“Can we go somewhere to talk?” Vladimir looked around the crowded lobby and back into Clayton's eyes. He had a great deal to tell him. Clayton looked at his watch. He had two hours before he had to be anywhere. He nodded and followed Vladimir outside to the conveniently waiting taxi.
“Just tell me, man, she all right? Has anything happened to her?”
The Prince looked sorrowful as he started the car, his frayed cuffs and worn jacket looking worse than ever, but the clipped moustache was still impeccably neat, the snow white hair. Everything about him bespoke nobility and distinction. There were so many like him in Paris now. Counts and princes and dukes and just men of good families, driving taxis and sweeping streets and waiting on tables.
“Nothing has happened to her, Captain,” he said, and Clayton heaved a sigh of relief. “At least not directly.” They drove to the Deux-Magots, took a table in the back, and Clayton ordered two cups of coffee. “Her grandmother died three weeks ago.”
“I was afraid of that.” She had seemed so ill and so frail when he left Paris more than a month before.
“But worse than that, Pierre Gilliard came from Siberia to see her. The news was terrible. She hasn't left the apartment since he told her. I'm afraid she'll lose her mind, just sitting there, grieving for them. It's too much for her.” There were tears in his eyes and he was sorry Andrews hadn't ordered something stronger. He could have used a stiff vodka. Just thinking about her broke his heart. Too much had happened to all of them, and now especially to Zoya.
“Was Gilliard there when they killed the Tsar?” He had a heavy heart himself, just thinking about it, although he had never known the man. But Zoya had brought him to life, with her tales of Livadia and the yacht and Tsarskoe Selo, and now he felt almost as though he knew him.
“Apparently the soldiers of the Soviet sent him and the English tutor away shortly before, but they came back two months later, and they've been speaking to soldiers and guards and local peasants in Ekaterinburg for months, helping with the White Army investigations. They know most of it and he wants to go back and talk to them some more. But it doesn't matter anymore.” His eyes were old and sad as he looked at Clayton Andrews. “They're all dead … all of them … murdered at the same time as the Tsar … even the children.” He was not ashamed of the tears that rolled down his cheeks. He cried every time he thought of it. He had lost so many good friends. They all had. But Clayton Andrews looked shocked, horrified, and he knew what it would do to Zoya.
“Marie as well?” It was a last hope … for Zoya's sake … but Vladimir only shook his head.
“All of them. Gone.” He told Andrews details that Gilliard hadn't even dared to tell Zoya, of acid and mutilation and burning. What she knew was bad enough. They had wanted to wipe them off the face of the earth, without a trace. But you cannot wipe out beauty and dignity and grace, kindness and compassion, and people who were so profoundly good and loving. In effect, they had not succeeded in destroying what they represented. Their bodies were gone but their spirit would live on forever.
“How did Zoya take the news?”
“I'm not sure she will survive it. She grows thinner day by day. She won't eat, she won't talk, she won't smile. It breaks my heart just to see her. Will you go to her?” He was ready to beg him. She must live on. Her grandmother had been old at least, but Zoya was young and alive, at nineteen her life was just beginning. He could not bear to see it end now. She had to live on, to carry with her the beauty they had all seen, into a new life, not bury it with her, as she was doing.
Clayton Andrews sighed, pensively stirring his coffee. What Vladimir had told him was shocking beyond belief, and more than that, it tore at his heart … even the boy … it was what Pierre Gilliard had said himself when he first heard the news, “The children! … not the children….” But he looked sadly at the Prince, thinking of Zoya again. “I'm not sure she'll see me.”
“You must try. For her sake.” He didn't dare ask the man if he still loved her. He had always thought he was too old for her anyway, and he had said as much to Evgenia. But he was the only hope left, and he had seen the light in Clayton's eyes the year he'd gone to Christmas services with them. At least then, he had loved the girl deeply. “She doesn't answer the door most of the time. Sometimes I just leave some food outside for her, and eventually she takes it in, though I'm not sure that she eats it.” But he did it for her grandmother. He would have wanted someone to do as much for Yelena. And now he was begging Clayton Andrews to go and see her. He would have done anything to help her. He was almost sorry Gilliard had come, but they needed to know, they could not go on hoping forever.
“I'll do my best.” He glanced at his watch. He had to get back to the hotel for one of the endless meetings. He stood up and paid for the coffee, and thanked Vladimir on the way back to the hotel, wondering if she would let him in. In her eyes, he had deserted her, and he knew that she had not understood his reasons. He thought she hated him now, and perhaps that was for the best, for her sake. But he couldn't let her just sit there and die. The picture Vladimir painted was a nightmare.
He sat impatiently through his meetings that night and at ten o'clock, he went outside and hailed a taxi, and gave the driver her address. It was a relief to discover that for once the driver was French, and not one of the noble Russians.
The building looked painfully familiar when he arrived, and for a moment he hesitated, before walking slowly up the stairs. He didn't know what to say, maybe there was nothing to say. Maybe all he could do was just be there. The walk to the fourth-floor apartment seemed interminable, and the halls were even colder and darker and more fetid than he remembered. He had left her six weeks before, but in that short time, so much had changed, so much had happened. He stood outside her door for a long time, listening, wondering if she was asleep, and then he jumped as he heard footsteps.
He knocked softly once, and the footsteps stopped. They stopped for a long time, and when she was satisfied he'd gone away, he heard them again, and this time he heard Sava bark. It made his heart beat faster just thinking of her so near, but he couldn't think of himself now, he had to think of her. He had come here to help her, not to help himself, and he had to force himself to think of that as he knocked again, and spoke through the door. “TaUgramme!” he called out, “toUgramme!” It was an awful trick, but he knew that otherwise she wouldn't open the door. The footsteps approached, and the door opened a crack, but from where he stood, she couldn't see him. And then with a single step and gentle push, he opened it wider and pushed her aside, speaking gently.
“You should be more careful, mademoiselle.”
She gasped, and her face was deathly pale. He was shocked at how thin she was. The Prince was right. She looked terrible as she faced him with wide, frightened eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“I dropped by from New York to see how you are.” He tried to sound flip, but the way she looked told its own tale. She was beyond laughter, beyond love, beyond caring.
“Why did you come here?” She stood looking angry and very small, and it almost broke his heart. He wanted to take her in his arms again, but he didn't dare. He was afraid he might break her.
“I wanted to see you. I'm here for the peace treaty negotiations at Versailles.” They were still standing in the doorway, and he looked at her questioningly as Sava came to lick his hand. She hadn't forgotten, even if Zoya no longer cared to remember. “May I come in for a few minutes?”
“Why?” Her eyes were big and sad, but more beautiful than ever.
And he couldn't lie to her anymore. “Because I still love you, Zoya, that's why.” It wasn't what he had planned to say, but he couldn't stop himself from saying the words to her.
“That's not important anymore.”
“It is to me.”
“It wasn't six weeks ago, when you left.”
“It was very important to me then too. I thought I was doing the right thing for you. I thought you had a right to more than I
had to offer.” He could offer her everything materially, but he couldn't give her youth or the years he had wasted before he met her. And that had seemed important at the time, now he wasn't so sure, in the face of everything Vladimir had told him. “I left you here because I love you, not because I didn't.” But he knew, as he had then, that she hadn't understood it. “I didn't mean to abandon you. I had no idea that so much would happen after I left.”
“What do you mean?” She looked up at him sadly, and sensed that he knew, but she was not sure how much.
“I saw Vladimir this afternoon.”
“And what did he tell you?” She stood stiffly away from him, watching his eyes, as his heart went out to her. She had suffered so much. It wasn't fair. It should have happened to someone else. Not to her, or Evgenia, or the Romanovs … or even Vladimir. He felt sorry for all of them. But more than that, he loved her.
“He told me everything, little one.” He took one step closer to her and pulled her gently into his arms, and much to his surprise, she didn't fight him. “He told me about your grandmother,” he hesitated, but only for a moment,“… and your cousins … and poor little Mashka …” She gulped on a sob, and turned her face away as he held her, and then as though suddenly the dam had broken, she began to sob in his arms, and he gently kicked the door closed and carried her like a very small child into the apartment and sat down on the couch, still holding her while she cried. She cried for a very long time, shaking horribly, as she told him everything she'd heard from Gilliard, racked by sobs, as she'd been then, and for a long, long time, Clayton held her. And then at last, the room was silent again, and there was only the sound of an occasional sniff. She turned broken green eyes up to his, and he kissed her gently as he had longed to do since he left her.
“I wish I'd been here when he came.”
“So do I,” she admitted, crying softly again. “Everything's been so terrible since you left … it's all been so awful … and Mashka … oh, God, poor Mashka … at least Pierre said that the bullets killed her quickly. But the others …”
“Don't think about it anymore. You must put it behind you.”
“How can IP” She was still sitting on his lap, and it reminded her of talks long ago with her father.
“You have to, Zoya. Think of your grandmother, think how brave she was. She took you out of Russia in a troika, to freedom, to safety. She didn't bring you here for you to give up hope, to abandon everything, to sit in this apartment and starve to death. She brought you here for a better life, to save your life. Now you must never, never waste it. It would be an affront to her, to her memory, and to all that she tried to do for you. You must honor her and do everything you can to have a good life.”
“I suppose you're right, but it's so hard now,” and then she remembered and looked up at him shyly. “She told me about the money before she died. I was going to send it back to you, but I've been using it.” She blushed and looked more like herself again.
“I should hope so.” He looked pleased, at least, he had done something for her. “Vladimir says you haven't danced in months.”
“Not since Grandmama got sick, and after she died, and Pierre was here. … I couldn't bring myself to go back.”
“That's just as well.” He looked over her shoulder and noticed the samovar with a nostalgic smile.
“What do you mean by that? You know, Diaghilev asked me to go on tour again with them. And I could now, if I wanted to.” She sniffed again, but he smiled at her this time.
“No, you couldn't.”
“Why not?”
“Because you're going to New York.”
“I am?” She looked stunned. “Why?” She looked more than ever like a child as he smiled at her.
“To marry me, that's why. You've got exactly two weeks to sort out your things, and then we leave. How does that sound?” She looked up at him with wide eyes.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, I am, if you'll have me.” He realized with a start, that she was a countess now, but not for long. He was going to marry her before they left Paris. And then she would be Mrs. Clay ton Andrews, for the rest of her life. “If you're foolish enough to saddle yourself with an old man, then that's your problem, Miss Ossupov. I'm not going to warn you anymore.”
“Good.” She clung to him like a lost child, crying again, but this time they were tears of joy and not sorrow.
“In fact,” he said, setting her gently on her feet as he stood up, “take some things with you now. I'm going to get you a room at the hotel. I'm going to keep an eye on you before we leave. I don't want to have to be pounding on that door, shouting ‘tategramme'for the next two weeks.” She laughed at him then and dried her eyes.
“That was very rude of you!”
“Not as rude as you, pretending not to be in. Never mind, get your things. We can come back here in a few days and get what you want to take with you.”
“I don't have very much.” She looked around the room, there was almost nothing she wanted to take with her, except perhaps the samovar and some of her grandmother's things. She wanted to leave the past behind and start a new life with him. And then suddenly in terror she glanced up at him. “Are you really serious?” What if he changed his mind? What if he left her again, or abandoned her in New York? He saw the fear in her eyes and his heart went out to her.
‘Of course I am, little one. I should have taken you with me when I left.” But they both knew she couldn't have left her grandmother, and she hadn't been well enough to travel then. “I'll help you pack.”
She packed a pathetically small bag, and then remembered the dog. She couldn't leave her behind, and she was the only friend she had left, except Clayton, of course. “Can I take Sava to the hotel?”
“Obviously.” He picked up the little dog, who tried frantically to lick his chin, and then he picked up Zoya's small bag, as she quietly turned out the lights. It was time to go home. She closed the door without looking back, and followed Clayton down the stairs, to a new life.
CHAPTER
28
It took less than a day to pack up her things. She packed the samovar, and her books, her grandmother's needlework, and her shawls, her own clothes, and their lace tablecloth, but there was very little else. She gave away the rest to Vladimir, a few friends, and the priest at St. Alexander Nevsky.
They said good-bye to Vladimir, and she promised to write. And then in a matter of days, she was standing next to Clayton at the ministry, and became his wife. It was all like a dream as she looked up at him, with tears rolling slowly down her cheeks. She had lost everything, and now even her own name was gone. But she clung to him for dear life, as they went back to the hotel. It was as though she were terrified that he might change his mind again.
They spent two more days in Paris, and then took the train to Switzerland. They had decided to spend their honeymoon there, and she admitted to Clayton that she wanted to see Pierre Gilliard again before she left.
It took two days to reach Bern, with the train stopping endlessly everywhere, but as she woke up on the last day, her heart skipped a beat. The snowcapped mountains greeted her, and for a moment, it looked as though she were back in Russia.
Gilliard met them at the train, and they went home to have lunch with his wife, who had been the Romanov children's nurse. She embraced Zoya as she cried and Clayton listened as they reminisced over lunch. It was all so painful, and yet they shared such tenderness, such happy memories.
“When will you go back?” Clayton asked quietly as Zoya went to look at photographs with Gilliard's wife.
“As soon as we feel strong again. Life in Siberia was very hard on my wife. I don't want to take her back with me. Gibbes and I have agreed to meet, and see if there is any more we can find out.
“Does it matter now?” Clayton was honest with him. It all seemed to be over now, and there was no point clinging to the painful past. He had told Zoya as much, but Gilliard seemed to be obsessed with it. It was even m
ore real to him, but it was understandable, he had been with the Tsar's children for twenty years, and they were his entire life.
“It matters to me. I won't rest until I know everything, until I find any of them who survived.” It was a new thought.
“Is there any chance of that?”
“I don't believe there is. But I must be certain of it, or I shall never rest.”
“You loved them very much.”
“We all did. They were an extraordinary family, even some of the guards in Siberia softened when they got to know them. They had to keep changing them in order to keep things rough. It frustrated the Bolsheviks no end. Nicholas was kind to everyone, even to those who had destroyed his empire. I don't think he ever forgave himself for abdicating to them. He was always reading history, and he told me that one day, the world would say of him that he had failed … that he had given up … I think it broke his heart.” It was an insight into the man the others would never know. A glimpse back to a special time that would never come again, for any of them. The grandeur of what they had all known dwarfed even what he had to offer Zoya in New York. But he knew she'd be happy there. She would never be cold or hungry again. At least he had that to give. He had already thought of buying a house for her. His own brick mansion on lower Fifth Avenue suddenly seemed much too small.
They spent three days in Bern, and then he took her to Geneva and Lausanne.
They got back to Paris in late February, and they took the Paris to New York. She sailed from Le Havre on a beautiful day, her four smokestacks standing tall. She was a beautiful ship, the pride of the French Line, and she had sat idle for three years, since she was launched halfway through the war.
Zoya was like an excited child for most of the trip. She had gained back a little weight and her eyes had come alive again. They had dinner at the captain's table several times, and they danced late into the night. She almost felt guilty for having so much fun. She had left so many people behind in her lost world, but Clayton wouldn't let her think of it now. He only wanted her to look ahead, to the new life they would share. He talked of the house they would build, the people she would meet, the children they would have. She had her whole life ahead of her. She was not even twenty years old, and life had only just begun for her.
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