Lost Roses

by Martha Hall Kelly

  I slid the thermometer out and checked it: 100. “Her fever is coming down.”

  Peg crossed herself. “Thanks to God.”

  All at once I heard Mother’s voice from the hallway and she rushed in.

  “I came as soon as I heard,” Mother said, unbuttoning her coat. “No wonder she’s sick, here in this wretched place.”

  Peg turned to Mother. “Thank you for coming, but the crisis is done for. Eliza saved her.”

  Mother turned to me, the light from the window catching a glint of the tear in her eye. “Of course she did.”

  I smoothed the hair back from Nancy’s forehead. “She will not properly recover here, I’m afraid.”

  Mother bent near to me. “Well, there’s only one place for her, I’m afraid.”

  “St. Luke’s?” I asked.

  “Gin Lane,” Mother said. “It will do her a world of good.”

  CHAPTER

  25

  Varinka

  1917

  Mamka, Max, Taras, and I had lived at the estate all winter when the mob from the village came to take the Streshnayvas from their quarters and murder them that spring. Mamka and I stood in the countess’s old bedroom watching it all. Vladi, pistol drawn, led men and women through the snow, many of them former workers at the linen factory, to the old servants’ quarters out back near the barns. We kept Max away from the windows as always. Why risk a stray bullet or one of the mob seeing the young boy and asking questions about his parents?

  Taras mounted on his horse, rifle pointed at the mob, and barred their way.

  “Move aside, Taras,” Vladi said.

  “They’re more useful to us alive,” Taras said. “We must be patient.”

  If Taras was being the voice of reason we were all in trouble.

  Vladi turned toward the hothouse to show his frustration, his breath coming in white fog. He took up a sledgehammer and crashed it through the glass panes and metal frame, the glass raining down in sheets around him. He passed the great hammer along and others in the mob took turns, swinging wildly at the glass that remained. Despite cuts to their faces and hands they drank vodka and sang patriotic songs and soon reduced the little glass house to ruin.

  The mob retreated, but that afternoon Vladi led the same group back to the estate, dirty feather beds and bulging cloth sacks over their shoulders, a new swagger to their walks.

  He stood at the front door and waved them in. “This is your new home.”

  How would the Streshnayvas feel about that? They were still living out in that one room, half dead. I kept an eye on them all. Snuck out there to watch them now and then.

  How strange it was to see the whole village move into the estate, choosing rooms and making themselves comfortable under the crystal lights. It was their right, since the people deserved a fine place to live as much as the Streshnayvas did, but how terrible to see Peter Pavlinov from the hunting goods store spitting on the fine zala rug. Mrs. Astronavich wheeling her trunk into Mr. Streshnayva’s room.

  I tried not to look at the countess’s hothouse, the once-beautiful home for fancy plants now a shattered, tangled mess of white metal and jagged glass. The emerald, swan-necked stem with one purple blossom, now lying on the heap. Roses the color of fresh cream tossed about, their feet still bound in little cloth bags.

  The people of the house set about turning it into their trash heap, tossing their newspapers and milk bottles there. Tin cans. Old woven shoes. People scoured the Streshnayvas’ pantry and ate all the fancy tinned sardines and caviar, but no one was working in the fields and ordinary food was scarce. Were we really better off now?

  * * *

  —

  LATER THAT WEEK, ONE MORNING when Taras was away hunting, I took the key from his boot, stole a warm loaf of bread from the kitchen, wrapped it in a linen towel, and visited the family. My plan was to unbolt the door, leave the bread, see how they were doing, and re-bolt it.

  The courtyard was quiet as I stepped up the stairs to the old gamekeeper’s room and peeped through a crack in the door. The younger daughter Luba sat near the window and the others slept in the middle of the floor, under a mound of coats. Their tiny dog, little more than a skeleton, must have caught the scent of bread and came toward the door.

  “I can see you, you know.” It was Luba.

  I stepped back from the crack, heart beating wildly, warm bread pressed to my chest.

  She must have stood, for her voice came closer. “Why do you watch us?”

  I said nothing and stomped the snow from my boots.

  “Why do you not help us escape? You can’t be happy with all this.”

  “It’s not my fault.”

  “By doing nothing you condone it. How is little Max?”

  I stood, quiet.

  “If he’s still alive, this isn’t good for him, living with such evil men.”

  “What do you know?”

  “You and your mamka must leave with him before it’s too late.” The little bell she wore tinkled.

  “The guards would never let us pass the gate with you. Besides we have no money.”

  “I have a secret way out of the estate. Money, too.”

  “We would be lost the first day. The wolves would like that.”

  “I have many things hidden in the house. A gun. And a sextant to navigate by the stars.”

  “That isn’t possible.”

  “I know latitude and longitude.”

  I grew quiet. It would help to know the way.

  “Think how much better it will be for the child,” Luba said. “We can go to Alexander Palace. They know my family—”

  “The tsar stepped aside.”

  Luba stopped for a moment at that, and then continued. “They would still help us and our townhouse in Petrograd is full of things we can sell. I know where the townhouse key is hidden.”

  I clapped my hands over my ears. “Quiet, so I can think.”

  “Let me out now and I will gather everything and meet you anywhere you like. I will get you to safety and all I want is my freedom.”

  “I can’t trust you.”

  “You have my parents, don’t you, sleeping here—with Sofya there next to them?” Luba waved toward a mass of coats heaped on the floor near the woodstove. “Would I do anything to endanger them?”

  I peered into the darkened room. “How many sleep there?”

  “Everyone except me, of course. My parents. The count. Sofya.”

  “Why does it not look like so many?”

  “We’re all so thin, Varinka.”

  How to decide? What if Luba let Sofya out, too, and she took Max back? But if I stayed with Taras I might never be safe. With Vladi so powerful now, Max and Mamka were at risk, too. There was no better time to try it, with both Vladi and Taras away.

  I sucked in one big breath. “All right. Meet me at my old izba in one hour.”

  “I will be there. Come with your mother and Max. Dress him in several layers and don’t be late. I will have our route planned.”

  Was this a good idea? We needed the help. But could I really trust her? If only Mamka were there to ask.

  I unlocked the door and pulled it open. The hinges screeched, causing a flock of blackbirds to take flight. Would the whole world hear?

  Luba stepped out, I set the bread on the floor, and closed and locked the door.

  “Make sure you bring plenty of food for Max,” Luba said.

  “If you’re not at the izba in one hour your family will suffer.”

  “I will be there,” Luba said. “I swear by God’s stars.”

  CHAPTER

  26

  Sofya

  1917

  Once Mrs. A. released me I slipped off our property undetected and hitched a ride with a goat farmer bound for Petrograd. I traveled much of t
he way in the back of his open lineika, surrounded by bristle-coated goats, who huddled near me like a litter of puppies, happy for another warm body. After twice proposing marriage, the farmer told me he heard the tsar had given up his crown and was being held under house arrest by a small band of guards appointed by the provisional government. With a smile, he drew one finger across his throat. So much for the tsar being the “little father,” beloved by the people.

  I arrived at Alexander Palace well past midnight. Distant gunshots echoed in the air as I disembarked at the edge of Tsar’s Village. The park seemed oddly still and in the black night, with only a crescent moon to guide me, I made my way past the Chinese Village, the red pagoda roofs towering above a mob gathered in the courtyard there, brandishing torches and placards and shooting off their guns. Would they storm the residence and take the tsar?

  I passed the Children’s Island we had played upon as youngsters, the weak moonlight showing the arbors and blue-painted playhouse under the mounds of snow, the lilac and magnolia trees covered with boards to keep off the snow.

  Once I made it to Alexander Palace I hid behind a tree, the grand, lemon-yellow facade rising above me. Guards stood at the front entrances stamping their boots in the snow, arguing about something and sharing cigarettes.

  I stepped around the back of the palace and crept up the stone steps to the chapel. How many times had we worshipped there, the tsarina too ill to go out to the church in town? Was Luba right about the chapel being unlocked?

  I hurried to the chapel door, my heart thumping in my ears, and reached for the brass knob.

  Cold in my bare hand, the knob gave way and I opened the door.

  Every part of me calmed as I stepped through the doorway and into the high-ceilinged chapel, my steps echoing on stone. We’d often sat in the front row, close to the royal family as they sat behind the screen, for the devoutly religious tsarina needed her privacy.

  I stepped through the adjacent billiards room, careful to make not a sound, up the stairway and down the carpeted hallway to the private apartments.

  I hurried toward the door of the tsarina’s inner sanctum, her Lilac Room. How Alexandra’s society critics had panned that room. Expecting her to entertain publicly as previous monarchs had, they chastised the quaint, homey sanctuary where she retreated with her family.

  I followed Olga’s voice, reading aloud from the Bible. Tears came to my eyes at the sound of her voice, so clear and direct.

  I stood in the doorway for a moment taking in the scene. It was dark in the room, except for one candle near Olga. Olga and Tatiana, the two eldest sisters sat together in one chair, clothed in white dressing gowns, their heads shaved smooth. Next to them, their mother, the tsarina, lay upon a lilac silk chaise. The sweet scent of lilac branches, forced to bloom, from cuttings in the imperial hothouse, hung in the air. Clearly, their house arrest was not stripping every luxury from the family.

  How I’d loved that room as a child, with the pale lavender silk walls, dyed to match a lilac sprig the tsarina had given her decorator. The soaring ceilings. The polished lemonwood furniture. Barely an inch of the walls at head height was left uncovered by some framed picture, treasure, or bibelot; and the dressers and tables held little villages of framed photographs and golden icons. But that night it suddenly seemed old-fashioned, maudlin even.

  Tatiana noticed me first and stood as if stung. “Sofya.”

  Olga snapped closed her Bible and joined her. “How did you get in here? There are guards everywhere.”

  They ran to me and hugged me.

  “Through the chapel.”

  “I thought only the front and kitchen doors were open,” Tatiana said.

  Olga took my hand in hers. “I prayed for this.”

  Tatiana smoothed one hand across her head. “What do you think of this? We’ve had the measles. It’s much easier, actually, and has made us appreciate hats. The others are still sick with it, upstairs asleep. Papa is finally getting some rest, too. You’ve heard they made him resign? Each day they make him clear the snow down by the fence so the lower classes can stare and jeer.”

  I was conflicted hearing this. I had great affection for the tsar, pitied him as I did the blinkered horse at the mill forced to walk in endless circles, but the price we were all paying for his narrow-mindedness was so great. Did he not deserve his fate?

  “Come see Mama,” Olga said. “She’s having a five. Not well, another headache.”

  Some things never changed. The girls still used a system of numbers to rate their mama’s pain.

  We stepped toward the tsarina, at rest on her favorite settee, much thinner since I’d seen her last and her eyes red-rimmed, a double shawl of lace lined with lilac-colored linen drawn to her knees. A vase of her flower of choice, Frau Druski white roses, sat by her side.

  The tsarina held out one hand. “Sofya. What brings you here at such a time?”

  I kissed her hand and received her embrace, catching the scent of her favorite perfume, Atkinson’s Essence of White Rose. How quiet it was there, so different from before the tsar had abdicated. Even at night while the family slept, the palace had always been fully lit, humming with activity, visitors and servants milling about. But one got the feeling the tsarina rather liked the solitude, finally had what she wanted.

  “I come from Malinov.” Why, after so much hardship did I choose that time to want to cry? “Last fall bandits broke into the estate and took us all hostage.” I unbuttoned my coat and let it slip down off my shoulders.

  Olga gasped. “Sofya. You’re so thin. Bandits kept you all that time?”

  “It’s happening everywhere,” the tsarina said. “They set fire to Count Freedericz’s house.”

  I lay my coat across a chair. “More bandits than Bolsheviks, we think. They’ve been forcing Father to write his Ministry correspondence as usual and stealing the money. He’s beyond despair.”

  The tsarina watched me carefully. “Despicable. And your son?”

  “A young peasant girl who was tending him at the time of the attack still has him.”

  “Can she not help you?” Olga asked. “Certainly, she wants to reunite you with your child.”

  “She shows no sign of it. We’ve seen only a glimpse of Max since the attack. I’m afraid he thinks of her as his mother and has forgotten me.”

  Olga and Tatiana came to me. “Don’t cry, cousin.”

  How good it was to finally tell someone our troubles.

  “God will help you,” the tsarina said. “He knows a mother must be with her son.” How could I tell her, lying there surrounded by gold-painted icons, that God had abandoned us long ago?

  “How is Agnessa?” Tatiana asked.

  “Near death and refuses to eat.”

  “Luba?” Olga asked.

  “Stalwart as you can imagine, but we need help—”

  “The letter, Tatiana,” the tsarina said. “Where is it?”

  Tatiana stepped to a desk in the shadows. I had forgotten how the tsarina treated Tatiana as her glorified maid, while strong-minded Olga often resisted her mother’s requests.

  “A letter arrived just last week,” Olga said. “From Afon.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “And a telegram and a letter from your friend Eliza. I hope you don’t mind that Mama opened them, in case we could help.”

  Tatiana returned and handed me the ecru envelopes, both slit along the top. “Much has been censored in Afon’s, but it is like hearing his wonderful voice to read it.”

  I held the envelopes to my chest. How long had it been with no word? Was he frantic? And what of Cook? Had he come to the palace for help?

  “Have you seen Baron Vasily-Argunov?” I asked.

  “Yury?” Olga asked.

  “He escaped when we were first captured. This would have been his likely fir
st stop. We think one of the bandits shot him though.”

  “No,” the tsarina said. “We would remember such a handsome visitor. Perhaps he didn’t make it. So many have fallen to the rabble.”

  The thought of Cook lying dead under the snow in the forest was too horrible to dwell on.

  The tsarina sat up straighter, one hand to her back. “It is past midnight. You need a bath and fresh linen and a good rest. Olga, have Anna see to it. And have her bring a third cot to your room. We will see to the Malinov situation in the morning. I have a direct telephone line to the Winter Palace and can send a letter to the Ministry as well.”

  Every part of me calmed. “Thank you, Empress. You are too generous.”

  “Tatiana, stay and read a bit more. Olga, tend to Sofya.” The tsarina slid a book from her table and opened it, our sign to repair to the children’s quarters upstairs.

  Olga and I hurried out into the hallway, a new lightness to my step. Imperial guards would have no problem taking on Vladi and Taras. Would they send Cossacks? I smoothed the envelope in my fingers. Word from Afon at last.

  I turned to Olga. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am. My parents—”

  Olga stopped in the middle of the hallway, one hand on my arm. “I must tell you the truth, cousin. I am sorry Mama raised your hopes.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “My mother is delusional. The pain of her back and the worry over our increasingly tenuous situation frayed her mind, I’m afraid. She cries much of the day but pretends our house arrest is temporary. Claims we have running water and electricity, but both were shut off weeks ago, so the maids fetch well water. She knows little of the news for they keep the papers from her and our phones are disconnected. Truth is, Petrograd is entirely turned over to the revolutionaries.”

  “But this is Ministry business. These bandits are stealing from the government, holding a member of the Finance—”