The Lost Souls of Angelkov (15 page)

On a sultry, overcast July day a few months after she met Lilya, Antonina made her first kill. It was a red deer, deep in the Olonov birch forest, and Antonina’s shot had been clean, hitting the doe in the chest. The animal dropped to her knees gracefully, her head still lifted in surprise, but by the time Antonina rode close and dismounted, the doe lay on her side.
Antonina knelt beside her as she drew her last breaths, took off her gloves and stroked the soft head, seeing the deer’s eyes film, her tongue, slightly protruding, stiffen.

“A marvellous killing, little sister,” Viktor said, and she looked up at him, proud. “Strange,” he then said, and Antonina frowned.

“What’s strange, Vitya?”

He was studying the doe’s swollen belly. “It’s far too late for that—most of the young were born long ago.”

Antonina put her hand on the rise of it, and in that instant felt the smallest of movements. Her mouth opened as she looked up at her brother.

He lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. “It doesn’t matter. They’ll both be dead in another moment. Come now, we will let the others dress it and bring it home. Tonight at dinner we will raise our glasses in a toast to you, our Artemis, our little hunter.” He smiled fondly.

But something had happened to Antonina in the moment she felt the dying thing in its mother’s womb. She thought so little about her own mother, apart from occasionally studying her as she stood in a receiving line in the grand entry, and wondering if she really looked as Princess Olonova had looked when much younger—as her father had once told her. Feeling that small, feeble movement within the doe, Antonina thought of Lilya, cradling dead Romka. She thought of the blue baby dropping onto the flax field. She thought of her own mother putting her hand on her distended belly, with her moving inside. And Antonina was filled with sadness unlike any she’d ever known. She had killed a mother deer and her baby, and for the first time she missed her own mother, who was in her bedroom in
St. Petersburg, spooning a generous dollop of the finest caviar into the mouth of a handsome young lieutenant.

That evening at dinner, Antonina stared down at the succulent loin of pork on her plate. What of the tiny fawn? Did it hang on a hook beside its gutted mother? Would it be prepared for a future meal? A wave of nausea swept through her. Without picking up her knife and fork, she asked to be excused from the table, saying she was unable to eat. But her father scolded her, telling her she must stay until he and her brothers and their guests were done. At the far end of the table sat an elderly baron and baroness who were visiting for the week. They were both hard of hearing and napped much of the day, showing up for meals and eating with surprising gusto.

Usually Antonina obeyed her father. But this time she said in a loud voice, “I’m not feeling well. It’s my woman’s time, Papa.”

It was shocking to speak so before not only her father and brothers but also the baron and baroness. And it was a lie. Her time had not come; it would not for another few months. Antonina tensed, waiting for her father to reprimand her for acting in such an indelicate manner.

But her father didn’t berate her. Instead, he looked uncomfortable, glancing at her brothers as if for explanation. But they all lowered their heads, cutting and chewing with great energy, as if they had never before eaten pork loin. As if they had never considered that their little sister was a female.

The baron and baroness didn’t appear to have heard the small drama playing out at the other end of the table. Both continued their meal, smiling in a vague manner.

“Papochka?” Antonina said. “May I go to my room?” She stood and put her hand to one side of her abdomen for further effect, mimicking the younger house serfs when they begged the housekeeper to lighten their workloads on particular days of the month.

Her father glanced at her, scrubbing his moustache with his napkin. “Yes, yes, of course,” he said, his eyes darting about the table as if looking for the salt cellar or the butter dish.

Antonina lay on her bed in the darkening bedroom, thinking about the doe, and about her mother.

After that, Antonina no longer joined her brothers on their hunts. Her taste for killing had ended with the one incident, and she would not be cajoled or shamed into joining them. Instead, she grew silent, watching the overdressed and highly scented women her brothers sometimes invited over for a social evening.

Antonina—the little sister of these tall, good-looking young men—would no longer be drawn into gossipy conversation, or play the piano as bidden, or recite poetry or act out a scene from a play in the drawing room. She shook her head, her chin raised. She would not perform like the trained bears in their chains, padding behind the wagons of the Germans on the roads.

Where once her brothers had flattered her, complimenting her on her stoicism and bravery, on her riding abilities and her capacity for vodka, at the ends of these evenings they told her she had shamed them.

“You have such a miserable expression,” Vitya told her. “Why don’t you smile more often?”

“I’ll smile when there’s something worth smiling about,” she retorted.

After a time, Antonina found it was easier to stay in her room when her brothers entertained. She fit nowhere; she was neither as hard and aloof as a man nor as soft and flowery as her brothers’ female friends.

On one of their Sundays together, Lilya confided in Antonina that if she could do anything she wanted, she would go into a convent to be a Sister of Righteous Elizaveeta. The village priest had once spoken of these women of virtue in a sermon, describing the lives they had devoted to God. “Imagine living every day in a clean, beautiful place, with candles and icons, the smell of incense. My own cot in a cell, my days filled with praying and serving God,” she said.

Antonina had quickly discovered how intelligent Lilya was; had she not been, Antonina wouldn’t have been interested in her. She thought of Lilya’s ability to learn Bible verses from simply listening to the village priest read them—more verses, Antonina suspected, than she knew.

“But my father says it’s not for peasant girls, only the nobility. And he told me even if I could be a sister, he wouldn’t allow it. He says women should leave the Church to men, and do God’s work in bearing children and working for the good of the family.” She shrugged. “What do you dream of doing?”

Antonina blinked. “I … perhaps … playing the piano.”

Lilya had never seen a piano. The only music she heard was the discordant sound of the village church bells. “Will your father not allow you, either?”

“Oh, I
do
play the piano, every day. But I would like to play in front of many people, at a concert. My parents have taken me to concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg.”

Lilya didn’t know what a concert was. She had never been to a city, and thought she probably never would. But for a princess, anything was possible.

“Surely you will.”

“No. Only men are allowed.”

This Lilya could understand.

Of course, Antonina couldn’t tell her father that she was spending a few hours every Sunday afternoon with the daughter of Kazhra’s blacksmith. She couldn’t tell her brothers that she and Lilya took the puppy into a fallow field at the edge of the forest and taught him to fetch a stick and offer one paw for tiny bits of black bread. He barked when he ran after the sticks, barked when he chased his own tail, and barked when he put his small front paws on Lilya’s boots, begging to be picked up.

Naturally, Kesha and Semyon were always there, and after a time their presence no longer disturbed Lilya. The two serfs never spoke to Antonina’s father; their role was to keep his daughter from harm. They saw no harm in their young mistress playing games in the forest clearing or a stubbled field with a kerchiefed village girl and a clumsy, noisy
laika
pup, a dog named after its most common pastime—barking. They found it highly peculiar and definitely in poor taste. But they found many things about the prince and his family peculiar. They had one job to do—guarding the young mademoiselle—and they did it.

Antonina’s friendship with Lilya continued through the summer and into the autumn. The trouble began after they had known each other for six months.