Mary Nichols - The Kirilov Star

Now even that had to end. The Constituent Assembly, formed after the Revolution under the Provisional Government, had been overthrown and there was civil war, the Red Army against the White, a war without frontiers, where friend opposed friend, brother took up arms against brother, servant fought master and the enemy was unseen and yet everywhere. The Reds were determined to put an end to aristocratic privilege and power, and the Whites were equally determined to hold on to it. And in the middle of it all were the Greens who belonged to neither side and took advantage of whatever situation prevailed. It was chaotic and, what was more, dangerously anarchical. Mikhail felt they had jumped from the cooking pot into the flames of the fire.

‘The fighting is getting closer all the time,’ he told Anna. He was a tall man, with strong dark features and a handsome beard. Too agitated to stand still, he paced the room, window to door and back again, only just avoiding crashing into the table at which his wife sat sewing by the light of a feeble lamp. Oil was running low, so he dare not give her more light. They had chosen to use a room at the back of the house which looked out on the forest and not the road to the town and they had drawn the heavy curtains, so that no chink of light escaped to reveal their presence. ‘And if the Reds find us…’ He stopped, unwilling to put it into words, but she knew what he meant. He was a distant relative of the Romanovs and he was afraid they would share the fate of Tsar Nicholas. Officially he was being held for his own safety, but the rumours were flying that he had been executed by the Bolsheviks without even a trial, though how you could justify trying a ruler ordained by God, Anna had no idea.

‘I am not risking it happening to you and the children,’ he said, glancing down at the floor where two pairs of legs stuck out from beneath the cloth-covered table, one clad in knickerbockers, the other lace-frilled pantalettes. Andrei and Lydia were whispering together, playing some secret game whose rules only they understood.

‘But why would they harm us?’ his wife asked. ‘We have done no wrong, broken no law, unless you count stealing the garden which always used to belong to us, and who else wants it? And you have served Russia faithfully as a soldier all through the war and since.’

‘I served Russia but I also served the tsar, Annushka,’ he said patiently, trying with a calm voice to make her understand and not frighten her any more than she was frightened already. ‘According to the Bolsheviks, the two are not compatible.’

She wouldn’t mind if he were coming too; she could face anything with him at her side, but no, he must take up arms for the White Army – as if they had a chance of winning! Why, even Pyotr Wrangel, who now commanded the White Army, was advising people to leave the country while they could. ‘Misha,’ she implored, jabbing the thread at the eye of the needle and missing. ‘If we must go, then come with us. One man cannot make a difference, surely? In the general confusion you will not even be missed.’

‘That would be desertion, Annushka. I cannot dishonour the name of Kirilov with such a shameful act. I begged leave to help you to escape, but that is all it is, a few days’ leave.’

Anna made one more attempt to thread her needle and then tears overwhelmed her again. He took it from her and bent over the lamp to thread it for her, returned it to her, then sat down and picked up one of the pieces of jewellery from the velvet-lined casket on the table and began systematically to break the gems out of their silver and gold settings with wire-cutters.

‘Do you really need to do that?’ she asked, choking back another sob. Mikhail was adamant and tears were not moving him. ‘It must be decimating their value.’

‘Darling, pieces like this have no value in the new scheme of things, except for barter, and at the moment they are worth more as currency than the new paper money. Or even roubles. You will have to part with them one at a time for travel documents and food. And you will need to sell what is left to keep you going in England until I can join you.’

She sighed, picked up a ruby and sewed it carefully into a pair of stays she held on her lap. It was followed by another and then an emerald and a diamond. ‘I shall be weighed down with it.’ She attempted a laugh which tore at his heart.

‘Put some in the children’s clothes too. Lydia, sweetheart, go and fetch your best petticoat, the silk one with the lace flounces round the hem. And bring Andrei’s best tunic too.’

Lydia scrambled out from under the table, followed by her brother. The ribbons had come out of her hair and Andrei’s socks were wrinkled at the ankle. Both stood and watched their parents for a moment or two, then Lydia asked, ‘Why are you breaking that necklace, Papa? Don’t you like it anymore?’

‘No, I don’t think I do,’ he said, taking a pair of pliers to a priceless antique, one that had been in the Kirilov family for generations. ‘But we must hide the pieces from thieves, so Mama is sewing them into your clothes.’

‘Why? Are we going on a journey?’ Andrei asked, as Lydia disappeared on her errand, taking a stub of candle her father had lit for her.

‘Yes, a very long journey,’ his father told him. ‘Over the sea to England.’

‘England!’ the boy exclaimed. ‘I saw that in my atlas. It’s the other side of the world. Why are we going there?’ He was so like his father, especially his dark, intelligent eyes; looking at him made Anna’s heart ache and she wanted to weep again.

‘To be safe,’ she told her son. ‘Until this dreadful fighting is over and we can come back home.’

‘I want to fight like Papa. I can shoot, you know I can. Didn’t I bring down a hare the other day?’

‘Yes you did, son,’ his father told him. ‘And a jolly good meal it made too, but shooting hares is not the same as shooting people and I pray to God you never have to do it.’

‘You do.’

‘I am a man and a soldier, that is different. It is not something I want to do.’ He turned as Tonya, carrying the petticoat and tunic, came into the room with Lydia. She had been a roly-poly of a woman, almost as broad as she was high, though since the war the fat had melted off her and left folds of superfluous skin. ‘Ah, Tonya, I am glad you are here,’ he said. ‘I will tell you our plans and if you have any suggestions to make I will listen.’

The countess, a little calmer now, continued to sew jewels into their clothes as he told of their plans. ‘I am going to take the countess and the children to Yalta, where they will go on a ship across to Constantinople and from there to England,’ he told her, smiling a little at her gasp of shock. ‘You may go with them or not, as you please. I shall not insist.’

‘But Your Excellency,’ she said, addressing him in the old way, forgetting she should not use that form of address now and she should have said Mikhail Mikhailovich. ‘Where else would I be but with my babes? And the countess needs me.’

‘Oh, thank you, Tonya,’ Anna put in. ‘I do not think I could bear it without you.’

‘But how will we get away?’ the servant asked. ‘Someone is sure to see us and tell the militsiia .’

‘We must leave separately and go in different directions. The countess and I will take the carriage to pay a visit to my cousin, Grigori Stefanovich. He is Chairman of the Workers’ Committee of the Petrovsk Soviet and a visit to him will not be thought out of the ordinary. You will take the children in the droshky, as if you were taking Andrei to school, but you will not leave him there but go to Simferopol. We will meet you there and go to Yalta together.’ He had considered sending them by train, but the trains, mostly made up of freight trucks, were packed with refugees, coming from further north, and they would never manage to get on one, even if they could obtain the necessary papers allowing them to travel.