Zadruga

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Colonel Dimitrievich is saying nothing. However, I have it on good authority that he put the plan to assassinate the Archduke before the Black Hand Central Committee on 14 June and that the committee, realizing what the consequences might be for Serbia, opposed it.’

  ‘But if they opposed it, why did it then take place?’ Alexis asked, wondering who on earth was doing Pasich’s spying for him.

  ‘Because Colonel Dimitrievich doesn’t give a hang for any judgement other than his own,’ Pasich said bitterly. ‘He told the committee he would rescind his instructions to the assassins, but as we know to our cost he did not do so. The result is that Austria suspects Serbian involvement in the assassination and her suspicions, God help us, are correct. Our task now is to deny such involvement vociferously in order to avoid finding ourselves in a war for which we are not yet prepared.’

  ‘And we would not be able to do so if a Karageorgevich were implicated in the crime,’ King Peter said quietly. ‘There is no time to be lost. Mr Pasich, you must speak immediately with the British minister. Alexis, you must speak to my personal priest. As Mr Fielding is not a member of the Orthodox Church and as there is no time for him to be received into the Church, the wedding ceremony will, of necessity, be both curtailed and private. It will, however, take place. On that you have my word.’

  It took place at seven o’clock that evening in the Konak’s private chapel. There was no incense, no massed choirs chanting gloriously, no awe-inspiring nuptial mass.

  Natalie wore a close-fitting, whale-boned cream-silk dress, the slightly open neckline and the long tight sleeves flounced with matching lace. She carried no bouquet and wore no jewellery. Her only adornment was a myrtle wreath in her hair, signifying her virginity.

  King Peter, Alexis, Zita and Katerina sat on spindly-legged gilt chairs in an arc behind her.

  ‘Isn’t Sandro going to be there?’ she had asked Zita disbelievingly when arrangements for the ceremony had been explained to her. ‘How can I be married if Sandro isn’t there? And what about Great-Aunt Elena and Great-Aunt Eudocia and Vitza and Max? Isn’t anyone going to be there?’

  ‘As Regent, the full responsibility of this crisis with Austria has fallen on Sandro’s shoulders,’ Zita said, her own pain at the necessarily mean arrangements for the wedding, extreme. ‘He’s trying to ensure that if the worst comes to the worst and Austria does declare war, Russia will come to our aid. With negotiations like those going on he can’t possibly be expected to attend a wedding.’

  She didn’t add that even if he could have attended the wedding it would have been most unwise for him to do so when at any moment there might come a demand from Vienna that he authorize the bride’s arrest.

  ‘The officer who saw Natalie with Princip has had time in which to make a report,’ she had said to Alexis when he had returned from the Konak. ‘As no request has been received from the Austrians for Natalie’s extradition does that mean he hasn’t made one? That he didn’t recognize Princip? That Natalie is leaving the country needlessly? Marrying needlessly?’

  Alexis’s still handsome face was grooved with lines of anxiety. ‘I don’t know, my dear,’ he had said truthfully. ‘The Austrians have apparently requested a Moslem be extradited from Montenegro. What his connection with the crime is, and how they got his name, I have no idea. Natalie could be next. It is a risk that can’t possibly be taken.’

  And so it hadn’t been taken. Zita sat calm and outwardly composed as Natalie was married, not to a scion of a European royal house as had always been envisaged, but to a minor member of the British Diplomatic Service.

  She wasn’t the only person present concealing a burden of grief. Katerina was dying by inches unable to understand why, when she loved Julian with all her heart and would have done everything in her power to make him happy, he had chosen instead to marry Natalie, who did not love him at all and had no intention of even staying with him.

  Alexis sat through the short ceremony ram-rod straight, racked by doubt and guilt. What if his judgement had been wrong all along? What if there was no real danger to Natalie at all? No possibility of grave political consequences if she remained in Serbia? What if he had emotionally blackmailed her into marriage with a man she did not love, all for no good reason? The thought seared him like a red-hot brand. Why, oh why had he taken her with him to Sarajevo? She hadn’t wanted to go. He was the one who had insisted she accompany him and this nightmare was the result.

  King Peter was also anguished. Pasich had told him only minutes earlier that a telegram had been received from Vienna. The Austrian authorities in Bosnia wished to question Natalie regarding her meeting with Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 26 June. He sighed heavily. No-one but themselves and the British minister knew of the wedding now taking place and, God willing, only the same number of people would know about her departure for Britain as Mrs Julian Fielding. As far as the Austrians were concerned it would be as if Natalie had disappeared into thin air.

  He had no intention of telling Alexis about the telegram until Natalie’s train pulled out of Belgrade station. There was no sense in causing further distress before what would be an extremely painful leave-taking. Remembering how it had once been proposed that Natalie marry Alexander he sighed again and tried to concentrate on the vows his troublesome young relation was making in a remarkably steady voice.

  ‘I can’t go through with it!’ she said in a far from steady voice an hour later as she was being helped out of her wedding-gown by her mother and Helga. ‘I can’t leave home!’

  She looked across the room at Katerina, overcome by panic. ‘I can’t do it!’ she said again, looking to Katerina for help as she had done when she was a small girl and Katerina had seemed always wiser, always more capable. ‘I won’t know anyone in London! I didn’t want to be married! I don’t want not to see you for ages and ages and ages!’

  Katerina quickly crossed the room towards her, putting her arms around her, hugging her tight. ‘And I don’t want not to see you for ages and ages,’ she said, fighting back an onrush of tears.

  They clung together, overcome by the enormity of what was about to happen to them. All their lives, despite their differences in temperament, they had been each other’s best friend. Now they were to be separated and neither of them knew how they were going to bear it.

  ‘I’ll go downstairs and make sure the trunks have been loaded into the carriage,’ Zita said thickly, knowing that this was the last opportunity Natalie and Katerina would have to be alone together. ‘Will you help me please, Helga?’

  With eyes red from weeping Helga left the room with her.

  Natalie said plaintively, ‘I never imagined what my friendship with Gavrilo and Nedjelko would lead to, Katerina. I had no idea. It all seemed so exciting, dreaming and planning of a united South Slav state. It was all such fun, slipping away from the Conservatoire and meeting with them in the Golden Sturgeon. I felt as if I were a student and a revolutionary and it was so very romantic. I thought how proud great-grandfather would have been of me. I never thought of what being a revolutionary really meant. I never ever thought it through.’

  ‘It’s a Karageorgevich family failing,’ Katerina said wryly. ‘Great-grandfather never thought things through either. If he had done, he would never have lost his throne.’

  For the first time in her life Natalie allowed a criticism of her great-grandfather to pass unchallenged. ‘I wish I were you, Katerina!’ she said with passion. ‘I wish I was calm and sensible! I wish I were the one who was remaining in Belgrade!’

  Katerina bit back the words that rose to her lips. Instead of saying she also wished they could change places, she said lightly, ‘Don’t be an idiot, Natalie. If you were me, I would be you and then where would I be?’

  Natalie’s resilient buoyancy came to her aid. ‘In an almighty mess,’ she said with a near hysterical giggle.

  Despite all her inner agony Katerina smiled. ‘I love you, little sister,’ she said huskily. ‘Come back home s
afely.’

  Beneath the dark mass of her hair, the pale triangle of Natalie’s face was almost mystically determined. ‘I will,’ she said, investing the words with all the solemnity of a vow. ‘I’m never going to do anything stupid ever again.’

  Katerina’s smile deepened. It was possible to imagine many things but Natalie never again being rash or unthinking was not one of them.

  ‘It’s time you got dressed,’ she said gently. ‘What are you going to wear?’

  Reluctantly Natalie walked across to her armoire and opened the doors. ‘My Serbian-blue costume,’ she said with quiet certainty. ‘And I shall wear it again, when I return.’

  The jacket was nip-waisted, a peplum flaring provocatively over the hips, the collar and cuffs trimmed with sable, the long skirt so narrow she could take only the shortest of steps in it. With it she wore pearl-grey Louis-heeled shoes and a small, round nonsense of a hat, a brilliant yellow feather sticking provocatively straight up in the air.

  There was a lump in Katerina’s throat as Natalie unobtrusively secured the hat with a hat-pin. Yellow braid edged the light-blue uniforms of the country’s most élite regiment and by wearing yellow with blue, Natalie was as near to being in Royal Army uniform as it was possible for her to be.

  There was a light knock on the door and Zita entered. ‘It’s time to go, sweetheart,’ she said with a composure she was far from feeling.

  Natalie turned away from the mirror. ‘I’m ready.’ Her voice was steady, her eyes dry. She had long ago made up her mind not to cause her mother further distress by giving way to her grief. ‘Has Julian already left?’

  ‘Yes. He’s gone to the British Legation and he’s leaving for the station from there. Another attaché at the Legation is going to accompany him. When he boards the train he will do so separately from yourself. Prime Minister Pasich advised Papa that no-one should know the identity under which you have left the country. If the Austrians remain unaware of your marriage to Julian they won’t be able to ask the British government to hand you over to them. With luck they won’t even know when, or how, you left the country.’

  ‘But she’ll be seen at the station,’ Katerina protested, wondering how Natalie’s brave yellow feather could fail to be seen, or Natalie recognized.

  Zita led the way out of the room. ‘Natalie will board the train quickly and quietly. She is to travel in a private compartment and we will say goodbye to her there. We will not stand on the platform to wave her off or be conspicuous in any way.’

  ‘I feel like a fugitive,’ Natalie said bitterly as they reached the head of the grand staircase.

  A spasm crossed Zita’s fine-boned face. ‘You are a fugitive,’ she said quietly, ‘and you must behave as one, both on the Budapest train and the Orient Express. When the Orient Express stops in Vienna, don’t alight for a walk. Don’t even do so when it reaches Munich. Germany is Austria’s closest ally and the Germans would most certainly detain you if Austria asked them to do so.’

  Natalie stumbled. Despite all the explanations her father had made to her, it still seemed incredible to her that so much fuss could be caused over so minor an incident. She hadn’t sought Gavrilo out in Sarajevo. She hadn’t even spoken to him for long. As a consequence, and because she was a Karageorgevich, she was being bundled across Europe like a hunted criminal.

  It was customary, if a member of the family were leaving Belgrade for any length of time, for the household staff to line up ceremonially at the door in order to say goodbye. Only her father was in the marble-floored entrance hall. Apart from Helga, no-one knew she was leaving. No-one even knew she was a bride.

  The door was open, the carriage waiting. Dusk was thickening into night. With a stab of shock she realized that by the time she boarded the train and it set off on its journey through Serbia to Hungary, it would be dark and she would not be able to look out and see the Serbian countryside.

  Bella was whining at her feet and picking her up, hugging her close, she stepped out of the house and walked a few short steps across the courtyard to the carriage. Her trunks had already been taken down to the station in order that they could be taken aboard as unobtrusively as possible. Because of the importance of the train arriving in Budapest in time to make the connection with the Orient Express, the Belgrade to Budapest night train always left exactly on schedule and so careful timing for the boarding of both herself and her luggage was essential.

  The journey to the station was a short one and Natalie tried to imprint every sight and every sound in her memory. In Prince Milan Street a young boy was carrying a lamb in his arms. She wondered if young men would carry lambs in their arms in London and doubted it. Trams were still running and in one, a woman wearing a loose Zouave jacket of maroon velvet embroidered in gold sat next to a moustached man in a western suit. A group of gypsies sat on the curb, one of them nursing a violin. An old man in baggy trousers and knee-high boots, an astrakhan cap on his head, sat outside a café drinking a glass of sliovovitz. Ochre-walled houses boasted rickety verandahs. Acacia trees sprouted in the tiniest of gardens.

  ‘The train is in,’ Alexis said with relief as their landau trundled over the cobbles of the square fronting the station. ‘Now remember. There are to be no goodbyes on the platform. We are to draw no attention to ourselves whatsoever.’

  ‘Will Julian be joining us to say goodbye?’ Katerina asked, forcing herself to sound indifferent.

  ‘No. There is to be no contact between Julian and Natalie until the train crosses from Germany into France.’ He stepped down from the landau. ‘The next few minutes are not going to be easy for any of us. I want no public tears. No acknowledgements of anyone who may recognize us.’

  As he led the way into the cavernous station he was bitterly regretting his decision that they all see Natalie on to the train. It had been Zita who had pleaded with him that they do so. ‘It’s terrible enough her being forced to leave in this way, without her having to go to the station and board the train alone. If Julian were going to be with her I wouldn’t ask it, but he isn’t going to be with her. Please, Alexis. Please don’t let’s say goodbye to her in the house. Let us all be together until the last possible moment.’

  Because of the guilt he felt, he had given in to her. As he strode quickly to Natalie’s specially reserved compartment at the rear of the train he hoped fervently he wasn’t going to regret doing so.

  The minute they were in the compartment he pulled down the window-blinds. ‘The train leaves in ten minutes,’ he said, wondering how on earth he was going to live with himself if her departure, and the marriage that was enabling her to depart without inconvenience to himself, proved to be unnecessary. ‘We haven’t long.’

  No-one needed reminding. No-one knew what to say. Words of any sort seemed inadequate.

  At last Alexis said gruffly, ‘I wouldn’t have allowed you to marry Julian Fielding if I wasn’t utterly sure of the depth of his love for you, or of my conviction that you will find happiness with him.’

  ‘Yes, Papa,’ Natalie said, knowing she could never find happiness with anyone who wasn’t a Slav; knowing her father would not have encouraged her to marry if it were not that it saved his being separated from her mother.

  The final whistle blew. Alexis kissed her on the cheek and then turned away and opened the carriage door, too overcome to speak.

  ‘Be happy, darling,’ Zita said, her long-held composure threatening to abandon her. ‘Goodbye, God bless.’

  Katerina was the last to leave the compartment. ‘I love you and I’m going to miss you,’ she said fiercely. ‘Look after yourself! Write to me!’

  As the carriage door swung closed behind her, Natalie stood for a moment, alone in the centre of the carriage, unable to comprehend the enormity of what had just happened.

  The train began to pull out of the station and as it did so she ran to the window, releasing the blind, slamming the window down, leaning as far out as possible.

  Katerina was following Alexis and Zit
a out of the station. Natalie gave a choked sob, knowing that she could not call out, knowing that if she did so her father would also turn round and that the last parting expression she would then see on his face would be one of anger.

  Futilely she began to wave and then, miraculously, Katerina turned around, waving in response.

  With tears pouring down her face Natalie waved and waved, the yellow feather in her hat streaming in the wind as the train picked up speed. Even when Katerina was no longer discernible she continued to wave. She waved until her arm ached; until the station was nothing but an indistinct blur; until not even the lights of Belgrade were visible in the enveloping darkness.

  Chapter Eight

  For hour after hour she sat by the window, Bella in her arms, too heartsick to walk along the train and into the dining-carriage. An attendant brought water and biscuits for Bella and a glass of milk for herself and she sipped at it, staring out into the blackness, wondering what would have happened if she had succeeded in the mission she had been given and had persuaded Sandro to meet with Gavrilo and Nedjelko and Trifko.

  The mere thought made her blood run cold. That disaster, at least, had never taken place. Sandro was not involved. She had never, thank God, mentioned Gavrilo or Nedjelko or Trifko by name to him.

  She hugged Bella closer, pressing her face against the comforting warmth of her silky fur, reliving again and again the ghastly seconds in Sarajevo when Gavrilo had stepped from the pavement and shot the Archduke and Duchess at point-blank range. She was certain he had never intended killing the Duchess. If he had intended a second victim, it would have been General Potiorek. The more she thought about those few vital seconds, the more certain she was that the Duchess had thrown herself across her husband in an effort to save him and, intercepting the bullet, had died. Then Gavrilo had turned the gun on himself.