The Diamond Secret (9 page)

"We appreciate all you have done for our son, Father Grigory." Czar Nicholas speaks in a conciliatory way. "But I must insist that you keep a proper distance from the girls and their nursemaids from now on. Sura has complained that you come to do prayers with the girls when they are already in their nightgowns. They are not children anymore."

"Sura?" Rasputin questions.

"The girls' nurse," the czarina explains.

"Do you say this as well?" Father Grigory challenges her.

She cowers a little. "I know you are without blame," she says to soothe him, despite her obvious uneasiness, "but you visit the grand duchesses in their bedchambers when they
86
are not dressed to receive company, and it causes talk."

"Let them talk! The name of Grigory Rasputin is known throughout Russia!" he bellows with rapturous grandiosity. "Everywhere, I am known as a holy man and mystic! You have seen my powers for yourself. I shall go back to St. Petersburg if I am not wanted."

"No!" the czarina cries. "You must not!"

"Ha!" he shouts triumphantly. "You know no other can stem the bleeding that ravages your boy, the future emperor."

"And for this, we are so very thankful," Czarina Alexandra assures him nervously.

"If I cannot visit the girls, how am I to tend to their immortal souls?" Rasputin challenges.

A man dressed in a black cape and black trousers approaches Grigory Rasputin. He is short but strongly built and has a twisting scar across his pale face.

That scar...

Nadya is suddenly in the Trans-Siberian train station. The man with the scar is chasing her.

It's a dream! It's a dream,
she tells herself urgently.

But her terror is so real!

There is no one else in the station to help her. It's completely empty. The scarred man snatches at her, but each time she manages to duck away.

"I want the diamonds," the scarred man shouts, momentarily halting his pursuit. "They belong to me."

Nadya is still barefoot and in a white nightgown; her hair is no longer short but long and wavy. "Leave me alone. I don't know where they are. I don't!"

"I will have those diamonds," the man screeches, lunging
at her.

She turns to run from him, and she hits a solid black wall. The stench of body odor tells her it is no inanimate obstacle. Looking up, she faces the sneering visage of Grigory Rasputin. Before Nadya can react, he seizes her shoulders in a crushing grip.

Nadya screams until the sound of her terror fills the station with a white noise so intense it becomes visible as a cloud of blinding illumination that obliterates everything.

"Nadya! Nadya!"

The all-encompassing white snapped into utter blackness.

Staring dazedly into the abyss of nothingness, Nadya began to see silvery forms gradually taking shape before her eyes; first the ovals of eyes appeared, then the slanting ridge of a nose. "Ivan?" Nadya asked the disembodied form hovering in the blackness above her.

"Thank goodness you're okay. I've been looking for you for hours. How'd you get down here? Are you hurt?"

"Where am I?" Nadya asked. Ivan's arm was around her now, and the solidness of and heat from his body was reassuring.

"You're at the bottom of some kind of ravine. I used my last match, or else I'd show you. You must have fallen and rolled down here. When I spotted you sprawled on the ground, I thought you were dead."

Shaken by this news, Nadya bowed her head and covered her face with her hands. "Oh God--I don't want to be dead."

Ivan tightened his hold around her. "No. No. Don't be dead. I'm so happy you're not dead." He kissed the top of her head. "Definitely don't be dead."

In the darkness, Nadya tilted back her head and reached up her hand until her fingers contacted the smooth surface of his lips.

Tenderly, he kissed her fingertips.

Then Ivan pulled her closer and sought out Nadya's lips with his own, kissing her gently at first, and then with growing passion. Nadya returned his kiss, somehow aware that all these days of traveling together had been leading them to this moment.

Ivan stroked Nadya's hair tenderly and then stood. Taking her hand, he drew her to her feet. "Do you feel well enough to walk?" he asked.

"I think so. Do you know the way back?"

Ivan hesitated uncertainly. "Not really," he admitted. "Let's see what we can find."

CHAPTER ELEVEN
   

Lessons in Royalty

By the time Nadya and Ivan finally had found their way back to the campsite, dawn's first rays were breaking. Sergei sat by the dying embers of their campfire. When he saw that they were back, he rushed to them. Thank goodness they'd returned. He'd been so worried!

Alarmed by the purple bruise on Nadya's forehead and the bump beneath it, Sergei reached out to touch her but then drew back, worried he might hurt her further. "What happened?" he asked.

"She fell," Ivan answered for her.

Nadya tapped the bruise and then cringed. "I had the most terrifying dream," she confided, and then, leaning against a boulder, went on to relay it to them.

Sergei looked to Ivan, his eyes full of questions. "She dreamed of Rasputin?"

"The whole country has nightmares about that charlatan," Ivan replied. "Did you know that Rasputin was not even his real name? It was a label given to him by the people of his village. It means something like 'dissolute' or 'disreputable.' Luckily, he's dead."

"From what I hear they had to poison him, shoot him, and then drown him before he would finally die," Sergei recalled.

"But he is gone?" Nadya was eager to confirm.

"That's what they say," Ivan told her. "We can only hope it's so. You know who he was, don't you?"

"I know what I've heard people say."

"But you've never met him?" Sergei pressed.

"How would I have?"

"You had a life before the asylum," he reminded her.

"A life at the Imperial Palace?" she questioned skeptically. "In my dream I was at the palace."

"I saw him once when I was a boy," Ivan said in a somber tone. "He was a bully and he smelled."

"When you drove the Imperial Family alongside your father?" Nadya said, remembering Ivan's story.

"Yes, then." He stuck to his lie.

"The man from the train station was in my dream too," Nadya said.

Sergei looked at her sharply. "This man with the scar, you dreamed he was at the palace? You're sure it was him?"

"Yes, in the dream he was at the palace. I remember his hideous scar," she said. "It was probably just a crazy dream," Nadya decided. "The mind can concoct wild stories."

"Maybe not," Sergei said. Sergei was sure this was further confirmation that Rasputin's assistant and the man at the train station were the same. "Ivan, we should tell Nadya what we suspect about the man being Rasputin's assistant."

"We should," Ivan agreed. He told Nadya of their fears about the man. While they spoke together--Nadya full of questions that Ivan answered patiently and with reassurances that they would keep her safe--Sergei noticed that something between Nadya and Ivan had shifted. It was in the way they inclined toward each other ever so slightly, bending like plants toward the sun. There was a new softness in Ivan's eyes when he looked at her. Nadya's voice was gentler somehow.

If these were indications of new love, as Sergei suspected they were, then he was not surprised. All that scraping and arguing, the teasing and playful antagonism, could mean only one thing. It was a sure sign of attraction.

But now Sergei had a new worry. What would happen if this love blossomed? If everything went according to plan, what future could these two ever expect? None whatsoever; either their attraction to each other had to be stifled or their plan to pass off Nadya as the grand duchess Anastasia had to fail. Both events could not exist simultaneously.

That morning, Ivan went back to plowing fields for the farmer. How tenderly Nadya waved goodbye to him! It would have been touching if it were not so ill-fated.

Sergei and Nadya finished what they had left of yesterday's loaf of bread. Sergei went to a nearby stream to wash up, and when he returned he came upon Nadya seated on a blanket, her back to him. She was having a conversation with the small doll he'd noticed before. Unseen and unheard by her, he stood a way off and observed.

"So my little friend, what do you think?" Nadya asked the doll. "Will this turn out well?" She tilted her head, as if to hear the doll's reply. "You hope so? Well, that isn't very helpful! Will we regain our family? Will I find true love? Will everything be 'happily ever after' for us?" She did more pretend listening before continuing. "Oh, you're sure of it, you say? I'm so glad! No matter what happens, I know I can always talk to you, at least."

Sergei smiled gently, touched by how she loved this small remnant of her past. How many lonely nights it must have seen her through! Not wanting her to be embarrassed, he coughed loudly to announce his arrival.

Nadya turned sharply toward the sound and set the doll aside when she saw Sergei. "So, where shall we begin my training as a grand duchess?" Nadya asked brightly.

Sergei remembered how distressed she'd been the day before. "Are you feeling better about our endeavor?" he asked gently.

"If there's even a chance that I'm Anastasia, I should find out--and who would know better than the only living person who knew Anastasia, the Empress Marie? While we were trying to find our way back before, Ivan assured me that there would be no danger to Anastasia in Paris. That's what I felt most afraid of, that no matter where I went, I could never be safe if I were really the grand duchess."

"So now you feel willing to try?" he asked.

"Yes."

Sergei pondered their first lesson. The task was so vast that he was not sure where to begin. What was the first thing Anastasia might be called upon to do?

"Would you be able to write a letter introducing yourself to Empress Marie?" Sergei inquired. "A formal letter, I mean."

"I can write, if that's what you're asking," Nadya replied. "I don't remember how or when I learned, but I can do it."

"Very well," he said, fishing out a piece of folded paper--the unpaid hotel bill--from his pocket. He had brought along a nearly empty jar of ink and a fine-nib fountain pen--a remnant of his former privileged life--that he now took from the large pockets of his jacket. "Let's see how you do."

He presented the writing utensils and flattened the backside of the bill on an old plank of wood. "Pretend you're writing a letter to the empress," he suggested.

Nadya seated herself on a flat rock. With the plank straddled on her knees, she thought for a moment before beginning. Sergei stood behind her, watching as she began to write:
Most beloved Grandmother...

"Why do you address her so?" Sergei asked.

"Isn't she my grandmother?"

"Why not Grandma or Dowager Empress Marie?"

Nadya tilted her head, perplexed. "I don't know. That's simply how it came to me."

"We must ask Ivan if he ever heard Anastasia address her grandmother," Sergei said, making a mental note to do so. If Ivan didn't know, then they would have to find out somehow. A wrong term of endearment would be just the sort of mistake to make the empress suspicious.

Sergei balanced on his haunches and peered over Nadya's shoulder to inspect her penmanship. It was the handwriting of one who had been schooled in the most excellent calligraphy. No one wrote in such a manner unless that person had been trained to do so. Every perfectly crafted letter curved uniformly, the
t
crossed with a confident slash, the capital
G
drawn in the grand old style. Her writing indicated education and wealth.

"You don't remember learning this at all?" he checked.

Nadya shook her head. "Everything before the asylum is a complete blank."

A fly hovered near the paper, smearing the ink. Absently, Sergei brushed it aside, and then he jumped away as the last of the ink spilled across the paper.

Nadya jumped to avoid being splattered. "We can save that ink," she said, leaping toward her half-open pillowcase. Scooping up a ruffled white petticoat, she blotted at it. Twisting the fabric, she wrung precious drops back into the bottle. "Working with Mrs. Zolokov taught me to be a real cheapskate," she said with a smile.

"Ah, but now you've ruined your petticoat," he noted regretfully.

She tossed it aside, unconcerned. "It's an old thing; it barely even fits anymore. Apparently I was wearing it when Mrs. Zolokov found me. I don't think I've even put it on since that day. I should have left it behind, so at least it's served a purpose now."

Sergei lifted the worn white petticoat, curious to see if it could be salvaged; perhaps they could soak it in a pond and get the stain out. Examining the petticoat more closely, he saw brown stains that coincided with places where the fabric had been ripped through completely. Gunpowder stains? Could someone wearing this garment have been shot?