Tempting Fate (66 page)

She flinched. “Don’t chide me, Papa.”

“I’m not chiding you, Laisha,” he said at once, conscience-stricken. “Why would I do such a thing?”

“Because I ran away.” She sounded so full of self-loathing that it was all he could do not to insist she dismount so he could hold her as he had when she was a child.

“I thought that was anger and discretion. Murdering the judges would not have been approved of, and I feared it was that or flight.” He was able to imbue his voice with enough sympathetic amusement that she looked down at him and did not avoid his eyes.

“I did want to choke him,” she said carefully, not investigating her feelings any more than necessary.

“Quite understandable. He richly deserves it,” Ragoczy remarked at once, making no concession to good manners. “He is a disgrace to the Society of Huntsmen and you have my word that I will speak to each of their officers about this.”

“You will?” She had started to cry but was not yet aware of the tears on her face; her anger prompted them, not her shame. “I want you to tell them exactly what he said, and how he said it. I want them to treat him like a … a…”

“An un-house-broken cur?” Ragoczy suggested. He could not bring himself to call her attention to her weeping, though his heart ached for her.

“At least. He looked at me as if I were a Hun in church!” She sobbed, once, twice, then bent over Babieca’s neck and let her grief rip through her. “He had no right! No right! To do that to me!”

Ragoczy held the mare steady until Laisha mastered herself. “Let me hold your stirrup for you,” he said, one hand closing on the metal.

Laisha kicked her feet out of the stirrups and slid off her mare. With unsteady hands she removed her gloves and rubbed at her face, which only served to make the grime more noticeable. “I don’t need help getting off my horse,” she said stiffly.

“I know that. I want to do something for you, and that was the best I could think of at the moment,” he said, trying to still the curt retort that could come so easily to his tongue. What he thought of as insignificant had a world of importance to his child, and he would not belittle her sensitivity.

“I rode the best of any of them!” Her head came up and she waited for him to offer those phrases of cold comfort she had heard other parents give their children that afternoon.

They did not come. “Yes, you did. It was a fine ride, and you showed excellent judgment at the water jump, which is undoubtedly what upset the Huntsmen so much—none of the others had thought of it.” He put one hand on her shoulder. “If there were any way I could shield you from this, Laisha, I would. You must believe me. But one day you will be grown, with a life of your own to live, and then you would not be pleased that you had been protected, because you would not be able to find your strength. This was not a test, and I did not think you would be treated so boorishly, and had I known what would come of this, I might have tried to dissuade you from entering the competition, but you have not been too badly harmed by it. You’ve only had to face ignorance in action sooner than I thought you would have to. Eventually you would have seen it.”

“They disqualified me because I am Russian.” She sniffed.

Ragoczy slipped his arm around her shoulder completely. “No, my child: they disqualified you because you are not Deutsche. There’s a difference.”

“And you?” She looked at him. She was less than half a head shorter than he, but her slender, awkward height, next to his deepchested, trim stockiness, made her appear to be slighter than she was.

“They must tolerate me, for the Society of Huntsmen have had Ragoczys in their number since the end of the Seventeenth Century. However, in the last sixty years, no Ragoczy has been awarded a greater recognition than the recording of their names on the honor rolls. The ribbons and pheasant cockades have, strangely, all gone to the Society’s countrymen.” With his arm still around her shoulder, Ragoczy began to walk toward the road. He led the mare with his other hand.

“Doesn’t it make you furious?” Laisha asked. “It would make me.”

“It … disappoints me. But it is such a common failing, Laisha.” He thought of those ridiculous chariot races in Rome when only the Greens were allowed to win because the Emperor belonged to the Greens; of the contests in Spain when the King’s Champion won every list, unhorsed or not; of the riding feats in Russia, where noble members of the Imperial Guard never lost. He stopped just before they reached the road. “You rode best today, and you know it. That matters, not what the judges did. If you had not ridden best and knew that as well, you would still have won more than anything they might have given you.”

She sagged against him. “I know, Papa. But I wanted something to show, so they’d all know it.”

He kissed her forehead. “It is very pleasant to get that recognition. When I was younger, I looked for that mark of approval, and I was … seduced? addicted? by achieving constant recognition.” He wondered then, as he had so many times in the past, if his status as Prince had been a consideration in his awards; he had the disquieting feeling that it was. “It came to an end when my country was overrun by our enemies. After that, I learned what it was to stay alive.” Had he been that reprehensible, or had he merely been very young, as Laisha was young? Those days were too far in the past for him to assess them now.

“My country was overrun by its enemies, too,” she said, with a touch of pride, as if this gave them another bond.

“So it was.” They resumed walking toward the road, and a moment later stepped out into sunlight. A truck laden with produce rattled by, and Babieca lifted her head sharply in protest. Ragoczy kept hold of the rein in his firm hand so that she would not balk.

Roger got out of the automobile as he saw Ragoczy and Laisha approaching. He held the door open as he gave the girl a quick, sympathetic smile.

“What about Babieca?” Laisha asked as Ragoczy motioned hex toward the automobile.

“Roger will ride her back to the Schloss in easy stages. You need a bath, and those scrapes ought to be attended to.” Ragoczy had already got into the driver’s seat and was waiting for Laisha to take her place beside him.

“Babieca’s my horse. I’ll take care of her,” Laisha declared with a stubborn set to her jaw.

“Ordinarily I would expect that of you,” Ragoczy told her. “But in this instance you will be kinder to your mare letting Roger ride her than you would be if you were in the saddle. Your head is probably aching, and if those scratches are at all deep—which I doubt, but I don’t know for sure—a long, slow ride would not help either of you. If Babieca needs a bit more rest, Roger can arrange to put her up on the way home and stay over with her. Does that relieve you, or are you going to insist on this mortification of the flesh to salve your own conscience?” He spoke in a level tone, as if he were addressing exhausted troops rather than one determined girl.

“I didn’t…” she protested, then opened the door of the automobile. “I do have a headache. I almost mistimed a very little jump going over the stream.”

Ragoczy gave her a rare, delighted smile. “One of the hardest lessons to learn is to save your strength for the struggles that are necessary. You’re doing well.” He signaled Roger.

“My master?” Roger had mounted Babieca.

“Bring her along, and if there’s any trouble, go to the old posting inn at Hausham. They have good facilities for horses still.” He started the Isotta-Fraschini.

“As you wish, my master.” He steadied the mare as the automobile rolled out onto the road.

When they had been driving for almost ten minutes in silence, Ragoczy said to Laisha, “Tell me, do you feel you would want to move from here?”

Her eyes were startled as she turned to him. “You mean send me to school?”

“No, not that.” Ragoczy’s dark eyes were narrowed. “I have at most another year of work on my current project, and then I will be at liberty to travel again. Italy wouldn’t be wise, but there are other places … I have a house in London. When Professor Riemen and I finish our tasks, do you think you would like to leave Bayern?”

“Leave?” She weighed the word as if it were unfamiliar to her. “What is London like?”

“Very English, very civilized. They’re insular, both geographically and metaphorically, but you might like the place.” He turned onto the road that led up toward Schloss Saint-Germain and on around Schliersee.

Laisha considered it. “Do you want to leave here?”

“It might be wise,” he answered carefully. “You’ve learned about what has happened in Italy. It could happen here as well. This afternoon … I didn’t like what I saw. It was not simply the judges’ bigotry—many people in the stands approved of the decision. There was no argument from the Society of Huntsmen members who attended.” He tapped lightly on the horn, warning a shepherd near the road to watch his flock.

“I don’t know very much English,” she said after a short silence.

“I can teach you. So can your tutors. In a year you should be fairly fluent.” He left the road and started up the drive to the looming bulk of Schloss Saint-Germain.

“Will you want me to make up my mind quickly?” She sounded worried now, and Ragoczy was swift to reassure her.

“No. Nothing has to be decided immediately. Give it your consideration, and if you wish, we can discuss it again in a few days. I should have your response by, oh, next May. It will take a little time to arrange for travel and moving, and you may want to come with me to London once or twice before you make up your mind either way.” He brought the Isotta-Fraschini to a halt in the courtyard of the Schloss, near the door.

“I
will
think about it,” Laisha promised as he came around to open the door for her. “But not tonight.” Her smile was tremulous as she made her forlorn way into the Schloss. She had wanted very much to travel, she reminded herself as she went up to her room. Why did Ragoczy’s suggestion distress her so much? Then she put the matter out of her mind, giving her attention instead to dealing with her tutors, who always fussed over her: she hated being fussed over.

Text of a letter from Irina Ohchenov to Franchot Ragoczy.

Paris, France

December 18, 1925

Schloss Saint-Germain

Schliersee

Bavaire

My dear Count:

In case Professor de Montalia has not already written to you, I wanted you to know that our translating from those tablets I mentioned to you a while ago has gone very well and the excitement about them is still increasing in the academic community. Not that this means a great deal in the general order of things, and if you stopped a man at random on the street and asked him about the work, he would know nothing of it and might well think you were mad. However, since the presentation of the work, I have had more requests for translations than I would have imagined possible a year ago. I’ve actually had to select those projects I will undertake and those I will not. This is something of a change from my first work. I am gaining confidence, not only in my work, but at last I feel that I can live the life I have wanted to make for myself. If you had not found me in that terrible place, no doubt I would be dead by now, surrounded by the ghosts not only of my family but of myself.

As you may know, I have discarded my title. It has no meaning to me any longer. Duchess. But of what? Where is my country? I am not simply an exile—my position no longer exists, and so I have decided that Irina Andreivna Ohchenov will bow to history and set aside those glorious prefixes to her name. I do this with mixed emotions, but I know it is best. What brought it home to me was the other evening. I was riding in a taxi—I can afford to ride in taxis now, and I indulge myself with them—and recognized the Russian accent of the driver. He, realizing that I was also Russian, began to lament the loss of the old days, and to decry the current state of affairs, while he made predictions about the triumphant return of the nobility to Russia as soon as the Communist dogs had killed each other off. This man was driving a taxi in Paris, and ranting about balls and jewels. I felt embarrassed by the whole conversation, although I could not at the time determine why. I should have been in sympathy with the man, who, I believe, was a distant relation of Leonid’s. Instead I was compelled to pity him, to regard him as a wounded, crippled creature. He boasted that for many Frenchmen, riding in a taxi driven by old nobility was something of a cachet. He seemed to me then to be like the dancing bears I saw as a child. He had a store of tricks, but that was not what made him loved—it was that a formidable creature had been reduced to the state of a clown.

From what I have seen of events in Germany, all is not well. Perhaps Hindenburg will prove the proper leader for them. Reporting here is highly biased, of course, but it appears that there is more unrest in that country than assumed at first. What is this National Socialist German Workers Party? There are numerous mentions of them in the press and it is claimed that they have over 25,000 members. They appear to be similar to the Italian Fascisti, which is alarming in itself. I have recently read that the NSDAP is derisively known as Nazi. There are fascist organizations in France, of course, but they are not so large or as influential as this organization appears to be. In reading over what I have written, I feel I am being strangely cautious. How many times I say “appear,” as if I am hoping that things are not so bad as they seem. It may be that the radical right wing is simply more vocal in Germany, but I doubt this is the case. Allowing for the alarmist tone of much French reporting, it still appears—I have said it again—that they are a most powerful faction. You, living where you do, will have a better idea of the strength of that movement. I hope you will be able to reassure me, but I fear that there is danger from these Nazis. My own experience with radical politics will doubtless tend to make me more apprehensive than most, and for that reason you may convince me that I am running from shadows. I hope that is the case.