The Diamond Secret (Once Upon a Time)

by Suzanne Weyn

  The endurance and strength she’d developed during her year of hard, grueling work at The Happy Comrades served her well as they found itinerant day labor at ship docks, at cargo wharfs, or in fields, plowing the spring crops. They even found work swinging mallets to smash rocks in the employment of a builder of stone walls.

  Nadya was strong enough to do the work alongside Ivan and Sergei, and every day she grew leaner and more muscular. It seemed to Nadya that they had, indeed, become “happy comrades.” Working as equals to ensure their most essential needs—food, shelter, safety, and simple entertainment—had bonded them. Their shared goals and struggles had united the three-some in a way that she treasured.

  Sergei, always so kind and upbeat, was like a brother to her, and even her initial up-and-down relationship with Ivan had now smoothed into one of friendship. Although they still spatted sometimes, it always was over quickly and their anger would swiftly abate. She could jolly Ivan out of a sour mood with a practical joke or a clever pun.

  One evening, a month into their journey, as they made camp in the woods near the German border, Nadya bumped into Sergei while building their fire. He stared at her with surprise. “What is it?” she asked him.

  “Your arms are rock solid,” he remarked.

  Proudly she rolled up the sleeve of her white shirt and flexed her biceps. “I love this life as a man,” she told him honestly. “It’s so free! I never want to go back to the confinement of being female.”

  She didn’t like the distressed expression that came into his eyes. “Ivan!” he shouted.

  Ivan had been collecting firewood in the forest but came running, tossing the wood he’d gathered as he blasted out of the trees. “What? What’s happened?”

  “Look at her arm!” Sergei demanded. “Flex it for him, Nadya.”

  With a grin, Nadya bent her arm, causing the muscle to bulge.

  Ivan’s eyes widened with exasperation. “You made me come running for that?”

  “That is not the arm of a grand duchess,” Sergei insisted. Taking Nadya’s hand in his, he turned it palm up. “These calluses and those sunburned cheeks don’t exactly make her look like a member of the aristocracy either.”

  “How do you propose that we live if she doesn’t work?” Ivan challenged.

  “I don’t know, but we’re on the German border; it won’t be that long before we’re in France. I’ve got to start training her to act aristocratically. As she is now, no one would even believe she’d even had a roof over her head, let alone lived in a palace. Nadya’s looking more like a field hand than a grand duchess.”

  Ivan surveyed her, walking in a circle. “You’re right,” he agreed. “In many ways, she looks worse now than when we first found her.”

  “Precisely,” Sergei said. “Back then she had a certain rough feminine appeal. She even had a natural delicacy. Now she looks like she was born to the hard work of the peasant class.”

  “Excuse me. I’m standing right here,” Nadya irritably reminded them, “in case you forgot. I happen to like the way I look.” These days, when she caught her image reflected in a lake while bathing or in the shining steel bumper of a harvester while working, she saw a young woman who stood tall with the health of days spent in the open air. There were no more dark circles under her eyes. The relentless sun had rid her complexion of its pasty pallor and had even splashed freckles across her cheeks. She did not miss the smoke-filled nights or the greasy food of The Happy Comrades Tavern. This hard but free life of honest labor was much better than the life of wasting away above the tavern, the life of scrambling hand-to-mouth on the street, or the life of squalid horrors she’d seen at the mental asylum. These were the happiest days she could recall.

  “From now on, one of us will find work and get food while the other stays at the campsite and trains her,” Sergei proposed.

  “But I want to work,” Nadya objected.

  “You’re right, that’s what we will have to do,” Ivan said to Sergei, ignoring Nadya’s protest. “You train her in aristocratic manners and I will teach her how to be like Anastasia. We’ll alternate days.” He studied her once more. “No more haircuts,” he declared.

  “I like my hair short like this,” she insisted.

  “No. It’s served its purpose. Now you’ve got to grow it long enough so you can style it.”

  “Since when did you become an authority on style?” she taunted. “Who do you think you are? Monsieur Ivan of Paris?”

  She placed her hand on her hip and threw back her head in a mock imitation of Ivan as a stylist. “I will make you look divine. The time I have spent in the Russian Army has made me an expert on style. I will give you a Russian military cut—so chic! I call it the Red Army Bob.”

  “Very funny,” Ivan replied dryly. “But listen to me. It’s important. The Romanov sisters cared about fashion. The czar kept them in traditional, proper Russian attire, but Empress Marie sent the girls the latest style magazines from Europe. I found them all over the place at The House of Special Purpose.”

  “The House of Special Purpose”: as Ivan spoke the words something went cold within Nadya. How ominous it sounded. When they named the place, they must have already known what its “special purpose” would be. Why else would they have called it that?

  In the tavern, she’d heard men speak of the Romanovs with hatred, spitting out their names contemptuously, saying that they’d gotten no less than what they deserved for living so lavishly while the common people starved. Nadya also knew how it felt to have hunger gnaw at her insides like a raging animal. Hunger like that could turn a person savage with desperation. It was why she’d endured Mrs. Zolokov’s abuse—because anything was better than starvation.

  And yet…

  When she saw photos of the Romanov family, she could not find it within herself to hate them. The little boy, Alexei, the czarevitch, was the youngest. He was rumored to have a sickness that would cause him to bleed to death if he were to get cut; he looked so sweet and fragile. The three oldest sisters were so elegantly beautiful in lacy white gowns with their blond hair swept up onto their regal heads, and the youngest one, Anastasia, was so playful and bright-eyed. All they’d ever known was privilege. How could they know their lives of luxury were an insult to those suffering in poverty?

  “I don’t want to be Anastasia Romanov!” Nadya blurted.

  “What?” Ivan cried.

  Unexpectedly, tears sprang to her eyes. “I don’t want the life of a girl who could be extinguished at the whim of angry people, men and women she’d never even met, who don’t know or love her.”

  Nadya sobbed and began to tremble. A warning sounded in the back of her mind—was this the madness, this passionate flame of wild emotion that had compelled her parents to dispose of her in the mental asylum? Watch it, the small voice of rationality warned inside her head. Don’t let it burn out of control or you’ll scare off the only friends you have.

  It was no use! Nadya was being swept up by a wave of feeling that she felt helpless to harness. “What kind of people kill a girl who has done nothing but make up entertainments with funny characters or play harmless pranks on the servants? A girl who wanted nothing but to play catch with her little dog in the sunshine, but wound up watching everyone she ever loved murdered before she was also riddled with bullets?”

  “How do you know these things?” Sergei asked.

  “Because she was a girl and I was a girl. But why should I want this girl’s life? Tell me!”

  “It would be an easy life, a luxurious one,” Ivan offered. “Anastasia had the most lavish existence imaginable! And what did it get her? What?” Nadya shouted through her tears. “You tell me why I should do this; for what possible reason should I want this Anastasia’s wretched life?”

  Overcome with emotion, Nadya couldn’t stand to look at them; Sergei gazed at her, incredulous at her outburst, while Ivan had his back turned as though disgusted.

  Nadya was seized with an overpowering need to get away
from them. With tears clouding her vision, she ran into the forest, pushing aside branches from her path as she went. With no thought to staying on a course or noting her direction, she ran until her foot slipped on a loose rock and flew up, launching her forward.

  Nadya is in a voluminous, floor-length white nightgown, padding barefoot down a dark hallway. Her hand is outstretched against the wall for guidance as she heads toward a brilliant beam of light coming from the room at the end of this hall. She stops just short of the light and peers into an ornate, high-ceilinged room of murals and opulent furniture abundantly trimmed in gold.

  The king and queen of Russia, Czar Nicholas and Czarina Alexandra, stand in the middle of the room. Nadya has seen their photos many times and recognizes them immediately. She realizes she must be in the Imperial Palace. How did she get in? Why is she in a nightgown?

  The czar wears a white military-style jacket with golden braids and epaulets at the shoulders. He has on riding pants and boots, as though he might jump on a horse and ride off into battle at any moment. He has kind eyes. Alexandra is resplendent in a brocade cape lined with ermine fur, worn over a sparkling, full-length mauve gown.

  The royal couple speaks to a large, hunched man in a filthy black cloak; he is a vile, ugly creature with a bulbous nose reddened from drinking and long, greasy black hair that clumps into sinewy tendrils. “I will not be dictated to!” he shouts, his tone threatening.

  She knows who he is from newspaper photos—Grigory Rasputin! But Rasputin is dead.

  All of them are dead. Is she seeing ghosts?

  Then she reminds herself that she is in a dream. Anything can happen in a dream.

  “We appreciate all you have done for our son, Father Grigory.” Czar Nicholas speaks in a conciliatory way. “But I must insist that you keep a proper distance from the girls and their nursemaids from now on. Sura has complained that you come to do prayers with the girls when they are already in their nightgowns. They are not children anymore.”

  “Sura?” Rasputin questions.

  “The girls’ nurse,” the czarina explains.

  “Do you say this as well?” Father Grigory challenges her.

  She cowers a little. “I know you are without blame,” she says to soothe him, despite her obvious uneasiness, “but you visit the grand duchesses in their bedchambers when they are not dressed to receive company, and it causes talk.”

  “Let them talk! The name of Grigory Rasputin is known throughout Russia!” he bellows with rapturous grandiosity. “Everywhere, I am known as a holy man and mystic! You have seen my powers for yourself. I shall go back to St. Petersburg if I am not wanted.”

  “No!” the czarina cries. “You must not!”

  “Ha!” he shouts triumphantly. “You know no other can stem the bleeding that ravages your boy, the future emperor.”

  “And for this, we are so very thankful,” Czarina Alexandra assures him nervously.

  “If I cannot visit the girls, how am I to tend to their immortal souls?” Rasputin challenges.

  A man dressed in a black cape and black trousers approaches Grigory Rasputin. He is short but strongly built and has a twisting scar across his pale face.

  That scar…

  Nadya is suddenly in the Trans-Siberian train station. The man with the scar is chasing her.

  It’s a dream! It’s a dream, she tells herself urgently.

  But her terror is so real!

  There is no one else in the station to help her. It’s completely empty. The scarred man snatches at her, but each time she manages to duck away.

  “I want the diamonds,” the scarred man shouts, momentarily halting his pursuit. “They belong to me.”

  Nadya is still barefoot and in a white nightgown; her hair is no longer short but long and wavy. “Leave me alone. I don’t know where they are. I don’t!”

  “I will have those diamonds,” the man screeches, lunging at her.

  She turns to run from him, and she hits a solid black wall. The stench of body odor tells her it is no inanimate obstacle. Looking up, she faces the sneering visage of Grigory Rasputin. Before Nadya can react, he seizes her shoulders in a crushing grip.

  Nadya screams until the sound of her terror fills the station with a white noise so intense it becomes visible as a cloud of blinding illumination that obliterates everything.

  “Nadya! Nadya!”

  The all-encompassing white snapped into utter blackness.

  Staring dazedly into the abyss of nothingness, Nadya began to see silvery forms gradually taking shape before her eyes; first the ovals of eyes appeared, then the slanting ridge of a nose. “Ivan?” Nadya asked the disembodied form hovering in the blackness above her.

  “Thank goodness you’re okay. I’ve been looking for you for hours. How’d you get down here? Are you hurt?”

  “Where am I?” Nadya asked. Ivan’s arm was around her now, and the solidness of and heat from his body was reassuring.

  “You’re at the bottom of some kind of ravine. I used my last match, or else I’d show you. You must have fallen and rolled down here. When I spotted you sprawled on the ground, I thought you were dead.”

  Shaken by this news, Nadya bowed her head and covered her face with her hands. “Oh God—I don’t want to be dead.”

  Ivan tightened his hold around her. “No. No. Don’t be dead. I’m so happy you’re not dead.” He kissed the top of her head. “Definitely don’t be dead.”

  In the darkness, Nadya tilted back her head and reached up her hand until her fingers contacted the smooth surface of his lips.

  Tenderly, he kissed her fingertips.

  Then Ivan pulled her closer and sought out Nadya’s lips with his own, kissing her gently at first, and then with growing passion. Nadya returned his kiss, somehow aware that all these days of traveling together had been leading them to this moment.

  Ivan stroked Nadya’s hair tenderly and then stood. Taking her hand, he drew her to her feet. “Do you feel well enough to walk?” he asked.

  “I think so. Do you know the way back?”

  Ivan hesitated uncertainly. “Not really,” he admitted. “Let’s see what we can find.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Lessons in Royalty

  By the time Nadya and Ivan finally had found their way back to the campsite, dawn’s first rays were breaking. Sergei sat by the dying embers of their campfire. When he saw that they were back, he rushed to them. Thank goodness they’d returned. He’d been so worried!

  Alarmed by the purple bruise on Nadya’s forehead and the bump beneath it, Sergei reached out to touch her but then drew back, worried he might hurt her further. “What happened?” he asked.

  “She fell,” Ivan answered for her.

  Nadya tapped the bruise and then cringed. “I had the most terrifying dream,” she confided, and then, leaning against a boulder, went on to relay it to them.

  Sergei looked to Ivan, his eyes full of questions. “She dreamed of Rasputin?”

  “The whole country has nightmares about that charlatan,” Ivan replied. “Did you know that Rasputin was not even his real name? It was a label given to him by the people of his village. It means something like ‘dissolute’ or ‘disreputable.’ Luckily, he’s dead.”

  “From what I hear they had to poison him, shoot him, and then drown him before he would finally die,” Sergei recalled.

  “But he is gone?” Nadya was eager to confirm.

  “That’s what they say,” Ivan told her. “We can only hope it’s so. You know who he was, don’t you?”

  “I know what I’ve heard people say.”

  “But you’ve never met him?” Sergei pressed.

  “How would I have?”

  “You had a life before the asylum,” he reminded her.

  “A life at the Imperial Palace?” she questioned skeptically. “In my dream I was at the palace.”

  “I saw him once when I was a boy,” Ivan said in a somber tone. “He was a bully and he smelled.”

 
; “When you drove the Imperial Family alongside your father?” Nadya said, remembering Ivan’s story.

  “Yes, then.” He stuck to his lie.

  “The man from the train station was in my dream too,” Nadya said.

  Sergei looked at her sharply. “This man with the scar, you dreamed he was at the palace? You’re sure it was him?”

  “Yes, in the dream he was at the palace. I remember his hideous scar,” she said. “It was probably just a crazy dream,” Nadya decided. “The mind can concoct wild stories.”

  “Maybe not,” Sergei said. Sergei was sure this was further confirmation that Rasputin’s assistant and the man at the train station were the same. “Ivan, we should tell Nadya what we suspect about the man being Rasputin’s assistant.”

  “We should,” Ivan agreed. He told Nadya of their fears about the man. While they spoke together—Nadya full of questions that Ivan answered patiently and with reassurances that they would keep her safe—Sergei noticed that something between Nadya and Ivan had shifted. It was in the way they inclined toward each other ever so slightly, bending like plants toward the sun. There was a new softness in Ivan’s eyes when he looked at her. Nadya’s voice was gentler somehow.

  If these were indications of new love, as Sergei suspected they were, then he was not surprised. All that scraping and arguing, the teasing and playful antagonism, could mean only one thing. It was a sure sign of attraction.

  But now Sergei had a new worry. What would happen if this love blossomed? If everything went according to plan, what future could these two ever expect? None whatsoever; either their attraction to each other had to be stifled or their plan to pass off Nadya as the grand duchess Anastasia had to fail. Both events could not exist simultaneously.

  That morning, Ivan went back to plowing fields for the farmer. How tenderly Nadya waved goodbye to him! It would have been touching if it were not so ill-fated.