Silver Nights (15 page)

Slowly, she unfolded the document, quietly began to read it in the hushed hall. She kept her voice as low as she could so that the men guarding Boris would not hear clearly, but the humiliation was still so great she did not know how she managed to endure it.

Adam Danilevski stood in the shadow of the staircase at the rear of the hall. Obeying an ordinary summons from his general, he had entered the house from the rear, having left his horse in the stable. The minute he walked into the building, a breathlessness in the atmosphere had told him that something more than ordinarily unpleasant was happening. Instinctively, he had rejected the escort of an overly nervous Nikolai and had made his way, almost stealthily, to the front of the house. Now he stood concealed in the overhang of the staircase, watching this ghastly scene unfold before his eyes. He could be of no service to Sophie or to Boris by showing himself, could only wait and listen.

Sophie finished reading. She folded the letter again. Blood smeared the back of the paper. Boris Mikhailov's blood. That thought came from a great distance as she stood immobile before her husband, waiting for the next stage of the nightmare to be revealed.

“Chain him in the stables,” the prince now said, cool and dispassionate. “He may spend the afternoon in contemplation of the punishment for a runaway—fifty blows of the great knout.”

Violently, Sophie was jerked back from her distant plane. A man of Boris's stature and strength could conceivably survive fifty blows of the ordinary knout, but no man could live through such torture from the great scourge. In essence, Boris Mikhailov had just received a sentence of “cruel” death. Paradoxically, a sentence of “simple” death by hanging or beheading was not permitted the master of serfs, but he could condemn to torture, and if it resulted in death then that was simply a misfortune.

“You cannot order such a thing!” she exclaimed, wringing
her hands in horror. “Boris is my serf. He was in my service, obeying my instructions—”

“Then he and you must learn that only
I
give orders in this household, Sophia Alexeyevna. And the only serfs under my roof are
mine
.” Dmitriev brought his face very close to hers, so that she could feel his breath on her cheek, was impaled by the ferocious cruelty in his eyes, the invincible power of some hatred that she knew was directed at her, yet she knew not why.

“No…no, please, you must not.” She was begging now, slipping to her knees on the hard marble floor, heedless of shame. “The offense is mine, not Boris Mikhailov's. It is upon my back your lash should fall—”

“My dear, you are not very clever.” Her husband interrupted her coldly, looking down at her as she knelt in front of him, the dark eyes imploring in her upturned face, deathly white. “Do you think I do not realize that you would heed your own punishment less than you would heed his, earned for you?” Contempt laced his voice. “Maybe this last lesson will teach you to understand what it means to be my wife. But believe me, Sophia Alexeyevna, if further lessons are required, you shall have them.” He gestured to the guards. “Take him away!” Turning his back on the still-kneeling figure, he marched for the stairs.

Adam kept himself hidden only with the exercise of supreme control. He wanted to run to her where she knelt, head bowed in defeat, skirts heaped around her, sunbright yellow, a shocking, incongruous burst of color in the rain-dark gloom of the hall. But Boris Mikhailov could not be saved if Adam's presence at the scene were revealed. No one must know he had been a witness. Silently, agonizingly, he left her alone in her grief and despair, melting into the shadows as he slipped from the house by a side door.

He sauntered into the stable yard some ten minutes later, when he was sure sufficient time had elapsed for Boris to be chained and the excitement of his recapture had died down a little.

“Do you wish for your horse, lord?” A groom came running as the count entered the yard.

“No, I left something in the saddlebag,” Adam responded
easily. “I would prefer to fetch it myself.” A note of sharpness in his voice, an eyebrow raised with a hint of derision, and he managed to convey the perfectly reasonable impression that he did not trust anyone in Dmitriev's stables to meddle with his possessions. The man bowed, returning to the tack room.

Adam went into the long, low stable block. The rain beat down upon the roof, which had sprung several leaks so that water splattered noisily into iron buckets set beneath the holes. The floor was wet beneath his feet, the straw soggy, and the stables' occupants hung their heads in the resigned patience of their kind. Boris Mikhailov was in the last stall, an iron collar around his neck fastened to a ring in the wall, shackles on wrists and ankles similarly fastened. Adam barely glanced in his direction as he passed, seemingly in search of his own horse, but the look showed him what he had hoped to find. The keys to the chains hung upon a hook set into the wooden partition of the stall.

“Hey! You, there!” Imperatively, he summoned the only other free occupant of the building, a young lad mucking out a stall across the gangway from him.

“Yes, lord.” The lad dropped his spade and came running, tugging his forelock.

“Look at this!” Adam gestured into the stall that held his horse. “Is this the way you treat animals belonging to your master's guests?” He allowed his voice to rise with anger. “It seems to me Prince Dmitriev cannot be aware of such insolent negligence.”

All the color drained from the boy's face; he began to stammer wildly. “Please…please, Your Honor, I didn't realize. It wasn't my fault, Your Honor. I didn't stable him, I didn't, lord…It wasn't me—”

“Fetch fresh hay at once!” snapped the count. “The water in the trough is dirty, and there is nothing but bran dust in the manger!”

The lad scuttled off, fear and bewilderment on his face. He could see nothing wrong in the stable, but it was the master's prerogative to find fault and no right of the serf to disagree.

Adam ran to the stall holding Boris. “I will create some sort
of a disturbance in the next few minutes,” he whispered, swift and low, fitting the key into the locks on the chains. “I cannot promise to draw attention for long. But try if you can to make your way to my house. Take this.” He slipped from his finger an intricately worked signet ring, tucking it into the muzhik's hand, still held against the wall. Boris said nothing, but his fingers curled over the ring. “Show this to my butler and he will take you in.” There was no time for further words. The chains were unlocked although still in place; they would pass casual inspection.

Adam was going through his saddlebags when the lad hurried in with a pail of fresh water and an armful of straw. “What the devil…!” Adam bellowed, and the lad dropped the pail. “There was a pouch of rubles in here.” Adam grabbed the collar of the threadbare shirt. “Who else has been in here?”

The boy began to wail piteously. To be accused of theft was the ultimate terror for a serf. Men boiled into the building as Adam's accusations gathered volume and momentum and the lad's cries of innocence grew more frantic.

“Who is in charge around here?” demanded Count Danilevski, staring around at the stunned circle of heavy peasant faces. “Someone has stolen a pouch of rubles left in my saddlebag.”

“No…no, lord, no one would have done such a thing.” The head groom, whom Adam had last seen guarding Boris, stepped forward, trying to sound calm and strong, but they were all jumpier than usual as a result of Boris's flight, his recapture, and the appalling knowledge of what was to happen to one of their number in the courtyard that evening.

“Outside! All of you!” Adam instructed brusquely. “I can see nothing in here.” He hearded them out into the pouring rain, where they stood miserably, turning out their pockets, knees knocking, feet shuffling, fear and dread on every face. And while they did so, Boris Mikhailov slipped loose from his bonds, gritted his teeth as the pain from his fractured ribs stabbed sharply, and inched his great bulk through the window at the rear of the building, melting into the rain to make his way to the house where he had visited Khan.

Adam, in a most credible imitation of his commanding offi
cer, managed to intimidate the group of stable hands to such an extent they no longer seemed to know what day of the week it was. Those gray eyes seemed to see into their very souls, and the questions were barked in an endless stream, allowing no time for reflection, demanding answers whether they had them or no. After five minutes, although the search had turned up nothing, they were all so demoralized, so utterly convinced that they were about to be convicted of theft by this terrifying soldier, that they would be quite unable to reconstruct the events of the last half hour, if asked to do so when the disappearance of the captive serf was discovered.

Adam kept them quaking in the yard until the noon dinner gong rang. Then he dismissed them, confident that they would not think to check on the securely chained prisoner in the stable after the ordeal they had been through, and with the prospect of the main meal of the day cooling on the table. He was unable to quash a guilty stab as he stalked out of the yard, threatening further investigation after he had talked with Prince Dmitriev. But the sacrifice of those poor, petrified souls had been necessary. The image of Sophie, on her knees in front of the cold, brutal bully she had drawn as husband, her softly despairing pleas, the head bowed in submission, would not leave him. Never had he known such a murderous rage, and he did not know how he was to conceal it from Dmitriev. But he had to keep the appointment, had to appear oblivious of anything untoward in the household, had to hope that in the uproar when Boris's escape was discovered Nikolai would not see any relevance in the fact that Count Danilevski had actually been admitted to the house once already. It was not unreasonable to expect Nikolai to have forgotten such an insignificant fact in the extraordinary turmoil. And if nothing more was said about the alleged theft from the count's saddlebags, the stable hands would breathe a sigh of relief. They would not bring it up, praying instead that the incident would remain buried. They would have no reason to draw any connection between a runaway serf and the general's irate aide-de-camp. No one would, except Sophie.

 

Sophie sat for hours in her bedchamber, staring sightlessly at the wall. She was as dazed as if she had been felled by a blow to the head. Boris Mikhailov was going to die in slow torment, and she had sent him to that death. Khan would have died if it had not been for Adam. God alone knew what fate had befallen Tanya Feodorovna. She clasped her hands over her breasts, trying to enclose herself, to imprison the badness within her—this rot that led to so much suffering for those who had any affection for her. Why was she afflicted in this way? Why did she have this…this unidentifiable fault…that made her husband loathe her to such an extent that anyone connected with her must suffer horribly? From now on, she must live quite alone. She must offer no one a smile, a word, lest they too should fall beneath the evil umbrella of her affection.

She did not go downstairs at dinnertime and received no summons. The dark, rainy afternoon trickled past. No one came near her. Untended, the fire in the porcelain stove built into the wall died down. The rawness of mid-October had descended upon the capital with a vengeance; the green-and-gold warmth of September vanished as always with the abrupt onset of winter. But Sophie did not feel the chill, damp air, did not notice that she sat in darkness. She was waiting for the moment when her body would tell her that Boris's long, slow road to death had begun.

The door opened. She looked up with utter indifference into the scared eyes of Maria. “Is it over?” she asked, although she knew it could not be. She had not felt it yet.

Maria shook her head, her eyes darting this way and that, as if she would see something in the shadows.

“I'm sure
you
can speak to me,” Sophie said dully. “It is only those for whom I hold any affection who must suffer.”

Maria stood gawking at her. “He's escaped,” she said, finally. “Disappeared from the stable where he was chained.”

Life shot through Sophie like a spurt of flame in a revived fire. “When?” was all she said, remembering she was in the presence of a spy.

“No one knows,” Maria told her, bustling over to draw the curtains against the night. “Sometime during dinner, it's thought. Didn't see no need to put a guard on him, chained up
as he was.” For once, she was talking to Sophia Alexeyevna instead of performing her duties in sullen watchfulness. But the habits of caution were now entrenched, and Sophie was not to be seduced, despite her almost disbelieving joy and her need to know every detail the maid might have to offer.

She did not have to pretend to be indifferent to Boris's fate, since the truth would be known throughout the household, but she did not have to give the maid any clues as to the depth of her present feelings. “How did he escape?” she asked, in the same dull tone.

Kneeling in front of the stove, Maria opened the door and began shoving fresh logs onto the embers. “Fire's almost out,” she muttered. “Cold as death in here. No one seems to know how.” She got to her feet, smoothing down her apron. “His Highness bids you sup with him. What gown will you wear?”

“I really do not care, Maria,” Sophie said, wondering how she was to break bread with her husband after the shame of this morning. Then she remembered that the miracle had occurred. Her shame was as nothing compared with Boris's reprieve. Her head went up. “The rose silk, I think. And I will wear the rubies.”

Prince Dmitriev, locked in an icy fury, balked of his revenge, greeted his wife's arrival in the drawing room with stony silence. There was no possibility that she had been implicated in the muzhik's escape. Maria had been guarding the princess's door from the moment she reached her bedchamber only minutes after Boris Mikhailov was taken off. But if it had not been Sophia Alexeyevna, who could have provided the necessary assistance?