| |
The next day, an icy chill settled on the Kremlin. Spring had hardly arrived, and winter storms blew through, defying the transition to warmer seasons. When late afternoon came, Inga made her way toward Taras’s room. It was mid-afternoon and she wouldn't need to help with dinner for a few more hours. Yehvah had already napped. When she woke, she told Inga to take a few hours respite. Most of the palace had shut down. The frigid temperatures kept people in their rooms, close to the fireplaces. Even the corridors felt like cemeteries today.
The instant she entered Taras’s room and shut the heavy wooden door, warmth flooded up against and around her, enveloping her and evaporating her gooseflesh.
Taras's head came up from his place in front of the fire. A thick bearskin draped his shoulders, the hide spread out around him on the hearthstones. He looked solemn. Parchments littered the ground beside him, but he paid them no heed.
“It’s frigid out there,” she said. “Yehvah gave me a couple of hours before dinner.”
He smiled his beautiful smile and held out an inviting hand to her.
Kicking off her wooden clogs, she hurried toward him. He held open the bearskin and she nestled into his embrace, resting her head on his shoulder. Wrapping the skin around both of them, he pressed his face into her neck, smiling against her skin as she snuggled closer to him.
Inga turned her face to look up at him. “What are you thinking about?” His smile faded. She could guess where his thoughts lay. “Your mother?”
He shrugged. “My father. Both, I suppose.”
“Did you find something else out?”
“Not anything specific.” He went silent, his eyes far away.
She touched his face and he gazed down at her again. “Taras, tell me.”
His eyes shifted to stare past her, into the fire.
“Someone told me...it was because of him. My father. Mother died because of something to do with him, or something he did.”
Inga didn’t know what to say. She could see he was troubled. “Tell me your thoughts,” she whispered when the silence became unbearable.
He searched her face. “I’m wondering if he could have helped it. If he had any control over it.”
“What difference does that make?”
“I don’t know,” he sighed in frustration. “Maybe none.”
He tightened his grip on her as he stared into the fire. When he spoke, his voice was soft, almost a whisper. “Why do men always end up fighting the wars of their fathers? Is one lifetime not enough to end a conflict?”
Inga pressed against his chest harder, thinking, while he rubbed her shoulder. The silence stretched between them.
“Maybe,” she said softly, “that’s part of what makes us human.”
“What is?”
“Maybe one of the reasons we have children is to pick up the mantle of those battles we ourselves don’t have the strength to finish.”
He stared at her for several seconds, then pushed some hair back behind her ear, trailing his knuckles against her cheek. Cupping her face with his hand, he brought it within inches of his. “You should have been a scholar.” She smiled up at him. His eyes looked haggard, but he smiled back. “Do you have a surname, Inga?”
She shook her head. “None to speak of. I suppose the only one I can boast is Russovna.”
“Daughter of Russia?”
She smiled sheepishly. She'd given herself the name, and wondered if it sounded silly to him. “I know it doesn’t say much about who I am—no history—but it’s all I have.” She studied his shirt as she talked.
He lifted her chin with his finger. “Inga, it says everything.”
Inga smiled again. His answer pleased her for reasons she couldn’t define. “What’s brought on these thoughts of yours, Taras? Did something happen in your investigation?”
Taras related his conversation with Lady Zakharin the previous night.
“Don’t read too much into what she said, Taras,” Inga said. “The boyars are...self-serving. Always. If your father refused to...bend to the will of a powerful family—even if what they wanted him to do was unethical—many boyars would still see it as his fault for not doing what they wanted. It doesn’t mean your mother’s death was his fault or that he put her in danger.”
“I know,” Taras ran a hand through his white-blond hair. “I only wish I knew what she meant.”
“What will you do now?”
“I don’t know. It feels like my investigation has hit a wall more steadfast than the Kremlin. Maybe I’ll never get the answers I seek.”
“What if you don’t?” Inga asked. “Will you let it rule your life?”
Taras met her gaze with troubled eyes, then blinked, looking away. “I understand what you’re saying. I can’t let it rule my life. I won’t. Not forever. At the same time, Inga, I’m not ready to give up yet.” He scrubbed his face roughly with his hands. “I feel like I’m so close. Like the answers wait on the other side of an impenetrable wall. If I could only...find a way through...”
Inga put a hand on his arm, wishing she could comfort him. “At least spring has come. Summer is always better than winter in the Kremlin. Maybe it will bring you more opportunities to find answers.”
Taras glanced out the window doubtfully. “Spring? Are you certain?”
Inga grinned.
Taras’s smile faded as he put a hand on her neck. “Thank you,” he whispered.
“Of course.”
Her eyes fell on the parchments beside him. They weren’t official documents, as she’d originally supposed, but his sketches. Taras often drew on parchment with charcoal. His ability to capture frozen images was simply remarkable.
“You’ve been drawing,” she murmured.
He released her from the embrace and pulled back to pick up the parchments. “It soothes me,” he said.
One of the pictures showed a Russian soldier who bore suspicious likeness to Nikolai, astride his horse. Another showed the jagged mountains against the Russian skyline. The exact view seen from Taras’s window. The third was of the Tsar, sitting on his throne and looking haggard, as he had since Anastasia's death. The final one captured Inga—just her head and shoulders—sleeping against a pillow, her hair fanning out to one side.
Inga’s face and neck grew hot. “When did you draw this?”
“Just now.” He grinned and her cheeks heated further. “I’ve seen you sleeping enough times to draw it from memory.”
Inga put her finger in the air over the picture of the mountains. She didn’t dare touch it because the charcoal smudged easily, but tracing the skyline in the air above the picture made her feel like she could truly touch those mountains somehow. “It’s amazing, Taras,” she said softly.
“Do you want to try?” he asked.
“Try what?”
“Drawing.”
“Uh...” Fear sprang up at the thought of him seeing anything she might draw. Surely it would turn out hideous. “I...don’t know how.”
“I’ll show you.”
Inga shook her head. “Taras, I don’t think...” He'd already pulled out a fresh sheet of parchment and picked up a piece of charcoal with a point on one end.
Turning her so she sat in his lap with her back to him, he put his arms around her and, laying the parchment atop a book in her lap, positioned the long, skinny stick of charcoal between her fingers. “What do you want to draw?”
“I don’t know.”
He gazed at her, waiting for an answer.
“Um...a horse?”
He smiled and focused on the parchment. With his hand enveloping hers, he pressed the charcoal along its surface. Trying not to tremble, she allowed his hand to guide hers. He drew the long curve of the horse’s neck and back. Then the plump, half-circle of its underbelly. The strong lines of a funnel shape became a muscular neck, and he used lightly drawn circles to shape its head and nose. From time to time, he pulled the charcoal up from the page and used the side of his hand to smudge the lines to make them look like shadows.
As the wild-looking stallion took shape under their hands, Inga's chest filled with amazement. From absolutely nothing a beautiful creature took shape. It seemed so lifelike, she wanted to reach out and stroke its full, untamed mane. Taras drew the horse throwing its head and stomping its feet. Inga could almost hear the spirited whinny. Did Taras always feel this way when he sketched?
When he finished, he set down the charcoal and picked up a damp piece of cloth, which he used to clean the charcoal stains from both their hands.
Inga couldn’t tear her eyes from parchment. “Taras, it’s beautiful. It’s...so real.”
Taras smiled, looking pleased.
“I never knew it felt so...I don’t know.”
“Satisfying?” he asked, and she nodded. He nodded in answer. “When you create something, you have complete control of it, unlike in real life. Does it surprise you that this is what I do when I’m troubled?”
Inga’s eyes went back to the horse picture and she shook her head. “Not anymore.”
He laughed.
She turned in his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Thank you,” she whispered. When she pulled back, he kissed her softly. They wrapped each other up in another embrace and he pressed her down to the warm hearth stones, kissing her more deeply.
