Princes and Peasants

by Catrin Collier

  ‘They weren’t stopped after what they did to me. The police took them away but they were set free.’

  ‘We explained why they didn’t go to gaol, darling.’

  ‘Because I wasn’t there to tell the judge what they did to me, and because they lied,’ Anna interrupted. ‘If Auntie Maggie and Betty hadn’t found me when they did after the Paskeys attacked me I would be dead like Naomi. She is dead, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Anna bit her lip and shrank back when Sarah tried to hug her.

  ‘If someone had found Naomi sooner…’

  ‘Her head injuries were so severe, darling, she would have died even if she’d been brought here straight after the attack,’ Sarah consoled.

  ‘Miriam said Dr Kharber will want to move Naomi’s body to the Jewish mortuary as soon as possible.’

  ‘He will, and her family won’t want us to lay out Naomi, they have their own special people to do that called the Chevra Kadisha,’ Sarah warned, having presided over several Jewish deaths in the hospital. ‘The funeral will probably be held today, as the Jews like to bury their dead as quickly as possible.’

  ‘We’ll be allowed to attend, won’t we?’ Anna asked.

  ‘You’ll have to ask Dr Kharber that, but not being of Naomi’s faith we may not be welcome.’

  ‘What should you ask Dr Kharber?’ Nathan questioned as he entered the office.

  ‘Whether or not we can attend Naomi’s funeral, sir?’

  ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Anna. Rabbi Goldberg will want to limit the mourners to members of our faith.’

  ‘Can we at least send flowers?’

  Nathan shook his head. ‘Unlike Christians, we Jews keep our funeral services very simple. We bury our dead as quickly as possible and we don’t put flowers on our coffins.’

  ‘So, there is no way that we nurses can mourn Naomi?’

  ‘You can say goodbye to her in your prayers, Anna. And perhaps you can light a candle and put it in the hall window tonight when you come on duty. Then whenever you walk past it, you will remember her.’

  ‘I won’t need a candle to remember her, sir.’

  ‘No, I don’t expect you will.’

  ‘Would you like tea, Dr Kharber?’

  ‘Please, Anna.’

  ‘Shall I take some in to Rabbi Goldberg and Mr and Mrs Rinski?’

  ‘No, Anna, leave them to come to terms with what has happened for the moment. Rabbi Goldberg told me that he has ordered the Jewish mortuary cart to call here at first light.’ He turned to Sarah. ‘Thank you for coming when I sent for you, and thank you for staying all night, but now, as your doctor as well as your friend, I am ordering you home to get some rest, not only for your own sake, but that of your child.’

  Realising there was nothing more she could do for Anna, Naomi, Mr and Mrs Rinski, or anyone in the hospital, Sarah didn’t argue. She went to the door.

  ‘Get one of the porters to walk you across the road.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Nathan, I’ll be in plain sight.’

  ‘Not in the darkness you won’t, and don’t tell me that you can look after yourself, not after what happened to Naomi. I’ll be watching,’ he warned her.

  ‘I’ll ask whoever is in the porters’ room to accompany me,’ she capitulated. ‘I’ll see you this afternoon after I’ve slept.’

  ‘Take the day off. Hopefully nothing will happen in the town the next twenty-four hours.’

  ‘If it does the girls can send for me.’

  ‘Thank you again, Sarah.’

  ‘For what?’ she asked.

  ‘Being you, and comforting Mr and Mrs Rinski.’

  ‘I did and said nothing.’

  ‘Precisely. The rest of us would have tried. And there are no words of comfort that can be offered. Not in the face of such a loss. It takes someone who’s experienced it to know that.’

  Chapter Twenty

  Hughesovka

  December 1871

  The only illumination emanated from the eerie, blue-white glow of the snow and the yellow oil lamps that burned on the porch of the hospital and in the doorways of the houses. Nathan stood in front of the hospital and watched the Jewish mortuary cart drive towards the shtetl. Rabbi Goldberg and Mr and Mrs Rinski stumbled hesitantly behind it. Knowing Glyn Edwards would be the first to offer, he’d suggested that Rabbi Goldberg and the Rinskis borrow one of Glyn’s carriages and a porter to drive it and them back to the shtetl, but the rabbi had refused. Seeing Mrs Rinskaya falter and Mr Rinski slow his step until they both fell some distance behind the rabbi, he hoped Naomi’s parents would reach their home without collapsing.

  Seeing a light flicker behind Glyn’s house, he walked across the road and down the outside of the fence that enclosed the back of Glyn’s garden. Maxim was searching with the aid of a lantern, poking at the snow covered ground with a long stick.

  ‘Have you found anything else?’ he asked the porter.

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ Maxim answered grimly.

  ‘Naomi had been hit on the head with something hard. A stone? Or a stick. It will be covered in her blood.’

  ‘The snow has obliterated everything, sir. There’s nothing, sir. No bloodstains or any more of Naomi’s clothes. Bogdan told me her stockings and underclothes are missing. All we found was the broken dish, sir. Vlad, Mr Edwards, and Mr Parry organised a search of the town. They questioned everyone who was out and about last night but no one saw anything – at least nothing they would own up to. I thought I’d take one last look around here before the Cossacks come into town. I saw the Jewish mortuary cart outside the hospital. Is Nurse Rinskaya…’

  ‘She died less than an hour ago, Maxim.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, sir. She was a pleasant girl. She had a kind word for everyone.’

  ‘Yes, she did.’ Nathan turned back and retraced his steps. He stopped when he reached the corner of the fence and looked across the road at the hospital.

  Dawn was breaking. The snow-blanketed town was bathed in a thin, cold light that lent the deserted buildings and quiet street a grim, sinister air. He shivered. He was cold. He knew he should go home to catch up on his sleep but he was in no hurry to face Vasya or her silent, suffering martyrdom after the scene at dinner. Was it really only last evening?

  He didn’t even want to return to his office in the hospital. It would only give him the time and opportunity to reflect on his deficiencies as a doctor. Naomi had been so young. She’d had her whole life ahead of her – and for all his training there’d been nothing he could do to save her. Nothing at all.

  He looked down the road and saw a company of Cossacks riding in, Captain Misha Razin at their head, and recalled what Maxim had said about the soldiers coming to help search for Naomi’s killer.

  Too tired to think, walk, or volunteer to help the Cossacks, all he wanted to do was sit somewhere quiet and clear his mind of the unbearable tragedy of the night so he could come to terms with it as much as he ever could. If only he’d insisted Naomi leave in the company of a porter … It had been kind of Sarah to say it wasn’t his place to suggest that, but he knew he would be haunted by the thought until the day he died.

  It was then he remembered one place where he’d be offered tea, a comfortable chair in front of the hearth, and innocuous conversation about nothing in particular. He pushed his hat down further on his head, set his face to the snowflakes blowing in on the east wind and walked down the street towards Koshka’s.

  ‘Dr Kharber?’

  He turned to see Sonya alight from a carriage. Her chaperone and a footman were with her.

  ‘You’re up early, Miss Tsetovna.’

  ‘Mr Edwards sent a message to Mr Hughes at my aunt’s last night that one of the nurses from the hospital had been attacked. Prince Roman Nadolny and Mr Hughes went to the company office to co-ordinate the search for the perpetrator. I knew the nurses would be upset and Sarah would be here helping, so I thought I’d come down early to see if I could do
anything. Is it true? Was the nurse…’

  Nathan didn’t wait for her to finish her question. ‘Naomi Rinskaya. She died less than an hour ago.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Dr Kharber, I only met her a few times, but she seemed a sweet girl. How are the rest of the nurses coping?’

  ‘Come and see for yourself. You know the girls, they’re always happy to make tea.’

  ‘Sarah?’

  ‘I ordered her home after Naomi died. She sat up with Naomi and Mr and Mrs Rinski all night, which is tiring for anyone but exhausting for someone in her condition. I hope she’s taken my advice and gone to bed.’

  Sonya looked at Glyn’s house. Smoke was drifting upwards from the chimneys, which meant Pyotr had laid and lit the fires, but the drapes hadn’t been opened in the family rooms at the front of the house, and she wondered if Glyn and Richard were still out searching the town with the rest of the men, looking for whoever had attacked Naomi.

  ‘Maria, go to the office of the New Russia Company please, and tell Mr Hughes and Prince Roman Nadolny I’ll be at the hospital or Mr Edwards’s. If no one needs your help in the company offices, you can go home. Tell Boris to send a carriage to the office for me at the end of the day as usual.’

  ‘You don’t want me to stay with you, Miss Sonya?’

  Sonya heard the disapproval in Maria’s voice. ‘I’ll be quite safe in the hospital, and company office, as I am every day, and I may even be home early if Prince Roman returns this afternoon as I’ll travel home with him. Don’t worry about my being chaperoned, we’ll have the driver.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Sonya.’

  Sonya ignored the frost in Maria’s voice and walked alongside Nathan to the hospital. Anna had seen them from the window and set a tray of tea on Nathan’s desk as they entered. Sonya noticed Anna’s damp eyes and pale face and hugged her.

  ‘You don’t have to wait on me.’

  ‘The tea’s for Dr Kharber, all I did was put an extra glass on the tray for you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Sonya removed her hat and cloak and hung them on the hooks the nurses used behind the kitchen door.

  ‘I hope you’re here to sort out the mess Yulia has made of the filing system.’

  ‘As there’s nothing else I can do until I’m due to start work in the company office at nine, I’d be happy to help out.’

  ‘Sit down and drink your tea first,’ Nathan poured two glasses before sitting behind his desk. ‘Has the day shift of nurses come in yet, Anna?’

  ‘Yes, Dr Kharber.’

  ‘Then please go home, and tell Miriam and Yulia to do the same. Ask one of the Cossacks or a porter to escort all of you to your respective doors and tell whoever it is to walk you across the road first. Until the madman who killed Naomi has been caught, no woman will be safe in this town.’

  ‘The porters have work to do. They’re busy…’

  ‘And they’ll be busier still, escorting all you nurses to and from this place. I don’t want any of you setting foot in the streets by yourself from now on.’ He softened his voice. ‘Go, Anna. You’ve had a dreadful night. You need to rest. All of you. See you tonight.’

  ‘And you, sir?’

  ‘Tell the nurses I’ll either be here or in my house if I’m needed for an emergency.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Anna left, closing the office door behind her.

  ‘Did Yulia really mess up the files that much?’ Sonya asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he concurred, ‘but drink this before you look at them.’ He handed her a glass. ‘If what I’ve heard is correct, I should congratulate you on your engagement.’ When she didn’t answer, he said, ‘You are engaged to Prince Roman Nadolny?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Is your ring as grand as the diamond one Alexei gave my sister?’ He didn’t know why he was asking. He had no interest in engagement rings, diamond or otherwise, and had bought Vasya only one ring, a plain gold band when they had married.

  ‘I have no ring as yet.’

  ‘There are no fine jewellers who deal in diamonds in Hughesovka,’ he observed.

  ‘Precisely.’ She didn’t tell him that Roman hadn’t mentioned a ring and she, in all honesty, hadn’t even thought of one.

  ‘I wish you and the prince a long and happy life together.’

  ‘Do you? Do you really?’ Sonya fought to control her pent-up frustration with Nathan.

  ‘Miss…’

  Sonya finally erupted. ‘Don’t you dare “Miss Tsetovna” me. Not when you know how I feel about you and what you feel for me.’ She saw him flinch as though she’d struck him. She’d intended to hurt him but instead of triumph, she felt numb, empty, and unaccountably nauseous.

  ‘It would never have been possible between you and me, Sonya.’

  ‘Why? Because I’m a Christian?’ she demanded. ‘Ruth was Jewish, Alexei a Christian, and you not only allowed them to marry but gave them your blessing.’

  ‘It was either that or lose my sister, and I couldn’t bear the thought. Besides, the situation was entirely different…’

  ‘Because Ruth is a woman? Or because she was prepared to give up her religion for the man she loved? And you weren’t prepared to make that sacrifice for me.’

  ‘I’m not as brave as Ruth, Sonya. My faith is the framework on which I’ve built my entire life.’

  ‘If you’d asked me I would have converted to your faith, just as Ruth converted to the Russian Orthodox Church for Alexei. No sacrifice would have been too much if it meant that we could have spent our lives together.’

  ‘You would have found the ways of the shtetl strange, and the customs and constrictions we expect our women to live under, even stranger.’

  ‘I could have learned. I would’ve done anything for you.’

  Unable to bear the love and pleading in her eyes he walked to the window, turned his back on her, and stared blankly at the street. ‘In the beginning perhaps you could have borne the sacrifice. But given time you would have resented it. Someone brought up as you have been, to value the freedoms of aristocratic life…’

  ‘Aristocratic? Me?’ she interrupted angrily. ‘Until recently I was a penniless bastard who never knew my father or my mother. Is that it? Is that why you wouldn’t marry me?’

  ‘I never considered your parentage.’ He turned to face her and she saw he was speaking the truth. ‘What I did think of was the different worlds you and I have inhabited and still inhabit. We’re mushrooms and toadstools, Sonya. Fine when kept separate; put us in a pan together, and the dish turns to poison.’

  ‘Which one of us is the toadstool?’

  ‘Me,’ he answered with a self-deprecating smile. ‘The Tsars know just how lethal and dangerous we Jews are, which is why Catherine the Great and her successors have restricted us to living “beyond the pale” in this small corner of all the Russias. So it wouldn’t only be the restrictions of my faith that would bind you, but also the laws the Tsars have passed to control every aspect of Jewish life, and limit our influence to our own settlements, thereby sentencing us and our children to eternal poverty.’

  Realising the futility of questioning the justice or otherwise of Russian laws governing Jews, a subject she knew very little about, she blurted, ‘Roman knows about us and he knows that I love you.’

  ‘You told him you loved me?’ He was shocked. ‘When we’ve never spoken about it until now?’

  ‘I didn’t tell him anything. He saw us dancing together at Alexei and Ruth’s wedding, and guessed.’

  ‘In which case one of us must have been wearing our heart on our face.’

  ‘Possibly both of us.’ She couldn’t quell the bitterness she felt. ‘I hope Vasya didn’t notice as well as Roman.’

  ‘She knows.’

  It was Sonya’s turn to be dumbfounded. ‘You told her?’

  ‘I’ve never said a word about you, but like your fiancé, she knows.’

  ‘She loves you. You do realise that?’

  ‘Almost as much as the prince loves you.’r />
  ‘Roman doesn’t love me.’

  ‘He told you that?’

  ‘He asked me to marry him but it would be a business arrangement. He’s rich, I have some money.’

  ‘A man doesn’t marry a woman as a business arrangement, Sonya.’

  ‘You did,’ she challenged. ‘You married Vasya so Ruth could marry Alexei.’

  Unable to contradict or face her, he ran his hands through his hair and turned back to the window. He saw one of the Cossacks who was out searching the street look towards the hospital, and closed the blinds.

  ‘You’ll have to be more careful when you look at me in future.’ She left her tea untouched and rose from the chair.

  ‘How careful will you be, Sonya, when you’ve promised to marry a man you don’t love?’

  ‘As I can’t marry you, it doesn’t matter who I marry. Least of all to you,’ she added cuttingly.

  ‘It will matter when you find yourself living with someone you’ll see every single day for the rest of your life.’

  ‘When you married Vasya, you made a decision for both of us, Nathan. What I do or don’t do with my life is no concern of yours.’

  She moved to the door. He turned and faced her. One step, at the most two, and he would be close enough to touch her. To gather her into his arms. To kiss her…

  He didn’t move.

  She opened the door and head high, eyes focused straight in front of her, walked away. She was so intent on ignoring Nathan she didn’t see Roman passing in one of John Hughes’s carriages.

  Roman glanced past Sonya to the window of Nathan’s office. The blinds were closed, which was why he noticed a chink on the right hand side. A chink just wide enough for someone inside to have moved the slats so they could see out.

  ‘Stop here, Manfred.’

  ‘Here, sir?’ Manfred asked in surprise.

  ‘Just for a few minutes. I need to make some notes and I can’t while the carriage is moving.’

  Roman continued to sit in the carriage pretending to make notes until Nathan left the hospital. Only then did he alight and order Manfred to return the carriage to the stables behind the company offices.