Sergei had not been able to locate Dmitri during his time in St. Petersburg, nor in the months following his return with Anna to Katyk did he gain any trace of him. Keeping himself in the background, with Misha’s help he had discovered from his regimental commander that Dmitri had requested, and received, a leave of absence from his duties and, it was presumed, had been away from the city for some time.
For the present, therefore, it appeared that the young princess of the House of Remizov would continue in the care of her mother’s brother and maid.
Anna and Sergei prayed daily for her brother Paul in Siberia, but it would be many years before they heard even a tiny shred of information about him.
The bond and love between Anna and Princess Katrina Viktorovich Fedorcenko Remizov lived on, as Anna poured her heart’s devotion into the growing young girl. Mariana possessed the strengths and personality characteristics of both young women who had cared for each other with such an uncommon love. Sergei often paused when watching the young face, then chuckling to himself and making comments about seeing both Anna and Katrina so visibly alive in his little niece. In the growing child the personalities of Anna, peasant maid, and Katrina, noble princess, fused and balanced into one.
As the little girl passed her first year and began to walk and talk and scamper about, there persisted in the community a sense of wonder concerning her origins. Speculations were subdued, though plentiful. No one doubted Anna’s character, and Yevno and Sophia were held in sufficient regard that no one believed the unthinkable, that the baby had really been Anna’s.
People talked—about the child, about Anna and her new husband, and the grandfather, who was suspected of knowing more than he told. Yevno had always been thought of as a somewhat odd and unusual man in things spiritual, and it was not unlikely that this tendency would carry into his eldest born. There were mysterious roots in the whole thing, that much was certain.
The rumors, as they reached their final stages, usually involved Anna’s marrying a man of great importance, but whose cloudy past had toppled him from high rank. Some said he was a Cossack from the south who had fought in the tsar’s wars and had even saved the grand duke’s life. Others continued to insist that, whatever the mystery, the man was a peasant just like themselves, who had migrated north from the Ukraine. As to the child, well, the wild nature of Cossacks was well documented.
But most of the rumors were eventually dismissed, and Anna’s new husband was said to have been a peasant and farmer all along. His regal bearing indicated otherwise, but the way he worked the fields alongside old Yevno said to any observer that he had been doing it all his life. And the rumors were quieted once and for all when he purchased a small plot and peasant cottage five versts southwest of Katyk on which to raise his small family. For a nobleman to do such a thing was unheard of, even in legend.
The child remained an enigma. Some of the old wives claimed that the Cossack—a good and compassionate man—had come across her abandoned somewhere in his travels and had brought her home to his betrothed.
The rumor that she was actually a princess was one of the more persistent and lingering threads of speculation. And, though most said there was not a word of truth to it, country peasants in Russia were always fond of turning whatever they could into a fairy tale.