The Sparrow in Hiding

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  He didn’t think she was going to touch the food until he took something, so Evgeny picked up one of the pierogies and regarded it thoughtfully. He didn’t want to answer her question. If he told her, she would surely recognize the story and know who he was, and then comfortable talks like this would become impossible. She would refuse to associate with him. And he enjoyed her company. “I would rather not speak of it.”

  She returned to ripping up one of the rolls for the waiting pheasant, her eyes lowered. Some people, Evgeny knew, did not believe that tearing bread rather than cutting it brought on ill luck, but he still had to suppress a shudder.

  “I did not mean to pry, Evgeny Petrovich,” she said then, lifting her eyes to meet his.

  She had been prying, but he couldn’t blame her for being curious. After all, her brother was keeping his true name secret, which must vex her. “Do you come out here to sketch as well?” he asked as a diversion.

  “Yes,” she said with a nervous laugh. “I’ve always had an interest in the forest and the creatures in it. The trees and the birds. Do you believe in the leshies?”

  The leshies watched over the animals of the forest and the trees that sheltered them. They made certain the sheep and goats and cows didn’t stray too far into the woods. Evgeny had once glimpsed the one who lived in the forest near his family’s house outside Nizhny. The creature had worn the form of a grizzled old man, but rather than a gray beard, his had been made of twisted vines. That leshy had been the one to tell Lizaveta what she must do to break the curse. “I’ve seen them before,” he admitted. “The birds say there’s one here in these woods, although I haven’t seen him.”

  “The birds told you that? They talk to you?”

  Evgeny sighed softly. He should have chosen his words more carefully.

  “I can hear the trees talk to each other,” she volunteered. “I think because my mother was a tree. Most of the time it’s like a conversation just beyond my hearing. I can tell what they’re talking about and what their mood is, but I can only rarely make out their words.”

  He felt his brows draw together. “Does your brother?”

  “Illarion claims not. I expect I’m more like mother than he is.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth again. “I see the leshy sometimes. He peers at me from a distance. He’ll peek at me, but won’t talk to me. I think he’s not sure what I am, why the trees speak to me.”

  Evgeny gazed up at the bay laurel. Now that he knew to look, he saw within its trunk the vague shape of a womanly form. “Does your mother?”

  It was Irina’s turn to sigh. “I can’t understand what she says. I would love to ask her a thousand questions. . . .”

  “Why she left you?” He knew that question had vexed Illarion as a boy.

  Irina nodded. “Father thinks she tired of him, and Illarion thinks she tired of us. I wish I could understand her better, but the only times I’ve made sense of her words has been in dreams.”

  “In dreams? She comes to you in your dreams?”

  Irina laughed softly. “No. I mean . . . a couple of times I’ve fallen asleep out here, near her. I dreamed she came and talked to me then.”

  “That makes sense.” In his dreams he sometimes soared through the air, whole, his brothers at his side. He never knew if that was a wish or a memory or . . . something deeper.

  Her eyes lowered to the blanket. “It must be lovely to hear what the birds say.”

  “It’s a reminder of my curse,” he admitted, “that I understand them, and they me.”

  “How is that a curse?” she asked, brows drawn together. “Think of all the things the birds could tell you, all their secrets. Where they go in the winter. How they build their nests. How they court and why they fly and what they dream of.”

  How could he possibly explain? She thought birds lived romantic lives where they flew and played and chattered in the trees all day long—much like the lives of aristocrats back in St. Petersburg. But he’d seen the other side: the desperate hunt for food in the winter, the endless flights in the season of migrations, the relentless cold and sickness and the persistent lice. Life wasn’t any better for the human poor of St. Petersburg, either.

  His mood suddenly black, Evgeny carefully pushed off the ground and gained his feet without wobbling. “I must return to work, Irina Alexeievna. If you’ll pardon me. . . .”

  “Are you not curious about such things?” she asked, as if surprised at his lack of enthusiasm.

  “When you live it every day,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose, “it grows mundane.”

  

  Irina watched Evgeny walk away toward the Big House, the pheasant hen trailing him. She had asked the wrong question. Or her enthusiasm had driven him away. Either way, it seemed as if the sunshine had faded with his leaving.

  Yes, Kolya is right. I am taken with the man.

  Was that foolish or not? There were moments when it seemed that Evgeny Petrovich was as taken with her, but when he could walk away like that, she felt unsure.

  Her mother had no answer for her, her leaves whispering only of sparrows.

  Frustrated, Irina bundled up the remaining food and her charcoals and tins. Now she only wanted to go back to her bedroom and lie down. She wandered back to the house, handed the tins from her lunch off to a footman, and began the trek up the stairs.

  Kolya caught her at the door of his office and drew her inside. He held a letter in his hand. “I received this from a friend in the city.”

  He received mail every day, so that was no surprise. “What does it say?”

  “It’s from my friend who was looking into your Evgeny’s family,” he said. “It is . . . interesting.”

  Irina waited for him to clarify that, but instead he folded up the paper and slipped it into one of the locking desk drawers. “What?” she asked. “What does your friend say about his family?”

  Kolya’s eyes met hers. “Is it so important to you?”

  Does it matter what sort of family Evgeny Vorobyov comes from? She gazed back across the desk at Kolya. “No, it isn’t.”

  Kolya smiled. “You are taken with him after all.”

  “I suppose I am,” she confessed.

  Chapter 4

  * * *

  MORNING CAME, and Evgeny went about his usual chores with a heavy heart. He wished he hadn’t reacted so poorly to Irina’s question, but there were times he recalled all too well how terrifying his life had been during the years of the curse. He doubted that would ever leave him. He couldn’t explain it to her without telling her the whole truth, so he hoped he might simply apologize.

  Once he’d finished the watering, he headed forth from the aviary into the woods to search for a pheasant again. The dampness left by the early morning mist dripped from the leaves, making his tunic stick to him. He called for a time, walking back and forth along the pathway, but his feet stilled when he saw a large shape at the base of the bay tree.

  Even from a distance, he could see it was Nikolai Morozov. The man wasn’t alone. A shaggy-furred shape leaned against him companionably—a wolf. Its yellow eyes watched Evgeny there on the path. How long had it been there? Evgeny took a step closer, and the wolf’s head rose from the ground. It growled, but didn’t rise.

  That growl was enough to wake Morozov, though, who came to his feet in a flurry of blankets. The wolf rose gracefully, its eyes fixed on Evgeny.

  Evgeny stayed very still, breath frozen in his chest. He couldn’t run fast enough to escape a wolf. With only one arm he couldn’t climb into a tree. He could only pray that the creature didn’t chase him.

  Morozov reached down and touched the wolf’s head. The wolf glanced up at him, then ambled away into the woods. For a moment, Morozov stared at Evgeny, blanket hanging off his arm. He resettled the blanket over his shoulders and walked up the path toward the Big House.

  Evgeny stepped aside. Would the man just pass by without speaking?

  But when Morozov drew even with him, he stopped
. He was taller than Evgeny by a couple of fingers and had both arms, but Evgeny refused to let himself be intimidated. He glanced instead to the pathway, noting once again that Morozov had no shadow.

  As had been the case back in St. Petersburg, Evgeny wasn’t certain what he saw when he looked at Nikolay Morozov. In his cursed vision, the man had a dual identity. Not just his intrinsic nature, as when Evgeny saw the tree within Irina’s stillness or the obdurate oak of Illarion’s true heart. No, Morozov was special in some way—different—a man, and yet possessing something secret within, something capable of hiding its nature from Evgeny’s eyes. And he had no shadow.

  “Dragomirov,” the secretary said as if they’d merely passed in a hallway.

  He knows my name.

  Evgeny sighed. Illarion had warned him it was only a matter of time before Morozov discerned his identity. “I no longer claim that name, Morozov.”

  A smile tugged at one corner of the man’s lips. “You cannot escape who you are born, Dragomirov. None of us can.”

  There was nothing to say to that.

  “Did you sleep out here?” Evgeny asked instead, trying to make sense of the blanket.

  “I came out this morning,” Morozov said. “I had to talk to someone.”

  Evgeny’s eyes flicked back toward the end of the pathway where Morozov had been sitting. “Someone met you out here? It was wet this morning.”

  Morozov shrugged and walked on to the Big House.

  Had he gone there to talk to the wolf? Or to the bay tree? Evgeny watched him go. Even once beyond the trees, the man didn’t cast a shadow on the gravel paths.

  Morozov had been with the Razumov family most of his life, Evgeny knew. At school, Illarion had received letters from that man, just as he had from his sister, although he hadn’t offered to let Evgeny read those. Evgeny hoped Illarion was correct in trusting the man . . . or whatever he was.

  

  Irina was determined not to let yesterday’s aborted discussion ruin her hopes for the present. She would simply have to be more careful what topics she raised with Evgeny Petrovich. She grabbed up her shawl and headed out to the aviary. When she opened the door, she saw Evgeny inside, a wood pigeon perched on his shoulder.

  When he saw her, Evgeny smiled.

  “I was going to take my lunch out to the forest today,” she told him.

  “You should take a blanket,” he said mildly. “It’s damp.”

  She already knew that. “If you wish to join me, you’re welcome to do so. The cook always packs too much food for me.”

  He paused while setting out a bowl of seeds for the birds. One of the pigeons flapped its wings to regain his attention. He set the bowl down on the edge of a stone planter and asked, “Are you certain?”

  Was she certain that Cook would pack more than enough food? Or that she wanted him to join her? Or perhaps it was a far more complex question. “We had such a lovely talk the last time,” she said. “I would enjoy your company.”

  “I would be happy to join you,” he said.

  “At noon?” she asked. “Do you have a watch?”

  “I do not,” he admitted, his cheeks flushing slightly. “But I will listen for the church bells.”

  She smiled. “Thank you.”

  

  Evgeny met her at the edge of the path and offered to carry the basket of food. She handed it over willingly enough, but held her sketching supplies close. They were precious to her.

  “Have you had any luck finding your male pheasant?” she asked right away.

  “I haven’t had time to search,” he admitted. “Perhaps this afternoon.”

  When they reached the bay tree, he helped her spread out her blanket, managing his side agilely enough with one hand and a foot. She favored him with an admiring expression. “One learns,” he told her.

  “I see.” She settled on the blanket and began unpacking the lunch, very similar to the previous day’s offering—pierogies and tarts and white honey—and then offered him a plate. “Please, help yourself. I don’t know what you like.”

  He’d learned on the streets to eat just about anything, so he selected a small portion of each.

  “I apologize for whatever I said that upset you yesterday,” she said.

  “I should not have reacted so rudely,” he said in turn.

  “We all have things in our past that haunt us,” she said. “I suppose it is a part of friendship, learning of the scars in another’s past.”

  Was she looking for friendship from him? Evgeny licked his lips. What was Illarion thinking, permitting this? “Your first husband?” he asked. “Was it he who scarred you?”

  “Yes,” she said softly.

  “Widow Ivanova claims it was an ill-fated match from the first.”

  She took a deep breath, as if speaking of it was an unpleasant duty that must be faced. “I meant to love my husband,” she said. “I meant to be a good wife, but from the first day, I feared him. Something about the way he grasped my hand at the wedding, the way he touched me. . . .”

  She shuddered, and Evgeny waited for her to finish the sentence. If she’d actually courted the scandal of leaving her husband, then something had been terribly wrong between them.

  She swallowed and took another deep breath. “He didn’t want me, not from the beginning. He didn’t . . . show interest . . . in me, not unless he was hurting me.” She paused, apparently to determine whether he grasped what she meant.

  Evgeny had a good idea. On the streets of St. Petersburg, he’d heard of men who acted that way, men who enjoyed inflicting pain. “He didn’t become aroused unless he beat you?”

  She nodded jerkily. “Yes. I didn’t truly understand at first. It made him angrier that I wouldn’t cry out. It’s not in my nature. So I feared him even more.”

  No, the tree in her wouldn’t allow that. She would have bent instead, bowing, and her husband would have continued to heap abuse on her. It was a terrifyingly private confession, one he would never have expected her to make to a near stranger like himself. “And you left him?”

  Her eyes slid toward the blanket, and her voice fell to a whisper. “I tried to please him, but nothing ever made him happy. One summer, when I was twenty, I fled here. He stayed in St. Petersburg. He didn’t seem to care that I was gone. But one day he came here and found me. He was angry about something. I don’t think it was anything I’d done, but I was the person on whom he took out his wrath. He found me here in the woods, and he . . . I don’t remember most of what happened, but it took me weeks to heal. I had been pregnant, but I lost the child. That had been the only thing that made my life tolerable, the hopes of having a child of my own.” She wiped her face with the side of her hand. “I never forgave him for that.”

  Unthinking, Evgeny brushed a tear from her cheek. “I am sorry. Some things are unforgivable.”

  “Kolya learned that Sergei had left St. Petersburg. Since Illarion was in Moscow on business, Kolya came to the dacha to check on me. He found me in the woods the next morning.” She touched the bark of the laurel tree. “He said my mother had shed all her leaves to cover my body to keep me warm. He carried me back to the Big House, and when he found Sergei there sleeping off his drunk, he dragged my husband to the crossroads in the village, stripped him, and gave him a chance to defend himself. That’s what I’ve been told. He beat Sergei to within an inch of his life and, in front of all the villagers and the priest, told him never to come back near his family again or he would kill him.”

  What did that tell him about Nikolay Morozov? If nothing else, it showed that Morozov was protective rather than a danger, a relief to Evgeny. He shouldn’t be surprised that Irina called the man by a diminutive, not when she’d known him most of her life. And if he was a little jealous, he had no right to be. “I’m glad there was someone to avenge you,” Evgeny said honestly. “I wish I could have seen it.”

  “Kolya in a rage is something terrifying to behold,” she said with a wet laugh. “I heard he is
quite impressive in battle as well. From Illarion, of course, who is biased, but I don’t doubt it.”

  Neither did he. Morozov was a large man with more than a hint of the wolf about him and no shadow. Evgeny suspected he made a fearsome sight when provoked.

  “Kolya thinks that’s why Sergei spread rumors about me,” she added, “because a serf humiliated him in front of a village of peasants. Sergei was always complaining about what an embarrassment I was to him. That his parents only arranged the marriage to increase their ties in the trade, and they wouldn’t have married him to a serf otherwise.”

  If Evgeny understood correctly, Sergei’s family hadn’t been actual nobility, even though they’d had marriage ties to a few aristocrats. There were always men who valued their meager consequence far more highly than it was worth. “Your husband surely said those things to hurt you.”

  “He believed them,” she said softly, wringing her hands together. “My father might think our wealth makes us acceptable, but he should have chosen a husband for me from a lower station who wouldn’t despise me so much.”

  “Your husband was wrong, Irina,” he said. “There’s a time coming when all people will be equal, because that is how our God made us. Not to be serfs or princes, but men and women.”

  She laughed again. “Now I know you went to the same school as Evgeny.”

  Yes, he and Evgeny had spent many evenings talking about the rights of men. Despite their disparate backgrounds, they’d shared many opinions on the subject, particularly where it came to the practice of serfdom. Many among the aristocracy believed that serfs were of lower stock, otherwise God would not have made those families serfs. It was a self-serving view, meant to keep those in power endlessly in power.

  And his own family? It was from their mother—the daughter of a farm worker—that Lizaveta had gotten her stunning beauty and strength of character. “No man should treat a woman as your husband did,” he said. “My father, whatever his flaws, never raised a hand to strike my mother.”