The Lost Souls of Angelkov (9 page)

As the doctor closes the bedroom door behind him, Grisha steps forward. “Will he recover?” When the doctor doesn’t immediately answer, Grisha says, “I am the steward, Dr. Molov. I must know what to expect, for the sake of the estate.”

The doctor nods, then reaches for Grisha’s arm to guide him away from the door. “I’ll speak the truth with you—I can see that she’s of little use.”

“What do you mean?” Grisha asks, looking down at the short, huffing man.

“The countess. Is it a muted form of hysteria? Last night, and now this morning … she doesn’t appear fully in charge of her senses.” He nods at Grisha. “I’m glad there’s someone in charge here.”

“Countess Mitlovskiya has had a great deal of distress,” Grisha says. “But what of the count?”

“It’s not good at all. Because the wound wasn’t cared for properly, it’s become infected. There is poisoning of the blood, and it’s working its way up his arm. We don’t want it to go into the rest of the body.”

“Will he live?”

The doctor shrugs. “It’s in the hands of God now. All we can do is wait.” He turns and starts down the staircase.

Grisha watches him go.

That night, Antonina dismisses Pavel to allow him a proper rest. She sits by Konstantin’s bed with Tinka in her lap; she knows that, for her, there’s no point in attempting to sleep. She had taken a number of spoonfuls of the laudanum throughout the day. The blended potion of opium and alcohol allowed her to drift, and she hadn’t wanted to emerge from the dull, dreamlike sensation the murky liquid gave her.

Now she sits in the dark, her cheek resting on her palm, elbow propped on the wide arm of the chair. The other hand rests on Tinka’s head. At some point she thinks she hears Konstantin murmur something.

She pulls herself up, holding Tinka against her with one hand, then kneels beside the bed. “Speak, husband,” she whispers. “If you can, for God’s sake speak.”

In the darkness, she can’t tell whether Konstantin’s eyes are open or not, but she definitely hears him whispering something. “What is it? What are you trying to say?” She puts her hand on his shoulder. It feels bony, as if the flesh is falling away.

And then she hears him say a name.

“Grisha? But he’s not here—it’s the middle of the night. Why do you want Grisha?”

“Grisha knows,” Konstantin says. The second word is a long-drawn-out sigh.

“Knows what? What does he know? I’ve spoken to Grisha. He’s told me everything that’s happened.”

“Knows,” Konstantin repeats, so quietly that Antonina has to put her ear to his mouth.

“Knows what?” Antonina asks again, but Konstantin is silent. She firms her grip on his shoulder to try to wake him, but it’s no use; he has fallen back into a state of deep sleep, or unconsciousness.

Antonina knows that the poison from the wound is making him this ill, that it might have been prevented had he allowed his hand to be looked after properly right away. Or if he would take in fluids. In effect, he’s killing himself. And in the manner Konstantin has always lived his life—with narrow-minded, dogged perseverance—she knows that in this, he also wants to complete what he has begun. He wants to die.

“I see what you’re doing,” she whispers to him. “You can’t live with your guilt, and so are choosing the coward’s way out. You lost our son because you wouldn’t listen to me, and now you choose to leave me to deal with the aftermath. To leave me alone to hope, to watch at the window for Misha, to pray until my knees bleed. And as you force me to carry this unbearable weight, you also wish to put on me the burden of widowhood.”

Of course, he doesn’t respond, and there is nothing for Antonina to do but rise and return to her chair.

The next morning, Antonina doesn’t allow herself any more of the laudanum—she needs to be alert—although later in the morning she quickly drinks one glass of wine. She has sent for Grisha, and the wine is just to steady her hands while she waits for him in Konstantin’s study.

“What now, Grisha?” she asks when he arrives, noticing the dark blotches of colour on his bruised face. She’s sitting on a chair in front of the fire, and Grisha stands near the fireplace. “What do we do now?”

Grisha concentrates on kicking some ashes back towards the grate. “We will continue to search for Mikhail Konstantinovich, of course, madam. We were out all of yesterday, and Lyosha and the others are out again today. There were many issues for me to deal with here, but I gave instructions for the men to spread out in wider and wider circles among the hamlets and villages. And we have reported the kidnapping to the authorities in Pskov.”

“Is there any news at all, Grisha?” Antonina speaks quietly. She has no energy to raise her voice.

He doesn’t answer immediately. “No one has actually come forward and said they have seen the young master,” he says at last. “But the villagers are frightened. Of course, they may have been threatened and are afraid to speak up. And so we will continue to look. We won’t give up, madam. And you know your son is strong, and clever. You must comfort yourself with that thought, madam: that he is all right. He is all right,” he repeats, more loudly.

Antonina nods, but doesn’t look convinced. “Perhaps they took him to the city—to Pskov. Or even all the way to St. Petersburg.”

Grisha shakes his head. “I feel strongly that he’s nearby, but well hidden. We will search the whole province, madam.”

“Will they send another note? Will they ask for more money?” This is the question Antonina has been wondering about since yesterday. She hoped Grisha would mention it first, in his usual firm way. “Because Konstantin
foiled the first attempt, will there be another chance?”

Does his expression change, ever so subtly, now? Antonina remembers how Konstantin had murmured Grisha’s name in the night.
Grisha knows
.

“It is certainly a possibility, madam. Men like these … they’re corrupt and greedy.”

His answer doesn’t bring as much relief as she’d hoped. “So we just wait?”

“And continue to search, madam.”

There is silence, except for the snapping of the fire. Grisha stares at the flames.

“Last night, Grisha, Konstantin spoke to me,” Antonina says.

Grisha doesn’t react for a moment, then turns from the fire to face her. “He regained consciousness?”

“For a moment.”

Grisha is very still.

“He said your name. It sounded like he said,
Grisha knows
. What did he mean, Grisha?”

Grisha doesn’t answer immediately. “I thought I recognized one of them. The Cossacks. As they came for me, I called out a name.”

Antonina rises from her chair. “You know him?”

But Grisha shakes his head. “As I said, madam, I thought so for a moment. I could only see his eyes, and as they beat me, his scarf came away, and it was not the man I thought. But Konstantin … he heard me call a name. This is what he must have spoken of.”

Antonina, standing in front of her chair, studies Grisha’s dark eyes. “Thank you,” she finally says, when a log drops heavily. “You may leave, Grisha.”

Grisha bows and turns. Once out of the study, he leans against the closed door. As negative as his feelings are for Konstantin Nikolevich, he doesn’t want him to die.

The kidnapping had not gone as he expected.

And death was not part of the plan.

H
ad Grisha suspected how terribly wrong it would all go, how Soso would deceive him, he would never have agreed to it.

He now knows—although he had never seen it in all the time he’d known Soso, Lilya’s husband—that in the same way he hates Konstantin, Soso hates him. Konstantin had no clue of the deep, dark anger Grisha felt towards him for his superior air and expectations, the casual demands. And now Grisha is having done to him exactly what he wanted done to Konstantin. Soso is punishing Grisha, as Grisha sought to punish Konstantin—by blackmailing him, extorting money.

When Soso invited Grisha to a game of cards in the servants’ quarter one night early in January, Grisha should have been wary. Because of his lofty position at Angelkov, the other men treated him with cautious deference. It was he, after all, who supervised all the serfs on the estate, who reported
their infractions or disobedience to the count, and who meted out their punishments. Grisha knew he made the serfs uneasy; when he was around, they had to be on their guard. He wasn’t a man who needed the company of either men or women, and he had never particularly liked Soso, but the winter had been harder than usual, each evening long, dark and frigid. The idea of a night of cards and vodka unexpectedly appealed to him, and so he let down his guard. He said yes.

By the time they started the second bottle, Soso was talking about his burning resentment towards the count, citing recent incidents that still angered him: selling two of the storeroom workers to another estate, which put an extra workload on Soso, and berating and humiliating him about a spilled bag of oats—even cutting his wages over it.

“He acts as though we’re of less importance than his bloody horses,” he ranted.

And Grisha agreed. Count Mitlovsky was pig-headed and cruel. Some landowners treated their serfs with kindness and patience. Mitlovsky did not: to him, they were, as Soso said, little more than animals. “He thinks,” Soso said, throwing down his cards, “that tossing us a handful of extra rubles at Christmas and a few bottles of vodka a year—the man has his own distillery, for God’s sake—makes him a saint.” He spat on the floor.

Grisha drained his glass, feeling his own anger growing. “I’m the one who runs Angelkov, who makes sure he understands the accounting. He asks my opinions on matters dealing with his finances. Was the estate this successful under the last steward? No. He has much to be thankful to me for, and yet he acts as though I’m the one who should be thankful.” He didn’t mention that the count used his home—and
Grisha’s own bed—for his trysts with Tania. Yes, the blue-shuttered house belonged to the count, but that he would take this liberty was, to Grisha, the most despicable affront.

He reached for the bottle and filled their glasses, then raised his. “To honesty,” he said. Aware that it was inspired by the vodka, he nevertheless felt camaraderie with Soso as they sat in the chilled dimness of his room in the servants’ quarters. Soso was one of Angelkov’s hardest-working serfs. He looked after the storehouses, ensuring they were properly stocked with food to supply the huge estate. Grisha had known him since he’d come to work on the estate with Lilya and her little brother a decade earlier, just before the count’s son was born.

Grisha had always had a grudging admiration for the man. Soso was a few years older than him, strong and tireless. He worked without complaining—usually—and so to hear him talk so freely about the count made Grisha feel that Soso also trusted him enough to confide in him.

“Freedom is coming, and I’m not going to walk away from a lifetime of work with nothing,” Soso said, his glass raised towards Grisha’s. “If Mitlovsky thinks he can get the same amount of work out of us once we’re free men, he’s wrong.” He drank. “I’m working on a plan, something that will give us—you and me—what we deserve. Something to help start a new life.” He stared at Grisha, frowning, his eyes almost disappearing under his heavy, short-lashed eyelids. He dug his little finger into his ear and rotated it. “We’ll get money from him, a lot of money. You don’t plan to stay and work for the old bastard, do you?”