hundred lifetimes as they darted around buildings and ducked behind carts to avoid the roaming mobs of citizens crying hateful threats of violence to anyone daring to cross their path.
A mass exodus of nobles swarmed the train platforms as women in jewels and men in fur hats crammed their panicked selves into already full cars.
“This way! Up front.” Tall, with long arms and legs, Sergey pushed his way through the crowd holding tight to Svetlana. Marina and Mama hooked their arms through hers as they wound through the sea of desperate humanity.
Svetlana’s travel case was ripped from her hand. A young woman with frayed clothing clutched it tight in triumph. “Give that back at once!”
The woman grinned, revealing rotting teeth. “It belongs to the People now. Your time is over, Printsessa.”
Grubby hands reached out and snagged Marina’s case. “Long live the People! Long live the Revolution!” They disappeared like smoke.
Svetlana caught glimpses of the train through the teeming bodies. Of people standing cheek to jowl inside. Of men kicking women off the ladder as they attempted to board the crammed cars. All of Petrograd was fleeing, but not all would make it. Fear curled cold and hissing in Svetlana’s stomach. They would make it. She would ensure her sister and M
ama made it.
The crowd thinned to allow for a gasping draw of breath as the engine belched its black smoke. A whistle trilled. The crowd screamed and plunged toward the train in final desperate flings to find space.
Sergey pushed them to the front car. Grabbing Marina, he shoved her onto the ladder before hoisting up Mama. The train wheels started to turn.
Tweet! Tweeeet!
Soldiers with red arm bands flooded the platform, striking at men and woman alike with clubs and trampling anyone knocked under their black boots. The Bolsheviks. “Get them! Don’t let them flee like rats.”
The soldiers rushed forward and ripped people off the train as it started to move. Sergey grabbed Svetlana, kissed her on both cheeks, and threw her up the ladder. “Paris. I will find you.”
“Sergey!” Svetlana hoisted herself to the rail and held out her hand, begging him to take it. “Sergey!”
Arms striped with red bands locked around him and dragged him back where he was swallowed into the rioting of chaos.
Chapter 1
July 1918
Paris, France
Edwynn MacCallan poised his scalpel over the beating heart. A wonder of sheer beauty with its miraculous chambers and thin veins coursing with life. The bullet pointing directly at the left ventricle threatened to end it all.
“Heart rate is falling, Doctor.” Gerard Byeford, Wynn’s colleague and surgical assistant, shifted uneasily on the opposite side of the operating table.
“A minute more.”
“We don’t have a minute.”
“Fifty seconds, then.”
“Wynn. You arrogant—”
Wynn heard nothing more as the bullet slipped free from its place of intended death, captured in the forceps’ unrelenting grip. It clanged a solid peal of demise as it dropped into the sterile metal tray, rolling back and forth until it came to a final stop among the smears of blood.
Gerard wiped the blood trickling from the incision as Wynn handed the forceps to a nurse who then placed a needle driver with a suturing hook into his hand. Wynn made quick work with the catgut thread in a neat row of stitches that would leave the patient with a slightly puckered scar for his Blighty badge. Proof of honor earned on the battlefield. Lucky blighter. Too many of the Tommies claimed theirs with an eternity box or a mud pit in no-man’s-land.
The next patient was not so lucky. Sent from a casualty clearing station near Amiens, his tag reported shrapnel to the abdomen, but with the mass moving of the wounded at such places his kidney contusion had been missed. The soldier, no older than twenty, died before the first incision was made.
Wynn ripped off his surgical mask and gloves and tossed them into the bin of soiled linen, then made his escape from the taunting smells of death and failure. And thousands more coming as the wretched war dragged them into its fourth year of death and destruction.
If he allowed the sobering thought to settle for too long, it would drive him straight out of his senses. A batty medical officer was the last thing the army needed at the moment, so he would have to reserve his mental breakdown for another time.
He slipped out the back door of the Parisian hotel turned hospital and dropped onto the stone steps. The bright orange ball of sunlight hung low in the sky, skimming the tops of Parisian buildings that had yet to crumble beneath the weekly barrage of Hun guns. Most days he couldn’t tell if the sun was rising or falling as each day blurred into another. Only the smell wafting from the kitchen—congealed eggs to announce breakfast or boiled beans for supper—kept him straight. Neither a pleasant marker of time, but at least the food was hot.
“Here you are.”
Wynn scrounged up a grin at the familiar voice. “Thought I smelled carrots.”
Hair blazing like the ripened root vegetable, Gerard plopped next to him on the step. His once bleached surgical apron was covered in all manner of operating byproduct. Then again, so was Wynn’s. “Ha-ha. That joke never gets old, does it, my lord?”
Wynn scowled at the title he tried to shuck off every chance he got. As the second son of the very wealthy Duke of Kilbride he never had to worry about the pressures of title and land hefted onto his brother, Hugh, the first born and heir. Surgeon was the only position Wynn cared about. “Told you not to call me that.”
“Pardon me, Doctor Marquess.”
“Another joke that never gets old.”
“Never. Just when we uppity surgeons start to think too highly of ourselves, we find our elbows rubbing against nobility. Come to find out, you’re not such a bad lot. In small doses.”
“Don’t let the others in the rank and file hear you. They’ll think I’m not pulling my weight to keep the commoners down. As if we need one more thing.”
Gerard hunched forward, his freckled hands clenched between his knees. “How many today, Wynn?”
The question had become common enough among the doctors at the end of their shifts. Not because it was some sick competition or morbid curiosity, but so they could spot who most needed a break. So busy caring for others, medical staff often forgot to care for themselves. This was one small way they could look out for each other.
Wynn took a deep breath of the humid evening air that hung over the small garden. Once a fashionable patch of grass for hotel guests to stroll, the area had quickly filled with hospital supplies and cleaning tents. Hopefully the smell of jasmine and orange trees would blossom again here soon instead of canvas and bleach.
“Six. Two hemorrhages. Kidney contusion. One loss of blood during an amputation. Seizure under the knife, and another infection. That lad had been left in a mud pit carved by a mortar for seventy-two hours. He didn’t stand a chance when they put him on my table. I didn’t even have morphine to give him.” He rubbed a hand over his bleary eyes. “They keep coming. Wave after wave, and half of them never reaching my table. The ones who do . . . Well, you know.”
“Yes. I know. Lost two myself.”
After four hard years, there was nothing left to say. All that remained was the hope that it would end soon.
Wynn slapped Gerard on the shoulder, jostling the thinner man who not only had the misfortunate of carrot-colored hair but the build of one too. “Tomorrow will be better. Bet my best retractor on it.”
“Retractor, you say? I could use a new one.”
“Tired of having the nurses hold incisions open with their fingers?”
“We do what we must, mate. Pardon, my lord.”
“That’s Doctor Lord to you, commoner.” Wynn yawned and stretched to his aching feet, checking his wristwatch. Nearly eight hours since he last sat down. Once he stepped into the operating theater, time no longer qualified for concern. All that existed was the patient before him. A moment off duty was quick to remind him of the mundane aches and pains of mere humans in need of rest. “I best be off to my bunk. Nestor needs to know where to find me when the cases start piling up in a few hours.”
Gerard rolled his eyes at the mention of the hospital’s administrative director. “I’ll keep him at bay long enough for you to get a few minutes of shut eye this time.”
“Thanks, mate. If you see me go down, prop me up with a broom.”
He walked around to the side of the building where large pots of boiling water had been set up for disinfecting stained aprons, gloves, and masks. A good soak in bleach and a vigorous scrubbing with lye and the surgical items would be ready to greet the next patients with medical cleanliness. Hurrying back inside, he was careful to stay out of view. If he were spotted by a militant nurse he’d never find his bed.
He quickly checked out. The nurse on duty tipped her head as Wynn signed the logbook. “See you in six hours, Doctor MacCallan.”
“Aren’t you the wishful thinker?” Wynn slipped his arms into his constricting jacket, not bothering with the tie.
“Someone has to be.”
“Too right about that. Good night.”
“Good night, Doctor.”
Leaving the hospital, Wynn turned down the
empty Boulevard de Courcelles and started walking the two blocks to where he and the other doctors were quartered. He was grateful his special pass allowed him out after curfew or he’d be forced to pitch a tent in his office until morning. The cobblestone street was lined with tall maple trees in the full bloom of green. Quintessential Parisian sandstone buildings with tiny wrought iron balconies and intricate carvings stood guard against the slow passing of time as hurried generations passed before their solemn gazes. Gas lamps rested silently from their hooks on street poles as the City of Light was forced to extinguish her glow while surrounded by war. She sighed now after the exhaustion of a washed-out day as her beauty sparkled under the brilliant coaxing of moonlight.
The air was heavy with summer, a blessing after one of the coldest winters in France’s history. The people of Paris had taken to chopping down doors and furniture that had withstood innumerable revolutions to keep fires going in their homes, but it couldn’t prevent the numerous deaths from exposure. Conditions on the battlefield were a thousand times worse. It was a miracle any of the soldiers had survived. Injuries of shell fragments, shattered bones, and bullet holes had turned to frostbite and hypothermia.
“Non!” The shriek carried down the empty street. Three doors ahead, a woman stood in the entrance shouting in French at a person standing on her front steps.
The person, draped in a long shawl that covered their head, took a step back and held up their hands as if pleading. A woman by the slender shape and fringe of her covering.
“Non!” The Frenchwoman grabbed a bottle from behind her and raised it as if preparing to hurl it.
The shawl woman stumbled to the footpath, blocking her face and head with her arms. With a vicious screech, the Frenchwoman lobbed the bottle into the street, then turned and slammed the door behind her. Glass shattered. The panicked woman turned away but caught her foot on the edge of her shawl, tripping her into the street and the broken glass. As she cried out in pain, her hood toppled back to reveal a sheen of silver hair and face that could have been carved from exquisite ice. Yanking the covering back in place, the woman stumbled to her feet and lurched forward.