“Katya Novikova is a strong, healthy girl, Princess. She will make a fine wet nurse.” Tanya Feodorovna smoothed the patchwork quilt on Sophie’s bed a shade nervously.
“But I have told you, there is no need for a wet nurse,” Sophie said tranquilly. “I have more than enough milk for this little one.” She smiled down at the babe in her arms. A shock of spiky black hair crowned the still slightly misshapen head nestled against her breast. His eyes were closed as he suckled greedily, one tiny hand clenched in a fist against the succoring breast.
“Oh, dear,” sighed Tanya. “You must be sensible, Sophia Alexeyevna. The longer you suckle the child yourself, the harder it will be for you.”
Sophie looked at her blankly. “To do what?”
Tanya sighed again, more heavily, and left the room. In the library she found the babe’s father and great-grandfather, both of them in earnest conversation. “I do not know what’s to happen,” she stated without preamble. “It is usual for a newly delivered mother to have some strange fancies for a few days, but Sophia Alexeyevna does not seem to be considering what is to be done. She behaves with the child as if they are in a world of their own. If there were a sign of fever I would understand.”
“There is none?” asked Adam sharply, these dread spectre of puerperal fever never far from his mind these days.
“Bless your heart, no, lord,” assured Tanya comfortingly. “The princess will be up and about in a day or two.” She dusted a corner of the table with her apron, shaking her head. “But what is to be done? I’ve found a good wet nurse in Katya Novikova, but the princess will have none of it…says she has more than enough milk herself, as if that was the point!”
“Perhaps we should both talk with her.” Golitskov heaved himself from his chair. “This cowardly procrastination is not going to help.”
Adam nodded, giving the old man his arm. They went slowly upstairs to the west wing. Sophie’s chamber was bright with jugs of autumn foliage. A fire crackled merrily, and buttery sunshine filled the casement.
“I was hoping for a visit,” she said, moving the baby to her other breast. “Your son has a hearty appetite, love.” She held out her hand to Adam. “Come and see. He is amazingly like you.”
Adam could not fight the joy and pride he felt in this child of his loins. “My head is a better shape,” he laughingly protested, tenderly touching the soft, pulsing spot on the child’s crown where the bone was not yet formed.
Prince Golitskov moved closer to the fire, warming his rheumatic hands. Adam was as absorbed in his fatherhood as Sophie in her motherhood. Love was responsible for more tragic tangles than such a supposedly soft and productive emotion had any business to be! He turned to the lost couple at the bed.
“Sophia Alexeyevna, you are going to have to make some decisions.”
The harshness in his voice startled Sophie. “What do you mean, Grandpère?”
“Have your wits gone begging?” he said. “You know you cannot acknowledge the child as your own. The longer you continue to suckle him, the more devastating it will be for you.”
“Your grandfather is right, sweetheart.” Adam spoke with difficulty. “Let him be put to the wet nurse.”
“No!” She exploded with a violence that startled the child, whose mouth opened on a protesting wail. “Hush,” she soothed, holding him against her shoulder, rubbing his back gently. “I do not know that I will have to go back to St. Petersburg.” But she did know it. Paul would not let her slip away again. She took a deep, steadying breath. “For as long as I may, I will mother my child.”
“Sophie, as soon as you are able to travel, I will arrange for you and the child to go into France.” Golitskov spoke decisively. “You will be well provided for, out of your husband’s reach.”
Sophie looked at Adam. Slowly, she shook her head. “I cannot do that.”
“It is that or you must surrender the child.” The hard choice, implacable, dropped like stone.
“I do not have to surrender him yet,” she said in a small, broken voice. “Not yet, not until I must.”
“Sophie, you must go into France.” Adam, in his own anguish, said the only thing possible. “I will come—”
“No,” she interrupted quietly. “If you abandoned your family you would never forgive yourself, and I will not live with that burden. I will not go alone because I would never have news of you and I cannot live in such a desert. I will accept my destiny, here. Sasha will not suffer, I know that. I can endure my own affliction, but I will not hasten it. I would have what I may while I may.”
Defeated, Prince Golitskov silently left the room.
“At least let us make some plans, sweet love.” Adam sat on the bed. “Let me hold him.”
She placed Sasha in his arms and he gazed in wonder at the bright blue button eyes, the snub nose; he examined each perfect miniature finger and toe, while his son blinked his unfocused eyes and yawned.
“The czarina gave me permission to stay here until the spring, if my husband permitted it,” Sophie said. “Paul has not communicated with me. If he waits until the onset of winter before sending for me, I may, in good conscience, refuse to make the journey until spring. The empress will stand my friend in such an instance.” She sat back against her piled-up pillows. “I am not concerned, Adam. It is already the middle of October. Paul would have to send for me by the end of the month. I have a feeling he is not going to do so.” Smiling, she leaned forward, tickling the babe’s stomach. “Do not wear such a long face, love. Anything could happen between now and the spring.”
Adam tried to fall in with this mood of happy insouciance. But he could not dispel his foreboding, could not discount the feeling that Sophie was deliberately adopting a policy of self-deception as shield against the harsh truths that in the deepest recesses of her soul she acknowledged.
In Kiev, General, Prince Paul Dmitriev was obliged to halt for several days. He needed to purchase and equip two carriages; three of his escort were sick of a fever and the horses needed reshoeing. But he was prepared to bide his time. Sophia Alexeyevna was going nowhere and could be left to enjoy her delusion of safety. Its violent shattering would be all the more devastating the longer she had enjoyed it.
A spy sent hotfoot to Berkholzskoye returned with the information that Princess Dmitrievna was said to have given birth to a healthy son.
Further questioning elicited the interesting information that a Polish count was staying at Berkholzskoye as guest of Prince Golitskov.
The inhabitants of the Wild Lands kept their own counsel, Dmitriev reflected sourly. Only by going to Berkholzskoye and ferreting out the information for oneself could one discover scandals that anywhere else would be shouted from the rooftops. Here in Kiev, a mere fifty versts away, no rumor of shameful happenings on the Golitskov estates was bruited. If he had not heard of her faithlessness from Maria, he would never have known.
But he had her now, helpless in her unknowing, waiting to receive the entirely legitimate vengeance of the deceived husband.
“Why so restless, Adam?” Sophie, curled in a big wing chair by the bedchamber fire, shook her head in mock amazement. “You were the one who said restfulness was the quality to be most admired in a woman. Here am I, perfectly reposed and contented, and you cannot sit still for a minute.”
Adam bent over the back of the chair and kissed her. “You do appear to have undergone some remarkable transformation,” he teased. “To tell the truth, love, I am trying to summon up the courage to ask your permission to go hunting.”
Sophie laughed. “You absurd creature! Why should you need my leave?”
He looked rueful. “I feel guilty about abandoning you. But Boris Mikhailov tells me that there is a pack of wolves terrorizing the village of Talma.”
“And you would go hunt them down.” She smiled wistfully, her eyes going to the casement, where the day blustered, cold and bright. “I wish I could come. I have not been hunting this age.”
“You know you cannot, which is why I will not go,” he declared with resolution.
“No, you must! I insist, Adam. Just because I am still so ridiculously lethargic does not give me the right to tie you to my bedside. I do not know why it should be taking so long for me to recover my strength,” she added, a mite disconsolately.
“It has not been much above a week, love,” Adam reminded her.
Sophie sighed. “I suppose so. It is just that I am not accustomed to feeling enfeebled.” A wail from the crib in the corner of the chamber brought her to her feet in a most unfeeble fashion. “Ah, mon petit, are you hungry again?” She bent over the crib, lifting the infant, kissing the firm, warm roundness of his baby cheeks. “Go with Boris, Adam. I have much to occupy me with a woman’s work for the moment.”
He smiled tenderly. “Indeed, it does seem so. We will not be gone more than three days.”
“You will be gone until you have hunted down every last wolf in the pack,” she said with mock sternness. “Do not pretend otherwise to salve your conscience.” She sat down in the chair again, opening her bodice for the hungrily nuzzling babe.
That shadow of foreboding darkened his vision as he looked at the picture they presented—such perfect contentment could only tempt an unkind fate. It would take but the slightest touch to shatter the picture into myriad fragments of grief and loss. Resolutely, he put such futile ponderings from him, bending to kiss the top of her head, to stroke his son’s cheek with a fingertip. “I will get my things together, then, if you are sure you will not be lonely.”
“I shall miss you, but I have Grandpère.” Her eyes danced mischievously. “He does not become unpleasant when I cheat at cards.”
“Perhaps if he had been a little more unpleasant in the past, he might have cured you of such a deplorable habit,” Adam declared, going into his dressing room. “Do you know where the bootboy put my hunting boots?”
“Are they not in the rack?”
“Ah, yes, I have them.” The eagerness in his voice made her smile, although it was a smile tinged with envy. She could well empathize with such enthusiastic anticipation. A few days on horseback engaged in a battle of cunning and wits with a pack of wily wolves was a heady prospect, particularly after such a sedentary week of bedside occupations.
She went downstairs to see them off, waving from the open front door as the group—Adam, Boris Mikhailov, and four serfs to act as gun bearers—trotted down the drive.
“Such a long face,” Prince Golitskov gently chided. “Next time, you will be able to go.”
Gregory closed the door on the chilly afternoon as they turned back into the house. A curious dank emptiness seemed to hang in the air, and Sophie shivered involuntarily. It was absurd to feel so bereft, so…so defenseless, just because Adam had gone hunting.
It was dusk when the party of horsemen, two empty carriages bowling behind them, turned onto the avenue of poplars leading to the mansion. They rode in silence under the bare trees, over the mud-deep earth that in summer was a dustbowl. At their head, Prince Dmitriev bore an expression that would have been familiar to his soldiers. It was the anticipatory satisfaction of one about to accomplish a mission of duty—regardless of cost.
The mansion stood closed against the night. He signaled to one of his men, who dismounted and began to hammer on the great iron knocker. Casements flew open, startled faces peering down at the small army, threatening upon the gravel sweep. Within, Prince Golitskov came slowly into the hall, one hand held to his breast, where ugly premonition blossomed. Yet no one whose business was illegitimate would hammer so peremptorily upon the door. Sophie, the child in her arms, rushed to the head of the stairs, staring wide-eyed into the hall below as Gregory, at a sign from the prince, pulled back the bolts.
General, Prince Paul Dmitriev stepped into the hall. He saw his wife first, hair tumbled about her shoulders, dressed casually in a loose print gown, a child clutched to her bosom. For a long moment, the cold blue eyes absorbed the sight while she stood impaled by his menace. Then he turned to the old man, who tottered slightly.
“I am come for my wife,” Prince Dmitriev said in his cold, dispassionate fashion. “Do not attempt to prevent me. You do not have the right, and a man is entitled to take charge of his adulterous wife.”
Prince Golitskov recovered himself. He stepped forward. “Prince Dmitriev, I will not allow you to remove Sophia Alexeyevna from my roof. The treatment she has received from you in the past—”
“She is my wife!” hissed Dmitriev in the same low voice. “Much though I may regret it, it is so, and I will have a husband’s vengeance for her infidelity and her bastard.”
“No!” Golitskov, in appalled horror at the mire of hatred and venom revealed by this speech, raised a hand in protest. There was a flash of steel. Slowly, he crumpled to the ground, blood spreading untidily across his shoulder.
“You have killed him!” Sophie, heedless of even the child she held in her arms, flew down the stairs, dropping on her knees beside the still, ghost-pale figure of the old man.
“It is a shoulder wound. He will not die of it,” her husband told her carelessly. “You!” He beckoned to Anna, who stood moaning and wringing her hands. “Tend to your master!” He caught Sophie by the hair, jerking her upright. “Get upstairs to your chamber with your bastard, whore!”
Stumbling under the force of his push, she caught the child convulsively against her with one hand, putting out her other to grasp the banister. He shoved her again, his knuckles digging into her back, and she staggered up the stairs, biting her lip to keep the moans of fear from escaping.
Tanya Feodorovna, with a loud cry of outrage, sprang from a doorway in the upper hall. She dropped to the ground, felled by an almighty blow to the side of the head from Dmitriev’s fist.
Dear God, Sophie prayed in silent repetition. Do not let him hurt the child. I do not mind what he does to me, but do not let him harm the child. She fell into her bedchamber under another violent push. He stood looking down at her as she crouched on her knees, one hand supporting herself on the floor, the child cradled against her with the other. He read her terror. Contempt filled his eyes, overlaid with a deep satisfaction.
“Finally, my dear, we come to a reckoning. You are a whore, my adulterous wife.” With a sudden movement, he bent, snatching the baby from her, pushing her backward as he did so, causing her to lose her balance.
“No!” She scrambled to her feet, her eyes wild, her hair swirling around her as she grabbed for the child. Paul struck her with the back of his hand, and she reeled. His signet ring had cut into her lip, but she barely noticed the sticky warmth of blood on her chin. She sprang at him again, and this time the blow brought her back to her knees, sobbing with pain and terror.
“Stay where you are and listen to me,” he said in the same cold tone. The baby in his hands set up a piteous wailing, and Sophie could hear her voice pleading through her own sobs. “Be quiet!” he said, and she fell despairingly silent.
“I will take this bastard as mine.” So cold, so deadly cold, as if snakes’ venom ran in his veins. “He will grow up as my heir, but he will abhor the name of his mother. He will suffer through his growing, and he will know to lay that suffering at the door of the whore who gave him life.”
Sophie began to shake uncontrollably as the diabolical words pierced her like a rapier of ice. The child’s wails increased in volume, and the milk flooded into her breasts in response.
Dmitriev swore a vile oath. Striding to the door, he bellowed and one of his men came running. “Take the brat!” He almost threw the squawling infant at the man. “Find some woman to act as wet nurse. She will come with us to St. Petersburg.”
“Yes, lord.” The man took the red, screaming, soggy bundle and bore him off.
As her son’s wails grew fainter, Sophie huddled over her aching breasts, now spilling nourishment for the child torn from her. She was drained of all strength, muscle and sinew liquified, her mind retreating from this hellish nightmare, as if, by so doing, it would go away and she would wake up.
“Get up!” Seizing her hair again, he yanked her to her feet. Her scalp burned; her face stung from the blows. “Where is Danilevski?”
She shook her head, and he jerked her head back by the hair and hit her again. “Where is he?”
“I do not know,” she croaked between her swollen, bleeding lips. “He went to Mogilev.” She did not know why she lied, except for the vague hope that if Paul could not put Adam definitely on the scene, he would have no evidence that he was the guilty lover. Without evidence, he could not injure him.
“Then I must postpone dealing with him.” Dmitriev shrugged carelessly. “It does not matter, for the moment.” He looked coldly into her face as if he were examining some repellent creature of a different species. “As for you, my faithless wife—”
“Why? Why would you have me to wife?” The question interrupted him. It was the question that had haunted her since their wedding night, when he had made it so mortifyingly clear that she disappointed him and she had not known why. The disappointment had become loathing, and she still had not known what she could have done to inspire such an extremity of distaste. He was looking at her now with that same disgust he had so often evinced in the past. Facing the end of all that meant happiness, she could ask the question with a curious indifference. The answer did not really matter, but she might as well go to her death with the riddle solved. “Why did you woo me and wed me, Paul, when you knew I did not please you?”
His laugh dripped acid. “No, you did not please me from the moment I laid eyes on you—bold, brazen, indecorous, with none of your mother’s delicacy and beauty. I had expected to wed Sophia Ivanova’s daughter—”
“Why?” she asked again, interest kindling despite her throbbing face, her burning scalp, her bereft soul.
The pale eyes looked at her, yet did not seem to see her. “I wanted your mother, and I would have had her but for you, who killed her.” His gaze focused on her again. “I thought to have the daughter in her stead.” He jerked back on her hair again. “And look what I possessed!” So vicious was his tone that she flinched in the expectation of another blow. “An unappealing, unfaithful whore!”
“Kill me,” she said. “You have taken my child, what more can you do to me?”
A slight gleam enlivened the ice-blue stare. “Oh, I have not begun yet. I will have my revenge on the Golitskovs through you. You will live a very long life, I trust.” Another jerk on her hair brought tears flowing from her eyes. “I repudiate you,” he spat. “As is my right with an unfaithful wife, one who has born a bastard. You will enter the Convent of the Assumption as a penitent.” For a second that ghastly gleam in the cold eyes flared with fanatical satisfaction. “You will enter as a penitent whore, with your head shaved, barefoot, and with the stripes of the lash upon your back. These instructions together with details of the crime for which you are repudiated shall be given to the superiors at the convent.” His thin smile flickered. “You will live long to pay for your crime, Sophia Alexeyevna, and for the humiliations visited upon me by your parents. And you will do so in a pitiless climate—the convent has a harsh and unforgiving regime dedicated to the redemption of sinners through prayer and penance.” A poisonous satisfaction laced every carefully articulated word.
Sophie barely heard him. Her fate held no interest for her, not beside the monstrous life he planned for her child. To grow up in that mausoleum, to grow under the hatred borne him by this vicious despot…And there would be no way to stop him. If he declared the child his own, his heir, his generosity would be applauded. He would repudiate the wife, as was his right in the eyes of the Church and of the law, but would care for the innocent child. It was a diabolical vengeance. As she had paid and would continue to pay for the supposed injuries her parents had inflicted upon Paul Dmitriev, so would her son pay for his mother’s crimes, and every day she lived she would be tormented by her knowledge of the life her son would be enduring.
Her lack of response to this description of her punishment penetrated his cold dispassion, and a tide of rage swept hotly through him. “Perhaps you do not fully understand what I am saying.” His eyes darted around the room, fell upon the scissors on the dresser. Dragging her by the hair, he crossed to the dresser. “I will start what the monks will finish, then maybe you will begin to understand.”
Before she could realize what was happening, he began to hack at her hair. She stood staring, disbelieving, into the mirror as the rich, dark locks fell to her shoulders, to the floor in luxuriant, chestnut-tinted profusion. That same fanatical light shone in his eyes as he hacked down to the scalp, pulling agonizingly as he did so. Tears poured down her cheeks, mingling with the blood from her split lip, but her mutilated image was blurred now in the mirror as she seemed to enter some dark world of her own. Her knees buckled, but he held her up by what little hair she had left, before flinging her facedown across the bed. Her hands were wrenched behind her. The roughness of rope bound her wrists so tight she had cried out before she could stifle the sound in the quilt.
The door clicked shut on his departure, the sound of the iron key turning. Sophie lay, trying to gather some strength, just enough to enable her to turn over. But when she did so, the cramping in her arms as she lay upon them was agonizing, and not all the will in the world would force her muscles to make the complicated maneuvers necessary to bring her to her feet without the use of her hands. With a sob, she rolled again onto her belly.
All night she lay, having no idea what was happening in the rest of the house; whether her grandfather lived, whether her child slept in a stranger’s arms; whether Tanya had recovered consciousness. The general’s army had taken over the house, and all at Berkholzskoye knew that this was the princess’s husband, who had the perfect right to remove his wife if he so chose. In the absence of any leadership of their own, they bowed to the invader’s rule.
At dawn the door opened again with the same lack of emotion with which it had been closed. “I trust you slept well,” came the cold voice above her. He turned her over, pulling her into a sitting position. “It is time for you to begin your journey. Stand up.”
Sophie did so. She had lost all sensation in her arms, could feel milk leaking from her breasts, staining her bodice. Her face was stiff with dried tears and blood, aching with bruises.
He looked at her with an expression of ineffable disgust before flinging a cloak around her, pushing her ahead of him out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the house. She saw not one familiar face, only her husband’s men, stone-faced, staring ahead. Two carriages stood on the sweep. Beside one she saw a peasant woman wrapped in a black shawl. In her arms was a bundle.
“Sasha!” Sophie stumbled, unbalanced by her bound hands, toward the woman, but her husband pulled her back.
“You have had your last sight of your bastard!” He propelled her toward the other carriage. She was bundled inside to fall crouching upon the floor. The door slammed shut and she dragged herself, slowly, painfully, onto the seat. A whip cracked, and the vehicle moved forward, jolting on the rough road. Soon, the inevitable nausea would come to plague her. But what did it matter?
During the long reaches of the night she had accepted her fate. In her weakness, acceptance came readily. It offered some kind of comfort, for to fight would bring only renewed agony of the mind and the body. There was no hope of rescue. Her destination would be known to no one. By the time Adam returned to Berkholzskoye, she would be long gone. The wife’s seducer could hardly demand explanation or satisfaction from the husband whose actions were entirely legitimate. And he would be able to do nothing for his son. He could not claim him as his son, and Paul would keep the boy immured, far from the eyes of the world, as he wreaked his vengeance.
She had nothing left. Paul had stripped her of the last vestiges of human dignity, and she felt herself no longer human, just some befouled and tattered piece of flotsam that had for a while held her head up upon the earth. She had enjoyed the sun; she had loved; she had given birth. Her eyes closed as she slipped into the peaceful world of memory.