by Jane Feather
“How can you know that if I do not?”
“Because I know you,” she replied with firm conviction. “I know you as I know myself, as I know this child that grows within me. We share parts of each other, and I know that however great your anger, however raw your wounds, you could not harm anyone in that way. It would be like…like Boris Mikhailov wantonly destroying a horse! Oh, maybe that sounds an absurd comparison! But it is a question of what is totally foreign to one’s nature, of what it is impossible for someone to do, whatever the provocation.” Suddenly seizing his wrist, she tugged him around to face her. “You know you did not do it.”
“But I wanted to,” he said quietly.
Sophie nodded. “It is the guilt of wanting to, not that of the doing, that has tormented you.”
“Will you tell me she deserved it?”
Sophie shook her head. “No, no one deserves to die in such a manner.”
She looked into his face, watching as the hard lines of anguish dissolved, as tears stood out in his eyes. Taking his hand, she drew him down with her to the grass, cradling his head upon her bosom, upon the shelf of her belly, fruitful with his child.
Chapter 19
“What do you mean, ‘with child’? Answer me, woman!”
“She is, lord, I swear to it.” Sobbing, sniveling, the petrified Maria fell to her knees before the towering fury of her master. The bearer of evil tidings, she bowed her head before his limitless wrath, knowing that had she kept such information from him, her suffering would have been magnified a hundredfold. Only the truth could provide adequate excuse for the fact that she was no longer in the princess’s employ, coldly dismissed in Kiev, sent back to St. Petersburg to report failure to her lord, who did not tolerate failure. Maria was supposed to keep watch on the princess at all times. She was no longer doing so, but the blame must be laid at another’s door. “She wouldn’t let me serve her after we left the boat, lord, but I knew.”
“How?” The word cut through the drear air in the mausoleum that was the Dmitriev palace in St. Petersburg.
Maria trembled violently, almost unable to speak. Would her negligence be held the cause for the princess’s infidelity? “There were signs, lord, on the boat. The princess wasn’t always well, sickly…” She hung her head, playing with her apron. “Also, lord, since she arrived in Kiev, she did not have…have…her time did not come upon her,” she finished wretchedly. “Then she would not let me launder her clothes…so I would not remark…but I talked to the laundry maid of Countess Lomonsova, who did the princess’s washing, lord. She said there were no…no signs of…”
“I understand you quite well!” interrupted the prince, directing a vicious kick at the kneeling figure. “Your orders were to keep the princess under your eye and report to me anything…anything, you hear me…that struck you as out of the ordinary. Why did you not tell me of your suspicions earlier?” He kicked her again, and Maria cringed, moaning with fear.
“Please, lord, I did not think anything of it until she sent me away at Kiev and went off with the count—”
“Count? What count?”
“Why…why the Polish count, lord, the one who used to come here so much—”
Adam Danilevski! Dmitriev wheeled away from the kneeling, whimpering Maria, who remained, still whimpering, still kneeling, in the middle of the carpet.
“The count was her escort,” Maria said. “The empress sent him with her to her grandfather.”
“Did you ever remark any closeness between the count and your mistress?”
“No, lord.” Maria confessed to this further dereliction miserably. “Perhaps it is not him—”
“Idiot!” the prince shouted, swinging back at her. “How would you know whether it was or not? Who did the princess spend time with?”
“Countess Lomonsova—” She fell forward, clutching her ear, sobbing under a backhanded clout.
“Not women!”
“The French count, lord, the Prussian prince, lord—”
“Who else?” Dmitriev knew full well that his wife would not have been indulging in a liaison with either of the ambassadors. The czarina would never have permitted it. But she had permitted this. The appalling humiliation of the truth engulfed him. He had been duped by the empress, laughed at behind his back, sent away so that his wife could paddle palms with some…could conceive a bastard! Not his rightful heir, but a bastard! His barren wife had conceived…. Rage more ferocious than any he had experienced before swept him in waves, each one more violent than the last. The Golitskovs had defeated him, routed him utterly with this final, ultimate humiliation.
Maria was still blubbering at his feet as she tried to find an acceptable answer to the question, but Sophia Alexeyevna had never been seen in any man’s particular company.
“Oh, get out of here!” He kicked at her once more. “Don’t let me see your face again if you want to keep the skin on your back!” The serf stumbled to her feet and fled the room.
The identity of the lover could wait. The scalding human fury vanished, leaving in its wake an inhuman iciness. He would be revenged upon his faithless wife in the traditional fashion. The severity of the vengeance might be deplored, but it could not be denied him, not even by the czarina, not when the evidence of adultery was there for all to see. Sophia Alexeyevna would suffer every minute of the rest of her hopefully long life; and his own life would be daily enriched by the knowledge of her suffering.
It was the end of September when Prince Dmitriev set off with a sizable armed force of his own serfs. Unencumbered, on horseback, they would accomplish the journey to Berkholzskoye in three weeks.
Sophie slipped out of bed in the darkness, padding barefoot to the window. It was the night of the fourteenth of October. A winter-promising wind came howling from the steppes. The night sky was for once overcast, its star-brilliance doused.
“What is it?” Adam spoke sleepily from the bed, frowning at the white shadow by the window. “Can you not sleep, love?”
She turned, smiling slightly. “I do not know what it is…strange sensations…a surging energy as if I must be up and out, striding the steppe.” She shrugged. “It’s nothing. Go back to sleep.”
Adam sat up. “Shall I fetch Tanya?”
“Good heavens, no! It is nothing, I told you. Just a peculiar feeling.”
“I will fetch her.” He swung his legs to the floor, but Sophie forestalled him.
“Let her sleep, Adam. It is not time yet.”
He stared at her face, pale in the gloom. “But it soon will be?”
She shrugged again, touching her mounded stomach. “Perhaps.” She came toward him. “Go back to bed. I will just sit on the window seat until I feel sleepy again.”
“How can I sleep when you are keeping vigil?” But he did as she asked, sensing that it was what she really wanted. Much to his later chagrin, sleep returned to him almost instantaneously. Soon his deep, rhythmic breathing was the only sound in the bedchamber, lulling Sophie as she sat, her forehead pressed to the cool casement, staring out at the shadows, the scudding clouds, the occasional glimmer of a star momentarily revealed.
She was still sitting there when the first pale streaks of dawn showed in the east. Adam, waking, got quietly out of bed, coming over to the window. “You are chilled, sweet,” he said. “Come back to bed now, just until you get warm.”
He had the sense that she was in some way withdrawing from her surroundings. It frightened him, yet it awed him, too. Something was happening to her in which he could have no part. But she allowed him to lead her back to bed, to hold her close until she was warmed again. He felt her first sudden, sharp indrawing of breath and was out of bed, pulling on his robe before Sophie realized.
“Where are you going?”
“To fetch Tanya. The baby is coming.”
Sophie laughed gently. “It is too soon to fetch her, Adam love. Nothing is going to happen for hours yet.”
He looked at her, bewildered. “How can you know?�
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“I just do.”
“But I felt you—”
“It was just a twinge,” she broke in. “If you are going to be in such a state until this is over, you will be a wreck.” She was still laughing at him, and he began to feel as if he had strayed into a world where the landscape was uncharted territory and the customs were known only to the few.
“I am still fetching her,” he declared, as if to assert his right to an independent judgment.
He returned in five minutes with a clucking Tanya, nightcap askew on her sleep-tumbled hair, shuffling in her slippers. “By all the saints!” she declared, seeing Sophie quite calm in bed. “I expected to find you delivered already!” She shook her head at Adam. “First babies are never in a hurry, lord.” Bending over Sophie, she pulled aside the covers, laying her hand on her mistress’s abdomen. “How bad are the pains?”
“Just an occasional twinge,” Sophie said. “I told him not to wake you.”
Tanya tut-tutted reassuringly. “I was awake, dear. It’s always hard for the men, particularly the first time.”
“Well, I am going to get up,” Sophie announced. “I see no reason to lie here counting twinges.”
“But she can’t get up! Tanya Feodorovna, will you please establish some order!” exclaimed Adam.
“Let her do what feels best, lord,” Tanya said soothingly. “She’s the best judge of that. You go off in your dressing room and stop fretting.”
Sophie chuckled at Adam’s expression of rebellious discomfiture. “Oh, do go,” she said. “You are making me nervous.”
That drove him from the room, and she stood up, watched closely by Tanya. Suddenly, she put out a hand to grasp the bedpost. “Perhaps I won’t get dressed just yet, Tanya.”
“I’ll fetch you up some breakfast. You’ll need your strength.” The woman bustled out, leaving Sophie still holding the bedpost. She let go tentatively, wondering how afraid she really was. Her mother had died going through this; there was the woman in the village whose baby had been pulled from her in pieces; there was…No! She forced herself to close out the images. Thousands of women had yearly pregnancies and came unscathed through childbirth, many of them without the skilled care and experienced attention Sophie would have.
“What can I do?” Adam spoke from the door to his dressing room. He was dressed, but his expression was haggard.
“Love, there is nothing anybody can do at the moment.” She came over to him, putting her arms around his neck. “Just knowing that you are here is enough.”
“You go off downstairs and keep the prince company,” Tanya ordered, coming in again with a breakfast tray. “I’ll call you if you’re needed. Eat hearty and keep your strength up.”
Sophie laughed. “That is Tanya’s prescription for all ills.” She broke off, a spasm crossing her face.
Tanya pushed Adam to the door. “Just you go downstairs and have your breakfast with the prince, lord.”
Adam obeyed reluctantly, but he could not see what alternative he had. He was clearly not wanted. In the dining room, he found Prince Golitskov, always an early riser.
“So it’s begun,” he greeted Adam without preamble. “Anna’s in such a state of excitement she overboiled the eggs and scalded the milk for coffee. But I daresay we’ll have to put up with it. If I tell her to do it again, the results will be the same. Well, sit down, man…sit down…. You’re not the one having the baby.”
“I only wish I were,” Adam said dismally, pouring coffee. “They sent me away as if I were some grubby schoolboy interfering in adult affairs.”
Golitskov laughed. “We’ll go riding after breakfast.”
Adam looked horrified at the suggestion. “I could not possibly leave the house.”
Golitskov shrugged. “Please yourself. Let’s hope it’s over before dinner, else we’ll be on short commons, I fear. Nothing’s going to get done today.”
Adam wondered if this grumbling indifference was a front to conceal the prince’s real anxiety and to diffuse Adam’s own. He sent a searching glance across the table at his companion. The prince looked up. “Dammit, Adam! I cannot bear to think of her enduring this.”
“Her mother—” Adam began, expressing the core of his dread.
“Sophia Ivanova was a different kind of woman,” Golitskov said with instant comprehension. “An ethereal creature, made more of air than of flesh and blood. No, that should not concern you.”
“I think, perhaps, I will go upstairs again.” Adam tossed his napkin down beside his plate of uneaten food.
The bedchamber was filled with women, stripping the bed, drawing back the hangings, placing cauldrons of water on the newly kindled fire. One of them was knotting a bedsheet to the bedpost at the foot of the bed and chills ran down his spine. Sophie was walking up and down the room, her face pale but calm.
“Sophie, surely you should be lying down.” He took her hand.
“I prefer to walk.” She let her hand lie in his. “Will you read to me while I walk?”
“Sweet heaven, anything.” He was overwhelmed with relief at the idea that he might be of service.
“Montaigne,” she said. “I always find him tranquil.”
For two hours Adam read aloud from Montaigne’s essays as Sophie paced steadily around the room. He tried to continue reading, to keep his voice even, whenever she stopped and held on to whatever piece of furniture was handy, but there came the time when a soft moan escaped her, and his voice faltered.
Tanya, who had been sitting quietly sewing, moved swiftly toward her. “Hold tight,” she said, rubbing her back as she hunched forward.
“It’s over.” Sophie straightened. “Go on, Adam.”
He started again, but after a couple of sentences he realized she was no longer concentrating on the words. Her face was drawn tight, her features etched in stark relief, the dark eyes filled with pain.
“You’d best leave now, lord.” Tanya took Sophie’s arm. “Let’s put you to bed, dearie.”
Adam watched helplessly as Sophie crept into bed. Her moan became a cry. Tanya pushed the knotted bedsheet into her hands and Adam fled, unable to bear the prospect of her pain.
All afternoon it went on. Women ran up and down the stairs in the hushed house. Men spoke in whispers as they went about their business, and every now and again a scream would shiver through the house and everyone would stop, breath suspended. In the library, Adam and the prince drank vodka, but it brought not even a spurious ease.
“Something must be wrong,” Adam gasped in the middle of the afternoon. “It cannot be continuing for all this time!” He ran from the library, up the stairs, entering the birthing chamber. “What is wrong?”
Tanya straightened from the bed, a lavender-soaked cloth in her hand, and spoke soothingly to him. “Why, nothing’s wrong, lord. Whatever makes you think such a thing?”
He came over to the bed, staring aghast at the face on the pillow. Her eyes were closed and he wondered for a dreadful minute if she were already dead, so deathly pale was her sweat-beaded face, so limp and dank with sweat the hair on the pillow. Then her eyes opened. Amazingly, she smiled. “It does seem to take an unconscionably long time.”
“I will never forgive myself,” he whispered, kneeling beside the bed, taking her hand between both his. “To cause you so much suffering.”
“What a great piece of nonsense,” she scolded, then gripped his hand with a strength he could not believe she possessed as the pain wracked her anew. She made no sound though and, when the agony receded, sank limply back upon the pillow as if drained of all strength.
“How long must she endure?” Adam demanded of Tanya, who was again bathing Sophie’s forehead with lavender water.
“Not much longer,” she said calmly. “It’s all going beautifully, lord. The child is coming headfirst. It’s just that the head is a little large.”
So cool and matter-of-fact she was! The image of the baby’s head, too large for the slender body locked in its elementa
l struggle, filled his brain. It was his fault the child’s head was too large. His mother always told him how large his own had been.
“Adam!” Sophie’s voice was barely a whisper, but the urgency could not be mistaken. “Give me your hand.”
She gripped with that same superhuman strength, but something different was happening. He looked in amazement. Her eyes were again closed, but her face was contorted with effort, not pain, now, the veins in her neck standing out against the ivory skin. Tanya moved to the foot of the bed, throwing back the covers. One of the other women hefted a cauldron of boiling water off the fire, placed a fresh kettle upon the trivet.
“Push again, Sophia Alexeyevna.” The calm instruction came from the foot of the bed. Sophie’s hand still gripped Adam’s, but it was as if she did not know what she was holding. He was transfixed by the extraordinary transcendent beauty of her face, which reflected the effortful labors of her body, lending his hand to the struggle with a sense of joy that he could participate even in this small way.
There came the moment when a sleek, dark head appeared between her thighs. He held his breath, suspended in wonder at the eternal miracle. A piercing wail filled the room, and Sophie’s hand went limp in his.
“Well, what a lusty lad,” Tanya declared a second or two later with undisguised satisfaction. “Crying before he’s even out in the world.”
“A boy?” whispered Sophie.
“A fine boy.” Tanya placed the naked, blood-streaked scrap of humanity in her arms.
Adam looked down at his son, wondering if more could ever be added to the sum of human happiness. He touched a tiny hand, wrinkled like an old man’s.
“Sasha,” Sophie said softly. “Do you like the name, Adam?”
Alexander, Sasha in diminutive. “Yes, I think it suits him,” Adam said solemnly.
“Now, lord, you go down and tell the prince he has a fine, healthy great-grandson,” Tanya instructed, taking the baby from Sophie. “There’s more work to be done here. You can come back when the princess is comfortable.”