by Ted Bell
“Where is he? May I see him?”
“Of course. He is up in the nursery playing with his toy soldiers. I’ve told him that his father was here to see him. He’s very excited. He asked me what a father was and I told him.”
“What did you say?”
“I said a father is a tall, handsome man. Very strong and very brave. A good man, true and full of life and beauty.”
Hawke got to his feet and held out his hand. “It’s all a miracle. Let’s go and see him now.”
“He’s coming here. Nurse is bringing him. I’ve only to call.”
Hawke smiled as she picked up the receiver next to the divan and spoke a few brief words in Russian.
Alexei and his English nurse appeared at the library door a few minutes later. When the door swung open, the little dark-haired boy peeked out from behind his nurse’s skirts and stared wide-eyed at Alex for a few long moments, then ran to his mother’s arms, hiding his face in the folds of her skirt. He was dressed like a little prince, which, in some respects, he was. The late Tsar’s grandson wore a suit of dark blue velvet, with a ruffled white collar at the neck. His shoes were black patent leather with small black satin bows.
“Good morning, sir,” the attractive young nurse said, with a slight curtsy and a very proper British accent.
Anastasia gestured at Hawke as she said to the child, “Alexei, that is your father standing over there beside the fire. He’s come a very long way just to see you. You must be on your very best behavior. Show him what good manners you have. Can you say hello?”
The child peeked out at Hawke for a second or two, then hid his face once more in the folds on his mother’s skirts. Hawke went to him and dropped to a knee on the floor beside his son.
“Alexei?” he said softly, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Alexei?”
The boy responded to the voice and touch and turned to stare silently at Hawke, seemingly memorizing every curve and plane of his face. Alexei’s eyes were big and blue and lively. He seemed totally unafraid of the tall stranger now. Hawke was shocked to see a very small version of himself. It was the face he’d seen in scrapbooks his own mother had kept, little Alex building castles by the sea, little Alex on his pony, little Alex reading a picture book.
“Does he speak English?” Hawke asked, his eyes never leaving his son.
“Almost as well as he speaks Russian. We’ve been teaching him both since he first learned to talk,” the young English nurse said, and then she slipped silently from the room.
“Hello,” Hawke said, reaching up and lightly stroking the boy’s plump cheek, lit to a lovely flame, the flush on the face of a child after a warm bath on a cold evening. Alexei turned to hide his eyes again, then, seeing his nurse gone, turned back to stare openly at this person called a “father.”
“Say hello, Alexei,” Anastasia said. “Say hello to your father. Wherever have you put your manners?”
“Hello,” the child chirped. “Hello, hello, hello.”
“How old are you?” his father asked.
He looked shyly at Hawke for a moment, then raised his chubby pink hand, holding up three fingers.
“Good for you! And how many is that, Alexei?”
“Free?”
“Three, that’s right. Do you want to know a secret?”
Alexei nodded his head vigorously, already a great lover of secrets. His father said, “When I was three, I was exactly your age. Isn’t that something?”
The boy nodded again, instinctively knowing he was expected to agree, and his mother watched father and son together, finding a lovely peace wash over her.
Alex said, “You’re a very big boy for three, Alexei. Will you give your father a wee hug? I would like that very much.”
Anastasia bent down and whispered in the child’s ear. Alexei looked at Hawke’s open arms for a moment, unsure of himself, but then stepped into his embrace. Hawke held him closely, looking up at Anastasia, his eyes gleaming with unchecked emotion. He saw her look away, overwhelmed perhaps, and he suddenly felt as if all the molecules in the room had risen up and then rearranged themselves before settling down into a strange new pattern.
He had found his life at last. The life he’d been meant to live.
“Our baby boy,” he said. “Our beautiful, beautiful baby boy.”
His mother turned her noble head slowly so that her eyes rested with overwhelming tenderness and affection on the man and the boy.
“Will you give him a kiss before he goes back upstairs, Alex? It’s past time for his nap, I’m afraid.”
Hawke bent forward and kissed his son on the forehead, then ruffled his curly dark hair, and stood back up. The nurse reentered the room and picked Alexei up in her arms. As he was carried away, looking back over her shoulder, unbidden, Alexei waved at his father and smiled, his blue eyes alight.
Hawke stood mute, staring at the door long after the nurse had pulled it closed behind her.
“Alex?” Anastasia said, stirring him out of his reverie.
“Yes?”
“Would you like to go for a walk along the lake? The snow has stopped and the light is lovely.”
“Yes. Fresh air would be good.”
“We can skate on the pond if you wish. The ice is perfect.”
“I’ve never learned. But I’d love to watch you.”
“Your coat is hanging in the entrance hall. I’ll run upstairs and get my skates and meet you at the door in ten minutes. All right?”
“Perfect.”
Watching Anastasia glide with such simple grace and style across the ice, Hawke could almost hear Tchaikovsky on the wind in the trees. He found himself remembering their evening together in Moscow at the Bolshoi, alone in the darkness of her father’s private box. The ballet had been Swan Lake, each member of the corps of ballerinas a perfect white swan, each one lovelier than the next, creating a rhapsodic fantasy in the air above the frozen wintry pond.
That night, in that privileged cocoon of privacy, with the music filling him up, she had told him she was pregnant with his child. She had been afraid it would make him run; he told her she had made him happier than he had ever been. It was true. That small moment would always be one he would treasure, the moment when the woman he loved told him she was carrying his child, his son.
Little did he realize then how that brief interlude would soon come to haunt his every waking moment.
Just how long he sat there on that wooden bench, beneath a stand of bare trees beside the frozen pond, wrapped within his ridiculous bearskin coat, enraptured by the mere sight of Asia’s flashing silver skates, he would not remember. He would only remember what followed.
She flew toward him, her arms outstretched like slender white wings, one leg extended perfectly behind her. Suddenly she spun and stopped, her silver skates creating a small cloud of glittering ice around her. Then she was beside him on the wooden bench, bundled up in her long white mink fur, the hood pulled up, hiding her dark gold hair. Her eyes were big and shining, her cheeks aflame, her radiant beauty piped to the surface of her with the cold.
“I love you,” he said simply. “I always will.”
“And I shall always love you,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder. “Until my last breath.”
He put his arm around her and drew her near.
“I will find a way, you know. I will find a way.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“What do you mean? Find a way?”
“A way for us all to be together. The three of us. A way out of here. This prison, this frozen fortress. To go somewhere no one can find us. Ever. I will build a fortress around us. I will shelter you and Alexei. I will protect you from any harm. We will begin again. To love each other. To love our child. To raise him to become the—”
He felt her stiffen. And th
en convulse, her shoulders heaving. He heard her sobs from inside the cowl of white mink.
“What, darling?” he said, pulling her closer. “What is it?”
“It cannot be, Alex. It cannot ever be.”
“What cannot be?”
“What you want. Your beautiful dream. It is not possible.”
“Why? Why on earth do you say such a thing?” He felt his heart lurch within his chest.
She pulled away and looked at him, her eyes spilling tears.
“Oh, my darling Alex. You have no idea what you have done. By coming here.”
“Done? I have come to take you away. You and our child. What do you mean I have no idea—”
“Alex. Please. Listen.”
“I am listening.”
“I cannot go with you. I cannot ever leave here, leave this place. This is my home, Alex, my sanctuary. I am safe here. So is Alexei. Did you know there is a price on both our heads? The Tsarists in the politburo want Alexei and me dead. For betraying my father. Only Kuragin stands in their way. But he’s made sure that one can hurt us here. No one.”
“What are you saying? I don’t even—we love each other. We have a child to protect. We have—”
“We have nothing, Alex. Nothing.”
“Nothing? We have each other. We have Alexei! And that is nothing? God in heaven, Anastasia, what can you be thinking?”
Anastasia pulled away from him, stood up, and looked down at him, tears coursing down both cheeks, her lower lip trembling, wrapping her arms around herself.
“Alex, it’s Nikolai. General Kuragin saved me from a firing squad. He saved your son, Alexei, from infanticide. They were going to bash his head against the wall as soon as he was born. The grandson of a tsar, even a dead one, will be a political threat inside the Kremlin for decades to come. Think about it. The bastard son of the Englishman who assassinated their great and noble Tsar? They hate him!”
“Yes. I see what you are saying. But, surely—”
“Nikolai Kuragin is our only hope! He is our savior! He is Alexei’s and my only real chance of survival, Alex. You must believe me, because it is true.”
“I can protect you. I can protect you both. It’s what I do, you know.”
“You want me to believe that we will be safer anywhere on earth than we are here in this fortress? Do you not understand that? They want me dead. They want our child dead and out of their way. It is the Russian way. Centuries of Russian politics repeated.”
Hawke looked away for a moment, his mind reeling. For how long had he wandered in his wilderness of grief? Insupportable grief, yes, and loss. Years. And now Asia was here before him, alive, and he felt as if he were fighting for her love! Fighting for his own son! No, more, he was fighting for his life, the one that had been ripped from him on that island in Sweden.
“My resources are easily the equal of Kuragin’s. Vastly superior.”
“He will never allow it.”
“He will never allow it? Stand between me and my family’s rightful happiness? No one can do that, believe me. Surely the general will understand us, Anastasia,” Hawke said, softening his tone, trying to keep the creeping desperation from his voice. He was shaken. He was beginning to doubt himself. And doubt was something completely alien to his being, his core. He took a moment to compose himself before speaking.
Hands on her shoulders, he turned her to face him, gazing directly into her lovely eyes.
“Anastasia, listen to me. Kuragin knows we love each other. Surely he can comprehend that it’s natural that we want to be together. Raise our child in some seminormal environment instead of some bloody barbed-wire prison. Listen, I’ll return to the palace and find Kuragin right now. He and I will straighten all this out, as gentlemen. I’m sure he will see reason. Why would he not? Why on earth would he keep the three of us apart, keep us from the happiness we truly deserve and—”
“Alex, please sit back down. There is something more I must tell you. Please sit. Now, before you say another word.”
“I can hear quite well standing up, thank you.”
She took a deep breath and let the dreaded sentence spill out all at once:
“Nikolai and I are married.”
“Married, you say? Don’t talk nonsense. He’s old enough to be your grandfather. It’s beneath you.”
“Listen, please. I believed utterly and completely that you were dead, Alex. I saw you from my bedroom window, facedown in the snow. I watched you bleeding to death before my own eyes. I wanted to die myself. Then, in prison, Alexei was born. I knew I had to survive in order to protect him. The grandson of the dead Tsar was suddenly a threat to many inside and outside the Kremlin who—”
“But how could you—”
“There was a trial. I was convicted of treason and accessory to murder. A date was set for my execution. The night before I was to go before a firing squad, General Kuragin visited me in my cell. He had a signed pardon from the prime minister, from Putin himself. In the end, so Nikolai said, Putin could not let the son of the man who’d restored him to power be murdered by the Tsarists. Putin did it for you, Alex. He and Kuragin are the only reason we are both alive.”
“So you fell in love? You married him?”
“Oh, Alex, it wasn’t about love. Nothing like that. It was mere gratitude. That, and the security he offered us here. He’s an old man. He has been very lonely for most of his life. In his way, I think he does love me, Alex. And I’ve grown fond of him. Listen. I truly believed I had lost the only man I loved or ever would love. You. Late one night, when he’d had a bit too much wine and vodka, Nikolai got down on his knees and begged me to make his last few years happy ones. He was crying. In that moment, considering all he’d done, I felt I had no choice but to say yes. And, until I saw your face a few hours ago, I had no cause to regret it.”
“And if I got down on my knees and begged? If I ripped open my chest and showed you my beating heart?”
“Alex, my God. Please don’t do this.”
“Don’t do this? Don’t do this?”
“I mean—”
“Don’t worry, Anastasia. I won’t beg you. My knees don’t work that way.”
He looked away from her, staring at the distant horizon, peering in vain through the black curtain that had descended between them. A flash of memory from his childhood: he’d been given a puppy for his sixth birthday and called it Scoundrel. His mother had found him hugging the dog tightly to his chest, smothering it with kisses. “Don’t love it so well, Alex, or it may be taken from you,” she said.
A man must never place himself in a position to lose.
He should seek only that which he cannot lose.
“Oh, Alex, my poor darling, I—I feel like my heart’s going to cave in. I don’t know what to say.” She reached up to take his hand, but it was like clasping a glove from which the hand has been withdrawn.
“It’s because there is nothing more to say. I should never have come here. I’d almost come to grips with losing you, and now I shall have to start all over again. Although now”—he looked away briefly—“now I seem to have lost my son as well.”
“Oh, my poor, poor darling. It is devastating to see you in so much pain. If only there were something I could say or do—but there isn’t, is there?”
“I am glad you are alive. At least I have that knowledge to carry with me. And I am happy that I got to see my son, if only for a few brief moments. Knowing he, too, is alive, safe, happy, and with his mother . . . I can take all that with me, Anastasia, carry that in my heart at least. I don’t blame you for what happened. You did what you had to do to survive. Anyone would.”
“Dear Alex.”
“I should like to leave this place, Anastasia. Now. Is that possible?”
“No, Alex. Please. Stay just a little while. If only for his sake . . .”
/> “You have no idea what you’re asking of me. None.”
“But tomorrow is his birthday. We have planned a little party. He thinks you will be there and—”
“No! Please stop this!”
“All right. As you wish. There is a train tomorrow. The Red Arrow.”
“I shall be on it.”
She looked away.
“But you cannot—”
“Please. It is done.”
“If you insist, I will make the arrangements. It’s a lovely train, an express. I’ll take you to the station. In the troika. I remember how you loved the troika.”
Anastasia looked up at Hawke, awaiting his reply. He was looking directly at her, but every trace of animation had flown from his face. His fierce blue eyes were cold as stone. He was still as still.
“I will retire to my room until it is time to leave tomorrow morning. Will you please apologize for me? Tell your—husband—that I’m not feeling well? And that I deeply appreciate all that he’s done for you and Alexei?”
“Of course. He will understand.”
She put her hand on his forearm.
He regarded her in silence for what seemed a very long time, and then he turned his back and walked away from her, his head held high, his hands clasped behind his back, his hidden heart shattered.
Six
Early the next morning, Hawke emerged from General Kuragin’s private study into one of the palace’s great sunlit hallways. He’d been unable to find sleep all night, but he put a brave front on it. After a brief conversation about the possibility of an extremely private meeting with Prime Minister Putin at some point in the future, he got to his feet to bid Kuragin farewell, allowing himself to be embraced by the much older man.
His parting words to the general had been, “Thank you, thank you for saving them both, Nikolai, from the bottom of my heart. I know that I owe you their lives, and I will never forget it.”
He turned to go.
“One more moment, Alex, please,” Kuragin said, moving toward the fireplace. “I have something for you. It’s been in this house for over three hundred years. I want you to have it.”