Tempting Fate (6 page)

Irina rose and began methodically to remove her clothes. They hung on her now, almost as shapeless and as colorless as the garments worn by the market women. She shivered in the cold, wishing for a moment that she could share the warmth of a snug, crowded izba that housed the peasants who worked her land. She had been in one of those two-room cottages last year and had thought then that it was a poor place to be, and had felt sympathy for the poor farmer whose family lived there. Now, that isba seemed desirable as the citadels of Heaven. She laid her bodice aside and unhooked her skirt; taking it up from the floor; she placed it over the back of her chair. Until last October, she had never picked up any garment; there had been maids to do such work. For a few weeks these minor chores had been curiously comforting, providing her small tasks that demanded little of her, yet kept her from thinking too much. In time the novelty had worn off and the care of her clothes, along with the preparation of diminishing amounts of food, the drawing of water for washing and occasional bathing, the clearing away of ice and snow around the house, and the chopping of the last few cords of wood, had become part of the mindless, irritating routine that could no longer block her memories or offer solace in escape.

Her nightgown felt clammy, subtly contaminated by the damp that seeped through the dasha. Irina reached for her velvet housecoat and pulled that on as well. The small fire in the grate would be cold before morning and she would be grateful for the extra warmth of the heavy garment. She turned back the covers, smoothing the grayed sheets and wishing that she had more soap and another bottle of bluing to spare for all her linen. There were stains on the sheets, and she frowned as she did a quick calculation: her courses would come again in a week, and she had no rags to spare for it. She looked at the sheet and sighed. Perhaps it would be best to tear up this sheet so that the others might be spared. Irina got into bed slowly, reaching for her brush on the nightstand as she settled back against the pillows and began to loosen her hair.

When she had completed sixty strokes, she became aware of a tapping at the window. Apprehensively she told herself that it was a frozen branch on the glass, nothing more. The tapping resumed, this time in distinctly three-four rhythm.
TONK
-tap-tap
TONK
-tap-tap. Irina put her brush aside and peered at the windows. It was quite dark out, and even the little light the low-burning kerosene lantern provided turned the windows to mirrors. She could see nothing but the occasional bright reflection from the frost-ferns climbing the panes.
TONK
-tap-tap
TONK
-tap-tap
TONK
-tap-tap.

Stilling the muted shriek of fear in her mind, Irina got out of bed. Surely, she thought, no one seeking to break into the house would announce himself in waltz time. She crossed the room toward the window where she heard the sound, and was startled as she recalled that this was the one window that did not have trees or flowers growing beside it. For an instant she faltered, tempted to return to her bed, blow out the light, and rush away through her empty, freezing house. The impulse was gone almost at once. She reached the window and her hand closed on the stiff latch. “Who’s there?” she called softly.

“Ragoczy,” was the answer.

Irina stifled a gasp. Leonid’s foreign friend! She pressed her hand to the window. “A moment. Just a moment. The latch is hard to open. It’s…” She took the latch in both hands, pushing against the little curved lever.

Ragoczy nodded and half-waved to indicate he understood, then clung to the rickety trellis beside the window. He would have liked to have the remnants of vines on the fan-shaped wooden structure for what little extra stability they might lend, but apparently there had been nothing planted below for several seasons and the trellis was bare. His face stung and his hands were febrilely cold in the icy rain mixed with snow blowing on the sharp gusts out of the north. His coachman’s cloak was torn at the shoulder, its sable collar bedraggled, his high black boots scuffed and muddied. He closed his dark eyes and leaned his forehead against the nearest pane of glass, his whole body quivering with fatigue.

The latch grated, wailed, then popped open and the window swung outward on protesting hinges. Irina held out her hand to him. “Count. You must come in.” Fleetingly she tried to imagine how he had got there, on the trellis outside this second-story window, but this passed. It was obvious that he was there, and certainly he would not have attempted so risky a climb if he were not desperate. She took a step back, astonished at the force of the wind, and waited, thinking that in happier times she would have been affronted to find this man in her room.

“I am grateful, Duchess,” he said as he came into the room, then reached to pull the window shut again. “You’re very good to let me in. I would have understood if you had decided not to.”

She tried to match his aplomb. “I doubt that soldiers would go to the trouble of knocking on my window.” Her mouth pulled down at the corner, but she extended her hand to him.

He raised her fingers to his lips. “I am aware that this is an unorthodox manner to pay a visit, but the circumstances…”

She was able to smile a bit at this ironic gallantry, and her fear of him subsided. “These are unorthodox times, Count.” She recalled seeing a village church in flames, its onion dome like a falling comet; her smile faded.

He bowed to her, wholly correct. “Irina Andreivna, I thank you from my heart. I had not expected to see any kindness in any part of this chaotic land. You surprise me.”

“I have seen little kindness as well, Count. It is rarer than I used to suppose.” She clasped her hands, then, with a conscious effort, let them fall. “Would you mind if I asked why you came here?”

“What right have I to mind?” He said it lightly enough, but there was an unspoken distress in his words. “I have been traveling for a considerable time, and it was becoming difficult to go on. I hoped that I might find some sort of refuge here, but I did not know you had the same notion.”

“This is hardly a refuge, Count,” she said, making no attempt to conceal her bitterness. “At best, it is a tomb.”

Ragoczy gave her a single, intent look. “And you are walled up in it?”

“I have told myself that what I’ve wanted is to keep safe until the worst is over, but that’s not so.” She sighed, the air shuddering out of her, as she lifted her hands, partly in supplication, partly in resignation. “What else can I do? Where is there left to go?”

“You have friends, Irina.”

“And where are they, these friends? They are hiding, as I am. They are trapped, timorous, afraid. How might they welcome me? I have nothing to offer them but helplessness.”

“You took me in,” he pointed out with such gentleness that she could hardly bring herself to look at him.

“That’s a different matter. You’re not…” She turned away from him, staring at the kerosene lantern, thinking that she would soon have to use candles at night, and then, when they were gone, there would be darkness.

“Leonid?” It was tactless to ask, and Ragoczy knew it. If the Duchess had not mentioned her husband, it was because he was missing or dead. He could not bring himself to keep silent. “What of him?”

She shook her head, the tiniest motion. “After he left, when he did not come back, word was sent that we should return to St. Petersburg—I will
not
call it Petrograd. He was hurt. He could not come with us, and I found that I could not leave. None of the trains were running properly, and then, after Evgeny went to help the Guards and … was shot…” Her mouth trembled.

“Your son and Leonid?” Ragoczy said, his dark, compassionate eyes on her. “I had not known. I am truly, deeply sorry, Irina Andreivna.”

“Oh, not just Evgeny and Leonid. All of them. They’re all dead. Ludmilla, Ilya, and Piotr, too. Ludmilla and Ilya died of fever and congested lungs. There was no physician to tend them, only a nurse, and she said that this disease is becoming common. For her there was nothing unusual in their deaths. After they became ill, I could not move them.” She was speaking faster, her voice hushed, as if by keeping her private disasters a secret she might lessen them. “Piotr was taken by soldiers. I had sent him away from the house because of Ludmilla—Ilya wasn’t really ill yet—and a troop of revolutionary irregulars came upon him. Sasha, my groom, found him that evening. They had … spitted him on their sabers.” Automatically she crossed herself. Her face was vacant now, and she could not bear to look at her husband’s foreign friend.

“I have never learned anything to say at these moments,” Ragoczy said after Irina fell silent. “No words are adequate. For what little consolation it may be, I share your grief.”

Her hands clenched abruptly. “How can you?” The rage that swept through her was more startling to her than to him. “
How can you?
What were they to you that you can say that?” She rushed at him, hand up, fingers hooked, grief-driven. She seized handfuls of his wet hair, tugging at them in her frenzy.

They were much the same height, and her assault might have, toppled them, but Ragoczy was more powerful than might be supposed, and he held her up as she screamed. She was hardly aware of him at all as she railed at her dead for their desertion, and she did not resist his strength. Gently he pulled her fingers from his hair, then put his arms around her, holding her as her shrieks turned to shattering sobs. “Weep for them, Irina,” he whispered to her, stroking her tumbled hair. “I envy you your tears: I have only sorrow.”

Gradually her outburst passed. The cold room, desolate in the dim light, once more closed in around her. She wiped ineffectually at her eyes and then noticed that Ragoczy’s cloak was soaking wet and that her housecoat was damp. “Forgive me,” she muttered, her voice thickened in the aftermath of her crying. “I don’t know what…”

“There is nothing to forgive, Irina Andreivna,” he assured her quickly, and opened his arms to release her.

This was the time for a few socially correct phrases that would absolve them from any possible embarrassment, but Irina was too worn to utter them. She took a few steps away from Ragoczy, then turned back to him. “You’re welcome here, Count, for as long as—”

Ragoczy interrupted her. “Irina Andreivna, you need not trouble yourself. I do not want to intrude.” He shrugged. “I had hoped that this house would be empty, and then my coming might not disturb anyone. Clearly that’s not the case.”

“These are hardly times for standing on ceremony.” Her face was wan and her voice listless. “You said it has been difficult.”

He did not know what he should tell her. The cell in the Monastery of the Victory where he had been imprisoned would provide her no comfort. His escape—a fluke—was not a tale for a woman with so much to mourn. The details of his uncertain journey: the horse he had stolen was lame and it had taken all his special concentration to master the animal and give it the impetus to go on. After two days, the gelding’s suffering had been too much, and Ragoczy had put a bullet into its head once the worst of his hunger had been assuaged. The rest of the way he had come on foot, through marshland and fens, avoiding villages and other settlements, crossing rail lines only at night, surviving on the few stray farm animals he had come across or had been able to attract. What point was there in telling this bereaved woman any of that? He held out his hand to her. “I have come through much worse, Irina.”

“Then my heart aches for you,” she said in a stifled tone. “As it aches for my family.” She made her way across the room with the caution of a blind person, feeling her way with care. When she reached the old-fashioned chaise, she sank down upon it, one hand held against her face to shield herself from his eyes.

“Duchess,” Ragoczy began, not approaching her, “tell me what you would prefer: I will leave, if that is what you wish, but I admit that I hope you will let me remain, at least for a little time.”

Irina lifted one shoulder.

“Do not let me offend you, Irina,” he said more forcefully. “You have already done me great service and it is lamentable that I should require more.”

“We all require more,” she said as she turned toward him. “I am very much alone here. Most of the servants are gone, and those that remain are less than useless. I have nothing to offer you, except the shelter of the roof. If that is enough … I confess that I long for company.” Her laughter was brief and shaky. “Absurd, is it not, Count, that at such time I should wish for the banter I used to deplore. No one would think it strange if I wanted to retire to a convent for the rest of my days, but I don’t think I could endure that. Leonid always said that you are erudite and intriguing. Would it be too much to ask of you that you remain here—it needn’t be long, if that is your concern—and converse with me?” She was weak with wanting him to agree. Until she saw him, she had been drowning in sadness; now she felt the first, tenuous stirrings of life in her. “If I keep to myself much longer, I may well go mad.” It was a danger she had not admitted, even to herself.

Ragoczy listened to her, studying her as she spoke. “If you truly desire my company, I will be most honored to oblige you, Duchess, and believe myself remarkably fortunate.” He reached up to unfasten the frogs of his cloak.

“I would prefer that the rest of the household…” she said impetuously, and broke off in confusion.

“… be unaware of my presence?” he finished for her as he draped the sodden cloak over the end of her dresser.

“Yes.” She was pleased he said it for her, as it saved her the shame, but felt compelled to explain further. “In these times, well, the danger … it is not a matter of discretion, precisely, but I am fairly certain we are watched, and if it were known that…”

Ragoczy nodded. “I saw a man on patrol near the izbi. I didn’t recognize the uniform, but he had an insignia on his sleeve and he carried a rifle.” He did not add that the man had been half-drunk and whistling as he made his rounds this freezing night.

Irina put shaking hands to her head. “Oh, God! What more do they want of me? They have had so much. If they want my life, then let them come and take it, and be done with it.”