A silver frame sat atop the chest, a blurry group photo of the whole Streshnayva family. Such a fine-looking group of people and such a sad end. Maybe they should have listened to the needs of the people?
I snuck down the back stairs to the kitchen, the once-bright room empty and cold with Cook long gone. Only two black bread loaves sat cooling on the wire rack. The people cooked for themselves now, ate their simple meals in their quarters, their makeshift stoves scorching the fine rugs and moiré silk walls.
I wrapped a loaf in a clean dishtowel and held it warm to my chest. Little Max would love the big city. The fine shops and the sweets.
Once back in the bedroom, I pulled the valise from the bed and gasped at the weight of it. I hauled it down the hallway to Mamka’s bedroom and entered to find her sewing.
“Sewing in low light again, Mamka?”
“Where have you been all day?” she asked, without looking up.
“We need to change Max into outdoor clothes,” I said.
“It is too late for him to play outside.”
“We’re leaving, Mamka. I will tell you the plan as we go. Wake him up now.”
She set her work aside. “Isn’t he with you?”
My body went cold. “Me? I’ve been packing. He was with you.” I ran to the window and looked out over the garden.
“He was gone from his bed after his nap,” Mamka said. “I thought you’d taken him.”
Rage bubbled up in me. How careless of her. “You could have asked me. You were sewing all this time, weren’t you?”
“He is your responsibility, Inka.”
Luba. If she’d taken little Max should I tell Taras? Then he’d know I planned to escape. But if he found out himself it would be just as bad.
“Perhaps he’s with the laundry girls?” Mamka asked.
“No. I freed Luba from their room.”
“So, she took him.” Mamka crossed herself. “It is God’s will.”
“Perhaps I got it all mixed up. I’m sure she will meet us at the izba after all. Either way, we must leave at once.”
Mamka scowled at me.
“She will be there,” I said. “She swore on God’s stars.”
“Don’t be so sure, Inka.”
I breathed deep, trying to stay calm. “Can you be positive for once?” I took up the valise. “Come. Help me carry this.”
Mamka and I wore our felt boots and carried the valise through the woods to our old izba, on our secret pathway through the snow, stopping once or twice to rest, but soon glimpsed the cabin roof through the trees. How good it was to see that homey place again.
We heaved the valise through the cabin door and breathed a sigh. Home. The great hulking white oven, my old mattress above it. Mamka’s sweet bed.
But no Luba.
Mamka crossed her arms across her chest. “I don’t like it, Inka. We may have to leave without the boy.”
“I won’t.”
We lit two fires for warmth, one in the big oven, one in Taras’s woodstove, and waited for what felt like an hour, just sitting, listening to the crack and pop of the wood. Having no watch, did Luba get the time wrong? She was such a capable girl, but mistakes happen.
The sound of footsteps came outside and Mamka turned to the door.
“She’s come with him,” I said, pulling the valise from the bed.
“Thanks be to God,” Mamka said.
Soon we’d see Petrograd and would be free.
Mamka and I rushed toward the izba door.
The door opened and Taras walked in, leaving the door wide open, the dark woods behind him. “Well now, look who’s here.”
He wore his sealskin jacket, stalker boots, and that expression dark as the sky over the steppe when a storm is coming.
Mamka went to the door, one hand to the wood to close it, but Taras grabbed her by the arm and flung her back.
I stepped to the bed and grasped the valise handle. “We’re just gathering some old clothes to share with the people.”
“Where’s the boy?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
He gave Mamka a penetrating look and she turned away.
“What a good liar you are, Inka.”
Taras pulled the valise from my hand, ripped the strap open and shook it upside down. Out tumbled a horrible upchuck of pale pink satins and lace and shoes, the loaf of bread in the middle of it all. Like a punctuation mark, Papa’s picture fell on top of the pile.
“Your old tattered clothes look a lot like your best things.”
“Hurry up, girl,” came a voice outside.
Vladi.
He came to the cabin door, pulling behind him by the shoulder a shaken Luba, chin high, Max in her arms. My heart beat faster. Would she tell that I let her escape?
“We heard Father Paul had given some girl with a child some money to run away,” Vladi said. “Then look who we found.” He pushed Luba in the door, Max in her arms.
She tripped over the doorsill and almost fell.
“Guess you never know what will turn up when you’re hunting elk. We almost shot them.”
Luba turned to Vladi with a cool look. “Maybe that would have been preferable.”
Max hid his face in the crook of her neck as Vladi leaned close to her. “You’ll be getting your wish, insect. But let’s start with Varinka. This one says you let her out of the quarters.”
I felt Taras’s eyes bore into me. “I know nothing of this.”
“And I went to their quarters and found her sister gone. The liars said she was asleep there on the floor under some coats but someone let her out, too.”
“I didn’t do it,” I said.
Mamka tried to gently pull Max from Luba but he held fast to her. “My Luba.”
Luba pulled him away and handed him to Mamka, a pained look on her face. As Max left her arms Luba placed her hands over her face, shoulders shaking.
Mamka walked by and shot me a hot glance, her lips pressed together so hard they were practically white.
Taras turned to me, fists balled like stones. “You let this little pig out?”
“But I didn’t think—”
“How many times have I told you?”
Vladi pulled Luba out the door. “This one outlived her usefulness a long time ago. Finally going to get their due and don’t try and stop me, Taras.”
“Savages,” Luba called back to us.
Taras took me by the arm. “Come.”
I pulled away. “Where?”
“You helped her escape. You must be punished.”
“I pitied the poor girl, Taras. Cooped up in one room.”
“She double-crossed you and still you support her?”
“No, Taras. I was stupid.”
“And now her sister’s gone, too. This could ruin everything.”
He dragged me toward the door to his woodshed.
I turned and reached for Max. “Give me my boy. Please, Taras.”
Taras grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked me toward the shed, my hair on fire at the roots.
“Don’t let Max see this,” I said over my shoulder.
Mamka followed, Max crying in her arms. “If you hurt her, Taras—”
“What, crone?” He dragged me into the shed, slammed the door, and hooked the latch.
Mamka pounded the door. “Taras!”
He pushed me onto his bed, his scent wafting up from the linens, of sweat and gunpowder and peppermint. The iron oven sat beside the bed and cast blessed warmth, an orange glow in its belly. I scanned the tools on the wall. Would he use one on me?
“You can’t depend on your Mamka to solve every problem.”
How was he so remarkably calm? “You don’t understand—”
Taras pulled birch kind
ling from a basket, crouched in front of the stove and added it to the fire.
He leaned over me, pulled up the hem of my sarafan, and ran his hand up my thigh.
I swatted his hand away. “No, Taras. The arrangement…”
“I never agreed to that.” He flipped me onto my stomach and with two hands ripped the back of my sarafan in one motion, pulled the torn dress out from under me, and threw it in the corner, leaving me cold in blouse and bloomers.
I tried to crawl off the bed, but he pushed me down and pinned me by my shoulders.
“You’re sick to want this, Taras.”
He fumbled with his trouser buttons. “You started it. Showing yourself to me like a slut.”
“By taking a bath?”
With one hand he wrestled my bloomers down and pressed his hardness against me. Every part of me shook.
I screamed for my mother and right away regretted it. What could Mamka do against Taras? She would try and kill him if she saw this and he would hurt her. Maybe Max, too.
He slapped his hand over my mouth, cutting off my air. I bit down on the soft part of it with all my strength, and tasted blood. Taras reared back like a stuck bear and then removed his belt with one motion.
Mamka pounded on the door. “I’ll go for the police, Taras—”
Taras laughed to himself. Of course our one old policeman would never act. He was probably sleeping off the drink.
He cinched one end of the belt around my wrist, the other to the iron headboard, and tethered me like a dog.
“I know it was hard for you in prison, Taras—”
Taras stepped to the workbench and considered his tools, as if choosing a cabbage at the market. “Your Papa spoiled you, Inka.”
“My arm is numb, Taras, can—”
“Actions have consequences. We are going to Petrograd soon, you and me. The Committee sent word. Vladi gave my name, can you imagine? And I need to trust you there, my girl.”
He chose a small, wooden-handled tool, opened the door of the stove, and laid the metal tip of it in the flames.
“What are you doing, Taras?”
He sat next to me on the bed and the springs groaned. With two hands, he gently brought my head to his knee and held it there.
My whole body shook. “Not my face.”
“What else do you care about, vain girl?”
He pulled the tool from the fire, the tiny T brand he marked his knives with. I could barely look at it as he blew on the metal tip, causing it to turn deep red.
“Please, no, Taras.”
“You should have thought twice before you helped that girl.”
From the corner of my eye I saw the brand come closer to my left cheek, a blurry red-orange glow, and felt the warmth near my skin. “Please, Taras.”
“The more you struggle, the longer this will take.”
“I promise I won’t…”
He stroked my hair. “Hold still. It will be over quickly.”
All at once came the sting of the hot metal on the top of my cheek near my eye, the smell of burning flesh.
A great pounding came to the shed door, Mamka’s wails, and then a scream as the searing-hot metal pressed deeper into my skin.
Only after a while did I know the scream was mine.
CHAPTER
29
Sofya
1917
The next morning I woke with a start on a cot in Olga and Tatiana’s room, to see a black wrinkled face staring down at me, tongue drooping out of her mouth.
“Come here, Ortipo,” I said and pulled the French bulldog from the adjacent chair onto my stomach. She made herself at home on my chest, panting meaty little breaths in my face. How good it had been to sleep in a bed, even just a camp cot. I stroked Ortipo’s soft back and admired the room, a pretty, if a bit messy, extension of Olga and Tatiana. Framed pictures of happier days hung on the walls: with their father aboard the imperial yacht, the family posed on the tennis court. Flowered drapes flanked the tall windows, painted ribbons and birds flew along the tops of the walls, and books and little standing frames covered the desks and dressing tables.
Just the thought of my family back in Malinov sent my stomach aching. How were Agnessa and Father getting along? Had Luba succeeded in hiding my absence? Though Olga and Tatiana seemed dedicated to planning my escape, they had their own problems.
I reached for the letters under my pillow. After a cold sponge bath, I’d stayed up reading Eliza’s letter from New York.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Dear Empress Alexandra,
It is with heavy heart I write to you, fearing the worst for my dearest friend Sofya Streshnayva Stepanov. I understand you know and love the family. Can you share any news of their situation in Malinov? I am at your disposal in any way I can be of help…
How like Eliza to go straight to the top and reach out to the tsarina. She seemed frantic with worry. I longed to be with her, to provide the same comfort she’d given me countless times.
I reread Afon’s letter to the tsarina, the return address blacked out:
My dear Empress,
I hope you and yours are well, but write today fearing the worst has happened to my wife, Sofya, and family, after hearing rumors of trouble in Malinov. Six letters have gone unanswered and I seek any information you can provide. Would you find it in your kind heart to send a company to check on them? I am with the regiment now fighting in , and expect no leave for due to . If you do contact Sofya please deliver my most ardent good wishes and love and tell her I will come home as soon as we .
Your most obedient servant,
Afon
I smoothed one finger across the envelope front, along Afon’s looping script. He’d heard of our troubles. Where was he fighting? Was he even still alive?
All at once came the sound one floor below of the servant’s silver hammer hitting the tsarina’s bedroom door, their daily invitation to rise. Eight-thirty already?
I left my cot and found Olga and Tatiana, awake and seated side by side on a love seat in their dressing room, sewing the white linen in their laps. A bowl of what looked like diamonds sat between them. They were dressed in dark skirts and white shirtwaists, with knitted berets covering their shorn heads.
Olga looked up from her work. “How did you sleep?”
Tatiana set her sewing aside as Ortipo jumped into her lap. “She is a very bad dog for waking you.”
How pretty Tatiana was, with her wide-set light brown eyes, and so like her mother, with the same slender figure and reserved manner. Called “The Governess” by her siblings for her doting way with them, Tatiana was unflaggingly positive and, in sharp contrast to Olga, rarely questioned their parents’ ways.
“We are almost done sewing,” Olga said. “Mama has us work on this project one hour every morning.”
“Making ourselves armor,” Tatiana said.
I sat in a nearby chair. “I don’t understand.”
“Mama’s idea. Sewing our jewels to our vests.” Tatiana held up her camisole, part of the bodice covered in a solid, glittering sheet. “See? Our maid Emilia pulls the stones from their settings and we sew them tight together here.”
“There are rumors we’re to be moved soon,” Olga said. “And we’ll wear these. In case we are shot, the bullets will bounce off.”
Olga bit off a thread, her teeth as white as her favorite little pearls around her neck. “Sofya, if we rely on my parents to help you escape, it may never happen.”
“Papa has just heard King George has denied us asylum in England, so they are preoccupied,” Tatiana said.
“His own cousin?” I asked.
“Last night I dreamed of a way to help you escape,” Olga said. “What if we dress you as a maid, in Emilia’s clothes, and tell the guards you must take Ortipo to the veterinari
an?”
Tatiana held her little bulldog tighter. “Ortipo is perfectly healthy.”
“But what if we fake an illness?” Olga asked. “Put chili powder under her nose.”
Tatiana smoothed the dog’s head. “I couldn’t live without her.”
“Sofya can deliver Ortipo to the vet and make her way back to Malinov. Emilia will pack Sofya food for the trip and I will contribute all the pocket money I have.”
“Is the staff still loyal to you?” I asked.
“Mostly, but we never know who is on duty—they come and go to see their families. The new guards hate it, never able to establish a firm roster.”
“So, they wouldn’t recognize my face as new?”
Olga smiled. “It’s bound to work.”
Once Olga and Tatiana dressed me in their maid Emilia’s black dress and white apron, complete with round, tortoiseshell spectacles and black sealskin boots, they stepped back to admire their work.
Olga pinned the regulation white organdy cap on my head. “Hurry, now. Paul the guard is on until noon. Tatiana is his favorite.”
Tatiana helped me into a black cloth uniform coat and shrugged. “He’s cute and kind and sneaks us the most delicious rum balls from the village.”
“You make a perfect maid.”
Tatiana handed me a canvas kit bag, which held a feast of black bread and cheeses, my folded trousers and coat, an ostrich-skin coin purse stuffed with her pocket money, and a flask of water.
“They will search you as you leave,” Tatiana said. “Sometimes in a most roguish way, looking for smuggled letters or jewels they can confiscate. But even if they didn’t, we have no weapons to give you. I slipped your letters under the bag’s lining.”
“They deny us even butter knives,” Olga said. She reached both hands behind her neck and unclasped her pearls. “But these may help.”
“No, Olga,” I said.
“It will make me happy and you might use them better than I. The guards won’t see them as valuable.”
Tears filled my eyes as Olga clasped the pearls around my neck and tucked them inside the collar of my dress.
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