The Lost Souls of Angelkov (13 page)

Lilya frowned. “We work together in the fields, princess.” She was afraid this wasn’t the right answer, and tried to think of what might please the girl. “But when we stop for a drink of water or to eat, we talk. Sometimes when we walk home, if we aren’t too tired, we sing hymns. I like that, the singing.”

Antonina nodded.

She doesn’t appear too displeased, Lilya thought, and looked at the grave again. She wanted the princess to mount her horse and ride away. She made her anxious with all her questions.

“Did you love your puppy very much?”

“But of course, princess.”

There was silence.

“I suppose you have many dogs,” Lilya finally said, when it appeared she was expected to speak.

“My father and brothers have dogs for hunting.” Antonina thought of the three elegant, aloof borzois, lounging on the red velvet sofa or on the thick wool rug in front of the fire. She was not allowed to touch the dogs, although her father daily brushed them. In the spring he used a strong boar brush, urging out the soft undercoat that thickened in the colder months. When she had been very small, she remembered leaning against her father, watching him as he crooned and sang to his dogs while he worked over them.

Lilya licked her lips. Was it her turn to speak? “But you don’t have your own dog?” she asked.

Antonina shook her head.

“That’s too bad,” Lilya said. “I will get another puppy soon. My father promised.” She again looked at the grave; she didn’t know where else to look.

“Let’s say the prayer for Romka, then,” Antonina said, standing beside her now, and Lilya felt a surge of relief. This was as it should be—the princess deciding what was to be done.

Together they bowed their heads and clasped their hands. “Which one?” Antonina asked, and Lilya hesitantly began:
“Into Thy hands, oh Lord, I commend the soul of Thy servant
Romka,”
and Antonina joined her in the Prayer for the Dead,
“and beseech Thee to grant him rest in the place of Thy rest, where all Thy blessed Saints repose, and where the light of Thy countenance shineth forever.”

Then Lilya added, “And I beseech You, oh Master, be merciful to Romka.”

“Amen,” they both said, crossing themselves.

Lilya gathered some tiny wild spring hyacinth and knelt, laying the little purple blossoms on the earth. Her kerchief had slipped to her shoulders, and Antonina looked at the whiteness of Lilya’s scalp through her dark hair as she bent over Romka’s grave.

“The next time I come by the village, will you show me your new dog?” Antonina asked.

Lilya quickly got to her feet, her head bowed. “Yes, if it is your wish, princess.” Cautiously, she looked up. “But … why?”

Antonina shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, and it was true. She didn’t know what made her want to keep talking to Lilya, what made her feel that she didn’t want to leave.

At a horse’s snort, they turned to see Kesha and Semyon. Though Antonina had ordered them to stay behind, they had come nearer, pulling Antonina’s pony with them. They were close enough to hear the conversation.

Antonina shook her head, annoyed. But she understood that this was their duty. Should anything befall her, Kesha and Semyon would pay with their lives.

Lilya lowered her head again, even more uncomfortable. The two burly men might think she was at fault for talking to the daughter of the landowner. “Have I permission to leave?”

“Yes.”

“Goodbye then, Princess Olonova,” Lilya said, bowing from the waist before she turned away. When she had taken ten steps through the grove, Antonina called out to her.

“When do you get your new puppy?”

Lilya had to turn around and bow again. “Next week. Today my father showed me a litter, almost weaned. He said I can pick one.”

Antonina thought of her own father. Would he do this for her? She didn’t know. “Then I will come to Kazhra next week, to see it.”

Lilya performed another small bow. “As you wish, princess.”

But Antonina wanted something more. “Lilya Petrova,” she said, and Lilya cocked her head. “Do you
want
me to come?” Antonina asked.

Lilya pulled her kerchief up, tying it firmly under her chin. She looked over Antonina’s head at the softly swaying branches with their small, furled buds. Her eyes skittered past Kesha and Semyon. When she finally looked at Antonina, her face was tight, suspicious.

“I don’t understand, princess,” she said.

Antonina raised her shoulders. “What don’t you understand? I asked if you want me to come to Kazhra and see your puppy.”

“But … but … if you wish to come, you will come. It is not my choice.”

It wasn’t the answer Antonina wanted.

Lilya saw that she had annoyed Princess Olonova. “If this is what you wish, princess,” she said quickly, aware of the clenching in her stomach, “then, of course, it is my wish too.” She held her breath.

Antonina smiled.

Yes, her nose was a bit long, Lilya thought, her eyebrows so much darker than her hair, but when she smiled, the stern expression disappeared. She was pretty, really.

“All right,” Antonina said. “I’ll come to the village. Look for me.”

Lilya let out her breath. She had chosen the right words, then. “Perhaps … perhaps it would be better if I bring the puppy here, to the clearing. And princess? It must be on this day, at this time.”

“Sunday afternoon?”

“Yes. It’s the only day I’m not at work, and allowed my own time—Sunday, after church.” Lilya couldn’t imagine what her father would think should the daughter of Prince Olonov come to their izba; surely it would cause trouble. He wouldn’t understand.

Lilya didn’t understand herself. But it was the princess’s order. She smiled back at Antonina, a small, forced smile.

Her front teeth were short, the eye teeth longer and pointed, and Antonina saw the tiniest bit of her pink upper gums. With her slightly slanted golden eyes and sharp incisors, Lilya Petrova had the look of a small and wary yet intelligent animal.

A fox. Yes, a fox.

A
ntonina lived in the huge and glorious country manor with her father and brothers. Her father hired nurses and governesses to watch over her, and tutors who taught her to read and write based on religious and Biblical texts: the Psalter and the books of hourly prayers and the Gospels. She was a quick learner but difficult to keep on task, working carelessly, easily distracted and often gazing longingly towards the windows during her lessons.

Her favourite time was at the piano. She had taken her first lessons on the small spinet in the corner of the music salon but quickly advanced to the beautiful rosewood Érard square piano, imported from Paris, in the centre of the room. Her teacher, the elderly Monsieur Fadeev, told the prince that his daughter showed great eagerness for a four-year-old, and had a definite gift. He had Prince Olonov come into the music salon, where Antonina sat on a high tufted cushion
placed on the piano bench. The old man played a simplified Mozart sonata and Antonina played the tune back easily, her small fingers stretching surprisingly to reach the keys.

Prince Olonov smiled proudly at his daughter, fondly, perhaps, but the fact that she was talented musically was of minor importance. Playing the piano was one of the requirements of young ladies of the nobility. By the time they were ready to be courted, they were expected to have a repertoire pleasing to the ear. They would play at small soirees and gatherings for the pleasure of family and friends and, hopefully, a future fiancé. However great a musical talent a Russian noblewoman might possess, it was simply a form of entertainment within the confines of the home. Professional performing was relegated to the serf troupes trained specifically for this purpose.

For women of Antonina’s class, singing, the reciting of poetry, skill with the needle, lovely penmanship, cleverness at cards, or playing the piano with a deft touch were all part of a package, one designed to attract the proper suitor. In Antonina’s case, her dowry was so large that it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d possessed the face of a horse and played the piano as though her fingers were wooden pins—there would be a line of men eager to wed her for her riches, and Antonina’s father imagined that he would marry her into further money.

Whatever her father’s thoughts about Antonina’s abilities, she progressed quickly in her insular music career, and derived great daily pleasure from her hours at the piano. She happily learned the thundering chords of Bach, which reminded her of the darkly scented world she knew from church. She loved the complicated trilling of Beethoven and
the lighter crescendos and diminuendos of Schubert, which made her think of the sounds of the forest. But her favourite composer was Mikhail Glinka, his music redolent with delicate nuance for her.

A Russian aristocrat who studied in Milan and Berlin, the young Glinka had produced the first Russian operas in the years following Antonina’s birth. She loved the village sounds of his music, especially those with the falling fourths that Glinka referred to as the soul of Russian music. By the time she was twelve, Antonina had memorized a number of his mazurkas and polonaises as well as the longer, more haunting fugues and nocturnes that became, to her, tiny epiphanies of private emotion.

Although her father occasionally sat, smiling, and listened to her play, her mother never entered the music salon unless she was hostessing one of her own soirees.

Antonina’s mother preferred city life. She occasionally stayed with her husband and children at the country estate during the pleasant summer months, but she chose not to leave her St. Petersburg social circle when winter covered the countryside in snow.

Princess Olonova had given her husband children because it was her duty, nothing more, and she had left their care and rearing to wet nurses and nannies. She found the three boys rowdy and annoying, and often smelling unpleasantly of the fields and stables. She would occasionally hold Antonina and stroke her hair as though she were a doll or a charming pet when she was a baby, but as the girl grew older, she lost interest in her as well.

Galina Olonova was known for her beauty. She was also flighty and fickle. She cared only about the latest gossip, what she wore and the next fete. All of the princess’s concentration was directed towards herself and her own pursuits: shopping, having a new wardrobe designed and sewn for each season, the planning of elaborate, week-long parties and the various forms of entertainment these celebrations demanded, and the endless stream of company that arrived and sometimes stayed for months at a time in the grand St. Petersburg house with its views of the Neva River. She also spent considerable time on her romantic dalliances. She took lovers. Her husband knew but turned a blind eye, for he had his own affairs.

They lived their lives as if not married to each other, or, more specifically, as if unmarried and free.

When Antonina’s mother came to the country estate for a few summer weeks now and then, the huge house came alive with company. Princess Olonova arranged dances and musical evenings and dinners for thirty or forty friends. She even carelessly entertained her various lovers at the estate. She had had the walls and doors of her bedchamber covered in layers of felt under the wallpaper, so that any illicit sounds would not be heard by the house serfs. She never worried about her husband coming to her room; that hadn’t occurred since she first learned she was carrying the baby who was to be Antonina.

Her husband was more discreet, and enjoyed a different kind of game. Unlike his wife, who usually picked men of her own class for her trysts—although she wasn’t averse to a quick rendezvous with anyone young and good-looking, no matter his station—the prince definitely preferred women
of the lower class. But he was above using his own house serfs for his pleasure. As a young man in his father’s home, he had seen it too many times. His father had used and discarded his female house serfs at will. As little more than a boy, the prince observed that it was a game for the old man: when a fresh-faced girl working in the fields caught his eye on one of his rounds to see the progression of the spring planting or the autumn reaping, she would be summoned, given a household uniform and thrust into life in the estate house. Within weeks, she fully understood the rules of the manor—and her role there.