The Kirilov Star (4 page)

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.’