Basil’s predicament need not have concerned him, however. His final moment of indecision gave the captive women the opportunity they needed.
As Katrina struggled to her feet, with a sudden lurch, she turned and with a quick upward jerk emptied the hot tea directly into Basil’s face.
The same instant, Anna leaped forward, pulling Dmitri’s sabre from behind her back and raising the sheathed blade over her head as if it were her father’s sickle and the murderer before her was a stalk of grain. Even as he cried out from the scalding tea, Anna brought the sword crashing down onto Basil’s right shoulder.
He cried out in mingled shock and pain. But to Anna’s dismay his hand now went fumbling for the pistol. She lifted the heavy sword into the air again, but before she could bring it down, a cracking explosion from the gun shattered through the room. Basil had fired wildly in the darkness. The bullet found nothing but the wall opposite the door.
As Katrina screamed, Anna brought down the sword again in a second mighty blow. As she did, the sheath and belt flew off. The flat of the bare steel blade struck Basil’s right arm once more.
Katrina was standing now, and from her dressing table whisked a hair brush into her hand. It was hardly a weapon to be feared, but she would not let Anna do battle with the enemy alone! No assailant liked the idea of a two-front battle, and Basil leaped away and out of Katrina’s reach. But the momentary distraction of the brush and Katrina’s mounting fury was enough. Anna raised her weapon overhead.
Whack!
Down came the sword upon him again. Lighter now without the sheath, and her whole frame filled with the passionate energy of defending one she loved, Anna wielded the sabre with all the stout vigor of an ancient Scandinavian warrior. It crashed down upon him again, the flat of the blade stunning the strong man against the side of his head. Another blow came, followed by two or three more in rapid succession.
From where Katrina stood, Anna looked like a goddess of war doing battle in the night against the demon interloper. Again she struck with the righteous instrument of salvation, the sounds of battle mingled with cries of pain.
Again Basil tried to take aim with the pistol, this time directly toward Katrina. But a shriek of pain came from his mouth even as the deafening report of gunfire blasted again.
The sharpened edge of the sword smashed against his outstretched wrist. The shot went wild, the gun fell with a crash to the floor, and blood spurted from the deep, gashing wound.
Katrina leaped toward the gun, kicking it across the room, while Basil staggered backward, stunned and grabbing at his wrist in pain.
The battle belonged to the tigress of a servant girl!
Anna had raised the sword again above her head. Basil glanced upward, and seeing the blade poised to come full upon him, razor edge first, at last he apprehended his defeat. Already outside he could hear footsteps and voices and the tramp of heavy boots in the corridor.
He leaped backward onto the sill of the window, which still stood open from his entry.
“I’ll be back!” he screamed, then turned and jumped down to a ledge, and the next moment had disappeared into the rainy night.
62
Within minutes every male servant in the Fedorcenko household had been dispatched to search the grounds for the intruder. Only Ivan and Peter did not join the hunt. Anna sent them on other errands.
Prince Fedorcenko, as titular head of the house, was one of the last to arrive on the scene. Altogether unable to take in the gravity of what had occurred, he turned away mumbling something to himself about needing to establish greater discipline among the servants about the place. By that time, although she did not realize it, the other servants were looking to Anna for direction about what was to be done.
Once the search was underway, and with two of the men stationed in the princess’s sitting room, Anna sent one of the women for tea. She herself would not leave Katrina’s side for a second. She settled her mistress into bed, soothing and speaking softly to her, and gradually the premature labor pains subsided.
Twenty minutes later it was clear that Basil Anickin had made good his escape. Forty-five minutes after the attack, Dmitri returned with Peter.
He rushed into the room in dismay.
Katrina conjured up her best smile for him. “I am fine, dear,” she said to his frantic questioning. “But you should have seen Anna! She ought to be given a commission in the guards.”
“Was the burglar caught?”
Katrina gave a glance toward Anna as she moved toward the door.
“I didn’t know, Princess, how much you would want the other servants to know,” said Anna, explaining Dmitri’s ignorance of the details of the ordeal.
“Do you promise not to do something rash?” said Katrina, looking back toward Dmitri.
“Rash . . . what do you mean? I’ll do nothing more than anyone should do. I will notify the police and make sure the rascal is caught.”
He stopped short with sudden realization. “Katrina, did this scoundrel touch you!”
Katrina took a breath and glanced once more toward Anna, perhaps hoping she might rescue her yet another time. But as much as she feared Dmitri’s response to the truth, she knew he must be told.
“Dmitri,” she said, “it was Basil Anickin who broke in and tried to kill me.”
“Dear God!” he breathed tightly.
As Katrina attempted to relate what had happened, her lips and hands trembled and her throat went dry in reliving the horror again. Dmitri responded exactly as she had feared.
“I will kill him!” he cried, jumping up from the side of the bed. “I will kill the no good—”
“Dmitri, please,” Katrina stopped him, desperately grabbing his hand. “Please let the police take care of him.”
“What can they do! Lock him up again? Send him to Siberia where he will escape? It did not work before, and it will never work with the likes of him! We will not be safe from his hatred until he is dead!”
“But I am afraid for you.”
“And we will always live in fear until he is dead!”
Suddenly Dmitri turned on Anna. “What do you know of this, Anna?” he demanded. “You said your brother was involved, did you not?” His tone was far from friendly.
“Dmitri!” said Katrina from the bed.
“By her own admission, her brother knew of Basil’s movements. And he was supposed to inform us of any danger! Whatever became of the warning, Anna? And what a coincidence that your brother should be the one—”
“Stop it at once, Dmitri!” cried Katrina. “Anna risked her own life to save mine and the child’s. She could have been killed along with me if it hadn’t been for her use of your sabre.”
“I don’t know how my brother knew these things,” said Anna, tears brimming in her eyes. “But I know he could not have had anything to do with it. He spoke to me at great risk to himself. You must believe me.”
“We do, Anna!” replied Katrina firmly.
Dmitri rubbed his hands across his face. An awkward two or three seconds passed; then a knock sounded on the sitting room door. Relieved at the reprieve, Anna went quickly to answer it.
There stood Ivan. “The lieutenant is here, Your Excellency,” he said as Dmitri walked up behind Anna at the door.
“The lieutenant . . . what lieutenant, for heaven’s sake? I have no wish to be disturbed!”
“The Cossack, sir,” replied Ivan cautiously, casting Anna a quick glance.
“Your Excellency,” said Anna, turning to face Katrina’s husband, “I took the liberty of sending for a trusted friend.”
“You seem to be well in control of my father-in-law’s house,” said Dmitri with irritation.
“I thought the princess should have protection . . . in case you could not be reached,” said Anna. “Forgive me if I have acted unwisely.”
Dmitri winced slightly at her words, but said nothing further. “Who is this friend?” he asked. “A Cossack, you say?”
�
��Lieutenant Grigorov. You may not remember, but he once helped me—”
“I remember,” said Dmitri. Anna could not tell if the sharpness in his tone was from present tensions or past ones. He turned back toward Ivan. “Bring him up. I don’t want to leave the princess just now.”
Dmitri dismissed the other two men who had been standing by, instructing them to remain in the corridor. When the door closed behind them, he turned to Anna. The anger that had been so etched on his face before subsided momentarily.
“Forgive my harsh words before, Anna,” he said. “I don’t know what I could have been thinking. You have never been anything but faithful to your mistress.”
“Thank you, Your Excellency.”
“Sometimes I think you have loved Katrina better than I.”
“Oh, Count Remizov, that is not true!”
“You were here to save her when I was not. I cannot even bear to think what might have happened had you not—”
The emotion of his anger and fear and sense of failure all suddenly seized him at once, and his voice cracked momentarily. He swallowed hard and tried to continue.
“I should never have left her tonight,” he went on. “I don’t ever seem to do the right thing by her!”
“But, Your Excellency, you had no idea this would happen,” argued Anna, her sympathies now coming out in favor of the one who had upbraided her only moments before. “And the princess told me you did not want to go, but had no choice other than to help your comrade.”
“Katrina defended me?” said Dmitri in amazement. Then he sighed and shook his head dismally.
Dmitri did not reveal the true cause of his present misery. He well knew that he could have been home sooner that night.
After Lieutenant Plaksa had been taken into custody, Dmitri had made an attempt to establish a favorable rapport with the offended Captain Sajachmetev. The two officers had gone to Dauphins. There Dmitri had proceeded to ply the captain with vodka while the count made sure the offended officer won enough at faro to mitigate his annoyance over the incident with Plaksa.
The line between helping a friend and having a good time, however, had been thin at best. And Dmitri knew it.
Now he found himself hardly able to look Anna in the eye. And to face Katrina, knowing that she had supported him, would be all the more difficult as well. Once again, he had let her down!
Dmitri was spared any further self-recriminations when a moment later, Misha Grigorov appeared at the door.
63
The Cossack and the count shook hands stiffly.
Dmitri could not help resenting Grigorov’s presence, all the more that it emphasized the fact that he had not been present to protect his wife. He could sense Grigorov’s coolness, although the Cossack said nothing, and that rankled the count. He was a Russian nobleman, of an old and respected family—this man was a mere Cossack! And there was enough vodka in Dmitri’s brain to make him resent the fact.
Yet Dmitri was man enough and practical enough to recognize that he had to swallow what pride his deeper sense of failure left him. For right now he needed this man.
“Thank you for coming, Lieutenant Grigorov,” he said.
“Anna said she needed help,” Misha replied. He might not have fully intended his words in that way, but it was plain to Dmitri that Grigorov’s loyalties were clearly attached more to his wife’s servant girl than to the Remizov family.
Momentarily, Dmitri allowed his vanity to distract him. “Well, everything seems to be under control—” he began, then stopped. Who was he trying to fool? Nothing was under control. “Listen, Lieutenant,” he said. Every word was an effort in humility, a quality with which he was not greatly experienced. “What I said is not exactly true. We could use some help—if you are willing . . . for Anna’s sake, and her mistress’s, if not for mine.”
“I am willing, Count Remizov. What would you like me to do?”
“The man who broke in here tonight must be found. Our lives will be in danger as long as he is on the loose.”
“Have you made a report yet?”
“No. I will see the police in the morning.”
“I know of some places where thieves and brigands often congregate—places where even gendarmes are reluctant to enter.”
“We are not looking for a thief,” Dmitri went on, “but a madman.” He went on briefly to clarify the situation to the Cossack, not failing to mention Anna’s heroic part in the drama, during which the lieutenant cast a look of high esteem in Anna’s direction. “Because of the man’s demented character,” Dmitri concluded, “he will be unpredictable and difficult to find. But I have no doubt he will be found. In fact, under the right conditions, he will probably make it easy.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He will make it easy for me, I should say. I am certain it is his intention to do away with me as well, and I think he will come after me if the opportunity affords itself.”
“You do not mean to say you intend to use yourself as bait, Count?”
“Perhaps in a way, yes. But I will not hang limp from the line. I will be a hunter also. I intend to find Anickin before he finds me. But to do so, perhaps I will need to lure him out of the dark holes where he keeps himself.”
“Please, Your Excellency,” said Anna, interrupting the conversation she had been listening to, “I am concerned for the safety of the princess.”
“Are you insinuating that I am not?” Dmitri rejoined, spinning around.
“No, Excellency, only that perhaps it would be best for you to remain here with her for a time before leaving again. The baby will come very soon, and she will need you—”
“Now you presume to tell me what to do in the matter of my wife and child!” he shot back. Guilt and anger rose up in him, a lethal combination. The Cossack’s appearance and Anna’s cool demeanor annoyed him, pricking his pride and manhood at their most vulnerable spots. Within seconds he had forgotten his kind words to both and how much he already owed each of them.
“Forgive me, Count Remizov,” said Anna. “I was only thinking of the princess.”
“There is only one way my wife will be safe from that lunatic, and that is after I have killed him!”
Dmitri strode into the bedroom and picked up his sword, which still showed traces of Basil’s dried blood. He retrieved its sheath, stooped down to kiss Katrina, then turned to leave, red-faced and trembling from the rush of a hundred emotions.
“Dmitri . . . please, don’t leave me now!” sobbed Katrina after him.
“It’s the only way,” he said, pausing to glance back. “You have Anna, Ivan, Peter . . . the whole household. I’m sure Lieutenant Grigorov will stay if Anna asks him to. I can do no good here! The one thing to be done that will insure our safety is something only I can do! You don’t need me. You never needed me. I’ve brought you nothing but heartache! Now is my chance to redeem all that!”
He turned again, strode back through the sitting room without another word to either Misha or Anna, and was gone.
The only sound once his footsteps retreated down the corridor and the door closed behind him was that of Katrina’s soft weeping from her bedroom.
Anna went to her, sat down on the bedside, and gently touched her hand to her mistress’s head.
“Anna, I am frightened,” said Katrina, turning to face her.
“He will be back soon, Princess. I am sure of it.”
“No, Anna. Not when he is like this.”
“Like what?”
“He had been drinking, Anna. Didn’t you smell it? When he is angry, especially at himself, and it is mixed with vodka, I do not see him for days. He will not be back until, I am afraid, something terrible happens!”
“I’m certain he will calm down. He was angered by what I said. But he will come to himself.”
“You do not know him as I do, Anna,” wailed Katrina. “I am afraid, Anna, not only about him, but about Basil. He might still be lurking about somewhere, and with Dmitri in such a
fury—oh, Anna, you have to get me out of here, away, someplace where we will be safe!”
“With the other men, your father, and Misha here with us, Princess, no harm could possibly—”
“No, Anna!” objected Katrina. “I tell you, nothing can insure our safety here. Basil would not be beyond bombing the entire house. My father is in no position to help. I am as concerned for his safety as my own! No, we must get out of here.”
“Back to your home, Princess?”
“No, no—that won’t do either! Basil will be watching it too. The estate at the Crimea . . .” Katrina said, thinking to herself. “No, it is too far! But we must get out of St. Petersburg without delay!”
“But the child, Princess. It is nearly time. A journey of any kind—”
“I know it is not without risk, Anna. But if we all die at Basil’s hand anyway, then how much better off are we? No, it must be done.”
“Perhaps you should see the doctor beforehand,” suggested Anna.
“Ugh!” exclaimed Katrina with a shudder. “I do not think I could see faithful old Dr. Anickin again after tonight without thinking of his son! No, Anna, you will have to take care of me yourself—you and your faithful Cossack—until I am situated someplace safe and we can find another—”
Suddenly she stopped, and her eyes widened. “What is it, Princess?” asked Anna in alarm.
“I was thinking of Dmitri’s mother’s place in Moscow,” replied Katrina. “But even there Basil would be able to find me. And the woman would no doubt turn me out anyway. And then a new thought struck me.” She stopped, her face animated with anticipation. “Anna . . . take me to your own father’s!”
“In Katyk?” exclaimed Anna.
“It is perfect, Anna! Basil Pyotrovich would never be able to pursue us there!”
“It is but a cottage, Princess—a peasant izba!”
The Russians Collection Page 105