Chapter 17
Tanya opened her eyes and looked around her with a puzzled frown. As her vision cleared, she saw she was lying in a stone hut, sparsely and poorly furnished, then her gaze took in the opulent furs that covered her body, and her frown deepened. She tried to think where she was, what she was doing here, but her mind felt strangely blank. Then, from a dark corner, a figure stirred and stepped out into the candlelight.
It was a very old woman, her face a mass of deep wrinkles, and she was smiling broadly, displaying toothless gums.
‘Saints be praised, you are alive!’ she screeched and rushed out, calling loudly. She returned in a few minutes, followed by a tall man, quite young, with one side of his face disfigured by a terrible scar. He stood on the balls of his feet and looked every inch the man of action. Some tiny chord stirred in Tanya’s mind, and she tried to sit up. He leapt forward, dropping to his knees before the bed.
‘Pray don’t move, beautiful lady, you have had rather a nasty knock on the head and must rest.’
He spoke with a dialect different from her own, but she found she could understand him quite well. He looked over his shoulder and rapped out orders to the crone for broth and wine.
Tanya continued to regard him with mild puzzlement, her head on one side rather like an inquisitive child. He grinned and, leaping to his feet, gave her a quaint low bow.
‘Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Christian. I have no other, or if I ever did, ’tis long forgotten. Originally, I was a Swede, now I have no nationality. I am not particular who I rob, as long as his purse is fat.’
Her eyes wide, Tanya regarded him with interest.
‘Are you a thief, then, sir?’ she enquired.
He laughed aloud. ‘Yes, sweet lady, you could say I am. But for once, I do not wish to talk of myself. I find the subject of you to be much more interesting. Won’t you tell me your name?’
She opened her mouth to answer him, then shut it, panic flooding through her. He stopped smiling and dropped to his knees again beside her.
‘What’s the matter? Don’t say you’re going to be difficult. I know some fellows think the breaking in of a filly to be the best part of the sport, but personally I disagree.’
She looked at him without comprehension and tears welled up in her eyes and ran down her cheeks. ‘I don’t know,’ she wailed.
Christian frowned impatiently. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’
‘My name,’ she cried. ‘You asked me who I am, and I wanted to answer, then I couldn’t. I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything at all!’
He dropped back on to his heels and gave a low whistle.
‘Well, well! It must have been the blow on your head. I have heard of such a thing happening. There, don’t cry, your memory will return, you just need time. If you can’t give me your name, I shall give you one. You look just like a princess to me, so that is what I shall call you – Princess.’
She smiled mistily. ‘That’s not a name, is it?’
‘It is now,’ he cried. ‘Ah, good, your broth is ready. I shall give it to you myself.’
With a curt nod of his head, he dismissed the old woman, who scuttled out quickly. Tanya tried to sit up, then blushed as she realised she was naked under the furs, and pulled them up under her chin. Christian laughed again, then tenderly spooned the broth to her, and she took it like a child. Then he gave her a large goblet of wine and ordered her to drink it all up. She obeyed, and he refilled her glass, filling one for himself. His eyes devoured her, taking in the tumbled, red-gold curls, the flawless face and shoulders, and he jumped restlessly to his feet.
‘I have something of yours,’ he cried and, going into a corner of the room, opened a large chest and took out the gleaming emerald necklace. Her eyes widened. ‘That is mine?’ she asked wonderingly. ‘I must be very rich, to own such a beautiful thing.’
‘But I, too, am rich, Princess, and it shall all be yours.’
She frowned and looked at him searchingly.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked sharply.
‘I . . . I don’t know. When you called me Princess like that . . . I seem to have heard it somewhere before.’
‘So, perhaps you are in truth a princess, who knows? You shall be one here, anyway. Here, let me put this on.’
She leaned towards him and lifted her hair. His fingers shook a little as he fastened the gold clasp around her neck, the perfume from her hair wafting over him.
‘Where are my clothes?’ she enquired, still clutching the furs to her.
‘I’m afraid they got ruined, all muddy and torn they were by the time we got here, but I have plenty here, fit for such as you.’
He darted over to the corner and began to pull gowns from the chest. ‘See, are they not fit for a princess?’
She smiled and nodded, but the frown had not left her.
‘Where did you find me?’ she asked.
‘Your coach had an, er . . . accident, and your head got a bang. We lifted you out and brought you here. Your companions, unfortunately, were not so lucky, you were the only survivor.’
Tanya gave a little shiver. ‘How dreadful. But were there no documents – anything to show who I am, where I was going?’
‘We found none,’ he said abruptly. ‘And it doesn’t really matter, as now you are going to stay here with me. I will look after you and make you quite happy and comfortable. You will never want for anything, I promise you.’
‘You’re very kind,’ she murmured doubtfully. ‘But shouldn’t I try to find out?’
Now it was his turn to frown. ‘No,’ he said harshly. ‘You are mine now, you belong to me. Do you understand?’ He took hold of her hair, twisting it around his fingers, and pulled her towards him, and the tears started to her eyes. He let go at once and took her hand instead.
‘I’m sorry, don’t cry, but you must not make me angry, I will be good to you. You don’t find me distasteful, do you?’
He fingered the scar on his face, and his eyes narrowed. ‘Does my face upset you?’
She looked at him with the uncritical eye of a child and shook her head vigorously, sending her curls tumbling around her shoulders. ‘Oh no,’ she answered. ‘I think you look very kind, except when you are angry. I’m sorry I made you angry.’
His face softened, and with one finger, he traced the line of her jaw, down her neck, and over her shoulder. ‘How soft your skin is,’ he said huskily, then jumped resolutely to his feet. ‘Drink up your wine and sleep now,’ he ordered. ‘Tomorrow, when you feel stronger, we will talk again.’
She obeyed him and lay down under the covers, closing her eyes. He looked down at her frowningly for some time, then with a sigh, he took a pile of furs, curled up in the corner, and was soon asleep too.
When Tanya awoke, the sun was streaming in through the small window, and she was alone. She lay quite still, staring up at the ceiling and vainly searching in her mind for some memory, some clue as to her identity. Surely it was not possible to forget a whole lifetime, just like that. There must be something – anything she could remember. But no, before the happenings of the previous night, she could remember absolutely nothing. It was a terrifying experience, and she found herself staring at her soft white hands, wondering what they had done. Had she been good or bad? Who could tell?
She saw some clothes had been laid out at the foot of the bed, and scrambling out from underneath the covers, she put them on. From the experienced way her hands dealt with the complicated hooks and laces, she knew she had worn such lovely clothes before. The dress was rather large for her, but by lacing it tightly she achieved a reasonable result. She wandered over to the chest, and her eyes alighted on the ornate hand mirror that lay on top of the clothes. With trembling hands, she picked it up and stared at the face that looked back at her from the glass. Despite the untidy curls falling over her shoulders and the purple bruise beginning to form on her temple, it was without doubt a very lovely face, and she gazed at it hungrily, trying to dredge up something from her mind, but to no avail.
She was still standing there when the door opened, and Christian came in.
‘Ah, Princess, you are awake. Good. Are you hungry? I’ll get Sonja to make us some breakfast. Did you sleep well?’
Tanya lowered the glass and looked at him gravely.
‘Yes, thank you,’ she replied and, picking up the engraved tortoiseshell brush that matched the mirror, began to tidy her hair. He perched on the edge of the bed and laughed.
‘Have you remembered anything yet, or are you still my mysterious princess?’ he asked teasingly. He did not tell her that this morning he had gone through the boxes stolen from her coach and found out exactly who she was! He did not want her to become the haughty Countess she would undoubtedly have been had she not lost her memory; he wanted her as she was, quite happy to stay with him. He had personally burnt every document he could find, just in case.
She shook her head. ‘Nothing. I can remember nothing,’ she said plaintively.
‘Well, well, never mind, perhaps it’s just as well. Your life can begin from now. When we have eaten, I shall show you around my village. I am the chief here, and you are my woman, so you need fear nothing.’
With a sigh, Tanya dropped the brush and paced restlessly up and down whilst the old woman prepared their food. She ate with a good appetite and, when they had finished, stepped thankfully out into the sunshine, raising her face to the sun, and stretching her arms. ‘How warm it is!’ she said. ‘What place is this?’
‘It is just a few huts my men have built, where we live in the summer when the pickings are good. There is much traffic to and from Novgorod and Nyenskans, which is good for our, er, trade. In the winter, we go to Narva, where we are always welcome. They think we ply our trade only on the Russians.’
Tanya’s head jerked up, and she looked at him sharply. ‘Narva. Narva,’ she whispered. ‘That is where I was going. It was urgent, imperative that I get to Narva. Why, why?’ She struck her hands together impotently, and he shrugged.
‘Then it’s just as well we stopped you,’ he said, regarding her through narrowed eyes. ‘The Tsar’s forces are closing in on the town, and this time, I do not think it will be so lucky. Heaven help them if the city falls. The Tsar’s Cossacks and Samoyedes will show no mercy. You are well out of it.’
She looked at him unseeingly for a moment, then her shoulders drooped.
‘Perhaps you are right,’ she said despondently.
Taking her hand, he showed her around his village. This did not take long, as it consisted of only about a dozen rough stone huts, built huddled together in a clearing, surrounded on all sides by towering trees.
‘No one has ever found their way here,’ said Christian with pride. ‘Nor’, he added, ‘can anyone find the way out, who does not know the proper route.’
Waiting to let that shaft sink home, he led her over to one of the huts and introduced her to Denka, his second-in-command. Tanya took an instinctive dislike to the huge bearded man who looked at her in a strange way with his hot little eyes. She drew nearer to Christian, who laughed.
‘Don’t be afraid of Denka, Princess. His growl is worse than his bite, isn’t that so, my friend?’ He slapped the big man on the back, and he smiled rather sourly. Just then, he was joined by a young woman with jet-black hair and eyes, dressed flamboyantly in scarlet, her brown arms covered in bracelets. She looked viciously at Tanya with narrowed eyes, her fingers hooked into claws, as though dying to scratch at her eyes. Denka pulled her towards him and gave her a noisy kiss, laughing and pawing at her. She submitted, taking no notice of him at all, her eyes flickering between Christian and Tanya. As they walked away, she could still feel the girl’s eyes boring into her back.
‘Who was that woman?’ asked Tanya. ‘Why did she look at me that way?’
‘She is nobody – a slut,’ replied Christian briefly and began to talk of something else.
Most of the people in the village were rough dirty men with loud voices and fierce eyes, and Tanya felt afraid when she was near them. There were also quite a few women around, most of them older than Tanya, a few, like Sonja, were very old, and obviously only tolerated as cooks and general slaves, it seemed to her. There were even a few ragged children running around and playing in the dirt. They stopped and stared, eyes round with wonder as Tanya passed by in her fine gown, her beauty only intensified by the sordidness of her surroundings.
The day passed quietly, most of the people sleeping in the shade or inside their houses. Tanya sat in the doorway of ‘her’ hut, mostly racking her tired brain for some flash of memory, but none came. Apart from that one word – Narva – her mind remained quite blank. Christian strode here and there, issuing orders, and it was obvious that he was held in great awe by all his men.
At last, the sun slipped behind the trees, and the stars came out one by one. The night air was warm, and the villagers began to come out. Huge fires were lit, and a pig appeared from somewhere and was soon turning on a spit over the flames. They all sat around the fires, and wine was passed around. Everyone seemed to drink a great deal, and Christian kept re-filling her cup until her face was flushed and her head swimming. She felt a little better after she had eaten but began to sag a little until she was leaning against Christian’s shoulder. She felt the tremor that ran through him and giggled to herself.
Suddenly, someone began to sing. It was a beautiful voice, rich and full, and although the language was unknown to Tanya, so poignant was the melody that she felt tears pricking at her eyes. She saw that it was the girl she had met with Denka, standing straight and proud by the fire, her eyes fixed on Christian. Someone whispered behind her. ‘The gypsy sings well.’
‘Aye,’ came the reply. ‘But she sings for the Chief. How furious she must have been when he kicked her out to make way for this new piece! Wouldn’t mind taking a turn there myself, when Denka tires of her. We should all get a turn then, eh?’
‘She’d stick her knife into your guts, you old lecher,’ came the reply, and there were some ribald comments, swiftly hushed as someone realised that Christian and Tanya could hear them. She felt him stiffen and spoke quickly of something else, distracting his attention. So that was why the girl had looked at her with so much hate. Who could blame her? To be thrust ignominiously out of the chief’s house, to be taken by the huge, unkempt Denka, must be bad enough, but to know your place has been taken by another woman – to have to watch her with Christian must be infuriating to say the least. Tanya gave a mental shrug and drank her wine defiantly. Her head was swimming, but she felt warm inside, and her mind somehow seemed less frighteningly empty when blurred by the wine. She was leaning heavily against Christian now, and his arm was around her shoulders. She turned her flushed face up to him and smiled, and he pulled her close, kissing her long and hard. She kissed him back, her head thrown back on his shoulder. The song stopped abruptly, then, with a muffled oath, he jumped to his feet, swung her up in his arms, and without a backward glance, carried her over to their hut. He pushed the door shut and laid his burden tenderly down on the bed. She laughed up at him breathlessly, and with a groan, he began to fumble with the hooks and laces on her gown. He cursed, and with a stifled giggle, Tanya showed him how to unhook her. As he pulled her dress and shift away, he stared down at her lovely body with a look almost of awe in his eyes. She looked gravely back at him, and he undressed quickly, never taking his eyes from her.
He took her with unrestrained passion, and she gave herself freely, finding relief in the sweet waves of ecstasy that flowed through her.
After, as they lay quietly in each other’s arms, Christian took her chin in his hand and raised her face to his. ‘Who is Ivan?’ he asked.
A sharp pain stabbed at Tanya’s heart, then was gone. The name lingered in the air, sounding like music to her, yet it conjured up no face, no memory. She shook her head helplessly, tears unaccountably running down her cheeks.
‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ she cried hopelessly. ‘Why, why do you ask?’
‘You called out his name, when we made love,’ he replied sullenly. ‘I heard you clearly. Just that, Ivan. But you’ll learn to cry my name like that. That longing in your voice will be for me one day, do you hear?’
He shook her fiercely, then crushing her to him, made love to her again, but this time she could not respond, the feeling of abandon had gone, dispelled by the sound of that one word. She lay submissively until at last, his passion spent, he slept beside her. She stared up into the darkness, a feeling of unutterable sadness creeping over her, until at last she drifted off into a sleep troubled by strange dreams. She was riding a horse through a forest – nothing like this dark forest, but another, and someone was riding behind her, calling her name, and she was laughing, urging her horse to go faster. Her mount stumbled, and she fell with a bump, and someone was covering her face with kisses. A much loved voice was whispering, ‘I love you, I love you,’ and she tried to see who it was, but it was too dark. She called out ‘Ivan, Ivan’, and suddenly it was light, but the face she looked up at was Christian’s, and disappointment flooded through her.
She woke up, shaking and crying out, and Christian took her in his arms and comforted her, and she clung to him like a child, for the thought of being alone was most frightening of all.
So, the next few weeks slipped by. The men would go off every few days and return laden down with booty. Each time, Christian would give Tanya first choice of anything he thought she might like. She chose a jewelled dagger and took to carrying it around with her – the feel of the cold metal against her skin was comforting somehow. To the other treasures laid before her, she showed complete indifference, exasperating Christian, who declared he had never met another woman like her. Each night before the raiding party was to set out, Christian would make love to her with a sort of desperate intensity, trying to pierce the shield that seemed to surround this woman, but he knew that although he possessed her body, he was shut out completely from her heart, and he walked around like a man possessed. Whenever he wasn’t with her, he left orders with the remaining men to ensure that Tanya did not leave the confines of the village, for he was obsessed with the idea that one day he would return, and she would be gone.
Then one day, the raiding party returned with Denka reeling in the saddle. He had been wounded in the shoulder, a deep flesh wound, not serious, but enough to put him in his bed. Paca, the gypsy girl, rather grudgingly tended his wound, not daring to do otherwise in case she should again be passed on, this time to the men.
Christian took Tanya in his arms to kiss her, and she turned her face away, unable to stop herself. Lately, she had been feeling more and more depressed, on the verge of remembering something of her past, but the wall still held. She no longer felt the childlike trust she had had in Christian – she somehow had the feeling that she was much older than he – not in years, but in some way difficult to define. He never used violence on her, for he was afraid that if he did, she would withdraw from him altogether, but neither would he allow her to refuse his lovemaking. He felt that this was the only way to pierce her shell, and she was forced to submit.
News came of a rich convoy of merchants headed their way, and the men saddled up to ride off to their plunder, leaving Denka in charge as he was still recuperating from his wound. The women walked to the edge of the village to wish their men good pickings and a speedy return, and Tanya went with them. Christian leapt into the saddle, then, looking at the pale, lovely face beneath him, was somehow sure that he would never see it again, the feeling more strong this time, and he bent down and lifted her up against his side, kissing her hard. ‘Look out for me,’ he murmured, then set her down and rode away without a backward glance, closely followed by his men.
Tanya wandered disconsolately back to the village, as usual, still racking her brains for some memory, however small, of her past. It was almost as if she were afraid to remember, that some part of her was stubbornly refusing to face what the past held. She had been feeling more and more frustrated lately, still forbidden to leave the camp, and she felt hemmed in. She would wander up and down between the huts, impervious to the glances thrown her way, whether lustful or full of hate, depending on the sex of the onlooker. Just now it was both, for Denka and Paca were blocking her path, and she turned aside, heading towards the edge of the clearing where the guards patrolled. Suddenly, right in her path, she saw a woman sitting in the sun suckling her baby, and for a moment, an unbearable pain struck her to the core. She stood rooted to the spot, staring at the child, then with a low cry, like a wounded animal, she turned on her heel and darted off towards the forest, with only one thought on her mind, to get away from the stares of the villagers, to be quite alone. She took the guard by surprise as she flashed past him, and he called after her, unsure whether to follow, or stay at his post. Then he saw Denka approaching and called to him, pointing out the way she had gone.
Tanya ran on and on, until the cool quiet of the forest penetrated to her, bringing a little peace to her tortured mind. She sank down on to a log, panting, and buried her face in her hands. Gradually the sound of her fast-beating heart grew quieter, and she began to feel a little better, when the sudden cracking of a twig made her look up in fright. She stared in fascinated horror at the man bearing down on her, and the look in his eyes gave her no doubt of his intentions.
Too late, she sprang to her feet to flee, but Denka was already upon her. She was knocked over brutally, and her head banged violently on the ground. For a few seconds, darkness swept across her mind, then her senses returned, and she found herself pinioned under the man’s huge bulk. She tried to struggle, and a whiff of fetid breath caught her full in the face. Quite suddenly, she was not in the forest at all, but in a dark, rat-infested hovel in the slums of Moscow, struggling in the darkness against an unseen assailant. Now, as then, her fingers wrapped themselves around the hilt of the dagger she wore in her belt, and she pulled it out and struck upwards with all her might. Denka gave a surprised grunt, tried to rise, then slumped heavily across her. Trembling violently, she wriggled out, and scrambled to her feet.
‘Peterkin, Peterkin, where are you, I need you?’ she screamed, staring wildly around. Vision returned and she shuddered, looking blindly at the trees that surrounded her. Where was she? For a moment, time had swept her back to Moscow, when she had been hiding with Peterkin. But from whom had she been hiding? Ivan, of course! At the thought of his name, the floodgates opened, and the memories came pouring back, tumbling over one another in her mind.
‘Ivan,’ she screamed the name aloud, and without even glancing at the groaning figure at her feet, careless of whether he was alive or dead, she turned on her heel and plunged deeper into the forest. As she ran, she remembered the last time she had run like this – after seeing Ivan kill Nicholas. Now, as then, she had no idea where she was running to, she had just one thought in mind, to put as much distance between herself and the village behind her as she could. Her breath was coming in sobs, and eventually, she was forced to pause and rest. The shadows of evening were already darkening the forest, and for the first time, she became aware of the gravity of her situation.
She was quite alone and lost in the middle of wild country, most probably miles from anywhere, without weapons and without food. Already she could feel the pangs of hunger and cursed herself for refusing the food the old woman had made for her that day.
Far off in the distance, a wolf howled, and another answered, and she felt the hairs rising at the back of her neck. She had always had a strange, unaccountable fear of wolves and found herself wondering if that was because one day she would be torn to pieces by a pack of them. She was even contemplating trying to find her way back to the village when she remembered with renewed violence the reason she had been travelling to Petersburg. She had been trying to find her husband. She had been through so much already to that end, and if she returned to Christian, she would be a prisoner again, for he would not risk her escape a second time. Besides, if she had killed that beast, Denka, her reception might not be very warm, although somehow she thought that Christian would not let that bother him. Nevertheless, she would go mad trapped there with nothing to do but satisfy the lusts of a man she could not even like, let alone love. Why, had he not said that there were no survivors but her, when he had ‘found’ her? It was obvious to Tanya now that his had been the hand that had caused the so-called accident to her coach, and therefore, his was the hand that was stained with the blood of her companions. Even as she thought this, she remembered Peterkin, and a wave of faintness and nausea made her sink to her knees. Had they killed him too? Had they taken the life of her loyal, brave Peterkin, so young and full of zest for living? At the thought, a sob rose in her throat, and soon she was weeping uncontrollably. Scrubbing her fists across her eyes, she rose to her feet, feeling considerably calmer now. She would go on or die in the attempt. Never would she return to those murderers.
She fixed the swiftly sinking sun to her left and began to walk for as long as she could see. When it became too dark, and she heard again the wolves in the distance, she climbed into the lower branches of a tree and curled up there for safety and, feeling totally exhausted, dropped instantly off to sleep.