The Ocean of Time (36 page)

My girls. My beautiful, unthought-of girls. And as I stand there, surrounded by them, looking from one to the next, I vow that I will do everything in my power to protect them. That I would give my life a thousand times over to let them live and be happy.

For I’m not a stupid man, and in that strange, wonderful moment of sublime and utter bliss, I am aware that such joy has its darker side, and that now, more than ever, I am vulnerable; that I have become in that instant a hostage to Fate and Time and, best and worst of all, to Love. A dark and overpowering love.

I wake beside her in the night and, rolling over on to my elbow, look down at her shadowed form. She is naked, the thin cotton sheet covering her legs and stomach.

I feel like waking her, simply to make love to her again, only I’m loath to disturb her sleep, for she looks so peaceful, so very happy in her dreams.

I blow a kiss, then gently climb from the bed and walk over to the window to sit there on the sill, looking out across the valley towards the village and the barn. This is mine. Everything I see, and more besides. Cherdiechnost. My estate, purchased in my name. My little foothold in the realms of time.

Untouched
, I think, and wonder how that’s so, for I know the Russians have targeted me elsewhere. But this feels safe, and yet dreamlike, for everything I want is here. Everything and more.

Throwing on a gown, I walk silently through, looking in at their bedrooms. Natalya and Irina share a room just down the hall. Next door are Anna and Martha, and in a small room, on her own in a hand-carved cot that I’m sure is Alexander’s work, is my darling Zarah. I stand above her, looking down, in awe at her childish beauty. She lays on her side, her hair messed up and sweaty in sleep, her tiny thumb in her mouth, and I know I am in love – just as much in love with her and her sisters as I ever was with her mother. Yet how can that be so? For what I feel for Katerina swallows worlds. So how can there be room for more? And yet there is. Room for each one of these five small treasures.

I wipe my eyes and turn. Katerina is in the doorway, watching me. She smiles, then comes across, unembarrassed by her nakedness. Her breasts are pendulous and heavy, the nipples hard.

‘Come back to bed,’ she says. ‘We’ve catching up to do.’

I smile, then briefly turn back, looking down at my baby-child again. ‘I should have known.’

‘Known?’

‘How beautiful they’d be. So like their mother.’

I turn back, meeting her eyes, and find a look there that I’ve not seen before. Not just love for me, but … I don’t know. It’s hard to say what it is exactly, only I know that she would not be anywhere else, or with anyone else, than here and now, with me.

I reach out and take her hands and draw her gently close. ‘You know what?’

‘What?’

‘I think I’m dreaming.’

She smiles. ‘Then keep dreaming, Otto. Don’t ever stop.’

Alexander Alexandrovich is sitting on a tuft of grass outside the front door, waiting for me as I emerge early that next morning, looking much as though he’s been there all night.

I grin at him, amused by his enthusiasm, then throw out my arm, pointing towards the workshop.

‘Come, then, Alexander! The cart!’

His face lights and he leaps up, hurrying to be at my side as we walk down the gentle slope towards the barn. It’s a beautiful morning, made all the more so by the fact that I am here and now, Katerina asleep in my bed, my children …

I stop dead, looking to my companion, a broad grin on my face.

‘
You
have children, Alexander.’

‘Yes, Meister?’

‘Do you love them?’

Alexander blushes, then nods reluctantly, as if it is unmanly to speak of such things. Yet this is new to me – totally outside of my experience. Yesterday I had no children, but today …

Today the whole world is transformed. Made fresh and new and bright and full of promise.

I laugh, in such good humour that I decide, there and then, to hold a feast, that very evening.

‘Meister?’

‘Yes, Alexander Alexandrovich?’

He gestures towards the workshop. ‘The cart?’

And so we go and see it, and a fine piece of work it is, for which I reward him. Only I don’t stay long, Returning to the house, I wake Katerina and ask her who I should see to arrange the feast.

Dressing quickly, she summons the steward, a short yet muscular man named Pavlenko. Igor Pavlenko. He is extremely pleased to see me, grinning like an idiot, yet when I tell him what I want, he is instantly serious and claps his hands and has a dozen peasants running about within minutes, each with a whole list of things to do.

‘Your father,’ I say, turning to Katerina again. ‘We mustn’t forget to invite your father.’

Her face clouds, and for a moment I think I’ve made a real gaffe, that he’s dead. But it isn’t that.

‘He’s out of town,’ she says. ‘He went to Tesov three weeks back. He’ll be so disappointed when he finds out he missed out on a feast.’

‘Maybe he’s back. It’s not that long a journey. Four, five days at most. I’ll send someone to see if he’s home.’

But Katerina’s not so sure. ‘He’d have come over, if he were back. He always does. Why, he almost lives here these days. The girls spoil him so.’

I smile at that. At least I’ve made my father-in-law happy. And that, in Russia, is no small accomplishment.

‘Let’s send someone anyway, just to be sure. And your mother …?’ I stop, knowing that this time I
have
made an error. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say gently. ‘I didn’t know.’

She pushes the door closed, then turns to me. ‘We need to talk,’ she says, very matter-of-factly. ‘If you’re not to make … elementary mistakes. You need to know what’s been happening.’

I reach out and hold her a moment, feeling her face against my shoulder. ‘When did she …?’

‘Six years back. It was winter. She was very ill. A lot of people were. There was a poor harvest that year. Anyway, we thought she’d pulled through, only …’

For a moment we hug, saying nothing, then I kiss the top of her head. ‘I’m sorry. I really liked her.’

She smiles up at me sadly. ‘You were at her funeral. You know, it’s really odd, all this. It’s happened before, but … not like this.’

‘I’m out of sequence, huh?’

Her smile broadens. ‘Very much. That business with the girls … What
did
you feel?’

I stare back into her eyes. ‘It was like the first time I saw you. I was …
overwhelmed.
’

She kisses me. ‘You’re such a good father to them. Or will be.’ She grins. ‘Back in the past.’

‘And in the future, too, I hope.’

Yet it has to be, surely? For them even to exist must mean I’ve been there, in that past, which for me, of course, is still in the future.

I speak to Alexander Alexandrovich, and he harnesses a horse to the new cart and sets off to bring Razumovsky, if he’s there, and – so he says – to give the cart a good ‘test’. Only when he says ‘test’, he uses the German word
versuch
, meaning ‘experiment’, and it makes me wonder what other little seeds I have sown in this place.

While he’s gone, I sit with Katerina in the kitchen, talking, enjoying the attentions of my daughters who, one by one, come down from their beds to slowly fill that big, sunlit room.

But let me pause. Even to
have
a kitchen is this age is something. For this is, remember, the thirteenth century, and nowhere, outside of castles and palaces and monastery refectories, do they have such things as kitchens. Cooking over an open fire’s the thing. But I have brought a degree of innovation to this place. Nothing that can’t be found somewhere in this age, of course – nothing anachronistic – but it is certainly unusual, and the servants love its ‘sophistication’, its ‘modernity’ and take pride in working here.

Those servants now appear as if from nowhere to prepare breakfast, and like Pavlenko, they are delighted by my return, embracing me and clapping my back heartily or gently touching my cheek – this from the older women – so that after a while I begin to feel like the Prodigal Master, even though they might as well be strangers for what I remember of them.

At Katerina’s prompting, I ask them questions, and soon I begin to get a feel of the close-knit web of lives that exists in this place.

By now, Martha is encamped in my lap, her head against my shoulder, the simple physical presence of her there – her childish warmth – making me feel drowsy. And on
her
lap is one of the seven cats we own – Nikita, it appears – a fat, grey animal that looks as if it’s swallowed an extremely large rodent.

Just after midday, Alexander Alexandrovich returns, the cart filled with overflowing crates and baskets and stoppered pitchers. They’re from Katerina’s father, and the news is that he’s home from Tesov and coming along later. And there’s more … only Alexander Alexandrovich has been sworn to secrecy by Razumovsky.

‘Go and work, Alexander,’ I order him, knowing that unless I do Katerina will pester him until he gives up his precious knowledge. ‘I’ll see to the cart.’

He hurries away, relieved.

I look to Katerina. ‘What do you think? What could he possibly have brought back from Tesov?’

The answer’s obvious to us both. Tesov is north-east of us – a trading post that specialises in only one thing.

‘Furs!’ she says excitedly. ‘He’s bought the girls their own furs!’

But we’re going to have to wait and see. There’s much to do, and we’ve barely finished getting things ready – setting out the great trestle tables in the main field – when Razumovsky arrives in his troika, even as evening falls.

He’s not alone. As he steps down, he turns and puts out his hand, helping down a young, blond-haired woman of a startlingly pale complexion. She gives a frightened smile and pulls her dark furs tighter about her.

A slave
, I think.
He’s bought himself a slave to keep his bed warm at night.

And who can blame him? Only I glance at Katerina and see the guarded, almost hostile expression in her face, not to speak of the troubled looks on the faces of my girls, who have formed a line beside her, waiting to welcome their
dyedooshka
home.

But Razumovsky seems oblivious to these undercurrents. Striding towards me, he embraces me, almost lifting me from my feet.

‘Otto! So
good
to have you back! Travel is clearly good for you! You look a good five years younger than when you set off!’

And, releasing me, he turns and puts an expansive arm out towards the pale young woman. He is drunk, of course.

‘Katerina, Otto, girls … Please welcome my wife, Birgitta.’

Drunk, yes, and stupid. Stupid not to realise what waves this whim of his will cause. Insensitive, too, but that’s his style. In that, I think, he’s
typically
Russian. Katerina’s indrawn breath is audible, yet her father seems not to hear it. But she is not alone in being shocked. The girl is barely twenty, if she’s that, a good ten to fifteen years Katerina’s junior – and she will have to call her ‘mother’.

Before he can say another word, I grab his arm and drag him through, into the house, slamming the door behind me.

‘Your
wife
?’

Razumovsky grins. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’

I want to punch him. ‘Can’t you see what you’ve done, Mikhail?’

He stares at me, puzzled.

‘Did you even begin to think what Katerina would feel, putting that woman – that
child
– in her mother’s place?’

‘Otto?’

‘And your granddaughters? Did you think what this would do to them? How
upset
they’d be?’

‘But—’

‘No.’ And I’m furious now, having worked myself up into a rage. ‘All you thought of was your dick!’

Razumovsky opens his mouth, then closes it again, considering my last statement.

‘She is good, Otto. A good woman. Her mother—’

‘Her
mother
?’

He lowers his voice. ‘Her mother was my lover, you understand, in Tesov. I would go and spend a month with her, every summer, these past five years. But this year she died. Her daughter … I promised to look after her.’

‘Look after her, fine, but
marry
her? Bring her into your
home
?’

I’m conscious that I’m shouting, and that my voice is probably carrying out on to the porch, where Katerina and my daughters and half the household staff are standing, listening. I make an effort to calm myself, but I really am outraged by what he’s done.

‘You dumb-arsed Russian bastard!’

Razumovsky is astonished by my outburst. He shakes his head, then, unexpectedly, roars with laugher.

‘You think this affects anything, Otto? You think Katerina would
allow
it? No, I am only being kind to the girl, and besides …’ his voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper, ‘she is a real wildcat beneath the sheets.’

I try to stare him out, to make him feel ashamed of himself, but Razumovsky has no shame. He shrugs, then turns his back on me, searching beneath the worktop for a flask of something. He emerges a moment later, clutching a flagon of red wine and, uncorking it, takes a mouthful.

‘So how was your trip, Otto?’

He has forgotten. Barely ten seconds have passed and he has already dismissed what I’ve said to him.

‘That woman—’

‘Is a goddess,’ he says, wiping his hand across his beard.

Walking past him, I throw open the door. The porch is empty. They have all gone. I turn back.

‘Mikhail …’

He staggers out, clutching the flagon. ‘Yes, my boy?’ And he puts his arm around my shoulders.

I cannot stay angry. Razumovsky is what he is, and he’s probably right about Katerina. Only he has done this family harm by marrying the girl.

He looks about him at the empty porch, a look of comic astonishment on his face. ‘Where
are
they?’

‘In the great field,’ I say. ‘You know, the feast?’

‘Then lead on,’ and he takes another, longer drink from the flagon then wipes his hand across his beard again, belches manfully and grins at me. ‘It’s so
good
to be home, don’t you think?’