By the time we crossed the Danube, I was nearly out of my head with fever and infection. The wounds had festered and smelled foul. I wouldn’t let her touch them and was afraid to stop until we were out of Russia. How I was still alive was a miracle; clearly, one of the holes in my stomach had punctured my intestines. She managed our food, money and travel, asking me what the next step should be. Sometimes, I made sense. Others, I rambled insanely and she was on her own.
She had booked us a cabin on a steamer that ran upstream on the river towards Munich and I had protested so violently she’d changed it for England. I’d tried to explain that the war had made these countries too treacherous for travel.
I’d managed to stagger on board and to our third class berths before collapsing onto the bed and passed out completely. She went in search of the ship’s surgeon and brought him in.
His exclamation of horror and his poking cold hands roused me. He spoke in French, the language of the Russian nobility.
“How long has he been like this?” he demanded harshly.
Anna’s voice was soft, “Seven days. He would not let me treat him or stop to let a doctor see.”
“He’s going to die,” he said. “This is a mortal wound. It’s terribly infected. He has blood poisoning. See the red streaks? The foul odor? He’s gangrenous. I’m amazed he’s survived this long. What’s his name?”
“Aidan Argent. The Honorable Aidan Argent. His father is the Duke of Bowden.”
“He’s English?”
“Cornish, actually,” I whispered. “Who are you?”
“Ship’s surgeon. Marcus Whyte. Look, I can help you with the pain but I’m afraid there’s not much else I can do.”
I smiled faintly. “I know. I wasn’t meant to survive. Thought it’d be quick, though. Will you see Anna safe? Send her to America, not stay in Europe. Too many events will happen here. America is safer.”
“Who is she?”
“Anastasia. Russian princess,” I mumbled but I wasn’t sure he heard or believed me.
“You came…Russia…delirious….drink this…Aidan…”
Darkness. Firelight. The smell of carbolic. Cedar. In my mouth. Mothballs and tepid water.
Hands rolling me. Hot compresses on my belly, pain that ate through me. I prayed to die, cried for my mother. Soft hands that gave me some respite from the pain.
Bitter drafts forced down my throat and brought back the darkness. Rocking motion that lulled me. Smell of food, raw, rank and long past its prime.
I begged for surcease, asked to put me out of this misery, heard a woman sobbing. Sunshine on my skin. Burned worse than fire. Shivers wracked me. All my joints felt frozen stiff like a rusted bolt.
“Aidan,” a girl’s voice, soft with a pretty French accent. “Open your eyes, Aidan.”
A man’s voice. I didn’t know it. “It won’t be long now. His heart rate is dropping, blood pressure falling, skipping. He’s septic. Aidan. I can give him some morphine. It’ll depress his breathing; make him go quicker, easier, in less pain.”
“No! He can’t die!”
I struggled to come back, to open my eyes, to comfort her, the last of her family. “Anna,” I managed.
“Aidan, we brought you to Bonn, a pension near the river. The doctor has been treating you. It’s time to wake up, Aiden. I need you. Without you, I can’t go on. Please, don’t die.”
I felt my heart stutter, slow and that same endless stretching as my essence left this body and went searching through the river of time for another.
I remembered at that moment that Anna would jump into the river and try to kill her only to be rescued by a soldier who would take her to England and she would have suffered a head injury forgetting her name, her language, her journey, and me. She would wind up in America as Anna and only then would claim to be the Grand Duchess.
I wandered in a void, lost in the river of time, found myself watching as my five year old self spent that lonely time in the group home. Neglected, barely cared for, and mostly ignored, I was grateful I had not been aware.
I found myself drawn to the farm and even in this spirit form; I was not allowed to enter the area and spy on my own family.
I could and did follow Suzy. Saw her frantic search after I disappeared, how she wore herself to an early grave mourning for me rather than treating the cancer that ate her lungs.
She died five years after I was murdered, never knowing what happened. She’d approached Tom, Schnee, and Harry to look for me and begged them not to stop until I was found. A deathbed promise they made her.
Tom and Cammy had buried me after a fancy funeral, he did it under my adopted name and with surprising sensitivity, and he placed me in a crypt next to Suzy which he had paid for, too. Both of them came often to the grave site and Tom often spoke to tell me what he was doing.
He died some ten years after my death, in a bomb attack at Heathrow Airport. I wasn’t there to save him but Cammy lit a candle for both of us, anyway. I drifted an existence not unlike being in the womb. I waited for re-birth.