Gone by Nightfall

by Dee Garretson

  The table wasn’t close enough that he could have overheard the baron and me, which was a relief. Nevertheless, I wished this young man would go away.

  “You managed to get a chocolate mouse,” he said, motioning to my plate. “Lucky you. Those were my sister’s favorites.” His stared down at the plate of chocolates as if transfixed by them.

  I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t just snap my fingers to get his attention or get up and leave. “Would you like one?”

  He gave a start and turned his gaze back to me; then his eyes flicked to the paper. So he’d seen the baron give it to me.

  I felt the dampness in my palms again.

  He shifted his weight, another shudder passing through him. When he spoke, I could tell it was taking some effort for him to get the words out. “I see you are acquainted with Baron Eristov. Have you heard the old saying ‘Be friends with the wolf but keep one hand on the ax’? In the baron’s case, I’d make that two hands, and I’d also make sure the ax was very sharp.”

  In another circumstance I might have been interested to hear what he knew about the baron. With a piece of treason in my hand, I didn’t want to say anything that would encourage him to continue talking.

  I stood and picked up the plate with my other hand. “I have to be going now.”

  “Wait, if you could give me just a moment,” he said. “I wanted to meet you earlier, but I couldn’t find anyone to do a proper introduction and I couldn’t ask you to dance. I’d like to talk to you.”

  As I walked away, I called back over my shoulder, “I’m sorry, I really have to be going. Perhaps next time.” I knew I was being very rude, but I didn’t need to get to know any more handsome young soldiers who would disappear within weeks. I couldn’t play the game of pretending everything was fine, writing them cheerful letters, waiting for them to return in triumph, and then have my heart ripped out and crushed when news came of their death. No more. One had been enough. And I didn’t need any distractions. Keeping the hospital open while staying out of the hands of the Okhrana was more than enough to occupy me.

  Chapter Three

  WHEN I GOT back to the hall, Anna was waiting at the bottom of the staircase.

  “I thought you weren’t coming!” she said.

  I handed her the plate and then tucked the paper into my glove, making sure it was pushed down far enough not to fall out. “I’m sorry. It took longer than I thought. There was only one chocolate mouse, but I’m sure Nadia will like the other chocolates. You’d better hurry up to bed before someone catches you.”

  “Thank you, Charlotte! Nadia will love these!” The little girl smiled and then headed up the stairs, carrying the plate carefully. I watched her, hoping Nadia actually got to eat the chocolates. If the governess found them, Anna would be scolded, and Nadia would get nothing.

  A group of people came into the hall, heading for the cloakrooms. From the lack of sound coming from the ballroom, there couldn’t be too many guests left. Before I could go in search of my stepfather, he appeared from a drawing room off the hall, leaning on one of his old friends, who was struggling to support him.

  I rushed toward them. “What’s wrong? Papa, are you ill?”

  He nearly fell, almost bringing both of them down.

  “He appears to have had a little too much to drink,” his friend Prince Shulga said as he struggled to regain his footing. The prince was even older than my stepfather and not in good health.

  I thought I hadn’t heard him correctly at first. My stepfather never drank to excess.

  “There you are, dear Lise.” My stepfather smiled at me and then shook his head. “How do you stay so young-looking when I have gotten to be such an old man?” His expression changed to a frown, and a tear ran down his face.

  A chill ran through me. Lise had been my mother’s name. I looked nothing like her, and she’d been gone for over a year.

  “Time to go home,” the prince said. “Perhaps we old men should not drink so much nor stay at the card table so long.”

  “I’m not drunk,” my stepfather replied, his words slurring. “Tell Sasha I’ll pay him tomorrow. And tell the baron to send the young man over to the house tomorrow morning. No sense in waiting.”

  “Yes, yes, old friend. Come along now.”

  I hurried to get our coats but fumbled putting my own on. I couldn’t concentrate on buttons. Papa hadn’t recognized me. He couldn’t be ill. We’d only just managed to find a way to go on after my mother’s death.

  I reminded myself that I was a nurse and I should pull myself together. I was not going to panic.

  The prince and I helped him into his coat and then out to our sleigh, where the coachman, Yermak, lifted him inside. Thank goodness Yermak had the size and strength of a bear. He acted as if he were lifting a child. My stepfather leaned back and closed his eyes.

  “Is the general ill?” Yermak whispered to me.

  “I don’t know,” I said, covering my stepfather with a fur from the pile on the seat. “Let’s get him home and we can decide if he needs a doctor.”

  My stepfather roused himself for a moment. “I’ve made arrangements…” A snore finished his sentence and he slumped back again. I wrapped the fur blanket more tightly around him. Maybe he was just overtired. He wouldn’t admit he was growing old. We shouldn’t have stayed so late. We shouldn’t even have come to the party, but he had insisted, saying I needed to get away from the hospital more.

  As we drove away, I studied his face as if it would reveal what ailed him. Were we actually a burden to him? He’d never acted as if we were. He’d never once suggested my brothers and I should leave. He’d been wonderful to us from the very first day we met. I wished I were already in medical school and had some training. My exposure to medicine consisted of taking care of my brothers and sisters when they were ill and my nursing training at the hospital, which was mostly for women who had gone through difficult childbirths.

  He’d never mistaken me for my mother before. Even if it turned out to be the ill effects of drink, I decided I’d send for the doctor anyway.

  My stepfather coughed and struggled to sit up straighter. “Lise, we should have a picnic tomorrow,” he said, smiling at me. “The children can hunt for mushrooms in the forest.”

  I clenched my hands together and tried to keep my voice from wavering. “We’ll see,” I said. We definitely needed a doctor.

  When we reached home, the butler and the footman put my stepfather to bed while Yermak went for the doctor. The doctor arrived, grumbling about the lateness of the hour. I told the man all about the confusion and the stumbling, mentioning possible causes, but the doctor didn’t make any comment.

  He made me wait outside in the hall while he examined Papa. When the doctor came out, he said, “Your stepfather is fine, but he’s an old man who shouldn’t be out gallivanting at all hours of the night. I’m an old man. I shouldn’t be out on calls all hours of the night just to reassure nervous girls. You should have asked the housekeeper her opinion about his condition. She may not be trained as a nurse, but she’s seen far more illness than you.”

  “She was asleep,” I explained as I followed him down the stairs. “What about my stepfather calling me by my mother’s name? Why would he do that?”

  “I’m sure it was just a slip of the tongue. Send a note tomorrow if he isn’t better, though I’m sure he will be.”

  Once he was out the door, I went back upstairs not as reassured as I hoped I’d be. I decided I’d still talk to Dr. Rushailo when I got to the hospital in the morning. My stepfather would never consent to having a female doctor examine him, but she would be able to help me determine if there was something else I should do.

  I walked to my room as the familiar pang hit me, the one where I wished I could talk to my mother. Right before she died, she asked me to promise that I’d take care of everyone. I’d said I would, not thinking at the time what that meant. I hadn’t even considered that I’d have to worry about my stepfather, a
nd I’d just assumed that so many things took care of themselves, not realizing exactly how much my mother had done both with the hospital and at home. Every time I thought I had one problem solved, two more would appear. Dropping out of school had helped, though that hadn’t worked out exactly the way I’d expected either.

  I’d been so naive not to realize that a war would make getting food and medicine so difficult, and I’d certainly never expected to have to worry about the Okhrana.

  I wished the baron had never given me that piece of paper. I took it out of my glove and put it inside my Greek book. No one would pick up the book except me, so it was a safe hiding place until I could show it to the Tamms.

  Once I closed the book, I thought I’d be able to take my mind off the paper, but it was as if I could see the words through the pages. I grabbed the book and put it on the top shelf of the armoire, then shut the door on it and made myself go to bed. I pushed the paper out of my mind by making a list in my head of things I needed to do the next day. I got to ten before I fell asleep.

  I woke up to someone shaking my arm.

  “Wake up, Lottie! Wake up! You’ve been sleeping for hours and hours and hours!” I recognized my sister Nika’s voice.

  When I opened my eyes, I could tell from the weak light slanting through the window that I had in fact not been sleeping for hours and hours. Maybe three at the most. I closed them again.

  I felt Nika move closer, and then she used her fingers to pry open one of my eyelids. “I know you are in there,” she said. “Don’t go back to sleep. Did you meet a husband last night?” I opened the other eye. She was inches from my face. If Nika was in my room, then her twin, Sophie, had to be there as well, and sure enough, when I looked at the end of the bed, I saw her.

  “Polina says she has a potion you can use if you find one you want to catch,” Sophie said. “You sneak it into his tea. Her babushka makes it out of boiled frog legs. She’s going to teach me how to make it next time we go to the country. We’ll get you a husband in no time. And maybe if he likes cats, he’ll give you a kitten and we’ll take care of it for you.”

  I ignored the part about the kitten. The twins were always begging for one, but Papa didn’t like cats. No, it was more than that. He had a strange horror of them. No cats for us. I reached out and tickled Nika. “Why do I want a husband?” I said over her laughter.

  “So you’ll have someone to give you presents. Like kittens. Polina says that’s what husbands do. And they kiss your hands all the time.” Nika looked down at her own hands. “I don’t know why girls like that, though.”

  “Why are your hands orange?” I asked her.

  Nika giggled and covered her mouth. I knew that gesture. It boded no good and made me realize something else was not right about her.

  The early morning sunlight seemed to have added an odd orangish tint to both girls’ blond curls. But it was an unnatural shade of orange, more like the color of the fruit.

  I sat up, trying to keep my wits about me. If I made too much of a fuss about what they had done, they were sure to do it again. They delighted in being naughty.

  Reaching out, I touched one of Nika’s curls. “What a lovely shade! It looks like the orange from the paint box.”

  She nodded her head, grinning. “Sophie helped me dip my hair in orange paint water, and I dipped hers.”

  Of course they had. “Oh, I see. Where was Polina when this was happening?” Polina was their nursemaid. I didn’t know why the poor girl hadn’t quit long ago, but I was happy she had stuck it out so far. I’d have been pulling my hair out without her.

  Nika wrapped a curl around her finger. “She was very tired last night, so we said we were tired too, but we really weren’t.”

  “So after she fell asleep, you did this?” At least the paint was from a watercolor set. I assumed it would wash out. I didn’t know how they’d managed to get the color so vivid. I probably didn’t want to know.

  They both nodded. An orange feather fell out of Sophie’s hair. I noticed two more at the end of the bed. I picked up one of them. “Feathers, too?”

  “Yes!” Nika jumped off the bed and ran around the room flapping her arms. “We’re firebirds, but we need you to help us stick the feathers to us. Polina says we can’t use paste unless she’s there too.”

  I got out of bed and put on a wrap. “I suppose she didn’t say the same about the paints.”

  They both shook their heads. “She never said anything about paints.”

  I sighed. No one could think of everything to tell the twins not to do.

  Sophie climbed onto the bed and jumped up and down. “Once we have all the feathers stuck on, we’ll be able to fly too!”

  My heart skipped a beat. “No, no. That’s not the way it works. People can’t fly, even with feathers. Promise me you won’t try. Promise!” I had a horrid vision of them leaping out a window without a second thought. Neither of the twins had any concept of second thoughts.

  Nika gave a very loud sigh.

  “Promise,” I said again.

  I saw Sophie give a slight nod of her head to Nika. “We promise,” Nika said. “At least will you paste the feathers on us? We have a lot of them.”

  A lot. That could mean anything from ten to a thousand. How many pillows had given up their innards? “Show me.”

  It turned out there were less than a thousand but still a considerable number of feathers drying in the schoolroom. Polina was both mortified and angry the twins had tricked her. I left her to scold them about wasting good feather pillows.

  Before I went downstairs, I checked to see if I had enough money to pay for the supplies coming in from the country. The hospital was very low on food, so I hoped Ivan, the man making the delivery, wouldn’t be delayed or his sleigh stopped and searched.

  I grabbed my Latin book and went downstairs, intending to get in a little studying while I waited for Ivan. Archer, Papa’s English butler, was consulting with Osip, the footman, in the hallway.

  “How is my stepfather this morning?” I asked Archer.

  Archer gave me his usual look of disapproval, which on his skull-like features was not all that much different from his normal appearance, except for a tightening of his mouth and a furrowing of his almost nonexistent eyebrows. “He’s fine, Miss Charlotte. He’s already breakfasted and is working in the library on the memoir.”

  The memoir took up a large part of Papa’s day, given that he intended to record every detail of every day of his military career. I was glad he had something to occupy him. If he ever finished the book, I had no idea how he’d spend his time.

  I went into the breakfast room to get some tea, settling down in a spot where I could look out the window at the frozen Neva and the sky above the broad river. I never grew tired of the view; it was like my own ever-changing watercolor.

  The street along the quay was crowded with sleighs, their bells jingling so loudly I could hear them through the window as I opened the textbook. When we’d first arrived in the city, back when it was still called St. Petersburg, I’d loved the sound of all the bells, and it made me believe my mother’s words about our new home. She had tried hard to convince us we would be as happy there as we had been in Paris, where we’d lived after my father died and during my mother’s disastrous second marriage.

  It’s like something out of a storybook, she’d told us. Built by giants who wanted a beautiful city with buildings that looked like a pastry chef made them. And in the winter, it’s a wonder of glittering snow and gold domes and air so crisp, you’ll feel the most alive you’ve ever felt.

  She’d been right. I couldn’t imagine living in any other city. I never wanted to live anywhere else. And once I became a doctor and opened a practice, other people would realize I meant to stay.

  I opened my book and started memorizing verbs. I hadn’t been at it for very long when I noticed the room getting darker. I looked out to see the sky turning to the color of an opal as the sun disappeared and snow began to fall.
It fell heavier and heavier, floating down in big flakes. It reminded me of the times we had spent at Papa’s dacha in the country, riding the horses, hiking through the birch woods, building fires to roast potatoes, and no matter what we did, we laughed, so much laughing.

  I told myself we’d do that again, as soon as the war was over. I wasn’t going to let it be just a memory. When the war was over, we could go back to the way things were before. Raisa’s push for me to leave still stung. A person didn’t have to be born in a place to make that place their home.

  I spotted a man outside, standing on the quay, leaning against a lamppost. It wasn’t so odd to see someone there, but it was odd that he wasn’t looking out at the river. He was looking right at our house. All the stories I’d heard of people being watched by the secret police came rushing back to me, how people hadn’t realized their everyday activities were being monitored until the police came pounding at the door.

  We had our own watcher.

  Chapter Four

  I TOOK A few deep breaths, trying to stay calm. I knew the man outside was from the secret police. He had to be. There was no other reason someone would watch our house. The baron had made it sound like we didn’t yet have the Okhrana interested in us, but he’d been wrong. If someone had put an observer on us, they weren’t just sniffing around.

  The front bell rang, and the sound of it made my hand jerk, knocking into the glass of tea and spilling some of it on the tablecloth. To hear the bell that early in the morning was odd, not only because we got very few callers, but because it was early for anyone to make a call. The watcher outside straightened up, his gaze focused on whoever stood on our front steps. I went out into the hall as the footman was taking the cloak of a person so covered in snow I couldn’t make out much about him except that he was a man. I didn’t think I made a noise, but the person turned in my direction as he handed over his gloves and shifted a cane from one hand to another. It was the soldier from the night before.

  Since I’d been thinking about our times at the dacha, my first impression was that he looked like he’d just come from a hike in the birch woods. His hair and his eyelashes were frosted with snow, making his dark eyes stand out in his face. My breath caught. He looked even better than he had the night before, especially since he was no longer wearing the elaborate white dress uniform. The simple dark blue uniform that was the standard daytime wear of Horse Guard soldiers suited him much better.