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To my nieces and nephews, Heidi, Matt, Mark, and Jessie
You’ve been an important part of my life.
Chapter One
FEBRUARY 1917, PETROGRAD, RUSSIA
I PULLED THE collar of my coat close around my face as I sneaked between the sleighs and automobiles parked in front of the grand duke’s house, hoping I could get beyond the light of the braziers before our coachman spotted me. If Yermak saw me, he’d want to know why I was leaving the ball early and without my stepfather.
No one inside would miss me. The partygoers were too busy sharing the latest rumors swirling around the czar and the czarina. And even though I liked dancing, the choice of partners was limited to friends of my stepfather, or staff officers who had wrangled headquarters jobs for themselves to keep away from the fighting. For some reason those men felt the need to constantly remind one of their great wisdom and wit.
Sewing up a saber cut is not like embroidering a handkerchief, my dear Miss Mason! You should stay with your nursing instead of trying to become a doctor, though you should really attend to soldiers instead of working in that absurd hospital for women. I must say, you American girls find the strangest ways to occupy your time!
The captain who had made this pronouncement about my future was so pleased with himself that I wished I’d had a suture needle handy. I would have sewn the ends of his overly long mustache to his overly bushy eyebrows before he knew what was happening. I hoped by the time I returned, he’d have found another victim to bore.
The sounds of the orchestra faded as I walked away toward the square, picking up my pace as I moved into the darkened streets. The snow had tapered off, so I was at least able to see where to put my next step. I loved Petrograd during the day, when the sun shone on the beautiful buildings painted in a dazzling array of pastels, but at night the city changed. Then the silent buildings felt more like giant tombs, and I could never forget the story visitors were told: that the city was built on bones, the skeletons of a hundred thousand serfs who were forced to erect a city on a swamp, all to please the ego of a czar.
I breathed easier when I saw Znamenskaya Square ahead of me. Since it was nearly two a.m., the square was mostly empty, though there were a few groups huddled around small fires, refugees who had poured into the city from the war zones with nowhere to go and no money to procure a bed or even a warm spot on a floor.
When I reached the entrance to the hospital, I didn’t see the dark shape standing outside the circle of light the streetlamp cast until I heard a soft voice that made me jump.
“Charlotte, I’m here,” Raisa said as she moved into the light.
“You were holding so still I didn’t see you.” I put my hand on my chest. “I think my heart skipped a beat or two.”
She laughed, a sound I hadn’t heard from her for a long time. “Then my practice has paid off. Tell your brothers I’ve been working at staying still so I can be a better vanishing lady in your magic show. When we’re able to practice again, I want to be ready.”
“I’ll tell them,” I said, though it was a bit of a struggle for me to imagine a future that included amusing ourselves with our little family circus again.
She loosened the shawl that was draped around her head, shaking off the snow. “I want you to teach me the trick of pulling a rabbit out of a hat, too. I promised my sister I would show her that when I see her again.”
“We’ll have to recruit some new rabbits,” I said. “Mr. Hatter and Miss Fluff have grown too big to fit in a hat. They spend all day lazing around their pen being spoiled now.”
Raisa smiled, but then a shiver overtook her, and she wrapped her arms around herself. I noticed that her gloves had holes in them. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get her to take mine, but next time I’d bring her another pair, some that had been my mother’s. She wouldn’t refuse those.
“Come into the hospital and get warm,” I urged. “We can talk a little. It’s been weeks.” I’d missed her so much, and I didn’t know when we’d be able to meet again.
“I wish I could, but I don’t want anyone inside to see me.”
“There is only a night nurse on duty. We can trust her. You’ll be safe, I promise.”
“You don’t know that.” She lowered her voice. “People are so desperate, they’ll try to sell any information they have to the Okhrana for a few kopeks.”
Even the mention of the Okhrana, the secret police everyone feared, sent a shiver down my back. I knew the nurses were on my side, but I understood why Raisa didn’t trust people she didn’t know. Her father had been betrayed by one of his own employees and sent to prison for speaking against the czar inside his own newspaper office.
Raisa pulled a chamois bag out of her pocket and gave it to me, the bottles inside clinking together. “It’s only four. I was afraid to take more.”
“Four is more than I’d hoped for! We ran out of the last of our laudanum yesterday, and we don’t have anything else that helps with the patients’ pain. Are you sure your uncle won’t notice?”
“He won’t. I changed the inventory numbers, and he’s usually so drunk he can’t remember what he has.” She shuddered. “It’s amazing he still has any patients left at all. I wouldn’t let him near me if I was sick. The fumes from his breath would be enough to finish me off.”
I hated that she had to live with that man. I knew she wasn’t even allowed to practice her music anymore, because her uncle said the noise of the piano irritated him. “I wish you would come stay with us,” I said. “You could find another job, or if you can’t, the offer for you to be the twins’ governess still stands. The two of them are too much for their poor nursemaid.”
Even in the faint glow of the streetlights, I could see her face take on the fierce look she so often wore. “You know I don’t take charity,” she said. “And I would be a terrible governess. Besides, I have to stay in good graces with my uncle so he’ll keep sending my mother and my sister money. He says he’s sure they are wasting what he sends them, though I know from my mother’s letters he’s only giving them a pittance. I can’t give them anything at all, so I can’t make him angry.”
If I believed in curses, I would have put a particularly potent one on the man. Just when I thought he couldn’t get any worse, he found a way. “Have you heard any word about your father?” I asked.
“The guard who takes the bundles of food I bring him said he is all right, though his hands are swollen with rheumatism.” She brushed at her face and I knew she was trying to get rid of a tear. Raisa hated crying. According to her, it served no purpose, so she didn’t allow it. I pretended not to notice, because I knew she wouldn’t want me to. Better to talk of something else.
“Where is your uncle getting the laudanum?” I asked. “It’s dangerous for you to keep taking it. Maybe I can go directly to his source.”
“He’s got a friend at one of the embassies who has them brought into the country
in the diplomatic bags. I don’t know which embassy.”
An embassy contact didn’t do me any good. Even if Raisa could find out who it was, I doubted they’d admit to their black-market work unless I could offer far more money than I had to get in on it.
“I need to get back if I’m going to get any sleep tonight.” Raisa reached into her pocket and pulled out a small book. “I brought this for you to give to Miles. It has some poems he might like.”
I tried not to show my surprise at the gift. I had thought Raisa had gotten over her infatuation with my brother months ago. Raisa was so sure of everything that she couldn’t comprehend Miles wouldn’t return her regard. She didn’t seem to realize he barely noticed her, and I didn’t want to hurt her by pointing that out.
“How is he?” she asked. “He looked fine when I saw him, but I know that doesn’t mean much.”
“When did you see him?” He hadn’t mentioned it to me.
“I … I ran into him on Nevsky.”
“Oh,” I said. That was an odd place for Miles to frequent. Nevsky Prospekt was Petrograd’s main shopping street, and I couldn’t imagine Miles actually shopping. He expected most things to appear before him as if by actual magic. “He’s been better this winter than last, at least.”
“I’m glad.” She looked around before she spoke again, even though we were all alone. “When revolution comes and my father is let out, Miles can come work for the newspaper. He’s such a good writer, and I’m sure his health will improve when he can do something he likes.”
Raisa sounded so sure about revolution, but I didn’t know what to believe. It felt like we were in limbo, where just one act could tip us one way or the other. If she and I had had more time, I would have asked her what rumors she’d heard about the political situation. Even stuck at her uncle’s, she seemed to hear far more than I ever did.
“Thank you again for the medicine,” I said, taking off one glove to get the bundle of rubles out of it.
As I handed the money to her, a voice called, “You there. What are you doing out here?”
I turned around, trying to block the view of whoever it was so Raisa could put the money away. At first the man’s black uniform blended into the night so that his white face was like a specter hovering toward us. As he got closer to us, I realized he was a policeman, one of the regular force, not the secret one.
My heart sped up. I wished there were more people around, even though I doubted anyone would be brave enough to intervene if he decided he wanted to arrest us.
He came too close, towering over me. I forced myself to stand still, though the smell of him made me want to gag. He stank of bad teeth and pickled fish.
“What are you girls doing out here this late?” I knew he was trying to figure out where we ranked in the hierarchy of Petrograd society. If he noticed Raisa’s threadbare coat, he might very well haul us in. A certain class of not-too-poor people often found themselves in holding cells, bargaining to be let out, under the threat that they’d be charged as nihilists agitating against the czar if they couldn’t pay a small bribe. The police knew those people wouldn’t go to anyone higher up to complain, so the officers could pocket the money themselves.
I didn’t want him to notice the bag, either. The laudanum wasn’t illegal, but if he saw the bottles, it would only lead to more questions. The police were always on the lookout for any signs of black-market activities.
I needed a distraction to hide the bag. It would have been a good time to pull a rabbit out of my dress, but since I didn’t have a bunny handy, I did the only thing I could think of.
I took a step back and then acted as if I’d lost my footing on the slippery snow, dropping the book and flailing my arms. The book fell down by my feet and I screeched as loudly as I could, pretending I was in incredible distress at having dropped it. The sound of the bottles knocking against one another was so faint compared to my other noises that even I couldn’t hear it as I reached down to pick the book up, stuffing the bag in the top of one of my boots at the same time. The boots were the traditional Russian felt ones that were big enough for a dozen bottles.
I straightened up and brushed the snow off the book. “I don’t think it’s damaged,” I said, hugging it to my chest. “But how clumsy of me.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” the man said, his tone a bit more menacing. “Who are you?”
I stuck my nose in the air and tried to sound snobbish. “I’m Charlotte Mason, General Cherkassky’s stepdaughter. My mother founded this hospital, and my friend and I are stopping in to check on a patient.”
The man contemplated that as if weighing whether or not to believe me. “English?” he asked.
“No, American.”
“Your Russian is very good for an American.” I heard the suspicion in his voice.
“I’ve lived here a long time.”
“I’ve heard that name…” His voice trailed off.
“Of course you have. General Cherkassky is a war hero,” Raisa said.
“No.” He stared at me. “Something in a report about a redheaded girl named Mason.”
My breath stopped. It was extremely unlikely there were any other redheaded girls named Mason in Petrograd. I couldn’t be on a police report. The only people who knew about my various black-market arrangements would never tell. He had to be bluffing, to try to scare me into paying him a bribe to forget he’d seen me. I clenched my teeth together, determined not to let him see my fear.
“You say this is a hospital?” The policeman looked up at the building. “It doesn’t have a sign on it. It looks like a house to me.”
“It’s a small hospital,” I said. “There’s a plaque by the door. It was a house, but my mother turned it into a hospital.” I decided I had to take some action to get rid of him. The longer he talked to us, the more likely we were to say the wrong thing.
“Good night,” I said. “We need to get inside.” I put my arm in Raisa’s and pulled her up the steps, my shoulders tensing as I waited to hear if the policeman would call for us to stop.
He didn’t, and when I pushed open the door, I felt the tension ease. I didn’t look back to see what he was doing, and once I shut the door, I leaned against it in relief.
“I’ll just tell the night nurse I’m here so she knows it’s not a new patient,” I said to Raisa, “and then we can go out the back door, but now that we’re in, you can at least stay for a minute. The fire will be lit in the sitting room, and it will be warmer in there.”
She nodded, so I took the bottles to the night nurse and gave them to her to log in. The nurses were used to me coming and going at all hours bringing various supplies, and we were in such desperate need that they never asked questions.
When I went into the sitting room, I got a look at Raisa in a stronger light and was shocked at how thin she’d gotten. Her cheeks seemed almost caved in, her neck too fragile to hold up her head.
“You can’t save all your food for your father,” I scolded. “You have to eat too! He wouldn’t want you to starve yourself.”
“I know. Don’t lecture, please. Every time I take a bite, I think of how hungry he must be, and that spoils the food for me.” She sighed and leaned her head back against the chair. “Two years ago, I never imagined how much I’d think about bread. Now I think about it every day, how to get it and how to hide it.” Her fingers moved up and down on the arm of the chair as if she were playing the piano. “Back then if I thought about the future it was to imagine I’d be getting ready to perform my first public concert, and you would be in medical school, already on your way to making great discoveries.”
I didn’t really want to talk about the past. “We were silly schoolgirls back then. We should have known that plans don’t always work out, especially when war changes everything.”
“I think about those days,” she said in a dreamy sort of voice, one I’d never heard from her before. “About how I didn’t have anything to worry about except practicing enough
so my teacher wouldn’t get angry at me. And I think about how much I loved going to your house after school. Your mother was always so kind to me, asking me questions as if every detail of my life was so important to her.”
Raisa closed her eyes as her fingers moved up and down again, like she was playing heavy chords faster and faster. Then in one quick movement she was back on her feet and back to herself. “Enough of all that. I want to talk about you.”
“Me? Why? There’s nothing to talk about.”
She came over and sat down next to me. “Yes, there is. You shouldn’t be doing this, putting yourself at risk to get medicine for the hospital. I know the hospital was important to your mother, but you need to think about you. Even though I don’t want you to go, you have to get away from Russia. Pavel is dead, and you staying here won’t bring him back. Go to America and visit your grandmother. She can’t be as bad as you say she is. Or travel. Your stepfather would give you the money.” She grabbed my hand, and when she spoke again, her voice was almost frantic. “Other people can manage the hospital and take care of your little sisters. Your mother would want you to go. She was always saying don’t let the past hold you back.”
I didn’t understand why she was so upset. “Raisa, don’t fret about me. You have enough to worry about.”
She bit her lip, and I saw that her eyes were full of unshed tears. “I do worry about you. You don’t have to have your life ruined because of the war. I’m afraid it’s going to drag on and on, and everything is just going to get worse and worse.”
I wanted to cover my ears and pretend I hadn’t heard her. She of all people should have understood I’d never leave my family. “No, the hospital is important to me too, and I’m sticking to my plan.” I wanted to remind her it was the plan she had encouraged me to make, back when we thought writing down our future would make it become a reality. “My mother’s death isn’t going to stop me from going to medical school. And the war isn’t going to stop me either. Besides, I barely remember the United States. This is my home.”
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