Blood Ties (12 page)

His grandfather observed the man closely.

"Gold," the man said. "I will only take
gold."

"And those men?" his grandfather asked.

"They are my concern."

"They are witnesses."

The man spat into the ground. They watched him ride into
the darkness, stopping at one of the wagons. He barked an order, and they
watched the wagon move into sight, toward the cluster of men who rested near
the trees. The wagon moved slowly, meandering, as if the four horses who pulled
it were merely heading home to the joys of barn and stall. Dawn was just
beginning and the wagon's outline became clearer as it moved toward the apparitions
who lay helter skelter on the grass. There were more than a hundred men in
various stages of exhaustion and dishevelment.

Suddenly the wagon stopped and activity began. Canvas was
removed. They could see the outline of men and gun barrels, then the bark of
fire, spitting red, as three manned guns sprayed the resting men. A few screams
punctuated the staccato urgency of the gun's mechanism. Then, as quickly as
they had rumbled, the guns were silent, and the men stepped down off the wagon
and walked among the corpses, providing the coup de grace with pistol fire.
Then all four walked to where he, his father, and his grandfather stood
mounted. It had all happened swiftly with little time for reaction.

"Gold," the original negotiator told his
grandfather.

The old man jumped off his horse and walked with the
negotiator out of earshot. In a few moments he was back on his horse and they
were heading back to the house. Later the gold had been exchanged for the guns
and the bodies buried in a huge pit.

The guns were quickly warehoused by the Estonian workers,
after carving the "VK" symbol into the base of each weapon. At first
he had been surprised at his own reaction to these events. He had been
determined, once he had assessed his grandfather and those qualities which he
held important, to show little emotion. Cold courage was the unvoiced filial
demand. Charles sensed that his grandfather was always testing him, and he was
determined that he should confirm the old man's choice.

The great Russian retreat of 1915 was an unforgettable
lesson. The Germans, as predicted, had butchered the underequipped, poorly
trained and unmotivated armies of the Czar. It was a staggering defeat, marked
by desertion and suicide and a massive loss of weapons, many of which found their
way into the von Kassel warehouses, although with less drama than the original
cache. They could not build warehouses fast enough to house all the weaponry.
Even some of the German materials found their way into the warehouses. In many
cases, the weapons of both sides were made by the same manufacturers.

It was no surprise to see the Russian ordnance officers
beat a path to the von Kassel estates.

"We are re-equipping our reserve units," they
would say, still arrogant. The Czar himself had come to the front to rally his
forces and they were reassembling for additional slaughter.

"We will sell the asses back their own weapons,"
his grandfather chuckled as he saw them strutting in the family reception
rooms. Charles would be present at serious negotiations around the large table
in the chandeliered dining room.

"We will accept gold only."

"Gold? That is impossible."

"Then no sale."

"We could seize your warehouses."

"Seize them, then."

The men could not fathom such boldness. Von Kassels could
never be intimidated. The men fumed with exasperation, but, in the end, they
agreed. They had been ordered to get arms wherever they could. It would not be
politic to destroy one of their few sources.

"That, Charles, is the business of arms," his
grandfather would say. It had not changed since.

As his grandfather had predicted, things were different
after the Russians accepted a truce. The Bolsheviks exploited the Russian
defeat and soon the Czar had resigned to make way for a more democratic
government. The upheaval made the Estonians increasingly restless and divisions
formed to fight the Czar became the cadre of a local army. The country was in
turmoil and many of the German nobility were selling their lands and getting
out. The handwriting was on the wall.

Even in his memory, the events of those years merged into
fuzzy confusion. His sister Karla, who had been sent off to a German school in
1914, had got word back that she was about to be married to a German Count, a
pilot. Wolfgang had proved to be the disappointment everyone had expected. He
had left the country estate for Tallinn, where he had allied himself with the
burgeoning Bolshevik movement agitating for making Estonia a Bolshevik state.
Because Wolfgang's actions merely fulfilled his grandfather's expectations, they
did not create much of a trauma in the family.

"What could one expect," his grandfather had said
when he heard the news, dismissing it with contempt. Wolfgang was, after all,
his father's son.

In Charles' mind, events marked time. The demise of the
Czar and the ascension of the Bolsheviks to power in Russia was associated with
the decline of his grandfather's health. He had been vigorous, ruthless,
pulsating with power and strength. With each new day, he seemed to shrink, look
inward, his spirit ebbing with his physique. Evenings, when they lived on the
estate, he would be driven in the open coach, swathed in blankets, to the
family cemetery where he could be seen for hours, brooding, huddling in a
corner, the vapors of the cool evening misting from his mouth, looking at the
stone-studded tract under which lay the bodies of countless von Kassels.

Occasionally Charles would join his grandfather on these
nightly excursions. At the beginning, his grandfather would not speak and he
would sit beside him for the better part of an hour listening to the familiar
sounds of the country, the quiet naying of the horse, the cough of Serge, the
old driver, who would clear his throat and spit in the direction of the horse's
tail.

Only on one occasion did his grandfather reveal his
innermost thoughts to the grandson who sat beside him in the coach. Charles
would always remember that moonless night. The first hint of early winter had
rolled in on a biting icy breeze, although it was only late October. Because
even the stars were covered by a heavy canopy of clouds, they could barely make
out the outlines of the gravestones. Despite an occasional whistle of the wind
through the sparse trees that surrounded the high iron-spiked fence of the
cemetery, sounds carried clear in the night. His grandfather's breathing was
labored, indicating the first sign of the pneumonia that was to kill him a few
weeks later.

"Someday we will all rest here," Charles had
said. He had not meant to be profound, only to hear the reassuring sound of his
own voice.

"They will try to take it from us," his
grandfather said, lifting a bony hand from under the blankets and waving it
toward the cemetery. "They will take our land. Our fathers will lie among
strangers." He turned toward Charles, his old eyes searching the boy's
face in the darkness.

"I will not let them," Charles said, feeling
pride in his own bravado.

"I have been wondering if I have been worthy,"
his grandfather had said, ignoring his answer. "If I have been true to the
good brave Knights. Was it my courage that failed?"

"Your courage, Grandfather?" The idea seemed
preposterous.

"I come here looking for answers. And I see only
death, the end of everything." His grandfather looked into the black sky.
Tears were running down his cheeks.

"Why us?" he cried.

"I will never let it happen, Grandfather. They will
never destroy us. Never. I promise you." He had grabbed his grandfather's
gnarled hand and put it to his lips. The grandfather did not remove his hand.

"Of all of them, your legacy is the most painful,"
his grandfather said. The words were to ring in his ears all his life, goading
him.

His grandfather died a few weeks later and they buried him
in the family cemetery, another von Kassel laid to rest in the ground they had
earned with their blood. At his grave, Charles reiterated the promise he had
made that night.

"I will not let them."

His grandfather had not been dead a week and the house was
still in mourning. His sister Karla, pregnant now, had returned for the
funeral, staying on to be with the family. It was as if the spirit of the
household was snuffed out with his grandfather's death. Even his father, who
might have found freedom at last in his father's demise, seemed subdued. He
made his daily rounds of the lands and the warehouses, transacted business
listlessly. Nothing seemed to capture his interest.

They came with torches in the middle of the night. Every
man, woman and child in the villages in their lands seemed to have risen up and
filled the snow-covered grounds around the main house. The front row carried
banners, an odd concoction of symbols of Estonian nationalism and the hammer
and sickle. By then the Bolsheviks had assumed power in Russia and the Estonians were demanding independence led by their own native Reds.

"My God, they have come to burn us down," his
father said as he viewed the procession approaching. He had carried his clothes
downstairs and was dressing quickly. "Get dressed," he ordered
Charles, who had come running downstairs in his bedclothes. He pulled a gun off
one of the gun racks and filled the chamber with a clip of bullets. "Get
the women and the servants in the basement."

Actually, the servants were nowhere to be found. Petrified
with fear, the women moved quickly to the basement. His mother was hysterical,
but Karla, with her customary coolness, kissed him, whispering.

"Keep calm. They are pigs."

Standing beside his father, rifle in hand, Charles waited
on the porch in the glare of the torches observing the procession approach. The
crowd seemed loosely organized. Spokesmen had apparently been chosen. These
stood in the front rank, their faces bathed in the firelight, two men and a
woman. Their voices were harsher, louder above the din of the crowd. One of the
men began to speak and the crowd settled to listen. The speaker addressed
Charles and his father.

"It is the end of the von Kassels. The tyranny is
over. The people are awake now. We are holding your warehouse for the
provisional army. It is over. We demand that you leave without your
possessions. Your day is over, von Kassels." There was a roar of approval
from the crowd.

In the deafening sound, the blinding torchlight, Charles
was surprised at his lack of fear. He turned toward his father and smiled, as
if to offer the comfort of his own strength. Surprisingly, his father was also
smiling, showing a pose of courage that might have earned him his own father's
approbation. When the roar subsided, the man began again.

"You will leave this land now," the man demanded.
"Now. Or we will burn you out." Again the crowd roared with approval.

He heard his father clearly. One word. "Never."
And then the crack of the rifle and the spokesman fell like a stone at the feet
of the crowd, a bullet in his head. The sudden crack, the shock of seeing their
spokesman fall, momentarily quieted the crowd. They seemed paralyzed. The
sudden turn of events also froze Charles, except that his head had turned in
his father's direction. His father's eyes were shining. There was a look of
serenity on his face. But the tableau disintegrated like broken glass as people
pressed forward and seized him. The crowd moved as one. His father was thrust
into the forefront, in the center of the porch entrance.

"He is a murderer," a woman shouted. She had
stood beside the man who had been killed. Charles, who was held tightly by two
burly arms, still calm and fearless, watched the woman's face in the flickering
light. "There is enough Estonian blood on their hands. This Teutonic
butcher is no better than the rest. I demand his execution in the name of the
new Estonia." The crowd howled. A rope emerged and one of the crowd jumped
onto the porch and displayed the noose. The crowd cheered. The woman raised
both her hands to quiet them. A man appeared with another noose. The crowd
roared again. Watching his father, Charles noted his composure.

Then the nooses were thrown over the wooden crossbar
supporting the porch roof. Hands moved the circles of rope over their heads,
tightening them. Charles gasped for breath, but his father's composure never
wavered. Then the woman produced a knife; she grabbed a nearby torch and turned
one side of her face to the crowd, the light etching the crossed scar embedded
in her cheek. Petya! For the first time he felt fear. But it was the old fear,
the boy's fear. Then the knife flashed and the woman carved a cross in his
father's cheek. He did not utter a sound. The blood oozed out of the cuts. He
seemed to be welcoming the moment, relieved at last. Even when the crowd pulled
the rope and his father's feet left the ground, the spasm of death did not
contort his features. He simply expired, his head twisted to one side as if in
repose, the body swaying peacefully in death.

Perhaps it was the lack of any reaction that quieted the
crowd. Their revenge was a disappointment. It was his father's one great
moment. His grandfather would have been proud. By the time Petya turned her
attention to Charles, the spirit of the crowd had ebbed. He did not lower his
eyes when she looked at him. Her face was hard, the features thickened by age
and bitterness, but in the eyes he caught something of the old Petya, the
nursemaid, the protector. Watching him, she said nothing, moving the torch
towards his father's lifeless body. The flames licked at his clothes, igniting
them. Mesmerized, the crowd watched the body dancing in the flame as if it were
alive.

His father's body was quickly consumed by the flames, and
when they spread to the crossbar and the roof of the porch a great cheer went
up in the crowd. They began to rush around, putting the torch everywhere,
outhouses, carriages, the lattice work of the garden, everything. Watching the
madness, he continued to maintain his calm, as he struggled to loosen the rope
around his neck. But it was still stuck on the crossbar and the flames were
moving fast, igniting the rope. Then, suddenly, the pressure was relieved. A
knife blade flashed. Petya had cut the rope.