With an exaggerated exasperated expression, and a hand on her hip, she glares at me. "Just do it, Nata," she barks.
Chagrined, I obey.
She grins. "Well done. Now, if you have to shoot someone, aim here, if you can," she points at her chest. "It's the biggest target. The gun will jump as you fire it, and aiming at the biggest target means you stand a chance of hitting something."
She stops speaking for a moment while she fiddles with the cage she had removed from the handle of my gun, pressing all the bullets out with her fingers. When it is empty, she hands it to me. "That is the magazine," she says. "I want you to put bullets in it, one at a time."
As I take it from her, she holds out her other hand in which lay the bullets she has just removed, like a nest of lethal eggs.
"Take one, and lay it in the guide," she instructs.
After fumbling with my gun for a moment, I eventually tuck it under my armpit while I proceeded to do as she told me.
"Yes, that's it," she nods. "Press it in. Good. Now the next."
When it is full, she has me insert the magazine into the handle of the pistol and lock it in place.
"Aim at the trees."
"You're going to make me fire it, aren't you?"
She nods, then puts a hand on my arm. "Nata, it's just the two of us now. I need to know that you can protect yourself if … if I can't."
I am about to reply, but she presses on, raising her voice to over-ride me.
"Point the damn thing at the trees, will you!"
Obediently, I raise it and aim at the copse.
"Lock your elbows," she instructs. "Be ready for the kick. Look along the barrel at your target and squeeze the trigger smoothly."
I begin to pull the trigger, tense in the expectation of the explosion waiting to happen. There is a loud crack, which echoes briefly, and my arms feel as though I have run into a wall with them outstretched; a flock of birds rises in panic from the thicket.
"Now you are ready to face the world," Rada says grimly, taking the gun from my shaking fingers, setting the safety, and putting it into the holster we took with it from the van. She passes it to me, and I loop the belt over my head so that it drapes from one shoulder across my chest, like a sash.
"I hope I never have to use it," I confess.
"Having seen you in action, so do I," she grumbles.
Chapter 29
~ Max ~
After following a track that ran roughly south for a little way, we have now joined another, broader trail ~ the avenue of poplars I observed from the shack ~ heading west, parallel with the railway line. We are walking in silence, picking our way over the ruts and puddles, the rising sun behind us, casting our shadows long ahead, like a pair of fingers pointing the way. I realise that my shoes are inadequate. My head is reeling from the events of the last twenty-four hours, and various parts of my face and limbs are throbbing from the punishment they have suffered since I left the café.
Though I try to shut out the memories of what has happened in that shed, I might as well be trying to stop the sun from rising or the Volga from flowing out into the sea. And, over all the shame and fear, I keep hearing Avadeyev's voice telling me that Sverdlov, the same Yakov Sverdlov that took me to the ballet and kissed me tenderly at my door, was the man who ordered the deaths of the royal family and all the servants, and then had the nerve to be angry at me for not telling him about my past.
After a couple of hours, as the sun climbs and our shadows shorten, we begin to hear the heavy breathing of a horse behind us, accompanied by the creaking of its harness. We turn, and see a farm wagon pulled by a single old horse, and driven by a small woman.
"Olgha!" I exclaim, amazed that in this wilderness our paths have met.
She stops the cart, looking with surprise at us. "Natalie, it's you! You looked like two bandits!"
Despite my mood, her words make me smile; a painful action. I realise that we must look quite a sight with all our guns, and the belts ~ decorated with rows of bullets ~ that were draped over our shoulders.
"What are you doing out here?" she continues. "I was disappointed when you didn't show up this morning, but assumed you had to be somewhere else."
"It's complicated," I say. "I'll explain later. This is my oldest and dearest friend, Radochka. Can we ride with you?"
"Of course," she smiles, sliding across the wooden bench seat to make room for us. "Jump up."
The board is just long enough for all three of us, and as soon as we have settled onto it she gives the reins a shake and the old horse begins to walk again.
As we sway slowly along, I tell her about my kidnap, and Rada's dramatic rescue. I cannot bring myself to recount the more sordid details, still trying as I am to put up a barrier in my mind to hide them away, to pretend they never happened.
"Look on the floor of the wagon, behind you," Olgha says suddenly, smiling.
I twist in my seat, and there lies the bag in which I was carrying my diaries when I first met her. I grin and hug her.
"In my haste to leave, under pressure from Leo and Stanislav, I forgot it," I say, lamely. "And thank goodness I did, because in there are all the secrets of my past life. They would surely have fallen into Avadeyev's hands."
"Yes, and that would have made your situation much worse," Rada mutters.
Absent-mindedly, I hum and nod, my thoughts still turned inwards, but then I am jolted out of them by the digging of an elbow into my ribs. Puzzled, I turn to look at Rada, who has a strange expression on her face.
"What?" I ask.
She starts laughing. "Nata, how could it have been any worse than it was, silly?"
"Humph!" I grunt. "Sometimes I have serious doubts about your sense of humour."
But I see at last what she means, and have to suppress a grin.
* * *
The road wanders between fields defined by hedges and trees, sometimes taking a diversion around a wood, or a body of water. It is a fine, dry day ~ warm in the sun, but comfortable ~ and I feel my mood improving. The thought of finally seeing Max sends frequent little shivers of anticipation through me. We pass a few farms along the way, isolated little settlements, country people making the best they can of a hard existence. Smoke rises from the chimneys of some, and there are clusters of goats and cows in fenced pastures, but we see no people. I wonder if they are watching us pass from their windows, curious but wary.
The sun passes over our heads, and begins to disappear into a rolling bank of clouds that we have watched growing from the horizon in front of us.
At length, we pull off the road into an enclosure of wooden buildings ~ Olgha's and Stefan's farm.
It is bigger than I have been expecting. A white-painted, square-fronted house stands at the far end of the yard we have entered, with barns and animal pens ranged along either side of us, and the entrance now behind us open to the road.
A pig peers curiously over the top of a half-door in one low shed, and I can hear the bleating of a goat from within another.
A door opens in the house, and a black-and-white dog runs out to greet us, followed by two men. My heart suddenly begins to pound as though it will explode when I see them. One of them, the older of the two, and conspicuously the shorter, is presumably Stefan, Olgha's husband, but my eyes lock onto the other man. There is no longer any doubt, no mistaking the wild, blonde hair and broad shoulders. It is Max ~ I have found him at last!
As soon as the cart has stopped beside a stable, I leap from it onto the cobbled yard, stumbling as I land. I regain my balance and run towards Max, the dog barking at my feet. I see his face as he recognises me, and a big grin opens on it, though I notice in the process that he had lost some teeth.
"Natalie," he lisps, as though saying a prayer, his hands reaching for me. "Natalie, Natalie."
We clasp each other close, and I inhale his smell, feel his breath in my hair, his hands stroking my back.
"I thought I would never see you again," I sob.
In my peripher
al vision I see Stefan cross the yard to begin releasing the horse from its shafts. Rada helps him, and I notice that they are in conversation, while Olgha comes to stand beside me.
"Olgha," I blurt at last, "this is Max. This is my Max. I was afraid they had killed him."
"They tried," she says softly, "and nearly succeeded. Come indoors, let's have something to eat and drink."
* * *
Max and I cling together as we follow Olgha into her kitchen, a large, open room that occupies the whole ground floor of the farmhouse, with a big scrubbed wooden table at one end, set with chairs, and a huge log-burning cooking stove at the other. Olgha makes a pot of strong tea, and sets it on the table. I pour a little for each of us into the pretty little cups she has brought from the dresser that almost fills the back wall. For Max and me, I add hot water and a spoonful of the jam that Olgha has placed in the centre of the table.
Rada and Stefan come in from the yard ~ they seem to be getting along well. Rada has taken off her brown army jacket while outside, and rolled up the sleeves of her shirt. She drapes the tunic over the back of a chair and, after looking to Stefan for approval, and receiving it with a nod, props her rifle against the dresser.
Stefan is lean and muscular, much shorter than Max, not much bigger than Olgha, in fact. He is dour, his leathery face seemingly unable to smile, his little eyes almost invisible in the mass of wrinkles, yet I feel a warmth in him ~ he cares, but shows it only in his ways, while hiding behind a serious expression. He had removed his hat as he entered the kitchen, hanging it on a hook beside the door, and his long, grey-brown hair is tied back in a pony-tail.
We sit together round the table, eating some bread and cheese and cake, while sipping our tea and getting to know each other.
While we chat, the kitchen becomes darker as, outside, the heavy clouds have arrived and rain has begun to fall, driven against the windows by sudden wild gusts of wind. Olgha lights an oil lamp and hangs it on a hook that descends from the ceiling above the table, and we sit in its circle of light. It feels … intimate, warm, as though we are a family.
I learn that Stefan inherited the farm from his parents, who died within only a few years of his marriage to Olgha, that Stefan is a blacksmith, and still keeps a forge and workshop, and that they have no children. Without family to help with the farm, they have struggled each year to get the crops in before winter, but they are blessed with good neighbours, who pitch in and help when they can. Stefan repays them by repairing machinery, shoeing their horses and sharpening knives.
Stefan asks to know more about Max and me, and I repeat what I have told Olgha about my life as a servant in the royal house, and subsequent escape from their murder. I also tell them both what I know of Max's past.
And all the time we are talking, Max and I are holding onto each other, as though to make sure we couldn't slip apart again. He has changed, physically and mentally. I discover that the beating he received from the circus gang broke two of his ribs, one arm and a cheekbone, as well as opening up his bullet wound again. I can see that he finds it hard to stand up as straight as before, and he walks slowly and carefully, as though each movement causes him pain. His mind wanders, too, and he does not speak, though he sometimes nods or shakes his head if necessary. Nevertheless, his hand grips mine, and he smiles his gappy smile every time I look at him.
Chapter 30
~ Attack ~
Our simple tea done, Stefan leans back and lights a pipe, and begins chatting easily with Rada. Olgha and I start clearing the table and washing the cups and plates; I feel relaxed and happy, despite all the terrible things that have happened. I am with my Max, and again I recall Myriam's words, when she visited me in the night nearly two years ago and promised that I would find love, and the home and family I have yearned for all my life. As I look fondly at Olgha, and at Stefan and Rada as they relax together, I know that this is the closest I have ever been to fulfilling that dream.
Suddenly the dog, which they call Malchik, and which has been asleep in his basket, raises his head with a grunt, then runs to the door, barking. Looking apprehensively at each other, Rada and I cross to the big window, and peer out. We are just in time to see a man run diagonally across the rain-lashed yard towards the pig-pen, doubled over, like a hunchback. He flattens himself into the recess of the pen door.
Another stands, half-hidden, behind the stable, a rifle clearly visible in his hands, and I see him raise it to his shoulder. As I shout a warning to Rada, the window panes suddenly shatter inwards, and a bullet slams into the far wall of the kitchen.
"Turn out the light," Rada calls over her shoulder to Olgha, pulling her pistol from her belt. She takes careful aim and fires a single shot through the broken window.
My pistol belt is lying on the sideboard that divides the room, where I put it when I arrived. I run across and grab it as the room fades into darkness.
"How can Avadeyev's men have found me again so quickly?" I ask as I rejoin Rada, removing the gun from its holster and gazing out into the yard.
"Perhaps there were more of them than we realised," she shrugs, squinting along the barrel of her pistol and letting off another round.
"I have seen four men so far," Stefan says, looking out through a smaller window at the end of the kitchen. "Ioann … Max, take Olgha upstairs."
He reaches up and takes down a shotgun mounted on the wall, and quickly loads it from a box of cartridges. Then, slowly, he opens the window and rests the barrel of the gun on the sill, peering carefully out, scanning the yard for movement.
"If they are at the front, they must also be at the back!" Rada says suddenly. "Stefan, is there another door?"
He shakes his head. "No, at the back there is only the log store."
"Nata, take your gun and go upstairs with them," Rada orders me, nodding towards the staircase where Max and Olgha have begun to slowly climb. "Look out of the back windows, and shoot anything that moves! Oh, pass me my rifle before you go."
I nod, grabbing the rifle from beside the dresser and handing it to her. Then I run up the stairs, overhauling Olgha and Max halfway. I slip past them and continue to the top, then pause to look around.
There is a little light entering via a small landing window to my left, and by it I can see a short hallway, with four doors off, all open. I turn right, towards the back of the house, and run to the door of the left-hand room.
The sight that greets me is almost surreal. In that pretty, half-dark room, with a floral bedspread and neat furniture, I see the bulk of a man in a dripping raincoat, in the act of climbing in through the window which he has managed to force open.
Rada's voice returns to me as I knock off the safety catch of my pistol and level it at him as she taught me, easing the trigger, trying not to jerk it in panic. The blast is deafening in the confined space, making my ears ring, but the result is even more shocking to me. The man's body jumps, and blood spurts from a hole that has appeared where the bullet has ripped through his clothes. But he has not stopped; his head turns to look at me, an expression of pain and anger and hate on his face, and he hastens to get his foot on the floor. I fire another shot, then two more, until he slumps limply on the window frame, one arm and one leg hanging inside, his blood running down the wall beneath the sill.
Olgha arrives beside me, and we run together to the window and heave the body out, watching it bounce off the roof of the woodstore and disappear from sight.
As Olgha closes the window, a crash from the next room alerts us, and we run back out into the hallway. I am slightly ahead of Olgha, and reach the door just as the shadowy silhouette of a man emerges from the room opposite. I only have time to register a brown jacket and grey beard before he leaps at me with grasping hands, knocking my gun from my hands before I can raise it to shoot. He grabs me, spinning me around and gripping me in a bear hug, pressing a knife to my throat. I see Olgha stoop to pick up the gun and point it, but the man is holding me as a shield and she dares not fire.
/> "Drop the gun," he shouts at her, jabbing the point of the knife against my skin. I think I feel it penetrate the flesh, and warm blood trickling down my neck.
She does as instructed, glaring at him. Then I see her expression change to a kind of smile, and at the same moment, the man's grip on me loosens, the knife dropping from his hand and thudding onto the rug at my feet. I twist free and turn to see what is happening.
Max is standing behind the man, towering over him, his huge hands around the man's neck, squeezing the life out of him. "Not hurt my Natalie," he says as the man collapses, his face purple, his tongue lolling from his mouth.
Olgha picks up the gun again, and hands it to me. "You have to finish him," she shouts above the din from downstairs, where guns are still firing, and Malchik, the dog, is barking and growling like a wild animal.
"I can't shoot a helpless man," I answer, pathetically.
"Then give it to me and I will," she orders, holding out her hand.
"No," I reply, vehemently, but then a flurry of shots and shouts from downstairs interrupts us.
As I run to the top of the stairs, followed by Olgha and, more slowly, Max, the gunfire and barking stops, and a silence falls that is even more ominous. We begin to descend, and when I can see into the kitchen I observe that the door is open, swinging in the wind that is driving rain through like waves crashing on a shore. Two men are standing just inside, and the bodies of Stefan, Rada, and the dog are lying on the floor, puddles of blood forming beneath each of them. As I watch, one of the men kicks the dog, then starts to lean over Stefan's still form.
He is stopped, however, by his associate, who lets out a yell when he sees Olgha and me, and he runs past the other man towards the stairs. I raise my pistol and aim at him, but then I see that the other one is pointing a gun at me, so I switch aim and start firing at him, one shot then another until a click tells me that my gun is empty. The man with the gun has fallen, but the other stands grinning in triumph, snatching up the weapon and raising it. I throw my useless gun at him, but it falls short, and I see the muzzle of his pistol staring at me.
The shot that I hear, however, does not come from his gun, but from the floor beside him, where Rada has propped herself up on one elbow and is lying on her side, her pistol still smoking.