Secret Fire (20 page)

There was such authority in her voice that Rodion’s hold actually loosened. But the Princess was standing right there. Katherine saw the fellow’s dilemma, saw the indecision and worry cross his craggy features, and knew the moment the Princess won out.

“You had better hope you’re not around when the Prince finds out about—”

Katherine stopped, steeling herself, hearing the horrid whish of the cane just before it struck. The pain was worse than anything she could have imagined. The breath hissed through her teeth. Her mind shrieked. That first blow brought her to her knees.

“Tell her what she wants, miss,” Rodion whispered imploringly, looking down at her.

He was the only one to see her face when the cane struck, and then the second blow, even
worse for landing in the same spot, and then the third, striking her lower back. Her hands trembled. Blood appeared on her lip where her teeth had dug in. She was so tiny, so delicate, not a hardy peasant whose body would have been conditioned by hard labor to undergo such punishment. A few blows of the cane was nothing to a serf. But this was no serf. Whoever she was, she couldn’t take this kind of abuse.

“Let me go” was all Katherine replied to Rodion’s entreaty.

“Sweet Mary, I can’t, miss,” he said miserably as Semen wielded the cane yet another time.

“Then don’t…let me…fall.”

“Just tell her—”

“I can’t,” she gasped then swayed forward under the next blow. “St. John pride…you know.”

Rodion was incredulous. Pride? And she was serious! Only the aristos let pride rule their actions. Dear Sweet Mary, what was he a party to here? Could she have been telling the truth about who she was?

It was with the greatest relief that he was able to say a moment later, “She’s fainted, Princess.”

“You want me to revive her?” Semen asked.

“No,” Sonya said testily. “Stubborn woman. It obviously won’t do any good to pry an apology out of her. But administer a few more strokes, Semen, for good measure.”

It was Semen who protested this order. “But she’s unconscious, Princess.”

“So? She won’t feel it now, but she will when she wakes up.”

Rodion flinched with each subsequent blow of that accursed cane, wishing he were taking the
punishment instead. But at least he held the woman up, supporting her by her forearms. She didn’t fall, as she had feared, though what was the sense of that he would never know.

“Search her” was Sonya’s last order.

Semen bent to do so, looking up after a moment, shaking his head. “Nothing, Princess.”

“Well, it didn’t hurt to be sure.”

Rodion and Semen exchanged a glance at that. But Rodion, tight-lipped as he carried the woman out of the woodhouse, was feeling all the impotence and rage that only someone under the yoke of serfdom could feel. Didn’t hurt? The Englishwoman would think differently.

“
O
h my God!”

Katherine leaped off the slab she had been lying on the moment she realized what it was. The effort brought a loud moan to her lips. She crouched, out of breath, glaring furiously at the thing. It was one thing to wake up in an unfamiliar place, but quite another to find yourself roasting over coals.

“A stove! They put you on a bloody stove, Katherine! They’re crazy. They’re every one of them crazy!”

“
Zdravstvui, Gospozha
.”

“Like hell it’s a good morning!” Katherine rounded on the woman who had come up soundlessly behind her. Seeing her back up with a start, she switched to Russian. “Were you planning on serving me for dinner?”

The woman broke into a toothy smile when Katherine’s meaning became clear. “The stove isn’t lit,” she assured her. “It makes a nice warm bed in winter for the children and the older ones. That is why it is so big, you see. But in summer it is too hot and the baking is done outside.”

Katherine gave one more fulminating look at the stove. It was huge, about five feet long and four feet wide, indeed large enough to accommodate several people as a bed. But if it wasn’t lit, why did she feel as if she had just been burned?

“You shouldn’t be moving about yet, miss,” the woman said more seriously now, drawing Katherine’s attention back to her.

“I shouldn’t?”

“Unless you feel able, of course.”

“Of course.”

Katherine’s reply was testy for lack of explanation, but it was accompanied by a shrug, which was the worst thing she could have done. Her eyes flared wide, then squeezed shut as the breath whished out of her. Unfortunately she tensed against the fire whipping down her back, and that just made it worse. She moaned pitiably, unable to resist, uncaring who heard her.

“That—bloody—bitch!” she hissed through her teeth, bent over further now in her pain. “She actually…unbelievable! How could she dare?”

“If you mean the Prince’s aunt, she governs here in his absence, so—”

“What blasted excuse is that?” Katherine snapped.

“Everyone knows what you did, miss. The mistake was yours. We learned long ago what attitude to adopt when in her presence. She is of the old order, you see, those who demand total subservience. Show a little fear and the utmost respect, and she is more than benevolent. No one is caned here anymore—you, of course, being the exception. You just have to know how to handle her.”

Katherine would have liked to handle her all right, with a torch and a whip. But she didn’t say so. She was doing her best to try and will the pain away. If she didn’t move a single muscle, it wasn’t quite so agonizing.

“How bad is it?” she asked hesitantly.

She wasn’t wearing her own clothes, so someone had undressed her, and she had to assume it was this woman. The dress that had been put on her was of coarse cotton, cool, but scratchy in the extreme. It had probably been donated by that female despot who called herself a princess. It certainly didn’t belong to this woman, as she was rather on the plump side, and the dress, while uncomfortable, at least fit Katherine.

“Do you bruise easily?”

“Yes,” Katherine replied.

“Then it is not so bad, I think. Many welts and bruises, but at least no broken skin or ribs.”

“You’re sure?”

“About the ribs, no. You could better judge. They wouldn’t call a doctor, even when your fever was so high.”

“I had a fever?”

“For a day and a half. It is why you were brought here. Fevers I know about.”

“Where is here? Ah, I don’t know your name. Mine is Katherine, by the way.”

“Ekaterina?” the woman smiled. “That is a fine name, an imperial name—”

“Yes, so I have been told,” Katherine cut in, exasperated with yet another version of her name. “And your name?”

“Parasha, and you are in the village, in my home. Rodion carried you down yesterday. He was most concerned. It seems the Princess had assigned no one to watch over you, even though she was aware of your fever. And with such deliberate neglect on her part, no one was willing to offer their services, leery of being associated with anyone in the Princess’s bad graces.”

“I see,” Katherine said tightly. “So in fact I could have died?”

“Goodness, no,” Parasha replied. “Your fever was just caused by the beating. It was not serious, the fever that is. Rodion, however, didn’t realize that. As I said, he was most concerned. He seems to think the Prince will be displeased when he learns what happened.”

At least something she had said made an impression on the man. But a lot of good Dimitri’s predicted fury had done to prevent the beating from occurring in the first place. And she was only assuming that he would be furious. What if he wasn’t? What if he couldn’t care less?

That possibility brought a tight knot to Katherine’s throat, which eased only with a concerted effort to direct her thoughts elsewhere. “Do you live here alone, Parasha?”

The woman seemed surprised by the question. “In such a big house? No, no, there is my husband, Savva, his parents, our three children, and room for more, as you can see.”

It was a big house, built of wood, since wood was so plentiful in this area. It was only one story, but spread out, and certainly larger than anything Katherine had seen in the many villages she had passed on the way here. She had assumed these log cabins would be one-room affairs, but this one had several rooms, she could see at least another room beyond the kitchen door, which had been left open. The kitchen itself was roomy, uncluttered; a large table was the focal point, as well as the monstrous stove. A finely carved cupboard, more beautiful than any she had ever seen, held an assortment of wooden utensils.

The house was quiet, no sign of anyone else around at the moment. “Is everyone working in the fields?”

Parasha smiled indulgently. “Until harvest, which will start soon, there is little to be done in the fields. There is still work, of course, weeding the vegetable patches, sheep-shearing, butchering, and preparing for winter, but nothing like planting and harvest time, when we are lucky if we work only sixteen hours a day. But today is Saturday.”

She spoke as if Katherine should know what that meant, and in fact Katherine did, thanks to the long conversations with Marusia on the way to Novii Domik. On Saturdays, all across Russia whole villages would converge on the communal bathhouse, where steam was created by throwing water on a large brick stove. Bathers lay on shelves lining the walls, the higher the hotter, some beating themselves and one another with birch twigs for greater effect, and to top it off, they then jumped into a frigid river or stream, or in winter rolled naked in the snow. Incredible, but Marusia had assured her the experience was truly invigorating; until she had tried it herself, she shouldn’t judge out of hand.

“You’re missing the steam bath yourself, aren’t you?” Katherine commented.

“Ah, well, I couldn’t leave you here alone when you had yet to wake from the fever, though it passed during the night. I would have had Savva carry you to the bathhouse, for the steam would have done you good. But the Prince’s brother Nikolai showed up last night and spent the night with his mother here in the village, so he will probably be there. And I didn’t
think you would want to be pestered by him when your senses returned, at least not until you were more recovered.”

“Why would he pester me?”

“He pesters all women.” Parasha chuckled. “He is fast following in his brother’s footsteps where women are concerned. But he is not so particular as the Prince. Any and all is his motto.”

Katherine didn’t know whether to feel insulted or not. In the end she said nothing in reply. She knew who Nikolai was, Nikolai Baranov, natural son of Petr Alexandrov and one of the village serfs. His mother had been given her freedom on his birth, but she had never taken advantage of it, had stayed at Novii Domik and eventually married one of the villagers. Yet Nikolai, like all the other bastards of the Alexandrov men, was raised in the bosom of the family, with a whole bevy of servants to attend and spoil him.

How Lady Anne, a proud Englishwoman, could have tolerated such blatant proof of unfaithfulness, was beyond Katherine. Nikolai was in fact only seven months younger than Dimitri. And yet, according to Marusia, Lady Anne had never complained, had loved Petr faithfully until the day he died.

Katherine knew she couldn’t be so understanding. However, she was realistic. She knew men were governed by their bodies, that even the most adoring of husbands were bound to commit indiscretions. That was a fact of life. She had seen and heard too much to doubt it. She had always firmly believed in the old adage that what you didn’t know couldn’t hurt you, and
had believed that when she eventually married, as long as she didn’t hear about her husband’s indiscretions, she would blissfully ignore the probability of unfaithfulness.

That was how she had thought she would feel when she eventually married. Now she wasn’t so sure. She hadn’t counted on falling in love. She wasn’t so sure she could blissfully ignore anything Dimitri did, and she would have to assume that he would be unfaithful if he was away from her for any length of time. The possibility hurt. A confirmation would be devastating. How could she deal with that when they were married? How could she deal with it now?

He was gone, supposedly to court another woman. She didn’t believe that for a moment, but he was still away in Moscow, where any number of women would attract his eye. Of course she was assuming that he cared for her. She was assuming a lot.

Blast, why did Parasha have to remind her of the Alexandrov men’s predilection for womanizing and siring bastards? Marusia had never mentioned that Dimitri had any, but that didn’t mean he didn’t or that he wouldn’t in the future. Look at Misha, thirty-five when he died and his oldest bastard eighteen years old now.

She ought to just forget Dimitri. He was too handsome, too enamored of women in general, according to Anastasia. He wouldn’t know how to be faithful to any one woman, even if he did love her. Did she need that? Certainly not. She needed to get away from him before what she felt became so overpowering that she wouldn’t care what he did as long as he gave her a few
crumbs of affection. And if she was going to leave, she had better do it while he wasn’t around and while Vladimir wasn’t there to watch her every move.

K
atherine crouched in the shadows beside the house and took a moment to absorb the pain that just a little movement caused her. But she had made it this far. She had a sack of food she had hastily gathered, and she wasn’t about to let a little thing like painfully bruised muscles stop her now.

She had waited impatiently while Parasha and her family had prepared for church this morning. There had been a moment of panic when the kind woman had started to insist that Savva would be happy to carry Katherine to church, that it was unthinkable to miss Mass, but Katherine had moaned and groaned so much when Parasha had tried to help her from her bed, which was still atop the stove, that she had given up the idea.

Katherine had met the rest of the family yesterday, and they had spent the evening singing the praises of their Prince and his family, who they considered part of their family. She came to realize that the happiness and welfare of the serf depended entirely on the character and wealth of his master. Under a good master he felt as if he had a home and was protected against bad fortune in a relationship that was almost like the feudal system of old. Under a cruel master his existence was more like a living hell of beatings and forced labor, in which he lived in constant dread (or hope, for that matter) of being sold,
traded, lost on the turn of a card, or worse, sent off to military service for the next twenty-five years of his life.

Dimitri’s serfs were all content with their lot and fully aware of their good fortune. The thought of freedom was abhorrent to them because they would then lose the protection and generosity that allowed them to prosper as well as the land they thought of as their own. In their behalf, Dimitri sold the goods they made over the long, idle winters. In Europe they fetched a much better price than in Russia, and it showed in the higher standard of living here at Novii Domik.

Fine clothes were donned for church, a custom the same everywhere it seemed. The men wore colored shirts, red being the favorite, instead of the loose shirt belted round the waist worn on ordinary days. The trousers were of finer cloth, but still baggy in the style inherited from the Tartars centuries ago. Top boots of a good quality were worn instead of the summer wear of most peasants, which was bare feet or the typical birch-bark boots. The Russian high hats of felt completed their outfits, and for some, the long overcoat, or caftan.

Women also put on a fine showing, exchanging the universal head-kerchief for a
kokóshnik
, a tall headdress richly decorated according to the means of the wearer, Parasha having pearls and gold ornaments on hers. The festive dress was sleeveless, known as a
sarafán
, and was made in soft materials and numerous colors, as Katherine saw from watching the many women passing by outside the window.

A Sunday here was like a Sunday in England, a day of relaxation after a long Mass, and Kath
erine was counting on today’s being at least two hours long, as she had heard some were. Afterward the young people would play games, as the children had excitedly informed her, while the adults visited and gossiped. How English that sounded! But Katherine didn’t expect to be around to watch or join the festivities. She hoped to be far away before her absence was discovered.

It would have been easier, not to mention less painful, if she could have had a few more days to recover before making her escape. But the moment she had noticed the horse kept in the animal shelter next to the house, one of several in the village, she knew she had the means to get away. After hearing that no one, absolutely no one in the village missed going to church unless they were bedridden, she knew Sunday gave her the only opportunity she was likely to get. She wasn’t about to wait a full week until next Sunday, when it was possible that Dimitri would be back.

Parasha had told her it took about as long to reach Moscow as it did to reach St. Petersburg, Novii Domik being between the two though far to the east. Dimitri had already been gone three full days, not counting today. Also, he hadn’t waited on the carriages transporting his servants, which would take five days at the least to drive one way. He had ridden ahead, could cut down his traveling time considerably if he was really in a hurry. She wasn’t taking the chance.

There was also the possibility that Princess Sonya would remember that she had promised to keep Katherine here until Dimitri returned. At present, in view of her condition, what Kath
erine was attempting would be thought impossible, no doubt the reason why no one had been sent down to guard against her escape. Once she had time to recover, even just a few more days, there was every likelihood that someone would be sent to watch her, or worse, she might be installed back in the big house, perhaps even under lock and key, and lose this opportunity altogether.

This was her chance, probably her only chance, with the village deserted, everyone congregated in the little church, and no one there aware of the true situation: that Dimitri actually wanted her kept prisoner at Novii Domik for the remainder of summer. That was her trump card; for now, they were all ignorant of why he had brought her here. His aunt might even say good riddance when she learned that Katherine had vanished.

She moved cautiously toward the little shed, keeping her eye on the church at the end of the road. It was distinguished from the village houses only by the belfry with a large blue onion-shaped dome atop it, characteristic of every other church Katherine had seen since arriving in Russia, except that this one, being small, only had one dome, whereas some she had seen had as many as seven or nine, all painted different bright colors, or intricately carved or shingled.

The steady drone of prayers, she hoped, would mask any sound the horse made. But then everything was down to hope now: that she could get away from Dimitri’s estate without being seen, that she could remember the way back to St. Petersburg without getting lost, that no one would bother to come after her, and that she would be
safely ensconced in the English community in St. Petersburg before Dimitri even knew she was gone.

She wouldn’t even mind seeing him again, once she was safely out of his power and they were finally on equal ground. But all she really wanted now was to return home and start forgetting him. It was better that way. It
was
better that way, wasn’t it? Of course it was.

Liar! What you really truly want is for him to come after you, to beg you not to leave, to swear he loves you and wants to marry you. And you’d do it to, ninny that you are, marry him in a minute, no matter how many good, solid reasons there are not to
.

Katherine was almost thankful for the agonized wrenching of her muscles while she readied the horse and mounted him, for it got her mind back on track. Getting away now was all that was important. She needed Dimitri to see her as his equal, and he wouldn’t until she could prove who she really was. And she couldn’t do that here. She would worry later about his reaction and what he would do about her escape.

Riding the horse slowly away, she had her first taste of what the ride was going to be like, and all she wanted to do was scream, she hurt so badly. Never in her life had she experienced anything like this pain. If she had a gun, she wouldn’t be riding away from Novii Domik but toward it, for at the moment she wanted nothing more than to find that bastard Semen and shoot him. He could have gone easy on her. He could have tempered his strength instead of putting it all into each stroke of that blasted cane. But no, show off for the Princess, follow her orders to the letter, that’s what the dolt had done. Katherine
was surprised he hadn’t broken every bone in her back.

She had to circle around the big house to get to the road, and she did this swiftly, giving it a wide berth. Once on the road, she set off at a gallop, which was actually easier on her than a slower canter, but still had her wincing and groaning every few seconds, loudly now, for there was no longer any need for quiet. She kept up that pace off and on for four hours, or what she assumed was four hours, for she didn’t have a watch, until she passed the estate where she had spent the last night on the way to Novii Domik and where Dimitri had returned the next day to get drunk.

She intended to stop at the other places where they had stopped before, for she had no money and would need food, and the servants knew her. They weren’t likely to deny her a meal, even though she was now alone. They might think it strange, her traveling alone, but she could spin a tale if she had to. But she wouldn’t spend the night at any of those estates. She didn’t dare. It would be too easy to get trapped if someone did come after her. And there were plenty of forests where she could bed down for a few hours’ sleep safely away from the road and any pursuers. Her pursuers might even pass her by, and that would serve just as well.

Right now she didn’t need to stop, had enough food to last until tomorrow, and wanted to put as much distance as she could between her and Novii Domik. She was also afraid to stop, afraid that if she got off the horse now, she wouldn’t have the will to get back on, or the ability for that matter. She would wait until night, when she
could rest and recuperate a little before facing another day of endless pain.

Katherine almost pulled the horse to a halt when it dawned on her what she had overlooked in her perfect plan. Night. She had forgotten that there was no night at this time of year, or very little of it. And there was no way she could keep on riding, even if she didn’t have a bruised, swollen back. She would have to stop, but she wouldn’t have the cover of darkness to help conceal her in the forest. She would have to go further into the forest, further away from the road, just to hide. A total waste of time, but what other choice did she have?

Several hours later, she finally left the road and found a sheltered spot in which to collapse, and she literally did just that, falling off the horse when her muscles refused to help her dismount gracefully. She didn’t even have enough stamina left to arrange her limbs in a more comfortable position, but lay exactly as she had fallen, mindful only of keeping the reins balled tight in her fist, since she couldn’t secure the horse properly, before she simply passed out.