Nadia stood before her aunt’s drawing room window, looking out, wishing she could ride off on Konstantin again. Her taste of freedom had whetted her appetite, and she wanted more.
Mama cleared her throat. “Nadia? Have you nothing to say?”
She turned to her parents, seated for tea with her aunt. “I’m sorry. My mind was elsewhere.”
Papa gave her a serious look. “In Switzerland, I hope.”
“Switzerland?” Why was he talking about Switzerland?
“Haven’t you been listening?” Mama, as ever, retained her polite, almost bored tone. Emotional displays at tea time were a sign of poor upbringing, and Mama would never do anything that might allow others to question her upbringing.
Sometimes when Nadia’s mind wandered, she could get by with appropriate nods and murmurs, but this wasn’t one of those times. “I apologize. What about Switzerland?”
Papa stood and joined Nadia at the window. “Switzerland, America, France. Wherever I can convince your mother to go.”
“Go? Why?”
Nadia’s aunt, her father’s sister, placed her teacup on her saucer and set it next to the samovar on the low table before her. “Your father believes the Ukraine is no longer safe. He doesn’t think Russia is safe either, so emigration is our best option.”
“I don’t think we should abandon our homeland.” Mama kept her voice calm but firm.
Papa gazed out the window. “This is no longer our homeland. The Bolsheviks signed away a third of our people and a third of our farmland—including the Ukraine. It’s a disgrace. The tsars of the past must be turning in their graves.”
“If it is shameful to sign such a humiliating treaty, surely it is also shameful for us to flee when you have spent your whole life in devoted service to the empire.”
Nadia had never seen her parents argue before, though this wasn’t really an argument. Neither raised their voices, and no flush appeared on Papa’s pale cheeks nor on Mama’s olive skin. And yet, they were clearly divided.
“Would you lose our last child to the war?” Papa asked. “See the end of our family line?”
“Russia is out of the war now.”
Papa paced to the hearth. “We are no longer in Russia. We are in the Ukraine, and the Ukraine has just opened the door to the German Army. They will strip the land of every last kernel of grain, and their presence will intensify the civil war between the Nationalists and the Bolsheviks. I’ve heard rumors, Anna, of what happened to people like us who stayed in Petrograd. We should leave while we can.”
Painful silence filled the room. They’d found safety in the Ukraine, but they couldn’t stay forever. They no longer received rents from their peasants, the Bolsheviks had seized all their bank assets, and their properties in Petrograd, Moscow, and Tambov Oblast had been requisitioned. Nadia didn’t want to leave Russia behind forever, but the things she loved most about her motherland—the balls, the music, the ballet—those things had already been taken from her. If the German Army was coming, surely it was time to leave.
“I’ve heard lovely things about Paris,” Nadia said.
Papa smiled. “That’s my girl. We’ll start a new life in France.”
Her father spent the next two hours convincing his wife and his sister to emigrate to France, at least until the Bolsheviks lost power.
Mama gave in, finally. “I suppose, if it will keep our little Nadia safe.”
“I’m not so little anymore, Mama.”
Mama smiled. Her smile held so much beauty, as always, but since the deaths of Alexander and Nikolai, it also held a permanent sadness. “No. But you’re all we have left. I can live knowing we’ve lost Lavanda Selo and our jewels and our paintings. But I don’t think I could live knowing I’d lost my last child.”
***
Nadia was about to dress for supper that night when loud bangs shook the house. She’d heard knocks like that before, in Petrograd, when the Bolsheviks had come to arrest her father. The family had sneaked out through the servants’ quarters and fled to Lavanda Selo, then fled again to the Ukraine. The fear still chased them.
Several heartbeats passed before Nadia moved. The noise came from the front of the manor, so Nadia headed for the back.
The cook rushed through the hall toward her. “It’s the Cheka. Run!”
The secret police, here? Despite the numerous hearths and stoves heating the manor, it suddenly felt very cold. Nadia followed the cook until she heard her mother scream.
“Mama?” Nadia glanced at the hallway leading to safety, but she couldn’t leave her mother. “I have to find Mama.”
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll run.” The cook shooed her toward the servants’ staircase, but Nadia rushed the other way. She ran down the main staircase and reached the ground floor just as two men hauled Papa from his study. One of them pointed a revolver at her.
Nadia inhaled a breath full of fear. Would he shoot? She said a silent prayer, pleading for mercy. The man jerked his head toward the front entrance, and she joined her father and walked outside.
Her mother, aunt, and most of the servants stood in the center of the cold courtyard. Nadia dashed to her mother and took her hand. Mama had already dressed for supper in an evening gown of scarlet, and light from the windows revealed goose bumps on her arms.
Five menacing men flanked them. The one in charge wore a long coat of black leather and spoke with a crisp, cool voice. “The staff is free to leave unharmed with their belongings. The former Baron and his family are to stay.”
The servants hurried away, a few with backward glances. Then it was just Nadia, her parents, her aunt, and the five armed Chekists. She should have listened to the cook and run.
“Did you think you could escape justice, former Baron Linsky?” The lead agent stood directly in front of them. “You and your class are like the large apples harvested in fall, grown fat only because the other apples have been plucked off and left to rot, just like the Russian working classes. Discarded and forgotten. Until now.”
Papa didn’t answer. Not even a glare broke the calm of his face. It was as if he were bored, waiting for his troika to arrive. The agents weren’t worthy of attention. Nadia tried to follow his example, but she trembled. From cold or from fear.
“You lived in luxury while your peasants—including my family—starved. You were heartless, but now I will see justice.” He walked to Mama. “Former baroness, you are as lovely as I remember. If only your beauty were paired with something other than indifference for your fellowmen.” Then he stood before Nadia. “And you are much like the Fabergé eggs the aristocrats waste so much money on: beautiful, extravagant, useless.”
Nadia followed the lead of her parents and tried to mask any response. She wasn’t useless. Was she?
“Like weeds, the aristocrats must be plucked out and destroyed. The Linsky family is charged with counterrevolutionary activities, continued loyalty to the criminal, former Tsar Nicholas II, and countless crimes against the people of Russia.”
“What right have you to judge us?” Papa’s voice was controlled and polished. He showed none of the fear that Nadia felt growing with each pronouncement.
“As a member of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counterrevolution and Sabotage, I have been tasked with removing enemies of the revolution. I doubt you remember, but you evicted my family in the dead of winter. My mother died, and a sister. My father brought my brother and me to the city, where they both caught typhus. I am all that remains of my family because you could think only of your rents. We worked that land for generations! It was ours by right!”
“Not by law.” Nadia’s father maintained his composure.
“We’ve a new law now. And according to our law, you are sentenced to death. As is your family.”
A startled cry escaped Mama’s lips, but she quickly clenched her jaw and stood more erect than before.
Nadia could barely breathe. Death? Just because she’d been born rich? She gripped her mother’s hand and then her aunt’s.
Papa glanced at them, then back at the Cheka agent. “The Ukraine is now a sovereign country. You and your revolution have no jurisdiction here.”
The agent huffed. “Tell that to the bullets. Revolutions are meaningless without firing squads.” He motioned to his men. “Bind their hands.”
There had to be some mistake. He didn’t really mean to execute them, did he? Nadia’s parents and her aunt kept all emotions hidden as the agents tied their hands behind their backs. Didn’t her family realize what was about to happen? They’d all been condemned to death.
The Cheka agent frowned. “Where are the sons? I remember Alexander and Nikolai galloping through the fields with no concern for the crops they ruined, no thought of how many people toiled from sunup to sundown so that they could feast every night and squander their days with amusement. Arrogant, useless boys. I imagine they’ve grown into arrogant, useless men.”
Nadia’s cheeks burned. Alexander and Nikolai had been neither arrogant nor useless. She remembered them riding through the crops once or twice, but she also remembered Papa reprimanding them. They hadn’t done it again.
Papa lifted his chin in defiance. “Rittmeister Alexander Ilych Linsky perished in service of tsar and country in 1915. Cornet Nikolai Ilych Linsky did the same in 1916. They were heroes of the empire.”
“They were oppressors of the proletariat, fighting in a bourgeoisie war.”
“You can insult me and shoot me, but you will not dishonor the memory of my valiant sons.” There, at last, was a hint of anger from her father.
The agent didn’t bother arguing. “The former baron first.”
Two of the agents grabbed her father’s arms. He struggled for a moment, straining to kiss his wife. The agent raised a hand, apparently to grant that small concession.
“Goodbye, my dear,” her father whispered to her mother. Then the men moved him to the courtyard wall.
Mama had been stoic until then, but now a whimper escaped her mouth.
Nadia rushed forward and threw herself before the Chekist’s feet. Her knees hit the ground with a painful jolt. “Please, your grace, please have mercy. My father is old, and he has already lost both his sons. Exile us. Don’t kill us. Please.”
The agent spoke to one of his men. “The exquisite daughter of a baron, prostrate before me, calling me your grace. It’s almost enough to weaken my resolve.” He looked at the paper in his hands. “But I have my orders. Nothing is more important than the revolution. Make ready.”
While Nadia continued to beg, the agents straightened their line and drew their revolvers.
“Aim.” The men pointed their weapons at Nadia’s father.
“Fire.”
The cracks echoed around the courtyard, and the acrid smell of cordite assaulted Nadia’s nostrils. Through tears, she saw Papa fall to the ground. It had been difficult to lose her brothers, but this . . . To witness the moment of death brought the grief to an entirely new level of agony.
Her mother and aunt sobbed.
Nadia was still at the agent’s feet. Papa hadn’t deserved execution, but he had served the tsar. Maybe his death would be enough to assuage the Cheka’s bloodlust. “Please, spare my mother and my aunt. They never worked for the tsar. They’re no danger to your revolution.” She choked back her tears so they wouldn’t muddle her voice.
The man looked through his orders again.
“The entire family is to die.” The agent with dark hair and a lantern jaw wasn’t the man in charge, but his statement sounded like an order. Would he convince his superior to kill the rest of them?
“Please have mercy,” Nadia pleaded. “We’ll leave Russia and never return.”
The leader met her eyes for a moment. “I suppose it’s not really their fault that they were raised in luxury. They’re more ornaments than tools of oppression.”
The other agent snorted. “Anyone with either a brain or a heart should have seen that it was wrong to dance in jewels at the Winter Palace, feasting on caviar and champagne, while those around them wore rags and starved. Besides, even in exile, they might sour opinion against us.”
“You care what the capitalist pigs think?” The agent shoved the orders into his pocket.
“No. But the revolution is new, still vulnerable to economic or diplomatic sanctions.”
Nadia sensed the man in charge was wavering but leaning toward cruelty. “We’ll take a vow of silence if you’ll just let us go.”
The second agent huffed. “You’d trust them?”
The man in charge made a motion with his hands. First Nadia’s mother and then her aunt were dragged to the wall and shot, leaving gaping holes in Nadia’s soul.
She stopped begging after her aunt was shot. It obviously would do no good. One of the agents hauled her to her feet and pushed her toward the wall. She couldn’t obscure her emotions as well as her parents had, but she gritted her teeth and straightened her spine, trying to summon a modicum of courage with which to greet the bullets.
“Wait.” That was the second man again, the one who had argued against mercy.
“Have you something to say, Comrade Kuznetsov?” the lead agent asked.
“A request.”
Nadia pulled at the sash binding her wrists while the Bolsheviks spoke. One tug loosened the tie, and then she pulled a wrist free.
She still hoped she would wake up and realize it was all a horrible nightmare. They were going to escape to Paris. They weren’t supposed to be executed in her aunt’s courtyard. But the wind cut into her face, and the murmur of men’s voices pierced her ears, and the smell of gunpowder bit her nose. This was real. How could this have happened? Her parents and her aunt, dead, shot like traitors or criminals. There were no three people she cared for more than those three lying dead in the courtyard.
Maybe . . . Could any of them still be alive? She went to her knees and crawled toward them. Her father was clearly dead, but her mother or her aunt? No. Neither of their chests moved. The only movement came from the Cheka agents.
She would be next. Would it hurt? The physical pain couldn’t be any worse than the crushing grief she already felt. Time was short. Soon they would stand her up and aim their pistols at her. She would try to die bravely, like Papa. She would show these miserable Bolsheviks what noble blood could bear. But first, she would pay her respects to the bodies.
She closed her father’s eyes, ignoring the ghastly wound to his face. “I’m sorry, Papa. Be waiting for me, please? And have Alexander and Nikolai come see me, won’t you? It will be like before the war—we’ll all be together.”
Mama’s face was unmarred. Nadia pulled her mother’s eyelids down and straightened her arms across her chest. “Poor Mama. You are still beautiful, even in death.” Nadia kissed her mother’s forehead. “I will see you again soon.”
Nadia turned to her aunt, but a pair of Cheka agents yanked her to her feet before she could touch the body. Her legs would barely hold her. Face them, just like Papa. She wanted to, but her body trembled, and she worried she would faint. A true noble could endure anything, so why was it so hard to look at the men who had murdered her family?
The man in charge slipped into the manor, disappearing from view. One of the other agents, Kuznetsov, motioned to the two men holding her, and they led her toward the stables.
Dare she hope for mercy? Perhaps they would spare her but insist she muck out the stables first and let her go after they’d humiliated her. Did they think an indignity like that would matter after she’d witnessed the execution of her parents? The servants had been able to leave in peace with their belongings. Maybe Nadia would be given the same chance. She just needed a few things: warm clothing, a skirt not covered in her parents’ blood, the coat she’d sewn her jewels into. She glanced back at the prone figures of her family. Even if she were spared, what would she do without them?
She blinked away tears and looked more closely at the men. Not a shred of mercy showed on their faces. They were not planning to deliver her.
“What are you doing with me?” she asked.
Kuznetsov spoke. “A slight delay. We’ll execute you after we enjoy the fine supper your servants prepared. And you will slake a different type of hunger. You may be an enemy of the revolution, but you’re still beautiful.”
As they reached the stables, he pushed her inside. Then he turned to his comrades. “I’ll let you know when it’s your turn.” He chuckled and closed the stable door, leaving the two of them alone with the horses.
Then she knew. No mercy. Just a different kind of horror.
“No.” Her voice was barely a whisper the first time she spoke, but it was louder the second. “No!”
The agent threw her into the wall. As she banged into the wooden beams, pain shot through her shoulders and head.
“You’re an enemy of the state, condemned to die. I can do whatever I like.”
She’d been prepared to die nobly in front of a firing squad. She wasn’t prepared for this. She tried to rush past the man, but he grabbed her and forced her to the floor. Fabric ripped, and she screamed.
A thunk echoed through the stable, and then the man’s weight pressed down on her, unmoving.
“Hurry, miss.”
Nadia wriggled from underneath the Bolshevik to see the groom. Dima had saved her with the swing of a shovel. But the other agents were still nearby, two on the other side of the stable door. Her parents were dead, her blouse was torn, and the Cheka would soon be searching for her. Terror and grief engulfed her, closing her throat and making it hard to speak. “What am I to do?”
Dima took her by the hand and pulled her to her feet. “Come on.”
“They shot my parents, Dima.”
“I know. And I’m sorry for it. I couldn’t do anything for them, but you can escape. Climb to the loft.”
Nadia tried to follow his instructions, but her limbs shook so much that he had to help her along.
“We’ve not much time, miss.”
She gripped the rungs a little harder and forced herself to move. She slipped and struggled, but finally, they reached the loft. Dima came up after her and rushed to the side of the barn. He tore back several loose boards.
“Out here. The stables border the wall. Climb down and run.”
“And then what?” Her family was dead, she had no friends, and she had no money.
Dima seemed to notice her torn blouse. “Take this.” He took off his threadbare jacket and handed it to her.
It was a peasant’s coat and smelled of horses, but she took it with gratitude. “Thank you. But . . . they’re dead.”
His eyes locked with hers. “They would want you to escape. Run. Those men will have a hard time finding you in the dark. Go far away, and don’t look back. Find work, or go abroad and find one of your father’s friends. Don’t use the Linsky name anymore. Make up a new one. And hurry.”
“What about you?”
Dima glanced back at the unconscious Bolshevik. “I’ll walk along the wall to the back of the house, and then I’ll do my best to start over. You’ll have to start over too.”
Someone beat on the stable door. “It’s time to share, comrade!”
Dima climbed out first and helped her onto the wall. The cold air bit into her neck. She should have taken the Bolshevik’s hat. His coat too; it looked warmer than Dima’s, but there wasn’t time for that now.
“Lower yourself down and jump. You’ll manage. Then run. And may God have mercy on you.”
She had always believed in God, but it was hard to believe He cared about her or her family, not when both her brothers lay dead on distant battlefields and both her parents lay dead in the courtyard. But the groom cared. He had helped. “Thank you, Dima.”
Nadia got on her knees, then lowered herself till she hung from the top of the wall by her hands. She dropped onto the snow-covered ground. They’d be able to see her footprints, wouldn’t they? She almost crumpled up there and waited. They’d find her. They’d kill her. And even if they didn’t, she had no idea what to do without her family. But Dima’s words repeated in her head. They would want you to escape.
She turned her back on the regal estate, turned her back on the unburied bodies of her parents and her aunt, turned her back on twenty years of life as an aristocrat.
And then she ran.