Kate Furnivall - The Concubine's Secret

‘What is it, my friend? Wait while I strike a match.’

A flame flared and a lamp hissed. In the sudden gleam of yellow light Alexei focused on the jumble of blankets on the floor and realised it was Konstantin’s own bed he had usurped. The boatman was naked, his long back well muscled, blond curls on his thighs. He turned and studied Alexei, unabashed by his own nakedness, his blue eyes still heavy with sleep.

‘What is it, Alexei? A nightmare?’

‘No. Where is my moneybelt, Konstantin?’

The long eyelashes blinked. ‘Moneybelt? What moneybelt?’

‘I was wearing one when-’

‘My friend, I am no thief.’

‘I’m not accusing you.’

‘That’s what it sounds like to me.’ He spread his broad hands as if to show there was nothing hiding in them. ‘When I dragged you out of the water, you were in a mess. Bleeding over everything, your clothes cut and torn, but there was definitely no moneybelt.’ He chuckled softly. ‘Do you think I wouldn’t have noticed?’

Alexei collapsed back on the pillow and closed his eyes. ‘I apologise, Konstantin. Please go back to sleep.’

Immediately the light went out. Alexei heard his companion’s bare feet pad across the boards, felt a hand touch his hair in the darkness and slide gently down to brush the skin of his neck.

‘How old are you, Alexei?’ Konstantin’s voice was a whisper.

‘Twenty-six.’

‘So young. And so… untouchable.’

A silence, black and sticky as pitch, dropped into the gap between the two men. Alexei rolled on to his side, turning his back on the boatman, so that the hand fell away. ‘Goodnight, comrade. Dobri nochi, tovarishch.’

Quietly the footsteps padded away.

Everything was gone. The money, the jewels, all that he had secreted away from prying eyes. How they must have laughed at his naivety.

Alexei felt bile rise in his throat because he knew it wasn’t his naivety that had caused this. It was his own blind arrogance. He’d known what to expect, what Mikhail Vushnev was likely to try on that freezing cold night on the bridge. But he had been so confident that he could handle whatever a dumb camp apparatchik thought up and still extract the information he needed.

How wrong could he be? How unforgivable was the mistake?

He forced his eyes closed. But the images remained there under his eyelids, etched sharper than acid into his brain. Everything of real value was gone. Everything.

Beads of sunlight threaded their way through a line of holes in the curtain that hung across the small cabin porthole. Bright tears of regret. That’s what they looked like to Alexei when he opened his eyes and saw them spilling over his blanket and on to the table. The sun had scarcely climbed above the eastern horizon, the dawn light still drifting lazily down the surface of the river, in no hurry to get anywhere.

But I am. In a hurry to get back to Felanka.

Alexei threw off the blankets and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. His head threatened to split wide open when he pushed himself to his feet and nausea hit. Stale, fevered breath escaped from his lungs in a rush. He swore. Swaying dangerously he fought to catch his breath, and that was when he saw Konstantin watching him in silence from his nest of blankets on the floor.

‘You’re weak as a kitten,’ the boatman said. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘Time to leave.’

‘ Nyet .’ It came out as a soft moan. ‘Not yet. You are not well enough.’

‘I have to go.’

Alexei straightened up. The boards were cold under his feet and he looked around the cabin for his boots. They were by a bucket in a corner and had been polished. He shuffled over, picked them up and put them on. The effort left him trembling. Konstantin said nothing.

‘My clothes?’ Alexei asked.

‘I told you, they were torn to rags so I threw them away. You can keep my old ones that you’re wearing and your coat is in that cupboard.’

Alexei retrieved it. The heavy material had one long cut down the front that had been meticulously mended.

‘How can I thank you?’

Konstantin wrapped himself tightly in his blankets. ‘There’s bread and some cold pork in the-’

‘No. But thank you. You’ve done more than enough for me already.’

‘I have no money to offer you.’

‘A knife is all I need.’

A brief nod of the head towards a cupboard. Alexei chose the sharpest and thinnest blade, then approached his rescuer and held out his hand in farewell.

‘Thank you, Konstantin. Spasibo. You have been a true friend . ’ He felt an urge to say more than just spasibo . ‘I am more grateful than I can say for what…’

‘Not grateful enough, it seems.’ The blue eyes closed. ‘Just go.’

Alexei bent down, squeezed his shoulder and left.

Popkov swore at her. It came as a shock to Lydia.

He started cursing the moment she stepped off the train in Felanka. She hurried down the icy platform towards him but he just stood there without moving, swearing at her in his booming voice. He loomed big and bulky, a bear on its hind legs, so black-eyed and dangerous that other passengers on the station platform swerved to avoid him. His hat was missing so that his greasy curls launched out at angry angles, and his black eyepatch lay askew where he’d been picking at it.

How many times had he waited here for her?

How many trains had he met?

How many hours had he wasted in the snow and the rain?

‘Liev!’ she called out and started to run, her coat catching at her legs.

The Cossack bunched up his massive eyebrows and scowled harder at her, looking ready to kill something, and as she drew near she heard his hot words clearly in the chill air.

‘Fuck you, suka! Where have you been? Why the devil did you leave without me? Why? You stupid little chit, you could be lying in fucking shit in a gutter somewhere by now or-’

‘Hush,’ she murmured and stood still in front of him. ‘Hush.’ She looked up into his face with a wide, affectionate smile.

His black eye glittered at her. ‘Damn you,’ he said.

‘I know.’

‘Go to hell.’

‘I probably will.’

‘You stupid little fool.’ His big paw landed on her shoulder, crushing it.

He’d never sworn at her before. Never. That’s how bad it was for him.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her words almost lost in the great sigh of the steam engine as it belched out smoke.

She stood close to him. Slid her arms around his chest as far as they would go and laid her cheek on his stinking coat. The bristles of his beard prickled her forehead as he kissed the top of her head. His huge arms wrapped around her, grinding her slender frame against his ribs till she couldn’t breathe. She could hear him swallow, over and over again.

‘Put him down,’ a woman’s voice chuckled just behind Lydia. ‘Stop mauling him. That Cossack is mine.’

It was Elena.

Alexei pushed the tip of his knife into the bottom of his boot and twisted. Nothing happened.

Chyort! He was too damn weak even to flick the heel off a shoe. He dropped the knife and sank down with relief on the rain-soaked grass, indifferent to the chill and the wet creeping through his coat. Since leaving the boat he’d walked north through the flatlands, following the line of the river, forcing his legs to march hour after hour. Only now did he allow himself to collapse on to the riverbank.

He was drenched in sweat, despite the bitter wind that skidded off the surface of the water. Flecks of ice in the air nicked at his skin like minuscule ice picks. His mouth was dry as sand and his hands shaking. Up ahead appeared a village, its wooden cottages breathing out coils of smoke from metal chimney pipes, and the smell of cooked meat swirled on the wind. He needed money. Without it he wasn’t going to get far, which was why he was now hacking at his boot in an attempt to remove the heel.