The Romanov Cross: A Novel (52 page)

The village, if you could call it that, was not far off. She could hear huskies barking and smell smoke before she saw the huts again; there were no more than ten or fifteen of them, and they were the crudest structures she had ever seen, low piles of stone with skins stretched across the tops to make a roof. Steep trails led down the cliff to a sliver of rocky beach where canoes and kayaks were laid upside down across racks made of whalebone. Raised on its own poles was a wooden lifeboat with the name
Carpathia
, in Russian, still faintly legible on its side. Sergei squeezed her hand and with the other pointed off across the Bering Strait. In the distance, like a black fist rising from the sea, she could just make out a tiny island, oddly surrounded, even on a clear day like this, with a belt of fog.

The old man bent low and lifting a sealskin flap ducked into one of the hovels. Within, Ana was surprised to find the room so warm and spacious. The hard ground was covered with many layers of pelts and furs, haphazardly overlapping each other, and two women, as short and broad as the men, were tending to a primitive hearth with a tin chimney spout in the corner. Ana heard the bubbling of a samovar and smelled the surprising aroma of Indian tea. When one of the women, smiling with worn-down yellowed teeth, brought them the tea, it was in chipped china cups with gold rims and
Carpathia
written on them again. Ana had the strong sense that these things had all been salvaged from a wreck of the same name.

But it was clear to her that Kanut was doing his best to show them the royal treatment. And though no sugar or lemon or milk was on offer, not to mention the traditional tea cakes, beautifully decorated and arrayed, that she had once been so accustomed to, it was the most welcoming and delicious cup of tea she had ever been served. Much as her heart had hardened since Ekaterinburg, she was equally touched by any small display of human kindness.

“How did you learn to speak Russian?” she asked, carefully enunciating each word. Shrugging off his coat, the old man revealed an embroidered, deerskin vest fastened with whalebone buttons, and a little carved figure of a bear hanging down around his neck. She wondered if it was a bear that also adorned the plate in his lip.

“Traders,” he said. “I work on ships.” He held up an arm, hand clenched as if to hurl a harpoon. “Ten year.”

At her side, Sergei radiated impatience, and she put a calming hand on his arm. “Drink the tea,” she said gently, “it will refresh you,” before thanking their host directly. Despite the strange surroundings, she felt as if she were back in one of the imperial palaces, welcoming a delegation from one of the far-flung outposts of the empire. Her family had once ruled nearly a sixth of the globe, and now she was reduced to the clothes on her back and the treasures in her corset. How thankful she was, yet again, that she had had the foresight to wear it, rather than stuffing it in their stolen bundle.

For several minutes, they haltingly talked about his adventures at sea—he had apparently traveled through most of the Arctic regions, hunting beavers, walruses, seals, whales—but Ana could sense the pressure building in Sergei. He kept crossing and recrossing his legs, clearing his throat, even coughing. Finally, when he could stand it no more, he broke in to say, “Can we hire you, or some of your men, to take us across to the island? We will gladly pay you whatever you want.”

Although the old man smiled politely, Ana could tell he was offended at having his colloquy interrupted. He seldom had a new listener, she imagined. But when he shook his head, it was with more than petty annoyance.

“No. Not there,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Bad luck,” he said, his fingers unconsciously grazing the ivory bear around his neck.

Was it his good-luck charm, Ana wondered? His equivalent of the emerald cross beneath her blouse?

“Is it because the Russian settlers are there?” Sergei pressed on. “I can promise you, they will do you no harm. They are followers of a great man, a holy man, known as Father Grigori.”

But the old man was as stolid and impassive as a boulder.

“He was also called Rasputin,” Sergei said. “Surely you have heard of him by that name.”

“Place for spirits,” he said, of the island. “I tell them, do not go there. Place for the dead. Do not go.”

Ana had the impression that he was saying it was a holy place for the Eskimos, sacred ground that the colonists had defiled by their very presence. Even that one glimpse of it that she had had confirmed her suspicions. It was a forbidding spot.

But Sergei was not to be dissuaded. For that matter, neither was she. They could hardly return to Russia now, and they had come all this way to find a safe harbor, if only for a year or two, until the world had come to its senses and the Reds had been turned out of power as ruthlessly as they had taken it. No, she was as determined as Sergei to reach their destination, especially now that it was within sight.

“Well, then, if you don’t want to go,” Sergei said, “what about selling us one of those boats down on the beach? The one from the
Carpathia
?” He held up his cup and pointed at the word on his teacup.

Kanut frowned.

“How much do you want for it?” Sergei went on, glancing at Anastasia. Reaching inside her coat, she drew out the drawstring bag in which they kept their ready bribes, and Sergei opened it, rummaged around inside, and took out a sparkling yellow diamond. He held it out toward the old man. “It’s worth a thousand rubles. And what’s that wooden boat worth?”

When the old man showed no interest, Sergei took out a sapphire so big and so blue it looked like a blueberry. “Both of them, you can have them both.”

But Kanut still didn’t budge. Ana didn’t know if this was some bargaining tactic, or if he was sincerely uninterested.

Sergei’s frustration was growing, but then he seemed to have hit on something. He dug deeper into the pouch and came out with three gold rings that had once belonged to Ana’s sisters. Her heart ached at seeing them. But Sergei was right—the moment the gold appeared, Kanut paid attention. He didn’t care about gems, but gold was the currency of the world, particularly in these regions where so much of it was mined.

“The rings—pure gold—you can have all three.”

Kanut held out his palm, and when Sergei had dropped the rings onto it, he left it there … waiting for the diamond and the sapphire to join them. So, Ana thought, he wasn’t so impervious to their beauty, and their value, after all. Sergei reluctantly handed over the jewels, too. They had just bought a sailboat for the price of the imperial yacht
Standart
.

The old man pocketed the booty in his vest, and perhaps afraid that these two fools might regret the deal, stood up and said, “You must go soon. The tides.” He shouted some instructions to the women, one of whom was just about to serve them some hunks of cured blubber, and motioned for Ana and Sergei to follow him.

Outside, the two men who had been accompanying Kanut were crouching on the tundra, tossing fishtails to the dogs, who were straining at their chains. The old man issued some order in their native tongue, and the men looked puzzled. The old man said something more, and Ana saw one of them, with a gold tooth in the front of his mouth, look at her and laugh. She did not need a translator to grasp the gist of what had been said.

The trail down to the beach was steep, and with her bad foot, it was difficult to maintain her balance. Sergei put an arm around her waist and virtually carried her much of the way. At the bottom, he was winded, and bending over double, dissolved in a fit of coughs.

Under Kanut’s close eye, the two men unlashed the sailboat from the whalebone posts, flipped it right-side-up, and slipped its bow into the frigid, slushy water. One of them stepped between the thwarts, and pulling on a coiled rope, raised a limp canvas sail. The other produced a dented canteen—he shook it so that they could hear it was filled—along with a knotted handful of jerky strips and some cured blubber, then tossed them all into the stern of the boat. Enough provisions, Ana surmised, for them to make it to the neighboring island … or die lost at sea.

Sergei, looking alarmingly winded and pale, put out a hand and helped Anastasia into the boat, and once she was settled, he took a seat at the stern, taking the tiller in one hand and the rope connected to the sail in the other. Nodding at the two Eskimos, like a hunter telling
the beaters to release the hounds, he wound the rope around his wrist as the natives put their shoulders down and pushed the boat away from shore. It bobbed in place at first, before Sergei pulled the sail higher and the wind suddenly caught it and snapped it tight. The boat veered away from the rocky beach, the cold waves lapping hungrily at its sides as Ana clutched an oarlock. Nunarbuk receded quickly, its squat stone huts lost in the gray cliffside, while St. Peter’s Island remained a black knob in the midst of the choppy sea. A flock of birds—all dusky hued and crying discordantly—flew around and around their feeble mast, as if issuing a warning of their own.

But Anastasia merely whispered a prayer under her breath and touched her hand to the place on her breast where the emerald cross hung. In what else could she put her faith?

Alone on the open road, with Frank strapped to the gurney in the ambulance bay behind her, Nika drove on toward Nome, snow blowing straight into the car through the missing windshield. At times it was flying so thick and fast that it totally obscured the lanes, and Nika had to stop the car altogether and wait for things to clear before she could even tell which way the road was going. The highway reflectors winked red when caught in the headlight, but that was about the only help she got.

She knew there wasn’t much in the way of human habitation out here, and what there was would be invisible behind the swirling snow. She coughed behind her mask—at least it kept the snow out of her mouth—but she worried that she was starting to feel light-headed. The candy bar she’d eaten earlier might not be enough to sustain her, though the very thought of food made her nauseous, not hungry. She simply had to keep control of her nerves and stay focused, for another few hours. Frank’s life depended upon it.

Glancing in back, she saw that he was lying motionless under several blankets and a thermal cover, a stocking cap pulled low over his brow, all the while drifting in and out of consciousness. She was worried
about a concussion, or worse, but what did she know? Despite what the patrolman might believe, she was no doctor.

If only Frank were fully conscious and aware, he could have assessed his condition himself.

She turned on the heater, full blast, but with the window gone, most of the hot air dissipated almost immediately; the rest simply melted the snow and ice piling up in the front of the ambulance until she found frigid water sloshing around among the foot pedals. Still, without the heat on, she felt that her hands, even in the gloves, might freeze.

Once the highway turned inland, the evergreens grew thicker, rising on both sides of the highway and affording some modicum of protection from the wind. They also helped her to see where the road was going, and she was able to pick up speed. She was even able to spot the occasional road sign—usually warning of some treacherous stretch ahead—but sometimes telling her how much farther it was to Nome. She’d have enough gas, she could see that, but keeping the ambulance from skidding off into a snowdrift, or colliding with some nocturnal creature out foraging, could prove deadly. She personally knew of three people in Port Orlov who had died from exposure, and one of them was an Inuit—Geordie’s great uncle—and he had lived there his entire life. His hungry malamute had wandered into the Yardarm, alone, four days later.

As she huddled over the wheel, pressing on toward Nome on her own desperate mission, she was reminded of the other malamute, the famous Balto, who had carried the lifesaving serum there almost a hundred years before. She thought of the terrible hardships those dogs and mushers had endured, and even as she suffered a bout of coughing herself, she tried to bolster her spirit with their own bravery and commitment. If they could do it on open sleds, across impossible terrain, why should she be questioning her chances? She had a car, albeit a lousy one. She had a heater—even if it was turning everything to porridge—and she had a doctor on board, despite the fact that he was injured and mostly unconscious. She should have had it made.

The pep rally didn’t help as much as she hoped it would.

She turned on the radio, and a country-western station kicked in, despite the storm. She didn’t really follow that kind of music, so the singer, crooning about a girl who got away, wasn’t familiar to her. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was the connection to civilization, the voice from the void, the company it provided, as she drove on through the darkness and the freezing cold. It was a mental lifeline, and one she clung to … especially as she felt her own energy slipping.

How much time passed by like that, she didn’t know. She was so concentrated on following the road, keeping track of those elusive reflectors posted along the sides, that she was becoming snow-blind. And more than once, without knowing it, she must have closed her eyes for a few seconds, because when she looked up again something in her field of vision had changed—a sign was already rushing past her, or the road had started to bend through a grove of trees. She’d hastily wipe the snow from her goggles, pound her arms to get the blood flowing, and tell herself in a loud voice, “Wake up, Nika—wake up!”

The ambulance was so old it had no GPS, and even the odometer was stuck, so it was hard to keep track of how much farther she had to go. She had to rely upon the infrequent signage. But there was no point in worrying about it, she thought, and less point in turning back. “You’ll get there when you get there,” her grandmother used to say. Back then, she’d thought it was pretty dumb. Right now, it seemed like the height of wisdom.

Taylor Swift—now there was someone she did recognize—came on, singing an old hit she’d written about some guy who’d treated her badly (who was it, Nika tried to recall, the tabloids said there were so many) when she was surprised by a voice from the ambulance bay saying, “Enough … enough.”