The Kirilov Star

Chapter One

Countess Anna Yurievna Kirillova was weeping. Mikhail, her beloved husband of thirteen years, was sending her away and she could not bear it. She was weeping so copiously she could not see to thread her needle. She wept for a comfortable life that had been swept away, for her husband and her children, for the state of her once-elegant home, for a future which terrified her, for Russia. A petite woman in her mid-thirties, she had a fragile beauty which her husband was afraid would never stand up to the harshness of the new regime; she was an innocent, passing from the care of her father to the care of her husband and, until the Revolution, she had never known want or fear, had never had to lift a finger, not even to dress herself. Now there was nothing but fear.

‘Let us stay here, Misha,’ she begged for the hundredth time. ‘We will be all right here. No one will trouble us, surely? We have already given up our home in St Petersburg, isn’t that enough?’ She had forgotten, or refused to acknowledge, that the city was now called Petrograd.

They had left it in the dead of night in the spring of 1918 when it became obvious that the old regime was gone for ever, that soldiers and sailors sent to put down the uprising had joined the revolutionaries. The tsar, on his way back from military headquarters supposedly to take charge of the situation, had been stopped and arrested. There had been pandemonium: people being shot for no reason except speaking up against the violence, others leaving the city on carts packed with personal belongings and being stopped and made to go back. Even more were looting, mostly furniture which could be chopped up for firewood.

Mikhail, fearing worse was to come, had brought his little family to their dacha near the small town of Petrovsk, in the foothills of Ukraine. He remembered as a child taking trips from there to the Black Sea to picnic and swim and enjoy the warm weather with his parents and siblings, of pony rides and walks in the woods, of swimming in the lake, of hunting and fishing, of picking grapes from the vines on the sunny slopes, of eating figs straight from the tree. If anyone gave a thought to the future, it did not filter down to the boy he was.

After he had married in 1907, he had brought his wife to spend the summer at the dacha with his widowed mother each year, and when Andrei was born the baby had become part of the annual exodus along with his nursemaids, Mikhail’s valet and Anna’s maid. The Great War, which had engulfed almost the whole civilised world, had put a stop to that; Mikhail had joined the army and there were no more trips to Ukraine. Andrei had vague recollections of the carefree holidays, but Lydia, born in 1916, had never been. When the time came to leave Petrograd, Anna had talked to the children of their villa and estate, painted a rosy picture of what it was like, and so the children, at least, had been happy to leave slushy Petrograd behind, unaware of the true reason for their flight.

In the old days they had travelled in luxury, with their own compartments and sleeping quarters on the train, and a mountain of luggage Mikhail’s mother swore they could not possibly do without, but the journey from Petrograd in 1918 had been accomplished in a packed freight train with only the luggage they could carry between them. Their travelling companions had been a strange mixture: wealthy kulaks in fur coats, stockbrokers in suits and suede shoes, shopkeepers with nothing left to sell, former servants, army deserters, priests deprived of their status, peasants in tunics and felt boots, all living together in the close confines of what appeared to be a cattle truck.

The train had stopped frequently and people would jump down and wander up and down the line, anxiously asking, ‘Why have we stopped?’ and they would try to buy food and water before being hustled back on board and the train jerked into motion again. There had been a very long wait in Kiev where everyone was on tenterhooks while papers were scrutinised and some passengers taken off under guard, for what misdemeanour no one knew. More people had crammed on the train, and after another twenty-four hours of hanging about, during which they dared not leave their places, except one at a time to answer the call of nature, they had set off again.

By the time they had arrived at the house some thirty-six hours later, they were all exhausted, bruised and very hungry, having eaten what little food they had brought with them early on in their journey, expecting to be able to buy more; but all Mikhail had been able to obtain was half a loaf of stale bread and a lump of goat’s cheese.

Kirilhor was a large white villa, the hub of an extensive estate, and had once been opulent. Servants had cared for it, had scrubbed the floors, beaten the heavy Persian rugs, polished the furniture and cooked delicious meals, but now it was run-down and faded, the paint was scuffed, the windows and much of the beautiful furniture had been broken. The four-poster beds, the elegant wardrobes and chests, the red plush sofas and armchairs, the grand piano, the pictures and ornaments, had nearly all been burnt or looted. Outside, the garden was rank and overgrown, its surrounding parkland had been seized by the peasants and shared out between them. The trees had been felled and sawn up for firewood, and crops were growing where once stately poplar, lime and oak had grown. A carriage and a droshky still stood in the coach house, presumably because the peasants had found no use for it. But without horses both were useless. Mikhail was glad his parents had not lived to see it.

It was not what the children had been led to expect because Mama had been describing it in summer, not in the winter when the trees were bare and the lake frozen. And the house was dirty – certainly not the little palace they had expected, with warm fires in every room. And where were the servants? Of the twenty or thirty servants who had served them before the war, there was only Antonina Stepanova Ratsina, the children’s nurse and governess, whom they had brought with them, Ivan Ivanovich, a giant of a man with a head of thick black hair and a beard to match, and his plump wife, Sima. They were there to welcome them and had killed a chicken to make a dinner, though it soon became apparent that food was no easier to come by here than it had been in Petrograd, where long queues formed every day for what little bread there was.

Two days later, Mikhail had left them to rejoin his regiment. With Ivan’s help, Anna had cultivated the patch of earth closest to the house to feed them, knowing that, according to the new laws filtering down to them from the capital, it was no longer theirs to cultivate. Anything they did not eat was the property of the state and had to be handed over, but as the area was in the hands of the counter-revolutionaries, there was no one to enforce the laws and they bartered their surplus for other things they needed, as everyone else was doing. Ivan had managed to buy a skinny horse for them so that he could take Andrei to school in the droshky. Lydia was not yet old enough to go.

It was far from the comfortable life Anna had been used to, but she had proved herself more resourceful and resilient than her husband had expected and they had established a kind of rhythm at one with the seasons. A colonel in the army, he had come home when he could, but in the last eighteen months he had only been back twice and then only for a few days at a time. It made the subsequent partings even more difficult. He had considered staying with his family, but he could not bring himself to desert as many others were doing. He wanted his wife just as she wanted him and those few days together were heartbreakingly poignant, but, loyal to the last, he had returned to duty.

Now even that had to end. The Constituent Assembly, formed after the Revolution under the Provisional Government, had been overthrown and there was civil war, the Red Army against the White, a war without frontiers, where friend opposed friend, brother took up arms against brother, servant fought master and the enemy was unseen and yet everywhere. The Reds were determined to put an end to aristocratic privilege and power, and the Whites were equally determined to hold on to it. And in the middle of it all were the Greens who belonged to neither side and took advantage of whatever situation prevailed. It was chaotic and, what was more, dangerously anarchical. Mikhail felt they had jumped from the cooking pot into the flames of the fire.

‘The fighting is getting closer all the time,’ he told Anna. He was a tall man, with strong dark features and a handsome beard. Too agitated to stand still, he paced the room, window to door and back again, only just avoiding crashing into the table at which his wife sat sewing by the light of a feeble lamp. Oil was running low, so he dare not give her more light. They had chosen to use a room at the back of the house which looked out on the forest and not the road to the town and they had drawn the heavy curtains, so that no chink of light escaped to reveal their presence. ‘And if the Reds find us…’ He stopped, unwilling to put it into words, but she knew what he meant. He was a distant relative of the Romanovs and he was afraid they would share the fate of Tsar Nicholas. Officially he was being held for his own safety, but the rumours were flying that he had been executed by the Bolsheviks without even a trial, though how you could justify trying a ruler ordained by God, Anna had no idea.

‘I am not risking it happening to you and the children,’ he said, glancing down at the floor where two pairs of legs stuck out from beneath the cloth-covered table, one clad in knickerbockers, the other lace-frilled pantalettes. Andrei and Lydia were whispering together, playing some secret game whose rules only they understood.

‘But why would they harm us?’ his wife asked. ‘We have done no wrong, broken no law, unless you count stealing the garden which always used to belong to us, and who else wants it? And you have served Russia faithfully as a soldier all through the war and since.’

‘I served Russia but I also served the tsar, Annushka,’ he said patiently, trying with a calm voice to make her understand and not frighten her any more than she was frightened already. ‘According to the Bolsheviks, the two are not compatible.’

She wouldn’t mind if he were coming too; she could face anything with him at her side, but no, he must take up arms for the White Army – as if they had a chance of winning! Why, even Pyotr Wrangel, who now commanded the White Army, was advising people to leave the country while they could. ‘Misha,’ she implored, jabbing the thread at the eye of the needle and missing. ‘If we must go, then come with us. One man cannot make a difference, surely? In the general confusion you will not even be missed.’

‘That would be desertion, Annushka. I cannot dishonour the name of Kirilov with such a shameful act. I begged leave to help you to escape, but that is all it is, a few days’ leave.’

Anna made one more attempt to thread her needle and then tears overwhelmed her again. He took it from her and bent over the lamp to thread it for her, returned it to her, then sat down and picked up one of the pieces of jewellery from the velvet-lined casket on the table and began systematically to break the gems out of their silver and gold settings with wire-cutters.

‘Do you really need to do that?’ she asked, choking back another sob. Mikhail was adamant and tears were not moving him. ‘It must be decimating their value.’

‘Darling, pieces like this have no value in the new scheme of things, except for barter, and at the moment they are worth more as currency than the new paper money. Or even roubles. You will have to part with them one at a time for travel documents and food. And you will need to sell what is left to keep you going in England until I can join you.’

She sighed, picked up a ruby and sewed it carefully into a pair of stays she held on her lap. It was followed by another and then an emerald and a diamond. ‘I shall be weighed down with it.’ She attempted a laugh which tore at his heart.

‘Put some in the children’s clothes too. Lydia, sweetheart, go and fetch your best petticoat, the silk one with the lace flounces round the hem. And bring Andrei’s best tunic too.’

Lydia scrambled out from under the table, followed by her brother. The ribbons had come out of her hair and Andrei’s socks were wrinkled at the ankle. Both stood and watched their parents for a moment or two, then Lydia asked, ‘Why are you breaking that necklace, Papa? Don’t you like it anymore?’

‘No, I don’t think I do,’ he said, taking a pair of pliers to a priceless antique, one that had been in the Kirilov family for generations. ‘But we must hide the pieces from thieves, so Mama is sewing them into your clothes.’

‘Why? Are we going on a journey?’ Andrei asked, as Lydia disappeared on her errand, taking a stub of candle her father had lit for her.

‘Yes, a very long journey,’ his father told him. ‘Over the sea to England.’

‘England!’ the boy exclaimed. ‘I saw that in my atlas. It’s the other side of the world. Why are we going there?’ He was so like his father, especially his dark, intelligent eyes; looking at him made Anna’s heart ache and she wanted to weep again.

‘To be safe,’ she told her son. ‘Until this dreadful fighting is over and we can come back home.’

‘I want to fight like Papa. I can shoot, you know I can. Didn’t I bring down a hare the other day?’

‘Yes you did, son,’ his father told him. ‘And a jolly good meal it made too, but shooting hares is not the same as shooting people and I pray to God you never have to do it.’

‘You do.’

‘I am a man and a soldier, that is different. It is not something I want to do.’ He turned as Tonya, carrying the petticoat and tunic, came into the room with Lydia. She had been a roly-poly of a woman, almost as broad as she was high, though since the war the fat had melted off her and left folds of superfluous skin. ‘Ah, Tonya, I am glad you are here,’ he said. ‘I will tell you our plans and if you have any suggestions to make I will listen.’

The countess, a little calmer now, continued to sew jewels into their clothes as he told of their plans. ‘I am going to take the countess and the children to Yalta, where they will go on a ship across to Constantinople and from there to England,’ he told her, smiling a little at her gasp of shock. ‘You may go with them or not, as you please. I shall not insist.’

‘But Your Excellency,’ she said, addressing him in the old way, forgetting she should not use that form of address now and she should have said Mikhail Mikhailovich. ‘Where else would I be but with my babes? And the countess needs me.’

‘Oh, thank you, Tonya,’ Anna put in. ‘I do not think I could bear it without you.’

‘But how will we get away?’ the servant asked. ‘Someone is sure to see us and tell the militsiia.’

‘We must leave separately and go in different directions. The countess and I will take the carriage to pay a visit to my cousin, Grigori Stefanovich. He is Chairman of the Workers’ Committee of the Petrovsk Soviet and a visit to him will not be thought out of the ordinary. You will take the children in the droshky, as if you were taking Andrei to school, but you will not leave him there but go to Simferopol. We will meet you there and go to Yalta together.’ He had considered sending them by train, but the trains, mostly made up of freight trucks, were packed with refugees, coming from further north, and they would never manage to get on one, even if they could obtain the necessary papers allowing them to travel.

‘My parents live near Simferopol,’ Tonya put in. ‘You remember, Stepan and Marya Ratsin? They came on a visit. Years ago it was, before the war. We can take the children to them to wait for you.’

‘Thank you, Tonya, if you are sure they will welcome them. It will only be for a few hours until the countess and I arrive.’

‘Of course they will welcome them. The Reds haven’t reached that far, have they?’

‘No, Crimea is in White hands at the moment.’ He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Though for how long, I cannot say.’

‘Then the sooner we set off the better.’

‘Tomorrow,’ he said.

‘Where will we get the extra horses?’ Andrei demanded suddenly. ‘We’ve only got old Tasha and she’s a bag of bones.’

Mikhail smiled at his son, though it was more than a little forced. ‘I have arranged to borrow one from the stationmaster.’

‘You surely do not mean one of those great railway horses that help shunt the trucks?’

‘Yes, there is nothing else to be had and I had to bribe Iosif Liberov with your mother’s white fur coat even for that. Ivan will return the animal when you are safely away.’ Then to Anna, who had been stitching busily the whole time, keeping her fingers on the move, trying not to think about what he was saying, ‘Have you nearly done, Annushka?’

‘There’s just this big diamond left. You haven’t taken it out of its setting.’ She held up the jewel which was set in filigree silver in the shape of a star. The diamond in its centre was very big and glittered in the light from the lamp. Graded rubies, dark as blood, were set down the centre of each arm, the corners of which held a smaller diamond.

‘It won’t budge. We’ll have to leave it like that. Can you put it in Lydia’s petticoat?’

‘I’ll try.’ She picked up her needle and the garment that Tonya had brought and set about concealing the star among its flounces. ‘She had better wear the petticoat; it will be found in our luggage if that is searched.’

‘We cannot take luggage, my love; remember we are only supposed to be going out for the day. We can put a couple of carpet bags under the seat of each carriage, but no more. Wear all you can; you will need it anyway, the weather is bitter.’

‘Mama, why are you doing that?’ Lydia asked, watching her mother poke the gem into a false pocket she had made in the seam between the body of the garment and the flounce.

‘We have to hide it, sweetheart. It is very valuable and bad men might try and take it from us if they know we have it. It is called the Kirilov Star. Did you know that?’

‘No, I didn’t. I can’t remember seeing it before.’

‘I don’t suppose you have. I haven’t worn it for a long time. Occasions for displaying such opulence have long gone. I do not know if they will ever come back. But you must take great care of it and show it to no one.’

‘I won’t.’

Mikhail sat down and drew his daughter onto his knee. ‘You are my diamond, little one, the star of the Kirilovs and you must always remember that. Be good for Papa and help Andrei to look after your mother.’

Lydia rubbed her cheek against his tunic. He had discarded his wonderful scarlet and blue uniform with its gold braid for a plain tunic and wide leather belt, such as the better class of peasants wore. It was rough but strangely comforting. ‘Aren’t you coming with us, Papa?’

‘Not right away. I shall join you later.’ He kissed the top of her head and lifted her off his knee. ‘Now off you go with Tonya and get ready for bed. You too, Andrei. We must all be up early in the morning.’

Anna kissed her daughter and hugged her son and it was not until they and their governess had disappeared that she burst into tears again. ‘What is to become of us, Misha? Will we be parted for ever?’

‘No, of course not.’ He knelt beside her chair and took her hands in his own. ‘You must not think like that, my dearest one. As soon as I can, I will join you. It will only be a few weeks, if that. No one among the Whites believes the war can be won, or that anything can return to what it was. Things have gone too far. When General Wrangel leaves, so will I, I promise you.’ He bent forward and kissed her tear-wet cheek. ‘Now, dry your eyes and come to bed. Tomorrow everything will look more rosy and you will be able to look forward to your new life. You must do it for the children’s sake, let them see what a great adventure it is going to be.’

She gave him a watery smile. ‘I shall try.’

But the next day could certainly not be described as rosy because it was snowing. Fat white flakes drifted down, swirling a little on the wind before settling on trees and rooftops and lastly on the lane that ran past the house. There was talk of postponing their journey but, according to Ivan, it would get worse before it got better, and if they were to go at all, they should go before it became too deep for the droshky. And what was more, he had heard gunfire in the night. It was still some distance away, but it heralded trouble. He had told his own family to take food and warm clothing into the cellar and shelter there if the fighting came to Petrovsk.

He was standing beside the carriage to which their old horse was harnessed, while the white flakes landed on their shoulders and decorated their fur hats. The vehicle was an ancient one with a soft retracting hood which Ivan had pulled up and which was already dotted with snowflakes. Before the war it had been used when the family came down for holidays, but had been laid up until they had arrived as refugees in 1918. Since then they hardly dared take it out for fear of being accused of private ownership. If the Reds came, it would certainly be taken from them.

‘You are right, of course,’ Mikhail told Ivan, stamping his boot-clad feet. ‘And I would not ask you to leave your family if I could manage without you, so the sooner we go, the sooner you will be back with them.’

‘Yes, Your Ex—’ He stopped suddenly, realising he should not have addressed the count in the old way. ‘Yes, Mikhail Mikhailovich,’ he corrected himself. ‘When do you wish me to leave?’

‘You must pretend to be taking Andrei to school and you have to take Lydia too because her mama and papa are out and there is no one to take care of her at home. The countess – I mean Anna Yurievna – and I are going now. We shall have to spend some time with Grigori Stefanovich and not appear to be in a hurry to leave, but he will give us safe conduct to travel. We can make use of that and will meet you at Tonya’s home tomorrow evening. Tonya has assured me her father, Stepan Gregorovich, will welcome the children. I have given her enough money for you to stop at a hotel on the way.’

‘Then I’ll fetch the horse from the station and harness it up.’ He wandered away, muttering that he didn’t know what the world was coming to, with everything upside down and the wrong way round and he could see no good coming from any of it. He was certainly no better off under the new regime, and with the count and countess gone, how was he going to earn a living and feed his family?

The count turned and went back into the house.

Andrei and Lydia were sitting at the kitchen table eating kasha, a gruel made of buckwheat; Tonya was trying to stuff more of Lydia’s clothes into one of the bags and Anna was trying to decide whether she had room to take the icon from her bedroom. No one was talking. Anna looked up as he entered, brushing snow from his shoulders and sleeves. ‘Well?’

‘Ivan Ivanovich thinks we should press on before the snow becomes too thick and I agree with him. Are you ready?’

‘Yes.’ She knew it was not the snow he was concerned about so much as the approaching Red Army. She put the icon down. It was bulky and would take up more room in her bag than it deserved; after all, she could pray just as easily without it. She pulled on fur-lined boots, a coat made of the best sable and a hat to match. On top of that she put a thick shawl which she intended to discard for her visit to Grigori. ‘I am wearing so many petticoats I feel like a dumpling,’ she complained.

‘You look beautiful,’ he said, bending to kiss the tip of her nose. ‘Now, does Tonya have her instructions?’

‘I don’t know. I forgot whether I told her to lock the bedroom door when they stop at the hotel tonight. You never know…’

‘Countess, you have told me a hundred times,’ Tonya put in. ‘And you have told me what to order for supper and what to say to my parents and not to let Andrei out of my sight for a minute. As if I would! And Lydia is to wear all her petticoats and her warmest dress and the seal fur coat you made for her out of your old one…’

‘I am sorry I am such a fusspot,’ Anna said. ‘Of course you know all that. And we shall be together again tomorrow night, so I do not know what I am worrying about. Come, children, sit with us a moment and then we must go.’ They all sat quietly as was the custom before undertaking a journey, but there was no time for lengthy contemplation of what lay before them and it was better not to think of it. Seconds later, she flung her arms about Andrei and hugged him so tight he squirmed to be free. ‘Be good for Tonya and Ivan and look after your sister, won’t you?’

‘Course I will. I’m twelve, nearly a man.’

‘So you are, and I am proud of you.’ She reached for Lydia. ‘Kiss me goodbye, little one, and then I must go. Papa is waiting.’ She had managed to remain dry-eyed, but now the tears started to flow again. It felt as if she were saying goodbye to her children for ever, when it was not her children she might never see again, but her husband. Mikhail was going to see them all onto the boat at Yalta and then there would be real goodbyes. She must not think of that. She had two days to persuade him to travel with them; he had never refused her anything before and she could not believe that he would continue to hold out against her pleas. She brightened and kissed Lydia. ‘Until tomorrow, my darling. Be good.’ Then she drew on her gloves and picked up her muff and followed her husband out to where the carriage waited with the old horse in the shafts.

Tonya, Lydia and Andrei went to the door and watched as the count helped the countess into the carriage and tucked the rug about her before climbing onto the driving seat and flicking the reins over the rump of the old horse. It pricked up its ears and, with a jingle of harness, obeyed the command, ‘Forward!’ They stayed at the door watching and waving until the vehicle was out of sight, while the snow swirled about them and landed on the doormat.

Lydia was loath to move. She did not understand what was happening, but seeing her mother cry had worried her. Mama was a grown-up and never cried. There was more to this trip than either of her parents had admitted. Why all the secrecy and the jewels sewn into their clothes and Mama and Papa going off separately? Papa had said they would be together again tomorrow, but something inside her, a huge dark lump in her breast, stopped her from breathing properly and frightened her.

‘Come back inside, Lidushka,’ Tonya said, taking her hand. ‘They have gone. You can’t see them anymore.’ It sounded like a prophesy.

‘Now, my cherubs,’ she went on, drawing the children back indoors. ‘We must get ready to go too. Go and make sure you have everything, while I pack some food to take with us. We shall have a picnic, eh?’

‘In a snowstorm!’ Andrei laughed, as he scampered up the stairs. He accepted what his father said without question and was treating the whole thing as a great adventure.

‘Do you think we shall ever come back here again?’ Lydia asked him as they reached the landing.

‘Course we will, one day. This is our home. It has belonged to the Kirilovs for hundreds of years. One day it will be mine because I am the heir.’

Lydia looked about her at the carpets and curtains and her bed with its thick hangings to keep out the draughts, though now they were moth-eaten. She felt less sure than Andrei. Everything was changing, like summer suddenly ending and the snow starting, except that the snow would one day melt and spring would come again. But something in her bones, in her soul, told her that this was different and that the springs and summers to come would be nothing like those that had gone before, and it made her anxious.

‘Hurry up!’ Tonya called from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Ivan Ivanovich is back and the droshky is at the door.’

Ivan had said goodbye to Sima and his children and now he was anxious to be off. They picked up the bags Tonya had packed for them and hurried down to the kitchen where Ivan was stamping the snow off his boots on the doormat. He took their bags from them and herded them out to the vehicle. The sight of it with a huge black carthorse in the shafts made Andrei giggle. ‘Do you think you can make it gallop?’ he asked Ivan.

‘Let us hope we do not have to,’ he said curtly, while he stowed the bags inside, lifted Lydia up and deposited her on the long fore and aft seat with her legs on either side, before turning to help Tonya up behind her.

‘I’m going to sit behind you, Ivan Ivanovich,’ Andrei said, moving the shotgun that lay on the seat and putting it on the floor at his feet.

‘Do you think I should have fastened the shutters?’ Tonya asked, looking back at the house.

‘No, we do not want to let everyone know we are fleeing, do we?’ Ivan said. ‘Leave everything looking normal.’

‘Normal!’ She gave a cracked laugh as the big horse began to pull. It was used to shunting heavy engines and the droshky was feather-light by comparison. ‘How can you say normal? I don’t know what that means anymore. All this hole-and-corner stuff. You’d think we were criminals…’

‘In the eyes of the Soviet, we are.’

They reached the end of the drive and turned south towards Petrovsk. It was only one straggling muddy street, lined with crooked wooden houses, which had thatched roofs and painted decorations around the doors and windows. The local Party headquarters on the square was built of brick, and so was the library and the school which was on the far side of the town. The railway station was only a rough wooden building but it also housed the telegraph and post office. There were a few people about, all known to them, and they called out a greeting as they passed. ‘Good day to you, Ivan Ivanovich,’ they said, laughing at the plodding horse. ‘What have you got there? A sledgehammer to crack a nut?’

‘Andrei Mikhailovich must be taken to school,’ he called back. ‘And Mikhail Mikhailovich needed the carriage to visit Grigori Stefanovich on business.’

‘What’s wrong with their legs?’

‘Nothing. It is snowing, or had you not noticed?’

‘Pshaw, they should walk like the rest of us.’

Ivan did not answer but urged the horse to go faster to take them past the hecklers, but it was used to its own steady pace and ignored him. At the school, he drew up. ‘Am I to go in?’ Andrei asked.

‘No, but we will pretend you have. Get out and run round to the back, then cross the field. I will be waiting the other side.’

‘I never heard such nonsense,’ Tonya said. ‘For goodness’ sake, can’t we take the children where we like without all this fuss?’

‘No, we can’t. It’s the count’s orders. Off you go, Andrei, and don’t stop to speak to anyone.’

Andrei believed every word his father had said and had no doubt they would meet at Tonya’s parents’ house and was unworried. ‘I’m going with him,’ the governess said, as he jumped down. ‘I gave my word I would not let him out of my sight. If I’m stopped I shall say I have a message from Anna Yurievna for the teacher.’

Lydia was frightened and clung to Tonya’s hand. ‘You go on with Ivan Ivanovich,’ Tonya said, gently disengaging herself. ‘I shall only be a minute.’

She hurried after Andrei and Ivan moved on. He didn’t like it, he didn’t like any of it. If it were not for his long service to the count’s family and the fact that the countess had always been good to his wife and children, he would have nothing to do with it. The Reds were getting closer all the time, and if they overran the area, he did not want to be labelled a Tsarist or a White, or any other name used to denote an enemy of the state.

The road wound round the field and passed through a small copse of birch trees. One or two shrivelled leaves still clung to the branches, but most made a grey-brown carpet on a land rapidly turning white. Once hidden from the town Ivan pulled up and before long Tonya and Andrei appeared. They clambered aboard and they were quickly on their way again.

They could hear the rumble of guns in the distance and away to their left a plume of smoke rose above a slight hill. The fighting was coming nearer, might already have reached Grigori Stefanovich’s village which was only about eight versts distant from Petrovsk. He looked at Tonya and inclined his head in the direction of the smoke. ‘Whose house do you think that is?’

‘I don’t know and we had better not wait to find out. You know the count’s orders as well as I do. Tickle that horse into a trot, for goodness’ sake.’

He did his best and the horse lumbered on, dragging the droshky after it as if it were trying to free itself from a troublesome fly. The country hereabouts had once produced good grain, wheat, barley and oats, but the war against Germany had put an end to farming; the men had all been away fighting and the women who were left could not work the fields in the same way. When the war ended, the occupying Germans had left and their own men drifted back, but then came the Revolution and everything was confused and no one knew what they were supposed to be doing. Today, the rolling fields were covered in snow, and though the outline of the road was still just visible, a few more hours of bad weather and that, too, would disappear under a blanket of white.

‘We should have harnessed the troika,’ Tonya told Ivan.

‘How could you, with only one horse?’ Troikas, as a rule, were pulled by three horses but they could be harnessed with only two. ‘Anyway, we are going south. If the snow turns to rain what good would a sleigh be?’

‘Perhaps Papa and Mama will catch us up,’ Andrei said. ‘They will surely be going faster than this.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘When are we going to have our picnic?’

‘Not yet,’ Tonya said. ‘Later we will find a shelter.’

‘There is a wood ahead of us,’ Andrei pointed out. ‘There might be a woodman’s hut.’

The road took them among the trees which, burdened by fresh snow, made the way dark as night. Most of the trees were conifers, but there were a few leafless deciduous trees. The last few berries which clung to them – orange rowanberries, wine-coloured elderberries, clusters of viburnum, some whitish, some purple – were being attacked by finches. Except for the creaking of the droshky the softly falling snow deadened all sound. Lydia shivered. ‘I don’t like it,’ she said. ‘It’s like being shut in the cellar. I don’t want to stop here to have our picnic, even if we do find a hut.’

‘Be quiet and listen!’ Ivan said.

Lydia stopped speaking as the sound of galloping horses came to them from among the trees. Ivan did not wait to see who rode them, but whipped up their own animal into a lumbering gallop. The droshky swayed from side to side and they hung on grimly. Half a dozen horsemen burst from the trees onto the road behind them and one shouted for them to halt. Ivan ignored them. Tonya sat forward with her arms about Lydia, as gunshots spattered round them. ‘You had better stop, Ivan Ivanovich,’ she cried. ‘Before they kill us all.’

His answer was to go faster. The horsemen, who seemed to think chasing them was a great joke, continued to fire at the ground around them, laughing and shouting and not bothering to catch them up, which they could easily have done. Before anyone could stop him, Andrei had grabbed the shotgun and stood up in the swaying carriage to return the fire. It was the worst thing he could have done. The chase stopped being a joke, and although Tonya reached up and tried to pull the boy down, it was too late; they were subjected to a hail of bullets, this time not aimed to miss.

Andrei and Tonya both fell backwards and landed awkwardly on Lydia who screamed and kept on screaming, as Andrei’s blood spattered onto her face; she could even taste it on her lips. So much blood, sticky and black in the darkness of the forest, soaking her coat. Andrei did not speak, was incapable of speech. Tonya was groaning. Was some of the blood hers? Ivan looked back once and then urged the horses on, but the horsemen galloped up and surrounded them, forcing them to stop.

‘Why didn’t you stop when we shouted?’ one of them asked, riding close to the carriage and peering inside. ‘Who was it fired at us?’

‘The boy,’ Ivan said. ‘He did not understand. He is only a child. He thought he was defending his sister.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Get down and look, for God’s sake, and stop that child screaming. You’ll have the whole army down on our heads.’ Which army he did not specify.

‘She is frightened.’ Ivan clambered down awkwardly, knowing that the men’s guns were trained on him. He reached across and pulled Tonya off Lydia. Unable to sit up, the nurse slid to the floor. ‘Be quiet, little one,’ he told Lydia. ‘You will only make the men angry if you scream.’

Her screams became frightened sobs, which she tried valiantly to hold back, but the sight of Andrei laying across her lap with his head thrown back and his eyes wide and staring was enough to set her off again. Her coat had fallen open and the blood was staining her white dress, soaking through to the petticoat, the petticoat containing the Kirilov diamond. She remembered her mother saying bad men might try and take it from her and she supposed that was who they were. Ivan lifted Andrei out and held him out in his arms, as if to show him to the horsemen, none of whom had dismounted. ‘He is dead.’ Ivan’s voice was toneless.

‘And the other? Who is she?’

He was about to say their governess when he realised that admitting the children had a governess was not a good idea; it branded them as aristocrats. ‘A friend of the family. They were going to stay with her in Perekop while their parents went to Kiev. They have been summoned to appear at some enquiry or other. I don’t know the details.’ The sight of Andrei, brave, foolish Andrei, had brought him near to tears himself and he could only mutter these untruths. ‘Let me take them on, comrades. We are no danger to you. We have nothing you want. The boy did not mean any harm and he didn’t hit anyone.’

The leader at last dismounted and came to look at Andrei, who was most certainly dead of a head wound. It had been a superb shot considering the smallness of the target and the fact that the droshky was travelling in a far from straight line; more of an accident than deliberate, if he were honest. ‘You should have stopped him.’

‘I couldn’t. I was driving. Tonya Ratsina tried to stop him and she is badly wounded. Let us go, comrade. The little girl is terrified, can’t you see?’

Lydia was no longer sobbing. She was staring with wide unblinking eyes at Ivan, who held her brother’s body across his hands as if in supplication. Andrei’s head lolled down one side, his legs down the other, unnaturally arched. She had always thought when people died they shut their eyes but Andrei’s were wide open. Could he see her still? The man leant forward and closed the dead eyes with one hand and turned towards her. She opened her mouth to scream, but he quickly put his hand over her mouth. ‘Silence, child! Your noise will not bring him back. I want to see the woman.’ He reached down into the vehicle and lifted Tonya’s chin. ‘No beauty by any standards.’ He let it fall, then picked up the picnic basket from the floor and flicked open the lid. ‘Food, comrades,’ he said, flinging chicken legs at them. They caught them deftly and began eating, obviously very hungry.

‘Take it,’ Ivan said. ‘Take it, with pleasure. And the pancakes. And the cold tea. Take it all. Just let us go.’

‘We might. But who are you? Give us a name.’

‘Ivan Karlov, cousin to Grigori Stefanovich, the Chairman of the Workers’ Committee of the Petrovsk Soviet.’ It was said without hesitation; he had had a few minutes to realise telling his own name would not help and could lead to his wife and children. He hoped using Grigori’s name might influence the men for the good.

Tonya started to groan and cry out with the pain of her wound and both men turned to look at her. ‘She needs help,’ Ivan said.

‘It’s my view she is beyond help, but we do not make war on children. If the boy had not fired, you would be well on your way by now.’

‘Why did you want to stop us?’

The man laughed. ‘Our horses are spent, we thought we would requisition yours, but now we have seen that great carthorse, we have changed our minds. An unfortunate occurrence, comrade, but not our fault.’ He reached into the carriage and picked up Tonya’s purse. ‘We will have this instead. Now, on your way.’

Ivan did not need telling twice. He laid Andrei on the floor the other side of Tonya and covered them both with rugs, then picked Lydia up and set her up in front of him, wrapping a fur round both their legs. It was done without speaking, without looking back at the horsemen, though he knew they were still watching him.

Chapter Two

Lydia did not scream, or even cry; neither did she speak. Her whole mind was numb, unable to absorb what had happened. The fur that wrapped her was warm, but she shivered uncontrollably. Not even when they left the forest behind, and came out onto open countryside again, did she come out of her lethargic state. It was better that way, Ivan decided; he could not cope with sobs and screams. The sun, rising over the snowy fields, bathed them in a rose-white glow, hiding the barrenness of the ground beneath them. They crossed a river and entered a small village, where Ivan stopped to ask if there was a doctor in the vicinity.

‘No, comrade, no doctor,’ the man returned. ‘There’s a midwife.’

‘What would I want with a midwife? It’s death not new life I’m concerned with.’

The man peered into the carriage. ‘What happened?’

‘We were attacked by Reds or bandits, hard to tell which these days.’

‘Reds? Here?’ He crossed himself fervently. ‘Has the war come to Ukraine?’

‘It is not far behind me.’

Tonya suddenly gave a huge sigh and then there was a gurgling in her throat, and an eerie silence replaced her rasping struggle for breath. There was a finality about it that was indisputable. The man looked into the carriage. ‘It’s a priest and a gravedigger you need, comrade,’ he said, ‘not a doctor.’

‘Then direct me to the priest.’

The man gave him directions, though he did not need them; the church dome was clearly to be seen at the far end of the street. ‘The child?’ the man queried. ‘Is she wounded?’

‘No, shocked that’s all. And can you wonder at it?’

‘No.’

Lydia did not speak while the arrangements for a double funeral went on around her. She did not hear, much less respond, to the sympathetic enquiries of the women of the village and shook her head dumbly when they offered her food. One of the older women tried to take off her bloodstained dress and petticoat, but she resisted silently and fiercely, with a surprising show of strength, and the woman gave up and went to fetch Ivan who was busy helping to dig the graves.

He came to Lydia and squatted down beside her. ‘Let the babushka have the dress, little one. She will wash it for you. You have another in your bag, don’t you?’ When she nodded, he fetched the bag and handed it to the old lady. ‘Change the dress. Leave the petticoat on. She needs its warmth.’

Lydia did not utter a sound as this was accomplished, nor later when she stood by the open graves and earth was scattered on the coffins of her brother and their governess. She watched with vacant eyes as the gravediggers began filling in the dark hole, hearing, but not hearing, the clump of the clods of cold earth as they landed on the wood. Ivan paid for the funeral with one of the jewels taken from Andrei’s tunic, the rest he put in his pocket, then he picked Lydia up and took her back to the droshky which the villagers had scrubbed out. The bloodstains were muted, not so glaringly fresh, but the smell had defied all attempts to eradicate it. She fought silently against returning to it, kicking and struggling in his arms.

‘Little one, we have to go on,’ he said. ‘I must take you to Simferopol. Your mama and papa will be there. You want to see them again, don’t you?’

She nodded, her eyes full of tears, but she clung to him, hiding her face in his shoulder. He climbed onto his own seat, set her between his knees again and, encircling her with his arms, picked up the reins. ‘Try to sleep, little one,’ he murmured.

He was not an articulate man, did not know what to say to comfort her, and he did not try. Instead he sang an old Ukrainian lullaby, softly, liltingly, while the snow turned to rain and drummed on the vehicle, washing away the last of the blood. Exhausted by everything that had happened, she put her head back against his rough tunic, while the horse plodded forward.

They travelled in silence; Lydia sat leaning against his chest, her little brain so numb it had ceased to function. Perhaps it was just as well, he thought; he was finding it hard enough to come to terms with what had happened himself. He had been fond of Andrei; the boy had been intelligent and lively and had not adopted the imperiousness of some aristocrats, believing themselves superior beings. That was down to the count, who was a man he could respect and trust. A man he had failed.

What would he say when he learnt of this terrible tragedy? His son and heir butchered by Reds or bandits, it did not make any difference which it had been. He would blame him and he would be right. It should never have happened. He should not have left a loaded shotgun where the boy could reach it. Now what was he to do? The count had given instructions for them to stay at a hotel, but how could he do that? A man and a little girl, not even a relation. It wouldn’t be right. He could not leave her in a room alone, not in the state she was in, and sharing a room was out of the question. Besides, they were well behind schedule, so he had better keep going all night. The count and countess would be there before him and be anxious about them.

The sun came up as they made their way down out of the hills and now it held more warmth. The snow had disappeared. The fields became fields again and the roads more clearly defined. Villages came and went. He bought food at one place, but Lydia would not eat; his efforts to make her speak failed miserably and he fell to talking to himself.

They arrived at Perekop in the early afternoon and by then the heat in the sun was fierce, making him sweat in his thick clothes. He stopped at a café which had tables under an awning, hitched up the horse and lifted Lydia down. She stood silently while he bought food and drink and took it to one of the tables in the shade. ‘Eat,’ he commanded. But she refused to open her mouth. It worried him. She had been twenty-four hours without food or drink of any kind and that surely was not good. After half an hour they set off again and arrived at Simferopol in the evening. The air had a salty tang and was redolent with the scent of rosemary and pine, but he hardly noticed it. He was dog-weary and worried. He had met the Ratsins only once when they had visited Tonya and he was unsure of his reception. He had to tell them of their daughter’s death and then ask them to look after Lydia until the count arrived, if he had not already done so.

Finding the house was not easy, and then it turned out to be little more than a hovel on the edge of a village a couple of versts from the town, a log-built izba, with a dirt floor and a stove in one corner. There was a table in the middle of the room with a couple of benches. The beds were on the stove.

Lydia had never been in such a place before, but she was so numb she hardly took it in. Tonya’s parents welcomed her with hugs and kisses and brought out the bread and salt to bid them welcome. They had not seen the count and countess, they said. Ivan wondered whether to keep their daughter’s death from them, but that would be cowardly, and so he told them what had happened in his gruff, straightforward way.

They wept, of course they did, and when the weeping stopped, they began to question him. What had happened, who were the horsemen, why were the count and countess visiting them? Were the Reds coming? He answered as best he could, anxious to be on his way back. If those horsemen had been Reds, forerunners of the army, then they would soon be at Petrovsk, and he had left his wife and children there. He had obeyed his instructions in so far as he had brought Lydia Mikhailovna to Simferopol, now his duty was to his family.

He looked across the room, where Lydia sat silent and blank-faced. Poor little mite. ‘May I leave the little one with you, Stepan Gregorovich?’ he asked. ‘The count and countess will be here soon, God willing. I am surprised they are not here ahead of us, but no doubt the weather in the hills delayed them. I have to return.’

The couple were alarmed at the prospect and would have liked to refuse; if the Reds were getting close, harbouring an aristocrat would cost them their lives. On the other hand, the money the big man was offering was more than they had ever seen at one time before and would enable them to move into better accommodation. And it was only for a few hours. They agreed and, having shared a meal of boiled mullet and fish soup with them, Ivan set off back to Petrovsk, leaving behind a child so traumatised, she was barely alive.

‘I don’t know how to entertain a countess,’ Marya Ratsina said between sobs for her dead daughter. ‘What would a countess expect? Where can I get food good enough for them?’ She looked at the money Ivan had given her. It was made up of gold and silver coins, not Kerensky’s paper money. Spending it would invite questions and they had to think of a good reason for having it. ‘Should I go and buy some food? And plates. You cannot expect them to eat out of wooden bowls.’ She went over to Lydia and peered into her face. ‘You, girl, what shall I do to make your mother and father welcome?’

She received no reply and set about cleaning the house with frantic haste, taking the rugs outside and banging them against the outhouse wall, choking on the dust. She swept the floors, cleaned the one little window, stoked up the stove, shook out the blankets and squashed a few bugs, none of which made much difference. The place was still a hovel.

‘For God’s sake, woman, leave off fussing,’ Stepan told her, filling his clay pipe with strong-smelling tobacco. ‘They will probably not even come through the door, they are only coming to fetch the child.’

‘What’s the matter with her? Why does she not speak? I offered her soup and bread but she took neither. I shall be glad when they come and take her away, she is giving me the shivers, sitting there so still and staring. What is she staring at? Is she ill? Oh, I hope she is not going to be ill. I have no idea what to do…’

‘Do nothing. Get on with your usual chores. Feed the chickens, milk the goat, and be thankful we still have them. If the Reds come, they will have them off us in a twinkling.’

‘And if they find her here…’ She jerked her head towards the corner where Lydia sat on a small stool. ‘We will be arrested and probably shot for harbouring her. Do you think they really are coming? It must be very bad in the north. I saw hundreds passing by when I went to the market this morning. They have bought up all the supplies, inflating the prices so I couldn’t afford a thing.’ She sat down, suddenly deflated like a pricked balloon.

They waited the rest of the day. Stepan went on with his chores and Marya would sit for a while, trying to persuade Lydia to talk, and then would jump up and go out into the road to peer towards the mainland, hoping to see the Kirilov carriage. It did not come. They put the child to bed on the floor. She refused to allow them to undress her, struggling silently, and when it looked as though they might succeed, she opened her mouth and screamed so loud and long they gave up and let her sleep as she was, which she did from sheer exhaustion.

The next morning Stepan went into Simferopol to see what was happening for himself. The town was milling with strangers, soldiers in tattered uniforms, civilians riding in an assortment of vehicles or making for the railway station on foot. Some were in furs, having come from the colder climate of the north, and they had servants with them. Others were less well clad and carried their own cases. They all looked desperate. There was a larger police presence than usual, looking at people’s papers, afraid Red soldiers might have infiltrated themselves among the refugees. The grand square in front of the railway station was packed with people, as was the station itself when Stepan managed to push his way through to it.

‘Your Excellency,’ he said, addressing a gentleman in an astrakhan coat and a shiny top hat, who was directing porters loading his luggage onto a trolley, while his wife, in a sable coat, and a boy in warm knickerbockers and belted wool jacket, stood watching. ‘Why is everyone leaving? Are the Reds coming?’

‘I fear it is inevitable,’ the man said. ‘If you have any reason to fear them, then I suggest you make your escape.’

‘No, I have no reason to fear them. I am a poor peasant, I have nothing but a few chickens and a goat. They can come, it won’t bother me, except that I have a child in my care, the little daughter of Count Kirilov. She was supposed to meet her parents at my house and they were going on to Yalta, but they have not come. I don’t know what has happened to them, but what am I to do with her?’

‘Can’t you keep her?’

‘No. She is a little aristocrat, dressed like one too. What would I do with one like that? She isn’t used to work…’

‘I should think not!’

‘Her brother and nurse were shot dead in front of her eyes.’

‘Oh, the poor thing,’ the lady said.

‘The nurse was my daughter and my wife is grieving for her. Even if she were not, she would not know how to look after the child. Can you take her? When her parents come I can tell them you have her. She will be better with you.’

They looked at each other doubtfully, while he waited, cap in hand, looking from one to the other hopefully. ‘She is so sad, the little one,’ he added. ‘She has lost everything…’

‘Where is she now?’

‘At my place, less than two versts away. If you do not take her I shall have to take her to the orphanage.’

‘No, don’t do that,’ the man said, his voice sharp. ‘Fetch her here.’

Stepan darted off before the man could change his mind.

‘Pyotr, what are you thinking of?’ his wife asked him. ‘We have problems enough getting ourselves away without taking on someone else’s child.’

‘But we cannot abandon her. If she is the daughter of Count Kirilov…’

‘If,’ she reiterated.

‘We shall soon find out. I am sure the count would do the same for us if it were Alexei left alone. Just think about that for a moment, will you? All alone and no one to take care of him. We can take her as far as Yalta and can make enquiries there for Count Kirilov. If he hasn’t turned up, the authorities will know what to do.’

She looked at her sturdy young son and gave in. ‘I hope she does not make us miss our train.’

‘It is not due for another hour and we shall be lucky if it leaves on time. Let’s see if we can find something to eat in the station canteen.’

They had just finished their smoked fish, cucumber and pickled mushrooms when Stepan reappeared with Lydia sitting sideways on a donkey he had borrowed. Her weight was balanced on the other side with her bag of clothes. He had persuaded her to come on the promise of seeing her papa and mama soon. He crossed the square and pulled up outside the station, lifted her down, and taking her hand, led her through the crowds, searching out the gentleman, wishing he had enquired his name, so that he could ask for him. Lydia, her hand in his, stared about her, looking for her father and mother. And Andrei. He had not died, he had not shed his life’s blood all over her dress. That had been a nightmare and was not real.

‘There he is,’ Stepan said, pointing.

It was not her papa but another man, and her heart sank. Of course, Stepan Ratsin would not know her papa, would he? She pulled against his hand, still unable to utter a word to tell him he was mistaken. Words choked her. She was dragged unwillingly towards the man. He had a woman with him and a boy, a boy a little older than Andrei who was looking at her with curiosity.

The man bent down towards her. He had grey eyes and a blond beard, a kind face. ‘Are you Count Kirilov’s daughter?’ he asked.

She nodded, her features brightening just a little at the mention of her papa.

‘What is your name?’

She tried, she really tried, to say her name but all that came out of her mouth was a croak.

‘She is still in shock,’ Stepan said, shifting from foot to foot. ‘Her name is Lydia Mikhailovna Kirillova.’

‘How do you know that? Does she have papers?’

Stepan told the man everything Ivan had told him, about the count being a colonel in the White Army and sending the children off separately so as not to attract attention, how they were all supposed to meet at his izba, and about the attack in the woods – he choked a little over this. ‘As for papers,’ he said. ‘Maybe they are in her bag.’ He handed it to the man, who opened it to discover the bloodstained dress. ‘Good God!’

‘Sorry, Your Excellency.’ If it took all the bowing and scraping and ‘your excellencies’ in the world, he would do it. He took the bag from the man and delved into it but there were no papers. ‘I expect the count has them.’

Pyotr closed the bag and looked at his wife. ‘No matter who she is, we can’t leave her, can we?’

‘No, I suppose not,’ she said, putting out her gloved hand to touch Lydia’s cheek. ‘Poor little mite. My heart bleeds for her.’

Stepan bent to Lydia. ‘You go with the gentleman. He will take you to your papa and mama.’ He looked up at the man. ‘What shall I tell the count if he comes? Who shall I say has her?’

‘Baron Simenov. We are going to Yalta. If he has not caught up with us by then, we will take her to the consul. Tell him that.’

Stepan touched his forelock and was gone, mounting the donkey and trotting it out of the town. What else could he have done? he asked himself. She would be all right with the baron. He was a kindly man and you could see the baroness was very taken with the child. Yes, she would be all right. And he crossed himself.

The trains were all crammed to suffocation, but the baron found a place for them all by dint of bribing the stationmaster and giving the porter a huge tea present. Lydia, believing she was being taken to her parents, went without demur.

‘My name is Alexei Petrovich Simenov,’ the boy told Lydia, when the luggage had all been stowed in the luggage van and they had taken their seats. ‘What are you called?’

‘Lydia.’ It was so long since she had uttered anything but a terrified scream, the words came out in a whisper.

‘How old are you?’

Her brain was working so slowly it was several seconds before she answered. ‘Four.’

‘A baby, then.’

‘I am not a baby.’ This was louder and angry.

‘I am thirteen, nearly fourteen. When I am old enough I am going to join the army and fight against the Reds.’

‘Hush,’ his mother murmured, laying a gloved hand upon his sleeve. ‘We will not talk of the war.’ She turned to Lydia. ‘When did you last see your mama and papa, child?’

Lydia could not remember. It seemed an age since they had hugged her mother goodbye and driven away in the carriage, longer still since Papa had sat her on his knee and called her the star of the Kirilovs. What had Ivan Ivanovich done with Andrei? Had he taken him to Papa and Mama? Why had he left her behind? A silent tear rolled down each cheek.

‘She is crying,’ Alexei said.

‘I expect she misses her parents,’ his mother told him, handing Lydia a clean white handkerchief.

‘Where are they?’ the boy asked.

‘I do not know. I wish I did.’ The baroness sighed. She turned to Lydia again. ‘What did your papa say to you when you last saw him? Can you remember?’

Lydia shook her head, the unused handkerchief screwed up in her hand.

‘It is no good quizzing the child,’ the baron put in. ‘She is too young and too confused to understand what is happening to her. Leave her be.’

‘Then I sincerely hope Count Kirilov turns up in Yalta. I do not know what we shall do with her if he does not. She is such a strange child…’

‘Katya, I think if you had been through what she has been through you might seem a little strange,’ he said. ‘She will come out of it, eventually.’

‘What happened to you?’ Alexei demanded of Lydia. ‘Did the Reds get you?’

‘Sasha!’ his mother remonstrated. ‘Do not be unkind. Lydia has lost her brother and her nurse and is all alone. We must take pity on her. Think what it would be like if you found yourself in a strange place without Papa or me.’

All this was said in Lydia’s hearing, just as if she were deaf. She was numb with shock and misery but not deaf. ‘Mama,’ she said on a plaintive note. ‘Where is my mama?’

‘When we leave the train, she will perhaps be waiting at the station for you,’ the baroness said. ‘We do not know her, so you will have to look out for her and point her out to us. You can do that, can’t you?’

Lydia brightened slightly at the prospect. Papa had said he would be there and see them onto a ship. And perhaps Andrei and Tonya would come back to her. But deep inside her she knew that was not possible. She had seen them in their narrow boxes lowered into holes in the ground and the earth piled on top of them. People did not come back from that.

The train took them to Sebastopol, the end of the line, and it was necessary from there to find other transport to Yalta. Pyotr herded his family, including Lydia, off the train. Some of the passengers hoped to embark on ships from there, but those who had chosen to go to Yalta were obliged to wait in line for a hire carriage. Their drivers, if no one else, were pleased that the tsar’s father had refused to allow the railway line to go to Yalta on the grounds that the noise and smoke would spoil the idyll of their seaside holidays.

Yalta was a fashionable resort for Russia’s aristocracy. Here they had built palaces and villas along the coastline and bigger estates in the hills, with vine-covered terraces sloping down to the rocky shore, and here they spent their summers in idleness, riding ponies, having picnics, swimming in the warm sea. Even now, with more and more people crowding into the town and British ships standing offshore, they were not all convinced they needed to leave.

Pyotr settled them in at an already overcrowded hotel, left his wife and her French maid unpacking and took Lydia with him to make enquiries about Count Kirilov, though how anyone could find him in this crush he was not at all sure. He set off to find a British Consulate official.

Sir Edward Stoneleigh’s temporary office overlooked the harbour. He was standing at the window looking out on a seething mass of humanity, all hoping to be evacuated. Some had run along the pier in the hope of being first to board any vessel taking off refugees. There were abandoned motor cars everywhere, some with doors left open and engines still running. There was nothing worse than a mob in a panic, he told himself, unless it was an aristocratic mob, unused to discipline and orderliness. Edward could see British ships standing by to take people off, but so far the order had not come for them to come into the harbour and begin loading.

He had his own orders to see as many off as he could and then leave himself. How many could be safely taken he was not sure, and if they could not all go, what order of priority was he to use? There were more ships on the way and he hoped all who wanted to leave could be accommodated.

He turned away from the window as his clerk announced Baron Simenov. Another aristocrat claiming kinship with the tsar, he supposed, and hoping for preferential treatment. He smiled and went forward to offer his hand. ‘What can I do for you, Baron?’

Pyotr shook the hand. ‘A place on board one of your ships for myself, my wife and son would be greatly appreciated, Sir Edward.’

‘There is a protocol…’

‘I am aware of that, Sir Edward, and I would not ask to go out of turn, but I can furnish you with telling evidence that I have been of use to the British government in an intelligence capacity, for which the Bolsheviks would dearly love to shoot me.’ It was said with a hint of dry humour which Edward liked.

‘Then we shall have to see what we can arrange.’

‘That is not the only reason for my visit, Sir Edward; I have another problem. I have been asked to look after a little girl, supposedly the daughter of Count Kirilov, though I have no way of verifying that. She appears to be all alone in the world and I am at a loss to know what to do with her.’

‘There are dozens of children in Yalta who have become detached from their parents. Husbands have lost wives, wives their children. I have no idea how it will all be sorted out. What is so special about this child?’

Pyotr told him succinctly all he had learnt from Stepan Ratsin, which was little enough. ‘Her parents were supposed to meet her and her brother in Simferopol, but they never turned up. I could not leave her with that uncouth peasant, and so I brought her to Yalta. According to the servant who took her to the peasant, that was where the family was heading.’

‘Has she means of identification?’

‘None at all. But she is dressed like a little aristocrat. Except for the bloodstains – her brother’s and her nurse’s, who were shot in front of her, so I was told.’

‘What does she say?’

‘Nothing. She has not uttered a word, except to croak her name and age. She seems to be in shock. Hardly to be wondered at, is it?’

‘No.’

‘I was hoping you might have news of the count, or some message as to what was to be done with her. I can hardly carry her off to England when her poor parents might be searching for her. And what would I do with her when I got there?’

‘I see,’ Edward murmured. ‘Where is she now?’

‘Outside in the vestibule. I have taken a room in a hotel for my wife and son. They are charging the earth for rooms and I was lucky to obtain one for all of us, but we cannot accommodate the little girl. She is, not to put too fine a point on it, somewhat smelly. You can see how we are fixed?’

Sir Edward did see. ‘You had better bring her in. I’ll see what I can find out.’

‘Thank you. And you will remember a place for us on one of the British ships?’

‘I will remember.’

They shook hands again and Pyotr fetched Lydia, his step lighter than when he arrived. Katya had always been a soft-hearted woman, but the last few months had hardened her and, like everyone else, she looked to her own safety and that of her darling son first. They had no idea who Lydia Mikhailovna was. She could be an impostor or a member of the Romanov family and, until they were safely in England, Katya would do nothing to risk being arrested; the penalties would be dire. He could hardly blame her. She would be glad the child could be handed over with a clear conscience.

Lydia was ushered into the office, more terrified and bewildered than ever. The man who had brought her here, promising to find her father, disappeared and she was left facing another man, who was still not Papa. He had a light moustache but no beard, his brown hair was parted in the middle and had a slight wave to it. His blue eyes regarded her kindly. He squatted down beside her so that he was on her level. ‘Well, Lidushka, we shall have to see what we can do to help you.’ It was said in perfect Russian, with hardly a trace of an accent. ‘Are you hungry?’

Lydia was not sure if she was hungry or not, but decided it was polite to nod that she was.

‘Good.’ He rang a bell on his desk. ‘First things first, eh?’ Then to his secretary, Richard Sandford, who had arrived in answer to his summons, ‘Richard, ask Madame Molinskaya to come here, will you? And then see if you can find out what has happened to Count and Countess Kirilov. The count, according to the information I have been given, is a colonel under General Wrangel. Or he was. He may have decided to call it a day. That would account for him saying he would meet his family in Simferopol. He may, of course, have assumed his daughter perished along with her brother and the nurse, so we need to reassure him on that score and tell him we have her safe.’

‘It won’t be easy, Sir Edward. Everything is a complete shambles. We have tenuous communications with the White command but that is becoming more and more difficult as their posts are overrun.’

‘Do your best.’ Edward bent again to Lydia. ‘How old are you, sweetheart?’

‘Four.’

‘Four, eh? Then you are a big girl, aren’t you? Perhaps you know where you live. Do you know the name of the place?’

‘Kirilhor,’ she said.

‘Where is that?’ Richard asked, but that was more than she could tell him.

‘See what you can discover,’ Edward told him.

He disappeared and a few moments later a fat, motherly Russian woman arrived and Lydia was given into her care. ‘Get those clothes off her and give her a bath,’ Sir Edward murmured, handing her Lydia’s bag of clothes. ‘Then feed her and put her to bed. After that…’ He shrugged, having no clear idea of what he would do.

‘Come, golubchick,’ she said, taking Lydia by the hand and leading her from the room. ‘We shall soon have you feeling more comfortable.’

‘Mama.’ It was a refrain Lydia was to repeat over and over like a mantra. ‘Where is my mama?’

‘Sir Edward will find out for you. You know who Sir Edward is, don’t you?’

Lydia shook her head.

‘He is the English gentleman we have just left. He is a baronet in England and what they call a diplomat. He is a very important man and very busy, so we must not trouble him if we can help it. I will look after you until we find your mama and papa. Now, you are going to be a good girl, aren’t you? A good girl for your papa and Sir Edward.’ As she spoke she led the child through the house to her own quarters above the kitchen. They consisted of a sitting room, a bedroom and a bathroom. She rang a bell and when this was answered by a maid asked her to prepare food for their guest. Then she ran a bath.

It was then the struggle began. Lydia did not want to be undressed. She was afraid the Star of Kirilov would be found and it was her bounden duty to hang onto it; Mama had told her not to let anyone see it. But Madame Molinskaya was hard to resist. She spoke softly, saying there was nothing to fear, everyone was her friend, and all the time she was unbuttoning, untying, stroking the little one’s face, reassuring her. It was when she managed to remove the bloodstained petticoat and threw it on the bathroom floor and heard the heavy thud she realised something was hidden in it.

She picked it up again to examine it. ‘Ah, my little one, what have we here?’ The secret pocket was found and the Star extracted, while Lydia, filled with a sense of her failure, cried salty, silent tears. ‘I see it all now. This is meant to pay your way. Now, why would anyone do that unless they knew you were going to be all alone? We shall see what Sir Edward says, but for now, I shall put it here.’ She laid the jewel on a table against the wall. ‘It will be quite safe while you have your bath and some supper, and then we will take it to Sir Edward. Now, into that warm water with you. There is some nice-smelling soap here.’ She sniffed it and held it to Lydia’s nose. ‘Violets. You like it, don’t you?’

Lydia nodded and was lifted into the bath. It was heavenly to be soaped with the luxury soap, something she had not seen since leaving Petrograd. Her matted hair was shampooed, and when that was done, she was lifted out and dried with a big fluffy white towel. This was more like it used to be, before they went to Kirilhor. Down in the bottom of her smelly bag was a nightdress which had escaped the staining. It was slipped over her head.

‘Now you are civilised again,’ Madame Molinskaya said, picking up a hairbrush from the table and, standing Lydia between her knees, beginning to brush the hair dry. It fell about her face in little corkscrew curls. ‘My, you are a pretty little thing.’ She was just finishing when a maid came to say food was on the table.

Lydia began to feel a little better. This lady was kind, a little like Tonya who had always looked after her and taken her to her mama after she had been bathed and made ready for bed. She would restore her to Mama and Papa. She followed the motherly woman into the adjoining room where the table was set for two. They sat down together and ate pirozhki and cabbage followed by a sweet pancake, smothered in honey. Lydia had not eaten at all for three days, had not felt hungry, but now she was ready to make up for it and ate with a hearty appetite, washing it down with creamy goat’s milk, which pleased Madame.

By the time the meal was finished the traumatised little girl was drooping with tiredness. Madame Molinskaya picked her up and took her into the adjoining room and put her to bed in a little camp bed in her own room which had been made ready while they ate. ‘Sleep, little one,’ she murmured, stroking her cheek. ‘We shall see what tomorrow brings.’ Then she retrieved the Star and went to see Sir Edward.

‘It’s mayhem down there,’ Captain Henry Conway said, jerking his head in the direction of the harbour where thousands of refugees were trying to cram themselves on the British ships which had come into the harbour. He had come up to the residence to discuss the situation with Sir Edward, who was an old friend from their student days. ‘I’m supposed to take off the troops but how can I leave civilians behind, especially those with children? I’ll make room for as many as I can, but I need some guidance on priorities.’

‘That has been worrying me too,’ Edward said, pouring a glass of cognac for each of them. ‘Best take first come, first served and hope more transport will arrive in the next few days and we can get everyone away who wants to go. Wrangel is doing his best to hold the peninsula but I fear the cause is lost.’ He paused to sip his drink. ‘There is someone who needs to go as a priority. Baron Simenov has been working for British intelligence and, besides being wanted by the Reds, has important information to pass on. He has his wife and son with him. Shall I tell him you can take them?’

‘Yes. Tell him to come to the ship and ask for me. We are planning to sail tonight. What about you? When are you leaving?’

‘When my job is done. I still have work to do here. I’ll see you in London perhaps.’

The captain finished his drink, shook hands and left. Edward sent for Richard Sandford. ‘Any news of the Kirilovs?’

‘I have located Kirilhor, Sir Edward. It is a dacha in the Petrovsk district of Ukraine. It was overrun by the Reds two days ago. It was more difficult contacting General Wrangel, but I got through by telephone to one of his staff who told me Colonel Kirilov was given leave to evacuate his family and was then to return to duty. He has not returned.’

‘He could have deserted but in that case he would have been with his children, surely?’

‘The officer said the colonel would be loyal to the last and they are assuming he has met his end.’

‘He had his wife with him.’

‘Then they might both have perished.’

Edward was inclined to agree. ‘According to Baron Simenov, the servant who brought the child to the peasant was adamant the count meant to meet them there and bring them to Yalta. I have had no application from anyone called Kirilov to be evacuated.’

‘Then the little girl is the only survivor.’

‘It seems that way.’

‘What are you going to do about her?’

‘I do not know. Madame Molinskaya is looking after her. I had to send out for a whole wardrobe of clothes for her. Almost everything she had was covered in blood. Poor thing, she is still in shock and unable to tell us anything, except her name and that she is four years old.’

‘An orphanage?’ Richard queried.

‘I am reluctant to do that. She is undoubtedly an aristocrat, so how can I condemn her to being one of thousands of orphans who will find themselves being looked after by the Bolsheviks when they come? They will ill-treat her, especially if they think she has any connection with the Romanovs.’

‘Do you think she has?’

‘I don’t know, but she has some valuable jewels with her, which look as though they might be traceable. I can try and do that once we get back to England.’

Richard smiled. ‘So, you are going to take her back with you?’

‘I can’t leave her here, can I? I’ll see if I can engage one of the other passengers as a nurse for her.’

The evacuation, carried out in a strong wind and rough seas, lasted three days, during which the British ships took the remnants of the White Army who had made their own way to Yalta, and as many of the refugees as they could accommodate, including the Simenovs. Two days later, when nothing more could be done, Sir Edward left with Lydia, whom he had listed as his daughter in order to justify taking her with him.

He was glad he had done that when they arrived in Constantinople and everyone’s papers were examined. Lydia, having none, would not have been allowed to continue otherwise. From there they went to Malta, where they stayed a week, while the refugees’ papers were processed and some of them were taken off the ship, then they sailed for England.

Edward had engaged a young English girl to look after Lydia. Claudia was twenty-one and had been governess to a Russian family who had declined to join the rush to leave, but, in straitened circumstances, had not been able to continue employing her. She spoke a little Russian and he thought Lydia would like that, though the child gave no indication of it one way or another. She submitted silently to being helped to dress and undress, of having her hair brushed, of being shepherded from one place to another in a kind of daze. It was late November when they arrived in Portsmouth.

They went to London by train and stayed at Sir Edward’s Mayfair apartment for the first night, and the next morning he left Lydia and Claudia while he went to the Foreign Office to make his report. What was going to happen to all the Russian refugees they did not know. Some had relatives in Britain where they knew they would be welcome, and some had already made up their minds to go on to America, but those left to fend for themselves would have to be helped to find accommodation and a means of earning a living, which was something many of them had never had to do before. They felt it demeaned them, but as few had brought enough money and jewels out of Russia to keep them in idleness for the rest of their lives, they had perforce to adjust their standards.

Edward said nothing to his superiors about Lydia. He had a feeling his actions would be frowned upon, and he did not know how to explain that the child’s plight had touched a chord in his heart and that her very silence seemed to be a reproof. He could not do much to help hundreds, but he could do something for this little one. She was still not talking and now they were in England it would be doubly difficult for her. A strange country, a strange language, strange people and the loss of her family all had to be dealt with. He hoped and prayed Margaret would understand when he took the child home.

Chapter Three

Upstone Hall was a country mansion in the village of Upstone in north-west Norfolk, surrounded by farming country. In the last few years Sir Edward had not often been in residence, having diplomatic postings abroad. Before the war his wife had always gone with him. They had no children, which was a source of great sorrow to them both, but she had enjoyed the social life in the different embassies to which he had been attached. But when war came he had been posted to Russia and she ceased to accompany him. He had returned home briefly at the end of hostilities, but because of his fluency in the language, he had been sent back to Russia specifically to help the refugees. It was frightening what was happening to that country and he wanted her to be safe, so once again he had left her at home. She lived at Upstone, managed the house, did good works in the village, raised money for the relief of refugees, visited friends and relatives and wrote long letters to him. He had written to tell her about Lydia but there had been no time to receive a reply before they set sail.

Sitting in the first-class compartment of the train taking them to Norfolk he turned his head to look at the child. She was pale and drawn, as she had been ever since he had taken charge of her. Her face betrayed no emotion, either of misery or pleasure. She hardly spoke except to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when offered food. He sometimes felt impatient with her, but then reminded himself of what she had been through and was filled with compassion. They changed trains at Ely and half an hour later drew up at the small wayside station at Upstone where they were met by Groves with the pony and trap.

He was home to a peaceful countryside, recovering from the war to end all wars and the dreadful flu epidemic that followed it. Many of the young men were gone, never to return, but those that were left, along with their womenfolk, were picking up the pieces and trying to get on with their lives. Times were hard enough in Britain, what with shortages and strikes; what was happening in Russia was so remote, so far away, they hardly gave it a thought. He smiled at Lydia. ‘Nearly home,’ he said in Russian.

‘Mama?’ she queried. ‘Will Mama be there?’

‘No, little one. I am afraid we do not know where she is. I promise I will do my best to try and find her for you, and in the meantime, you will live with us.’

He saw one large tear spill over her lashes and roll down her cheek, the only indication she gave that she had understood him. He put his arm about her shoulders and drew her to his side. ‘We will look after you,’ he murmured, bending to kiss the top of her head. ‘I promise you that.’

They turned into the drive where the pony, as if sensing it was nearly home, broke into a trot, and then they were drawing up beside the house and the door was flung open and Margaret ran down the steps to throw herself into his arms almost before he could get down. ‘You are back. Oh, thank the Lord! I could not believe you were really on your way until I got your telegram. Welcome home!’ She took his arm to drag him into the house, ignoring Claudia and Lydia who still sat in the trap, looking bewildered.

‘Hold hard!’ he said, laughing. ‘I am not alone, you know.’

She turned to look at the occupants of the trap. ‘Oh, I forgot you were bringing someone back with you. I’ll send Mrs Selby out to them. I want you all to myself.’

‘Later,’ he said, turning to lift Lydia out and set her on her feet. ‘This is Lydia Mikhailovna Kirillova. She is going to stay with us while I try to locate her family.’ He turned to the child. ‘Lydia, this is my wife, Lady Stoneleigh. Give her a little curtsy and say how do you do.’

Lydia, whose mama would have deplored bad manners on her part, obeyed, though she could not manage a smile.

Claudia was presented next and made her obeisance and then they all went indoors where Mrs Selby, the housekeeper, was sent for and the girls were delivered into her hands. She was a thin woman, dressed in dark blue with a white frilly cap on her grey hair. At her belt was a huge bunch of keys.

She conducted them to the top floor of the three-storey house, to some rooms she called the ‘nursery suite’. They consisted of two adjoining bedrooms and a bathroom, adequately but not luxuriously furnished. Their bags, which had been filled with their meagre belongings, had arrived ahead of them and stood on the floor at the foot of one of the beds in the room they were to share. Lydia looked about her. This was like the nursery suite in St Petersburg. She remembered that every afternoon she and Andrei would be taken by Tonya downstairs to Mama’s boudoir and they would talk about what they had been doing, the lessons they had learnt, the pictures they had drawn, the walks they had taken. Sometimes Papa would be there and they played games together. It did not happen when they moved to Kirilhor because, although there were many, many rooms, they had been desecrated first by the occupying Germans and then by vandals, and they had been obliged to live in one small section of the house. And Papa was more often away than at home.

‘I have had no orders about where you are to have your meals,’ Mrs Selby said, after she had shown them the schoolroom, where a bright fire burnt. ‘For now you had better come down and fetch them up here. Supper will be ready at six. I will leave you to unpack.’

As soon as she had gone, Claudia took Lydia back to the bedroom and began opening drawers and cupboards and inspecting the washing facilities, talking all the time in her broken Russian, but when that became inadequate, she lapsed into English. ‘We shall soon be comfortable,’ she said. ‘Sir Edward is obviously very wealthy. Look at the size of this house, a palace, it is. Lots of servants I shouldn’t wonder, and horses and carriages. Maybe a motor car.’ She was unpacking the trunk and putting things away, watched by a silent Lydia. ‘We shall do all right here, but you will have to learn English. Are you hungry?’

Lydia caught the gist of the last sentence and nodded. She felt strange, as if someone had picked her up from Kirilhor and transported her on a cloud to this place. She could not remember how she got here. The time was a blank, a nightmare from which she was only now awakening.

‘Will you be all right here while I go and fetch our supper?’ Claudia asked her in Russian. She did not wait for a reply, but left her. Lydia went to the window and looked out. Way below her was a yard and men with horses. The trap in which they had arrived was now without its pony and was tipped up on its shafts. A black and white dog lay outside a kennel. Beyond that was a park whose trees still had a few russet and yellow leaves, but were mostly bare. The ground beneath them was green. Everywhere was green. When they had left Kirilhor it had been white. What had happened in between? She had lost Mama and Papa and Tonya and Andrei, but how? Why was she here? A tear gathered in her eye and rolled down her cheek unheeded.

‘Edward, what am I supposed to do with her?’ Margaret asked as they sat over their dinner. Cook had taken especial care over the meal in honour of his homecoming. There was vegetable soup, roast beef, roast potatoes, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, Yorkshire pudding and rich gravy, and that was to be followed by apple pie and cream, a typically English meal and one she knew he would appreciate after being away so long. ‘She is such a strange little thing. Does she speak any English at all?’

‘I can’t say, since she has hardly said a word either in English or Russian, but I doubt it.’

‘Then how am I to communicate with her?’

‘Claudia speaks a little Russian, she will translate until Lydia can learn English.’

‘Learn English! How long do you expect her to stay with us?’

‘Until I find out what happened to her parents. Baron Simenov is returning to Russia on government business and I asked him to find out what he could.’

‘Baron Simenov,’ she repeated. ‘Isn’t he the one who found the child in the first place?’

‘He was one of the hands through which she was passed.’

‘Why didn’t he keep her, then? He’s Russian. It would have been better for her.’

He sighed, trying to conceal his impatience. ‘Darling, I explained why he did not. He thought I would find the count and his wife before I left. And he was taking his wife and son to a new home in England, knowing he would almost certainly be asked to return to Russia. He did not know until we reached England that I had not been able to trace the count or his wife.’

‘Are you sure you were right to bring her out of Russia?’

‘What else was I to do? Leave her to the Bolsheviks? She is an aristocrat, perhaps even a Romanov, and I am told her father is a White Army colonel. The Reds would have no compunction about doing away with her.’

‘How did you manage to bring her out with you? Did no one ask questions?’

‘I said she was my daughter.’

‘Your daughter!’ Margaret had stopped eating and was staring at him in consternation. ‘But everyone in the diplomatic corps knows we have no children.’

He smiled crookedly. ‘It was assumed she was the result of a Russian liaison…’

‘Edward, how could you!’

‘It was easier not to disabuse the authorities of that idea. They would have refused to take her on board.’

‘Why is she so important to you? Are you sure you have told me everything?’

‘Darling, of course I have. If you had been there, seen the chaos, seen the state she was in, covered in blood and numb with shock, you would have done the same as I did.’

‘There are homes for displaced children.’

‘I know. I could not shunt her into one of those. We have this great house, ample funds and no children. I thought, hoped, you would welcome her.’ He reached out and put a hand over hers where it lay on the table next to his. ‘Give her a chance, darling. I am sure you will come to love her.’

‘Do you? Love her, I mean.’ It sounded like an accusation.

‘I do not know her well enough yet,’ he said carefully, alerted by her tone. ‘But she touched a chord in me when I first saw her and I could not bring myself to abandon her.’

‘Some might say you abducted her. Her parents might, even now, be searching desperately for her.’

‘I know, but it was the only way to keep her safe. The situation in Russia is truly dreadful. If the Kirilovs are related in any way to the late tsar, they may have shared his fate.’

‘What makes you think they might be related?’

‘Only what I have been told and that big jewel Lydia had sewn into her petticoat. I have shown it to other Russian émigrés and they recognised it as part of the Kirilov collection. One of them gave me a photograph of the late dowager Countess Kirillova wearing it on the front of a tiara at a court function. I am told it is called the Kirilov Star.’

‘It could have been stolen, along with her clothes, and put on her to deceive the authorities – deceive you, too. She hasn’t been able to tell you about it, has she?’

‘No, but perhaps she will when she feels more comfortable with us.’

A maid came to clear away the dishes and bring in the apple pie and the subject of Lydia was dropped, quite deliberately by Margaret, who went on to talk about village matters. She was resigned to giving the strange little Russian child a home, at least for the time being, but that did not mean she had to love her. In spite of her faith in her husband’s fidelity, a tiny doubt began to take root and she found herself wondering if Lydia really was Edward’s child, especially as he was so vague about who she was. She could not believe he knew as little as he said he did. You simply did not pick strange children up off the street and bring them home for no reason.

He could have fathered her during the war when he was on the ambassador’s staff in Moscow and kept her existence a secret. It would have stayed a secret if it hadn’t been for the Civil War and the exodus of refugees. Had the Kirilovs ever existed? And if they had, was Lydia their child? Why was she so sceptical? Could it be her own inability to give Edward a child, her failure, after three miscarriages suffered in the early years of their marriage, to be a complete wife, her failure to be a mother? He had wanted a child so desperately. Not as desperately as she had, though. It might have been why Edward had been so taken with Lydia. She was torn between believing there was no other motive than Christian charity and the dreadful fear that he had turned to someone else. If he had, then it was the height of cruelty to bring the child here to torment her.

Lydia and Claudia set out to explore after breakfast next morning, creeping from room to room and talking in whispers. The schoolroom had a desk and a table, cupboards and bookshelves and on the wall a huge map of the world, most of it coloured pink denoting the British Empire, Claudia told her. It was here Claudia was expected to give her lessons and to teach her English. A little further along the corridor were several servants’ bedrooms. Down the next flight of stairs there were what seemed like dozens of bedrooms, though they did not dare open their doors, and two bathrooms. The front stairs, of carved oak, led down to a huge hall. There were two large reception rooms leading off it which could be opened up to make one vast room, several smaller sitting rooms, a large and a small room for dining, though the smaller was called the ‘breakfast room’, Claudia told her. At the back of the house there were rooms for washing dishes, a laundry room full of steam, a dairy where a maid was busy churning butter and a huge kitchen with a big black range and a long dresser and hooks everywhere.

Seeing Lydia the staff began talking to her, and though she could not understand a word, she thought they were making her welcome, for they smiled a lot and gave her a jam tart. ‘She’s a bonny wee thing, isn’t she?’ Cook said to Claudia. ‘Does she speak any English at all?’

‘No,’ Claudia said. ‘Fact is, she hardly opens her mouth.’

‘I expect she’s shy. She’ll soon get used to us. What are you doing today?’

‘I don’t know. I thought we would go for a walk and explore.’

‘Yes, you do that. But don’t go too far and get lost.’ She opened the back door for them and they found themselves in a courtyard. ‘Luncheon is at one,’ she called after them.

They crossed the yard to the stables where the grooms were working and an almost identical conversation took place. Lydia was nervous of the black and white dog and hid behind Claudia. ‘Bless you,’ a man in a thick tweed jacket and jodhpurs said. ‘Bessie won’t hurt you. Soft as butter she is. Come and stroke her.’ And he took Lydia’s hand and put it on the dog’s rough fur. The dog wagged its tail and licked her other hand, making her smile.

‘That’s the first time I ever saw her smile,’ Claudia said.

‘Ah, well, that’s animals for you.’

They left the stables and walked through a garden and out of a gate into the park that surrounded the house. Here there were walks carved out of the grass and they followed one to a lake and stood looking across the water. A light breeze ruffled the water and set the reeds swaying to and fro and made the leaves of the water lilies bob up and down. Some ducks were swimming a little way out, but seeing them, paddled towards them quacking noisily, expecting titbits. ‘We must bring some crusts next time we come,’ Claudia said in English, and when Lydia looked enquiringly at her, repeated it in Russian, adding, ‘Time to go home. Sir Edward and Lady Stoneleigh might be looking for us.’

Home. The word obviously meant something different to Claudia.

In the days that followed, Lydia’s young brain shut out the awful death of her brother and their nurse except in horrendous nightmares. The loud ticking of the nursery clock was an unheard background to gunshots, galloping horses, sleet and snow, the dark, menacing forest and a vision of brave little Andrei, his life’s blood spilling all over her white dress, wine-red and sticky. It was a terror so huge that it surrounded her like a stifling blanket which had somehow wrapped itself around her and covered her face in her sleep, so that she could hardly breathe. She would wake up screaming and be comforted by Claudia.

They kept to their own quarters, except when they went out for walks with Bessie trotting along with them and sniffing in the hedgerows, and they saw little of Lady Stoneleigh. Her ladyship was not cruel, but she was not especially kind to her. It was a kind of indifference, a standing apart, on the sidelines, as if she were watching a play from the wings and at the end of it the actors would take their bows and go home. Lydia could not put this into words, but sometimes she wondered if Lady Stoneleigh really liked having her.

Sir Edward was different. He would come up to the nursery suite almost every day and talk to her in Russian and sometimes he joined them on their walks. He understood her bewilderment at being without her family, in a strange country surrounded by strangers speaking a language she could not understand. He and Claudia were the only stable things in her life and it was through his gentle perseverance that she slowly came to accept her new life, but she was desperately lonely and homesick for Mama and Papa and had not given up the idea of being reunited with them.

It was something Margaret wished for too.

‘Edward, have you made any progress at all about finding that child’s parents?’ she asked him one day, just before Christmas. They had finished dinner and were sitting in the drawing room. She was on the sofa with a piece of embroidery in her lap but was making no attempt to ply her needle. He was in an armchair reading a newspaper. He put it down.

‘No, I’m afraid not. These things take time.’

‘Surely people, especially landed gentry, do not just disappear into thin air.’

‘They do in Russia at the moment,’ he said grimly. ‘The situation is chaotic and the stories coming out are horrendous. Both Reds and Whites are perpetrating unimaginable horrors. If the count and countess have survived, heaven knows where they are.’

‘I believe there is a charitable society in London that takes care of displaced Russian children. It is run by a Russian lady married to an Englishman. You could take her there.’

‘Why? Do you want to be rid of her?’

‘Edward, she does not belong here.’

He was disappointed. He had hoped, by bringing her to Upstone Hall, he would be making a loving home for her, but it had not turned out like that. Lydia and Claudia were like ghosts in the house, occasionally seen flitting here and there, sometimes heard talking quietly in a mixture of Russian and English, but never real, never part of the household. And sometimes, in the middle of the night, he heard Lydia screaming. He would slip on a dressing gown and go up to stand outside the nursery door, listening to her sobbing and Claudia soothing her. Unable to do anything for her, he would go back to bed, feeling helpless, wishing Margaret could bring herself to be a mother to her.

‘She is not a nuisance, is she?’ he asked.

‘No, she is very quiet – too quiet, I think. She would surely do better among her own kind.’

‘Darling, it would be cruel to uproot her again so soon after bringing her here. Can’t you imagine what the poor child has been through? Her nurse and brother were shot in front of her eyes. Her clothes were covered in their blood when she was brought to me. It will be a long time before she gets over that.’

‘You are determined on keeping her here, aren’t you?’

‘What else would you have me do? I brought her here, accepted responsibility for her and that responsibility is ongoing.’

She gave up. He was not going to change his mind, which only went to confirm her worst fears.

The household was gearing itself up for Christmas, doing a lot of cooking, buying and making presents, discussing the decorations and the parties they meant to attend, and though they talked to Lydia about it, she understood very little. She knew it was a happy time when wishes were granted to good little girls. Her wish was that Mama and Papa would come, which would be the best present of all, but when she told Sir Edward, he took her between his knees and kissed her. ‘The trouble is, my little one, I still do not know where they are.’

‘Are they lost? Or hiding?’

‘You think they may be hiding?’ he asked, surprised that she had thought of it.

‘We were hiding at Kirilhor. We had to be quiet all the time and stay in the kitchen and back parlour. When the bad men were coming, we had to leave. Papa said we would go on a big ship.’

It was the first time he had heard her speak of that time. ‘And you did, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. Did they come on a big ship too?’

‘No, I do not think so, my sweet. I have asked everyone I know. I think they were left behind in Russia. As soon as I hear anything I will tell you, I promise.’

She was miserable for a few days after that but brightened as Christmas Day drew nearer. There was a Christmas tree which she helped to decorate and parcels were put all round the bottom of it which were not to be opened until after Christmas dinner. This would be at one o’clock after everyone had been to church, including all the servants, except Cook and the kitchen maid left behind to make sure dinner was on the table on time.

Church, which they attended every Sunday, was the only time Sir Edward and Lady Stoneleigh took her anywhere together. Dressed in a warm woollen coat in a soft blue, with a tam-o’-shanter on her curls and her hands in a muff, she stood and sat and knelt between them and enjoyed the singing. On Christmas Day she was allowed to join Sir Edward and Lady Stoneleigh for dinner of roast goose and Christmas pudding. She was becoming used to English food and, like all small children, her appetite was good.

After that the presents were distributed from under the tree. Lydia received a jigsaw puzzle, some books, and a china doll from Sir Edward and Lady Stoneleigh. From Claudia she had a handkerchief with her name embroidered in the corner and from the kitchen staff a box of home-made sweets. Claudia had helped her to make a needlecase for Lady Stoneleigh and a bookmark for Sir Edward. ‘How beautifully you have done it,’ her ladyship said, and kissed her cheek. Sir Edward kissed her too, but it was Lady Stoneleigh’s peck which surprised and pleased Lydia. It was the first time she had shown any sign of affection. Sir Edward noted it too and decided it was a good sign; his wife was at last coming to accept the child.

Winter gave way to spring. The daffodils appeared in the grass and the leaves reappeared on the trees. People stopped telling Lydia she would be reunited with her parents, stopped talking to her about Russia at all. The past became a kind of dream; Mama and Papa, Andrei and Tonya were people who came to her in her sleep and had no presence in her daytime life. The people in her waking hours were Claudia, of course, Sir Edward, whom she loved, Lady Stoneleigh, whom she saw only occasionally, and the servants. With so many servants about, she soon began to pick up a little English, but it was not the English of Sir Edward and his wife; it was Norfolk with a strong Russian accent which many people found difficult to understand. Edward, hearing it, decided something must be done about it and employed an English teacher.

Miss Graham was young and enthusiastic. She wore knitted jumper suits, long strings of beads and did her dark hair up in a bun. She spoke no Russian and Claudia was needed to translate at first, but Lydia was a bright child and learnt quickly. In her head she had decided that if she were good, if she did everything she was told and tried hard at her lessons, everyone would be pleased with her and then she would be reunited with her family all the sooner. It was a childish logic she told no one until one day when Sir Edward came to the schoolroom to sit in on one of her lessons. It made Miss Graham all flustered, but he smiled to set her at her ease. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Pretend I am not here.’

The lesson went on and after it had finished he drew Lydia between his knees. ‘Well done, sweetheart,’ he said in English. ‘I did not realise how clever you are. You have learnt remarkably quickly.’

Some of the words he used were unknown to her, but she realised he was pleased because he was smiling. ‘Does that mean I can go home now?’

‘Home?’ he asked, puzzled. ‘Do you mean to Russia?’

‘Yes, to Mama and Papa. I want to go back to them.’

He sighed. ‘The trouble is that the bad men are everywhere and it would not be safe. If I could find them, I would bring them here. You would like that, wouldn’t you?’

She nodded, her eyes alight with hope, and he felt a cur for giving her hope when he feared there was none. He gave her a little pat on her bottom and sent her back to Miss Graham and Claudia and then he went downstairs to find his wife.

She had been out riding and was in her room changing out of her riding clothes. Her complexion was pink from the exercise and her eyes bright. ‘Good, you are just in time to help me off with my boots,’ she said, sitting in a chair and lifting one foot.

He knelt down and pulled the boot off, stroking her stockinged foot as he did so. ‘Did you have a good ride?’

‘Yes, I went through the park, along the towpath, across the common and back through the wood. What have you been doing?’

‘I had a report to write for the Home Secretary.’ The second boot joined the first on the floor. ‘He is concerned about the numbers of Russian refugees coming into the country and how best we can accommodate them. Fifteen thousand at the last count.’

She smiled. ‘No doubt you advocated taking them into private homes.’

‘Some could be housed like that, it is true.’

‘Like Lydia.’ She was still not totally sure Edward had been telling the truth about Lydia, though she had to admit she was a fetching child and really no trouble.

‘Yes. She has come on by leaps and bounds. Her English is quite good enough for her to be sent to school.’

‘Boarding school?’

‘No. She is too young and too vulnerable. It would undo all the good we have been able to do. I think the local village school would be best. She is an intelligent child and will enjoy school and meeting other young children. I will arrange for her to go after the summer vacation.’

‘Have you had no news at all about her parents?’

‘Afraid not. I fear they have not survived. We must do our best to bring her up as they would have wished.’ He paused. ‘I think she is old enough to leave the nursery behind and have a room of her own, don’t you?’ It was said tentatively because the move represented another step Margaret had to take towards accepting the child.

He was still kneeling at her feet, still stroking her foot, gently massaging the toes, something he knew made her squirm with pleasure. She leant forward and taking his face in her hands bent forward to kiss him. ‘You know exactly how to get round me, don’t you?’ she said, laughing.

‘Do I need to?’

‘No. We’ll do whatever you think is best.’

He stood up, took her hands and propelled her towards the bed.

‘Edward, it’s the middle of the day.’

‘So what? I love you at any time of day, all day, every day.’

Lydia was temporarily forgotten.

Lydia was given a lovely bedroom on the second floor. Unlike the nursery, it had a thick patterned carpet, curtains with a pretty pattern of flowers and leaves, a bed with a cover which matched the curtains, a tall wardrobe in which to keep her clothes, a dressing table and a little desk. Its windows looked out over the stables on one side and the terrace at the back of the house on the other. She loved it. It had a dressing room adjoining it which was made into a bedroom for Claudia. She was not told the reason for this change and would not have understood if she had. Claudia said it meant she was here to stay.

In September Miss Graham left and Lydia went to school every day, escorted there by Claudia. The school had only one classroom divided by a curtain. The little children on one side were taught their letters by Miss Smith, the big ones on the other had lessons in English, arithmetic, geography and history given by the headmaster, Mr Connaught, who had a wooden leg. There was a pot-bellied stove in the middle of one wall, surrounded by a fireguard on which wet coats were hung when it rained, causing steam to rise from them. Shoes, boots and clogs stood drying off in sentinel rows around it.

Lydia, bewildered and afraid, even though Sir Edward had explained why it was necessary for her to attend school, joined the little ones. It was not an unmitigated success. The other children looked on her as some kind of freak, mimicked her accent and laughed and pointed at her gymslip and pristine white blouse, her black stockings and shiny black patent shoes, something few of them could afford. She did not complain. Putting up with everything she found strange was all part of her strategy to be good enough to be allowed to go home.

This hope died, or rather was killed outright, when Sir Edward received a letter from Baron Simenov.

‘They are dead,’ he told Margaret as he read it over breakfast after Lydia had gone off with Claudia to get ready for school.

Margaret looked up sharply. ‘Who are dead?’

‘The Kirilovs.’ He finished reading. ‘This is a letter from Baron Simenov. He is back in London. The cause of the White Army is lost.’

‘What did he say about the Kirilovs?’

‘The count and his wife were caught and questioned on the way through Red-held territory, and in the course of a search, some precious gems were found concealed on their persons. It is punishable by death to export jewels from the country and they paid that price. The story was told to the baron by Ivan Ivanovich, the servant who had taken Lydia to Simferopol. He returned to Kirilhor. It was the talk of the village apparently.’

‘How barbaric! What are you going to say to Lydia?’

‘I don’t know. She has been so much better lately.’

‘You cannot allow her to go on hoping if you are sure there is no hope.’

‘No, you are right. She must be told.’

‘She may not believe you. She might think you are trying to keep her from them.’

‘So, what do you suggest?’

‘Perhaps you could invite Baron Simenov and his wife to stay with us for a few days. He could tell her.’

‘That would be a cowardly thing to do, Margaret,’ he said. ‘I will tell her myself, but not about the execution. An accident perhaps. And I will ask the Simenovs to visit. Pyotr might be able to tell me more than he has written in the letter.’

So the baron and baroness and young Alexei came to stay at Upstone Hall for a weekend and Lydia was allowed to join them.

It was two days since Sir Edward had told her that her papa and mama had died on their way to meet her and her brother in Simferopol. An accident, he had said, taking her on his lap to comfort her. ‘They were happy because they were on their way to join you and your brother. Their horse bolted and the carriage turned over. It all happened very suddenly, but at least you know they did not abandon you. They would not want you to be sad for them.’ She had hardly seemed aware of what he was saying, had stared straight ahead at a picture of a wood carpeted in bluebells on her bedroom wall, but it was nothing but a blur of blue and green. It was like losing Andrei and Tonya all over again. Why did she feel betrayed, as if they had all deliberately left her?

But the Simenovs were Russian, they were her link with her past, if only a tenuous one, and though she was shy with them at first, hearing them speak Russian and answering them in the same tongue was lovely. For the first time since coming to England she really came alive, smiling and chattering.

Alexei seemed to have shot up since she had last seen him on the fateful train journey to Yalta. He was dressed in a Norfolk jacket and long trousers and he had a stiff white collar on his shirt. His brown hair was slicked back from a centre parting and his dark intelligent eyes looked at her with something akin to pity, but she did not recognise it as such. ‘I am learning Russian history and European languages,’ he told Sir Edward and Lady Stoneleigh in confident English. ‘Papa says it will be useful in years to come. When the Bolshevik regime collapses, I mean to go back to Russia.’

‘Do you think it will collapse?’ Sir Edward asked, humouring the boy.

‘Oh, it is bound to. The Russian people will not tolerate it when they find it is not the paradise they have been led to believe.’

Edward smiled; the boy was obviously repeating something he had overheard. ‘You think they have been misled?’

‘Oh, without a doubt. It was a way to get them out of the war. They will come to their senses.’

‘Let us hope so,’ Lady Stoneleigh said. The baron’s story of what he had learnt about the Kirilovs had finally convinced her that Edward had been telling the truth all along and she berated herself for ever doubting him. She felt happier than she had for months. ‘The Communists are at the root of all the strikes we have been having. The thought of them taking over this country is terrifying.’

‘It won’t happen in England,’ her husband told her. ‘The English people are not so easily led by the nose.’

‘Neither are the Russians,’ Baron Simenov put in.

Lydia looked from one to the other in bewilderment. She had hardly understood a word, not because her vocabulary was poor, though that was part of it, but because what they were discussing was way above her head. ‘Would you like to go for a walk?’ she asked Alexei in Russian.

Alexei was not keen to be a baby-minder, but the look of appeal he gave his father was ignored.

‘Yes, show the young man round,’ Edward told Lydia, smiling at them both.

They slipped out of the house by the kitchen door, after begging some stale crusts from the kitchen maid, and walked down to the lake. The ducks paddled towards them, expecting the titbits Lydia threw to them.

‘This is a grand place,’ Alexei said, watching the ducks squabbling over the bread. ‘Do you like living here?’

‘Yes, but I miss Papa and Mama and Andrei and Tonya.’ Speaking their names made her gulp back tears.

‘I am sorry about what happened to them,’ he said, remembering what his father had told him when he asked him to be kind to the little girl. ‘But try not to be sad.’

‘I cannot help it.’

‘No, I suppose not. But you are a great deal better off than a lot of Russian émigrés. They are finding life in England hard, not speaking English and needing to work. You have a good home here. Be thankful.’

That was something Claudia said to her every day but she wasn’t quite sure what it meant. ‘I wanted to see them again so much. Now I can’t.’

‘I understand. I would feel the same if I lost my parents.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘With my mother’s cousins in Berkshire, but Papa is looking for a home for us in England. I go to an English boarding school.’

‘Do you like it?’

‘Oh, yes. It’s great fun.’

‘I don’t like school. They laugh at me.’

‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said. ‘But you must hold your head up and pretend you do not care. You are a little countess, remember that.’

‘I will try.’

‘You have to learn, you know, nothing is achieved without learning. When I have finished my education, I intend to go back to Russia.’

‘But Sir Edward said the bad men were everywhere.’

‘You mean the Bolsheviks. They have to be overthrown.’

‘What are Bolsheviks?’

‘Communists. Reds. They believe everyone is equal and there should not be any tsar or counts or barons or anything like that. And no one must be rich or own property. They call each other “comrade” and won’t have anyone addressed as “Excellency”. They killed the tsar and all his family. That was why anyone with a title had to leave. Didn’t you know that?’

‘No.’ She really did not understand but it was nice hearing him speak in Russian.

‘Would you like to go back, one day, when the Reds are defeated?’ he asked.

‘Perhaps,’ she said with a sigh, though if the baron was right, there was no one there to go back to. He had taken her on one side soon after they arrived and gently reiterated what Sir Edward had said. ‘Sir Edward is a good man,’ he had said. ‘And I know he loves you and will look after you.’ She loved Sir Edward without reservation and knew she must try and settle down in England now. If what they said was true, her old home was no more, Russia had changed, nothing would ever be the same, not the village or the dacha or the servants. Without Mama and Papa and Andrei, what was the point of going back? But it made her very sad.

‘We have to grow up first,’ Alexei said.

The crusts were all gone and the ducks, realising there were no more to be had, were swimming away. He took her hand and led her back to the house.

Growing up was sometimes hard, Lydia decided, as the years passed and she moved on from infant school to Upstone High School for Girls. Although she was an apt pupil and did well at her lessons, she always felt a little apart from her fellow pupils and students. It wasn’t that she spoke with a Russian accent – that was soon eradicated – nor that she was unpopular, because she had many friends, though some of that might have been down to her privileged upbringing. No, it was her continuing feeling that she was Russian.

Finding himself having to field questions about her origins more and more often as she grew older and went about more, and thinking her statelessness might be a barrier in later life, Sir Edward decided to adopt her formerly and changed her name from Lydia Kirillova to Lydia Stoneleigh. He told her that he and Margaret were to be her new mama and papa. It was then he had confessed to bending the truth about her parents’ deaths. ‘They did not die in an accident,’ he said, taking her hand and speaking softly. ‘They were executed by the Bolsheviks. I didn’t tell you before because you were upset enough about losing them without the added distress of the manner of their death. And I was not at all sure you would understand at that age. But you are entitled to know the truth. I hope you can forgive me.’

She was shocked and angry at first, not so much about her parents’ death, which she had come to accept, but because he had taken away her birthright, her very Russian-ness, the person she believed herself to be, but what he had done was done out of love. She kissed his cheek. ‘Of course, I forgive you.’

‘I have been given this for you,’ he said, handing her an old sepia photograph of a very aristocratic-looking lady in a long evening dress. She was wearing a heavy necklace and long earrings, and on her head a tiara, on the front of which sparkled the Kirilov Star. ‘I believe the lady is your grandmother, the dowager Countess Kirillova.’

Lydia studied it carefully. She did not remember the lady, but she did remember the jewel. ‘May I keep it?’ she asked.

‘Of course. It is yours. Would you like me to have it framed, then you can keep it in your bedroom?’

‘Yes, please.’ It was something tangible from her old life, something she could look at and touch to remind her of her roots.

Gradually Margaret’s attitude towards the little waif changed, possibly because she knew she could never have a child of her own, and they became close. They went horse riding together and shopping for clothes. Margaret loved buying clothes and embraced all the latest fashions, and she loved dressing Lydia. They talked about her life at school, especially after she left the village school and went to the high school. They discussed what she would like to do when she grew up. The world, so Sir Edward said, was changing and women were no longer restricted in what they could do. She could be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, even stand for Parliament, if she so chose. Of course, she need not do anything; she could have a Season, be presented at court and wait for the right man to come along.

But she was still only fourteen and marriage was a long way from her mind. She was intent on going to college and studying the Russian language and Russian history. She needed to understand what had happened to her.