He yanked me to standing, and set his face close to mine. “I said, move along.”
Tears pooled in my eyes as he herded us out into the rear yard through the cold darkness toward the barn in the distance. It was Max crying upstairs, louder now. I pressed my arms across my belly, dizzy from the pain of not being able to go to him, and gulped the night air to calm myself. What if I just ran back to find him?
Being shot would not help my boy.
I turned and looked back at the house and choked back a cry. Up on the second floor, the nursery window stood, a dead, dark hole, lights extinguished except for the silver pinpricks of light shining on the ceiling—Luba’s stars.
CHAPTER
17
Varinka
1916
I stood in the nursery with little Max in my arms as gunshots erupted downstairs. A quake of fear ran through us both. This was Taras and his friends forcing their way into the estate? Max cried and I shut the light in the nursery and held him close, his body warm against mine. What to do? Run to Taras and stop him? He wouldn’t listen. I might get shot and who would tend the baby?
Soon I heard heavy footsteps in the back hall and Vladi’s voice, barking orders, drifted up. “Move along, all of you.” A bullet shot up through the floor and tore clear through the ceiling. I cried out and little Max shrieked louder as plaster rained down on us.
“Hush,” I told him, his little body wracked with sobs.
I pushed back the nursery window curtain and watched a line of people, with hands bound behind their backs, head out toward the fountain in the courtyard. Where were they taking them? I had to get home, but how? Raisa always lit me a kerosene rag–wrapped torch to light my way and fend off wolves. How would I make it in the dark?
The child calmed as I took his blanket and stepped down the back stairway and out the door. I wrapped his blanket about him against the cold air as the moon ducked in and out of clouds while I walked, guiding us down the road toward the gate.
I squinted at the gates in the darkness, the black spears shining in the moonlight and my foot hit something soft, yet heavy. The moon came out from behind a cloud and revealed the two guards on the ground. I gasped and bent to Ulad.
He lay on his back, a deep slash at his throat and a halo of seeped blood on the ground behind his head. Vladi’s work, no doubt. I shook with fear and with anger, too, at Taras. Why had he ruined my good fortune? I fought the urge to retch, held the baby tighter, and hurried to the entrance of my shortcut trail.
Would wolves come to the scent of Alex’s and Ulad’s blood? The owls called when they spotted wolves on the forest floor. I clenched my teeth and willed Max not to cry. I would protect the child with my life, stand tall to intimidate a bear or climb a tree if I had to.
Less than a verst away, an owl called out and I picked up my pace. The moon disappeared behind a cloud, leaving me in inky darkness. Please, Papa, not now.
An owl called again, this time closer. I held Max to my chest as I ran.
I relaxed my jaw when I saw the candle in the window of our house and the blood tingled in my arms. In the house, I found Mamka sitting in a chair by the window, a shawl over her shoulders, the candle illuminating her tarot cards, laid out on the table, her dark eyes reflecting the candle flame. She looked at me with no expression, as if she expected to see me step into our house with a baby in my arms.
“What an ugly baby,” she said.
Of course, this was what we all are careful to say when we see a baby for the first time, so as not to bring bad luck.
I stood for a moment, not sure what to say. “It’s the gamekeeper’s son. He needs taking care of tonight.”
Mamka stared at me, unblinking.
“Just one night. He is a good sleeper.” Why could I not stop talking?
“The truth,” Mamka said.
“I swear it.”
Mamka reached across her table, picked up a card and held it up. The Fool card, a gentleman carrying a pack on a stick, one foot over a precipice. Her liar’s card.
Why was she so insistent? Max was a good thing. A gift from Papa.
“Well, yes. He belongs to the Streshnayva family. Something terrible has happened at the estate.”
“Taras?”
“Yes.” All at once my throat closed off and I tried to keep the shake from my voice. “He and his friends broke in.”
“We must leave.”
“Yes.” But to where? I placed the baby in her arms and Mamka smiled for the first time in so long as she looked down at him. She stroked one finger under his chin and he returned that smile. I ran about gathering clothes and food for a journey: some dried groats, another orange I’d found, and stuffed them into a rucksack. “We will go to Petrograd. Someone will help us.” How wonderful it would be to finally escape Taras.
Mamka looked up at me, her eyes wide.
“He’s a good baby, is he not?” I asked.
Mamka nodded, her face serious in the candlelight. “The mother?”
“I don’t know what happened to her.” I stuffed Mamka’s nightie into the bag. “That doesn’t matter right now.”
Mamka kept her gaze on my face.
Prickles rose on the back of my neck. “Stop, Mamka. There’s nothing to be done to find the mother right now, so just let me pack.”
Mamka clutched her shawl closer as the sound of thudding horses’ hooves came at the front door.
Taras?
I ran to snatch the rucksack from the bed but stopped as the door was flung wide and Taras strode in, wearing a lynx coat, a pistol in one hand, in the other a pillowcase bulging with boxes, their sharp elbows poking against the linen.
He closed the door behind him and glanced at the rucksack on the bed. “Going somewhere?” he asked softly.
“Of course not.”
In Mamka’s arms little Max stirred and cooed.
Taras set his bundle down on the foot of the bed and directed his pistol toward the baby. “What’s that?”
“It’s the gamekeeper’s child.” The heat rose in my cheeks. Could Taras see it in the dim light? “Put the gun down, Taras.”
He ran his fingers through his long hair. “Where did it come from?”
Mamka held the boy tighter.
I stepped closer to Taras and touched his sleeve. “What happened to the family?”
“We just wanted money, but Vladi got carried away. It will all be fine, though.”
“They’ve been kind—”
“You need to help me, now, Inka. Vladi is coming to stay here tonight—late, after our meeting—to make sure you are safe while I guard the prisoners.”
“We don’t need his protection.”
Taras pulled me closer and smiled. “Things are different now, but I’m not taking any chances. At least we’ll have all the food we need.”
Little Max cried and reached for me.
Taras pointed his gun toward the child. “That will not be staying. I don’t care where you have to take it.”
Mamka wrapped Max tighter in his blanket.
I held out the fruit to Taras. “Look—I’ve brought you an orange.”
He waved it away and walked to the door. “I’m leaving.” He stopped and turned. “And if you don’t get rid of that child, Inka, believe me, I will.”
CHAPTER
18
Eliza
1916
One Monday Sofya’s letters just stopped coming, adding an eerie emptiness to our post box. After several days of fretting and speculation I visited Mother’s friend Eliot Blandmore at the New York Bureau of Immigration. She’d met him at a Southampton painting class and arranged a meeting at his office in the newly built, forty-story Equitable Building in lower Manhattan.
I found his office, a typical gray cube, every inch of it stuffed with people,
all waiting in a pungent, cheese-scented haze of cigarette smoke. I pushed into the crowd, through heated Italian and German conversations, sidestepping a family picnicking on the floor and overstuffed valises brimming with worldly possessions.
I made it to a man who sat behind a desk, deep in conversation with an elderly gentleman in a baggy tweed jacket, who turned his cap in his hands.
“I don’t know where your bird is, Mr. Pirelli. Two doors down you’ll find animal control.”
Mr. Pirelli moved on.
“Mr. Blandmore? I am Eliza Ferriday. You’re expecting me?”
He stood and offered his hand, a lanky man with an Adam’s apple the size of a golf ball.
“Haven’t much time, I’m afraid.” He shuffled through some papers on his desk. “We’re short-staffed and half the world wants into America’s golden doors. The unfortunate half.”
“My friend, Sofya Streshnayva, from Petrograd, I haven’t heard from her. No letter in a week.”
“A week, Mrs. Ferriday? Come back in a month. We attend to serious cases here.”
“I understand, Mr. Blandmore, but Sofya writes every day.”
“Ambassador Francis is barely able to get his own correspondence to us from Russia and says the tsar’s on the ropes himself with the war going badly.”
“Sofya told me there were bandits around her country estate. Could you help send an embassy message—”
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”
“Any bit of information would help me greatly.”
“I see you’re one of those women. Won’t take no for an answer.”
I stood straighter. “I am simply here on a mission of mercy for a dear friend, Mr. Blandmore. If you are implying entitlement—”
He dropped the papers onto his desk. “Yes, we have heard reports of Bolsheviks gaining traction in Russia and criminals under a red banner committing crimes and…”
“Please be frank, Mr. Blandmore.”
“Well, the reports may not be one hundred percent accurate, but there have been mentions of criminal activity on some estates south of major cities.”
“What kind of criminal activity?”
“I shouldn’t have told you even that, Mrs. Ferriday. Just know we’re watching it closely so our own borders are not infected with revolution. We’re starting to see our first émigrés arrive from the fallout of it all. Whole bunch of them just made it through.” He pulled a clipboard from under a pile and ran one finger down a list. “No Streshnayvas though.”
“Where are they from in Russia?”
“Moscow mostly. But from all over Russia, and that’s one big country. They’ve been left to me, I’m afraid, and I’m at my wits’ end with what to do with them. All were rich.” He leaned in. “Bet they practically lived on caviar. But they had to escape quickly, so no money, no passports. Better English than mine, but no skills. Mostly women and children.”
“Can they sew?”
“Just fancy stuff, never used a machine, but they still may have to go to the mills. I’m not allowed to place children there, so the little ones may need to go to foster care.”
“You can’t take children from their mothers, Mr. Blandmore. Surely you can reach out to the Russian-American community here….”
“Tried that, but most of the Russians already here are poor folks driven out by the tsar—told me they call these ladies ‘White Russians’ and I should let them starve since they supported that murderer.”
“What about hotel jobs? Perhaps they could board there, too.”
“I can’t spend my day calling hotels. St. Luke’s Hospital says they’ll take them temporarily, but then they’ll go to a lodging house down on Rivington Street.”
“The Bowery, Mr. Blandmore? How could you?”
For misery, filth, and debauchery, the Lower East Side neighborhood had no equal.
“Look, Mrs. Ferriday, I didn’t invite them here.”
“May I speak to them?”
“You need to be a registered immigrant aid society.”
“Well, Mr. Blandmore, that’s just what I happen to be.”
“Name?” He pulled a pad from his drawer.
“The, well…Central Committee…for…”
“Russian Relief?”
“That’s it.”
Mr. Blandmore wrote on his pad. “Surely it’s American.”
“Of course. The American Central Committee for Russian Relief. I like to call it ACCRR.”
“Think twice before you go in there, Mrs. Ferriday. They’re a needy bunch and there’s more coming every day.”
“Let me be the judge of that, Mr. Blandmore.”
“Suit yourself. Consider yourself registered. Go talk all you want. Detention room seven, down that hall.”
I made my way to number seven, an even smaller room, folding chairs lined up against the walls. I entered to find women sitting, several with children on their laps, a neat stack of valises in the corner. They stood as I came in. Even in their rumpled traveling clothes they were a refined group.
“Pleased to meet you all. I am Eliza Ferriday—I’ve come to offer help.”
A woman with close-cropped light hair and aquamarine eyes stepped forward and held my hands in hers. “Thank you.”
Another, holding a child on her hip, came closer. “We will work. Please don’t let them take my girl.”
“I’ll do everything I can to help.”
She handed me her sleepy baby and the child lay her head on my shoulder. So close to little Max’s age.
I went from one woman to the next, murmuring gentle comforts as I hatched my plan, more than happy to throw myself into the volcano.
* * *
—
I SPENT HOURS SECURING positions for the White Russian women, happy to have a new mission. As I waited for their paperwork, Mother proposed a trip up to Bethlehem, Connecticut, to visit The Hay, thinking it would be good for Caroline. I dreaded the trip, knowing it would pour salt on the wound of losing Henry, but agreed to go. I braced for the worst, hoping it would heal the rift between my daughter and me.
The following Monday, sweet Thomas drove us five hours north of Manhattan to the old place. Mother and I sat in the backseat, Caroline and Betty Stockwell in the front, as he drove slowly along the town green.
Fall was in full color and the village of Bethlehem seemed frozen in time with its neat town green and the same sort of sensible, pre–Revolutionary War houses one sees in quaint New England towns.
“Nice town,” Thomas said, a little too brightly. “All they need’s a general store.” Was he trying to smooth over the gaping hole of Henry’s absence?
“One restaurant would be nice,” I said.
The lonely hamlet made Southampton look like Indianapolis and it needed more than a general store. The only activity came from across the green at the old Bird Tavern. Carriages came and went from the dark, toaster-shaped inn, a vestige of colonial days, up on a grassy rise, a horseshoe toss from The Hay’s front lawn.
“Any word from Sofya?” Mother asked.
“No. Something’s terribly wrong, Mother.”
“Perhaps the mail’s been disrupted? There’s a war on, not that this country recognizes it.”
To our great distress, America was still officially neutral in the war, but the Battle of Verdun raged on, the line held valiantly by the French against the Germans.
“I’m out of my mind with worry, and here I am on a pleasant country trip.”
“It is your obligation to your daughter, dear.”
“Eliot wasn’t much help but he introduced me to a group of lovely Russian women who’ve come here for asylum, suffered terrible things due to mob dissent. They left Russia with nothing.”
“How many revolts have there been against the tsar? Perhaps this one
will be his undoing.”
“The women are all so like Sofya, Mother. Fine and gentle, many the wives of army officers. And the dearest children. I’ve decided to found a relief society to help them.”
“Admirable, dear, but after Henry’s…well…you need to rest. Focus on your daughter. She’s in mourning, too, you know.”
“If the women can be placed near hotels or restaurants they can be self-sufficient, earn their own living. The Grand Hotel near Julia’s house in the Catskills would be the perfect place for as many as they’ll take, and some with Julia, too, I hope. Could we employ a few up here?”
“This place may not even be habitable yet and we already have Peg and Thomas and six day maids.”
“Perhaps we could host a few in Southampton?”
“You know how they are out there, Eliza, with their rules. Non-family visitors are limited. But we’ll see. And I’m sure Sofya will send a telegram any day.”
I reached into my skirt pocket, rubbed the little blue charm I kept there. Please let it be soon.
Betty turned to us from the front seat. “Telegram? My mother just sent one from their trip.”
Though not as tall as Caroline, at fourteen years old Betty was already showing signs she would be a beauty and quite curvaceous. She wore a silver dress with a pink ribbon at the waist for our country trip, and her parents’ footmen had piled more Goyard luggage into the boot of the car than Mother and I brought combined.
“How is your mother, Betty?” I asked.
“Well, thank you. She writes the longest letters. Says Palm Beach was blazing hot and she couldn’t abide it there with Father playing golf in the raging sun each day. She told him she would not lay about in a bathing costume since there are enough alligators in Florida without her looking like one, too, and he said he rather likes alligators and she said the only good alligator is one found in the shape of an Italian-made purse—”
“Thank you, Betty dear,” I said.
Caroline turned in her seat. “Mother, may Betty and I take supper in my bedroom?”
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