Princes and Peasants

by Catrin Collier

  ‘Your aunt and uncle are dead,’ Rabbi Goldberg thundered.

  Nathan sensed the rabbi had enjoyed giving him the tragic news. ‘Dead!’ The pain in his voice affected the people around him and they began to inch away giving him room to breathe. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ the man who’d pulled the cart assured Nathan. ‘There’s no mistake. Their house was only partly affected by the fire. The bedroom walls are still standing. Asher and Leah weren’t burned but suffocated. You can see them for yourself, Nathan Kharber.’

  Nathan was acutely aware of the people surrounding them. ‘No one of our faith should look upon a man or woman who cannot look back. I will pray over them, but not here. Not with everyone watching.’

  The onlookers finally cleared a path through to a cart. Ruth was slumped, sobbing, over the side, Alexei stood beside her covering her back and shoulders with his arms, shielding her from the people pressing around them.

  Rabbi Goldberg materialised beside Nathan. ‘Ruth should not be here and neither should you. You told your uncle and aunt that they were dead to you –’

  Nathan interrupted him. ‘Only after Uncle Asher and Aunt Leah told Ruth that they disowned her and regarded both of us as dead to them.’

  ‘Ruth married outside of her faith. She is no longer one of us.’

  The rabbi’s observations provoked a tidal wave of agreement that escalated into anger directed against Nathan. A woman spat in Nathan’s face. As he lifted his arm to wipe away the spittle a shot was fired.

  The crack was followed by absolute silence.

  Every head turned towards Roman who’d fired in the air from the edge of the crowd. Raisa Shapiro took advantage of the situation and climbed on to the wheel of the handcart so everyone could see her. The diminutive widowed sister of Rabbi Goldberg wielded authority over the entire shtetl that was far above her status – an authority every man, woman, and child deferred to, although it was rooted in nothing more than the respect due to a woman of her advanced age and family connections coupled with her overpowering personality.

  ‘Nathan and Ruth are Asher and Leah’s orphaned nephew and niece.’ Raisa’s voice, shrill and piercing, carried to every corner of the crowd. ‘They were as a son and daughter to Asher and Leah and closer to them than anyone else here present. Nathan and Ruth are of the same blood. They have more right to be with Asher and Leah than any of you. Where is your compassion? Your religion? Nathan and Ruth are mourning. They need kindness and love, not anger. Rabbi Goldberg,’ she addressed her brother, ‘Asher and Leah are our dead. They need to be buried swiftly and correctly according to our ceremonies and customs.’

  ‘You are right, Raisa,’ Rabbi Goldberg acknowledged, but only after he saw the majority nodding agreement with Raisa’s impassioned speech.

  ‘I have heard it said that the Jews are the most righteous and kindest of people. Now I have seen it for myself. Those of us who have no right to be here will leave you to your mourning, but our thoughts will be with you. And should you need our help, we would be honoured to assist in any way we can,’ said Roman, though he didn’t relinquish the hold on his gun.

  ‘My house was untouched by the fire. Carry Asher and Leah there, and send for the holy ones to wash and dress the bodies.’ Raisa embraced Ruth and pulled her gently back from the cart.

  ‘Everything has been destroyed. We have no grave clothes or coffins,’ Rabbi Goldberg pointed out.

  ‘The company has coffins stored in their yard. They will let me buy or borrow two if I promise to replace them,’ Nathan said.

  ‘I’ll go to the yard, Nathan, and fetch them,’ Ruben volunteered.

  ‘My house escaped the fire. I have shrouds without pockets, I can make new ones for myself and my husband,’ a woman volunteered.

  ‘Come.’ Raisa leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Ruth ‘Let us bury Asher and Leah Kharber according to the rites of our faith. Nathan, you are chief mourner. Tear your coat. Ruth, tear yours also. The side over your heart. Rabbi, you will be needed to pray over our dead. The rest of you return to clearing the fire damage until the funeral. All of you, except the ones needed to pull the cart.’

  Roman waylaid Alexei. ‘I will wait for you and Ruth in the carriage.’

  ‘Thank you, but there is no need. Ruth won’t leave until they bury her uncle and aunt and I’ll stay as close to her as the rabbi will allow me to until the ceremony is over. Please ask my grandmother to send another carriage for us in two hours, but warn her it may have to wait.’

  ‘You don’t want to change out of your scorched clothes?’

  Alexei gave Roman the ghost of a smile. ‘Sackcloth and ashes seem appropriate to the situation.’ He reached out and squeezed Sonya’s hand.

  ‘If you want me to stay…’

  ‘No, Sonya.’ Alexei kissed her cheek. ‘There’s nothing you can do here for me, or for Ruth. We’ll see you back at Grandmother’s tomorrow or the day after.’

  Roman whirled around to see Sonya standing behind him. ‘I ordered you to stay in the carriage. Where’s Ivan?’

  ‘Here, sir. Miss Tsetovna refused to stay in the carriage.’

  ‘I don’t take orders from anyone, Ivan – or,’ Sonya stared defiantly at Roman, ‘you.’

  ‘So I see. You could have been attacked.’

  ‘Not after you fired the shot and gave Vasya’s aunt a chance to talk. Brave woman.’

  ‘Brave woman indeed.’ Roman watched Raisa lead the way to a wooden house that had miraculously evaded the ravages of the fire, although the walls were blackened by soot. He watched as Asher and Leah’s bodies were lifted from the cart and carried inside. Heads bowed, Ruth, Nathan, Rabbi Goldberg, and Raisa followed.

  Raisa was the last to enter. She turned and quietly but firmly closed the door behind her, leaving Alexei standing on the doorstep.

  Chapter Ten

  Burned out shtetl

  September 1871

  ‘Do you want to carry on with your tour of the town or return home?’ Sonya asked as Roman turned to her.

  He eyed the men who’d returned to the task of clearing the remains of the fire-damaged buildings. ‘I could talk to the elders about their plans for rebuilding the shtetl. Care to be my bodyguard?’

  ‘You think I can protect you?’

  ‘If you’ll let me hide behind your skirts.’

  ‘They’re only men,’ she reminded.

  ‘They look formidable with their black coats and bushy beards.’

  Sonya stood back while Roman approached the elders and a group of shopkeepers. To her surprise, after Roman began speaking they actually began listening to him, and when he started pacing out the ground she realised he was suggesting they build their shops and homes further apart.

  She drew closer so she could hear what he was saying.

  ‘… if you allow for two carriage stops between each shop, it will be easier to load and unload your goods.’

  ‘And the houses?’ one man she recognised as the blacksmith asked.

  ‘Should have gardens. This area is over a mile from the main works and factories. I know Mr Hughes has plans to develop his industrial complex to the south of the town as far as the river but not the north-east. There is no shortage of land in this sector. Give your houses large gardens so you can grow your own fruit and vegetables and make your streets half as wide again as you’ve pegged out. Then, fate forbid, if there’s another fire before we have an opportunity to rebuild in brick, there’s less risk of sparks spreading the flames.’ When the men hesitated, Roman added, ‘I know it means undoing some of the work you’ve already done…’

  ‘It’s not that, Your Excellency. People need room to breathe, but we Jews have never had much of that and find space a difficult concept to understand.’

  Sonya looked on in amazement, wondering if she had really seen the men around Roman smile. It was difficult to know. She had never known a Jewish elder to show any emotion – happy or sad.

  Roman took a notepad from
his pocket, scribbled on it, tore out the page he’d written on and handed it to the elder. ‘This is authority from me for you to take more land. When I speak to Mr Hughes this evening I’ll ask him to send someone out here to assist you with marking out the plots first thing tomorrow. In the meantime, once you’ve cleared this area, move the foundations of your shops further apart.’

  The elder took the note. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll return in the morning. If you think of anything urgent you believe that I can help with, I’m usually in the headquarters of the New Russia Company during office hours. I’m a guest of Mrs Ignatova, so any other time I’ll probably be in her house.’

  Roman shook hands with the men, walked Sonya back to the carriage, and they moved on. As they travelled through the fire swept areas, he studied the streets and made notes while Lyudmila regaled Ivan with a high-pitched, non-stop stream of local gossip. If the driver understood a word of what the cook was telling him he gave no sign of it beyond an occasional grunt.

  The last scattered undamaged buildings of the settlement finally petered out and the steppe stretched beneath the sky, vast, open, and endless around them. Sonya expected Roman to order Ivan to turn the carriage back to Catherine’s house. Instead he told him to drive on.

  ‘I need to get a perspective of the town from a distance,’ he explained. ‘It’s difficult to plan a settlement when there’s an unlimited amount of land. The temptation is to spread the buildings, but if you do, people – or more precisely workers – will spend half their time unproductively, walking or driving from one area to another. And, as most of the essential community buildings such as the schools, hospital, churches, synagogue, hotel, offices, and shops are either built or destined for a fixed location, they’ve already dictated where the centre of the town will be. Hughesovka needs to grow around them, not away from them.’

  Roman asked Ivan to stop the carriage about two miles from the last buildings. He opened the carriage door and helped Sonya down. They walked within sight but not earshot of Lyudmila and Ivan.

  ‘Is that enough perspective for you?’ she asked after fifteen minutes of trying to keep pace with his long-legged stride.

  ‘I’m, sorry. I didn’t mean to walk so quickly or so far. You must be exhausted after missing a night’s sleep.’

  They turned and looked back at the town. The industrial towers loomed above the low-built workers’ houses of the settlement. To the south, west, and east they caught glimpses of the rivers between the larger edifices, silver scars in the drab, flat landscape. On the outskirts, a procession of black-garbed figures walked slowly towards the walled Jewish cemetery with its sprinkling of headstones.

  ‘Alexei and Ruth must have borrowed coats,’ Sonya murmured, spotting Alexei’s tall, blond-haired figure walking several steps behind a group of veiled, black-garbed women, none recognisable as Ruth.

  ‘Listen,’ Roman whispered, ‘from this distance you can hear the carpenters hammering nails into wood. Even on a day of death, life continues and grows. One day Hughesovka will be a city.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I know so. Given the number of workers needed to run the factories, collieries, and ironworks Mr Hughes is planning, it cannot fail to be just that.’

  ‘Will we live long enough to see it?’

  ‘If we survive another twenty or thirty years, yes.’ He slipped his notebook back into his pocket. ‘I confess, I had an ulterior motive in asking you to walk with me, and now we can no longer be overheard by the indomitable Lyudmila or silent Ivan –’

  ‘Lyudmila means well,’ she broke in.

  ‘I don’t doubt it, but I wish her well-meaning wasn’t quite so loud or exhausting, for our sake as well as Ivan’s.’ He offered her his arm. She took it and he closed his hand over her gloved fingers. ‘First, I’d like to thank you for agreeing to be my guide. You were truly excellent, I wouldn’t have seen as much without your expert direction.’

  ‘Ivan would have done as well.’ She wondered what was coming.

  ‘I have a proposition for you. I don’t want you to give me an answer right away. It’s a question I hope you’ll consider carefully. Take all the time you need – a year or more if it results in the answer I hope to receive.’

  Suspicions roused, Sonya began formulating gentle replies she hoped would spare the prince’s feelings.

  ‘I know a great deal about you, Sonya. You may not be aware you were the talk of St Petersburg when you visited the city with your aunt and Mr Hughes. The stunning beauty from the steppe with the look of an angel. Since then word of your inheritance has leaked out, and now you’re not just any beauty, but a beauty who’s inherited two million roubles from her father.’

  ‘I’m aware that news of my inheritance has become common knowledge in some circles. Aunt Catherine has already warned me that most of the attention I’ll receive from men in future will be for my fortune, not my person. I don’t need further counsel from you, Prince Roman.’

  ‘I’ve no intention of lecturing you, Miss Tsetovna, but given the rumours about my own wealth, I have some experience of your situation.’

  ‘Given the exalted circles you move in, I don’t doubt you’ve met several fortune hunters.’

  ‘I have. After living in Catherine’s house and seeing you every day, your company has proved a most refreshing change from the St Petersburg and Moscow socialites who haunt the fashionable salons in the hope of diverting a portion of the assets of the wealthy into their own purses, along with a wedding ring. Angelic looks don’t often come with an angelic temper or a generous and kind heart, but in your case your personality is even more attractive than your person. I am asking you to do me the honour of becoming my wife, Miss Tsetovna.’

  ‘Prince –’

  ‘Even if you should refuse me, which I hope you won’t, I trust that we can at least become friends enough for you to call me, Roman, Miss Tsetovna.’

  She didn’t reciprocate by asking him to call her Sonya, not without her aunt’s permission. She wasn’t even sure how Catherine would react when she told her about Roman’s extraordinary and unexpected proposal. ‘I have absolutely no intention of marrying, I have my career…’

  ‘I appreciate that you are as indispensable to Mr Hughes as you once were to the hospital. Should you accept my proposal I would not dream of interfering with your plans for making a career outside of whichever of my houses you choose to live in.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want your wife to run your home?’ she questioned in surprise.

  ‘I have enough trained butlers, housekeepers, footmen, maids, cooks, and valets to organise my domestic life to perfection – in all my houses.’

  ‘Do you have many?’ Sonya asked curiously.

  ‘Moscow, St Petersburg, Yalta, Paris, London, Rome. And as business has brought me here, I’m planning to build another in Hughesovka.’

  ‘If you have so many servants why do you want a wife?’ Sonya blurted unthinkingly.

  ‘Why does anyone marry?’ he shrugged. ‘Companionship, and possibly children. I confess I would like to father a child. Do you like children?’

  ‘I enjoy looking after Alexei’s surviving sister, Kira. She’s just over a year old.’

  ‘I must visit the nursery and make her acquaintance. Would you like your own children?’

  ‘One day, but I intend to love not like them,’ she corrected.

  ‘You are right, children should be loved not liked.’

  The smile that accompanied his comment caught her off guard. Without intending to, she used his Christian name. ‘Roman, I am aware of the great honour you…’

  ‘Please,’ he held up his hand, ‘spare me the “you have honoured me” refusal speech out of an etiquette book.’

  ‘You’ve heard it before?’

  ‘No, you’re the first woman I’ve asked to marry me. That surprises you?’ he added when she didn’t comment.

  ‘It does.’ She wished she could think of something more appropriat
e to say.

  ‘The one thing I value above all else, as I hope you’ll soon discover, is honesty. I know from the way you looked at Dr Kharber when you danced with him last evening that you love him…’ He held up his hand to silence her. ‘Please, let me finish. I also know from the way he looked at you that he loves you. However, he is a doctor who practises an honourable profession and is, above all else, an honourable man.’

  She couldn’t help but notice he’d pronounced honourable as though it was an insult.

  ‘I also saw at the wedding that the good doctor couldn’t conceal his lack of love for his wife, yet he treated her with consideration and respect. That alone tells me he will never act on his love for you, nor will he allow you to show your love for him when he knows it would threaten his wife’s peace of mind and cast a shadow over his marriage.’

  She wanted to tell Roman that he was wrong. That she didn’t love Nathan, had never loved him, but when she looked into his piercing green eyes, she knew he would sense that she was lying.

  ‘Unrequited love can damage and blight lives but only if we allow it,’ he advised.

  ‘Is that something else you’ve discovered from personal experience?’

  ‘I doubt if there’s anyone alive who hasn’t loved unwisely,’ he replied ambiguously.

  ‘You said that you know a great deal about me. Are you aware my parents weren’t married?’

  ‘Yes. Mine were, but only two weeks before I was born. My father didn’t want to annoy his parents and he knew they’d be less than pleased with his choice of wife.’

  ‘Your mother was Chinese?’

  ‘She was, and I’ve inherited her features. You’ve heard she was a princess?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. I’ve done my best to put an end to the tales told by my father. My mother’s parents were farmers. Hardly impoverished but neither were they wealthy. They were of that most boring class when it comes to fairy stories, well-dressed, well-fed, comfortably off Chinese Manchu bourgeois. Do you know much about your parents?’