The Diamond Secret (Once Upon a Time)

by Suzanne Weyn

  Sergei and Nadya finished what they had left of yesterday’s loaf of bread. Sergei went to a nearby stream to wash up, and when he returned he came upon Nadya seated on a blanket, her back to him. She was having a conversation with the small doll he’d noticed before. Unseen and unheard by her, he stood a way off and observed.

  “So my little friend, what do you think?” Nadya asked the doll. “Will this turn out well?” She tilted her head, as if to hear the doll’s reply. “You hope so? Well, that isn’t very helpful! Will we regain our family? Will I find true love? Will everything be ‘happily ever after’ for us?” She did more pretend listening before continuing. “Oh, you’re sure of it, you say? I’m so glad! No matter what happens, I know I can always talk to you, at least.”

  Sergei smiled gently, touched by how she loved this small remnant of her past. How many lonely nights it must have seen her through! Not wanting her to be embarrassed, he coughed loudly to announce his arrival.

  Nadya turned sharply toward the sound and set the doll aside when she saw Sergei. “So, where shall we begin my training as a grand duchess?” Nadya asked brightly.

  Sergei remembered how distressed she’d been the day before. “Are you feeling better about our endeavor?” he asked gently.

  “If there’s even a chance that I’m Anastasia, I should find out—and who would know better than the only living person who knew Anastasia, the Empress Marie? While we were trying to find our way back before, Ivan assured me that there would be no danger to Anastasia in Paris. That’s what I felt most afraid of, that no matter where I went, I could never be safe if I were really the grand duchess.”

  “So now you feel willing to try?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Sergei pondered their first lesson. The task was so vast that he was not sure where to begin. What was the first thing Anastasia might be called upon to do?

  “Would you be able to write a letter introducing yourself to Empress Marie?” Sergei inquired. “A formal letter, I mean.”

  “I can write, if that’s what you’re asking,” Nadya replied. “I don’t remember how or when I learned, but I can do it.”

  “Very well,” he said, fishing out a piece of folded paper—the unpaid hotel bill—from his pocket. He had brought along a nearly empty jar of ink and a fine-nib fountain pen—a remnant of his former privileged life—that he now took from the large pockets of his jacket. “Let’s see how you do.”

  He presented the writing utensils and flattened the backside of the bill on an old plank of wood. “Pretend you’re writing a letter to the empress,” he suggested.

  Nadya seated herself on a flat rock. With the plank straddled on her knees, she thought for a moment before beginning. Sergei stood behind her, watching as she began to write: Most beloved Grandmother…

  “Why do you address her so?” Sergei asked.

  “Isn’t she my grandmother?”

  “Why not Grandma or Dowager Empress Marie?”

  Nadya tilted her head, perplexed. “I don’t know. That’s simply how it came to me.”

  “We must ask Ivan if he ever heard Anastasia address her grandmother,” Sergei said, making a mental note to do so. If Ivan didn’t know, then they would have to find out somehow. A wrong term of endearment would be just the sort of mistake to make the empress suspicious.

  Sergei balanced on his haunches and peered over Nadya’s shoulder to inspect her penmanship. It was the handwriting of one who had been schooled in the most excellent calligraphy. No one wrote in such a manner unless that person had been trained to do so. Every perfectly crafted letter curved uniformly, the t crossed with a confident slash, the capital G drawn in the grand old style. Her writing indicated education and wealth.

  “You don’t remember learning this at all?” he checked.

  Nadya shook her head. “Everything before the asylum is a complete blank.”

  A fly hovered near the paper, smearing the ink. Absently, Sergei brushed it aside, and then he jumped away as the last of the ink spilled across the paper.

  Nadya jumped to avoid being splattered. “We can save that ink,” she said, leaping toward her half-open pillowcase. Scooping up a ruffled white petticoat, she blotted at it. Twisting the fabric, she wrung precious drops back into the bottle. “Working with Mrs. Zolokov taught me to be a real cheapskate,” she said with a smile.

  “Ah, but now you’ve ruined your petticoat,” he noted regretfully.

  She tossed it aside, unconcerned. “It’s an old thing; it barely even fits anymore. Apparently I was wearing it when Mrs. Zolokov found me. I don’t think I’ve even put it on since that day. I should have left it behind, so at least it’s served a purpose now.”

  Sergei lifted the worn white petticoat, curious to see if it could be salvaged; perhaps they could soak it in a pond and get the stain out. Examining the petticoat more closely, he saw brown stains that coincided with places where the fabric had been ripped through completely. Gunpowder stains? Could someone wearing this garment have been shot?

  “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  “Don’t know,” Nadya replied. “Maybe they gave it to me at the…you know…the asylum.”

  It was a gruesome possibility but was certainly plausible; an asylum might well refurbish clothing from the remains of the dead.

  Sergei worked his fingers into the seams of the waistband. The fabric seemed stretched, as though something had been in there before but had since been removed or had fallen out.

  “Don’t bother with that,” Nadya insisted. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s get back to the letter. I saved enough ink, and I can squeeze out more from the fabric.”

  At the sound of pounding horse hooves, they both snapped their heads around toward the noise. Riders were bearing down upon them. With a protective instinct, Sergei stepped in front of Nadya to shield her from the two aggressively authoritative men emerging from the forest. “You are trespassing on the private estate of Count Dubinsky!” the first of the men stated with displeasure.

  Sergei slowly grinned. “Count Yuri Grigorovitch Dubinsky?”

  The burly man scowled with confusion. “The same,” he confirmed.

  “Then may I assume we have crossed the border into Germany?” Sergei asked.

  The man nodded. “Indeed.”

  Sergei was pleased to discover they had traveled farther than he’d realized. He hadn’t suspected it, as these men were speaking to them in Russian.

  Clapping his hands with robust pleasure, Sergei stepped closer to the two horsemen. “We are not trespassers,” he insisted. “We are friends come to visit Count Dubinsky.”

  The man pulled out a large firearm from under his jacket. “Stand back!” he demanded. “Count Dubinsky does not fraternize with riffraff.”

  Sergei drew himself up to his full commanding height and squared his shoulders. “Tell Count Dubinsky that Count Sergei Mikhailovitch Kremnikov has arrived to see him.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Unexpected Developments

  Ivan was standing in a half-plowed field under a threatening sky, examining a blister on his right hand, when a tidy, well-dressed man approached him. Ivan instantly assumed from the expression of authority on his face that the man was some sort of foreman bent on delivering a remonstrance to Ivan for pausing in his work. With that in mind, he snapped up the hoe he’d set on the ground and resumed work, despite the pain it caused his hand.

  Ivan could not afford to be fired. As their sole support that day, he had a responsibility. If he were dismissed, there would be no supper for any of them tonight.

  “Ivan Ivanovitch Navgorny?” the man inquired. When Ivan nodded, the man handed him an envelope.

  Thoroughly baffled, Ivan opened it and found a card inside. It was a message in Sergei’s writing. We need you immediately. This man will lead the way. Go with him. Will explain when you arrive. Sergei.

  Ivan gazed at the messenger with troubled eyes. “Do you know what’s wrong?” he asked.

&nb
sp; The man spoke rapidly and seemed to be explaining that German was all he spoke. If Ivan hadn’t been so worried, he would have been encouraged to discover they were so close to the border. His employer was Russian, so Ivan deduced that they were right on the line.

  But what was this new trouble? Ivan knew they did not have the proper papers to cross the border. On foot, they were hoping to slip across the border undetected.

  Somehow Ivan was sure this was the problem. Sergei and Nadya must have been picked up by the police as vagrants unable to produce the proper papers. It had to be.

  Ivan gestured to the messenger, hoping to communicate that time was important. “Come, come on,” he said. “Please take me to my friends.”

  The messenger understood and led the way across the field in the direction from which he’d come. Ivan wished the man would walk faster; he was anxious about his friends. If Nadya and Sergei were being sent back to Russia, he didn’t want to get separated from them.

  Of course, if Ivan were sent back to the Russian authorities, he risked arrest. This slowed his pace. He was a military deserter, after all. The penalty was to face a firing squad.

  The German messenger noticed that Ivan had come to a near halt and looked at him questioningly.

  Ivan felt pulled in two directions. If he stayed on the farm where he’d been working, he could avoid arrest. But Sergei had sent for him, and he was obliged by their bond of friendship to go.

  But what if it were a trick? Perhaps Sergei had been forced to write the note. Maybe he was, at this very moment, hoping Ivan would see through it. The note was vague and cryptic, not at all like the loquacious Sergei. Could that be his friend’s attempt to warn him that something was amiss?

  And what of Nadya? Ivan knew he had gotten her into this. Wasn’t it his duty to make sure she was all right?

  Ivan’s legs began moving again once he thought of Nadya. What was it he felt toward her? Friendship, certainly. When they’d first met he’d been sharp with her because he’d misjudged her. He’d assumed she was dim-witted and low-class because of where she worked and due to her messy appearance. When he’d heard about her being from an asylum, he’d been annoyed that he had taken on such a package of potential trouble.

  And yet, there had been something he’d liked about her right from the start—even if it had taken him until now to admit it. Was it her spirit, her humor? Probably it was both.

  Ivan had grown to respect not only her fun-loving attitude and intelligence, but also her resourcefulness, kindness, and tenderness. The only instability he could discern in her were the terrible nightmares that haunted her. And who was he to judge her for that, he who also knew what terrors sleep could bring?

  Ivan had fallen in love with Nadya. There was no getting out of it, even though he knew not loving her would have been infinitely simpler. He loved her, like it or not. And really, down deep, he did like it so much. He loved the very sight of her, the sound of her voice, her laughter. He was inexplicably happy when she was near, and he had not felt happy about much for such a long time.

  Propelled into a run by his thoughts of her, Ivan waved to the messenger to hurry. “Faster!” he cried. “I have no time to waste!”

  The messenger caught up to Ivan and clapped him on the shoulder. He gestured toward an automobile parked on the dirt road bordering the farm, a Duesenberg roadster. Climbing behind the wheel, the man gestured for Ivan to join him.

  The messenger led Ivan through ornately carved oak doors into the library of the palatial estate. Not since his childhood visits to the Peterhof Palace had Ivan been in a grander place. His mind raced as he sought to make sense of what was happening. Why was he here? It was not a government building. In Russia, the Bolsheviks had commandeered many of the wealthy’s estates for their own use, converting them into housing for the poor masses or into government offices. But this estate still bore the earmarks of private ownership. Massive gold-framed oil paintings adorned the walls. Velvet drapes still festooned the impeccably clean, many-paned windows.

  The moment Ivan stepped into the high-ceilinged room that boasted walls lined with leather-bound books, he was greeted by Sergei. “Ivan, at last!” his friend cried robustly. He was leaning with his arm propped on the mantel of a fireplace in which a roaring blaze crackled. “Please meet my friend Count Dubinsky.”

  A slight man with wispy blond hair sat in a high-backed leather armchair, and he now rose to greet Ivan. He wore a velvet lounging jacket over elegant black trousers. “Please consider everything at my house to be at your disposal,” he said, gesturing around the room. “If it were not for the generous loan extended to me by Count Kremnikov, I never would have escaped the Revolution with my fortune intact.”

  Count Dubinsky’s remark caused Sergei to roar with laughter. “Yes, I suppose you would be as penniless as we are right now,” he remarked, “though for the life of me I can’t picture you in anything other than finely tailored clothing and eating only the finest caviar.”

  “Well, until today that is the only way I could have imagined you,” Count Dubinsky replied. “But have no fear. I have fared well in exile and am in a position to pay you back with interest.”

  “No, I could never charge interest,” Sergei demurred.

  “I insist. And I will pay you in German marks, which you will find vastly preferable to the now nearly worthless Russian ruble. You will discover that helping me out of the goodness of your heart was a wise investment. It doesn’t come close to restoring the fortune you lost, of course. If only you had fled with me, as I’d wanted you to.”

  A cloud of unhappiness settled over Sergei’s countenance, and Ivan was fairly sure he knew why.

  “I couldn’t leave until I’d received word that Elana and Peter had arrived safely in Sweden,” he said. “I had to be available to aid them if they had encountered trouble, and then the Bolsheviks held me prisoner in my own estate for weeks.”

  “Why are you not in Sweden with them now?” Count Dubinsky asked.

  “I do not know where they are,” Sergei answered quietly. “They never arrived in Sweden.”

  “My good man!” Count Dubinsky cried with a gasp. “I am so sorry.”

  “Where is Nadya?” Ivan asked, eager to change the subject for Sergei’s sake, as well as to be informed.

  “Shopping!” Count Dubinsky told him enthusiastically, apparently pleased that they’d moved on to a less tragic subject. “My sister, Irina, has taken her to look at clothing and to have a day of beauty in the city. What a find you have made! It’s almost unbelievable.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Ivan asked, looking to Sergei for an explanation.

  “I confided in Dubinsky that we have tracked down the grand duchess Anastasia and intend to deliver her to her grandmother in Paris.” A flickering sparkle in Sergei’s eyes warned Ivan not to say anything that might indicate they were anything other than confident that Nadya was indeed Anastasia.

  “Imagine the poor girl wandering the Ural Mountains all alone and without her memory until the good nuns took her in to their convent,” Count Dubinsky said with emotion. “To think she might have lived out the rest of her days as a plain, humble nun.”

  “There are worse fates,” Sergei remarked piously.

  “Indeed,” Count Dubinsky agreed with a somber air. “But she’d have lived without the knowledge of her birthright and her proper place in history.”

  Ivan was not surprised that Sergei had refrained from telling the count about Nadya’s life in the asylum or her work as a tavern waitress. During the miles of walking, they had decided a convent was the most palatable and acceptable explanation of where Nadya had been since the Revolution. For their story they had concocted a fictitious convent they’d claim had been shut down by the Bolsheviks, who were well-known to be intolerant of religion.

  “It’s true she would have been robbed of her place in history. Very true,” Ivan agreed. “Did you know the grand duchess before the Revolution, Count?”

  “
Quite so! I was a frequent visitor to the palace! As Sergei well knows, I had the ear of the czar himself. I was one of his most trusted advisers.”

  “And you have no doubt our Nadya is the same girl?” Ivan asked cautiously. Here was their first test. This man had seen the girl at her best, not just from afar or at the brink of death, as Ivan had seen her.

  “None at all! Maturity has altered her, of course. Young people change so rapidly and radically during adolescence. I see no sign of her former aristocratic ways, but that’s to be expected after spending time living as a hardworking nun.”

  “How do you think a grand duchess could have adapted to such plain living?” Ivan asked, thinking not of the convent but of Nadya’s life on the streets and in the tavern.

  “Strange as it may sound, she might have been oddly suited to such a life,” Count Dubinsky said. “I will tell you something you might not have expected: Czar Nicholas insisted the girls live a somewhat spartan life. They slept on camp beds, and for many years he insisted they start each day with a bath made of ice water, just as he did. The czarina Alexandra, having been born in Germany and having spent many summers in England with her grandmother, Queen Victoria, was familiar with the luxurious life and often intervened on behalf of the girls. But mostly the czar held the line.”

  “Surely they lived in luxury, though,” Ivan insisted, remembering the grand duchesses in their fine fur-lined coats, playing on their sleds or gliding over their private pond on glistening leather skates.

  “It was an odd mix, to be sure. The czar was a doting father, but he didn’t want his girls to grow up to be spoiled, either.”

  “Nadya…or I should start calling her Anastasia, I suppose…. She is very much a hard worker,” Sergei observed.

  “Oh, I’m sure she is. During the Great War the grand duchesses were frequently enlisted to stand in receiving lines, greeting and dispersing care packages for the soldiers for hours,” Count Dubinsky recalled. “Of the four girls, Anastasia was the one who performed this duty with the most unflagging good cheer. If you have any doubt that your Nadya is she, let me show you a photo.”