The Great War of the Quartet (The Imperial Timeline Book 1) (50 page)

If it had not been for Maya, she might have found a convent a much more relaxing retreat from dismal bourgeois living than being a governess—after her Kharkov acquaintance had betrayed her heart she had really felt like she should become a nun and forget all about ever marrying. If Vera had been here she would have been interested in the women sitting at the small café, but Maya was keeping her eyes firmly away, and Anna had no interest in gossiping with rich baronesses of the bourgeois nobility that had its wealth rather than patriotic valor as their noble legacy. The reason for Anna’s family’s original ennoblement before the rigorous systematization of nobility with the table of ranks of the army and civil service and so on had been lost in the mists of time. She had no idea how her ancestors had become courtiers—perhaps they had once been medieval boyars?—and the rank of count had been given her great-great-grandfather for his services to Russia as a loyal servant of the Tsar—little Maya’s distant ancestor.

She had some paper money with her, and she liked to try to teach Maya about how it worked. Maya liked the appearance of money, but she might not appreciate where it came from. It was hard to explain since Anna was herself ignorant about the science of economics and what was the real difference between a bill from the Mint and a piece of paper that looked the same and said the same made by a counterfeiter. Sure, it was illegal to make your own money, but the only value of the paper from the Mint was that they were somehow “insured” by Russia. The most important thing to make the little girl understand was that money was limited, but she was not in as much need of being reined in as her sister. Vera was much more needy than Maya, something Anna interpreted as greed but her mother read as intelligence in her ceaseless quest to turn Vera’s vices into virtues while the less needy Maya was made out to just be retarded for not voicing desires for things the way her sister did.

The ice cream was expensive, but Anna was too proud to decline when she realized this. Instead, little Maya got her treat at an outrageous price. Whether inflation—which was partly mysterious and partly easily understandable—or the wealthy bourgeois baronesses were responsible for the price was a moot point. Anna allowed Maya to enjoy the treat, and even ate a spoonful when prompted by the girl. Maya could be so very thoughtful and kind to her governess.

“How come Dasha won’t come?” Maya asked with her lisp.

“She can’t,” Anna said, a little annoyed that Maya was so keen on her older sister Darya Pavlovna.

Dasha—now Princess Darya Yegorskaya-Kreuzmann—was the youngest daughter of the late grand duchess, and she was sixteen years older than the little girl. She and her husband—Prince Yakov Yegorsky-Kreuzmann—had visited over the summer last year, and Darya Pavlovna had had her first child over the winter. Maya liked her older half-sister very much, although Anna suspected that Darya Pavlovna in turn was only being polite towards her little half-sister. It was as if almost the whole family was playing a mean joke on the child, but at least only Vera could ever be openly mean to her—although their mother could be a borderline mean to Maya’s face too.

Maya’s young age and her isolation from her family left Darya one of the few half-siblings she knew. Her half-brother Konstantin was in Constantinople, but her other big half-sister Oksana was in Germany with her Teutonic family, and the brothers Ivan, Alexander, and Pavel were all complete strangers to her whom she had never met.

“You should take me to Moscow for the summer,” Maya quietly mumbled.

“It’s too far, and it could be dangerous.”

Indeed, Anna had heard rumors that the Bulgarians were waiting in the Black Sea to sink any ship that came through the Bosporus. She prayed that the enemy would lose quickly, but the war continued despite her prayers for everything to turn out well soon.

“Rome’s too hot,” Maya muttered, pointing at her ice cream. “The little ice cream is melting.”

“You remember Moscow; it’s not winter all year,” Anna chuckled.

However, Maya had been three when she had last seen Moscow, and it had been her first summer there since the infant was brought along to Constantinople. She spoke Russian, and despite her Caucasian face, she was a Russian through and through, but she had spent almost her whole life in a home surrounded on all sides by Greeks and Turks whom she resembled more than proper Russians. Anna was a bit afraid about that hostile presence, and she was certain that Maya was too. The ominous sight of the Ottoman flag on the other side of the Bosporus since several months back made Anna remember with a cold shiver the horrors of 1453 that haunted her from childhood when she first learned of that black year. That was when the Turks had extinguished Orthodox civilization with a pagan rampage of rape and destruction, and the visible symbol of the Mohammedans that was the Ottoman crescent flag made her fear that the city would yet again be martyred if the Russian army was preoccupied defending Russia from the Teutons in the west and the Mongols in the east. It was terrifying to be sandwiched between errant Western Christianity, pagan Ottoman Mohammedanism, and the yellow peoples of the East, and only God could keep Russia safe on all sides at all times. Yet even that protection had allowed the Mohammedans to temporarily destroy Orthodoxy until its rebirth in Muscovy and the creation of a great Orthodox empire that reached from the Pacific Ocean in Asia to the Teutonic West. What if God would not shield Constantinople from a second rape? While she was there. And Maya. The godless Turks would surely be just as savage on her as they would be on any woman, and it was too horrible to imagine barbarians raping her precious ward to death.

Anna resented the princess’ decision to stay as she was becoming more and more convinced that Constantinople was not safe, but she was too anxious to ask her to go back to Russia with the children to keep them safe in Petersburg or Moscow, far away from the Mohammedan hordes that had begun to slowly reoccupy the holy land they had been supposed to never return to after the great restoration following the Christian Liberation War that had freed the Christians from their Mohammedan overlords.

“Don’t you miss home too?” Maya quietly asked.

It was difficult to know how much the girl thought through what she said. Since she was not a big talker, Anna liked to think that she thought a lot rather than just walk around with an empty head. As much as she tried to be critical and not be overgenerous in her praise of the child, it was hard since she was so sweet, and nobody seemed to care. Would anybody other than Anna be sad if something bad would happen to the child? If only Tatyana Andreyevna would have been violent Maya would practically have been living a Dickensian life of misery.

“I miss lots of things, but you have a home here too. You like your nursery.”

That was certainly true. Maya liked it, even when the big fat Greek lady was there with the little babies. Maya didn’t care much for her little brother and sister; they were so small and ugly, and the ugly Greek lady with the big boobies was living there to suckle the ugly babies. Stupid Vera liked the Greek nurse, and she liked watching when the babies sucked on her udders. Maya just wanted the nursery to be nice and quiet so she could read with Anka without knowing that stupid Pyotr and stupid Olga were waiting to start bawling and fuss. It wasn’t fair. Nobody asked Maya if she wanted to be cuddled by the fat Greek lady. She liked milk and she liked hugging too—she always hugged Anka as much as possible before she left the nursery to go to her room for the evening.

It wasn’t fair that Mommy said Olga was pretty, because she wasn’t. Maya was pretty, because Anka said so, and Anka was good and said what was true but Mommy never said anything like that. Mommy was obviously a liar, since nobody would think that Olga was pretty. Babies were so ugly, especially Pyotr. Oh, he was so ugly, but Mommy said he was a handsome boy. He was ugly, ugly! Maya wasn’t, Pyotr was!

“Maybe take the nursery home?” Maya suggested.

It made sense to bring things you liked along, so when she went home to Moscow, she should bring the nursery. She was sure Daddy could take it with him like a turtle taking his house with him.

She didn’t want to lose her home, so it made sense to take it with her—just like a turtle took his house with him when he moved. The nursery in Moscow—as much as she remembered it from that one summer visit—was foreign and strange and she much preferred her current little home with the little desk and all her dolls and stuffed toys. She didn’t like leaving her stuffed cat alone, and she liked having her around with her. She got her little Manya for her name day two years ago, and she had kept her close ever since. Although Manya was not a cat like the animal walking around and meowing, she could still talk to her when no one was around. When Anka made her Manya voice it always made her happy, and she had begun to think that a cat like Manya would sound the way Anka did when she played with her.

“When you get older you’ll want to get far away from your nursery,” Anna said, confident that she was right.

“No, never,” Maya mumbled, not very convincingly.

Even when she felt strongly about things, she had a very mature lack of obstinacy. Like a mature woman, she was content to say things as if she was not a strong-willed child. Since Anna had little experience with children as an adult before she had been hired to help instruct the little princesses she did not know whether Vera and Maya fitted some kind of typical template for what a child should be like. Indeed, would they be different from ordinary children? Her own upbringing had been without a governess and it had been her mother who had taught her to be first a girl and then a woman—a side effect of the family’s lack of means and reluctance to waste money on a round-the-clock governess—although she had attended an exclusive school for noble ladies that had made her very self-conscious about her family.

Perhaps princesses were different from ordinary girls, and despite Anna’s illustrious family background, she was in practice a commoner. Those rich baronesses chattering over drinks and snacks—titled nobility or untitled de facto nobility alike—were surely more aristocratic in some ways with private drivers and big summer houses. Anna’s father had never owned a car—let alone hired a driver. Her grandfather had had private carriages that had been lost when the family estate had been sold before Anna had been born and the family settled in a relatively humble condominium in Petersburg, just a short walk from Senate Square.

“You won’t be a little child your whole life.”

“I know that,” Maya muttered.

She had a child lisp which became rather obvious when she spoke. Anna tried to engage Maya in conversation so her mouth would learn how to talk without mispronouncing words, but the girl had become increasingly unlikely to be very cooperative in that department. She had once been very talkative as she had still been learning to speak, but when speech became such a natural thing for her, she had become increasingly silent and had to be cajoled into speaking while she had earlier been very happy to speak on her own initiative.

Vera had been different. She had been a quiet and obedient child and had only recently—around the time she begun to receive instruction from the Makedonsky lady—started to say things she didn’t understand. Anna had her suspicions about Anastasia Petrovna and her suitability in being entrusted with children, but Tatyana Andreyevna was very enthusiastic about her mother, and she was obviously very well-liked by people above her. The reason Anna resented her was her unmistakable air of superiority, especially since the only difference between the Makedonskys and Anna’s family was that the Makedonskys were rich. And even if Anna would have been just a maid, she was still equal to Anastasia Petrovna in the eyes of God. Even a slave was equal to her in God’s judgment, and Miss Makedonskaya should remember that.

Chapter 7
3

It was almost completely dark, and the small square between the local authority building and the magistrate court was practically deserted. The concrete halls that housed the two preeminent public institutions represented not just the local home of the local administration and the enforcement of law, but were incarnation of the national institutions of law and government. Meryem had ended up walking all the way into the central district of the city, and as her feet were hurting in the oversized boots she was wearing, she had to sit down. Her feet were really stinging, and there was little doubt that she was bleeding a little from the chafes. She hadn’t actually inspected her feet, but she didn’t have to. Besides, why should she care about her feet? As far as she cared, they might as well be bleeding profusely… Hell, it would be great if she would just bleed dry and be out of her misery.

It might get colder soon, and she had yet to take a bath. She had even had to sneak into an alley earlier to pee, and it made her feel like a stray dog.
Just a dirty, homeless bitch
. After the initial shock of being turned away by her father’s valet, her mind had been patching up everything she remembered about what had happened when she decided to become Daryn’s wife. Since her father obviously couldn’t give his permission—why would he if he considered her dead—she had no idea if she was in the local registry, if she was still a human being. Did she have a home? She didn’t know anything about the law, but she knew that you had a home that was kept in the local registry by the neighborhood shrine where the priest maintained the official records of everyone in the area belonging to that particular shrine. Maybe she should turn to her neighborhood’s priest and ask? “
Excuse me, Your Reverence, can you tell me where I live?
”

What had her father’s valet said? She should turn to her husband, was it? That was a bit difficult, wasn’t it? She hadn’t actually seen her father-in-law after she had married Daryn, and he hadn’t said whether he knew about her becoming his wife. Since her father had disowned her, it would have been futile to try to get his written permission for changing her place the civil registry. She hadn’t actually thought about the law; law was a matter for lawyers and legalists to think about, not ordinary people, and she just barely knew that there was such a thing as the civil registry.

What was going to happen to her? She hadn’t been crying for some time now, and the more time she had between her visit home and now, the more she just sat listlessly silent and worried about herself. And her son—she instinctively rubbed her belly, imagining that she needed to soothe her tiny baby too. If she wasn’t Daryn’s wife in the civil registry, that would make the child a bastard, wouldn’t it? As long as Daryn was here he would know what to do, but Meryem had just assumed that her father would allow her to explain what had happened since they last met, and he would be proud of her patriotic service and welcome her back to her old room again. Once she had impressed her father with stories about Daryn’s brave sacrifice, she had assumed that he would be proud that she was carrying his child.

Obviously that hadn’t happened, and she couldn’t think of an alternative plan. Her head was still filled with the dazing confusion that her father would be so different from what she had expected. She knew that no one could be like God, but she thought that he would have rushed out across the yard, past the flowerbeds, and come to embrace his child, crying with joy to see her again even before she could relate her patriotic little story of how she had been riding with Lieutenant Ibrahim Daryn and hoped to inspire their Asian brothers and sisters to take up arms against the
white ghosts
.

A large red banner hanging across the Tekika Urban Authority Building’s frieze proclaimed, “
A thousand million hearts beating as one are unconquerable. Work hard, obey the law, follow the Rising Sun flag, and win the Holy War!
” Just across from the stone bench where she sat there was a big banner that had been placed on the small grass lawn. “
Peasants, workers, soldiers, scholars; everyone, unite and victory is near! Long live Great Japan! Long live His Majesty the Emperor!
”

She had a fleeting fantasy that her father would show up, and being reminded by that patriotic appeal, he would understand that
unite
could have a more intimate meaning, he would hug her and say how happy he was to see her. Could she sit here until morning? After all, the magistrate court was less than a hundred yards to her left, and he would presumably go there early in the morning to do whatever he had to do to uphold the laws and defend justice.

The thick fur coat she had been given after she was set free was not thick enough to keep the cool night from affecting her. It was getting colder, and she was hungry too. She hadn’t eaten since lunchtime when she had a bit of bread while they changed trains during the journey home, and she had looked forward to a delicious supper with her mother. Instead she had to sit here, hungry and cold.

The stone bench was so cold, and it made her butt feel as cold as her head. Could she last all night, or would she turn into a little ice cube before morning? The clock on the authority building was just coming close to ten, and already she was unbearably cold, and it was bound to get worse yet before it would get better.

This just wouldn’t work. She was hungry, tired, and cold, and she was starting to feel like she might have to pee again. Maybe she should walk back home and try again? No. But she didn’t have any money to even pay for a visit to a bathhouse, let alone to pay for a meal or a bed in an inn. What was she supposed to do? Maybe she would have better luck with her uncle, but she didn’t remember where he lived.

Don’t cry
.
I forbid you to cry, stupid Meryem…

She had to go someplace warm, but where? A home for homeless girls? She had no idea if there was a place like that in the city. She only knew about places like that because she had seen movies, and the thought that she would be anything like a pathetic little orphan was revolting. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Being “abducted” by Daryn had been fate. There was no cosmic reason for her to suffer. She sighed, admonishing herself for reminding her about those things. She was so hungry she felt like she could eat anything. Even disgusting pig or dog.

Maybe Captain Suzuki could help her? He might be able to lend her some money. Where did he say he lived? Matahashi, right? When she got up off the stone bench she looked around the square, trying to think which way Matahashi was from here. She wasn’t sure of the exact way, so she might have to follow the big street and turn off by Peasants’ Hall. That was the way there, wasn’t it?