The Diamond Secret (8 page)

Screaming, Nadya jumped up and stared at him, aghast. "My hair! How could you?"

"You'd never have gotten those knots out. And the short bob is the latest thing in Paris and New York. I saw it in a magazine," Ivan said, defending his action.

With tears in her eyes, Nadya raced into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. Noisy sobs filled the apartment.

"That was a little brutal, don't you think?" Sergei criticized his friend.

"This is not a game!" Ivan said, his voice growing loud and agitated. "We have to find a way to make her presentable by the time we arrive in Paris, and we must do it by whatever means are necessary. Who would believe she was Anastasia with that awful hair?"

"A little kindness wouldn't kill you," Sergei argued.

Ivan stepped closer and lowered his voice. "That man she saw in the station," he began. "I think he was Secret Police."

"It's possible, I suppose," Sergei agreed. "Do you recall Rasputin's assistant?"

"I saw him once or twice during the Great War," Ivan said. "Sometimes he would stand on the balcony with Rasputin, beside the Imperial Family, during military parades and the like. What was his name?"

"I can't recall, but it occurred to me that he fit Nadya's description of the man at the station. Do you think he might have joined the Secret Police?" Sergei asked.

Ivan considered this. It certainly was possible. "Or he might still be working for agents of the Imperial Family, trying to track down Anastasia."

"True," Sergei agreed. "But perhaps he is a free agent working only for himself. The dowager empress is not the only one looking for Anastasia. Lenin has offered a reward for her return too. He doesn't want her leaving the country; she could be a powerful symbol for other Russians in exile to rally around. This new Communist government is not impervious to being overthrown. We will have to watch Nadya closely, for her safety."

"I've had the same thoughts," Ivan said as he crossed to the wardrobe and pulled out a large white shirt and a pair of his friend's trousers. "That's the other reason I cut her hair," he explained, laying out the clothing on the bed. "We'll all be safer if we disguise her as a boy."

"Safer from what?" Sergei questioned.

"From the Secret Police or anyone wanting to collect a reward from Lenin," Ivan said.

Sergei dropped his voice to a whisper. "By dressing her as a boy, do you think you're keeping yourself safe from your attraction to her?"

Ivan threw out his arm irritably, brushing off the remark. He might have grown to like this girl, but he was
not
attracted to her. He couldn't allow himself to be. It would ruin everything!

"Sergei, you really do say the stupidest things sometimes. Don't be an idiot!" he snapped.

CHAPTER TEN
   

In the Night Forest

As they traipsed from Moscow through the countryside of Russia, heading toward Germany on their way to France, Nadya was surprised to discover that she enjoyed life as a young man. It was freedom itself--no more hair to wash and tear a comb through; her clothing was loose and comfortable. Her walk was becoming bolder, with a hint of the swagger she'd so often observed in men; it was a way to ward off challenges to her "masculinity" from other young males who might be inclined to pick a fight with her.

The endurance and strength she'd developed during her year of hard, grueling work at The Happy Comrades served her well as they found itinerant day labor at ship docks, at cargo wharfs, or in fields, plowing the spring crops. They even found work swinging mallets to smash rocks in the employment of a builder of stone walls.

Nadya was strong enough to do the work alongside Ivan and Sergei, and every day she grew leaner and more muscular. It seemed to Nadya that they had, indeed, become "happy comrades." Working as equals to ensure their most essential needs--food, shelter, safety, and simple entertainment--had bonded them. Their shared goals and struggles had united the three-some in a way that she treasured.

Sergei, always so kind and upbeat, was like a brother to her, and even her initial up-and-down relationship with Ivan had now smoothed into one of friendship. Although they still spatted sometimes, it always was over quickly and their anger would swiftly abate. She could jolly Ivan out of a sour mood with a practical joke or a clever pun.

One evening, a month into their journey, as they made camp in the woods near the German border, Nadya bumped into Sergei while building their fire. He stared at her with surprise. "What is it?" she asked him.

"Your arms are rock solid," he remarked.

Proudly she rolled up the sleeve of her white shirt and flexed her biceps. "I love this life as a man," she told him honestly. "It's so free! I never want to go back to the confinement of being female."

She didn't like the distressed expression that came into his eyes. "Ivan!" he shouted.

Ivan had been collecting firewood in the forest but came running, tossing the wood he'd gathered as he blasted out of the trees. "What? What's happened?"

"Look at her arm!" Sergei demanded. "Flex it for him, Nadya."

With a grin, Nadya bent her arm, causing the muscle to bulge.

Ivan's eyes widened with exasperation. "You made me come running for that?"

"That is not the arm of a grand duchess," Sergei insisted. Taking Nadya's hand in his, he turned it palm up. "These calluses and those sunburned cheeks don't exactly make her look like a member of the aristocracy either."

"How do you propose that we live if she doesn't work?" Ivan challenged.

"I don't know, but we're on the German border; it won't be that long before we're in France. I've got to start training her to act aristocratically. As she is now, no one would even believe she'd even had a roof over her head, let alone lived in a palace. Nadya's looking more like a field hand than a grand duchess."

Ivan surveyed her, walking in a circle. "You're right," he agreed. "In many ways, she looks worse now than when we first found her."

"Precisely," Sergei said. "Back then she had a certain rough feminine appeal. She even had a natural delicacy. Now she looks like she was born to the hard work of the peasant class."

"Excuse me. I'm standing right here," Nadya irritably reminded them, "in case you forgot. I happen to like the way I look." These days, when she caught her image reflected in a lake while bathing or in the shining steel bumper of a harvester while working, she saw a young woman who stood tall with the health of days spent in the open air. There were no more dark circles under her eyes. The relentless sun had rid her complexion of its pasty pallor and had even splashed freckles across her cheeks. She did not miss the smoke-filled nights or the greasy food of The Happy Comrades Tavern. This hard but free life of honest labor was much better than the life of wasting away above the tavern, the life of scrambling hand-to-mouth on the street, or the life of squalid horrors she'd seen at the mental asylum. These were the happiest days she could recall.

"From now on, one of us will find work and get food while the other stays at the campsite and trains her," Sergei proposed.

"But I want to work," Nadya objected.

"You're right, that's what we will have to do," Ivan said to Sergei, ignoring Nadya's protest. "You train her in aristocratic manners and I will teach her how to be like Anastasia. We'll alternate days." He studied her once more. "No more haircuts," he declared.

"I like my hair short like this," she insisted.

"No. It's served its purpose. Now you've got to grow it long enough so you can style it."

"Since when did you become an authority on style?" she taunted. "Who do you think you are?
Monsieur
Ivan of Paris?"

She placed her hand on her hip and threw back her head in a mock imitation of Ivan as a stylist. "I will make you look divine. The time I have spent in the Russian Army has made me an expert on style. I will give you a Russian military cut--so chic! I call it the Red Army Bob."

"Very funny," Ivan replied dryly. "But listen to me. It's important. The Romanov sisters cared about fashion. The czar kept them in traditional, proper Russian attire, but Empress Marie sent the girls the latest style magazines from Europe. I found them all over the place at The House of Special Purpose."

"The House of Special Purpose": as Ivan spoke the words something went cold within Nadya. How ominous it sounded. When they named the place, they must have already known what its "special purpose" would be. Why else would they have called it that?

In the tavern, she'd heard men speak of the Romanovs with hatred, spitting out their names contemptuously, saying that they'd gotten no less than what they deserved for living so lavishly while the common people starved. Nadya also knew how it felt to have hunger gnaw at her insides like a raging animal. Hunger like that could turn a person savage with desperation. It was why she'd endured Mrs. Zolokov's abuse--because anything was better than starvation.

And yet...

When she saw photos of the Romanov family, she could not find it within herself to hate them. The little boy, Alexei, the czarevitch, was the youngest. He was rumored to have a sickness that would cause him to bleed to death if he were to get cut; he looked so sweet and fragile. The three oldest sisters were so elegantly beautiful in lacy white gowns with their blond hair swept up onto their regal heads, and the youngest one, Anastasia, was so playful and bright-eyed. All they'd ever known was privilege. How could they know their lives of luxury were an insult to those suffering in poverty?

"I don't want to be Anastasia Romanov!" Nadya blurted.

"What?" Ivan cried.

Unexpectedly, tears sprang to her eyes. "I don't want the life of a girl who could be extinguished at the whim of angry people, men and women she'd never even met, who don't know or love her."

Nadya sobbed and began to tremble. A warning sounded in the back of her mind--was this the madness, this passionate flame of wild emotion that had compelled her parents to dispose of her in the mental asylum?
Watch it,
the small voice of rationality warned inside her head.
Don't let it burn out of control or you'll scare off the only friends you have.

It was no use! Nadya was being swept up by a wave of feeling that she felt helpless to harness. "What kind of people kill a girl who has done nothing but make up entertainments with funny characters or play harmless pranks on the servants? A girl who wanted nothing but to play catch with her little dog in the sunshine, but wound up watching everyone she ever loved murdered before she was also riddled with bullets?"

"How do you know these things?" Sergei asked.

"Because she was a girl and I was a girl. But why should I want
this
girl's life? Tell me!"

"It would be an easy life, a luxurious one," Ivan offered. "Anastasia had the most lavish existence imaginable! And what did it get her? What?" Nadya shouted through her tears. "You tell me why I should do this; for what possible reason should I want this Anastasia's wretched life?"

Overcome with emotion, Nadya couldn't stand to look at them; Sergei gazed at her, incredulous at her outburst, while Ivan had his back turned as though disgusted.

Nadya was seized with an overpowering need to get away from them. With tears clouding her vision, she ran into the forest, pushing aside branches from her path as she went. With no thought to staying on a course or noting her direction, she ran until her foot slipped on a loose rock and flew up, launching her forward.

Nadya is in a voluminous, floor-length white nightgown, padding barefoot down a dark hallway. Her hand is outstretched against the wall for guidance as she heads toward a brilliant beam of light coming from the room at the end of this hall. She stops just short of the light and peers into an ornate, high-ceilinged room of murals and opulent furniture abundantly trimmed in gold.

The king and queen of Russia, Czar Nicholas and Czarina Alexandra, stand in the middle of the room. Nadya has seen their photos many times and recognizes them immediately. She realizes she must be in the Imperial
85
Palace. How did she get in? Why is she in a nightgown?

The czar wears a white military-style jacket with golden braids and epaulets at the shoulders. He has on riding pants and boots, as though he might jump on a horse and ride off into battle at any moment. He has kind eyes. Alexandra is resplendent in a brocade cape lined with ermine fur, worn over a sparkling, full-length mauve gown.

The royal couple speaks to a large, hunched man in a filthy black cloak; he is a vile, ugly creature with a bulbous nose reddened from drinking and long, greasy black hair that clumps into sinewy tendrils. "I will not be dictated to!" he shouts, his tone threatening.

She knows who he is from newspaper photos--Grigory Rasputin! But Rasputin is dead.

All of them are dead. Is she seeing ghosts?

Then she reminds herself that she is in a dream. Anything can happen in a dream.