The Lost Souls of Angelkov (19 page)

Antonina thought of Lilya’s bruised jaw and neck. Something small and cold wormed through her intestines. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I’m saying, Antonina. We’ll start here, on the estate. Next we’ll move to Kazhra—it’s the closest village. We’ll question every soul, ask what people have seen. Someone always sees something. There are no real secrets. Someone can always be persuaded with either rubles or a threat. You may imagine it will be a difficult task to find this man, Antonina. Trust me—it won’t.”

Antonina swallowed. “You cannot, Papa. Please.”

“You will speak his name. Otherwise, many of the serfs will suffer. Then we’ll see if this young man is as wonderful as you imagine him to be. You’ll be disappointed. This I can swear to you.”

“You won’t do this, Papa. I know you won’t. You aren’t a cruel man.”

At this, Prince Olonov stared so long and hard at her that Antonina could no longer stand it. She put her face into her hands.

“You’re right, Antonina,” her father said after a moment. Even though his tone was different, his voice softer, something about this change made Antonina even more fearful.

She raised her face, clenching her hands in front of her now.

“I wanted to see if you could be honest and forthright with me. But you can’t. It’s so simple. All I have to do is ask Semyon and Kesha. They know that if they don’t speak the truth about what they know—where they’ve gone with you, and whom you spend your time with—they’ll not only have to fear losing their positions, they may lose their lives. They’ll give me the answers I need.”

Antonina was hot, too hot, and her father’s face floated, a strange, pale rectangle apart from the darkness of his beard, threaded with white.

“You can’t hide anything from me, Tosya,” he said.

She felt for the chair behind her, and sat in it. “All right, Papa. All right—I will tell you everything. But it’s not a man. It’s a girl. Just a peasant girl, that’s all. Surely you don’t feel the same about me talking to a peasant girl. There was no harm in that. It’s as I told you, there was never—has never been—a man.”

“A girl?” her father repeated, and Antonina tried to smile.

“Yes. Just a girl. You were right—it was her puppy, and she gave me the icon. I haven’t seen her for a long while.”

“Who is this girl?”

Antonina shook her head. The movement hurt. “It doesn’t matter. I told you, we haven’t seen each other for some time. I just wanted …” She stopped. She knew she couldn’t try to explain to her father how she and Lilya had become friends, or why.

“It matters.”

“Why?”

Her father rose. “I’ve explained it all. And I’m tired of this nonsense. I’m going to summon Semyon and Kesha.”

“All right, Papa,” Antonina said, jumping up. The sudden movement gave her a jolting pain in her temple. “Her name is Lilya Petrova Nevskaya. She’s the daughter of the blacksmith in Kazhra. Now that you know … that’s all you want, isn’t it? For me to tell you her name? To speak the truth?”

When the prince didn’t answer, Antonina stepped closer to him. She looked up into his face. “You won’t punish her, though, Papa. It’s not her fault. It’s mine. I told her she must meet with me, and talk to me. She didn’t want to. She truly didn’t want to. It’s not her fault. You must not punish her,”
she repeated. “Promise me you won’t punish her, or her family, for what I wanted. What I did.”

She stared at her father, willing him to nod, to say,
Yes, yes, daughter, I understand now. I give you my pledge no harm will come to the girl or her family
.

“No,” he said. “I’ll promise no such thing.”

That night, her father’s last words—
I’ll promise no such thing
—repeated over and over in Antonina’s head, increasing the ache that wouldn’t go away. She couldn’t sleep for worrying what might happen to Lilya. She lay in the dark, staring at the black square of the window.

When morning finally came, she went downstairs to the breakfast room. Her father was at the table, reading a newspaper and eating egg pie and cold roast beef.

Antonina sat across from him. “Good morning, Papochka,” she said carefully.

He glanced at her. “Good morning.” He picked up a small gold bell from beside his plate and rang it. Immediately the door opened and two uniformed servants in white gloves entered. One brought in a tray with a silver covered dish and set it in front of Antonina, removing the lid with a flourish. The other servant poured her a cup of tea from the samovar.

“Thank you,” Antonina murmured, looking at the pie and meat. Her stomach churned.

“Eat, Tosya,” her father urged her. “Eat while the pie is hot.”

Antonina picked up her fork and put it into the egg-filled pastry, staring at it. Then she looked at her father. “Papa.”

“Hmmm?” He was still reading.

“Papa,” she said again, louder, and this time her father put down the newspaper and looked across the table at her, a small, easy smile on his face. “What of Lilya?”

“Lilya?” he said, as if he hadn’t heard the name from her lips the afternoon before. “Oh, the daughter of the blacksmith. They’ve been dealt with.”

“Dealt with?” Antonina echoed.

“Yes. The blacksmith I had whipped. To punish the wife, I sent the girl and the other one away.”

Antonina swallowed. “Sent them away?” she whispered.

“Yes. The girl and the filthy child.” He spoke casually. “I wouldn’t have bothered with the boy, but at the last minute I felt sorry for the girl. Actually, I rather admired her. She accepted it well—did not make a fuss when she understood what was to happen to her. As a reward, I let her brother go with her.” He looked at Antonina, his eyebrows raised. “I am not as hard-hearted as you might think me, daughter.”

Antonina tried to speak, but her mouth was too dry. She lifted her teacup. Her hand shook, and scalding drops of tea fell on the back of her other hand. She needed two hands to set the cup back on the table. “Papa, Lyosha, the little boy … he’s barely four years old. He’s sickly. He needs his mother to care for him.”

Her father concentrated on cutting his beef. “That’s not my concern. The punishment fit the crime.”

Crime, Antonina thought. “Where did you send them?”

“That’s not information you need, Antonina. You have learned a lesson: your actions have consequences.”

Antonina imagined the hovel in Kazhra, the mother screaming as Lyosha, coughing and wailing, was torn from her arms, the father perhaps unconscious from the lashing.
Sezja barking without cease. And Lilya? At this, Antonina covered her face with her hands. Lilya would know this happened to her family because of Antonina. That Antonina had revealed her name.

“So,” Prince Olonov said, looking at her across the table, “we will speak no further of this unfortunate situation. Pass the pepper, please, Tosya.”

When Antonina didn’t move, he asked her for the pepper a second time. She stared across the table at him. “I know now what kind of man you are,” she said. “You spoke, only yesterday, of acting as a father to the serfs, saying that they are like your children. Would you treat your own child so? Would you treat me in a way to bring such unhappiness into my life only to make a point? Why would you?”

Her father’s face had grown darker, his lips thinner. Antonina knew she was driving him to fury, yet she couldn’t stop herself. Her head pounded; she had to shout to hear herself over the heavy drumming.

“You only make their suffering worse. You are a tyrant.”

Was she screaming? He rose and came around the table. Antonina stood. Her father stepped towards her, raising his open hand.

Antonina closed her mouth, willing herself not to shut her eyes or draw back. She wanted him to hit her; she wanted to understand what the servants understood. To know what Lilya had felt from her father. She counted the beats—the thud in her head matching the pulse of the blood in her veins—her father’s face undergoing a series of expressions in that tiny and yet somehow unending period. After five beats, he made his hand into a fist and lowered it.

“What would you like to do, Antonina? Will you go and
live in a peasant hut? Yes? This would make you happy? Then go. Go and live with the serfs. See how long you last, sleeping with the pigs to stay warm, your head jumping with lice, your flesh crawling with fleas.”

Antonina flinched, deflated. Of course, he was right. She had no power to change anything.

“You have no idea of anything, you foolish girl.” He turned and walked away, his shoulders slumped, both hands hanging loosely at his sides in defeat. At the doorway, he said, “Go to your room. Stay there until tomorrow. You will not be brought your meals.”

Antonina didn’t respond.

“Do you understand the position you put me in, Tosya? I cannot allow your disrespect.”

Antonina could not speak as she watched him go. She thought of Lilya, and dropped to her knees, praying that the girl could find a way in her heart to forgive Antonina for what she had done to her family and her life.

M
ARCH 1849

A
ntonina’s name day was March 14, not exactly winter and yet not spring in the Pskov region; each day the weather changed, unsure of its season. To celebrate Antonina’s name day the year she would turn eighteen, her mother came to the country estate to put on a fete.

Arranging parties was Galina Maximova’s forte. In the autumn she had orchestrated two
bals blancs
to introduce Antonina into St. Petersburg society. Antonina, dressed in white, had danced with a number of eligible men. The balls resulted in two marriage proposals, but neither suited her father because the men weren’t influential or wealthy enough. And Antonina had been relieved. There
had
been one man, a slender, dark-haired young soldier from a good family whom Antonina found interesting and thought she might like to speak to further. She reported her interest to her mother, and the princess invited the soldier to a small tea. But the soldier
sent a note of apology, saying he was previously engaged. He hadn’t tried to set another date. Princess Olonova told her daughter this meant he wasn’t interested in pursuing anything further with her. Antonina had been nothing more than slightly annoyed with the soldier for his insult.

She had last seen her mother in St. Petersburg two and a half months earlier, when she and her father had gone to the city for Christmas and New Year’s, as Princess Galina Maximova hadn’t wanted the cold isolation of the country estate during the holiday festivities.

Antonina’s brothers had all left the manor. The oldest, Viktor, had joined the army, and Marik was married with a young child and lived on a smaller estate on a far corner of their father’s land. The youngest, Dimitri, had moved to St. Petersburg to live with his mother. The princess complained that Dimi was only interested in gambling and frequenting the drinking establishments around the city. Antonina had seen, over the holidays in St. Petersburg, how Dimitri never rose until mid-afternoon, and was pale yet dark around the eyes, his face slightly puffy from the vodka and late hours.

At the time, her mother had kissed her and told her she would organize a big party for her only daughter in March. The princess was in a wonderful mood; Antonina noticed that she wore a large and new emerald ring.

The princess kept her promise, arriving a week ahead of the scheduled three-day party so she could finalize the events she had planned and make sure the manor was ready. Although Antonina had invited some young people her age from nearby estates, and Marik and his wife and Dimitri were in attendance—Viktor couldn’t get leave—most of the more than one hundred guests were her mother’s friends
from St. Petersburg and Moscow. They would stay in the dozens of guest bedrooms of the estate.

The prince’s theatre troupe would perform, and because he had sold his serf orchestra the year before—complaining it was enough to house and feed one troupe—the Yablonsky serf orchestra was hired. It took the sixteen men in the Yablonsky orchestra two days of travel to get to the Olonov estate. They were housed in the servants’ quarters and allowed a full night’s sleep after their journey. Then they came into the ballroom to rehearse the pieces Galina Maximova had selected. Antonina heard the first strains of their music and went to watch the rehearsal.