by Suzanne Weyn
Elana rubbed Sergei’s shoulders to comfort him. “He looks more like you every day,” she said fondly.
“Shall I wake him?” Sergei asked.
“Let him sleep,” Elana said. “There will be time enough.”
Elana sat on a straight-backed chair between her bed and Peter’s slim cot and prepared to tell Sergei everything that had happened since they’d left Russia. Sergei seated himself on her bed to listen.
Their carriage had been overturned in a peasants’ protest on their way to Denmark. They’d been left on the side of the road as the protesters dragged off the disabled carriage. Elana had tried to continue on by foot, but Peter had become gravely ill with dysentery. If a caravan of gypsies hadn’t helped them, he might have died. While Peter recovered, they’d traveled with the gypsies. Along the way, Elana had met a man they knew, and he’d told her that the Red Army had commandeered their estate for a headquarters. “The man told me no one saw you after the Red Army marched into our home. He said everyone believed the Bolsheviks had killed you.”
“They turned me out with only the clothes on my back and the few rubles I could hide in my pockets,” he told her, “but thankfully they allowed me to live.”
“I asked everyone, every Russian person I met, about you,” Elana recalled vehemently. “No one had seen you.”
Sergei shook his head at the irony of it all. By going off to search for his missing wife and son, he had created a situation that made it impossible for them to find him. “How did you wind up here in Paris?” he asked.
“The gypsies were traveling through France to Spain. I’m grateful for them. They took good care of Peter; we never would have made it out of Russia on our own. When Peter was well enough, we left them and headed for Paris.”
“There are other Russians here in Paris. Did you go to them for help?”
Elana shook her head. “As we were walking into Paris, I developed a fever and collapsed on the road. Who knows what would have happened if some traveling monks hadn’t seen Peter crying there by my side. They brought us here and, when I was better, they gave me employment. If I’d had a friend in Paris it would have been different, but I saw no reason to bother people I only vaguely knew when we were really all right where we were.”
Sergei glanced around at the Spartan quarters, so different from the life she’d known before. “How brave you’ve been, Elana,” he said, filled with guilt that he had not been able to do more for them. If he had been smarter, more well-connected, more relentless in his search, he felt he could have spared them all this.
Elana leaned forward in her chair and touched Sergei’s arm. “You know, Sergei, my grief at losing you was deep. But I have found an inner peace and quiet happiness here in this monastery that before, I never would have believed existed. I missed you, but not our old life of superficial acquaintances and lavish excess.”
“That’s funny,” Sergei said, smiling.
Elana frowned. “I’m not trying to be funny.”
“No, I’m not mocking you. Never. I mean…I don’t miss it either. I’ve rather enjoyed living by my wits without all the pompous grandiosity. But tell me—don’t you find this just a little dull?”
Elana laughed, and to hear that beloved, familiar, wonderful laugh again after so long was almost too wonderful to bear. “Maybe life with gypsies was more fun,” she admitted. “But I would never want to go back to the life of the aristocracy.”
Sergei chuckled at that. “And a good thing too, if we ever want to return to Russia. The aristocracy isn’t well liked over there right now. They’re putting everyone who’s survived to work.”
When he spoke the word “survived” the merriment left Elana’s face. She lunged from her chair and into his arms. Crying fresh tears, she put her arms around his neck. “I am so happy that you are alive, my darling. So happy. So happy.”
He held her, kissing her soft hair, silently swearing to never let her leave his protection again.
Someone knocked at the door and Elana moved from his arms to answer it. She spoke quietly to the monk outside her door, and then she turned to Sergei. “Someone has come looking for you.”
Elana opened the door wide to reveal a police officer standing behind the monk.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Blood Memory
Nadya followed the uniformed police officer into a back room of the station house. Ivan lay on a table, a sheet over his body but not over his face. “Est-il vivant?” she asked.
“Il est vivant mais passé de hors,” the officer replied.
Thank goodness, she thought, resting her hand on her anxiously pounding heart. He wasn’t dead but unconscious, probably passed out from the loss of blood.
Then Nadya realized what had just happened. How had she spoken and understood French? She hadn’t comprehended what the hotel clerk had been saying to her until she saw the flyer. But the shock of seeing Ivan lying there had jogged something inside her, some buried ability to speak another language.
The police officer told her—in French—that a patrol car had found him bleeding and unconscious on the walkway at the bank of the river. They’d found identification in his wallet and had seen immediately that he was Russian. They’d had an artist execute a quick sketch, which they’d sent to all the hotels, searching for anyone who might know him. Fortunately, Nadya arrived quickly and, as she’d directed them, they’d sent out an officer to find her friend at the monastery.
Nadya understood nearly every word the police officer said, and what she couldn’t exactly understand, she could piece together from the context. “Will he live?” she asked the officer, speaking in French.
The policeman told her frankly that, in his experience, wounds like Ivan’s usually were fatal.
His words made Nadya reel, and she quickly crossed to the table on which Ivan had been laid, gripping its corner for support. “Have you called a doctor?” she asked.
“Yes, yes, he is on his way,” the officer replied as he left the room.
Ivan’s white shirt had turned almost entirely red with his blood. Gingerly lifting the fabric, she saw that someone had placed a gauze bandage over the wound, but it, too, was soaked through. On a chair across the room was a pile of white towels. She decided that one of them would be better than the soggy, blood-soaked bandage, as she pulled off her long gloves.
With a replacement towel ready, she peeled away the bandage. To her horror, a crimson torrent began to gush from Ivan’s flesh. Instinctively, Nadya jammed the heel of her hand over the gaping injury to slow the outpouring of blood.
Working quickly, she used her left hand to grab the clean towel and press it down on Ivan’s chest. A rose-like splotch appeared at the towel’s center, but it didn’t spread too far. After several minutes, she grew confident that the bleeding had subsided enough to take her hand away. As she withdrew it, Nadya was mesmerized by the red trails of drying blood running from among her fingers, pooling at her palm, and forming streams to her elbow. Her cuticles were rimmed in red where Ivan’s blood had seeped under and around her nails.
Just as shock had jolted loose her buried knowledge of French, this sight unlocked another long-bolted door in her mind. Like dreaming while strangely hyperalert, Nadya saw the scene unfold inside her head so vividly it was as though she were living it all over again.
Her eyes crack open and she slowly becomes aware that she is lying facedown on the ground in the woods. The dirt’s coolness is like a salve on something burning at the side of her waist. That same flaming agony is blazing across her forehead.
She hears a bird’s high call.
Above her, leaves rustle.
There’s water running somewhere in the distance.
Metal clangs against rock.
With a searing pain in her neck, she forces her head around toward the clang. Three Red Army soldiers are waist-deep in a very large hole, digging. Beside the hole is a pile of bodies. Blessedly, their faces are all turned away from her, but she has come aw
ake enough to understand who they are.
She remembers everything now, but knows this is not the time to allow the shattering reality in. To do so would dissolve her into unspeakable grief. This is a moment to think only of survival. For she knows she is one of the corpses the soldiers intend to bury.
Unexpectedly and with animal-like awareness, she is startled to feel a gaze on her. She turns in its direction. A handsome soldier carrying a rifle is staring down at her in alarm. Closing her eyes, she awaits the inevitable shot that will finish her.
A moment passes.
Then another.
There is no shot, so she opens her eyes. The soldier is gone. A little ways off, she hears him being violently sick.
She is nauseated too, but there’s no time to focus on it. No one is watching her. This is her chance to move, if she can.
Digging her nails in the dirt, she pulls herself along.
The handsome soldier is returning; she hears his footsteps coming closer. Turning back, their eyes meet. His face is full of sympathy. Somehow she can feel that he is a friend. He turns away again, silently indicating that he won’t stop her from leaving.
She’s now at the edge of the clearing. The soldiers remain intent on their digging. Their lookout is not alerting them. She is getting away!
Does she dare stand and run? Can she?
She tries. First she’s on one knee, and then the other. Pushing forward like a sapling toward a shard of sunlight, she stretches until she is on her feet.
“Hey!”
A shot rings out. It hits her chest so hard her arm flies up involuntarily and her feet leave the ground.
She’s thrown backward, and then she’s tumbling down the hill that had been behind her. She hits the ground and bounces and is thrown farther down, tossed like a child’s rubber ball.
There is more shooting, but she can’t tell if it’s directed at her. All she knows is that she is moving through space and is helpless to control her direction.
A final bounce hurls her into the rushing river. Facedown, all she can hear is water surging in her ears. The racing tide turns her, face upward, to the sky. She is aware of men shouting, but then the water flips her over once again, and she sees only the silver swirl and froth of the river.
She is carried like this, tossed back and forth, over and over for a thousand years, or at least that’s how it seems. Finally the river expels her, shivering and dazed with pain, and washes her onto a dirty, garbage-strewn patch of dirt on the banks of a grimy city.
Coughing river water from her lungs, she climbs to her knees, and then collapses. She dreams deeply of lavish balls and melodic waltzes before falling down a long tunnel of self-protective forgetting.
It was a horrible memory, but Nadya’s unconscious had mercifully held it back until she was strong enough to bear it. Now, looking down at Ivan’s pale, still face, she recognized him as the soldier who had been so merciful there in the woods.
Back then she’d owed him her life. He’d helped her to survive, and now he’d plucked her up and brought her home to her grandmother.
It didn’t matter to Nadya that she had been a grand duchess. What was a grand duchess—or a duke, or a baroness, or even a czar? They were merely titles. What mattered was that she was a young woman who’d had a family she loved and a life filled with happy memories that were hers to cherish once again.
Overwhelmed with emotion, Nadya threw herself on Ivan’s chest. “Don’t die,” she pleaded. “You mustn’t, you can’t, not when I finally see you clearly. I love you, Ivan. Stay with me.”
She was sobbing so hard into his chest that she was unaware of his right hand gently stroking her hair.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Awake
Ivan opened his eyes and saw that he was lying in a four-poster bed with a lavender satin cover over him. It was certainly far too elegant to be a hospital, yet his torso was circled in bandages.
“Good morning, my friend!” Sergei was seated on an upholstered chair to the left of the bed. “Let me go tell everyone that you are finally awake.”
“No, wait! First tell me what’s happened,” Ivan requested.
Sergei recounted how, two days earlier, Ivan had been taken by ambulance to a hospital where he’d undergone many hours of surgery to extract the bullet from his chest. As a result of Nadya’s fervent request, the empress had supplied him with the finest doctors in Paris and had allowed him to be brought to her estate to recover.
“Then she’s accepted Nadya as Anastasia?” Ivan inquired.
“She has,” Sergei confirmed. “They fished that Lepski character that shot you from the river,” Sergei went on. “Nadya was still at the police station when they hauled him in, and she identified him. They’re holding him on pickpocketing and various other charges until you’re able to confirm that he’s the one who shot you.”
“Where is Nadya now?” Ivan asked.
“Getting beautiful for a ball the empress is throwing in her honor.”
“She’s already beautiful,” Ivan remarked, propping himself onto his elbows. “Come on, now help me up. We’re getting out of here.”
“No, you can’t,” Sergei protested. “You’re not nearly well enough.”
Someone knocked on the door, and Sergei bid them to enter. The maid jumped back slightly when she saw Ivan sitting up and awake.
“Yes, isn’t it good news!” Sergei said.
“Very good news,” the maid agreed.
“Will you tell the empress that we will be leaving immediately?” Ivan requested.
“Yes sir,” the maid said as she left.
“Do you want to reopen your stitches?” Sergei scolded.
“They’ll hold until we’re back at our hotel room,” Ivan argued.
“There’s no room for you there.”
Ivan looked at his friend incredulously. “What?”
“Elana and Peter are there.”
“Are you joking? Of course not! You would never make a joke like that. Oh, Sergei! My friend! I’m so happy for you. How did it happen?”
Ivan settled back on his pillows to listen as Sergei told him of how Nadya had discovered their whereabouts. Ivan was smiling along with Sergei when another knock came at the door. “Come in,” he called.
Empress Marie entered with Nadya behind her. “Then it’s true, you’re awake! Thank God!” Nadya cried. Although her hair and makeup were done for the ball, she wore a simple blue shirtwaist dress.
“I am awake,” Ivan agreed, smiling at her, infused with happiness at the sight of her. How could he go on living without her? He couldn’t! He knew it now as never before.
Nadya went to Ivan’s side and took his hand. “I was so scared that you wouldn’t wake up,” she said.
“My maid says that you wish to leave?” asked the empress.
“No!” Nadya cried.
“I don’t want to be a burden any longer, though I thank Your Highness for your incredible kindness in caring for me here.”
“You are most welcome,” Empress Marie replied. “You have brought me my granddaughter, a jewel beyond measure. Your care here is but a small token of gratitude.”
The old woman’s eyes glistened lovingly as she looked at Nadya. It was easy to see that she’d accepted Nadya as her granddaughter.
The butler entered, holding a polished wooden case that he placed on the dresser and unlocked with a small key. When he opened the case, it was impossible not to be dazzled by the spectacular diamond necklace inside. “Gentlemen, here is your reward for returning my Anastasia to me,” the empress announced.
Ivan looked at Sergei, who seemed to have been rendered speechless by the enormity of their prize. It had to be worth much more than had been offered initially.
“This must be the necklace that maniac thought I was carrying,” Ivan realized.
“This necklace once belonged to Marie Antoinette,” Empress Marie told them. “At one point it was broken, but it has been repaired. I smuggled it o
ut of Russia, along with other treasures, when I escaped from Siberia.”
Nadya got off the bed and went to look at the necklace. “I know this necklace! I’ve been dreaming about it.”
“This exact necklace?” the empress questioned.
“Yes,” Nadya said. “I remember exactly the large blue diamond at the center.”
“Well, it is the most valuable thing I own, so I believe it is fit payment for the return of my most valuable granddaughter. It is all yours with my thanks, gentlemen.”
This was his moment for truth, and Ivan suddenly knew just what he needed to do. Spectacular as this necklace was, he could live without it. But he would be miserable if he let Nadya slip away from him.
“We can’t take it,” Ivan said. “We haven’t earned it, because Nadya is not Anastasia!”
“How can you be certain?” the empress asked.
Ivan was surprised by her calmness. Why wasn’t the empress more upset by this news? Maybe it was shock or disbelief.
Ivan turned to Nadya and took a breath to steady himself. He had to be completely honest. “Nadya, I was a soldier in the woods on the morning that Anastasia was shot.”
“I know. I remember you now that my memory is back,” she revealed.
“Your memory is—” Ivan looked at her, perplexed. What was she doing? What new game was this? Had she deluded herself into thinking she really was the grand duchess?
“No, Nadya, you can’t remember that because you’re not Anastasia,” he insisted. “Anastasia was hit in the chest with a bullet, and you have no scar where she was hit.”
Nadya gently moved aside the opening of her shirtwaist dress and touched the skin over her heart. “You’re right, no scar.”
“So you see? You can’t be Anastasia.” Ivan grabbed both her hands. “I’m sorry for everything that’s happened. It was wrong to get your hopes up and to deceive you. The empress could have offered you a wonderful life, but if you don’t hate me now, I’ll do everything I can to give you a happy life.”